Month: August 2020

The Raspberry Pi is, by far, the world’s most popular single-board computer and, for many people, the Raspberry Pi 4 is fast enough to serve as a PC. But what if you want the flexibility of a single-board computer that has GPIO pins for physical computing but you need the speed and compatibility of an x86 PC? Enter Seeed’s Odyssey X86J4105, which marries an Intel Celeron CPU with two sets of GPIO pins, one of which is for an onboard Arduino-compatible controller and the other of which has 40 pins and claims to work with Raspberry Pi accessories.

Clearly more expensive than the priciest Raspberry Pi, the Odyssey X86J4106 starts at $188 for the basic model with no storage or operating system and goes up to $258 for our review configuration, which comes with 64GB of eMMC and an activated copy of Windows 10. Is the added versatility of an x86 Intel CPU worth the premium?

Design of the Odyssey X86J4105

Measuring 4.3 x 4.3 x 1.3 inch (110 x 110 z 33mm) the Odyssey X86J4105 is larger than the Raspberry Pi 4 3.3 x 2.2 x 1.1 inch (85 x 56 x 28mm) but not by a gross amount. On the underside of the board is the heatsink and fan atop the Intel Celeron CPU.

Optional Case for Odyssey X86J4105

The Odyssey X86J4105 comes as a bare board and if used in this configuration it will require some M3 standoffs to raise the board from your desk. If you purchase the optional $25 re_computer case then your Odyssey X86J4105 will be raised up from your desk via a plastic riser that acts as a means to expel the waste heat from the unit.

Atop the case’s plastic rises is a blue aluminum chassis which wraps around the board and has openings for the various ports. A glass lid, held in place via magnets can be easily removed using a secret button on the underside of the case. With the lid removed there is free access to all of the GPIO pins and the user expandable storage. The re_computer case is compatible with other maker boards such as the Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone and Jetson Nano and there are standoffs in the case which can be used to secure those boards.

Key Components and Ports on Odyssey X86J4105

Each version of the Odyssey X86J4105 comes with 8GB of DDR4 RAM and an Intel Celeron J4105, a three year old CPU which provides enough power to run Windows 10 Enterprise which came pre-installed on our review unit. Storage is provided via 64GB eMMC, available as an optional extra.

However, you can provide your own storage and there are an impressive number of ways to do this. A full size SATA port and M.2 SATA slot provide older, slower, but cost effective storage options. Just next to the M.2 SATA is space for a 4G / 5G cellular card for additional connectivity.

On the other side of the board is an NVMe slot which can be used with 2280 and 2242 drives. We populated our NVMe slot with a spare 256GB Toshiba drive and installed Ubuntu 20.04 for our later tests.

Display options are HDMI 2.0a at upto 4096×2160 @ 60 Hz and an additional DisplayPort is available via the front mounted USB-C connection. This provides another 4096×2160 @ 60 Hz output.

Cooling the Odyssey X86J4105

Cooling is via a large heat spreader and fan on the underside of the unit. We ran a series of Cinebench tests and our best score was 491 so clearly this is not a board for 3D rendering, and the temperature at one point hit 75 Celsius, much greater than the 60 Celsius trigger that would run the fan at 80%, but our fan just idly “ticked” as if it were unable to start. Looking in the BIOS we found that the fan was set to “Normal” which has trigger points at 45-50, 50-60 and above 60 Celsius.

By setting the fan to “Positive” we saw the fan come to life past 60 Celsius, but never at any temperature below that. There is no software to control the fan speed / curve; it is all handled via the BIOS. Despite this issue, the Odyssey never slowed down or bottlenecked.

Is the Odyssey X86J4105 better than a Raspberry Pi 4?

That depends on a certain point of view. CPU and memory performance is much better with the Odyssey, as are the SATA and NVMe drives which offer much higher performance than the micro SD cards used on the Pi.

We ran a sysbench stress test on the Raspberry Pi 4 and Odyssey, via Ubuntu. 

The Intel Celeron J4105 calculated prime numbers approximately six times faster than the Raspberry Pi 4.

It is clear that the Odyssey is a much more powerful board than even the Raspberry Pi 4 but what is also clear is that this is a board to use for projects that will benefit from its strengths such as better networking and access to more storage options.

