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Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga Review: Thin, Convenient, a Little Slow

Our Verdict

The ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga is just half-inch thick computer that lags behind similarly priced competitors on productivity, but is supremely classy and convenient.

For

+ Extremely thin
+ Looks and feels classy
+ Great webcam

Against

– Priced for business, so more expensive
– Haptic touchpad can feel unresponsive

When it comes to portability, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga ($1,684.99 to start) is all business. It’s an enterprise notebook that puts thinness above all else, including power.

This is a smaller than half-inch convertible that still manages to stay within spitting distance of other similar competitors on productivity while being even smaller than some detachables (with their keyboards attached, to be fair). Combine that with Lenovo’s excellent keyboard and a classy design that’s easy to feel proud of, and it’s clear how the Titanium Yoga could become a respectable daily driver for casual users or certain trendy businesses that don’t require heavy computing from their employees.

But for the price of the unit we reviewed, which had an Intel Core i5-1130G7, you could easily get a speedier competitor equipped with a Core i7 but without the business trappings of ThinkPad. You’ll have to choose if power or portability is more important for your money, as well as whether you need enterprise features like extra durability and security.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga Specifications

CPU	Intel Core i5-1130G7
Graphics	Intel Iris Xe Integrated Graphics
Memory	16GB LPDDR4x-4266
Storage	512MB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD
Display	13.5 inch, 2256 x 1504, IPS, Touchscreen
Networking	Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 11ax, Bluetooth 5.1
Ports	2x Thunderbolt 4, 3.5mm headphone/microphone combo jack
Camera	720p
Battery	44.5 Wh
Power Adapter	65W
Operating System	Windows 10 Pro
Dimensions(WxDxH)	11.71 x 9.16 x 0.45 inches (297.5 x 232.7 x 11.5 mm)
Weight	2.54 pounds (1.15 kg)
Price (as configured)	$1,684.99

Design of Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga

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From its silver color to its textured faux leather lid to its titanium, carbon and magnesium chassis, the ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga exudes class. Like a geeky version of a Rolex, this computer is clearly aiming to be a statement piece as much as a genuinely useful device, and for the most part, it succeeds.

That faux leather lid feels soft to the touch, and its texture almost gives the convertible a subdued glittery appearance. The lid’s detailing also makes the ThinkPad feel somewhat like a fancy moleskin journal, both to the eye and to the touch.

Decoration is otherwise minimal, with light ThinkPad branding on the lid and keyboard deck’s outer corners standing out the most. This serves to accentuate the case’s sturdy and solid build quality, which emphasizes the Titanium Yoga’s premium status.

The Titanium Yoga is also thinner than other Intel 11th generation convertibles we’ve tested, coming in at under half an inch of thickness. At 11.71 x 9.16 x 0.45 inches, it’s smaller than the HP Spectre x360 14 (11.75 x 8.67 x 0.67 inches) and the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 9310 (11.69 x 8.15 x 0.56 inches). It’s even smaller than the recent ThinkPad X12 Detachable with its keyboard attached, which sits at 11.15 x 8.01 x 0.57 inches.

This small form factor extends to weight as well. The Titanium Yoga is 2.54 pounds, whereas the Spectre x360 14 is 2.95 pounds, the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 is 2.9 pounds and the X12 Detachable is 2.4 pounds.

The small form factor approach doesn’t come without sacrifices, though. The Titanium Yoga is woefully low on ports, with the left side housing two Thunderbolt 4 connections and the right side simply giving you a single 3.5 mm combination microphone/headphone jack. The device doesn’t come with any dongles, so you’re either going to need to buy them separately or pick your accessories carefully.

The Titanium Yoga also comes with a Lenovo Pen, which magnetically attaches to the right side of the display. This is a secure fit, though it might take you a while to figure out that it can actually attach to the device if you don’t read the manual.

Finally, the Titanium Yoga has MIL-SPEC certification, meaning it can take a tumble or five. This isn’t always found on non-business laptops, giving the ThinkPad an edge up when it comes to durability.

Productivity Performance of Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga

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Despite its stylish exterior, our review configuration of the ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga packs lackluster performance compared to similarly-priced 11th generation Intel convertibles. The Intel Core i5-1130G7 processor is the same one you’ll find in the tablet based ThinkPad X12 Detachable, and it’s outclassed by the Intel Core i7-1165G7 that powers both the HP Spectre x360 14 and the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1. Our configuration also only came with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.

It’s not too uncommon to see ThinkPads costing more, however, due to their business classification. And, you can configure the ThinkPad X1 Titanium with a Core i7, if you’re willing to pay a bit more.

On Geekbench 5, a synthetic benchmark for testing PC performance, the Titanium Yoga fell behind each of its competitors. It scored 1,328 on single-core tasks and 4,747 on multi-core tasks. That’s only slightly less performance than you’ll get from the ThinkPad X12 Detachable (1,334 single-core/4,778 multi-core), but other convertibles provide more serious competition with the higher-end chips. The HP Spectre x360 14 hit scores of 1,462 on single-core/4,904 on multi-core, while the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 9310 hit 1,532 on single-core/4,778 on multi-core.

The Titanium Yoga was largely on par with competition when we tested its file transfer speeds, where we tracked how quickly it transferred 25GB of data across its SSD. Here, it hit speeds of 409.26 MBps, which is slightly above the XPS 13 2-in-1’s 405.55 MBps and the X12 Detachable’s 408.39 MBps on the same test. The HP Spectre x360 14 was an outlier here, transferring its files at a speed of 533.61 MBps.

On our Handbrake benchmark, in which we use the free program to track how long it takes a computer to transcode a video file down from 4K to 1080p, once again saw the Titanium Yoga fall towards the bottom of the pack. It finished the task in 20:57, which was faster than the X12 Detachable’s 24:12 but slower than other convertibles. The Spectre x360 14 finished its transcode in 18:05, while the XPS 13 2-in-1 did so in 15:52.

We also ran the Titanium Yoga through Cinebench R23 for 20 runs in a row to simulate an extended intensive work session. Its average score was 3,397, while its CPU ran at an average clock speed of 2.1 GHz. During this time, the CPU hit an average 64.75 degrees Celsius (148.55 degrees Fahrenheit).

Display on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga

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Like plenty of other recent ultraportables, the Titanium Yoga has a 3:2 aspect ratio screen, which means an image with more vertical headroom. This means more letterboxing on 16:9 content, but it also means you’re expanding your vertical resolution to display more, which is particularly useful for reading webpage content. The Titanium Yoga’s IPS touchscreen in particular has a 2,256 x 1,504 resolution image. That’s more detail than you’ll get on the more common 1920 x 1280 resolution found in the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 9310 and the ThinkPad X12 Detachable, but less detail than the HP Spectre x360 14’s 3000 x 2000 resolution.

When I watched the trailer for Nobody on the Titanium Yoga, I was impressed by how deep the blacks were, but not by much else. The screen was bright enough that I didn’t have to strain to view it, and while colors were accurate, they were not vivid. Viewing angles were also restrictive in a well-lit room, and I had to sit almost directly in front of the laptop to have a workable image. Turning off my lights solved this problem, but that’s not an applicable solution all of the time. I also noticed a mild glare on the screen even when holding it away from heavy light, but it was easy enough to ignore.

Of course, the Titanium Yoga’s aspect ratio is meant more for surfing the web or working on documents than watching a movie. In that respect, the Titanium Yoga exceeded, especially in tablet mode. Reading on it feels almost like browsing through a well put-together coffee table book.

Our testing found that, when it comes to color, the Titanium Yoga is roughly on par with competition. It covers 71.1% of the DCI-P3 color spectrum, which is about the same as the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1’s 70% DCI-P3 rating and the ThinkPad X12 Detachable’s 74.9% rating. The HP Spectre x360 14 stands as an outlier, hitting a vibrant 139.7% DCI-P3 rating.

The Titanium Yoga had a higher average brightness than most competitors in our testing. It registered at an average 425 nits, with only the XPS 13 2-in-1’s 488 nits beating it. The X12 Detachable had 376.2 average nits of brightness, where the HP Spectre x360 14 was the dimmest at 339 nits.

Keyboard, Touchpad and Stylus on the LenovoThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga

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The ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga doesn’t make any changes to the classic ThinkPad keyboard design, which makes it a great typer, but its unconfigurable haptic touchpad leaves it feeling unresponsive elsewhere.

The ThinkPad style keyboard is an old favorite among techies, and it works well on the Titanium Yoga. This keyboard has concave keycaps to help you easily touch-type without having to look at its buttons, which feel like they have reasonable travel distance for such a thin machine. I regularly hit between 80 – 85 words per minute on this keyboard, which is between five to ten points higher than I usually score.

The trackpoint nub is also back here, and you can press on it like an analog stick to move your mouse cursor. It’s kind of an old-fashioned solution, but it works well and is decent if you don’t like taking your fingers off home row. I even found myself using it a few times, despite generally preferring touchpads, since I found the Titanium Yoga’s touchpad lacking.

