Sound

HP’s Spectre x360 14 review: the best 2-in-1 you can buy

HP’s Spectre x360 14 is a luxury worth paying for.

I have used a heck of a lot of laptops in the past year, and some of them are quite nice. MacBooks have nailed the “premium” look and feel for years, and I’ll never waste an opportunity to gush about the build quality of Dell’s XPS line.

But I’ve never touched a consumer laptop as gorgeous as the Spectre x360 14. The new Spectre’s sturdy black body, lustrous accents, and boldly sharp edges would make it a standout among convertible laptops across the board, even if it didn’t have a slew of other excellent qualities — which, from its 3:2 screen and packaged stylus to its stellar performance and battery life, it absolutely does.

With a starting MSRP of $1,299.99 ($1,589.99 as tested) the Spectre x360 is easily my new favorite 2-in-1 laptop. Today’s market is full of capable convertibles that look good, work well, and do certain things really well. But while the Spectre x360 14 isn’t a perfect laptop, it tops the pack in almost every area. It’s a stylish chassis, premium panel options, stylus support, a powerful processor, and fantastic battery in one. It’s proof that you can have it all — for a price.

The HP Spectre line is second to none when it comes to design, and this latest model is no exception. Like its 13-inch predecessor, the Spectre x360 14 is made of CNC-machined aluminum. Also like its siblings, you can get the 14 in “nightfall black,” “Poseidon blue,” or “natural silver.” Take a look at some pictures before selecting your color because they each have pretty different vibes. The nightfall black option has a sophisticated, svelte aesthetic that looks tailor-made for a boardroom. Poseidon blue is friendlier and probably the one I’d go for myself.

The accents, though, are what make the Spectre stand out from the legions of other black laptops out there. Lustrous trim borders the lid, the touchpad, and the deck. The hinges share its color, as does the HP logo on its lid. It’s bold without being obnoxious. The two rear corners are diamond-shaped, and one of them houses a Thunderbolt 4 port on its flat edge. (On the sides live an audio jack, a USB-A, a microSD slot, and an additional Thunderbolt 4, which is a decent selection — gone is the trapdoor that covered the USB-A port on the 13-inch model.) And the edges are all beveled, making the notebook appear thinner than it actually is (it’s 0.67 inches thick). Careful craftsmanship is evident here — I’m not exaggerating when I say this Spectre feels like artwork.

Take it in.

And, as the “x360” moniker implies, the Spectre is a 2-in-1. At 2.95 pounds, it’s a bit heavy to use as a tablet for long periods, but it’s smooth and easy to fold and the hinges are quite sturdy. Unlike with many convertibles, there’s barely any wobble when you use the touchscreen. The display is also stylus-compatible; the Spectre ships with HP’s MPP2.0 pen, which attaches magnetically to the side of the chassis.

Despite its design similarities, this Spectre looks noticeably different from its ancestors, and that’s because of the screen. The new model has a 3:2 display, which is 13 percent taller than the 16:9 panel on last year’s device. (It’s kept the same 90 percent screen-to-body ratio.)

Microsoft’s Surface devices have been using the 3:2 aspect ratio for years, and I’m glad that the Spectre line is finally making the switch. If you’re used to using a 16:9 display (which many modern Windows laptops have) and you give a 3:2 a shot, you’ll see what I mean. You have significantly more vertical space, which means less scrolling up and down and less zooming out to fit everything you want to see. It makes multitasking significantly easier without adding much size to the chassis.

This 3:2 panel can come in a few different forms. My test unit has an FHD option that HP says should reach 400 nits of brightness. I measured it multiple times, but it only reached 285 in my testing — which is dimmer than I’d hope to see from a device at this price point. I’ve reached out to HP to see what’s up and will update this review if it turns out to be a bug. (Of course, 285 nits is still more than enough for indoor office work.)

The OLED panel is certified for “low blue light.”

In addition to the FHD display, you can opt for a 3000 x 2000 OLED panel (HP didn’t provide a brightness estimate for this one; LaptopMag measured it at 339 nits) or a 1,000-nit option with HP’s Sure View Reflect technology, which makes the screen difficult to read from the sides. This will mostly be a benefit for business users.

In terms of other specs, the base model pairs the 400-nit screen with a Core i5-1135G7, 8GB of memory, and 256GB of storage (plus 16GB of Intel Optane). Then, there are a few upgrades you can go for. My test unit, priced at $1,589.99, keeps the base model’s screen but has a heftier processor (the quad-core Core i7-1165G7) and double its RAM and storage. I think this model is a good option for most people — it gets you a top processor and a good amount of storage without too stratospheric of a price tag. If you want to get fancier, you can get the OLED screen and 1TB of storage (plus 32GB of Intel Optane) for $1,699, or the Sure View screen and 2TB of storage for $1,959.99.

Of course, laptops aren’t just for looking at, but you’re not compromising on performance to get this build quality. The Spectre is verified through Intel’s Evo platform, which means that it offers a number of Intel-selected benefits including Thunderbolt 4, Wi-Fi 6, all-day battery life, quick boot time, fast charging, and reliable performance. In my testing, it more than surpassed those standards.

The system handled my heavy workload of Chrome tabs, downloads, and streams speedily with no issues. Battery life was excellent; I averaged 10 hours of continuous use with the screen around 200 nits of brightness. That means if your daily tasks are similar to mine, the Spectre should make it through your workday with no problem. (You’ll likely get less if you opt for the OLED panel.) The processor also includes Intel’s Iris Xe integrated graphics. While you wouldn’t want to use those for serious gaming, they’re capable of running lighter fare.

Elsewhere, I have almost no complaints. The backlit keyboard is snappy with a solid click — it’s easily one of my favorites. The speakers sound good, with very audible bass and percussion. There’s a fingerprint sensor to the left of the arrow keys and a Windows Hello camera, neither of which gave me any trouble.

Apart from the dimness, there are only two things about this laptop that I’m not in love with. They’re both minor; the fact that I’m even mentioning either of them in this review is a testament to how excellent this device is.

The first is the touchpad. It’s quite smooth and roomy (16.6 percent larger than that of last year’s Spectre x360 13) and handles scrolling and gestures just fine. But it’s noticeably stiffer than some of the best touchpads on the market. The press required to physically click is firm enough that I ended up doing it with my thumb most of the time. On the likes of the Dell XPS 13 and the MacBook, clicking with a finger is much less of a chore. When I first clicked with the integrated buttons, I also had to overcome some initial resistance to hit the actuation point (put plainly, every click felt like two clicks). This issue resolved itself during my second day of testing, but it’s still a hiccup I generally only see with cheaper items.

My complaints are minor — this is almost perfect.

Secondly, bloatware. There are a number of junk programs preloaded onto the Spectre and several pinned to the taskbar. Dropbox, ExpressVPN, McAfee, and Netflix are all on here, and I got all kinds of notifications from them. This is an oddity at this price point, and seeing cheap McAfee alerts popping up on the Spectre is like seeing really ugly bumper stickers on a Ferrari. This software doesn’t take too long to uninstall, but I’m disappointed to see it nonetheless.

But those are really the only two complaints I have, and neither of them should stop you from buying this laptop. It’s beautiful to look at and a dream to use. I found myself using it in my free time instead of my personal device (which almost never happens with review units — I really like my products).

When we’re evaluating a convertible laptop at the Spectre’s price point, the big question is how it compares to the gold standard of Windows convertibles, the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1. The XPS has a few advantages: it’s a bit thinner and lighter, its touchpad is less stiff, and it has a more modest look that some users might prefer.

But for me, the ball game is close but clear. The Spectre x360’s meticulous craftsmanship, classy aesthetic, and 3:2 screen put it over the top. It also edges out the XPS in a few key areas: the keyboard is more comfortable, the battery life is better, and Dell’s closest-priced configuration to this unit only has half its storage. The Spectre’s smaller amenities that the XPS lacks — like the bundled stylus, the USB-A port, the blue color, and the OLED option — are icing on the cake.

If you’re looking for a premium Windows convertible with a classy aesthetic, that makes the Spectre a no-brainer purchase. This is HP at its best; it’s a luxury laptop in pretty much every area. I can’t imagine that it won’t be the next laptop I buy.

Photography by Monica Chin / The Verge

Bang & Olufsen wants its new Beosound Level to outlast your average connected speaker

Bang & Olufsen’s Beosound Level is the Danish brand’s latest battery-powered connected speaker. It supports voice controls via Google Assistant, Bluetooth, and you can also stream to it via the AirPlay 2, Chromecast, and Spotify Connect standards. B&O says the Beosound Level uses a modular construction that it claims will make it usable far into the future. It’s a welcome feature, considering the speaker’s high $1,499 (£1,099) starting price.