GPIO on Odyssey X86J4105

There are two sets of GPIO pins present on the Odyssey. The smaller of the two is a 28-pin breakout for the onboard Arduino an ATSAMD21 ARM Cortex-M0+ MCU which identifies as a Seeeduino Zero in the Arduino IDE. This GPIO may not follow the design cues of other Arduino boards, but we have all of the GPIO pins that we need, digital, PWM and Analog pins, along with I2C, SPI and serial.

To use the Arduino GPIO, we need the Arduino IDE, which comes pre-installed with the provided copy of Windows 10. After setting up the IDE to work with the onboard Arduino we created two scripts to test the GPIO, one to check that we could control the GPIO to flash an LED, and another test to read the voltage through a potentiometer. Both of these scripts worked without issue.

The Raspberry Pi-compatible GPIO is another story. Since the 40 pins are not accessible via Windows, we installed Ubuntu 20.04 on a spare NVMe drive. The Raspberry Pi compatible GPIO does share the same pin layout and it is electrically compatible with the Raspberry Pi but that is where the compatibility ends.

Typically the GPIO is controlled via software, and a popular choice is Python using the RPi.GPIO or GPIO Zero modules. Both of these do not work with the Odyssey and that indicates that the majority of Raspberry Pi HATs and add on boards will also not work. We tested Pimoroni’s Explorer HAT Pro, a board that uses the RPi.GPIO library along with Python3’s smbus I2C module and we were unable to make the board work. Not all is lost though, if you have a simpler board, or a component which uses digital IO (on / off) then these can be connected to the Pi compatible GPIO and used directly in the terminal or via a Bash script. Reading through the Getting Started guide, we noticed that there is a Python 3 module for use with the Odyssey, so we installed and tested it, and yeah it worked, but it was not a slick experience and it proved quite troublesome to even flash an LED.

Based on our findings, if you need reliable GPIO access in a project based around the Odyssey, then the Arduino GPIO should be your go to. It is accessible via Windows and Linux, and we can communicate with the built-in Arduino using serial / UART.

Network / WiFi Speeds / Bluetooth on Odyssey X86J4105

We tested the Gigabit Ethernet NICs and WiFi (2.4 and 5GHz) using iperf in Ubuntu, connected to another machine on the same network acting as a server with a Gigabit NIC also. Ethernet speeds were 942 Mbits/sec which is about average for Gigabit connections. The Intel 9560D2W card provided both 2.4 and 5GHz connectivity via two fragile antennas; they are tricky to fit so take your time. For 2.4-GHz WiFi, we saw only 25.8 Mbits/sec and 5-GHz WiFi gave us only 50.5 Mbits/sec. Those are not the greatest speeds but, if you are planning to use the Odyssey as a server, then you will undoubtedly go for Ethernet over WiFi.

Linux Support on Odyssey X86J4105

As this is an x86 machine, support for Linux distributions is a given. We tested the Odyssey with Ubuntu 20.04 and it was a smooth install process. Installed onto a 256GB NVMe SSD, Ubuntu boots quickly and runs extremely well. There was one snag; when opening a terminal for the first time, the window would not pop open, and would require killing the process and trying again. That’s not a deal breaker but something to watch for.

Bottom Line

The Odyssey X86J4105 is a board for makers. The Arduino GPIO is exceptionally easy to work with and can be used to wake the main system to perform a task, then return to a low power mode.

The Raspberry Pi compatible GPIO is a bit of a let down, if there were a version of the RPi.GPIO Python 3 library then the Odyssey X86J4105 would have everything that a maker would need. But what the Odyssey X86J4105 does have is great networking and storage options. If you need a low power server or just love the idea of having Arduino capability on a PC, then the Odyssey X86J4105 is a great choice. However, if you’re looking for a Raspberry Pi-compatible computer that runs Windows, you’d be better off attempting to install Windows 10 on a real Raspberry Pi (though you won’t like that either).

Garmin’s latest go-anywhere, do-anything Fenix 6 Pro Solar multi-sport watch recharges from the sun, marking an important step towards the smartwatch you never need to charge.

The £739.99 Garmin Fenix 6 Pro Solar is one of the US firm’s top-of-the-line devices, capable of lasting weeks on a charge and tracking practically any stat you’d want, plus it’s able to guide you out of forests when you’re lost.

