Having posted its all-time quarter record revenue of $111.4 billion this week, Apple is looking for ways to expand. The company’s CEO, Tim Cook, sees selling Macs to businesses as one of the main growth opportunities for Apple, especially with the Apple M1 chip and its successors in tow. But with Intel appealing to businesses with vPro and AMD attempting to do the same with Ryzen Pro, there’s work to do.
Apple has significantly increased its global PC market share from around 3.6% in Q1 2010 to 8.2% in 2020, due to wide adoption of Macs by consumers. Being the world’s fourth largest PC supplier, Apple is still considerably behind Dell, which commanded 16.4% of the market last year, but noticeably ahead of companies Acer and Asus, which controlled around 6% of the market each.
The Big Three PC makers, Lenovo, HP and Dell, all have large businesses selling to enterprise customers. So it makes sense for the Cupertino, California-based company to eye business PC sales.
(Image credit: Apple)
“We have been on a multi-year effort in the enterprise and have gained quite a bit of traction there,” Cook said during Apple’s quarterly conference call with analysts and investors, as reported by CRN. “We are very optimistic about what we can do in that space.”
Indeed, Apple has been trying to tap into the enterprise for quite a while. In 2014, it inked the IBM MobileFirst for iOS solutions pact in a bid to offer specialized apps, services, tools and management services for iPhones and iPads used by various enterprises, such as SAS. In 2015, the two companies expanded their collaboration to Mac PCs with the Mac@Work program. IBM had over 290,000 Apple devices in its own fleet as of late 2019, which was still below IBM’s headcount of 352,600 that year.
In addition to IBM, there are multiple Apple Mac-focused managed service providers (MSPs) who have been witnessing increasing adoption of Apple’s devices by various companies in the recent years.
“We have seen an increase in Mac purchases by our clients–not only the ones that already depend on Apple and the macOS, but also clients that have traditionally been on Windows,” Jim Harryman, CEO of Kinetic Technology Group, a Mac-focused MSP, told CRN. “We see [Apple products] creeping into those companies as well and starting to take hold in areas that you wouldn’t traditionally think.”
Apple M1: A New Enterprise Opportunity?
Business-focused PCs from companies like Lenovo, HP, and Dell mostly rely on Intel’s vPro, with some opting for AMD Pro. They support a host of security and management technologies that are exceptionally handy for the target market. But even with Intel processors inside Macs, Apple’s platform is much different on the hardware side of matters and obviously different from Windows and Linux on the software side of things. Therefore, Apple has never supported Intel vPro or AMD Pro. This, perhaps, has been a barrier to entry for Macs in enterprises.
Now that Apple is transitioning its own system-on-chips (SoCs) and released the M1 and is moving to a system architecture it controls almost completely, it can potentially develop a vPro or AMD Pro-like platform with enhanced security and robust management technologies, which will make it more competitive against The Big Three PC OEMs.
In fact, when Apple rolled out its Employee Choice program a few years ago, it highlighted numerous enterprise-oriented capabilities, though most of them come with regular Apple Macs.
AMD’s Pro platform supports capabilities like Transparent Secure Memory Encryption (TSME) to protect against snooping while data is processed. That’s something that Apple hasn’t talked about publicly in terms of its security technologies. With its own silicon, Apple is much better equipped to introduce such features and support them across its hardware and software.
“We are also pleased with the rapid adoption of the Mac employee choice program among the world’s leading businesses,” Luca Maestri, CFO of Apple, said during Apple’s quarterly call. “With the introduction of M1-powered Macs, we are excited to extend these experiences to an even broader range of customers and employees, especially in times of increased remote working.”
Cook admitted that Apple’s share on the PC market is “quite low in the total personal computer market” and said that the company’s own processors opened up new growth opportunities.
“[The M1] gives us a new growth trajectory that we have not had in the past for the Mac,” Cook said.
(Pocket-lint) – In the world of tech we’ve become accustomed to devices with multiple purposes. One could point at the smartphone as being the ultimate example of that – with plethora of apps, it’s replaced our physical alarm clocks, calendars, to-do lits, sticky notes, cameras, and many other functions. So when a gadget comes along with a single purpose, it catches our attention.
That’s what Norway-based ReMarkable is attempting to do with its paper tablet. It’s a digital tablet, but it’s designed to replace paper and pen only. To do that, the company has focused on recreating a genuine paper-and-pen experience of writing, so that – in this age of wanting to reduce our impact on the planet – it can replace physical notebooks and notepads.
It’s not cheap, but for those who love to write with a pen or pencil on paper – whether to jot down ideas, keep a journal, or just doodling – it’s a modern alternative to books, which either take up space on our shelves, or paper, which inevitably ends up in the recycling bin.
Design and display
Dimensions: 187 x 246 x 4.7mm / Weight: 403g
10.3-inch monochrome display
One of the elements that makes ReMarkable’s second-generation tablet so appealing its its design. It’s made from super slim piece of aluminium. And when we say super slim, it really is: imagine if someone sliced an iPad Air in half and you’re pretty much there. At just 4.7mm thick, the ReMarkable 2 is much slimmer than your typical tablet.
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That slimness makes it a pleasure to hold, but also makes it really easy to carry around in your bag. You don’t need to make space for it. Likewise, at just 403 grams, it’s not that heavy either – about a third of a laptop’s typical weight.
This isn’t really for carrying around instead of your laptop, phone or tablet though. Due to the ReMarkable 2’s dedicated function, it’s really just to replace an A4 notepad. In that context, it’s far easier and more convenient to carry around than a Black’n’Red ruled notepad. And that’s where its attraction first sets in. For those of us used to carrying around paper sketchpads or notebooks, the lightness and ease of the ReMarkable 2 is really appealing.
The display takes up a lot – but not all – of the space on the front. It’s surrounded by a white bezel which is thicker on the bottom than on the top, to give you somewhere to rest your palm when you’re writing on the bottom section of the digital page. What we like is how this white frame is designed to match the default white surface of the E-Ink display. It’s also covered in the same matte-textured glass.
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This same texture and finish is on the back too, which adds consistency to the feeling and look from both sides of the tablet. It contrasts nicely with the dark grey metal frame that runs around the edges and the metal side panel on the left edge. One nice little detail is the rubber feet on the back – there are four tiny rubber dots, one per corner, so that when you place the tablet down on a desk or table to write on it, it doesn’t feel uneven or slip around.
As far as ports and buttons go, there’s not much to talk about. There’s a power/sleep button right on the top edge in the left corner, with a USB Type-C port for charging on the bottom edge. Apart from that, you have a five-dot connection point on the left edge, with magnets built into the sides that allow you to snap on one of the company’s luxurious and lovely folio cases, or the essential Marker stylus.
Reading, writing and rhythm
Textured display surface
Digital ‘Marker’ support
Multiple page formats as standard
PDF and ePUB file reading
After we’d finished gawping at the slim design, the thing that stood out is just how easy the ReMarkable 2 is to get writing on. That’s pretty much the entire point of this tablet – to feel like pen/pencil on paper.
