Month: September 2020

Dell’s XPS lineup has been among the best for years, and the company has gradually refined whatever pain points it did have, such as when it used to put the webcam below the screen. But this year, the lineup underwent a major redesign, with Dell chopping down the bezels even more, something that I wouldn’t have guessed was possible.

The firm has long touted how small the footprint is on its laptops, always saying that the XPS 15 fits in the footprint of a 13-inch laptop, and that the XPS 13 fits into the footprint of an 11-inch laptop. With the XPS 15 fitting into an even smaller footprint this year, there was room for something bigger.

Dell announced the new XPS 17 in May, and it’s the first new XPS 17 in around a decade. If you read my review of the latest XPS 15, then there are pretty much two things to know. The screen is bigger, and it’s more powerful with Nvidia RTX graphics. In fact, it’s the first XPS laptop ever with RTX graphics.

Obviously, these specs are for the unit that Dell sent me. The base model starts at $1,399.99, although that one has integrated graphics, a Core i5-10300H, an FHD screen, and 8GB RAM.

Design

While the XPS 17 was introduced alongside the XPS 15 redesign in May, this design was actually first shown in January at CES with the XPS 13. This design consists of a 16:10 display, narrow bezels on all four sides, and no USB Type-C ports. Indeed, if you put the XPS 13, 15, and 17 next to each other, they look nearly identical except for being different sizes.

The Dell XPS 17 is indeed the 17-inch laptop that can fit into the footprint of a 15-inch laptop. The most important thing that that means to me is that it can fit into a regular-sized bag. That’s not always the case with 17-inch laptops; in fact, it’s pretty rare. It’s a bit heavy at five and a half pounds, but that’s the kind of laptop that this is. It’s got a lot of power under the hood, and it also fits into a small footprint. That combination makes the XPS 17 unique.

The top-down view is the one thing that looks the same. The chassis is made out of aluminum, and the laptop comes in a silver color with a chrome-colored Dell logo stamped in the lid.

The sides are silver-colored as well. This was a big change with the redesign since the sides have more traditionally been black. I think this gives it a much cleaner look. But as I mentioned, there are no USB Type-C ports, even on the 17-incher.

Instead, there are four Thunderbolt 3 ports, two of which are on each side. The bad news is that they’re not full Thunderbolt 3 ports, so if you’re like me and you work from a Thunderbolt 3 dock that has two 4K monitors attached to it, you won’t be able to use the full resolution. My workaround was to disconnect one of the monitors from the dock and connect it directly to the laptop. Still, it’s disappointing, considering how premium and powerful this PC is.

The cool thing about having two Thunderbolt 3 ports on each side is that you can charge the PC from either side. I know that this sounds like a small thing, but it’s really nice, and it’s a rarity in laptops.

Also on the right side, you’ll find an SD card reader and a 3.5mm audio jack. I’m kind of surprised that the SD card reader is there with everything else being cut, but I guess it’s nice that it’s there.

Display and audio

The screen on the Dell XPS 17 is a flat 17 inches, compared to 17.3 inches on a traditional 17-inch laptop. The reason for that is because this has a 16:10 display, and to be clear, being that it’s measured diagonally, this display is larger than a 17.3-inch 16:9 screen. It comes in your choice of 3840×2400 or 1920×1200 resolutions. Dell sent me the former, and it is absolutely beautiful.

It comes in at 500-nit brightness, so it works great in bright sunlight, and indoors, I only found myself using it at about 25% brightness. It also has 100% Adobe RGB, 94% DCI-P3, and a 1600:1 contrast ratio.

The colors are also nearly perfect, and that actually goes for whatever angle you’re viewing the display from. Dell promises a 178-degree viewing angle, and it delivers. You can look at this thing from any angle and not see any visible distortions.

Plus, it’s big. I’m not always a fan when companies make taller screens like this because it means that it’s also narrower. But at 17 inches, there’s plenty of screen real estate for everything.

The company also has something called Dell Cinema, which includes CinemaColor, CinemaSound, and CinemaStream. CinemaColor includes HDR technologies and more, and there’s actually an included app that lets you apply different display settings such as movie, evening, sports, and animation.

The bezels are small, but that doesn’t mean Dell removed the webcam, or moved it. It’s shrunken down to fit into that tiny top bezel, and there’s an IR camera for facial recognition as well. You’re not making any sacrifices in that department like you would have been in the old days.