The watch is available with either a 42 or 47mm case, and in various colours and materials, here reviewed in slate grey with red accents and a 47mm case.

By every dimension the Fenix 6 Pro Solar means business. At 15.1mm thick and 47mm across your wrist, it dwarfs most other smartwatches. It doesn’t feel enormous when worn, still fitting under shirt cuffs and doesn’t catch on things.

It weighs 62g, which is reasonably light – the smaller Fossil Gen 5 weighs closer to 100g. With the included 23g silicone strap, the watch feels well balanced on the wrist and doesn’t slide around once done up. It is comfortable to wear with plenty of adjustment. The 22mm strap can be swapped out for either a quick-release band made by Garmin or any standard 22mm third-party strap.

The 1.3in non-touchscreen is a colour transflective LCD display that is clearly visible in direct sunlight and has a backlight for seeing it in the dark. The screen is protected by scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass 3 DX and is big and clear enough to see at a glance. It is more animated than Garmin’s similar displays on watches such as the Forerunner 245, but isn’t as slick or as good-looking as the OLED screens on most smartwatches.

Five physical buttons take care of controls. Most things are quick and easy to do using the up, down, select and back buttons. If you think of it operating a bit like an old-school or retro Nokia, then you get a rough idea of how it works.

Scroll up or down from the watch face for a series of customisable widgets. I have smartwatch notifications first, then a series of health stats including heart, stress and sleep, temperature, solar intensity, a series of running performance widgets and so on; there are loads to choose from.

Each of the buttons has a press-and-hold shortcut too. I have it set so holding the down button opens music controls, up for settings and holding the light button takes you to a rotating bunch of quick settings, including timers, alarms and Garmin Pay.

Specifications

Screen: 1.3in transflective MIP (260×260 pixels)

Case size: 47mm

Case thickness: 15.1mm

Band size: standard 22mm quick release

Weight: 62g body only (silicone band is 23g)

Storage: 32GB

Water resistance: 100 metres (10ATM)

Sensors: GPS/Glonass/Galileo, compass, accelerometer, thermometer, heart rate, pulse Ox

Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.2, ANT+, wifi

Connections and battery life

The Fenix 6 Pro Solar is much less dependent on your phone than most smartwatches; you don’t even need to pair a phone to set it up.

Pairing with the Garmin Connect app enables alerts of calls, texts and other notifications, control of music, and activity syncing, all of which worked great with a variety of phones. The watch has wifi for syncing directly to the internet, downloading updates or music too. It can be plugged into a computer to sync and update via Garmin Express, which is a requirement if you want to update the built-in maps.

Sans-phone, the watch will continue to track your vitals and activities for weeks with a large amount of internal storage, including fairly comprehensive analysis. You could head off into the wilderness for a week without a phone and still do everything, including mapping, which can’t be said of most smartwatches.

The Fenix 6 Pro Solar lasts at least quadruple the length of most smartwatches between charges. Used just as a smartwatch with phone notifications and all the health tracking features activated it, the watch lasts nine full days and nights between charges. If you cut down on some of the health tracking, such as the pulse oximeter, wrist heart rate or other bits you can extend battery life by days (up to 14 according to Garmin). A power manager allows you to select from various pre-sets or make your own with certain features turned on or off.

Running with music is the biggest battery drain. A 25-minute run with all the tracking options (GPS, heart rate, etc) while playing music via Bluetooth headphones consumes 4-5% of the battery. That’s still over nine hours total of running with music, which is enough for most people to complete a marathon. Three runs a week reduced the smartwatch battery life to closer to seven days, which is still multiple days longer than most competitors.

However, that’s all without employing the watch’s hidden talent – the Power Glass covering the screen doubles as a solar charger. It works all the time, even indoors, but requires bright sunlight to meaningfully top up the battery. On a week where I spent two hours walking (with tracking and maps) and three 25-minute runs on bright British summer days I got an extra day’s battery from general smartwatch usage.

The beauty is that, other than the added cost to the watch which is a not-inconsiderable £140 over the version without the solar charging, there’s no downside to the Power Glass as it’s fully transparent to the eye. You just see the screen and a slim strip that looks like bezel.