While many stereos and amplifiers from the middle of the last century can still be used today, the average lifespan of modern integrated audio systems is far shorter. If your music system contains a computer, then it’s inevitable that it’ll eventually become outdated. B&O’s hope is that the modular design it’s using for the Beosound Level will help the company keep it supported for longer, as well as making it easier to repair when components fail.

Central to this modularity is the Beosound Level’s streaming module, which houses the speaker’s digital signal processing (DSP) chip, wireless connectivity tech, and antenna array. It’s B&O’s first speaker to use it, but the company says it won’t be the last; it’ll be standardized across its future lineup of home speakers. B&O says there’s enough processing headroom in the hardware that ships with the Beosound Level that it should be able to handle updates in the immediate future. But when the hardware reaches its limit, the company plans to offer an upgrade service for users who are prepared to send their device in to the company to have the streaming module replaced.

The Beosound Level’s battery is also modular, and unlike the streaming module, it’s user-replaceable. However, its form factor won’t be standardized across B&O’s speaker lineup, so replacing it will require a battery made specifically for the Beosound Level. Battery life is rated at up to 16 hours with volumes at moderate levels, dropping to four hours at max volume.

Other features include a built-in accelerometer that allows the Beosound Level to adjust its sound depending on whether it’s standing vertically, horizontally, or hanging on a wall. (A wall bracket is available separately for $119, or £89.) Internally, the speaker has five drivers: two 4-inch woofers, one 2-inch full-range driver, and two 0.8-inch tweeters.

Charging is either handled via a USB-C port on the speaker itself or by attaching a small magnetic plug (which is powered over USB). The speaker has an IP54 rating for dust and water resistance, touch controls, and it’s available with wood or fabric finishes.

We’ve seen companies try to take modular approaches with their devices before, but success has been elusive so far. Modular smartphones have never really gotten off the ground, and Alienware’s promises about a modular future-proof laptop fell apart after just one year. Bang & Olufsen tells me it hopes to support the Beosound Level for years after it eventually stops producing the speaker, so it might be some time before we see if it’s able to deliver on its goal.

The Beosound Level is available starting today.

Best USB-C headphones for Android phones 2021

(Pocket-lint) – The headphone jack might just be dead – when Apple first got rid of it, the outcry was widespread, but we’ve now come to accept its absence as the default. Many Android phone makers are opting for Bluetooth and USB-C audio instead.

Removing the jack enables phones to be made thinner, use fewer connectors and be made waterproof more easily. However, the adoption of USB-C headphones has been slow because many opt for Bluetooth headphones instead.

There are advantages to using wired though; a digital connection can help improve audio quality, as headphones can be made with dedicated DACs integrated into them, such as the Audeze Sine and iSine that use the Lightning port on the iPhone.

Best in-ear headphones: 10 great wired, wireless and wire-free earphones

So we’ve rounded up the best USB-C headphones we’ve found – there aren’t huge numbers of options, as you’ll see.

Best USB-C headphones to buy

Moshi

Moshi Mythro C

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These well-rounded USB-C earphones sound great and bass reproduction is decent. That’s thanks to a built-in DAC and four in-line buttons with a mic and a DJ Boost mode. As with many other earphones, you also get many different ear tips, as you’d expect.

Note that while these headphones say they are compatible Google Assistant compatible, they don’t have the assistant built-in, as with some other devices (such as the Pixel headphones below).

Libratone

Libratone Q-Adapt In-ear USB-C

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Libratone already has a pair of Q-Adapt in-ear headphones for the iPhone and has also released a pair with a USB-C connector too. They were made specifically for the Google Pixel 2 and fall under the “Made for Google” program.

They’re sweatproof, so can be used when exercising, have in-line controls for controlling music playback and even have a noise-cancellation mode when taking phone calls with power coming directly from the USB-C port.

Google

Google Pixel USB-C Earbuds

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Google released these earbuds alongside the Pixel 3, and, while they aren’t as good as wireless options, they are dirt cheap.

They also have native compatibility with Google Assistant so you can hear your notifications (just press and hold the volume up button) and get real-time translation from Google Translate.

Razer

Razer Hammerhead

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Earbuds aren’t purely useful for music and chatting, though, and can be great for immersive gaming, too. R

Razer’s Hammerhead earbuds are slightly pricy, but if you really want the edge on mobile games they’ll do very nicely indeed. We also really like the look and feel of the tangle-resistant cable.

Xiaomi

Xiaomi ANC Earphone

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Bringing ANC to the table are these earbuds from Xiaomi which offer a nice alternative to the set from Libratone above, especially if those older buds are out of stock. These have an unremarkable design but do everything you need them to very well.

OnePlus

OnePlus Type C Bullets

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OnePlus rounds out our list with these really solid, incredibly simple earbuds, which aren’t particularly noteworthy but equally are priced pretty sensibly and sound really good for the price, too.

Writing by Dan Grabham. Editing by Conor Allison.

AMD’s Radeon RX 6700 XT Spotted With 12GB GDDR6 Memory

Radeon RX 6000 Graphics Cards
(Image credit: AMD)

AMD made it clear during its CES 2021 presentation that new mainstream RDNA 2 graphics cards will arrive in the first half of this year. The Radeon RX 6700 XT may be one of the very first models.

Gigabyte (via Komachi_Ensaka) today registered at least six custom Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card with the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC), implying that we may be nearing the Radeon RX 6700 XT’s release. While the Radeon RX 6700 XT’s specifications are left to speculation, Gigabyte’s submission at least confirms that the graphics card will come equipped with 12GB of GDDR6 memory.

There have been whispers that the Radeon RX 6700 XT would employ AMD’s Navi 22 (codename Navy Flounder) silicon. Size-wise, the die should be smaller than Navi 21, which dwells inside the Radeon RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT (one of the best graphics cards) and RX 6800. Navi 22 may well end up with 40 Compute Units (CUs), adding up to a total of 2,560 Stream Processors (SPs).

Gigabyte Radeon RX 6700 XT Graphics Cards

Graphics Card	Part Number
Radeon RX 6700 XT 12G	GV-R67XT-12GD-B
Aorus Radeon RX 6700 XT 12G	GV-R67XTAORUS E-12GD
Radeon RX 6700 XT Gaming OC 12G	GV-R67XTGAMING OC-12GD
Radeon RX 6700 XT Gaming 12G	GV-R67XTGAMING-12GD
Radeon RX 6700 XT Eagle OC 12G	GV-R67XTEAGLE OC-12GD
Radeon RX 6700 XT Eagle 12G	GV-R67XTEAGLE-12GD

Since we’re looking at 12GB of GDDR6 memory, it’s reasonable to think that the memory would communicate across a 192-bit memory interface. We still don’t know what clock speed the memory will be running. If these are the same GDDR6 chips as the Radeon RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT, then they should be clocked at 16 Gbps. Across a less generous memory bus, the Radeon RX 6700 XT would be able to deliver a maximum memory bandwidth up to 384 GBps.

As for the Infinity Cache, it would be silly to expect the Radeon RX 6700 XT to feature the same 128MB of L3 cache as the Radeon RX 6900 XT or RX 6800 XT. If the 192-bit memory interface is sound, there’s a possibility of coupling six 16MB chunks of cache to each memory controller. In that case, we could see an Infinity Cache of 96MB. It’s also possible the Infinity Cache size doesn’t need to match with the memory controllers, in which case something smaller like 64MB is feasible.

While the Radeon RX 6900 XT and Radeon RX 6800 XT are rated for 300W, the Radeon RX 6700 XT should feature a more modest TDP in the range of 200W. If so, a single 8-pin PCIe power connector would suffice. If AMD is using the same display output formula with the Radeon RX 6700 XT as it did with the Radeon RX 6900 XT and RX 6700 XT, the Radeon RX 6700 XT will likely have an HDMI 2.1 port, two DisplayPort 1.4a outputs and possibly the USB-C port as well.

Current rumors suggest we could see RX 6700 XT (and possibly RX 6700 as well) cards launch by the end of March.

Amazon’s electric Rivian vans will start making deliveries in 16 cities this year

Amazon’s new electric delivery vans will hit the road in more than a dozen cities starting this year, the company announced Wednesday. The vans, which are being designed and built by buzzy EV startup Rivian, are already making deliveries to customers in Los Angeles. Amazon plans to expand its testing to 15 more cities this year, as it continues to build toward a fleet of 100,000 vehicles by 2022. The companies did not name which cities they would choose.

In a short video published today, Amazon touts the fact that the vans were designed, built, and are now being tested within a year. “We’re loving the enthusiasm from customers so far—from the photos we see online to the car fans who stop our drivers for a first-hand look at the vehicle,” said Ross Rachey, director of Amazon’s Global Fleet and Products, said in a statement. “From what we’ve seen, this is one of the fastest modern commercial electrification programs, and we’re incredibly proud of that.”

Rivian is a relatively new name in the electric vehicle industry, having only debuted its pickup truck and SUV at the end of November 2018 — despite operating in stealth since 2009. Originally founded to make something that competed with Tesla’s first car, the Roadster, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe eventually pivoted the company toward a more action-adventure customer segment of SUVs and pickup trucks.

Since coming out of stealth, Rivian has hauled in a series of enormous investments from several major players. Amazon led a $700 million round in February 2019, followed by $500 million from Ford in April 2019. Most recently, Rivian landed $2.65 billion from T. Rowe Price and Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund. (Jeff Bezos recently announced he would be stepping down as CEO to devote more attention to the initiative.)

Rivian has shown off two vehicles so far: the R1T pickup and the R1S SUV. Built on the same architecture as the delivery van, Rivian claims its vehicles — which will start at around $70,000 — will be able to travel up to around 400 miles on a single charge, hit 60 miles per hour in under three seconds, and eventually be able to drive themselves in some capacity.

Amazon originally announced the new delivery van as part of its climate pledge to become a carbon-neutral company by 2040.

It’s funny that Amazon’s Rachey mentions the photos of the delivery van posted online. Curious passers-by have also captured the shall-we-say unique external sound that emanates from the van while parked or traveling at low speeds. Electric vehicles can be notably silent when compared to their internal combustion engine-having counterparts, so regulators require them to produce an artificial sound when traveling at low speeds to alert pedestrians and other road users that may not otherwise hear the approaching vehicle.

Based on the spacey, sci-fi-ish sound that has been selected, it would seem that Rivian was going for something that could best be described as “chill/lo-fi beats to relax/study to playlist.” According to The Drive citing a post from Drive Tesla Canada, the Rivian vans’ artificial sound is so loud, it can be heard from inside someone’s house.

It’s not clear whether this will be the final sound used for all of Amazon’s delivery fleet. In other words, there’s still time to change it. Please change it.

33 Spotify tips, tricks and features

(Image credit: Spotify)

As of February 2021, Spotify boasts 155 million Premium subscribers and 345 million monthly active users. The platform has long been the world’s most popular music streaming service, and with good cause – it got in on the ground floor and its simple interface and vast library make it a compelling choice even in the face of stiff competition from Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer, YouTube Music, Amazon Music Unlimited and others.

But are you getting the most from your Spotify membership?

We’ve compiled a list of our favourite Spotify features, tips and tricks to help you get the most out of the service – from mastering offline listening to getting the best possible sound quality, sharing your music to filtering your recommendations. Some of these are only for Spotify Premium subscribers only though, so if you want the full experience, you’ll have to cough up the £9.99 per month…

Spotify Connect: what is it? How can you get it?
Tidal vs Spotify: which is better?

Set up

1. Get the best sound quality

First things first: head to the settings menu (below your account name, top right, and although it’s set to ‘automatic’ by default, you can change the music quality – choose Low (24kbps), Medium (96 kbps), High (160 kbps) or Very High (320 kbps). Admittedly, these aren’t going to sound as sweet as lossless Tidal Master or Qobuz files, and taking the Very High path might take up more of your data allowance to stream. But that’s a small price to pay for better listening.

2. Save music for offline listening

Spotify Premium users can download tracks to listen to offline. Not only does this save you valuable data, it also means you can listen where you don’t have mobile reception. Win-win. Save your playlists in the best possible quality, naturally. Hit the three dots then select ‘download’ on Android, or select the playlist then hit ‘download’ at the top on Apple.

3. Create a new playlist

To create a new playlist, head into the playlist category in ‘Your Library’. At the top you’ll find an music icon with a plus sign on it (Android), or tap ‘Edit’ and then ‘Create’ (iOS) start your brand new playlist. On the desktop app, you’ll see a plus-sign and ‘New Playlist in the bottom-left, underneath any playlists you’ve already created.

4. Transfer your music from other apps

You can transfer your existing playlists on other music services to Spotify. The Soundiiz website is a great way to get it done and supports all the services you’d expect.

Interface

5. See your stats

Click on your profile icon in the top left to see who’s following you and who you’re following. It will also show your most recently listened-to artists and public playlists.

6. Sort your now-playing queue

Cue tracks in Spotify by selecting ‘add to queue’ from the three dots next to the track title. On iOS? You can also swipe right on a track to add it to your now-playing playlist.

7. Search for your favourite tunes

Want to find a track from your own library? On mobile, pull down on the screen when you’re in any of the sub-categories (albums, playlists, artists) in the ‘Your Library’ tab to reveal a search bar at the top, complete with filter options. This searches your own saved tracks rather than the whole of Spotify (which is done via the main ‘Search’ icon at the bottom).

8. Listen using the web interface

Not allowed to install software on your work computer? No problem. Head to play.spotify.com and you can listen without installing the Spotify desktop app (or relying on your phone). Take that, overzealous IT department.

9. Master keyboard shortcuts

Did you know you can control Spotify using just your keyboard? The Space bar is play/pause, next track is Control-Right (Control-Command-Right on a Mac), back is Control-Left (Control-Command-Left on a Mac), Volume is Control-Up or -Down (Command-Up or -Down on a Mac) and to create a new playlist press Control-N. And that’s just scratching the surface.

Check out the full list here.

Organising your music

10. Build your own library

There are a couple of ways to build your music library. Adding your favourite tracks to playlists is one way, saving music to your own library is another. Add tracks, albums, artists radio stations, podcasts and playlists by hitting the plus/save sign (either next to the song in the desktop app, or by tapping the three dots on mobile), then access your music via ‘Your Library’.

11. Add music that isn’t on Spotify

Missing out on those artists that are absent from Spotify? Add them yourself. Go to Spotify’s ‘Preferences’ on the desktop app, scroll down and click ‘Add a Source’, then select a folder containing your own music files. You can then see them in your Spotify library – they’ll be under ‘Local Files’ in the left sidebar.

12. Recover a deleted playlist

Spotify’s Account website can help restore playlists that you’ve deleted. Log in, go to ‘Account Settings’, and select ‘Recover Playlists’. Hey presto.

13. Find clean and explicit versions of songs

If you think a lyric sounds unlike the witty line you remember, chances are an expletive was swapped out in favour of a less explicit word. Spotify can help you track down the original. Scroll down and select the pull-down menu on the right-hand side. If it says ‘1 More Release’, that could well be the explicit version.

Music curation

14. Follow some friends

Is your pal always first with the best new music? You can piggyback off their hard work by following them on Spotify. This way you’ll be able to see what they’re listening to, and pass those killer tracks off as your own discoveries. (We suppose they are, in a way.) Select ‘Find Friends’ to locate them, and instantly expand your listening.

15. Share music with friends using Spotify Codes

Spotify Codes is another way to share music. Scan a code on your friend’s phone to download a tune, or import a code posted by an artist to hear their latest single. You can also scan a code from a poster, flyer or billboard. Tap the ‘…’ context menu next to a song, and you’ll see a Spotify Code appear at the bottom of the album artwork. Use the ‘Camera’ icon to scan it, or tap the Code-enhanced artwork and save it to ‘Camera Roll’ for uploading to a social network.

16. Make a collaborative playlist

Maybe you’re putting together a set list for a friend’s wedding or a party. Start a collaborative playlist and everyone can chuck in their tuppence-worth, no matter how misguided. Right-click on the playlist name, and it’ll give you the option of making it collaborative. Then grant friends access to it, and brace yourself for some terrible choices. Alternatively, you can make a playlist secret, too.

17. Let the Radio option open your ears to similar artists

Stuck for what to listen to? ‘Radio’ can help. On desktop, select it from the left-hand pane, then choose ‘Create new station’ and pick an artist, album or playlist you like. Radio will then serve up a selection of artists/songs similar to your choice, that you’ll (hopefully) like. On mobile? Hit the three dots top right when on an artist, album or song and then select ‘Go to Radio’.

18. Filter out the chaff

Yes, of course you want to listen to James Brown. No, you don’t want anything from his Lost ’80s years. Thankfully you can filter out the wilderness era. Type the artist name in the search bar followed by the years that you want to hear (with no spaces). For example “James Brown year:1970-77”.

19. Sort out your search

Use the word “Not” after your search term to omit artists you don’t want, and the “+” symbol or “And” to include those you do.

20. Listen to Spotify’s Weekly Discover Playlist

This is a playlist of 30 tracks Spotify compiles based on your listening habits. It tends to be scarily good. It updates every Monday and sits in the ‘Made For You’ section (or in Browse – Discover, or you could simply type ‘Discover Weekly’ into the search bar). There’s also the Release Radar playlist that updates every Friday with brand new music releases.

21. Listen to your Daily Mixes

Too impatient to wait a whole week? Spotify now offers six Daily Mix playlists that are tailored to users’ listening habits.

22. Check out the What Hi-Fi? playlist

And we have to mention our own playlist… Each month, we update our Spotify playlist so you can see what we’ve been listening to over the past four weeks. It’s a great mix of tunes we use to test our review kit, as well as a few personal favourites from the team. You know it makes sense.

Connecting other devices

23. Listen through your home cinema speakers

Using the Google Chromecast streaming dongle, you can play Spotify through the speakers attached to your TV. Just select ‘Chromecast’ from the ‘Devices Available’ section of the Spotify app and get playing.

24. Control it with your voice

Good news. The Amazon Echo and Echo Dot speakers play nice with Spotify. Just connect your Spotify account in the Alexa app, and then start barking commands like “Alexa, play me some Bowie on Spotify!” and the Echo will do as it’s told. You’ll be grooving to Let’s Dance in no time. If you set Spotify as your preferred streaming service, you won’t even need to request Spotify by name, either. Apple users can control music playback by asking Siri, too.

25. Send music to your speakers with Spotify Connect

Premium subscribers can use their phone as a remote control and play music on connected Spotify Connect speakers, such as Sonos – although certain devices (the PlayStation 4, for example) are happy to work with Spotify Free. Play a song on your phone and make it fullscreen. Select the ‘speaker’ icon at the bottom of the screen, then select your speakers. Instant house party.

26. Listen in your Uber

Connect your Spotify account in the Uber app and you can then take control of your car’s stereo (assuming your driver has allowed it). They’ll love your choice of music, we’re sure…

More features

(Image credit: Spotify)

27. Share songs instantly with anyone

Heard a song you just have to send to a friend? Tap the three dots, then ‘Share’, then send it on to the social media platform (Facebook, Instagram Stories, Skype even), your WhatsApp groups, or simply copy the song link.

28. Preview music on iOS

Tap and hold the title of a track, album or playlist, and you’ll get a preview. On a playlist or album you’ll see the first five tracks – slide over each piece of cover art and you can preview each song.

29. Use private listening to hide your guilty pleasures

Not everyone needs to know about your love of Wang Chung. If you want to keep your listening private, click ‘Settings’ (top right), then ‘Private Session’ on Android or ‘Settings’ then ‘Social’ then ‘Private Session’ on iOS. That way, friends won’t know you’ve spent all morning blissing out to big-haired saxophone-heavy ’80s cheese.

30. Make a playlist tailored to your running speed

Spotify can also pick tracks that are close to the same tempo as your running speed. Start running, pick a running playlist from the ‘Browse’ screen, and Spotify will use your phone’s sensors to select songs to suit your stride. See it in action here.

31. Link to a specific part of a track

If there’s a great solo you want to alert someone to, you don’t have to tell them to skip to 2:53 in the track. Just send them a link and they’ll jump right in at the relevant part. On desktop, copy the track’s URI (uniform resource identifier) by right-clicking the track and selecting ‘Copy Spotify URI’. Then paste it into an email or text message, and add ‘#time2:53’ to the end. When the respondent clicks it, they’ll be transported to exactly the part you were talking about. Magic.

32. Find out about live gigs

OK, large gatherings aren’t the thing right now, but looking ahead: Spotify can help you see your favourite act in the flesh. To see when an act might be playing near you, click ‘Browse’ on your desktop app, then ‘Concerts’ to see which acts you’ve listened to are playing nearby. Going to be out of town? Just change your location to see what’s happening near you.

33. Listen to podcasts

Did you know you can listen to your favourite podcasts on Spotify? Well, now you do. Head to ‘Browse’ and then ‘Podcasts’ (on desktop) to follow your faves, and go to the Podcasts section in ‘Your Library’ to find all your saved podcasts.

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OneDrive for Android now supports Samsung Motion Photos and 8K video playback

Microsoft is updating its OneDrive app for Android this week with a new home screen, Samsung Motion Photos support, and the ability to play 8K videos. The new home screen includes quick access to recent files, offline files, and the “On This Day” feature of OneDrive that reminds you of your old photos.

Samsung Motion Photos support is also included in this update, allowing owners of Samsung phones to play back photos captured with motion in the OneDrive app or online. These photos work like Apple’s Live Photos and capture a still image alongside several seconds of video and sound before the capture. Microsoft says Samsung Motion Photos playback is rolling out worldwide and will require Android version 6 or above.

OneDrive’s new home screen on Android.

Image: Microsoft

The final addition is 8K video playback for compatible Samsung phones like the new Galaxy S21 or last year’s S20. While you’ve always been able to store 8K videos on OneDrive, the service now supports playback on compatible screens and devices. This could tempt more to store 8K video on Microsoft’s cloud storage service, particularly when OneDrive now supports up to 250GB files.

This latest Android update for OneDrive focuses a lot on Samsung’s phones and is an example of the ongoing partnership between Microsoft Samsung. Both companies are working on a variety of ways to integrate Microsoft’s software and services into Samsung Android phones, and there’s even a partnership for cloud gaming through xCloud.

Ruark R3

Our Verdict

While we thought its radio sources need a little tonal attention, the highlights here are playback from CD, from streaming music services and Bluetooth.

For

Compact music system
Endless paths to music
CD and streaming

Against

Edgy sound on radio sources
Variable results for ‘3D audio’

Sound+Image mag review

(Image credit: Future)

This review originally appeared in Sound+Image magazine, one of What Hi-Fi?’s Australian sister publications. Click here for more information on Sound+Image, including digital editions and details on how you can subscribe.

We don’t recall a product ever ‘coming good’ during a review to the quite same extent as did the Ruark R3 Compact Music System. It positively alarmed us when we first turned it on. But by the end of our time with this streaming tabletop music system we were using it daily for pleasure as much as for assessment. Join us in our journey with this timeless design from a UK company which has made this genre of smart radiogram-like music system something of a specialty.

Build & facilities

The R3 is a table-top audio system (£629, $790, AU$1299) which stands some 42cm across and 17cm high, bringing together CD replay, reception of DAB+, FM and internet radio, streaming via network and Bluetooth (with aptX), Spotify Connect, Tidal and other music services… pretty much everything, in short, that the modern music world has to offer.

You can plug in additional sources – there’s one optical and one analogue input, also a minijack headphone output and a ‘line out’ at full level, so you could run the whole gamut of sources into a hi-fi amp or a recorder.

Ruark’s great skill is in offering this potentially overwhelming profusion of sources in a friendly box – old-style, you might even call it, with its grey cloth grille and walnut casing, though a more modern-looking soft-grey lacquer finish is also available.

On top is the company’s longstanding Rotodial for control, while a small infrared remote is also included, along with app control from a smart device. And if it’s going bedside, you can avail yourself of the useful alarm clocks, snooze and sleep timer functions.

Ruark’s other skill is sound quality. This is a company we can still remember of old as Ruark Acoustics, making fine British loudspeakers with thrusting names like Sabre and Swordsman through the 1980s and 1990s. Then in the 2000s when digital radio was trending, Ruark developed the little R1, which the UK’s Sunday Telegraph hailed as “the Aston Martin of DAB radios”.

Such was the R1’s success that traditional loudspeakers fell by the wayside (though “never say never”, says owner Alan O’Rourke), and the reinvented Ruark Audio now has a range of radio and streaming solutions, from the latest Mk4 version of the R1 ‘deluxe’ up to a large four-legged radiogram of the future, the highly desirable R7 Mk3.

So Ruark has a heritage of hi-fi sound, and we’ve enjoyed many of its players in the past, so were looking forward to this new R3.

(Image credit: Ruark Audio)

Setting up

We had no problems setting up the R3; we gave it Ethernet and attached the antenna required for radio reception; this may confuse newbies by flopping around loosely, but we knew from previous Ruark visits that there’s a special aerial spanner in the packaging for this very purpose!

We began our listening by sampling its skills with radio. We selected digital radio and, being fresh from the box, the R3 scanned Sydney’s airwaves and found some 70 available DAB+ stations all awaiting selection via a shuttle of the R3’s top Rotodial. And all were sounding pretty unpleasant – very spitty in the treble, artificial-sounding, with voices thin in their midrange content, and music lumpy in the bass.

We changed to internet radio – it was no better, indeed slightly worse on low-resolution stations. We were worried by this, to be honest: it was not the sound we expect from Ruark devices, which normally present a warm friendly radio sound.

We hastened to the tone controls through the menus. There are four elements to the tone controls: bass and treble adjustment, a loudness option which was ‘on’ by default, and – ah! – a ‘3D’ option. This 3D option was also on by default. Switching it off went a long way to removing the artificial spittiness from the radio sources.

We further tamed the treble by a few notches, left the loudness on, and kept the bass in its central position. This brought the radio sections back to what we’d expect from Ruark – full and friendly, just a teeny bit fizzy up top but no longer distractingly so.

The remote control has three large preset buttons, which are available separately for each source, so three for FM, three for DAB+, three for internet radio. You store them by simply pressing and holding the button when listening to a station.

But in fact there are 10 presets for each type of radio; you can access the rest by pressing and holding the ‘preset’ button then pressing the left-right buttons to reach presets 4 to 10. Recall them the same way, without the holding. It’s easy, versatile, and very useful.

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App control

For those with less than 20/20 vision who can’t read the small lettering on the front display across the room for source selection (let alone the tinier menu options), there’s a handy free app available for control. This is Undok, the control app from Frontier Silicon, maker of the smart module within the R3.

We’ve long enjoyed Undok, and are pleased to see it back after an unexplained hiatus. Undok controlled the R3 effectively, though not entirely. For example, there’s access to bass, treble and loudness, but not the all-important ‘3D’ option, for which you’ll need to use the remote and/or Rotodial to switch on or off.

App quirk two: we tried to rename the R3, but it refused to change to ‘Ruark R3’… yet when we jokingly tried ‘Simon’, that was OK. Turns out that you can only pick a one-word name, e.g. Ruark.

App quirk three: the bass slider in the app was glitchy, advancing a few notches, then jumping back again, up then back – very odd.

But otherwise the app is very useful for local control, for switching sources, for saving presets. One tip for internet radio: if there’s a station you can’t find (our local community station, for example, was not listed), you can head to Frontier Silicon’s site https://smartradio.frontier-nuvola.net, set up an account, link your R3, ‘manage favourites’, and enter the URL manually. The station then appears under ‘My Favourites’. Nice flexibility!

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(Image credit: Ruark Audio)

Streaming

Ruark R3 specs

(Image credit: Ruark Audio)

Drivers: 2 x 75mm NS+ full-range

Quoted power: 30W Class-AB

Inputs: RCA analogue, optical digital, USB-C, FM, DAB+ radio, Bluetooth (SBC, AAC, aptX), Wi-Fi/Ethernet, internet radio, Spotify Connect, Tidal, Deezer, Amazon Music, DLNA/UPnP

Outputs: line out, headphone minijack out

Dimensions: 420 x 220 x 167mm

Weight: 5.3kg

Radio listening completed, we switched to music streaming. For Spotify you use the Spotify app and point it at the Ruark for playback – we were pleased to find this works with free Spotify as well as paid (which isn’t the case for many streaming platforms and products).

And it was immediately evident that for all the other inputs – music services, CD, Bluetooth streaming – the R3’s sound balance was completely different. Gone was all the spittiness, gone the bass lumpiness. So we headed back to the tone controls, put the treble and bass back to zero, left the loudness on – and turned the 3D sound on.

And with these sources you should definitely try the 3D sound option. It gives the sound a real lift, a widening, an additional enjoyability, though it still occasionally has deleterious effects on certain tracks. We played Paul Simon’s You Can Call Me Al from Spotify Free and all was good.

But on the next track, Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard, the janglier right-channel guitars became nastily edgy and artificial until we turned ‘3D’ off again. We tried the same track from our own CD-quality collection sent by Bluetooth (which supports both AAC and aptX), and this softened the edginess somewhat, but it still sounded better with 3D off.

The more we played, the more songs reacted badly to the 3D setting, and we ended up keeping it off, with one notch down also on the treble slider to prevent residual fizziness in the treble.

So for best sonic results, adjust the tone options whenever you switch from file-based playback to radio, and vice versa – especially disabling the 3D sound for radio sources. It’s a shame the R3 can’t remember your tone preferences for each source (as it can for input levels, which are trimmable for each analogue and digital input), and we’d go so far as to suggest Ruark should simply disable 3D sound entirely for FM, DAB and internet radio sources, as its effects there are particularly nasty. Better still, a big ‘3D Sound’ button on the remote control would allow easily toggling of this sound mode, as on, say, a soundbar.

But if you’re happy to pop over to the R3 and switch this manually each time, you can enjoy the best which the R3 has to offer, which is considerable. It’s a delightful CD player, for example, those full-quality files filling the room with well-balanced sound. And the louder you play, the happier the R3 seems to be; the bass available from the two 75mm drivers is remarkable as you raise the level; its response begins in the 40s of hertz and rises impressively smoothly.

Soft recordings get a boost from the treble lift of the sonics here; Paul McCartney’s My Valentine has rarely sounded so well-defined. And as with all Ruark units we’ve tested, the R3 is adept with classical music, and we blasted forth the London Musici’s 1991 Conifer/Technics recording of Prokofiev’s ‘Classical’ symphony to confirm the R3’s adherence to this track record, pushing up the bass a tad to underpin this dynamic piece.

The R3 proved equally enjoyable from streaming music services. From Apple Music we streamed Neil Finn’s 2010 solo concert at Sydney’s intimate Seymour Centre, and the Ruark did a lovely job of presenting Finn’s voice and the decay of both artificial and venue reverb as he switched from guitar to piano, serving the latter with both percussive attack and pianissimo softness, as required.

There is a ‘Music Player’ option which you can use to play either from USB or from music shares on the network, although unfortunately the R3 couldn’t see our NAS drive of music (only our PVR, from which it bravely offered to play episodes of Home and Away etc., but of course couldn’t). From USB it was able to play MP3, AAC, WMA, WAV and FLAC, the last two up to 24-bit/48kHz, so no support for higher-res PCM or DSD.

Note that Ruark has chosen to include not a standard USB-A slot but rather a USB-C 5V charging connection, very up-to-date of it, except that you can’t plug in normal USB sticks and drives. USB-C sticks are widely available, so that’s what we used. Adapters are also available, though when we tried one, the R3 announced that ‘USB hubs are not supported’. Sticks must also be formatted in FAT-32 format.

(Image credit: Ruark Audio)

Verdict

So quite the journey we enjoyed with this versatile music system. While we thought its radio sources need a little tonal attention, its highlights are playback from CD, from streaming music services and Bluetooth, and overall it’s an impressively easy-to-use and attractive table-top unit which accesses pretty much every kind of music under the sun, delivered effectively under local, remote or app control.

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Epson EpiqVision EH-LS300B

Our Verdict

Epson’s EH-LS300 UST projector is practical for everyday use, with some limitations, as well as for truly immersive bigscreen movie nights.

For

Powerful bright image
Free-to-air TV catch-up services
Convenient way to get a really large picture

Against

No Netflix or Prime support
No Ethernet
1080i/50 and 576i/50 issues

Sound+Image mag review

(Image credit: Future)

This review originally appeared in Sound+Image magazine, one of What Hi-Fi?’s Australian sister publications. Click here for more information on Sound+Image, including digital editions and details on how you can subscribe.

Ultra-short-throw projectors are going great guns. Even mainstream companies not previously or not recently involved in projection (LG, Samsung, Hisense) have realised that a projector sitting on a bench can deliver a large-screen ‘TV-like’ experience with a convenience that a conventional projector cannot when it has to be pushed back in the room or hung on a ceiling.

As a consequence the ultra-short-throw is rapidly evolving. Since it’s going to work like a TV, shouldn’t it have speakers? Shouldn’t it be smart, like a TV? Yes it should. So here comes Epson, a company which declares itself the world no.1 in projection (on the reasonable basis it has been declared so by Futuresource Consulting for the last 17 consecutive years), with models for just this space. The ‘4K Pro UHD’ EH-LS500 arrived first, and now this EH-LS300, which offers Full-HD resolution of 1920 x 1080. With such underlying expertise, but a lower resolution, does it deliver the promised new age of UST?

Build

Ultra-short-throw projectors use a combination of lenses and mirrors to cast the picture up onto a screen almost immediately above them. The Epson EpiqVision EH-LS300B is a fairly compact specimen at 467mm wide and 400mm deep. Inside there are three 15.5mm LCD projector panels using Epson’s C2 Fine technology, and a laser diode. That kind of light engine works by firing the laser into some phosphor, which then produces a bright white light.

The use of this kind of light engine means several good things. Firstly, long life. The projector is rated at 20,000 hours of lamp life. Secondly, the projector turns on fast – 5.5 seconds when in standby, according to our stopwatch, or 6.5 seconds if it has been disconnected from power. It goes off fast as well.

And the lamp can be controlled in level to help darken scenes. Epson says that the dynamic contrast ratio is as much as 2.5 million-to-1 (on the datasheet) or 1.5 million-to-1 (in the US manual we found online).

There are two HDMI inputs, a USB socket for playing back video content from a USB stick, and Wi-Fi for the smart TV stuff. Surprisingly, there’s no Ethernet connection – we’d prefer that option rather than having to rely on Wi-Fi in our somewhat RF-congested modern environments. But it is dual-band Wi-Fi – 2.4GHz and 5GHz – supporting the 801.11ac standard, so it may well outperform the usually-installed 100Mbps Ethernet of many devices. (Our 100Mbps test clip was pretty choppy… but we do have an extremely busy Wi-Fi environment.)

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(Image credit: Epson)

A nice touch: built-in sound that is quite good. As always, we believe that the sound of your system should match the scale of the video. Since the Epson EpiqVision EH-LS300B delivers big vision, a decent external sound system should be in order. But absent that, we were quite impressed with the audio built into the projector. Epson relied on the audio expertise of Yamaha for this: a 2.1-channel forwards-firing audio system with 20W of power, better than any actual TV that we’ve used – and we’ve used plenty. We also checked the Audio Return Channel capability via HDMI to a connected home theatre receiver, and it worked perfectly well.

Setting up

The projector is available on its own at £2500 ($2000, AU$4000). But in Australia you can also get it as a package with an ‘Ambient Light Rejection’ screen in 100 inches (AU$5099 package) or 120 inches (AU$5699). These employ a surface treatment which reduces the reflection of light coming from above or directly in front, increasing their contrast ratio when there’s light in the room. These screens weren’t available to us at the time of review, so we used our regular viewing screen.

Epson EH-LS300 tech specs

(Image credit: Epson)

Projection technology: 3 x 15.5mm C2 Fine LCD panels

Resolution: 1920 x 1080 pixels

Aspect ratio: 16:9

Lamp: Laser diode

Lamp life: 20,000 hours (Normal and Quiet modes)

Brightness: 3600 lumens (both white and colour); 1800 lumens (ECO mode)

Inputs: 2 x HDMI, 1 x USB, Wi-Fi

Outputs: Optical digital audio

Control/other: Mini-USB (Service)

Dimensions (whd): 467 x 133 x 400mm

Weight: 7.2kg

In a couple of ways an ultra-short-throw projector is a little trickier to set up than a regular projector. There is no zoom lens, for example, so the size of the picture is determined entirely by the distance between the projector and the screen – far less than a conventional projector, but still significant for the largest screen sizes. For a 100-inch screen, the distance from the wall to the back of the projector (the side facing the wall) should be 26.6cm. With the largest recommended screen size of 120 inches, the distance is just 38.6cm. The projector itself is getting on for 40cm deep, so its front will end up more than 75cm from the wall – which is a lot of bench depth.

The other slightly tricky thing is that the image is cast at such an extreme angle you have to adjust everything with better-than-millimetre precision. The slightest angle to one side and you have a marked trapezoid of a picture. You really don’t want to be nudging the projector when you’re dusting.

But there is a clever adjustment system for picture geometry. There’s even a dedicated button on the remote. With this you can drag the corners of a box to make sure everything’s square. It’s kind of like a supercharged keystone correction system. But like keystone correction, it’s done digitally, which means that Full-HD input signals are no longer directly mapped onto the display pixels, so detail is lost. So it’s best avoided if you can.Get the physical placement right instead.

Last thing on physical set-up: we found the focus adjust lever quite spongy, so a bit tricky to get the focus exactly right. With perseverance we did succeed. (One of the oddities about this kind of projector: focus adjustment has basically no effect at all at the bottom of the screen, which is always in focus, and a massive effect at the top.)

As for the smart set-up, Android TV has this well under control. You just use the Google Home app on your phone – it works on iPhones as well – which talks you through with very little fuss. We had the unit connected within a couple of minutes.

(Image credit: Epson)

Performance

It turns out that 3600 lumens allows a surprisingly viewable picture even under the full glare of our room’s fluorescent tubes! Not that we did any kind of critical viewing that way, we hasten to add. But we suspect that kids would be perfectly satisfied with afternoon cartoons served this way, especially onto an Epson directional screen. And it’s fine for the news and such. So consider this not just a home cinema device, but a (kind of) everyday TV.

Then, when night fell, we started to use it as a real home cinema projector. And we were impressed. What impressed us? The colour and the black levels. The subjective black levels were entirely satisfying. Which is to say that with all the material we viewed – including HDR content from 4K Blu-ray – the black elements of the picture seemed, well, entirely black. And yes, 4K Blu-ray, because even though the projector delivers 1080p output, it supports Ultra-HD inputs including HDR (and Dolby Vision, which it treats as HDR).

We jammed in as much night-time viewing as we could in the time available, and we must say that we found it entirely satisfying: bold, accurate colours; sharp, detailed image.

The EpiqVision quickly demonstrated that it’s not really one for interlaced video in Australia. With both 576i/50 and 1080i/50, it seemed simply to assume that all such signals were video-sourced. So it applied motion-adaptive deinterlacing, rather than checking to see if a simple weave might be better for any given bit of video. Most of the time you won’t notice this, but occasionally there’ll be some lines or grid in the picture which adversely interact with the processing and develop distracting moire patterns. The solution, as always: use a source with good quality deinterlacing.

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Network streaming

When you first set the Epson up, you’re offered a default bunch of apps, including (in Australia) TV station apps such as iView, SBS On Demand and so on. There’s YouTube, Google play Movies & TV, Disney+ and Stan, Vimeo, Spotify and Tidal and a whole lot more. Even after we’d finished the setting up, it took a little while to download and install them one by one. It was kind of fun watching them pop up in the list of apps as they were loaded. When it had finished, we went to fire up Netflix – one of the paid video services to which we subscribe. We couldn’t find it.

So we figured we’d try Google Assistant to help us find it. A press of the microphone button on the remote and the utterance of the word Netflix, and the projector announced in the familiar Google Assistant voice, ‘Here’s Netflix on the Google play Store’. And there was, indeed, the play Store entry for Netflix. Only problem was, at the bottom of the screen it said, ‘Your device isn’t compatible with this version.’ This was also the case for Amazon’s Prime Video.

We checked the projector’s website and, sure enough, there it was in the fine print: “Not all streaming apps are natively available on the EpiqVision EH-LS300B. An external streaming media device is required to stream some services, including Netflix. Netflix cannot be streamed using Chromecast from Android TV, iOS, Mac or Windows devices.” (We assume by that ‘Android TV’ that Epson actually means Android, as in an Android phone.)

In other words, not only does this projector not support Netflix, apparently you can’t stream Netflix from your phone to the projector via Chromecast. We tried. In fact, we could kind of stream Netflix from our phone, but only in the slowest, choppiest most broken-up way. To compare, we plugged an actual Chromecast with Google TV device into one of the EpiqVision’s HDMI inputs, and found that Netflix would stream fairly smoothly via that route.

YouTube, by contrast, streamed smoothly via either route, as did iView and SBS On Demand and Stan. We did find it quite puzzling why any version of Android TV would not support Netflix and Prime, the second and fourth most popular streaming services (that’s counting YouTube as being number one).

Apparently the projector is also able to support video calls using the Epson Online Meeting app – powered by Zoom. You’ll need to plug a camera and microphone into the USB socket for that.

(Image credit: Epson)

Verdict

Aside from the inability to play Netflix and Prime Video direct, we were impressed. The Epson EpiqVision EH-LS300B delivers a bright and impressive image to a large screen – and we would indeed recommend using a screen such as one of Epson’s, rather than a non-flat non-reflecting bit of wall, because we assure you, walls will never get the image truly flat. Plus the good quality sound and the extremely long-life light source makes this unit practical for everyday use, with some limitations, as well as for truly immersive bigscreen movie nights.

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Alienware m17 R4 Gaming Laptop Review: Can’t Get Much Faster

Our Verdict

A speed demon that prioritizes raw performance, the Alienware m17 R4 puts plenty of pop into a sleek but bulky chassis.

For

Unrivaled performance
Snappy keyboard
Attractive design

At present, RTX 3080 is the fastest laptop graphics card around, but not all RTX 3080-powered laptops are created equal. Many vendors use Nvidia’s Max-Q technology, which prioritizes power efficiency and low fan noise over high performance. Alienware’s m17 R4, however, seeks to pump out every possible frame, deploying a special cooling system and eschewing Max-Q to make its top-of-the-line configuration one of the best gaming laptops,

But the Alienware m17 R4 is not just a speed demon. Starting at $2,106 ($3,586 as tested), this laptop has a snappy keyboard, a sleek sci-fi inspired design with plenty of RGB and an optional 360 Hz screen. You just have to live with a heavy chassis and the occasional bout of fan noise.

Editor’s Note: The Alienware m17 R4 review unit we tested came with a 512GB boot drive and 2TB RAID 0 storage drive. While this hardware is for sale, it is normally shipped to consumers with the 2TB RAID 0 drive as boot drive.

Alienware m17 R4 Specifications

CPU	Core i9-10980HK
Graphics	Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080
Memory	32GB DDR 2933 MHz
Storage	512GB Boot, 2TB (2 x 1TB RAID 0) SSD
Display	17.3-inch, 1920 x 1080 360 Hz
Networking	Killer Wi-FI AX1650 (Wi-Fi 6), Killer Ethernet 2.5 Gbps NIC, Bluetooth 5.1
Ports	3x USB Type-A 3.2, 1x HDMI 2.2, 1x mini DisplayPort 1.4, 1x Thunderbolt 3, 1x microSD card reader
Camera	1280 x 720
Battery	86 WHr
Power Adapter	330W
Dimensions (WxDxH)	15.74 x 11.56 x 0.87 inches
Weight	6.6 pounds
Price (as configured)	$3,586

Design of the Alienware m17 R4

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(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

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The Alienware m17 R4 has the same sci-fi inspired “Legend” design as both its immediate predecessor, the m17 R3, and its sibling, the Alienware m15 R4. Available in “lunar light: white or “dark side of the moon” (black), the m17 R4 looks like a giant starship, rocketing through space. The body (ours was white) has a black rear end that juts out like the jet engine on the back of an imperial cruiser. The number 17 on the lid appears in a sci-fi font that you might find adorning a secret warehouse at Area 51.

There’s a honeycomb pattern for the vents on the back, above the keyboard and on the bottom surface. We can only assume that Alienware aliens live in some kind of hive where they are all doing CUDA core calculations.

And, of course, there’s lots of RGB lights to brighten the mood in outer space. The keyboard has four-zone RGB and there are customizable lights on the back edge and in the alien heads on the back of the lid and the power button.

The chassis is made from premium materials: a magnesium alloy with matte white or black paint, covered by a clear coat for extra durability. The interior uses Alienware’s cryo-tech cooling technology which has 12-phase graphics voltage regulation, 6-phase CPU voltage regulation and a CPU vapor chamber.

At 6.6 pounds and 15.74 x 11.56 x 0.87 inches, the Alienware m17 R4 is not exactly light or thin, not that would you expect that from a 17-inch laptop with a Core i9 CPU and RTX 3080 graphics. By comparison, the Gigabyte Aorus 17G (5.95 pounds, 15.9 x 10.8 x 1.0 inches) and Razer Blade Pro 17 (6.1 pounds, 15.6 x 10.2 x 0.8 inches) are both significantly lighter, though the Aorus is thicker. The Asus ROG Flow X13, which we’re also comparing to the m17, is much thinner and lighter (2.87 pounds, 11.77 x 8.74 x 0.62 inches), because it’s a 13-inch laptop that gets its RTX 3080 graphics via an external dock.

The Alienware m17 R4 has plenty of room for ports. On the right side, there are two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, along with a micro SD card reader. The left side contains a Killer RJ-45 Ethernet 2.5 Gbps port, a 3.5mm audio jack and another USB Type-A port. The back holds a Thunderbolt 3 port, a mini DisplayPort 1.4, an HDMI 2.1 connection, Alienware’s proprietary graphics amplifier port and the power connector.

Gaming Performance on the Alienware m17 R4

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(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Sporting an Nvidia RTX 3080 GPU and an Intel Core i9-10980HK CPU, our review configuration of the Alienware m17 R4 is as fast of a gaming laptop as you can get right now. Thanks to Alienware’s strong cryo-tech cooling solution and the company’s willingness to include a full version of the RTX 3080, rather than the Max-Q variants in some thinner notebooks.

When I played Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra RTX settings, the game ranged between 61 and 72 frames per second, depending on how intense the action was at any given time. The frame rate improved to between 85 and 94 fps after I changed to Ultra settings with no RTX. In both cases, the fan noise was really loud by default. Changing the fan profile to quiet improved this somewhat while shaving only a couple of fps off, and only in intense scenes.

The Alienware m17 R4 hit a rate of 120 fps in Grand Theft Auto V at very high settings (1080p), eclipsing the Gigabyte Aorus 17G and its Max-Q-enabled RTX 3080 and Core i7-10870H CPU by 20%. The Asus ROG Flow 13 with its Ryzen 9 5980HS CPU and external RTX 3080 dock, was also a good 13% behind while the RTX 2080 Super-powered Razer Blade Pro 17 brought up the rear.

On the very-demanding Red Dead Redemption at medium settings, the m17 R4 achieved an impressive rate of 79.7 fps, besting the Aorus 17G and ROG Flow X13 by more than 20%. Saddled with last year’s card, the Razer Blade Pro 17 was a full 29 % behind.

Alienware’s behemoth exceeded 100 fps again in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, hitting 103 while the Aorus 17G and the ROG Flow X13 hovered in the mid 80s and 60s. On this test, surprisingly, the Razer Blade Pro 17 came close to matching the m17 R4.

Far Cry New Dawn at Ultra settings also provided a great example of the Alienware m15 R4’s dominance. It hit a full 105 fps where its nearest competitor, the Gigabyte Aorus 17G could only manage 92 fps with the Asus ROG Flow X13 and Razer Blade Pro 17 were both in the 80s.

To see how well the Alienware m17 R4 performs over the long haul, we ran the Metro Exodus benchmark at RTX, the highest settings level, 15 times at 1080p. The laptop was remarkably consistent, averaging 75.6 fps with a high of 76.2 and a low of 75.4. During that time, the average CPU speed was 4.19 GHz with a peak of 5.088 GHz. By comparison, the Gigabyte Aorus 17G, got an average frame rate of just 59.6 fps with an average CPU speed of 3.47 GHz and the Asus ROG Flow X13 managed a slightly-higher 65.2 fps with an average CPU speed of 3.89 GHz.

Productivity Performance of Alienware m17 R4

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With its Core i9-10980HK CPU, 32GB of RAM and dual storage drives, which include both a 2TB RAID 0 PCIe SSD (2 x 1TB) and a 512GB SSD, and that RTX 3080, our review configuration of the Alienware m17 R4 can be a powerful work tool.

On Geekbench 5, a synthetic benchmark that measures overall performance, the m17 R4 got a single-core score of 1,318 and a multi-core score of 8,051, which wa slightly ahead of the of the Core i7-10870H-powered Gigabyte Aorus 17G on both counts but behind the Asus ROG Flow X13 and its Ryzen 9 5980HS on single-core performance while creaming the Razer Blade Pro 17, which we tested with a Core i7-10875H.

The storage in our review unit came misconfigured slightly, with a 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD as boot drive and a significantly faster 2TB RAID 0 drive made from two 1TB NVMe PCIe SSDs. Dell sells this hardware, but consumers receive units with the 2TB as boot and the 512GB SSD as a secondary, storage drive.

In our tests, copying about 25GB of files, the 512GB drive managed a mediocre 379.7 MBps, but the 2TB drive hit an impressive 1305.5 MBps, which beats the Aorus 17G (869 MBps), the ROG Flow X13 (779.5 MBps) and the Blade Pro 17 (925.2 MBps).

The Alienware m17 R4 took just 6 minutes and 44 seconds to transcode a 4K video to 1080p in Handbrake. That time is 21% faster than the Aorus 17G, 18% quicker than the Flow X13 and a full 29% ahead of the Blade Pro 17.

Display on Alienware m17 R4

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The Alienware m17 R4 comes with a choice of three different, 17-inch display panels: a 1080p panel with 144 Hz refresh rate, a 4K, 60 Hz panel and the 1080p, 360 Hz panel in our review unit. Our panel provided sharp images and accurate but mostly unexciting colors, along with smooth, tear-free gaming.

When I watched a trailer for upcoming volcano-disaster-flick Skyfire, the red-orange of lava bursts was lively and the green trees in a forest seemed true-to-life. Fine details like the wrinkles in actor Jason Isaacs’ forehead also stood out.

In a 4K nature video of a Costa Rican jungle, details like the scales on a snake and colors like the red on a parrot’s feathers were also strong, but not nearly as strong as when I viewed it on the 4K, OLED panel from the Alienware m15 R4 I tested recently. On both videos, viewing angles on the matte display were strong as colors didn’t fade even at 90 degrees to the left or right.

In Cyberpunk 2077, details like the threads on a rug or the barrel of a gun were prominent and colors like the red and yellow in the UI seemed accurate but didn’t pop.

The Alienware m17 R4’s display registered a strong 316.2 nits of brightness on our light meter, outpacing the Aorus 17G (299.6), the Razer Blade Pro 17 (304.4) and the Asus ROG Flow X13 (281.6). According to our colorimeter, the screen can reproduce a solid 80.6% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is about on par with the Aorus 17G and slightly behind the Razer Blade Pro 17, but miles ahead of the ROG Flow X13.

Keyboard and Touchpad on Alienware m17 R4

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With a deep, 1.7mm of travel, great tactile feedback and a full numeric keypad, the Alienware m17 R4 offers a fantastic typing experience. On the tenfastfingers.com typing test, I scored a strong 102 words-per-minute with a 3% error rate, which is a little better than my typical 95 to 100 wpm and 3 to 5% rate.

Not only does the keyboard have a full numeric keypad, but it also sports four customizable macro keys above the pad on the top row. The Alienware Command Center software allows you to set these to launch a program, enter text or use a pre-recorded set of keystrokes when you hit them. I found programming them very unintuitive, however.it. Alienware Command Center also allows you to set RGB colors or lightning effects for four different zones on the keyboard.

The 3.1 x 4.1 glass touchpad, which uses Windows precision drivers, offers great navigation with just the right amount of friction. Whether I was navigating around the desktop or using multitouch gestures such as pinch-zoom or three-finger swipe, the pad was always accurate and responsive.

Audio on Alienware m17 R4

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The Alienware m17 R4’s audio system outputs sound that’s loud enough to fill a mid-sized room and rich enough to dance to. When I played AC/DC’s “Back in Black” with the volume all the way up, the sound was mostly accurate, but some of the high-pitched percussion sounds were a little harsh. Earth, Wind and Fire’s bass-heavy “September” sounded great, with a clear separation of sound where instruments such as the horns section appeared to come from a different side of the notebook than, for example, the drums.

Gunshots and the sound of my NPC friend Jackie yelling at me to stay down sounded sharp and clear in Cyberpunk 2077. However, I had to turn the volume way up to compensate for the fan noise when the system was on high performance settings. Even on the “quiet” thermal setting, fan noise was quite prominent.

The preloaded Alienware Command Center app has an audio section that lets you tweak the sound settings and choose among profiles such as Music, Movie, Shooter and Role Play. I found that the default “Alienware” profile sounded about the same as the Music one, but disabling the audio enhancement definitely made the sound flatter.

Upgradeability of the Alienware m17 R4

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The Alienware m17 R4 has three different M.2 SSD slots, all of which are accessible and user upgradeable. The first slot is an short 2230 length and the other two are both the normal 2280 size. Unfortunately, the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard and therefore not replaceable.

Opening the Alienware m17 R4 should be easy: there are eight Philips-head screws, some of which come out and the others of which you can just loosen, on the bottom panel. In our testing, getting the screws loosened was easy by prying off the bottom panel was challenging and required several minutes with a spudger. Once the panel is off, all three SSDs are visible, but are covered by copper heat sinks you can easily unscrew.

Battery Life on Alienware m17 R4

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Forget about using the Alienware m17 R4 without a power outlet for any length of time. The laptop lasted just just 2 hours and 5 minutes on our battery test, which involves surfing the web over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. That’s awful in comparison to all of its competitors as both the Gigabyte Aorus 17G and Razer Blade Pro 17 lasted for an identical 4 hours and 41 minutes. But this is a 17-inch, 6.6-pound laptop so portability isn’t a primary concern.

Heat on Alienware m17 R4

The main touchpoints on the Alienware m17 R4 stay relatively cool when you’re not gaming and remain warm but tolerable when you are. After we streamed a YouTube video for 15 minutes, the keyboard hit a reasonable 35.5 degrees Celsius (95.9 degrees Fahrenehitt), the touchpad was a chilly 26.2 degrees Celsius (79.3 degrees Fahrenheit) and the underside was just 36.6 degrees Celsius (97.9 degrees Fahrenheit).

After running the Metro Exodus benchmark for 15 minutes to simulate gaming, those temperatures were obviously higher. The keyboard hit 35.5 degrees Celsius (112 degrees Fahrenheit), the touchpad measured 35 degrees (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and the bottom hit 50 degrees (122 degrees Fahrenheit).

When I played Cyberpunk 2077, the area around the WASD keys measured about 40 degrees Celsius (105 degrees Fahrenheit) but the key caps themselves didn’t feel uncomfortably warm to touch. At performance settings, the fan noise was extremely loud.

Webcam on Alienware m17 R4

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The Alienware m17 R4’s 720p webcam is nothing special. Even when I shot it in a well-lit room, an image of my face was filled with visual noise and fine details like the hairs in my beard were blurry while colors such as the blue in my shirt and the green on the walls were muted. You’ll get by with this built-in camera if you need to, but you’d be better off springing for one of the best webcams.

Software and Warranty on Alienware m17 R4

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The Alienware m17 R4 comes preloaded with a handful of useful first-party utilities.

Alienware Mobile Connect allows you to control your Android handset or iPhone from your laptop, taking calls and texts for the desktop.

Alienware Command Center lets you control all the RGB lighting effects, set keyboard macros, tweak audio settings and even modify the performance settings and thermals to go for better performance or quieter and cooler temps. You can even change the max frequency, voltage and voltage offset for the CPU manually if you have an unlocked CPU and want to try overclocking.

As with any Windows laptop, there’s also a small amount of preloaded bloatware, including a trial of Microsoft Office, links to download Photoshop Express and Hulu and free-to-play games like Roblox.

Alienware backs the m17 R4 with a standard one year warranty on parts and labor that includes in-home service (if there was already a remote diagnosis). You can pay extra to extend the warranty up to five years and you can add accidental damage protection with no deductible.

Configurations of Alienware m17 R4

When you purchase the Alienware m17 R4 from Dell.com, you can custom configure it with your choice of a Core i7 or Core i9 CPU, RTX 3070 or 3080 GPU, up to 32GB of RAM and up to 4TB of storage. You can choose white or blackcolor options and you can also pay extra to get per-key RGB lighting instead of the standard 4-zone lighting we tested.

You also get a choice of screens that includes 144 Hz and 360 Hz 1080p panels, along with a 4K, 60 Hz panel that promises to hit 100 % of the Adobe RGB color gamut. If you value image quality over fps, we recommend the latter, because the color on our 360 Hz panel was ok, but not exciting.

Our review configuration of the Alienware m17 R4 currently goes for $3,586.79. For that price, you get the Core i9-10980HK, RTX 3080 graphics, the 360 Hz display, 32GB of RAM and a combination of storage drives that includes two, 1TB M.2 PCIe SSDS in RAID 0 and a 512GB M.2 SSD by itself for a total of 2.5TB of storage. Dell lists the RAID drive as the boot drive in its store but our review model came with the 512GB drive as boot and the 2TB RAID drive as storage, which seems odd.

Bottom Line

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At this point, it’s hard to imagine someone making a gaming laptop that’s significantly more powerful than the Alienware m17 R4 we tested unless they use desktop parts. The RTX 3080 is currently the fastest mobile GPU around, especially since Alienware didn’t opt for Nvidia’s more power efficient Max-Q technologies.. Using a strong cooling system, pairing it with a Core i9-10980HK, and you have performance that’s often 20% faster than competitors that also use RTX 3080s.

In addition to its strong performance, the Alienware m17 R4 offers a deep, tactile keyboard and a unique, attractive design that’s all its own. The 360 Hz screen is more than capable, but unless you’re a competitive gamer, you can go with the default screen or, better yet, go for the 4K panel which promises much richer colors.

The biggest drawbacks for this epic laptop are those which are kind of inherent to any 17-inch laptop which turns the performance volume up to 11. It’s heavy, has short battery life, emits plenty of fan noise. It’s also quite expensive. It would be nice if, for this price, you got a better-than-awful webcam, but most laptop webcams are terrible.

If you want to save a few dollars or you need a little more battery life, consider the Gigabyte Aorus 17G, which goes for $2,699 with similar specs (but just 1TB of storage) to our Alienware m17 R4. The 17G lasts more than twice as long on a charge and weighs 0.65 pounds less than the m17, but its gaming performance isn’t as good.

If you don’t feel attached to the 17-inch form factor, consider the Alienware m15 R4, which has the same design and keyboard but is much more portable, albeit hotter. It also has an optional, 4K OLED panel which has incredibly vibrant output. However, if you want the ultimate 17-inch gaming rig right now, the Alienware m17 R4 is your best choice.

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