CinemaSound has to do with the Waves MaxxAudio Pro speakers. There’s an app for that too, but this one is called MaxxAudio Pro instead of CinemaSound. The XPS 17 has large speakers on either side of the keyboard, and they sound fantastic. The dead giveaway is that it has both woofers and tweeters, a rarity on laptops.

Indeed, this has four speakers, two of which are 2.5W and two of which are 1.5W. Obviously, they’re used for different frequencies. If you’re looking for sound quality and volume in a laptop, you definitely came to the right place.

Keyboard and trackpad

The keyboard found in the XPS 17 is the same as can be found in its other clamshell laptops. Dell does have a technology called MagLev that it uses in the XPS 13 2-in-1 and XPS 15 2-in-1, but perhaps surprisingly, the technology didn’t make it into the smaller, redesigned clamshells.

Dell didn’t add a numpad, which is a decision that I’m happy with. I’m not a fan of the numpad, and it’s not even easy to ignore because it moves the regular keyboard to the left, leaving it off-centered. I’ll take the quad-speaker setup instead.

Key depth is 1.3mm, which is pretty standard for a consumer laptop these days. It’s quite comfortable to type on, and it’s definitely one of the better keyboards in a consumer laptop. If we were talking about commercial laptops, that might be another story, but we’re not talking about commercial laptops. I find that I make very few mistakes with this keyboard, something that I do appreciate after using some keyboards that I’ve had some issues with.

There’s a power button in the keyboard, which doubles as a fingerprint sensor. Unfortunately, you do have to scan your fingerprint after the PC boots up, as opposed to how everyone else with a fingerprint sensor in the power button does it, scanning your finger before it boots up.

Dell considers this to be a security issue, assuming that you might walk away from your PC between when you press the button and when it boots up and someone might sit in front of it. I have a bit more faith in the user than Dell does, and I think you’d get to know your PC and whether or not you’re safe to grab a cup of coffee while it’s booting up.

My favorite feature of the XPS 15 is on the XPS 17, which is that the Precision trackpad is massive. Huge trackpads are something that Apple introduced on its MacBook Pro PCs a while back, and I’ve been waiting for a Windows OEM to follow suit. If the real estate on the keyboard deck is there, I say use it. The large, clickable trackpad feels great, and it makes drag-and-drop operations a breeze.

Performance and battery life

Both performance and battery life are excellent on the XPS 17. This thing is great for anything. I used it for things from gaming with Forza Horizon 4 and Halo: Reach to 4K video editing to general work. Sure, there was the occasional bump in the road, particularly when it came to gaming, but it absolutely handled anything that I threw at it.

After all, this thing has top-end hardware for its class. It has an Intel Core i7-10875H processor, which has eight cores, 16 threads, and a 45W TDP. It’s the better Core i7 from the H-series, the other one being the hexa-core Core i7-10750H. It’s only bested by the Core i9-10885H, which is available in the XPS 17.

For graphics, it comes with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q with 6GB GDDR6. With RTX graphics, it supports things like real-time ray tracing and deep learning super sampling (DLSS). RTX graphics was how I knew it would support some solid gaming. You can get it with integrated graphics if you don’t want the power at all, or you can get it with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti.

Keep in mind that this is a creator laptop, not a gaming laptop. It uses a 130W charger, while most gaming laptops are closer to the 230W range, and it doesn’t have the thermals for it. This is primarily a work machine, but I’m here to let you know that it does have the power to play as well.

Even more impressive is battery life. I often say that you have to choose between power and battery life, and with the UHD+ display, you can bet that this uses a lot of power. I used it with the power slider one notch above the battery saver, and with the screen at around 25% brightness. I can tell you that you can easily get six hours out of this, and in many cases, you can take it further than that. With general work, I was able to get up to eight hours.

Of course, the touchscreen model comes with a 97Whr battery. In other words, this has one of the biggest batteries that you’ll find in any laptop (much larger and you can’t take it on a plane). The non-touch model comes with a 56Whr battery.

For benchmarks, I used PCMark 8, PCMark 10, 3DMark, VRMark, Geekbench, and Cinebench.

If you’re not the type to go through benchmark scores, all you need to know is that this is a powerful machine.