Sustainability

The Fenix 6 Pro Solar is generally repairable, but Garmin typically replaces damaged devices with refurbished units for a fee. The battery is rated to last a few years of frequent charge cycles while maintaining at least 80% capacity, but is not user replaceable. The screen is covered in Corning’s scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass 3 DX, similar to a smartphone.

Garmin offers trade-in schemes for some lines and complies with WEEE and other local electronics recycling law.

General Health tracking

The Fenix 6 Pro Solar has comprehensive health tracking features. An excellent optical heart rate monitor on the back works continuously through the day, alerting you to abnormally high or low beats per minute and recording your resting and active heart rates. It measures Pulse Ox (oxygenation of the blood) both during the day and while asleep, respiration rate, stress, body temperature, fall or incident detection and many more. The only thing it doesn’t have is ECG for tracking heart arrhythmia.

Garmin’s body battery system helps you make sense of it all, combining stress, sleep, heart rate variability and other data into a simple in-out system. You charge up your body with good sleep and deplete it with stress, activity and daily life. If you’re about balanced you’re doing a good job, but it’s easy to spot when you’re struggling or not doing enough exercise.

Sleep tracking is extensive, including light, deep and REM sleep stages, respiration and Pulse Ox tracking, which together can show signs of issues such as sleep apnoea. The data is presented in easy-to-read graphs on the phone or a widget on the watch.

Then there’s your standard step, calories, floors and so on, including move reminders.

Sport, training and adventuring

Comprehensive sport tracking covers a list of over 30 activities, but the main ones are running in its various indoor and outdoor forms, cycling, swimming, walking, hiking, skiing, golf and gym sessions of various activities with on-screen animations showing you how to do them.

The watch will handle triathlons, but as a runner I focused on hitting the pavement. The Fenix 6 Pro Solar’s outdoor running tracking was first class. It got a GPS lock within seconds, monitored every stat I could want, had a clearly readable display with only the info I wanted on it, gave me pace and lap alerts, performance analysis after 1.5km and handled intervals and more advanced training plans with aplomb. The watch is noticeably larger and heavier on your wrist than something like the Forerunner 245, requiring me to tighten the strap to stop it sliding around.

At the end of each run it gives you an aerobic and anaerobic training score, plus an analysis of your training load over the last seven days. The recovery, Vo2 Max and race predictor functions were more accurate than other Garmin watches I have tested too. PacePro allows you to map out a race course and get pace suggestions in real time on the watch adjusted for elevation and other factors to help you hit your desired time, once races are open again.

Walking maps were very useful too, providing maps with trails and other features that weren’t visible on Google Maps, making it more effective than a phone. Moving the map around can be a bit tedious with buttons, but is straightforward with practice.

The altimeter, barometer and compass, plus maps of the whole of Europe mean you can go hiking just about anywhere. If you need maps for other regions you can buy them and upload them through Garmin Express.

Apps

The Fenix 6 Pro Solar can run third-party apps downloaded from the Connect IQ store. There are plenty of small utilities and widgets, apps such as Uber and Strava, music services including Spotify, Deezer and Amazon Music, and buckets of watch faces.

The Spotify app works well. It can download up to 2,000 songs for offline playback via wifi or control music on your smartphone. Not many smartwatches have offline Spotify playback, so having it for runs is a big plus for subscribers.

Garmin Pay is also available for contactless payment on the go. It is not supported by many banks in the UK, but does support Curve, which allows you to bind most credit or debit cards to it. Payments are secured by pin and could be a lifesaver for use on public transport or buying a drink when running without a phone or credit card.

Observations

The watch can vibrate and has basic beeps and tones, which work well for the various alarms, timers and activities.

Price

The Garmin Fenix 6 Pro Solar has an RRP of £739.99 and comes in either 42 or 47mm sizes.

The watch is also available without solar charging as the Fenix 6 Pro costing £599.99, with solar charging but without music, maps and wifi, as the Fenix 6 Solar costing £649.99 or in a larger 51mm version called the Fenix 6X Pro Solar costing £849.99.

For comparison, the Garmin Forerunner 245 Music costs £299.99, the Forerunner 945 costs £519.99, Suunto 9 Baro costs £539, the Coros Vertix costs $599 (£460), the Polar Vantage V Titan costs £519, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 costs £269 and the Apple Watch Series 5 costs £399.

Verdict

The Garmin Fenix 6 Pro Solar is the do-anything, go-anywhere watch for those that need a smartwatch while stuck to a desk during the day, but then dump everything and go climb a mountain, do a triathlon or simply trek into the middle of nowhere at the weekends. Or aspire to do those things.

It is very much the kitchen-sink of multi-sport watches, which means most of it is total overkill if you’re just a runner, just a cyclist, just a swimmer or just looking for a long-lasting smartwatch. But if you do more than one thing, or like the idea of being able to jump out of an aeroplane in the middle of Europe and still find your way home, this is the watch for you.

It is really easy to live with and looks the part. A rugged, yet stylish sports watch that states to the outside world: “I do more than just the day job”. Those with smaller wrists will struggle with the 47mm version, but the 42mm version is smaller than many smartwatches.

Garmin’s Power Glass offers a glimpse of the solar-powered future. It’s not quite the holy grail of a smartwatch you never have to charge, but made a small but material difference to the battery life. Having to charge it less than once a week is still a killer feature for everything this watch can track and do. It is worth noting you’re paying an extra £140 for the solar-charging technology versus the same watch without it, which is a fair sum.

It is certainly not cheap, and definitely overkill for most. But if you want the ultimate outdoor adventure smartwatch, the Garmin Fenix 6 Pro Solar is it.

Pros: tracks everything under the sun, long battery life, solar charging, phone notifications, Garmin Pay, full offline mapping, offline Spotify, Bluetooth, wifi, 100m water resistance, real buttons, accurate GPS

Cons: expensive, big, limited Garmin Pay bank support, limited smartwatch features compared to Apple Watch/Wear OS/Galaxy Watch, no touchscreen, screen fairly basic compared to the best smartwatches

Apple, Bose, Sonos, Google and Amazon all have plenty to offer in the £200-£400 bracket Bluetooth speaker market – not to mention a more stable footing in the audio game – this may explain why Huawei has called on the services of audiophile pioneers Devialet to deliver something that will stand out. Enter the Huawei Sound X – a nicely weighted and compact speaker that more than holds its own in an already crowded market.

Made from a combination of shiny black plastic and audio-transparent knit fabric, the Sound X somehow manages to look like a hyper-realistic rendered photo even in real life. Its two exposed woofers even make it look a little different from the competition.

Behind the fabric base are six 1.5in drivers, which, once combined with the two 3.5in woofers, manage a rated output of 65W and 360-degree listening. It’s enough to create plenty of oomph in any configuration, but the back-to-back woofer design uses Devialet’s Push-Push bass structure that means, aside from showing the speakers pulsating (up to 20mm), each woofer cancels out the backwave vibrations of the other. This greatly suppressing distortion, which is often the curse of small speaker cabinet construction.

The same technology is used to stunning effect on Devialet’s award-winning Phantom speaker, which, from £990, has the sort of audio quality and bass response you’d expect from a £10,000 hi-fi.

Huawei has also incorporated Devialet’s Speaker Active Matching (SAM) processing from the Phantom, that lets the speaker accurately match the sound pressure generated by the microphones during the studio recording process in real time during playback. Think of it this way: if the kick drum has ‘x’ impact on the recording mic, then the same impact supposedly comes through on the speaker.

But before we get to performance, it’s worth explaining a little more about Huawei’s collaborator on the Sound X. Founded in Paris in 2007, this niche audio brand quickly found a cult following thanks to unique driver configurations, processors and chipsets capable of generating 4,500 watts and 108 decibels of audio nirvana from a ridiculously compact speaker. Some 76 awards and 160 technology patents later Devialet has started buddying up – its first being with Sky TV – and is clearly looking to tap into a more mainstream audience.

Huawei is no stranger to collaborations, previously working with both Porsche and Leica, and seems content to stick to their strengths and bring in the experts where needed. So, has Huawei created the best streaming speaker £300 can buy? From a sound quality perspective, and despite only streaming, at best, Bluetooth 5.1 aptX (16-bit/44.1kHz), the performance is sensational.

Wherever we positioned the speaker in the room, we were met with a thunderous amount of volume – rated up to 93dB – without a hint of distortion. The Sound X is louder than anything else we’ve tried at this size or price, and even kept pace (in terms of volume) with Naim’s £749 Muso Qb 2. But we’re not 12 and this isn’t a boombox, and volume counts for very little without detail, soundstage and balance to match. In this respect Devialet can be proud of the shift it has put in, having created a speaker full of nuanced power that more than justifies its price tag.

Like the Devialet Phantom, there’s a richness to the sound quality here, and an impressive amount of control over the low frequencies. We sampled tracks across genres, from the rough and rumbling D&B classic Valley of The Shadows by Origin Unknown, through the Talking Heads back catalogue with Tina Weymouth’s edgy bass lines, and the Sound X remained accomplished, boasting a level of audio authority we genuinely weren’t expecting.

It’s not the final word in sonic subtly, and neither should it be for £300. The bassline prefers to show off at higher volume, and this is evident when played side-by-side with the Apple HomePod, which is sorely lacking the same weight of impact as the X, but still matches it comfortably on balance and detail.

But all is not perfect. Firstly, and we assume this is down to ongoing issues over privacy, despite it having a quad-core 1.5GHz processor, built-in 512MB storage, 8GB storage and Wi-Fi, outside of China the Sound X is little more than a good Bluetooth speaker. There’s no Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant, and the lack of Wi-Fi limits audio-streaming quality, which is a crying shame.

If you have a Huawei phone, you can tap on the NFC logo to hand-off music to the speaker, and it also plays nice with Huawei HiLink, the company’s smart control platform, but practical uses remain scant compared to the competition.

Maybe the Devialet badge and trickle-down audio wizardry is enough to entice, but Huawei isn’t a hi-fi company, and, like Apple, it desperately wants you to invest in its tech and communications ecosystem. Without the hands-free simplicity and enhanced streaming compatibility of brands such as Sonos, Amazon and Apple, despite the Sound X’s strong audio showing it remains a few updates short of the competition.

Celeron CPUs have been part and parcel of Intel’s processor family for more than two decades. They’ve played a vital role in the company’s product mix, despite not getting the sort of press coverage as its flagship CPU family, the Core series.

That’s partly due to the fact you can’t actually buy most Celeron models today. 

A fair chunk are either sold as part of a motherboard (e.g. this Seeed motherboard) or as part of a complete system – most likely a tablet or a laptop.

Intel Celeron N4000 vs Celeron N4100

The N4000 is arguably one of the most sought after Intel processors. It was launched alongside the N4100 towards the end of 2017, nearly three years ago. Both are Gemini Lake parts and built on a 14nm manufacturing process.

That’s not where the similarities end; they have a base speed of 1.1GHz, 4MB cache, a TDP of 6W, support up to 8GB of DDR4/LPDDR4 memory in dual channel mode, run an Intel UHD graphics subsystem with a base frequency of 200MHz and can drive up to three 4K displays.

The biggest difference is in the number of cores. The N4000 has two cores and two threads, while the N4100 has four cores and four threads. The latter also has a slightly lower boost frequency (2.4GHz vs 2.6GHz) and a slightly higher graphics burst frequency (700MHz vs 650MHz).

What this means is that the Celeron N4000 ends up being significantly slower than the N4100, not so much on single thread performance but more because it has half the number of physical cores.

Passmark numbers show that it is about 40% slower than the N4100. Even worse, is it hardly even competes with older processors, such as the Celeron N3450.

What about the Celeron N4120?

Although the N4120 was launched towards the end of last year, it bears a strong resemblance to its predecessors. Based on the Gemini Lake refresh, it shares many common qualities with the N4100, except for a slightly higher boost frequency (2.6GHz vs 2.5GHz).

That should, in theory, give it a slim advantage when benchmarked. However, this hasn’t been demonstrated just yet, partly because it’s a new processor and not many systems have been tested with this CPU at the helm.

In conclusion, it’s best to avoid computers, tablets and laptops based on the N4000 and opt for those with either the N4100 or the N4120. These two are within touching distance of a 7th generation Intel Core i3 processor, which is to say they are quite nippy indeed when paired with an SSD and plenty of memory.