Month: January 2020

Today MediaTek has announced a new entry into its new “Dimensity” 5G SoC product lineup. The new chip is called the Dimensity 800 and represents a mid-range solution for lower cost devices compared to the larger Dimensity 1000 flagship SoC. The chip’s main feature is the fact that it supports 5G connectivity in the sub-6 spectrum, making this amongst the first 5G designs at this price range.

The SoC is powered by an octa-core CPU setup, including 4x Cortex A76 cores at 2GHz alongside 4x Cortex A55 cores at also 2GHz. It’s interesting to see this segmentation in the IP – the A77 cores aren’t that much larger than the A76 cores, but it’s possible MediaTek has been able to optimise the A76 for higher density implementations, hence also the quite low frequency even though the new chip comes manufactured on TSMC’s 7nm N7 process node.

On the GPU side, we’re seeing a Mali-G57MP4 at an undisclosed frequency. The G57 is a derivative of the Valhall GPU family and covers the lower end spectrum of possible configurations.

The chip features a cut-down DRAM interface with only 2-ch (2x16b) LPDDR4X support at up to 2133MHz, so half the bandwidth of the Dimensity 1000.

The chip still comes with MTK’s newest 3rd generation in-house APU/NPU for AI acceleration, but doesn’t disclose the breakdown in the same way they did with the D1000. They do state there’s up to 2.4TOPs of inferencing throughput which is actually still a very respectable figure for a SoC at this range.

The Dimensity 800 comes with 5G Sub-6 integrated modem; MediaTek discloses 2CC CA on the downlink. MTK at this time didn’t disclose more information on the throughput and how it compares to the D1000, but they do state DSS (Dynamic Spectrum Sharing) as a feature of the D800 which is an important characteristic for the chip’s modem.

We’ll be seeing Dimensity 800 based products being announced and come to market throughout 2020.

Samsung’s Odyssey G9 gaming monitor is an incredible thing to behold in person. It’s on the show floor at CES 2020, and pretty much everyone who sat in front of the 49-inch 1440p display was dazzled.

You’re going to have an impossible challenge trying to find a rig that can push the latest PC games at 240Hz. But if you’re a competitive e-sports player who specializes in older titles, this display could be a dream. Those not running it at 240Hz can still take advantage of its sharp resolution and that immersive 1000R curvature that pretty much envelops your whole field of vision.

The back is very sci-fi, with a clear cutout in the center that reveals a round LED that shifts colors. It looks like Iron Man’s arc reactor. Does anyone need that in a monitor? Nope. Does it look cool, especially for the crowd the G9 is marketed toward? Oh, most definitely.

Listening to the crowd of onlookers here in Las Vegas, I heard some confess that the Odyssey G9 is too much monitor for them and that they’d have a hard time following along with everything happening on-screen in Fortnite. To me, there’s really no such thing as too much monitor. Give me two of these things side by side. Surround me with like five or six of them, even.

With a 1ms response time and support for both AMD FreeSync 2 and Nvidia’s G-Sync, the G9 is likely to come with a very hefty price tag when it ships later this year. It’s easy to quibble over whether it’s worth the cost compared to other ultrawide or 1440p monitors on the market.

There are not many projectors with Android TV built-in ⁠— we reviewed the Anker Nebula Capsule II and XGIMI Mogo and walked away impressed by them, but didn’t like that neither of them has any official support for Netflix. Though you can always sideload the Netflix mobile app, it can be difficult to control and quite janky. The newly announced Epson EF-100 projector isn’t quite comparable to those two ⁠— with no battery, it’s not very portable ⁠— but it’s the first Android TV projector we’ve come across with official Netflix support, and that’s pretty exciting.

The projector utilizes a Microlaser Array to achieve 2,000 lumens of brightness and an “enhanced black density”. It avoids the common projection problem of a rainbow effect with a 3-chip LCD projection technology. The image displays at 1280 x 800, but the projector accepts inputs up 1920 x 1080. It also has a built-in speaker and supports Bluetooth to use with wireless headphones and speakers.

The Epson EF-100 should be available to purchase starting this month ⁠— available in white and silver or black and copper. You’ll be able to buy it from Epson as well as other retailers at the suggested retail price of $1,000.