Conclusion

My biggest complaint about the Dell XPS 17 is that it doesn’t have full Thunderbolt 3 ports, which would have been able to handle two 4K displays on a single port. If that bothers you too, just wait for the next one. Intel’s next generation of CPUs is going to support Thunderbolt 4, which is really just the full Thunderbolt 3 that I’m describing. My other gripe is that there’s no cellular model. I realize that it’s something of a rare feature on more powerful laptops, probably because it uses battery, but I don’t care. It’s 2020 and I should be able to work from anywhere.

Let’s be clear that this is an absolutely incredible laptop that’s nearly perfect. It’s an absolute pleasure to use, no matter what you’re using it for. If you’re playing games, it can do that. If you’re streaming movies, it’s got a killer HDR display and stunning speakers. If you want to edit video, it’s got the power for that as well.

All of it comes in a beautiful chassis and yes, a small footprint. The fact that this thing has a 17-inch display and can fit in a regular bag is a feat of engineering. Honestly, the Dell XPS 17 is in a class all its own, and I can’t think of anything like it. If you’re looking for a laptop that can do everything, this is it.

Genesis is a smaller name in the gaming peripheral world, but the brand is steadily gaining popularity, particularly in the e-Sports community. The Polish-based company makes and sells all sorts of peripherals, including keyboards, mice, headphones, microphones, PC cases, and more, which are specifically targeted at value-oriented customers.

Genesis sent me the Thor 420 RGB low-profile mechanical keyboard, and I’ve been using it almost exclusively for the better part of three months. As a primer, I have experience with both membrane and full-sized mechanical keyboards; my daily driver is a standard Logitech K120 membrane keyboard, but I’ve also spent substantial time using a Razer Blackwidow (w/ Razer’s Green switches, equivalent to Cherry MX Blue switches) and Corsair K70 (Cherry MX Red switches).

Depending on the retailer and region, the Genesis Thor 420 RGB ranges in price from €60-80 (US$70-95) at the time of publication.

Design

The Thor 420 RGB is a beautiful piece of kit. The aluminum keyboard deck sits atop a low-profile black plastic base. The keyboard is 418 mm long, making it a hair shorter than most other standard keyboards. It still takes up a fair amount of desk space. 

As a low-profile keyboard, the Thor 420 RGB is fairly short at 24 mm. The keys sit flush with each other rather than in tiered rows (more on this in a bit), giving the keyboard a sleek aesthetic. The keys themselves are elevated above the keyboard deck and the transparent casings of the switches are exposed, allowing the RGB lighting to shine around each key rather than just through. The overall effect is rather pleasing.

The keys use a chiclet design like many laptops rather than the traditional beveled design used in most mechanical keyboards. Because of this, the keys sit flush in a plane. While this helps keep the height down, it can make key recognition difficult, especially for touch typists. There is little tactile indication as to where one key ends and another begins, and it can be difficult to know over which row fingers lie.

Another issue is the size of the individual keys. The letter keys on the Thor 420 RGB measure 15 mm2; most beveled keyboard keys (like those on the Logitech K120) measure 18-20 mm2. Some mechanical keyboards have slightly larger keys. While a difference of 3 mm on each dimension doesn’t look large on paper, it alters the typing experience substantially. Coupled with the lack of a tactile boundary between keys, the small size requires major readjustment. 

During my first month with the Thor 420 RGB, I found myself constantly mistyping keys. I commonly hit multiple keys simultaneously or typed in the wrong row. After sticking with the keyboard and adjusting my typing style to the Thor 420 RGB, I’ve come to like it, primarily because of the tactile bump of the switches and the speed with which I can type. It takes some adjustment, but I’ve found myself typing faster on the Thor 420 RGB and quite enjoying the experience.

Overall, the design is beautiful but different from most other mechanical keyboards. The keys and their flat aesthetic will take some time getting used to. Even experienced typists will need time to readjust to the Thor 420 RGB. After adjustment, the keyboard feels great and can improve both the typing and gaming experience. 

Specifications

The Thor 420 RGB uses low-profile mechanical blue switches. Genesis says the travel distance is 1.2 mm and that actuation force is a mere 45 grams. Response time is rated at 1 ms.

When using the keyboard, I noticed that the switches trigger very easily and have a light tactile bump that is perceptible but not distracting. The Content Slim Blue switches are very loud and sound like a machine gun during writing sessions. As such, office workers may want to look for something with quieter keys (MX Brown equivalents). 

While gaming, the keyboard feels very responsive. The bump is more noticeable, as keys are not pressed in such rapid succession. It’s miles better than my membrane keyboard; I don’t second guess whether or not I’ve pressed a key.