While my finger smoothly glides around the Titanium Yoga’s touchpad and multi-touch gestures are easy to perform thanks to its precision drivers, the touchpad uses haptic feedback and has no travel when you press it in. We’ve seen this option before on MacBooks and certain other PCs, but it’s unconfigurable here, and the amount of force I needed to actuate the touchpad feels awkward to me. Sometimes presses register, and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes I right click when I mean to left click, and vice versa.

There are physical left, right and even middle click buttons above the touchpad, though those exist more for trackpoint users and are inconvenient to reach for when using the touchpad. Additionally, the 3.5 x 2.5 inch touchpad dimensions leave it feeling a little small, and it wasn’t uncommon for my finger to bump up against its sides.

The Titanium Yoga also comes with a Lenovo Pen, which tracks writing well and has three programmable buttons. One of those buttons is where you’d normally place an eraser, but unfortunately isn’t touch sensitive. Palm rejection is impressive here, as I could fully place my palm on the display while writing or drawing with the pen without having the ThinkPad pick it up. The only time palm rejection failed was when I tried to use Windows’ built-in feature that translates handwriting to text when you click on a text box with your stylus. In these situations, my cursor bounced all over the place.

Audio on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga

Audio on the ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga is loud and accurate, if not what I’d use to DJ my first post-lockdown party. The convertible has two top-firing speakers, one on each side of its keyboard, which I tested by listening to Leave the Door Open by Bruno Mars, Anderson .Paak and Silk Sonic.

This song’s full of drum beats and smooth vocal performances all over the pitch spectrum, but despite that, nothing sounded inaccurate, tinny or dropped on the Titanium Yoga. It could have sounded richer or fuller, but for such a thin device, not losing the bass tracks is enough for me.

As for volume, I could understand the song’s lyrics across most of my 2-bedroom apartment, though they did become muffled at the very edges of my space. When just sitting by myself in front of the Titanium Yoga, I tended to keep the volume at around 60%.

Upgradeability of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga

The ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga is easy to open, though there’s not much point to doing so. All you have to do is loosen, but not remove, the six Phillips head screws on the convertible’s underside and gently lift off the case. Inside, you’ll see the battery as well as the networking chip. The M.2 SSD is hidden under a black flap, though it’s in an uncommon size (it looks like a 2242 form factor to us, though we don’t have official word on that) and there’s no slot for a second SSD.

You may be able to change out your SSD in the future, but for the other components, consider that you won’t be able to replace them.

Battery Life of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga

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The ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga hit just under 10 hours of battery life in our testing, which while not the absolute minimum for an ultraportable, does put it behind most of its similarly powered competition.

Specifically, the Titanium Yoga had 9:58 of life on our battery benchmark, which continuously streams video, browses the web and runs OpenGL tests at 150 nits of brightness. That’s about an hour less life than we got on both the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 9310, which hit 10:52, and the ThinkPad X12 Detachable, which hit 11:05.

Heat on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga

For such a thin device, the ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga impresses on cooling. After 15 minutes of streaming video, the device’s touchpad only registered 73.4 degrees Fahrenheit (23 degrees Celsius), while the center of its keyboard in between the G and H keys only hit 81.5 degrees Fahrenheit (27.5 degrees Celsius). Its underside was just slightly hotter at 84.6 degrees Fahrenheit (29.22 degrees Celsius).

The only part of this laptop that even came close to pushing any boundaries was the keyboard deck, right above the f5 key. This hit 93.6 degrees Fahrenheit (34.22 degrees Celsius), which typically isn’t too concerning, but could get warm to the touch after a few seconds here.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga Webcam

The ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga comes with a single front-facing 720p webcam that’s usually color accurate and tends to avoid artifacting, but doesn’t always hold up to dark or overly lit rooms.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

During late afternoon in my office, the Titanium Yoga’s camera captured my face with no visible grain and no major alterations to my natural skin tone. All aspects of the photo are properly in focus, as well.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

In my much dimmer hallway, shots lost focus and fidelity and heavy grain started to appear. Colors still appear accurate, however.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Colors started to take a hit when I stood in front of my office’s window. Here, my face appears much paler than in real life. You also can’t see much of the scenery outside my window, though artifacting seems to be at a minimum.

Overall, that’s pretty impressive performance for a laptop webcam — no 720p webcam is going to perform perfectly under dim conditions or heavy light. And of course, the typical ThinkPad physical camera shutter is also here on the Titanium Yoga.

Software and Warranty on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga

The ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga is mostly free of bloat, excluding typical Windows pre-installs like Skype and the Microsoft Solitaire Collection. Otherwise, the Titanium Yoga’s built-in software suite largely focuses on genuine utility.

Most of the Titanium Yoga’s functions are inside Lenovo Commercial Vantage, which is where you’ll update your BIOS and drivers, check your warranty, view your storage and RAM usage, find documentation and check Wi-Fi security.

There’s also Lenovo Pen Settings for programming various aspects of your Lenovo Pen, as well as Dolby Access, which lets you choose between equalizer and postprocessing presets for your display and audio settings.

The one program that does feel excessive here is Glance by Mirametrix, which you can turn on to try to get your computer to move windows to where your eyes are looking or go to sleep if someone looks over your shoulder.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga Configurations

Our configuration of the ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga came with an Intel Core i5-1130G7 CPU (with integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics), 16GB of LPDDR4x-4266 RAM, a 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD and a 13.5 inch 2256 x 1504 IPS touchscreen. All of this currently costs $1,685 on Lenovo’s website.

That $1,685 is also the current starting price for this unit, though other configurations can reach up to $2,429. For these other configurations, your display will stay the same, but you’ll be able to select CPUs up to the Intel Core i7-1180G7 with vPro and RAM capacities ranging from 8GB to 16GB. Storage options range from 256GB to 1TB.

All configurations also come with the Lenovo pen.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga Bottom Line

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium’s focus on size and aesthetics makes this device especially appealing to casual users, but puts it behind other, similarly-priced convertibles when it comes to productivity.

In our performance tests, our Core i5-powered X1 Titanium Yoga fell behind some non-business competitors that have Intel Core i7-1165G7 CPUS and sell for similar prices (you can also get the Titanium Yoga with Core i7 for more money). These rivals also had thicker chassis, which allowed for longer battery life.

But that thickness does count harm portability, and the Titanium Yoga has the advantage of being a business-class device while those rivals are not. That means it comes with added durability, like MIL-SPEC certification, plus extra security and manageability features like vPro.

It also comes with an included stylus. While the HP Spectre x360 14 also has an included pen, the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 does not. You also get Lenovo’s excellent keyboard with the Titanium Yoga, plus a fashionable design and a moleskin-like finish.

Those features make the Titanium Yoga a great casual usage device, though thanks to its aesthetics, it will look equally at home in the boardroom, the classroom or the living room.

Xiaomi Mi Watch Lite review: Fitness tracking on a budget

(Pocket-lint) – The Xiaomi Mi Watch Lite joins the Mi Watch as a part of a duo that wants to put smarts on your wrist for significantly less money than an Apple Watch or a Samsung smartwatch.

If the Mi Watch is considered affordable, then the Mi Watch Lite is proper cheap, going toe-to-toe with a raft of Amazfit Bip watches available around this price – and other budget options you should probably steer clear of.

For that cut price, the Mi Watch Lite offers a mix of smartwatch and fitness tracking features and battery life that can make it through a week. You’ll inevitably have to live with some shortcomings, but it feels like ones that don’t detract from what is a decent budget smartwatch.

Design & Display

Measures: 41 x 35 x 11.9mm / Weighs: 35g
1.39-inch display, 320 x 320 resolution
Size options: 41mm
5ATM waterproof

Like the first Mi Watch – the one that never made it out of China – the Mi Watch Lite is a square affair, featuring a 41mm case made from plastic.

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It weighs in at 35g, so it’s by no means a heavy watch, and it’s paired up with a TPU strap that’s removable. It just takes a bit of time to get it off and get something else on there.

There’s your pick of black, ivory or navy blue case colours, or the choice of five ‘fashionable’ Morandi colours including olive, pink and ivory.

On the wrist, the Mi Watch Lite doesn’t look hugely different from other budget square smartwatches out there and the colour options are nice – but it would be stretch to say it gives them a more stylish look. It’s pleasant enough looking, but the larger Xiaomi Mi Watch is visually more appealing.

The Lite offers a single physical button on the side of the case that’ll wake the screen up and launch the app menu screen. That screen is the touchscreen kind of course. It’s a 1.4-inch TFT LCD type, so not the AMOLED kind you get on the more expensive Mi Watch.

It’s a good quality screen for the price and certainly doesn’t have that washed-out look you sometimes find on smartwatches this cheap. The backlight offers 350 nits of brightness, so it’s not one you’re going to struggle to see at night or during the day. It still offers good colours and it’s generally a nice screen to glance down at.

What’s more problematic is the controls: tapping is prioritised over swiping through screens. You can scroll through some screens, but it’s slow moving when you do it. It’s generally less of a problem if you’re checking a notification or looking at one of the widgets, but when the sweat comes during exercise, it’s more problematic and frustrating to handle.