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There’s no learning curve. No awkward repositioning of a hand because it was making the touchscreen react oddly. No having to hold the Marker (stylus) in a specific way to see what we were doing. We just put the tablet down, loaded up an Oxford-ruled lined paper template, then started writing. Easy.
That textured surface on the front is a big part of what makes this tablet such a pleasure to use. Your hand doesn’t slip like it might on a glossy slab of glass, like the displays on ‘proper’ tablets. What’s more, because it’s a transflective E-Ink display, the surface reflects the colour temperature of the light in the room, so it looks natural.
Reponse on screen is relatively lag-free. It’s not quite as instant as using a real pen on real paper, but it’s not far off and it’s not laggy enough that it stops the natural feeling. The monochrome E-Ink also means it’s easy to see what you’re doing. It’s inky black and relatively sharp thanks to its 226dpi resolution.
However, it’s not sharp enough that it looks super crisp, not so responsive that it feels effortlessly fluid. Both points that could be improved a little for third-generation model, if there is one in the future.
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The only aspect to learn is the interface, but that doesn’t take long. The home page – if you want to call it that – is an overview of your notebooks. You create new ones by tapping an icon at the top of the screen, where you select what style of paper you want, which is where its versatility shines.
Not only can you choose from a wide array of standard lined, ruled and grid papers, but for the musically minded there are useful templates like guitar tab, bass tab, guitar chords, and piano sheet templates in various sizes. There are week planner templates for those who like to get their week organised in advance, and – for artists – various isometric, symmetrical and caligraphy templates.
Essentially, if you can buy a book from a stationery story with bespoke template lines in, ReMarkable has thought of it and added it to the available options. So if you need one notebook as a journal, another for practicising your calligraphy, another for song-writing, and another just for planning and doodling ideas, you can do that all in the one place.
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Once you’re in a notebook, drawing away, you can add multiple layers to a page and hide layers you’re not working on, just like working in painting app/programme, so it’s even flexible in that regard. You can also choose which style of pen you’re using within a page. For instance, choosing a paintbrush, pencil or pen, depending on how you want to draw or write.
The only thing that took us aback a little was that the ReMarkable tablet doesn’t come with a stylus as standard – that’s an additional extra. Which is unusual given how essential it is to using the tablet. And how pricey the product is in the first place. The Marker has a built-in ‘eraser’ at the end for rubbing out text on screen. There’s no setup required and you don’t need to charge it. It just works – much like a real pen.
While the ReMarkable 2’s primary aim is as a distraction-free creation tool, that’s not all it can do. With ePub and PDF support, you can load up e-books and documents on to it as well for offline reading. What’s more, with the iOS and Android smartphone apps, plus the MacOS and Windows 10 desktop apps, you can sign into your account on a smart device and read/sync pages and notebooks for easy access everywhere.
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The biggest downside of the lot, however, is that the display is lacking a backlight. So those wanting to read, write or create while in bed at night will need a bedside lamp on in order to see what they’re doing. Again, much like real paper.
Verdict
Sometimes a gadget comes along that’s so niche and limited in its purpose that for most people it’d be a needless expense. But for those who want to reduce their impact on the planet but love handwriting notes, plans and journals, the ReMarkable 2 is simply divine. With a backlight on the display it’d be almost perfect, although it’s not cheap.
If you’re completely focussed on going paperless, there isn’t a product on the market that can replicate the pleasure of writing with a pen on paper digitally like the ReMarkable 2. It’s divine.
With that said, its limited functionality and singular purpose mean that it’s not a gadget for most people. It’s not going to replace your existing tablet, laptop, Kindle or phone, but we get the sense that ReMarkable is fine with that. It knows its audience, and for those people, it might just be the perfect device.
With the superb construction, elegant design and perfectly natural sound of the Michi P5 and S5 combo from Rotel, the only question left to ask is ‘how much?’ The pair offer awesomely low noise with huge output and do so in a gorgeous package.
For
Superb sound
Prestige appearance
Great built-in DAC
Against
No AES/EBU input
Cross-talk between each unit’s remote
Incredibly heavy and bulky
Aus Hi-Fi mag review
(Image credit: Future)
This review and test originally appeared in Australian Hi-Fi magazine, one of What Hi-Fi?’s sister titles from Down Under. Click here for more information about Australian Hi-Fi, including links to buy individual digital editions and details on how to subscribe.
Rotel Michi S5 tested at £3299 (AU$5999). Rotel Michi P5 tested at £5399 (AU$10,399).
Can a famous brand be a victim of its own success? Ask any professional marketing person that question and their answer will be a resounding “Yes!” Take, for example, one of the world’s most famous motor vehicle manufacturers, Toyota.
Toyota is not only one of the most famous car companies in the world, it also sells more passenger vehicles than any other car manufacturer. But when it first tried to enter the luxury vehicle market to compete against the likes of Rolls Royce, Mercedes Benz and Daimler, with its fabulous – and famous – Century model, it could not gain any traction on the world market.
No-one wanted to buy one, despite its technical superiority and the provision of luxury fittings no other vehicle had, such as reclining rear seats with built-in massage systems, and doors that opened and closed electronically at the touch of a button. Still in production, the Toyota Century is the vehicle that is used to transport both the Japanese Emperor Naruhito and the former Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzō Abe.
It wasn’t the money that stopped those who could afford it from buying a Toyota Century (the current model will set you back more than AU$250,000), it was the badge on the bonnet. Because anyone could own a Toyota, it seems that the rich didn’t want to be seen in one. Motoring enthusiasts didn’t want to be seen in one either. Imagine if, when asked what type of exotic vehicle they drove, they had to answer “a Toyota”.
So what did Toyota do? It started building luxury vehicles that didn’t have the Toyota badge on them, but another one. That name?
You know it already: Lexus. And they sold like hot cakes (and still do), because, quite frankly, not everyone can own a Lexus.
Which brings us to Rotel.
At the start of the hi-fi era, in the 70s, Rotel was by far and away the best-selling hi-fi component manufacturer in Japan and, indeed, in all probability the best-selling hi-fi brand right around the world, with a well-deserved reputation for delivering top quality at reasonable prices.
However, as more and more manufacturers entered its particular niche in the hi-fi market, Rotel’s market share diminished, so that in the early 90s, the company decided to start building high-powered, high-performance ‘luxury’ models to compete against the likes of Luxman and Accuphase in its home market, and against the likes of McIntosh and Audio Research on the world stage.
The models it built were undeniably fabulous and were certainly completely different visually from all other Rotel products, exemplified by the appearance of the RHC-10 preamplifier and RHB-10 dual mono power amplifier, to name but two. The company also learned from Toyota’s marketing faux pas and branded the models ‘Michi’, which is often translated from the Japanese as meaning ‘Righteous Way’. But instead of leaving it at that, it marketed the brand as ‘Michi by Rotel’. You can guess the rest.
This time around, twenty years into a new century, the Michi brand name is just ‘Michi’, the marketing is for ‘Michi’ and the brand writ large on the front panels is also just ‘Michi’. It’s only if you look around the back that you’ll find small lettering that says ‘By Rotel’. “Michi is taking Rotel’s values of excellent performance and value into the high-end segment with models that offer new levels of engineering, build and design while setting new reference standards for audio performance,” says managing director Peter Kao. “We have used all of our 55 years of design and manufacturing experience to create our best-ever products.”
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Michi S5 preamplifier
The front panel of the Michi S5 Control Preamplifier’s austere exterior, with its black glass plate and two large rotary controls gives absolutely no clue as to the complexity of what’s inside it… at least it doesn’t until you switch it on and its brilliant full-colour OLED panel springs into life.
Then, if you spin the left-most control to see what sources might be on offer, you’ll discover that the P5 has no fewer than six line level inputs, four of which are unbalanced (via RCA inputs) and two of which are balanced (via XLR) plus a single phono input which you can switch between being most suitable for either moving-coil or moving-magnet cartridges.
On the digital side, you get six SPDIF inputs, three optical and three coaxial, as well as USB and Bluetooth. Curiously, there is no AES/EBU input.
The Michi S5’s extensive menu system allows owners sophisticated customisation options for all inputs, so you can switch off the ones you’re not using so they don’t appear when you’re scrolling through inputs, rename any or all of the inputs to more accurately reflect whatever component you have connected to them, plus you can use the Michi’s bass and treble controls to make specific tonal modifications attach to the specific input you’re using.
You can also fix a specific volume level to each input that will override any other volume setting and cannot itself by changed using the front panel volume control or the infra-red remote control’s up/down buttons. Michi says of this feature: “This is useful for input sources that include their own volume setting like common Apps on phones or tablets.”
Look around the rear of the amplifier and you’ll find some additional digital connections, but the network port is only for firmware updates and control over IP, and that USB-A socket is only there to power external devices. It has no digital signal capability. The RS232 connector is there, of course, to facilitate custom installation integration.
Also on the rear panel are six pairs of stereo line outputs, labelled ‘Line Out’, ‘Mono Sub Out’, ‘Pre Out1’ and ‘Pre Out2’, ‘Balanced Out1’ and ‘Balanced Out2’. The ‘left’ and ‘right’ subwoofer outputs are not stereo: as the labelling suggests, each one outputs a summed signal derived from both channels. You also get two digital outputs, one coaxial and the other optical.
The USB input supports 16-bit and 24-bit PCM from 44.1kHz up to 384kHz as well as DSD64 and DSD128, but to do this via a PC, you’ll have to load a Windows Driver, which Michi helpfully supplies on a USB stick. Mac users, of course, don’t need a driver: their computers will just work properly with the Michi. The SPDIF inputs support 16/24 PCM up to 192kHz. Digital decoding is accomplished using an AKM4490EQ 32-bit/768 kHz dual DAC, one of the best of the currently available devices.
Whereas Rotel equipment was once manufactured in Japan, like the great majority of Japanese hi-fi manufacturers (and many other hi-fi manufacturers around the world), it is now manufactured in China, and the same is true for components bearing the Michi name. However, Rotel retains a point of difference from most manufacturers because it owns its own factory in Zhuhai in China, which it established in 2005. Rotel says that although Michi components are manufactured at that same facility, they are made in a separate section of one of the factories.
(Image credit: Rotel)
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Michi P5 power amplifier
Me saying earlier on that the front panel of the Michi S5 was austere doesn’t leave me much to say about the Michi P5 stereo power amplifier’s front panel because, as you can see for yourself, it’s even more umm… austere.
There’s just a single button at the bottom centre of its front panel, which is actually a standby power switch, since the main power switch is on the rear panel. Since power amplifiers consume a lot of power even when they’re not being used, and particularly so in the case of the Michi P5, which is rated with a power output of 500-watts per channel into 8Ω, you can choose to have the Michi P5 switch itself off automatically after a no-signal period of 20 minutes, 1, hour, 2 hours, 5 hours or 10 hours. Alternatively, you can disable the automatic power-down circuit completely so it never switches off.
As with the S5, the P5 has a very bright OLED display whose primary feature is its ability to act as a spectrum analyser, showing the spectrum of the music being played in your choice of 8, 12 or 16 bands, or you can choose to have the display act as a VU meter, for which there are four different options (VU/x2/x4/x8). For either setting you can choose between four different brightness levels, or you can choose to switch the display off entirely.
The display also shows the input voltage at the top right of the display and the temperature of the heatsinks at the top left. The voltage shown on the display (240V) didn’t actually reflect the mains voltage in my home at the time, which was 244V, so it might just show the intended operating voltage, rather than the actual voltage being delivered to the amplifier.
Being a power amplifier, all the action is around the rear, and you should be able to see from the photograph that the Michi P5 has two sets of inputs, one balanced (XLR) and the other unbalanced (gold-plated RCA). The rocker switch that selects which of the two will be active is located above them, with a network port and RS232 to its left, and 12V trigger inputs and outputs to its right.
There are two pairs of high-quality speaker terminals that are colour-coded and have collars that make it very easy for the knobs to get a grip on bare wire, plus you can also use banana plugs. In a really welcome move, the knobs are completely removable, so you can use ultra-secure insulated eye terminal terminations on your speaker cables if you like.
As you might have guessed from the size of the Michi P5’s chassis, the rated power output into 4Ω (800-watts) and the relatively limited amount of heatsinking – along with the fact that the heatsinks are covered by a protective layer of aluminium – the output devices are fan-cooled, for which purpose there are two large (90mm diameter) holes in either side of the rear panel.
These holes are the exits for air-cooling ducts at the other end of which are located ultra-quiet, low-speed fans that switch on when the output transistors reach a temperature of 39°C. These fans are so quiet that when they’re operating you’ll only be able to hear them by putting your ear up to the duct exit, and even then you’ll hear only a very soft sound; one that sounds uncannily as if someone is exhaling softly through their fully opened mouth.
As for those output transistors, there’s quite a few of them to be cooled – 32 of them, in fact. The power delivered to them issues from a pair of 2.2kVA transformers made in-house by Rotel itself. This is not surprising, because Rotel has been making its own mains power transformers for many years. What is rather surprising is that the four 47,000µF capacitors linked (two each via regulators) to each of these transformers are made in the UK.
I say “surprising” because Rotel is also famous for making its own capacitors, but its website informed me that it “always sources the best capacitor for each specific application”, which means that in the case of its Michi components, it uses slit-foil and T-Network electrolytic capacitors from the UK; Rubycon electrolytic capacitors from Japan; and LCR polystyrene capacitors from Wales. The integrated circuits come from Analog Devices, Texas Instruments and Burr-Brown, companies that are all domiciled in the USA.
Can I warn you in advance not to attempt to lift – or even manoeuvre – a Michi S5 on your own? Its dimensions (485x238x465mm) would make it an awkward lift at the best of times, but no matter what its dimensions, its dead weight of 60kg would make it impossible… unless you’re an Olympic weightlifter.
Performance
Rather unusually these days, Michi includes interconnects with its components. I say “unusually” because most manufacturers try to cull favour with their retailers by not including interconnects, so those retailers can make additional profit by adding interconnects to the sale.
While I have to admire Michi for doing this, the quality of the interconnects it supplies would have me asking my friendly retailer what other interconnects he might have available. The quality is, however, a moot point, because Michi provides only unbalanced interconnects, and given the choice between using balanced or unbalanced connectors to link a pre-amplifier with a power amplifier, I’d choose balanced connectors every time, so that means I’d have to spring for balanced interconnects anyway.
Each component comes with its own remote control, but the two are identical, so you can keep one for a spare. The remotes are of extremely high quality and very attractive. If only Michi had seen fit to supply high-quality name-brand alkaline (or even lithium) batteries to install in them rather than the ones it does provide. I didn’t chance it, and used my own Eveready batteries instead. Why Eveready? Because the company guarantees that its batteries will not leak, and a remote control can be ruined by a leaking battery as, to my chagrin, I once discovered.
Both units not only have identical remote controls, those controls also use identical infra-red remote codes. This has the advantage that the same remote signal turns both units on and off, and adjusts display brightness, for example. But in this case it also introduces a curious quirk so that when you’re using the remote to tell the P5 to do something, the same remote signal will tell the S5 to do something completely different… which may be, for example, to switch the display from spectrum analysis to VU.
Since any changes implemented on the P5 by this behaviour are completely benign (i.e. they have absolutely no affect on the amplifier’s sound quality or its performance or, in fact, anything that could affect the music playing at the time) I didn’t worry about it and just regarded it as a quirk. However, if you’re particularly bothered by it, you could just obscure the P5’s IR receiver so it couldn’t receive the signal.
Set-up is quite intuitive, so you are unlikely to have reason to have recourse to either of the two Owners’ Manuals, but if you do you’ll be pleased to find that they’re well-written, well-illustrated and highly informative. During set-up please resist the temptation to place the P5 on top of the S5, despite the obvious physical and visual temptations to do so. Both devices will return better performance if they’re placed side by side, or one above the other on separate racks of a proper hi-fi component shelving system.
My review units were obviously relatively new, so I made sure to burn them in continuously for several days using pink noise at relatively high volume to do so, avoiding any sonic annoyances by wiring one of the two speakers out of phase then facing it directly in front of the other loudspeaker so almost everything cancelled out. (If you haven’t ever tried this, it’s not only a great burn-in aid, but also a great party trick!)
After the long wait I was pretty eager by the time the listening sessions were scheduled and I’m here to tell you it was well worth the wait. The sound was absolutely enthralling, totally realistic and completely captivating.
I knew I was in for a treat because there was no need to acclimatise myself to anything or work my way into the listening session. Right from the outset it was all just wide smiles and toes a-tapping and allowing tracks to play right through, rather than switching to other tracks to evaluate different areas of performance.
The result of all this was that I spent rather more time listening to the Michis than I really should have given the time constraints involved in preparing a review for this issue, but there were no complaints from me. If the Michis had been performers, I would would certainly have been on my feet calling for an encore.
This same high level of performance proved true for whatever input I used, because the Michi P5’s digital and phono stages are truly excellent. If you’re a true vinylista you’ll want to use an external phono stage that enables greater precision with cartridge matching than the P5’s ‘one input fits all’ phono stage, but if you play vinyl only irregularly, I think you’ll be more than happy with the sound of the phono stage… I certainly was. I couldn’t fault the digital inputs either, whether I used SPDIF or USB. They’re so good that there would be absolutely no need to invest in an external DAC unless you’re one of those audiophiles that actually likes fiddling with different filter settings and oversampling rates. So full marks to Michi here as well.
What did I find so enthralling about the sound? Everything really. But overall, I’d have to say that what’s most impressive is the totality of the very real and tangible feeling that a musical event is taking place right there in your own room. The sonic presentation is so lively and so true-to-life it will take your breath away.
And if you’re into trying to achieve true-to-life listening levels, then the Michi S5 is amongst those very few amplifiers that will be able to realise this for you effortlessly, without stress, without distortion, without impacting on your mains power bill… and without its chassis becoming so hot you need to ruin the ambience by turning on the air-conditioning.
That said, the Michi S5’s chassis can become warm if you work it very, very hard, so do give it some room to breathe, but that said, I found that it runs far cooler than most amps of its ilk.
‘Massive’ would be the best descriptor for the bass I heard from this Michi combo, but it was at the same time delicate and tuneful. I can think of no better demonstration of these twin virtues than to suggest that you listen to the tympani in the second movement of Beethoven’s Ninth, the famous Choral Symphony.
Yes, their sound is impactful, impressive and thunderous, but many high-end amplifiers can do this. What most can’t do is reveal that there’s only two being played, or that they’re tuned an octave apart. But using this Michi duo, I could hear this instantly… and that’s a metric I’d call not just revealing, but a revelation.
But if the Michi’s ability to reveal minutiae in the bass regions is impressive, its ability is equally impressive across the midrange… if not more so. And if you want to check the midrange ability of any component, one of the best albums to use is the one that debuted Chick Corea on electric keyboard but also has two of my favourites, Joe Farrell and Flora Plurim. Despite being recorded in 1972 (or perhaps because of it), the recording is stunningly good, whether it’s Plurim’s rich scat singing or the clarity with which Corea’s staggeringly lyrical electric piano playing is revealed, and the Michis revealed everything with crystal clarity.
On this album, you can really hear how an amplifier’s ability to deliver air in the midrange aids one’s ability to hear multiple instruments clearly, no matter how closely they compete for space. Whereas I think that many of the once-revered jazz fusion albums now sound dated, ‘Return to Forever’ sounds as though it could have been recorded yesterday.
The Michis’ high-frequency performance didn’t disappoint either. I’m generally a great fan of Ludovico Einaudi (though perhaps not of his more minimalist stuff) and his album ‘Elements’ from 2015 is one of my favourites for testing the extreme highs, and most particularly the second track, Night. Just listen to that ethereal opening synth as it loops and then the way Einaudi layers all the other sounds over it. The stabbing piano notes are interjected at the perfect moments. It’s a great example of why timing is everything, and why component-chain timing is crucial for an authentic high-fidelity listening experience.
Great stereo separation and magnificent stereo imaging are crucial to tricking the ear and the brain into imagining the reproduced sound is ‘live’, and the Michis demonstrated both to perfection when replaying Canadian chanteuse Holly Cole’s Train Song, from her 1995 Tom Waits tribute album ‘Temptation’. Although it’s also a great tester of bass, I prefer to use the myriad sounds of Cyro Baptista’s tinkly percussion to evaluate high-frequency reproduction, stereo imaging and, for amplifiers, channel separation. And what I heard from the Michis was as good as I’ve ever heard from any pre/power combo. Bravo!
(Image credit: Rotel)
Final verdict
You need to see the Michi P5 and M5 in the flesh to see how superbly they’re built. Words can’t really begin to describe that. But you also need to hear for yourself how music that’s played through them sounds, because words can’t even begin to describe that… though if you started off by saying “totally and completely natural”, you’d be off to a very good start.
This Michi P5/S5 combo gets it right. Really nails it, in fact. If you want good looks, insanely high power output, low noise, superb performance and, most importantly, great sound, you’ve arrived at your destination.
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Laboratory test report
Before going into detail about the results of Newport Test Labs’ test results, it’s extremely important to note that for the purposes of this test, Australian Hi-Fi specified that all tests had to be conducted with both the Michi S5 and Michi P5 in the ‘test loop’. Therefore there are very few results that can be compared with Michi’s own specifications, which are gained by testing the components individually, or indeed against the results from any other audio test laboratory that has not tested the two amplifiers as a ‘combo’.
It means that, in effect, we’re reporting ‘worst case’ results because for results such as distortion, the inherent distortion of the Michi S5 are here added to that of the Michi P5, which obviously does not occur if the components are tested individually.
One of the few outcomes that would not change is power output, of course, and Newport Test Labs measured the power output of the Michi S5 at 612-watts per channel (27.8dBw), both channels driven into 8Ω, when it was delivering a 1kHz test signal. It was also able to deliver this exact same power when delivering a 20Hz test signal.
However, when Newport Test Labs used a 20kHz signal to test power output, the Michi P5’s protection circuitry kicked in when the output voltage reached 45 volts RMS, which is around 253-watts (24.0dBW) into 8Ω, and around 506-watts (27.0dBW) into 4Ω. The fact that the protection circuit kicked in was not a surprise in itself, because 20kHz is a very high frequency to use for testing power output, and the power spectrum of music is such the Michi P5’s rated output power (500-watts into 8Ω) would never be required at this frequency.
But because the protection kicked in a little earlier than we expected, we checked with Michi, which told us: “The S5 has been engineered and tested for continuous power output of 20Hz–20kHz but as you noticed we have protection circuitry to monitor what is considered abnormal operating conditions including short circuit, d.c. voltage on the outputs and over-current. As normal operations would not typically have a signal of this type (frequency/power) we do shut down the unit into protection at high power outputs at high frequency. We found it best practice to monitor and use an abundance of caution with the power output generated by the S5.”
When Newport Test Labs tested the power output of the Michi S5 into 4Ω loads, the same protection circuitry kicked in with 20kHz test signals, but the Michi S5 easily delivered 1052-watts (30.2dBW) per channel with 1kHz test signals, both channels driven into 4Ω and 1,024-watts (30.1dBW) per channel with 20Hz test signals (both channels driven into 4Ω). These independent laboratory test results at 1kHz and 20Hz show power output levels that are well above Michi’s power output specification for both loads.
It should also be noted that if Newport Test Labs had tested dynamic (short-term) power output, the Michi S5 would have delivered its rated power output, because the test signal used for this purpose is so short-term that it would not have triggered the protection circuitry, but the Australian amplifier power measurement standard specifies that the power output of high fidelity audio amplifiers must be measured (and stated) on a continuous, rather than a dynamic basis.
Frequency response is one test that would certainly be impacted by measuring both the P5 and S5 as a combo, yet as you can see from the tabulated results, the Michi combo delivered superlative performance, with Newport Test Labs measuring a response of 5Hz to 480kHz –3dB. The Michi combo’s frequency response across the audio band, which is shown in Graph 7, was measured as 20Hz to 20kHz ±0.18dB, which is self-evidently an excellent result.
The frequency response measured when the Michi S5 was driving a test load that simulates the load that would be presented to it by a typical hi-fi loudspeaker system is shown by the black trace on Graph 7, below.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
You can see that it tracks the response gained with a non-inductive load almost perfectly, which shows that the Michi S5 will sound the same no matter what speakers you connect to it, and will also be able to perfectly control the back-emf from speakers that have large bass drivers. Although the Michi S5’s damping factor was more than will be required by any speaker system, it’s not overly high, with Newport Test Labs reporting it as DF61, on the back of an output impedance (at 1kHz) of 0.13Ω.
Channel separation was outstanding at low and midrange frequencies, as shown in the tabulated results, with the Michi combination returning test results of 105dB at 20Hz and 98dB at 1kHz. The 72dB result at 20kHz is excellent, and more than will ever be required in order to deliver perfect stereo imaging and separation, but a little short of what I might have expected.
However, this could easily have been influenced by where the amplifiers were placed on the test bench relative to each other, as well as by the interconnects connecting the two, so even-better results might be achieved under different conditions. The same could be said for the inter-channel phase results, even though these, too, are really excellent results.
Channel balance was amazingly good. Taken merely on its value of 0.019dB, no-one would ever have guessed this would be the result of testing a pre/power combination; It’s more like you’d get by testing a state-of-the-art stereo power amplifier on its own. This is a superb achievement by the engineers responsible for designing the Michis.
Newport Test Labs measured the A-weighted signal-to-noise ratio of the Michi P5/S5 combination as 76dB referenced to an output of 1-watt, and 103dB referenced to rated output. The 103dB result is excellent, but further suggests that the result at 1-watt, although good, could be further improved by careful component placement and interconnect routing.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
Graph 1 shows the total harmonic distortion measured by Newport Test Labs when the Michi combo was delivering 1-watt into an 8Ω load. You can see there’s a second harmonic component at –95dB (0.00177%) and a fourth harmonic at –110dB (0.00031%) and that’s it: otherwise the noise floor above the fundamental is perfectly clean, and also sitting right down at –115dB (referred to one-watt). This is an excellent result, as both harmonics are harmonically related to the fundamental, which will ensure good sound.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
Graph 2 shows the total harmonic distortion measured by Newport Test Labs when the Michi combo was delivering 1-watt into a 4Ω load. You can see the second harmonic component has increased slightly, to –88dB (0.00398%), and the fourth to –112dB (0.00025%) plus a third harmonic has appeared at –108dB (0.00039%) and a fifth at –113dB (0.00022%). Once again, this is excellent performance.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
Graph 3 shows the total harmonic distortion measured by Newport Test Labs when the Michi combo was delivering 20-watts into an 8Ω load. As you’d have expected given the increase in power output, additional distortion components have been introduced, but the essential structure of the lower-order components is maintained, with the second harmonic component at –93dB (0.00223%), the third at –110dB (0.00031%), the fourth at –112dB (0.00025%) and the fifth at –115dB (0.00017%).
The difference in the visual appearance of the graph is due to the noise floor of the amplifier having dropped down to around –130dB, which speaks for itself.
You can see that the noise that contributed to the overall result mentioned previously and tabulated in the results is low-frequency in nature, as evidenced by the spikes at the extreme left of the graph.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
Graph 4 shows the total harmonic distortion measured by Newport Test Labs when the Michi combo was delivering 20-watts into a 4Ω load.
Essentially the distortion components are the same as when driving an 8Ω load, but interestingly, there’s a slight increase in the noise floor. This, together with the one-watt results, would seem to suggest you should prefer 6Ω or 8Ω designs when choosing loudspeakers to partner with the Michis.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
CCIF-IMD distortion (19kHz and 20kHz test signals at equal levels) into an 8Ω load is shown in Graph 5. As you can see, there’s nothing to be seen at all. Sensational performance! Not only are there not any of the side-bands around the high-frequency test signals I normally expect to see, there’s also no sign at all of a regenerated difference signal down at 1kHz.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
When Newport Test Labs used the same CCIF-IMD test signal, but increased the power output to 20-watts (Graph 6, above), both the side bands and the regenerated signal were introduced into the output, but at very low levels: around –90dB (0.00316%) for the two primary side bands at 18kHz and 21kHz, and at around –105dB (0.00056%) for the regenerated signal. Once again, these are all outstandingly good results.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
The tone control action of the Michi P5 is shown in Graph 8. You can see the bass control delivers around 11dB of boost that is nicely shelved at 20Hz, then rolls off below this, which is excellent design. It delivers rather more cut: around 17dB. This same graph also shows the action of the treble control, and you can see it offers 9dB of boost that shelves nicely at 20kHz. Again, this is excellent design.
As with the bass control, the treble control offers rather less high-frequency attenuation, but still a more-than-adequate 13dB at 20kHz. If you attenuate both bass and treble you will also reduce the overall volume slightly across the midrange, but this is of no import, as it could be easily corrected by increasing the volume slightly.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
The Michi combo’s distortion at the S5’s rated power output (500-watts per channel into 8Ω) is shown in Graph 9. Once again, Michi’s engineers have excelled themselves, with distortion completely under control, such that the second-order component is at 93dB (0.00223%), all the even-order components are more than 100dB (0.001% down, and all the odd-order components are more than 120dB down (0.0001%).
All these distortion components are too low in level to be audible, but even if they were, even-order distortion is pleasing to the ear, so it wouldn’t be an issue. Note on this graph that the noise floor right across the audio spectrum is now down at –140dB, and even the low-frequency noise at the left of the graph, which is higher in level, is still more than 110dB down. Once again, excellent performance.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
Square wave testing using a 100Hz square wave revealed what the frequency response already showed, with the tilt on the waveform indicating the Michi combo’s frequency response rolls off at low frequencies and does not extend to d.c. The slight curvature in the tilt also shows a tiny amount of group delay.
The overshoot on the leading edge shows that there is a rise in the Michi’s frequency response at an ultrasonic frequency. Further investigation into this by Newport Test Labs revealed that the rise was 3dB, and that the frequency of the peak was at 302kHz. This is interesting, and obviously measurable, but will have zero affect on the amplifier’s sound quality.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
The 1kHz square wave shows the same h.f. overshoot, and some slight tilt on the horizontals, so it’s not a perfect result, but it’s so close to perfect as really doesn’t matter.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
The 10kHz square wave’s horizontals are on the other hand, perfectly flat, and the rise-time is super-quick, so if it were not for the overshoot caused by the high-frequency rise to 302kHz, it would be a perfect result.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
Newport Test Labs determines amplifier stability by placing a 2µF capacitor in parallel with an 8Ω load and driving the amplifier into this load using a 1kHz square wave as the test signal. As you can see from the oscillogram, the Michi was beautifully behaved, with just a quarter wave height overshoot that was completely damped within three cycles, so I can say that the S5 will be completely stable into even the most highly reactive loudspeakers.
When both units are in standby mode, they will still draw 2.41-watts from your mains power supply, which is rather higher than the Australian Government’s mandate for standby power consumption, but low enough that it would have almost zero effect on your utility bill.
When you’re using this Michi combo to listen to very loud music, the two will pull somewhere around 200-watts from your power supply, which is surprisingly modest considering the S5’s power rating. Combined power factor was measured at +0.627.
Overall, Newport Test Labs measured outstandingly good performance from this high-powered, low-distortion pre/power combination.
Vivaldi is releasing version 3.6 of the Vivaldi browser with a great and terrible power today: you can now create two-level tab stacks, so that grouped tabs can become pseudo-workspaces for whatever you get up to in your browser. Vivaldi first introduced the feature as an experiment in December 2020, but now you can officially indulge in two levels of too many tabs.
Creating two-level stacked tabs is as easy as holding down the Command or Windows key, selecting whatever tabs you want to be in the stack, and then right-clicking and selecting “New Tab stack” from the drop down menu. You can also achieve the same effect by dragging and holding one tab over another. Clicking on the newly formed tab stack (signified with a white outline) reveals the second row of tabs nestled inside. Tab stacks can be renamed and closed all at once from the right-click drop down menu as well.
Vivaldi’s two versions of stacked tabs.Image: Vivaldi
With the two-level tab stack, each grouping can function as a visually distinct workspace for however many browser-based projects you might have going at once. It could be a way to silo distracting tabs in your window while keeping your tabs neat and preventing you from losing a page when you really need it. Or, could just be another way to hoard even more tabs.
Vivaldi also lets you put tabs on the sides and the bottom of the browser window, and the new two-level tab feature works in those orientations, too.
Vivaldi’s Chromium-based browser has been angled towards power users since its inception. It’s highly customizable, full of features, and seemingly pretty great when it comes to privacy. The browser even launched with tab grouping in 2016, something Google Chrome didn’t start rolling out until 2020. And if you like tree-style tabs, which can “branch” off of and nest inside other tabs, Vivaldi has those, too.
For more information on all of Vivaldi’s tab-focused features you can head here. If you’d like to try Vivaldi for yourself, you can download the browser from Vivaldi’s site.
(Pocket-lint) – With more and more laptops and devices being equipped with flash memory, that often means it becomes too expensive to get a good amount of storage built-in.
And, with so many more of us travelling around for work, working from home or needing to use more than one machine, it’s more important than ever to have an external drive of sorts.
Thankfully, there’s a lot of them around. And most of the portable options are small enough to go in a pocket.
There’s both SSD (solid state) and HDD (more traditional style hard-drive), with the former being a bit more expensive, but also faster, smaller and more portable. They’re also more likely to last you a long time because there are no moving parts. For editing movies and photos on an external drive, nothing really gets the job done like an SSD.
SSD vs HDD: What’s the difference between flash storage and traditional hard drives?
SSDs – Small and speedy
We’ve tested each of the following, using each of them to edit 4K video footage in Final Cut Pro, keeping the original files on the external drive, and each of them performed really well, with no real frame-drop issues, slow export or render times. So, regardless of which of the following you get, you’ll enjoy the speediness and efficiency.
Judging them based on portability, design, performance and value for money, here are our top picks.
How to improve your gaming performance with blazing-fast NVMe SSDs
Our top external drive recommendation
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Samsung T7 Touch
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The Samsung T7 Touch is the latest in ultra-fast portable drives from Samsung that joins our list and replaces our previous favourite – the T5. With the T7 Touch, Samsung has taken the brilliant foundations of the previous drive and improved upon them. Not only is the transfer speed of the T7 almost double that of the T5 (at up to 1,050 MB/s) but it’s also interesting in other ways too.
This is a drive that’s designed to blur the lines between professional and personal use with the inclusion of AES 256-bit hardware data encryption and a fingerprint sensor/password setup. It includes both USB type-C-to-C, USB type-C-to-A cables in the box and software for Mac, PC and Android phones too. Using that software you can set a secure password and scan your fingerprints to secure the drive so no one else can access it. Plugged in without scanning it simply won’t show any files on the drive.
You also have the option of registering as many as four different fingerprints, meaning you can scan your preferred fingers or give access to family or team members with ease.
All this is rounded off in a durable, aesthetically pleasing aluminium housing with a nifty “Motion LED” light around the fingerprint reader. The T7 Touch is a brilliant balance of speed, portability and security that we love and are sure you will too.
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WD_Black P10
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The WD_Black P10 is one of several variants of external SSDs Western Digitial has designed specifically for gamers. This drive comes with a robust, snazzy-looking housing that includes an aluminium top for passive cooling goodness. It’s available in several size formats and offers extra space for your games.
An external drive like this is a brilliantly simple way to upgrade your storage space for more games without messing about with internals. We’ve written before on how to upgrade your PS4 and Xbox One using this sort of drive and the WD_Black range is an awesome option. The bonus of the P10 is it’s plug and play. We used it on PC, installing a multitude of Steam games, then booting them straight from the drive with reasonable speed. The P10 isn’t the fastest of the line-up (that honour goes to the P50) but it is a brilliant balance of speed, size and value for money.
If you want something faster, the P50 is a niftier option with a rear/write speed of 1980MB/s and USB SuperSpeed 20Gbps too. While if you need insane amounts of space there’s the D10 which offers up to 12 TBs of storage space and can hold as many as 200 games.
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Seagate FireCuda gaming SSD
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Gamers love RGB and speed. At least that’s what Seagate seems to be saying with this external FireCuda Gaming SSD. A drive in a solid, robust casing that’s rubber backed and sports a customisable RGB lighting strip.
This is a compact drive you could easily slip in your pocket, but it’s also a great looking bit of kit with up to 2TB storage space and as much as 2,000MB/s max speed with USB 3.2 gen 2×2 tech.
Fast, fabulous and a fantastic addition to your gaming setup.
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ADATA SE800 External Solid State Drive
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The ADATA SE800 is a compact, lightweight, blazingly fast portable SSD. This is an external drive that comes in a uber-snazzy looking protective shell that looks like it’s made of brushed aluminium. That shell is also IP-68 rated, meaning that (as long as it is properly sealed) it’s waterproof, dustproof and shockproof too. So your data is safe if you happen to take a soaking while carrying it or accidentally drop it into a small body water – the bath, a puddle, a river, the toilet. We’re not here to judge.
This drive isn’t just about looks and waterproofing though, it’s also a powerhouse. Thanks to USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C connectivity, it’s able to transfer data at speeds of up to 1,0000MB/s making it one of the fastest drives on this list. It comes bundled with both a USB 3.2 Type-C to C cable and USB 3.2 Type-C to A cable meaning it will also connect to basically anything you own with ease too.
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Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD
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Testing the transfer speeds from our MacBook Pro desktop to the Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD, we got virtually identical results to the Samsung. The same 9.3GB collection of files was transferred in 20.66 seconds, and the discrepancy easily ignorable, and probably explained by the pace of human reaction, rather than the speed of the transfer itself.
So performance is essentially as good, but there’s one real reason you might want this over the Samsung: design. Not only is the Sandisk (somehow) considerably smaller and lighter than the T5, but it’s also got some water and dust resistance.
You can’t submerge it, but it’ll survive the odd accidental splash. As a bonus, it also has a handy little cutout in the corner to feed a carabiner through so you can attach it to your keys if you want to.
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Gtech G-Drive Mobile SSD
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The G-Drive Mobile SSD is taller and thicker than either the Samsung T5 or Sandisk Extreme SSDs, but what it lacks (slightly) in portability, it more than makes up for in durability. Its external surfaces are covered in a shock-absorbing plastic/rubber material, ensuring that it can survive falls up to three metres. What’s more, it has IP67 rated water and dust resistance, which means it can survive in up to one metre of water for up to 30 minutes. As a bonus, you also get a limited five-year warranty as standard.
You don’t really lose out on performance either, with Gtech claiming up to 560MB/s transfer speeds. Testing using the same selection of files, the G-Drive Mobile SSD took 24.4 seconds to transfer. We tested it a few times just to be sure, and it was consistently around four to five seconds slower than the previous two drives, despite claiming faster top speeds. Still, it’s hardly slow, just not quite as fast as the T5 or Sandisk Extreme.
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Samsung X5 Thunderbolt drive
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If you want a stupendously fast external drive, look no further. The Samsung X5 is it, featuring sequential read speeds up to 2,800MB/s and sequential write speeds up to 2,300MB/s. Using the same 9.3GB collection of seven video files, we tested the transfer speeds and were blown away. Those same files that take 20-25 seconds on the previously mentioned drives took less than 6.5 seconds on the Samsung X5.
You may be wondering, why with those speeds is it not our top recommendation? Two simple reasons: it is pretty expensive, and it only achieves those speeds if you use a Thunderbolt 3 port on your Mac/Laptop. If you can afford it, and you have TB3 ports on your computer, it’s well worth it. It’s so ridiculously fast.
Taking a different approach to the T5, Samsung clad the X5 in plastic, but in the form that looks more like the outer shell of a sports car than an external drive. What’s more, inside it has a protection guard built from magnesium and a heat sink to ensure the NVMe SSD inside is kept at a temperature below 45 degrees C.
All of this innovation and design comes at a cost, both literally in terms of cash outlay and in portability. It’s not exactly huge, but it’s three times heavier than the Samsung T5, and considerably taller, wider and thicker. Still, it’s not difficult to carry around and comfortably fits in a pocket.
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LaCie Rugged SSD
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As SSD standards go, the LaCie is big and bulky but – as the name suggests – it’s very durable. It can survive drops up to 2 metres, and conforms to Military Standard 810-F. It’s recognisable instantly too, thanks to its bright orange chunky, texturised silicone outer casing that absorbs all the shocks and bumps you can throw its way.
Don’t confuse its chunky, hefty looks for slow pace though. It’s just as speedy as most of the others on this list, thanks to that SSD storage. Using our same selection of video files, it transferred them in around 20.2 seconds, bringing it up to speed with the Samsung T5 and SanDisk options.
As a bonus, for those who still have computers rocking the old style Thunderbolt port, it has one of those connectors built into the unit, wrapped around safely in the rubber sleeve.
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Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim
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As external HDDs go, the Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim has a lot going for it. It’s attractive, covered in a dimpled sheet of aluminium and – as the name suggests – it’s really slim.
It’s compatible with both Windows and mac OS, and is very affordable compared to the SSDs in the list above. While the speeds aren’t quite fast enough for live editing of RAW photos or 4K video, the transfer speeds are reasonable. We got those same video files as we’ve been using previously, dragged them across, and they’d written to the drive in around 1min 18 seconds.
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Toshiba Canvio Basics Portable HD
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If you’re looking for really great value for money, the Toshiba Canvio Basics is one way to go. It’s compatible with USB 3.0, so it’s not a snail, and it’s compatible with Xbox and PS4, although it is formatted to NTFS for Windows machines, rather than the system Mac uses. It can be reformatted to work with Mac, however, or you can download plugins to make your Mac read NTFS-formatted drives.
In our file transfer test, it was slightly faster than the Seagate Backup Plus, but not by much. The 9.3GB collection of videos transferred across in around 1min 12 seconds.
Writing by Cam Bunton. Editing by Max Freeman-Mills.
Users caught between Apple and Microsoft may now have an easier time managing passwords: it looks like iCloud Keychain is coming to Windows 10 as a Chrome extension (via MacRumors). It’s already in the iCloud for Windows 10 app, but there’s just one small problem: the Chrome Extension isn’t available yet.
The latest version of iCloud for Windows 10 includes “Support for iCloud Passwords Chrome Extension” in the list of new features, and when you open the app, there’s a new Passwords-syncing option. Checking the box will cause a login prompt to come up, along with a request for two-factor authentication. According to Apple’s support page, you’ll need to have two-factor turned on for your account to have access to the feature, which is probably a good choice since, in theory, you’re going to be syncing all of your passwords.
I say “in theory” because after you log in again, you’re prompted to download the iCloud Passwords extension for Chrome. However, the download button just takes you to a 404 page, and searching the Chrome Web Store for the extension doesn’t turn up anything. It seems like Apple may have launched the iCloud for Windows update a little prematurely.
This is not the extension I was promised.
Hopefully the Chrome extension will be available soon, as having access to iCloud Keychain on Windows would make life a lot easier for people who use it on their iPhones, iPads, or Macs. However, if you simply can’t wait, you could always switch to a dedicated password manager. Of course, moving all of your passwords would be a pain if you’re already using iCloud Keychain, so you may be better off just waiting a little bit longer.
Schell Games is making a sequel to its massively successful virtual reality game I Expect You to Die, and it’s expected to come out later this year.
Along with the announcement, the studio mentioned the original game earned $6 million in revenue across all VR platforms, which could explain how it can afford to make a sequel. It isn’t yet clear which VR platforms the next game will come to, but it will at least arrive on Steam, which indicates support for Vive, Index, and Windows Mixed Reality headsets.
The original was more or less a spy-themed escape room in VR, and the second one looks like it’ll be more of the same, which isn’t necessarily unwelcome in a world where real-life escape rooms aren’t really accessible during a pandemic.
So far, most of the early era VR games people would recognize haven’t gotten follow-ups, and that’s doubly true for ones made by indie studios. While Lone Echo has a sequel in the works, the studio behind it was bought by Facebook and is now a part of Oculus Studios. Similarly, Job Simulator’s sequel (Vacation Simulator, of course), was made after the studio behind it was purchased by Google.
Superhot was super fun when it came to VR, but its sequel doesn’t yet support VR play. I could go on, making a list of VR games that haven’t gotten sequels like Arizona Sunshine, Boneworks, and Beat Saber (not that it needs one), but you get the picture.
Hopefully, this sequel announcement speaks to the fact that VR is coming out of a slump. It had a pretty successful 2020, with the release of Half-Life: Alyx and the Oculus Quest 2, but one year of success doesn’t necessarily indicate a trend. As with all things, content is king, and VR will need to keep having killer releases to gain market share. Obviously, it’s not all on I Expect You to Die 2’s shoulders, but if it can replicate the success of the original, it could indicate that the VR market is getting back on its feet.
HBO Max has nearly 40 million US subscribers, AT&T disclosed in its first quarter earnings report on Wednesday. Combined with traditional HBO subscribers, the platform has surpassed a 41 million subscriber milestone the company says it didn’t expect to hit for two more years. Globally, AT&T says HBO now has more than 60 million subscribers.
There are a few caveats worth mentioning. For one, AT&T has different metrics for different levels of its subscriber base. Total subscribers includes not only people who pay for a standalone subscription, but also those with access to HBO Max either through an existing HBO subscription through a cable company or through a promotion via AT&T’s cell carrier business, regardless of whether they’ve even downloaded the app. That total subscriber number for the US market is the more than 41 million figure AT&T is touting today.
But of the 37.7 million HBO Max domestic subscribers out there (the remaining few million being pay TV subscribers), about 17.2 million subscribers are considered “activated,” AT&T’s term for someone who has downloaded the app and either signed up independently or upgraded an existing subscription (or claimed a free one via promotion). Still, it’s a strong number compared with the end of September, when HBO Max boasted 28.7 million subscribers, of which only 8.6 million had been activated.
For context, Disney Plus hit more than 86 million subscribers in a little over a year, though it costs less per month than a standalone HBO Max subscription and released without a bogged-down rebrand of an existing, cable-driven service.
In unsurprising fashion, AT&T is crediting the growth to its controversial decision to release the films of its subsidiary, Warner Bros., on HBO Max on the same day they release in theaters. “The release of Wonder Woman 1984 helped drive our domestic HBO Max and HBO subscribers to more than 41 million, a full two years faster than our initial forecast,” said AT&T CEO John Stankey in a statement.
The Wonder Woman sequel is just the first of many planned film releases on HBO Max that were once scheduled for exclusive theatrical windows — until the coronavirus pandemic upended Hollywood. High-profile film directors, including of Warner Bros. releases like the upcoming Dune adaptation and Tenet, have voiced their extreme disapproval of the decision.
But AT&T, which owns parent company WarnerMedia that oversees both HBO and Warner Bros., claims this strategy is paying off, for now. There’s no telling yet how the huge investment in streaming will affect Warner Bros.’ relationship with directors like Denis Villeneuve and Christopher Nolan going forward, and whether the HBO Max subscriber growth AT&T is attributing to Wonder Woman 1984 will continue onward through the rest of this year’s release slate.
Microsoft posted the second quarter of its 2021 financial results today, reporting revenue of $43.1 billion and a net income of $15.5 billion. Revenue is up 17 percent, and net income has increased by 33 percent. We saw some impressive growth for Surface, Xbox, and cloud-related services in Microsoft’s previous quarter, and it’s very much the same this time around.
The PC market just had its first big growth in 10 years, with around 300 million shipments of devices during 2020. The pandemic has impacted the way a lot of people work or learn, and many have turned to laptops to continue remotely.
Windows OEM non-pro revenue has grown by 24 percent for Microsoft, reflecting the demand from consumers. