Month: December 2019

The previous iteration of HP’s premium convertibles did nearly everything right. They had an eye-catching design, a wide range of components, solid build, you name it. But sadly, those highlights were often drowned out by a clunky touchpad experience that left people feeling frustrated. But now, HP has returned to fix the Spectre’s lingering issues and then some, and the result is simply one of the best all-around 13-inch laptops you can get right now.

On the outside, aside from a new Poseidon blue paint job (along with the existing black and silver model seen here), the new Spectre x360 13 looks quite similar to the outgoing version. However, a closer examination reveals that HP has reduced the x360’s top and bottom bezels by more than 50 percent. Not only does this get rid of the massive chin found on the previous Spectre x360 13 and allow for a superb screen-to-body ratio of just over 90 percent, it also meant HP could reduce the size of the Spectre’s chassis, resulting in a body that’s almost an inch shorter from front to back (0.9 inches or 23mm shorter to be exact).

That might not sound like much, but when you combine those size reductions with a chassis that weighs just 2.88 pounds, you get a 2-in-1 that slips into almost any bag and is incredibly easy to carry around. Critically, HP didn’t mess with the Spectre’s port selection, which means you get three USB ports (with two featuring support for Thunderbolt 3), along with a headphone jack and a microSD card slot.

As someone who appreciates clever design, I love how HP installed one USB-C port on the tiny diagonal section on the back right of the laptop. It’s the perfect position for plugging the Spectre in to recharge while still keeping cables out of the way. Same goes for the power button on the back left of the machine, which is easy to reach in both laptop and tablet modes, but in such a way that you practically never press it accidentally.

Another neat touch is that because the Spectre’s body is now too thin to support a traditional full-size USB port, HP switched over to a collapsible design that help the laptop retain its Type-A connection without ruining its slim, tapered edges. Getting at least three USB ports is key (though one more would be really ideal) because with one USB port often reserved for charging, having two other USB ports free means it’s still possible to leave your dongle at home without really limiting expandability.

With a peak brightness of 365 nits, the Spectre’s 13.3-inch 1,920 by 1,080 touchscreen performs respectably well, though if you want a display with a bigger impact, you’ll probably want to upgrade to HP’s optional 4K OLED touchscreen. And while I don’t necessarily think it’s something that qualifies as a con, the Spectre’s 16:9 aspect ratio does seem like it’s slightly optimized more for entertainment than productivity, at least compared to laptops with taller 16:10 or 3:2 displays (like the Surface Laptop 3).

As for the Spectre’s keyboard, you get a nice bounce with a decent amount of travel, something that prevents typing from ever feeling dead or lifeless. And with new Microsoft Precision drivers, HP’s touchpad finally gets the accuracy and quick response people have been pining for on previous models. That said, because of the Spectre’s overall smaller dimensions, the new X360 13’s touchpad is slightly smaller too, giving you less space to work with overall. This isn’t a big deal as left to right as HP’s glass pad is plenty wide. Yet sometimes it feels like an extra couple millimeters would go a long way while scrolling.

I also want to call out the presence of dedicated controls for turning off the Spectre’s webcam (which does support Windows Hello face login) and microphones. For the mic, there’s a dedicated button on the keyboard for disabling the microphone, complete with an indicator light so you know it’s really muted. And on the right side of the system between the microSD card reader and the USB-C port, there’s a second toggle for disconnecting the webcam. HP probably could have combined these functions into a single button, but I’m glad it didn’t.

Meanwhile, the Spectre x360 13′ provides solid performance, with our $1,300 Core i7-1065G7 review unit offering a sweet spot between price and power. The i7 CPU gives you a bit more raw computing power than a base Spectre x360 13 with an i5 chip, while the upgrade to 32GB of Intel Optane memory and a 512GB SSD makes it so that opening bigger programs like Photoshop feels just a bit snappier.

Finally, with a time of 10 hours and 23 minutes on our video rundown test, the Spectre x360 doesn’t last quite as long on a charge as the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (11:30). You still get more than enough battery life to last pretty much all day. But if you upgrade to the 4K OLED screen, expect battery life to drop a bit.

With the latest Spectre x360 13, HP delivers practically everything we look for in a quality ultraportable. It’s well built while also sporting slick, distinctive styling that won’t get the Spectre x360 confused with similar systems from Apple or Dell. Battery life and performance are strong, as are the Spectre’s selection of ports, and discrete toggles for the system’s microphones and webcams are a welcome addition to help reduce paranoia about day-to-day privacy.

And with smaller bezels on a more portable body and a touchpad with more responsive drivers, HP addressed the previous model’s greatest weaknesses. This version of Spectre x360 13 is the culmination of great design and thanks to meaningful tweaks over the past couple generations, HP has really made damn fine laptop.

README

The Spectre x360’s integrated Iris Plus graphics are fine in a pinch, but pro video editors will want to step up for something with a discrete GPU

HP hits a sweet spot for ports with two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 3 plus a collapsible port for USB 3 Type-A

HP has finally ditched Synaptics touchpad drivers for Windows Precision drivers.

If you’re using the Spectre on your lap, the system’s rear vent can sometimes get a bit toasty

The Spectre x360 13’s 16:9 display is nice for watching movies, but may feel slighty cramped for productivity.

Because of the Spectre x360’s new smaller dimensions, HP had to move its speakers from the top of the laptop to the bottom.

This build of the G7 15 gaming laptop has a 9th Gen i7-9750H, 16GB RAM, 1TB HDD/256GB SSD storage, and a GTX 1660 Ti graphics card. Throw in a reasonably bright IPS (around 300-nits) display, and you have a pretty powerful entry-level system. You’d be able to play most games at a generous frame rate at 1080p, with some concessions in the settings for demanding games. You won’t be able to play Cyberpunk 2077 on ultra settings, but you could probably play this Cyberpunk-inspired map in Minecraft.

I always prefer it when my gaming laptops don’t look like gaming laptops. If you’re the same way, the G-series redesign laptops are sleek looking without being too over top with obnoxious RGB lighting or racing stripes on the chassis. You’ve also got all the ports you need if you’re looking to be productive at work or school.

This slim gaming laptop comes with a free 3-month subscription to Xbox Game Pass for PC that’ll give you to over a hundred games to play like Halo: The Master Chief Collection or Pathologic 2. If security is concerned for you, you also get a free year subscription of McAfee Livesafe to protect your expensive new purchase—though Windows 10’s built-in antivirus protection is quite good on its own.

The Samsung Galaxy S11 series are phones that we are looking forward to thanks to the different leaks we have seen about them. We have already learned that the distribution of cameras on the Galaxy S11+ will not be as messy as we saw in its first renderings, but there is still more information about it. Samsung’s next flagships are changing the key sections that users look for in the latest phones. This year, the camera will undergo a breakthrough.

Among other things, we know that these phones will have a 120 Hz refresh rate display. Which will allow you to enjoy a much more fluid user experience than what we find in its current catalog. Another aspect that caught our attention was its 108-megapixel camera, which we confirmed by the source code of the OneUI 2.0 camera app and that it would be an exclusive sensor, not the same as that of the Mi Note 10. This camera will be capable of doing something unique in the market.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S11 CAMERA

For a couple of years, the cameras of the Samsung Galaxy phones have not lived up to its competition, both in hardware and software. This year the thing could change radically with the new 108-megapixel camera that we will see on these phones. The resolution has high importance in photos if it was used correctly. Also, it seems that the next Samsung high-end phones will have pixel fusion technology that will allow combining physical pixels to work as a single larger one.

Until now, that fusion in the high-resolution cameras was 4 in 1. But Samsung will go even further with the Samsung Galaxy S11+ camera, the South Korean firm will merge 9 pixels in 1. Obtaining a huge simulated pixel size, the largest to date, of 2.4 μm. This will make the captured photograph 12 megapixels (108/9) and pixels of that size will allow or should allow, a low-light camera behavior much higher than what Samsung has accustomed us.

In a separate tweet, the leaker UniverseIce showcased the back design of the phone. The Galaxy S series is going to adopt the design of the A and M lineups. With a huge rectangle in the upper left corner.

Now we will have to see if the firm also decides to maintain the variable focal aperture with this camera. Or if having pixels of such a large size it prefers to opt for a fixed focal aperture. Anyway, we expect great things from the photographic section of the Samsung Galaxy S11.

Smartphone cameras have exponentially increased in size within a year. The 48MP camera smartphones crowded the first part of 2019. Soon after, we saw phones with 64MP cameras which were eventually followed by smartphones like the brilliant concept Mi MIX Alpha and the commercially available Mi Note 10 with 108MP cameras. And now, according to one of the popular leakers, Ice Universe, Samsung is rumoured to introduce a 144MP camera manufactured using 14nm FinFET process.

In case you are aware of, though Sony jump-started the megapixels game with a 48MP sensor, it was Samsung who outpaced the former company by soon introducing 64MP and 108MP smartphone camera sensors. Although Sony has a 64MP sensor now, the company is yet to make a 108MP camera. On the other hand, Samsung is all set to manufacture 144MP camera sensors using 14nm FinFET process if the information shared by Ice Universe on Twitter happens to be true.

The infographic posted on Twitter by Ice Universe showcases the market trend of mobile CMOS sensors which incorporates over 100 million pixels to sub-10 million pixels. It also adds 14nm manufacturing technology is essential to make sensors above 100 million pixels density. Coincidently, just last week, Samsung exhibited a 14nm FinFET manufacturing process optimized for imaging applications. Which kind of suggests Samsung could be really working to introduce 144MP mobile CMOS sensors to the market. Note that Qualcomm’s recently-introduced Snapdragon 865 SoC already has support for 200MP sensors, so the writing is on the wall.

The Galaxy S11 series is unlikely to feature this sensor. On the other hand, the Galaxy Note 11 looks a very likely candidate for this new piece of camera. However, it would be interesting to see if Xiaomi can snatch the cake once again as it did this year from Samsung.

As of now, there is no information available about this purported upcoming sensor from Samsung, apart from this rumour.

Just a few weeks back, a post went up on Reddit from a Lenovo employee asking for testers to partake in an early trial of an upcoming Chrome OS tablet from the company. We’d seen this type of thing before with the Lenovo Smart Clock and that testing request showed up just weeks before the Smart clock was officially announced. Though there was a bit of back-and-forth around this new tablet post on Reddit, it ended up coming out that the whole thing was legit and truly from Lenovo.

We can only assume some folks have since been contacted by Lenovo about the test device, but we have no firm evidence of that at this point. What we do have, however, is a pretty clear connection between a tablet device referenced in the Chromium Bug Tracker named ‘Kodama’ and a Bitland employee with a tight time frame. If all those words didn’t quite make sense together, let me catch you up.

‘Kodama’ is one of around 10 separate Chrome devices we’re tracking that will use the new MediaTek 8183 ARM processor. Most of these devices look to be tablets and/or detachable devices and we’d expect to see them start arriving early in 2020 from all the things we’ve learned about them so far. These devices are in the ‘Kukui’ family (the name of the unibuild baseboard they are all based on) and ‘Kodama’ is one of those devices we’ve been tracking that we are certain will be made as a detachable with a dedicated keyboard accessory.

The Bitland piece of this isn’t quite as straightforward, but you just need to know that Bitland is a Chinese laptop/tablet producer that has built laptops and tablets for Lenovo for years among other companies. An individual with a Bitland email was spotted in the Chromium Bug Tracker by Kevin Tofel of About Chromebooks making a request for a screen rotation bug to be fixed for ‘Kodama’. His request not only included the name of the device, but a bit of a timeline as well.

Now, that timeline could be anything, but it all sounds pretty pressing. Given that this comment is about ‘Kodama’ from a Bitland employee right around the same time as Lenovo started looking for testers for a new Chrome OS tablet tells me that they are connected. The timing is just to coincidental for these events not to be connected.

Kevin also found an FCC approval for a Lenovo tablet that passed through the FCC back in the end of November. However, the model number (Lenovo TB-8705F) on this filing does match up with a previously announced device in the Lenovo Tab M8. Could this be a rehashed device? Perhaps, but it is highly unlikely. I’d bet the Tab M8 FCC filing is just the new Smart Tab from Lenovo and ‘Kodama’ is or will be something different.

Either way, we are getting very close to seeing some of these new MediaTek 8183 devices and we are feeling more and more confident by the day that we’ll see at least one of them at CES in just 3 weeks from now. The early parts of 2020 are going to be absolutely crazy with new Chrome OS devices, and we can’t wait to try them all. Be sure you are subscribed to our newsletter so you don’t miss a beat!