Like the round Mi Watch, Xiaomi has made the Lite suitable for swimming and showering by slapping it with a 5ATM water resistance rating, which means it’s good at depths up to 50 metres.

Software & Performance

Works with Android and iOS
No third-party app support

Xiaomi uses its own in-house operating system for the on-watch software experience and it has Xiaomi Wear (Android) and Xiaomi Wear Lite (Apple) apps for that time spent away from the watch itself.

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Our screen control frustrations aside, it’s a very easy watch software to get to grips with. Swipe left and right to see widgets showing off data like heart rate and weather forecasts. The main menu screen is a mere button press away.

Like the Mi Watch, that main menu screen doesn’t include any text, so it’s up to you to quickly establish what launches what here. There’s some simple settings you can tinker with on the watch like screen brightness, watch faces, do not disturb mode, idle alerts, and setting up a password for security.

The companion Xiaomi Wear app is broken up into three sections letting you dig into your health and fitness stats, track workouts from and adjust settings. There’s no third-party app support here, so if you’re thinking of connecting it to the likes of Apple Health or Google Fit, you’re out of luck.

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The app itself – much like Zepp Health’s Amazfit and Mobvoi’s TicWatch – doesn’t feel the most polished or slick, but it does make it easy to adjust watch settings and delve deeper into your data if you want.

Sports & Fitness Tracking

GPS and GLONASS
Built-in heart rate monitor
24/7 fitness tracking and sleep monitoring

Like the Mi Watch, the Lite is one that’s built to track your fitness and health – and has the key sensors on board to deliver that.

Pocket-lint

There’s built-in GPS and GLONASS satellite support to map outdoor activities. There’s accelerometer and gyroscope motion sensors for indoor tracking. And there’s 11 sports modes in total, including running (indoors and outdoor), cycling, trekking, swimming (pool and open water) and freestyle modes for those activities it doesn’t cover.

What you’re missing out from the Mi Watch are the Firstbeat-powered training features, stress tracking, the ability to take blood oxygen measurements, automatic exercise recognitio, and wider satellite support.

As a stripped-back sports and health monitoring watch, the Lite performs pretty well. GPS accuracy during our testing was reliable in comparison to a Garmin running watch. For indoor workouts, heart rate data was usually closely in-line with a chest strap monitor for HIIT and indoor rowing sessions – although we didn’t have to raise the intensity too high outside to see some odd spikes in heart rate.

If you’re less concerned about smashing out burpees and nailing 5K PBs, the Lite’s core fitness tracker features work well without really offering ways to make improvements or motivate you to move more.

Pocket-lint

Step counts during our testing were within acceptable range of the Fitbit Sense, and it’ll capture distance covered and calories burned. It offered similar accuracy to the bigger Mi Watch for sleep monitoring, though doesn’t capture REM sleep stages or offer any kind of insight or advice to improve sleep.

If you choose to continuously monitor your heart rate, then based on our experience, resting and average heart rate data seemed high compared to the data captured on a chest strap and a heart rate monitoring pulse oximeter. While there’s no stress monitoring here, you do still get guided breathing exercises, though there’s nothing groundbreaking on that front in terms of how it’s delivered.

Smartwatch Features

Over 120 watch faces
View notifications
Music controls

For this low price you’re obviously not going to get an Apple Watch equivalent here, so you won’t be able to make payments, put music on it, or even download apps.

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What you can do is view notifications from a paired Android or iPhone, control music playing on your phone from native and third-party apps, check weather forecasts and set alarms.

Notifications can only be displayed and not acted on and some messages can look a little messy at times in the manner they’re displayed. Music playback controls work well and dedicated screens to show-off weather data work without issue, so there’s definitely some nice elements here.

You do get a nice array of watch faces too, with the ability to store multiple faces on the watch itself and download more from the watch store, which you can find in the companion app. There’s a good mix of analogue and digital faces and additional ones if you want to pack it with data or keep things simple.

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That’s really your lot though. Aside from some timer and alarm features, Xiaomi keeps it basic, which some will be satisfied with and others possibly not so much.

Battery Life

Up to 9 days in typical use
10 hours GPS battery life

The Mi Watch Lite comes packing a 230mAh capacity battery, which Xiaomi says will get you up to 9 days in typical use. That typical use is based on lab tests where heart rate monitoring was set to be the biggest interval option, 100 notifications were received by the watch, and it tracked one 35-minute outdoor exercise session a week.

Pocket-lint

The likelihood is that most people are probably going to be working out more than once a week or wanting to monitor heart rate with more detail. Our testing time didn’t reflect Xiaomi’s lab testing conditions. We had continuous heart rate monitoring on at 5 minute intervals, had notifications turned on and tracked five outdoor and indoor workouts a week. It ended up lasting about 5 days in our testing time, which is short by 4 days of that claimed 9 days life per charge.

Those GPS battery life numbers seem to add up as well, offering the kind of drop off in 30 minute and 1 hour outdoor runs that suggest it could reach to those 10 hours when you want that hit of mapping data.

Best fitness trackers 2021: Top activity bands to buy today

By Britta O’Boyle
·
2 March 2021

Our guide to the top fitness trackers available, helping you count steps, track calories, monitor your heart rate, sleep patterns and more.

When it comes to charging, there’s a large cradle that clips around the back of the watch and you’ll have no concerns it’s going to budge or fall out when it’s charging. It’s pretty well locked in place.

Verdict

The Xiaomi Watch Lite is a cheap smartwatch that is surprisingly nice to live with once you accept the compromises you have to make with it.

You’re not going to get that same high-quality display or some of the richer health and fitness features and insights you’ll get on the Mi Watch, but what remains offers a familiar and good experience.

It’s a solid albeit basic fitness tracker, competent smartwatch, and doesn’t do too badly as a budget sportswatch all considered. Compared to smartwatches in and around it at this price, the Mi Watch Lite stands out for the right reasons.

Also consider

Pocket-lint

Amazfit GTS 2

If you can stretch to spend more, the GTS 2 will get you a more impressive hardware and richer fitness tracking and smartwatch features.

Read our review

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Writing by Michael Sawh. Editing by Mike Lowe.

VAXEE Outset AX Review

Introduction

Founded in 2019 by several former Zowie employees, VAXEE is a peripherals company and shop platform. The AX marks VAXEE’s second cooperation with an esports figurehead. This time around, VAXEE joined forces with former CS professional player Zhengwei “alex” Bian and his brand, Outset. Whereas the Outset lettering features prominently on the AX, the line “powered by VAXEE” is hidden on the back of the mouse, underlining that the AX is the result of a joint creative process. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll nonetheless refer exclusively to VAXEE throughout the review.

In many ways, the Outset AX is no different from the Zygen NP-01. PixArt’s PMW3389 sensor, Huano switches for the main buttons, a fairly flexible, soft, braided cable, 24-step optical scroll wheel: The AX focuses on performance and to that end does without RGB lighting or resource-heavy software, but instead comes with extensive on-device configurability, including CPI, polling rate, lift-off distance, and button response time. VAXEE still is of the opinion that pursuing the lowest weight possible isn’t necessarily most conducive to in-game performance, instead settling on a reasonable middle ground of 81 g. Aside from the shape, which is essentially a differently balanced EC2, some improvements have been made to the AX: The scroll wheel has been refined and is smoother, the stock mouse feet are 0.6 mm thick, and the matte coating is, well, more matte now. Speaking of which, variants in matte black and glossy white are available exclusively through VAXEE’s own shop.

Specifications

VAXEE Outset AX
Size:	117.43 mm x 65 mm x 43 mm
Size (inches):	4.62″ x 2.56″ x 1.69″
Ambidextrous:	No
Weight:	81 g
Number of Buttons:	5 (including wheel click)
Main Switches:	Huano (10M)
Wheel Encoder:	Optical
Sensor:	PixArt PMW3389
Resolution:	400/800/1600/3200 CPI
Polling Rate:	125/500/1000 Hz
Cable:	2.10 m, braided
Software:	No
Price:	$59.99
Warranty:	1 year

Apple approved another secret gambling den, masquerading as a puzzle game

This morning, I wrote how Apple’s $64 billion-a-year App Store isn’t catching incredibly obvious multimillion-dollar scams because the company isn’t even bothering to audit its most profitable apps for fraud, and how app developer Kosta Eleftheriou is showing the company how it’s done.

But that’s not the only kind of scam Eleftheriou has been uncovering in Apple’s App Store — he has also discovered that Apple’s review teams have been approving games that transform into secret gambling dens when you access them from certain countries (or via VPN). We wrote about two of them last Thursday as if they were an isolated incident, but he’s now found at least two more, suggesting this may be a trend — including a match-three puzzle game dubbed Lucky Stars that turns into a casino if you open it in Russia, and a game called Vegas Pirates that does the same.

The developer – “Marina Misko” – has several gambling apps, all posing as games for kids 4+

These have been on the App Store for several months, and even had multiple updates approved by Apple! pic.twitter.com/iE8pbljeh9

— Kosta Eleftheriou (@keleftheriou) April 20, 2021

In some ways, they’re even more egregious examples: while it might be more shocking that a kids’ monkey-collecting-bananas game would transform into a gambling den, these new apps would seem to invite extra scrutiny with their gambling-oriented visuals and the fact they pretended a Russian news organization was their “developer website.”

They’re both gone now.

If you’re looking for shock value, Eleftheriou also spotted this unrelated app the other day:

Apple is testifying before Congress today — and in an incredibly high-profile court case against Epic Games next month — about how its App Store protects users, justifies the company’s traditional 30-percent cut (reportedly $64 billion last year alone), and shouldn’t be broken up. These kinds of discoveries are giving the company’s critics a lot of ammo.

Asus ZenBook 13 (AMD) Review: Ryzen Slays the Tiger

Our Verdict

The Asus ZenBook 13 UM325SA packs some of the best value we’ve seen in an ultraportable yet, outperforming much more expensive Intel options thanks to new Ryzen 5000U chips.

For

+ Strong and cheap
+ OLED display
+ Surprisingly good audio

Against

– Need a dongle for a headphone jack
– Touch-based numpad feels gimmicky

The Asus ZenBook line usually tends to be a series of plain, mid-range ultraportables that hit respectable performance for strong value. The ZenBook 13 UM325SA ($749 to start, $999 as tested), is also somewhat unassuming and still maintains strong value, but its performance is anything but mid-range.

That’s thanks to its new Ryzen 5000U processor options, which bring the power of AMD’s latest CPU line to ultraportables and into competition with Intel’s 11th Gen “Tiger Lake” processors. The result is a stunningly strong computer that’s priced well below Intel and Apple alternatives, yet usually outperforms the former while coming within spitting range of the latter.

Asus ZenBook 13 Specs

CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 5800U
Graphics	AMD Integrated Radeon Vega Graphics
Memory	16GB DDR4-3733 MHz
Storage	1TB M.2 SSD
Display	13.3 inch, 1920 x 1080, OLED
Networking	802.11ax Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0
Ports	2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x microSD card reader
Camera	720p, IR
Battery	67Wh
Power Adapter	65W
Operating System	Windows 10 Pro
Dimensions(WxDxH)	11.97 x 7.99 x 0.55 inches
Weight	2.5 pounds
Price Range	$750 – $1000

Design of Asus ZenBook 13

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The Zenbook 13 is still a thin, light and minimally decorated machine that looks neither ostentatious nor exciting. Fitting that, color options include a blackish gray and a lighter, more metallic silver — the one we tested was gray.

The laptop’s lid is probably its most heavily decorated part, with a reflective, silvery Asus logo sitting off-center towards the laptop’s charging port side. A slight radial texture surrounds and emanates from the logo, although a glossy surface means it’s often covered by fingerprints. There’s also a small “Zenbook Series” logo on the laptop’s outer hinge.

Opening the laptop reveals a focus on functionality, as there’s not too much going on here visually aside from the chiclet-style keyboard and large touchpad. The keyboard does sit inside a sloping tray, which is nice, but what’s more noticeable is that opening the laptop’s lid also lifts the keyboard off your desk at up to a three-degree angle for easier typing.

The left side of the laptops houses two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports and one HDMI 2.1 connection. The right side similarly has just a single USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port and a microSD card reader. The big missing port is a 3.5 mm audio jack; you get a USB Type-C dongle in the box for that. You also get a USB Type-A dongle for RJ-45 Ethernet. Those adapters cut into the device’s portability. For instance, plugging in both dongles as well as the charger will use up all of your ports.

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The Zenbook 13 is on the smaller and lighter side when it comes to portability. At 11.97 x 7.99 x 0.55 inches and 2.5 pounds, it edges out similarly specced competitors on most measurements. The 13 inch MacBook Pro with an M1 chip is 11.97 x 8.36 x 0.61 inches and 3 pounds, while the HP Spectre x360 14 is 11.75 x 8.67 x 0.67 inches and 2.95 pounds. The Dell XPS 13 9310 comes the closest to giving the ZenBook decent competition on size, hitting 11.6 x 7.8 x 0.6 inches and 2.8 pounds.

Productivity Performance of Asus ZenBook 13

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The ZenBook 13 UM325SA is our first time looking at a Ryzen 5000U series chip, which brings AMD’s latest CPU generation to the ultraportable market. While our Ryzen 7 5800U ZenBook 13 configuration with 16GB of RAM and 1TB M.2 SSD didn’t quite beat Apple’s new M1 chip, it generally outperformed Intel Tiger Lake ultraportables like the i7-1165G7 HP Spectre x360 14 and XPS 13 9310. The Ryzen 7 5800U has eight cores and 16 threads, while Intel’s U-series Tiger Lake processors go up to four cores and eight threads.

In Geekbench 5, which is a synthetic benchmark that attempts to capture general performance, the Asus ZenBook 13 hit 6,956 points in multi-core tests and 1,451 points in single-core tests. That’s above the 5,925 multi-core/1,316 single-core scores earned by the MacBook Pro with an M1 processor running Geekbench via Rosetta 2 emulation. The M1 running a native Geekbench test performed much higher, although native M1 Geekbench isn’t exactly comparable to what we ran on the ZenBook. The ZenBook also generally beats our Tiger Lake competition. For instance, the HP Spectre x360 14 earned 4,904 multi-core/1,462 single-core scores and the Dell XPS 13 9310 earned 5,319 multi-core/1,521 single-core scores. Those single-core scores are closer to our ZenBook’s output, but the laptops fall far enough behind on multi-core to outweigh that benefit in most cases.

The ZenBook 13 led the pack in file transfer speeds. When transferring 25GB of files, the ZenBook 13 did so at a rate of 1,068.21 MBps, while the XPS 13 9310 followed behind at a rate of 806.2 MBps. The MacBook Pro M1 hit a rate of 727.04 MBps, and the Spectre x360 14 trailed behind with a score of 533.61 MBps.

The ZenBook 13 and MacBook Pro M1 were significantly faster than our Tiger Lake machines in our Handbrake video-editing benchmark, which tracks how long it takes a device to transcode a video from 4K to FHD. The ZenBook 13 completed this task in 9:18 and the MacBook Pro M1 did it in 7:44. Meanwhile, the Spectre x360 14 and XPS 13 9310 were much slower with scores of 18:05 and 18:22, respectively.

We also ran our ZenBook 13 through Cinebench R23 for 20 runs in a row to stress test how well it operates under an extended load. The average score among these tests was 7,966.40, and the CPU ran at an average clock speed of 2.43 GHz and average temperature of 66.72 Celsius (152.1 Fahrenheit).

Display on Asus ZenBook 13

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Aside from a new Ryzen 5000U chip, the ZenBook 13 UM325SA also packs a new 1920 x 1080

OLED

display. That’s an improvement over 2020’s

Tiger Lake model

, which had an

IPS

-level screen.

I tested this display by watching The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and was impressed by the color and brightness, but a little disappointed by the screen’s viewing angles and reflectivity. While the red on Falcon’s outfit popped and shadows and other blacks were deep, I found that the image tended to wash out when looking at the screen from over 45 degrees away horizontally. Vertical angles were more generous, but the issue with horizontal angles persisted regardless of whether I watched in a high or low-light environment. I also found that even in low light environments, reflectivity was an issue, as I could frequently see my outline on the screen. Still, this didn’t outweigh the excellent color and brightness for me.

Our testing backed up my experience, with the ZenBook 13’s color only being beaten by the HP Spectre x360 14, which also had an OLED screen when we tested it. The ZenBook’s DCI-P3 color rating was 96.5%, while the Spectre’s was 139.7%. The MacBook Pro M1 had a much lower 78.3% DCI-P3 color rating, while the Dell XPS 13 9310 followed behind with a 69.4% DCI-P3 color rating.

The ZenBook was closer to the bottom of the pack in terms of brightness, though given that all of our competitors were also packing bright screens, this isn’t really a mark of low quality. It had 375 nits of average brightness, which is above the Spectre’s 339 nits, but below the MacBook Pro M1’s 435 nits score. The XPS 13 led the pack with a score of 469 nits, but any of the screens are still plenty bright.

Keyboard and Touchpad on Asus ZenBook 13

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The ZenBook 13 UM325SA boasts a chiclet membrane keyboard that’s not too different from what you’ll find on most other ultraportables, but is nonetheless comfortable to use thanks to a slight angle and a cushiony feeling on keypresses.

The Zenbook’s lid is designed to lift its keyboard off your desk at up to a three-degree angle when opened, and while it doesn’t sound like much, that slight elevation helps for both comfort and typing accuracy. I wasn’t any faster than my typical 75 words-per-minute when typing on this keyboard, but I did find myself making fewer typos and my fingers didn’t feel as strained.

That comfort comes from keypresses that feel satisfyingly soft and pillowy, as well as wide keycaps that keep your fingers from feeling cramped or getting lost.

What’s perhaps more interesting than the keyboard is the touchpad, which is a generous 5.1 x 2.5 inches. It uses precision drivers and is perfectly smooth yet has enough friction for precise input, plus it tracks multi-touch gestures without issue. But that’s not what makes it interesting. What stands out here is the toggle-able touchscreen numpad built into it.