The Thor 420 RGB, as its name implies, uses RGB backlighting. Each key has its own backlight, rather than the zone lighting used in cheap RGB keyboards. As such, every key can light up in one of several colors. I noticed it lacks the color variety of top-end RGB keyboards, but there are at least nine distinct colors. Using the software, users can set key backlights to any of the 16.7 million colors in the sRGB spectrum, though the keyboard admittedly makes it a bit hard to discern between these.

Additionally, the Thor 420 RGB comes with 19 backlight modes programmed into the keyboard itself. These can be toggled in software, but a nice feature is that there are hotkeys for cycling both RGB modes and colors on the keyboard. Because of this, the Thor 420 RGB is essentially plug-and-play, which is nice. The software is available if you want it, but the keyboard does not rely on it. The Thor 420 RGB also doesn’t automatically install a software suite, which gives the users the choice as to whether or not they want to use Genesis’ software (more on that below).

Most of the backlight modes will be familiar to users of RGB keyboards. It has the typical static color, color sweeps, and waterfall modes. There is quite a bit of variety, including a “raceway” mode (which lights up a trail of keys in a spiral pattern around the board) and two “explosion” modes (which launch colors in an outward circular pattern when a key is pressed). Most of the RGB modes are fun to explore, and there’s enough variety here to match most people’s preferences. There are also some preset modes for games like Call of Duty and League of Legends that only light up specific hotkeys.

The Thor 420 RGB also features n-key rollover, which allows the keyboard to register all keys pressed simultaneously without limit. In my testing, this is indeed the case; the Thor 420 RGB registered every single key when I mashed the entire keyboard in testing software. There is also no ghosting. The switches are rated for 50 million clicks, so the keyboard should last a while under heavy use.

Performance

As mentioned, the Thor 420 RGB has a fairly low actuation force of 45 grams and a shallow travel distance of 1.2 mm. For a mechanical keyboard, these numbers are on the low side of things. The result is that the Thor 420 RGB feels snappy but can be a bit “trigger-happy.” The keys don’t take much to fire off, which is a godsend when fast reflexes are needed and a nuisance when they aren’t. 

Typing and gaming on the Thor 420 RGB is a dream compared to my old Logitech K120 membrane keyboard. The K120 feels muddy and sluggish in comparison. Even other mechanical keyboards, like the Razer Blackwidow, don’t feel quite as balanced; the Razer, for instance, feels cumbersome and heavy compared to the lighter switches and lower travel distance of the Thor 420 RGB.

That said, the Thor 420 RGB takes some getting used to, especially for typing. I found myself having to readjust my style to use a lighter touch. Otherwise, keys would press down too easily. I tend to rest my fingers on my keyboard during breaks in typing. That works fine on the other keyboards I’ve used that require more force to push a key down, but I found myself triggering keys by mistake.

After about a month of use, though, I found that I like the lower force needed for the Thor 420 RGB. I also found that my typing speed increased slightly from roughly 95 WPM to a solid 98 (100 on a good day). However, I tended to make a few more mistakes, mostly due to the smaller key size (see the section above for details).

Software

Genesis provides a software app for each of its peripherals. These can be downloaded at Genesis’ website (genesis-zone.com) and appear to be customized in certain ways for each device.

Unfortunately for the Thor 420 RGB, the dedicated app is barebones. The only features available during our testing period (in version 1.2) are creating, importing, and exporting profiles and changing the backlight modes. Considering the illumination animations can be changed on the keyboard itself, there is very little use for the backlight mode. However, this setting does allow users to customize the backlight for each key and save this lighting to a particular profile. One of the five profiles can be automatically set when a related program is launched. This can be used to light up specific keys with preset colors when specific games are launched, which may be a nice quality-of-life feature for some.

The software does little else. As mentioned, it is a courtesy that Genesis doesn’t automatically install this app when the keyboard is plugged in (unlike some other manufacturers). If users want to fully customize the coloration of their keyboard and switch to specific patterns when an app or game is launched, the app is a great tool. For all others who are happy with the presets installed to the keyboard itself, the app is unnecessary.

I would like to see the ability to set macros or rebind the keyboard via software in a future update. There are other keyboards around this price point that have this feature, and lots of gamers would surely appreciate the ability to tie macro setups to profiles. Hopefully, Genesis will enable this at a later date.

Verdict

Genesis hits a lot of high notes with the Thor 420 RGB low-profile mechanical keyboard. The peripheral is solidly built and looks gorgeous. Its RGB backlight is bright and reasonably colorful, and the per-key lighting is a nice bonus. Also, the fact that its backlight animations and presets can be controlled directly from the keyboard rather than through software is a major plus in my book.

However, I have some minor quibbles. For one, the key size is small. I understand that one of the main selling points of the Thor 420 RGB is its low profile and relatively compact design, but the small keys took a long time to adjust to. While my typing speed increased during my time with the keyboard, the number of mistakes I made (and still make) while typing also increased. I make fewer mistakes now than I did during the first two weeks of my review, but it is still a bit frustrating.

Lastly, the minimalist software feels incomplete. Genesis advertises the keyboard with a macro assignment feature, but the software doesn’t provide one. If Genesis has some other version of the app hiding somewhere and I find it, I will update this review. As it stands in September 2020, the software is only good for setting up a customized backlight pattern. That’s nice, but this keyboard should be able to do much more.

For the price (~€80/$93), there’s a lot to like with the Genesis Thor 420 RGB. There are plenty of cheaper RGB mechanical keyboards out there, but those don’t have the clean aesthetic and solid durability that the Thor 420 RGB has. This is a keyboard that easily hangs with the big players in the RGB mechanical keyboard world (and even outpaces a few in some areas).

The Galaxy Tab S7+ is Samsung’s unreserved attempt to beat Apple’s iPad Pro with an Android tablet designed just as much for work as it is for play.

The new tablet comes in two sizes: the 11in Tab S7 costing £619 and the 12.4in Tab S7+ costing £799, as reviewed here.

Intended to compete with Apple’s top iPad Pro, it looks very similar in design. The 12.4in OLED screen is simply fantastic, rivalling the very best OLED TVs let alone smartphones and tablets. It has iPad Pro-like thin bezels around the edge of the display, flat metal sides, rounded corners and even antenna lines crisscrossing the metal back.

The screen has a 16:10 ratio, making it much wider than an iPad with its 4:3 ratio and more like a Microsoft Surface Pro.

The Tab S7+ has four Dolby Atmos-enabled speakers in the sides, which give stereo sound in either portrait or landscape orientation. Movies sound full and loud, while video calls come across clearly and naturally. The front-facing camera is good, too, but the microphones aren’t great at picking up voices from a distance, meaning Google Meet calls were better done from the desk than the sofa.

A larger version of Samsung’s excellent S Pen stylus, as seen in the Note series of smartphones, is included in the box and magnetically attaches to the back of the tablet for storage and charging. The stylus is excellent with pressure sensitivity, tilt support and low latency but having it attached to the back is a bit awkward.

Specifications

Screen: 12.4in WQXGA+ Super AMOLED

Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 865+

RAM: 6GB of RAM

Storage: 128GB + microSD card slot

Operating system: One UI 2.5 based on Android 10

Camera: Dual rear camera: 13MP+5MP; 8MP selfie camera

Connectivity: USB-C, S Pen, wifi 6 (5G optional), Bluetooth 5 and location

Water resistance: none

Dimensions: 185 x 285 x 5.7mm

Weight: 575g

Good performance and battery

The Tab S7+ has Qualcomm’s latest top Snapdragon 865+ processor and 6GB of RAM, meaning it is the highest performing Android tablet available. Models with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage are available in some regions.

It handles any app or game with ease, plus multiple apps on screen at once. It lasts for more than 10 hours of productive work between charges when used like a laptop in Dex mode. That included having multiple tabs open in Chrome, Evernote, AI Writer, various messaging apps and lots of email, and various other bits used intermittently. That beats the 12.9in iPad Pro by two hours, when used in a similar manner. I expect you will get longer out of the tablet if just used for watching films or similar.

The Tab S7+ came with a disappointingly low-power 10W charger, which took about three hours to fully charge the tablet, but can charge at rates of up to 45W with higher-powered adapters that can be purchased separately.

Sustainability

Samsung declined to provide an estimate for the expected lifespan of the battery in the Tab S7+, which is typically 500 full charge cycles while maintaining at least 80% capacity for other rechargeable batteries. The device is generally repairable and the battery is replaceable by authorised service centres. Battery replacements will cost no more than £59.

Samsung declined to comment on the use of recycled materials in the Tab S7+ but does offer trade-in and recycling schemes for old devices.

One UI 2.5 + Dex

The Tab S7+ runs Samsung’s version of Android called One UI 2.5, which is based on Android 10 and also features on the company’s recently released smartphones but not the latest Android 11. An update to Android 11 is expected in the next six months. Samsung has pledged three years of major Android updates and quarterly security patches, which is still some way behind Apple’s five-plus years of software support for its tablets.

You can run up to three apps in a split-screen configuration and more as floating windows, much like the recent Galaxy Z Fold 2. Mostly it works fine but some apps refuse to run in landscape mode, forcing the tablet into portrait mode when launched.

But to make the most out of the tablet as a work device Samsung also includes an upgraded version of its Dex system, which essentially turns Android into a desktop-like computer complete with apps in windows, full mouse and keyboard support, a task bar at the bottom of the screen and other elements similar to Windows or macOS.

Dex works very well within the confines of Android. Most apps can be used in windows and resized just fine. Samsung’s own apps all run fine but even those third-party apps that work in Dex have quirks that you have to adapt to. Some don’t like being resized and effectively quit and relaunch when you expand or shrink their windows, which can get annoying if the app is protected by a pin or similar. Other apps, including password manager LastPass, simply won’t run in Dex mode, which made it a hard sell for my particular usage.

Chrome on Android is also not good enough to be a desktop browser. It struggles with heavy web apps and doesn’t support drag and drop, which means some of the systems I use for work do not operate correctly. Right click is also hit-and-miss and it’s hard to select text with a mouse.

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To make the most of Dex you need a keyboard and mouse. Third-party devices work well enough but really it is designed to be used with Samsung’s Keyboard Cover, which is an additional £219. The Keyboard Cover is a two-part case. A back cover attaches to the tablet via magnets and includes a good kickstand, while the keyboard attaches to the ports on the bottom of the tablet.

The keyboard and trackpad are pretty good but the keyboard attachment to the tablet is not rigid enough to be comfortably used on a lap. It is simply nowhere near as good as the Surface Pro’s type cover keyboards, which are £100 cheaper.

Observations

The cameras are fairly good for a tablet but won’t beat a good smartphone camera.

The S Pen has a soft-touch finish and excellent balance making it easy and comfortable to write and draw with.

Price

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+ costs £799 with just wifi or £999 with 5G connectivity.

The S Pen is included in the box but the Keyboard Cover costs an additional £219.

The smaller 11in Galaxy Tab S7 costs £619.

For comparison, Apple’s iPad has an RRP of £329, the iPad Air costs £579, the 11in iPad Pro costs £769, the 12.9in iPad Pro costs £969 and Microsoft’s Surface Pro 7 costs £719.

Verdict

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There’s no doubt the Galaxy Tab S7+ is the best tablet Samsung has ever made. It is leagues ahead of the company’s previous efforts and most definitely the best Android tablet you can buy, too.

But despite all the software additions Samsung has made to Android to make it a more powerful work machine, it falls short of being a good laptop or Windows tablet replacement. Apps can be unpredictable, unstable or simply don’t work when in Dex mode. That’s fine for casual things but if an app quits and loses work, that’s simply not acceptable.

The iPad Pro has its own problems as a PC-replacement but app instability isn’t one of them. Chrome on Android also isn’t up to the task of being a proper desktop browser, not in the same way the iPad’s Safari.

That’s not to say the Tab S7+ isn’t a fantastic gaming, video-watching, casual browsing and entertainment device – it really is the best tablet you can buy for media consumption. The screen, the battery life, the performance, the design and build are all top-notch, and the S Pen is excellent.

But £799 is an awful lot of money for a media consumption tablet and if you add the £219 Keyboard Case, £1,018 puts it next to tablets and computers it can’t match for getting work done.

The Galaxy Tab S7+ is the best Android tablet available. It just can’t beat Apple’s iPad Pro or Microsoft’s Surface Pro 7 for work.

Pros: fantastic screen, great performance and battery, good speakers, good webcam, USB-C, microSD card slot, Dex, split-screen, good fingerprint scanner, S Pen.

Cons: expensive, keyboard case expensive accessory, not all apps support Dex mode, some apps quit or crash when resizing, mouse support is inconsistent, no headphone socket.

Continuing with AMD’s tendency for fishy codenames, the chipmaker (via @Komachi Ensaka) has added support for a Dimgrey Cavefish graphics card to Mesa 20.3-devel. Much like Sienna Cichlid and Navy Flounder, Dimgrey Cavefish is presumed to be a RDNA 2 graphics cards that’ll surely unsettle the gaming graphics card hierachy as we know it.

AMD has already committed to lift the curtains for the Radeon RX 6000 series, which have been popularly baptized as Big Navi, on October 28. Therefore, it’s not too surprising that the chipmaker’s trio of next-generation graphics cards are doing their rounds in the wild. We don’t have any factual information on AMD’s RDNA 2 product stack so it’s wise to treat the specifications that are going around the hardware world with a truckload of salt.

Assuming that each Compute Unit (CU) in AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture still equates to 64 Stream Processors (SPs), we can piece together some of the rumored specifications for AMD’s Radeon RX 6000-series graphics cards.

At the current time, Sienna Cichlid is associated with the Navi 21 silicon. If the current prediction is accurate, Sienna Cichlid could end up with 80 CUs or 5,120 SPs. This would mean that Sienna Cichlid is likely to be the flagship, in which event, would be the Radeon RX 6900.

If Sienna Cichlid corresponds to Navi 21, then Navy Flounder should be Navi 22. Thus far, the silicon is rumored to bring 40 CUs, which amounts to 2,560 SPs. There is a good possibility that Navy Flounder could be the direct replacement for the current Radeon RX 5700 (XT). If that’s the case, Navy Flounder must be the Radeon RX 6700 although we can’t discard the probability of it being a Radeon RX 6800.

The Dimgrey Cavefish is the latest RDNA 2 codename to pop up. Common wisdom tells us that Dimgrey Cavefish must be Navi 23, the last piece to the puzzle. The only logical assumption is that Navi 23 will be featured in either the Radeon RX 6600 or RX 6500, depending on AMD’s intentions.

It’s uncertain which graphics card AMD will announce on October 28. The chipmaker vaguely used the Radeon RX 6000 moniker. If we look back at RDNA 1, AMD started with the Radeon RX 5700 (XT) and eventually went down the pile. Being optimistic, we would love for AMD to reveal Big Navi because the current graphics card market needs some competition in the higher tiers. Nvidia’s recent GeForce RTX 3080 has proven to be a tough cookie, and Big Navi will likely be the most worthy competitor.

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700U (via @TUM_APISAK) has emerged in an Ashes of the Singularity submission. The model name makes it pretty clear that the chip hails from AMD’s next-generation lineup that succeeds the Ryzen 4000-series (codename Renoir) APUs.

Where the Ryzen 7 5700U’s belongs is currently a mystery, but there are two prospects that are being thrown around: one is Lucienne and the other is Cezanne. AMD’s affection for using famous painters’ surnames as the codenames for its processors is well known, and sometimes the chipmaker’s selection might provide some clues.

A quick search shows that Lucienne was an artist herself, but more importantly, she was the secret love child between Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Frédérique Vallet-Bisson. Given the connection between Lucienne and Renoir, it’s fairly safe to assume that AMD’s codenamed Lucienne APUs could be an iteration of Renoir. If that’s the case, Lucienne should still be wielding Zen 2 cores and Vega graphics. On the flipside, there’s Cezanne that’s rumored to sport Zen 3 cores, but still retain the Vega engine.

According to the submission, the Ryzen 7 5700U comes equipped with eight cores and 16 threads. At first glance, the name suggests that it’s the direct successor to the existing Ryzen 7 4700U, however, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

While the Ryzen 7 4700U is indeed an octa-core chip, the chip lacks simultaneous multi-threading (SMT). The Ryzen 7 4800U, on the other hand, comes with a eight-cores, 16-thread design, therefore, the Ryzen 7 5700U is closer to the Ryzen 7 4800U than the Ryzen 7 4700U. It’s interesting though that AMD seemingly decided to unlock the full configuration on the Ryzen 7 5700U. 

The anonymous submitter tested the Ryzen 7 5700U on Ashes of the Singularity with the 1080p Low Preset on the Vulkan API. Unfortunately, there aren’t any Ryzen 7 4800U or Ryzen 7 4700U submissions that match those parameters so an apples-to-apples comparison wasn’t possible. Furthermore, the Ashes of the Singularity submissions don’t expose the clock speeds for the processor. For now, we’ll just have to wait for another leak to get a glimpse of the potential performance uplifts that AMD’s Ryzen 5000-series APUs could bring to the table.