By holding the touchpad’s top-right corner for about a second, a numpad overlay will appear on the touchpad. You can still move your mouse cursor as usual in this mode, but you’ll also be able to tap on the overlay to input numbers as well as simple arithmetic commands like addition, subtraction and multiplication. Further, by swiping the touchpad’s top-left corner, your laptop will automatically open the calculator app.

This isn’t our first time seeing these features on a ZenBook, but they still remain novel here. The idea is to make up for the keyboard’s lack of a number pad, but unfortunately, this solution leaves much to be desired. The simplest issue is that touch input is unreliable and often requires users to self-correct by looking at what they’re touching. It also tends to lack comfort due to a lack of tactile feedback. Those two problems take away the major strengths tenkeys tend to have over number rows, but they’re not the only issue here.

While the numpad shortcut works well enough, the swipe to either bring up or dismiss the calculator can be finicky, and it’s not too unusual for it to not register a few times before working. It’s also unusual from a user experience perspective that the calculator shortcut uses a different input method than the numpad, and that the logo indicating where to swipe bears no resemblance to a calculator, but instead looks more like a social media share button.

While you can safely ignore the touch-based numpad without losing any utility over competitors, it doesn’t add much convenience to the device and comes across like a gimmick. At the very least, it does result in a larger touchpad than usual.

Audio on Asus ZenBook 13

The Asus ZenBook 13 UM325S comes with bottom-firing Harman Kardon speakers. And despite the ultrabook’s small size, they work well for both bass and volume.

I tested the ZenBook’s speakers by listening to Blinding Lights by The Weeknd, and they got loud enough at max volume to fill my whole 2-bedroom apartment, even through doors. Bass was also plenty present, capturing both the song’s drum beats and low synth without losing too much information. I couldn’t exactly feel it in my chest, but I also didn’t feel like part of the song was getting cut or drastically losing its impact, which is impressive on a laptop this size.

Unfortunately, the compromise here is that high notes did tend to get a little tinny as the volume got louder. While I had a decent listening experience at volumes lower than 60%, the distortion became noticeable and eventually annoying as I got higher than that level.

There’s also DTS audio software on board that lets you swap between different presets for music, movies and games, and lets you access a custom mode to boost certain parts of your audio like treble and bass. This mostly tended to affect sound mixing rather than quality, but helped me keep my general system volume down, which reduced tinniness to a minimum.

Upgradeability of Asus ZenBook 13

The ZenBook line has a history of being difficult to upgrade, and that’s the case here as well. That’s because some of the screws you’d need to remove to open up the device are hidden under the laptop’s feet. There’s no guarantee you’ll be able to get these feet back on after removal, so we skipped opening up the laptop for this review.

When we reached out to Asus, we were told that the ZenBook 13 UM325SA uses soldered RAM, though you can access and swap out the M.2 SSD if you wish.

However, given that you might end up having to replace your laptop’s feet in the process, we’d suggest being careful about your configuration choices before buying.

Battery Life of Asus ZenBook 13

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The ZenBook 13 UM325SA enjoyed a long 13 hours and 36 minute battery life in our benchmark, which continuously streams video, browses the web and runs OpenGL tests over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. That put it well above the HP Spectre x360 14’s 7:14 score and the Dell XPS 13 9310’s 11:07, with only the MacBook Pro M1 beating it. That laptop lasted for 16:32.

Heat on Asus ZenBook 13

We took the ZenBook’s temperature after 15 minutes of YouTube videos, and found that the touchpad registered 73.4 degrees Celsius (164.12 Fahrenheit), the center of the keyboard between the G and H keys hit 83.3 degrees Celsius (181.94 Fahrenheit) and the laptop’s underside was mostly 84.7 degrees Celsius (184.46 Fahrenheit).

That said, the underside as a whole has a lot of surface area, and its rear-center (just in front of its underside vent) did hit 94.6 degrees Celsius (202.28 Fahrenheit).

Webcam on Asus ZenBook 13

The ZenBook 13 UM325SA has a single 720p webcam with IR capability for Windows Hello. While it has strong color accuracy, I found that photos I took with it suffered from low quality and a lot of artifacting. It also didn’t adjust well to heavy or low light.

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The colors were natural, but it still almost feels as if I have a filter on. I’d be nervous taking an important work call on this device.

Software and Warranty of Asus ZenBook 13

The Asus ZenBook 13 UM325SA comes with minimal utility software, excluding the extended McAfee total protection trial that’s turned on by default when you get the system. We uninstalled this fairly early on, as some antivirus programs can lower benchmark performance.

Aside from that, you have DTS audio processing for swapping between different presets that tune the speakers for music, movies or gaming. You also have AMD Radeon software, where you can adjust your PC’s power mode, view usage stats for different components and launch games.

Most of Asus’ utility software limited to the MyAsus app, which lets you run diagnostics, troubleshoot, perform updates and the like, all from one place.

There’s also typical Windows pack-ins like Spotify, the weather app, and Microsoft Solitaire Collection.

Configurations of Asus ZenBook 13

We reviewed the ZenBook 13 UM325SA with a Ryzen 7 5800U processor, integrated Radeon Vega graphics, a 13.3-inch 1920 x 1080 OLED display, 16GB of LPDDR4X-3733 memory and a 1TB M.2 SSD. That’s the top configuration for the AMD version of this laptop.

Official pricing info is still a little undefined at the moment, though we’ve been told that the price range for this line of Zenbooks is $750 – $1000. We’d assume that our laptop would come in closer to the top of that range. CPU options for this laptop include the Ryzen 5 5500U, the Ryzen 5 5600U, the Ryzen 7 5700U and the Ryzen 7 5800U. Some of those CPUs are split between the UM325UA and UM325SA models, though there isn’t much difference on these devices other than that CPU selection.

You can also choose to lower your RAM and SSD capacities for a cheaper price, although Asus hasn’t given us details on available options as of publishing.

Bottom Line

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AMD’s Ryzen processors have, as of late, had a reputation for strong productivity performance and value, and those features stand out in how the latest Asus ZenBook 13 leverages the new Ryzen 5800U chip. Despite costing a maximum of $1,000 at its highest configuration, it easily stands above Intel Tiger Lake competitors that reach as high as $1,600, all while touting a gorgeous OLED display.

In our productivity tests, the only ultraportable that beat the ZenBook 13 was the M1-equipped MacBook Pro 13, which we tested in an $1,899 configuration (and starts at $1,299). Yet despite costing slightly more than half of that price tag, the ZenBook was still in the MacBook’s general range, and never once lost to an Intel competitor.

Granted, some of those Intel competitors have special features. The HP Spectre x360 14 is a convertible, and the Dell XPS 13 has a premium design and a 1920 x 1200 resolution. But they also perform worse while costing more, and even though this ZenBook is still largely plain when it comes to bonuses, it does have a beautiful new OLED display.

There are a few quibbles here and there, like the slim port selection or the near-useless touch-based numpad. But overall, this device is the definition of punching above your weight class.

HyperX Alloy Origins Core Keyboard Review

Introduction

The last time we covered a HyperX keyboard was in 2019, with the Alloy Origins, a full-size keyboard that launched at the same time as their own switches. Much has changed since, including the release of more keyboards and their awaited HyperX Aqua tactile switch. Perhaps the biggest change of all was the acquisition of the entire HyperX brand by HP announced earlier this year, with the process due to be completed later this year. At the time of this review, HyperX marketing is still working as per usual, with a continued interest in my covering the brand further. So here we are with the first of three new HyperX keyboard reviews coming up on TechPowerUp, and thanks again to the company for sending the review samples!

I know that the Alloy Origins 60 is their newest keyboard, and I was in two minds about whether to start with it. But I have been covering so many 60% keyboards recently that I wanted to, and even relished, the opportunity to do something different to start off the HyperX keyboard series for 2021. The Alloy Origins Core, which is the subject of this review, is also a natural progression from the Alloy Origins in two ways. First, it is built upon the same base the full-size Alloy Origins established, and it is a TKL version of the design. Second, this model came with the HyperX Aqua switches, the same tactile switches I wanted to check out with the Alloy Origins, but they were not yet ready at the time. We begin the review with a look at the keyboard specifications in the table below, and be sure to read through all the pages to make an informed purchasing decision based on whether the Alloy Origins Core is for you.

Specifications

HyperX Alloy Origins Core Keyboard
Layout:	TKL form factor in a US ANSI layout, other languages supported based on your region
Material:	Aluminium body with ABS plastic lining, ABS plastic keycaps
Macro Support:	Yes
Weight:	0.9 kg / 2 lbs.
Wrist Rest:	No
Anti-ghosting:	Full N-Key rollover USB
Media Keys:	Available as a secondary function
Dimensions:	133 (L) x 360 (W) x 34.5 (H) mm
Cable Length:	6 ft / 1.8 m
Software:	Yes
Switch Type:	Choice of HyperX Red, Aqua, or Blue RGB mechanical switches
Backlighting:	Yes, 16.8 M per-key RGB lighting
Interface:	USB
Warranty:	Two years

New iMac 24-inch (2021, Apple M1) vs iMac 27-inch (2020. Intel): Which is the best iMac for you?

(Pocket-lint) – Apple has revealed its new iMac – available in a single 24-inch size, it brings Apple’s own M1 processors to the iMac lineup as well as a new, thin-bezel design and seven colour finishes.

Here we’re pitching it alongside the 2020 27-inch model featuring Intel processors. We’re expecting this version to be replaced by a new-style, Apple M1-powered model in due course, perhaps with a 32-inch size – certainly, it’s set to be bigger than the 27-inch size we believe. That model will probably have an upgraded Apple Silicon processor, maybe the M2.

The old 2019 21.5-inch iMac model seems to still be available, but we suspect Apple will just be selling off old stock.

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Design

2020 iMac: Familiar aluminium design with a black display surround
2021 iMac: New thinner design, seven different colour finishes

The iMac 2021 takes the iMac design up a level. It’s still very recognisable as an iMac and has the same ‘strip’ under the display, but is significantly thinner, without the bulge around the stand. There are also much thinner bezels with a white surround instead of black.

Crucially the 2021 iMac is now available in seven different colour finishes, however, not all are available to all buyers. There are two different models with very small differences. Primarily this is in the graphics, which we’ll come onto shortly, and two additional USB-C ports on the higher-end model. But whereas the ‘two ports’ model is available in four finishes, the more expensive ‘four ports’ model is available in all seven.

The 2019/2020 iMac retains the familiar aluminium design with a black display surround.

Apple

Displays

2020 iMac: 5K 27-inch display
2021 iMac: 24-inch 4.5K display

The older 2020 iMac features a 5K 27-inch display which has been in use for several years – as we’ve said above we expect it to be replaced by a larger model at some point soon, perhaps 32-inches. The new 2021 iMac introduces a 24-inch 4.5K display with smaller bezels than the 27-inch.

The 2019 21.5-inch iMac still appears to be available, though expect it to go end-of-life soon.

Apple

Processor and graphics

2020 iMac: Various Core i5/i7 options topped out by 3.6Ghz 10-core Core i9-10900K, AMD Radeon Pro graphics
2021 iMac: 8-core Apple M1 processor with 7 or 8 core graphics

The 2020 iMac is available with Intel’s 10th Generation Core i processors (Comet Lake) in 6- and 8-core variants of the Core i5 and i7. You can also upgrade to the range-topping 3.6Ghz 10-core Core i9-10900K that’ll Turbo Boost to 5GHz. We had this in our review model and as you’d expect, it absolutely flies.

For the 2021 iMac, both two-port and four-port models have an 8-core Apple M1 processor under the hood. The graphics are where things differ slightly, with 7 or 8 core graphics respectively. The graphics options on the 2020 Intel iMac are varied, with several AMD Radeon Pro options, maxxing out at the AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT with 16GB of GDDR6 memory.

Storage and peripherals

2020 iMac: dual USB-C/Thunderbolt 3, four USB-A ports and an SD card slot
2021 iMac: Dual Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports, extra pair of USB-C ports on four-port model
All iMacs come with a Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse, 2021 iMac available with Touch ID version of Magic Keyboard

The two-port 2021 iMac gives you dual Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports, while the four-port version gives you two additional USB-C ports.

There are stacks of storage options on the 2020 Intel iMacs and you can specify up to a huge 8TB of storage, On the 2021 M1 iMacs though, things are a little more limited – we know the M1 chip is currently limited to 2TB of storage, and you can specify this on the four-port version. On the two-port version you can only get up to 1TB of storage.

The 2020 Intel iMac has two dual USB-C/Thunderbolt 3, four USB-A ports and an SD card slot. So the USB-A and SD slots are gone on the 2021 version. The headphone jack moves from the rear on the 2020 model to the side on the 2021 iMac and the Ethernet port moves to the power brick (yes really), as part of the magnetically attached power cable.

All iMacs come with a Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse, but the high-end four-port 2021 iMac has a special Magic Keyboard with Touch ID. You can also upgrade the standard Magic Keyboard on the two-port version to the Touch ID model.

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Verdict

The 2021 24-inch iMac is a clear step forward, but while it clearly supercedes the 2019 21.5-inch iMac, it’s not a complete replacement for the 2020 27-inch model. That’s because of the storage, processor and graphics options available on that model – and the power of the high end Core i7 and Core i9 options.

We expect there to be a new larger iMac this year to replace the 27-inch model as well, probably with a new M2 processor.

Writing by Dan Grabham.

Predator Apollo RGB DDR4-4500 C19 2x8GB Review: A Worthy Newcomer

Our Verdict

There’s no doubt that the Predator Apollo RGB DDR4-4500 is a speedy memory kit. Unfortunately, the hefty price tag will probably scare off potential buyers.

For

+ Good XMP performance
+ Samsung B-die ICs
+ RGB lighting doesn’t require proprietary software

Against

– Excessively tall
– Far too expensive

It’s hard not to know Acer – it’s one of the more prominent mainstream brands in the computer industry. However, the company’s Predator sub-brand might not ring a bell for the typical computer user that’s not into gaming. Nonetheless, the Predator label is home to Acer’s premium gaming PCs, laptops, monitors, and chairs. To further expand its reach, Acer has created Predator Storage, a new family of high-performance storage and memory products that target enthusiasts and gamers alike.

Acer won’t actually manage Predator Storage, though. Following in HP’s footsteps, Acer has handed the reins over to Chinese OEM Biwin Storage to manufacture and commercialize Predator-branded memory and SSDs on its behalf in the United States and Canadian markets. Today marks Predator Storage’s first venture into the memory market. The sub-brand debuts with its Apollo RGB series of gaming memory that offers frequencies ranging from DDR4-3200 up to DDR4-5000.

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The Predator Apollo RGB memory modules sport an aluminum heat spreader for effective heat dissipation. According to the brand, the design takes after a cyberpunk theme. It features a two-tone paint job with a mixture of black and silver colors and is carved in such a way that it exposes the majority of the LED diffuser. However, one thing to consider is that the Predator Apollo RGB measures 51.4mm (2.02 inches) tall, so you’ll need to make sure you have the necessary clearance space for the memory modules, especially if you’re using a large CPU air cooler.

As with any modern-day gaming memory, the Predator Apollo RGB is equipped with RGB lighting that you can configure to your heart’s content. Software isn’t provided for such purposes, but the memory is compatible with all the major RGB ecosystems, including Asus Aura Sync, Gigabyte RGB Fusion 2.0, MSI Mystic Light Sync, and ASRock Polychrome Sync.

Predator Apollo RGB DDR4-4500 C19 (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Our Predator Apollo RGB memory kit checks in at an unorthodox data rate of DDR4-4500. There are so few DDR4-4500 memory kits on the market that we can count them with the fingers of one hand. As you can tell by now, the Predator Apollo RGB is a dual-channel 16GB memory kit, so it consists of two DDR4 memory modules with a density of 8GB each. The memory modules are based on a single-rank design and are manufactured with a 10-layer PCB and 15μm gold-plated contacts.

Leveraging Samsung’s K4A8G085WB-BCPB (B-die) ICs, the Predator Apollo RGB is rated for DDR4-4500 at 19-19-19-39 timings with a 1.45V DRAM voltage requirement. When the XMP 2.0 profile for the advertised speed isn’t active, the memory modules default to DDR4-2133 with automatic timings at 15-15-15-36. For more on timings and frequency considerations, see our PC Memory 101 feature, as well as our How to Shop for RAM story.

Comparison Hardware

Memory Kit	Part Number	Capacity	Data Rate	Primary Timings	Voltage	Warranty
Thermaltake ToughRAM RGB	R009D408GX2-4600C19A	2 x 8GB	DDR4-4600 (XMP)	19-26-26-45 (2T)	1.50	Lifetime
Predator Apollo RGB	BL.9BWWR.255	2 x 8GB	DDR4-4500 (XMP)	19-19-19-39 (2T)	1.45	Lifetime
Patriot Viper 4 Blackout	PVB416G440C8K	2 x 8GB	DDR4-4400 (XMP)	18-26-26-46 (2T)	1.45	Lifetime
Klevv Cras XR RGB	KD48GU880-40B190Z	2 x 8GB	DDR4-4000 (XMP)	19-25-25-45 (2T)	1.40	Lifetime
TeamGroup T-Force Xtreem ARGB	TF10D416G3600HC14CDC01	2 x 8GB	DDR4-3600 (XMP)	14-15-15-35 (2T)	1.45	Lifetime

Our Intel test system consists of an Intel Core i9-10900K and Asus ROG Maximus XII Apex on the 0901 firmware. On the opposite side, the AMD testbed leverages an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and ASRock B550 Taichi with the 1.30 firmware. The MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Gaming Trio is the main graphics card in our RAM benchmarks.

Intel Performance

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Memory Review (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

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Memory Review (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

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Memory Review (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

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Memory Review (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

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Memory Review (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

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Memory Review (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

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Memory Review (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

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Memory Review (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

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Memory Review (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

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Memory Review (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

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Memory Review (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

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Memory Review (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The Apollo RGB kit performed as expected on the Intel platform. The memory struggled against rivals with lower frequencies and optimized timings. However, it was surprising to see that the Apollo RGB even bested the T-Force Xtreem ARGB DDR4-3600 C14 kit, even if it’s only by a couple of points. The Apollo RGB ranked second place in the gaming chart.

AMD Performance

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Memory Review (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

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Memory Review (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

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Memory Review (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

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Memory Review (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

On the contrary, the Apollo RGB memory performed best on the AMD platform. The memory kit managed to defeat all the memory kits, except for the T-Force Dark Z FPS DDR4-4000 C16 memory kit. Gaming on the AMD platform also favored Predator Storage’s kit as it jumped up to the top of the gaming chart.

Overclocking and Latency Tuning

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Memory Review (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

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Predator Apollo RGB DDR4-4500 C19 (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

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Predator Apollo RGB DDR4-4500 C19 (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Despite leveraging Samsung B-die ICs, increasing the DRAM voltage to 1.5V didn’t get us anywhere. Bumping it to 1.55V, however, allowed us to overclock the memory to DDR4-4600. In the process, we also dropped the timings from 19-19-19-39 to 18-18-18-38.

Lowest Stable Timings

Memory Kit	DDR4-3600 (1.46V)	DDR4-4000 (1.45V)	DDR4-4200 (1.45V)	DDR4-4400 (1.45V)	DDR4-4500 (1.55V)	DDR4-4600 (1.55V)	DDR4-4666 (1.56V)
Thermaltake ToughRAM RGB DDR4-4600 C19	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	18-24-24-44 (2T)	20-26-26-45 (2T)
Predator Apollo RGB DDR4-4500 C19	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	18-18-18-38 (2T)	18-18-18-38 (2T)	N/A
Patriot Viper 4 Blackout DDR4-4400 C18	N/A	N/A	N/A	17-25-25-45 (2T)	21-26-26-46 (2T)	N/A	N/A
Klev Cras XR RGB DDR4-4000 C19	N/A	18-22-22-42 (2T)	N/A	19-25-25-45 (2T)	N/A	N/A	N/A
TeamGroup T-Force Xtreem ARGB DDR4-3600 C14	13-14-14-35 (2T)	N/A	19-19-19-39 (2T)	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

If you’re perfectly satisfied with DDR4-4500, the Apollo RGB kit is very happy with a 1.5V DRAM voltage and tight timings of 18-18-18-38. That was the lowest we could push the memory before instability kicked in.

Bottom Line

The first time is always the hardest, and despite being the company’s first foray into the memory market, Predator Storage did a good job with the Apollo RGB DDR4-4500 C19 kit. We won’t delve into the memory’s aesthetics since it’s a subjective matter. Performance-wise, the Apollo RGB will not disappoint, but it will have a hard time contending with some DDR4-4000 and above memory kits with tight timings, more specifically on Intel platforms. In its favor, the Apollo RGB does feature high-quality Samsung B-die ICs, so overclocking and tweaking are definitely on the menu, but your mileage will vary.

The Apollo RGB DDR4-4500 C19 kit’s price tag will be the hardest thing to swallow for most consumers. The MSRP for the memory kit is $299.99, so it’s on the more expensive end of the spectrum. It’s hard to consider the Apollo RGB DDR4-4500 C19 at current pricing, especially when you have tough competitors, like Patriot’s Viper 4 Blackout DDR4-4400 C18 that only sets you back $134.99. However, hardware doesn’t always retail at the manufacturer’s established MSRP, especially when it comes to products like memory that tend to have volatile pricing, so it remains to be seen if the Apollo RGB DDR4-4500 C19 will maintain the $299.99 price tag when it lands at retailers this month.

New Apple TV 4K uses iPhone sensors to auto-calibrate and boost picture quality

(Image credit: Apple)

Apple has taken the wraps off its Apple TV 4K 2021. The latest version of Apple’s video streamer includes a host of new features including high frame rate HDR support at 60 frames per second and an all-new Siri Remote.

It’s powered by a new chip, the A12 Bionic, which debuted in 2018’s iPhone XS, XS Max and XR. Apple boldly claims using the A12 brings “a significant boost in graphics performance, video decoding, and audio processing” to the video streamer.

But the most eye-catching addition is a new colour balance feature that uses your iPhone’s sensors to optimise the video output for your particular TV. More specifically, it uses the light sensor in the iPhone to compare the colour balance to industry standards. The Apple TV 4K then automatically tweaks its picture output to allegedly deliver more accurate colours and better contrast based on the measurements it takes from your TV.

It’s certainly an interesting take on picture calibration, but we’ll have to see it working in the flesh to decide whether Apple’s method does actually make a difference and can actually improve picture quality.

Apple’s Siri Remote has been overhauled and is all-new for the Apple TV 4K 2021. It features a new clickpad control with five-way navigation which is also touch-enabled so you can swipe your way through menus.

Additionally, the outer ring of the new clickpad actually works as a jog wheel, so you can slide your thumb around the edge to skip through video content.

If you already own an Apple TV 4K box you can buy the new Siri Remote separately for £55. It also comes as standard with the Apple TV HD, also known as the fourth-generation Apple TV, which launched way back in 2015. This new combination costs £139.

The 2021 Apple TV 4K is available in 32GB and 64GB variants for £169/$179 and £189/$199 respectively. You’ll be able to pre-order from the 30th April, with the device going on sale during the second half of May.

MORE:

Apple’s new TV calibration feature is coming to older Apple TV models

Apple launches new Apple iPad Pro with Liquid Retina XDR screen and M1 chip

Read our Apple TV 4K review

DarkFlash DLH 21
Case Type:	SFF chassis
Material:	Steel and plastic
Weight:	N/A
Slots:	2
Drive Bays:	1x Internal 3.5″ 2x Internal 2.5″
Motherboard Form Factors:	Mini-ITX
Dimensions:	238.8 x 175 x 412 mm
Front Door/Cover:	N/A
Front Fans:	N/A
Rear Fans:	N/A
Top Fans:	1x 92 mm (included)
Bottom Fans:	N/A
Side Fans:	2x 120 mm (optional)
Front Radiator:	N/A
Rear Radiator:	N/A
Top Radiator:	N/A
Bottom Radiator:	N/A
Side Radiator:	240 mm
I/O:	1x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C 2x USB 3.0 1x Audio combo plug
Fan/LED Controller:	ARGB Controller built-in
Compatibility:	CPU Cooler: 134 mm GPU: 320 mm PSU: SFX, SFX-L

Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 15-inch review: redemption

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On paper, the Surface Laptop 4 is a Surface Laptop 3 with better chips.

In look and feel, very little has changed from the last generation. Sure, there are differences here and there: the Laptop 4 is ever-so-slightly thinner, and there’s a new “Ice Blue” color option. But you get the same 3:2 touchscreen, the same port selection, and the same design.

The big changes are on the inside. You can configure both the 13.5-inch and 15-inch Surface Laptop models with either Intel’s 11th-Gen processors or AMD’s Ryzen 4000 processors. Microsoft promised that these improvements would deliver significantly better performance and battery life than the previous Surface generation.

So this review will largely focus on the new system’s performance. But my priority wasn’t to compare the 15-inch Surface Laptop 4 that we received to its predecessor. For one, the Laptop 3 set a low performance bar — it had mediocre battery life, and couldn’t even play a 4K 60FPS video without stuttering, so even a competent budget laptop would blow that out of the water. But more importantly, there’s another company out there that recently made a huge chip upgrade to its flagship models, which has left most other 2020 chip upgrades in the dust: Apple, with its Arm-based M1. So my big question when looking at AMD’s new Ryzen 7 Surface Edition (also known as the AMD Ryzen 7 4980U Microsoft Surface Edition because of course it is) is: Does it beat Apple’s M1?

The answer is no. For the most part, it’s still not quite as good. But that may not matter to Surface Laptop 4 buyers — at least, not yet.

First, a quick tour of the Ryzen 7 Surface Edition. This chip isn’t AMD’s top gun; it’s part of the Ryzen 4000 generation, and the Ryzen 5000 mobile series has been out for a few months now. It’s a bit disappointing to see that the Surface is still using the older Ryzen chips, since much of the new generation is based on a new architecture (Zen 3, to the 4000 series’s Zen 2) that has delivered performance gains.

Of course, that doesn’t make the Ryzen 7 4980U a bad chip. Ryzen 4000 chips outperform Intel’s 10th Gen Comet Lake processors across the board. The 4980U in particular has eight cores, and AMD’s excellent Radeon integrated graphics. Note that the M1 also has eight cores, but those cores aren’t created equal. An easy way to think of it is that AMD’s chip has eight all-around-pretty-good cores, while Apple’s chip has four high-performance cores and four weaker cores. You’ll see that difference reflected in our benchmark results later on.

In addition to that processor, the 15-inch Surface Laptop 4 I reviewed comes with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. It costs $1,699. The most comparable M1 MacBook Pro is also $1,699. If you’re not looking to spend that much, you can get the 15-inch Laptop 4 for as low as $1,299 for 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, which puts it neck-in-neck with the entry-level MacBook Pro, but with a bigger screen. The 13.5-inch Laptop 4 is priced more closely to the fanless MacBook Air, starting at $999 for a Ryzen 5 4680U, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. Then, there are the Intel models. You can get a 13.5-inch system with a Core i5 starting at $1,299 (also with 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage), and a 15-inch system with a Core i7 starting at $1,799 (16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage). It’s all quite confusing, so I recommend visiting Microsoft’s site for yourself to mix and match.

The 13.5-inch model comes in Platinum, Ice Blue Alcantara, Matte Black, and Sandstone. The 15-incher comes in Platinum and Matte Black.

To see how our test system stacks up, I ran various synthetic benchmarks as well as a 5-minute, 33-second 4K video export in Premiere Pro. See the results below:

Surface Laptop 4 15-inch benchmarks

Benchmark	Score
Benchmark	Score
Cinebench R23 Multi	8144
Cinebench R23 Single	1242
Cinebench R23 Multi looped for 30 minutes	8077
Geekbench 5 CPU Multi	7028
Geekbench 5 CPU Single	1163
Geekbench 5 OpenCL / Compute	14393
PugetBench for Premiere Pro	176

Right off the bat, this system is a huge improvement over the Surface Laptop 3. It took 16 minutes and 33 seconds on the video export, where its predecessor took over three hours. (16:33 is a slower time than we’ve seen from many Intel models, but that’s expected since AMD chips don’t support Intel’s Quick Sync.) The Laptop 4 also beats multi-core synthetic results we’ve seen from Intel’s top Tiger Lake chips in the MSI Prestige 14 Evo and the Vaio Z, as well as the 16-inch Intel-based MacBook Pro,

Intel models max out at a quad-core Core i7-1185G7.

But the more interesting comparison is to the M1 machines. The Surface Laptop 4 solidly beats both the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air on Cinebench R23 Multi, and that task alone — it lost to both machines on every other test we ran, including all three Geekbench tests, the Puget for Premiere Pro benchmark, and the Premiere Pro export. That may seem confusing but (again) it makes sense when you think about the architecture of both chips — the Ryzen chip does better on the task where it can show off all eight of its powerful cores. That indicates that you’ll do well with the Surface Book if you’re running heavy multicore workloads, where you’re more suited to the M1 if you’re primarily doing pretty much anything else.

Of course, that’s far from the whole story. The reality is that most people who want a 15-inch screen probably don’t care if there’s a better-performing 13-inch machine floating around. And the MacBook that’s comparable in size — the MacBook Pro 16 — is significantly more expensive than the Surface Laptop 4, and comes with older Intel chips. So why am I comparing this device to M1 systems, you may ask? Really, I’m benching this laptop against an imaginary 16-inch M1 MacBook Pro, which (rumor has it) will launch sometime in the third quarter of this year. Given the results I’m seeing here, the release of a machine like that would make the Surface Laptop 4 a tougher purchase to justify.

That said, there are two big advantages the Ryzen-powered Surface Laptop 4 could very well have over a 16-inch M1 MacBook. The first is battery life. I got an average of 10 hours and 52 minutes using this device as my primary driver, which is some of the best battery life I’ve ever seen from a 15-inch laptop, and one of the best results I’ve seen from a laptop this year. That beats both of the M1 MacBooks, and destroys the 16-inch Intel MacBook as well. If there’s an area where Microsoft really makes its case, it’s here.

The Laptop 4 also knocks cooling out of the park. The Laptop 4’s fans did a really excellent job cooling the system. Throughout my fairly standard load of office multitasking (including around a dozen Chrome tabs, Spotify streaming, and the like), the chassis remained downright cold. During the more intense tests I ran, the CPU remained steadily in the mid-70s (Celsius) with occasional spikes up to the mid-80s — jumps up to 90 were rare. I was able to run our 4K video export several times in a row without any negative impact on results, and I didn’t see a huge dip in Cinebench results over a 30-minute loop either.

The screen maxed out at 370 nits — a bit dim for outdoor use, as you can see here.

If you’re a fan of the 15-inch Surface Laptop’s design, you’ll be happy to know it hasn’t changed much. One of the big advantages of this device is how thin and light it is, at just 0.58 inches thick and 3.4 pounds. For context, it’s almost a pound lighter than the 16-inch MacBook Pro, and over half a pound lighter than the lightest Dell XPS 15. It’s actually only a bit heavier than the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

With that said, those who aren’t diehard Surface fans may find the Laptop 4’s design a tad dated. In particular, the bezels around the 3:2 screen are quite chunky. That makes sense on a convertible device like the Surface Book 3 or the Surface Pro 7, which you need to be able to hold as a tablet, but doesn’t fit as well on a clamshell. If you put the Laptop 4 next to any member of the XPS line, you’ll see how much sleeker and more modern the latter looks. That doesn’t mean the Laptop 4 is ugly; it’s just falling further behind other Windows laptops each year.

The port selection is also the same, which is good news and bad news. The Laptop 4 retains a USB-A port, which I stubbornly believe is still a necessity for modern laptops (looking at you, Apple and Dell). But there is just one, and neither the Intel or AMD model supports Thunderbolt on their lone USB-C ports, which is disappointing on a laptop at this price. The Surface Laptop could certainly do with more port options, even if it’s competitive with what Apple and Dell are offering in terms of numbers. (In addition to the USB-A and USB-C, you get a headphone jack and Microsoft’s proprietary charging port.)

The Windows Hello webcam is fine, delivering a serviceable picture, and the dual far-field microphones had no trouble picking up my voice. The speakers, which now support Dolby Atmos 9, sound quite clear, with good volume and bass and percussion that are audible (though not booming). Despite having Atmos speakers, our Laptop 4 unit didn’t come preloaded with Dolby Atmos software or anything similar to tune the audio.

All 15-inch models have an aluminum body.

My least favorite part of this laptop is the keyboard. It’s just a bit flat and mushy for my taste. I respect that some people prefer wider, flatter keycaps, of course. But I would take an XPS 15, MacBook, or Surface Book keyboard over this one — it’s just not quite as snappy or satisfying.

Overall, it’s tough to identify a true competitor to the 15-inch Surface Laptop 4. Put it next to a Windows workstation like the $1,200 entry-level Dell XPS 15 and the Surface wins on power, battery life, and weight. It’s a good purchase for someone who wants an excellent combination of efficiency and multicore performance in a 15-inch chassis, but doesn’t need the grunt of a discrete GPU.

The keyboard is backlit and has 1.3 mm of travel.

But that window of opportunity may be closing, because there’s very likely a larger M1 MacBook Pro on the way. I think there’s a good argument that people in the group described above (who don’t need a device right this second) should sit back and wait to see what Apple does in the next few months before committing to Microsoft’s machine, provided they don’t have a hard preference for operating systems.

On the other hand, even if the larger MacBook Pro is spectacular, there are some advantages the Laptop 4 will certainly retain (it runs Windows, and it’s built like a Surface Laptop) and some it will probably retain (it’ll likely be lighter than the MacBook Pro 16). And, of course, plenty of people need a laptop right now. In today’s market, among today’s 15-inch laptops, the Surface Laptop 4 is a pretty damn good buy. Microsoft didn’t change much about the outside — but on the inside, it really pulled through.

Photography by Monica Chin for The Verge

Specifications: Lexar NM620 1 TB
Brand:	Lexar
Model:	LNM620X001T
Capacity:	1024 GB (953 GB usable) No additional overprovisioning
Controller:	Lexar DM620 / Rebranded Innogrit IG5216
Flash:	Micron 64-Layer 3D TLC NW964 / MT29F1T08EMCAGJ4-5M:A
DRAM:	N/A, but HMB 64 MB
Endurance:	500 TBW
Form Factor:	M.2 2280
Interface:	PCIe Gen 3 x4, NVMe 1.4
Device ID:	Lexar 1TB SSD
Firmware:	V1.3
Warranty:	5 years
Price at Time of Review:	$160 / 16 cents per GB

Eizo FlexScan EV2795
Screen Size	27″
Native Resolution	2,560×1,440 (16:9)
Panel Technology	IPS, 8-bit (10-bit LUT)
Refresh Rate	60 Hz
Brightness	350 nits
Contrast	1,000:1 (static)
Viewing Angles	178° (horizontal) / 178° (vertical)
Response Time	5 ms (GtG)
Adjustability	Tilt (-5° to 35°), height (176,6 mm), pivot (90°, both directions), swivel (344°)
Video Inputs	1x DisplayPort 1.3, 1x HDMI 1.4, 1x USB-C 3.1 Gen 1 (DisplayPort Alt Mode, 70 W Power Delivery)
Video Outputs	1x USB-C (daisy chain)
USB Upstream Ports	1x USB-C 3.1 Gen 1 (DisplayPort Alt Mode, 70 W Power Delivery), 1x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-B
USB Downstream Ports	1x USB-C 3.1 Gen 1 (DisplayPort Alt Mode, 15 W Power Delivery), 3x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A
Other Ports	Ethernet (10/100/1000 Gbps), 3.5-mm audio output (headphones)
Audio	Built-in 1 W stereo speakers, 3.5-mm audio output
VESA Mounting	Supported (100×100 mm)
Extras	Auto EcoView ambient light sensor, EcoView Optimizer 2, KVM switch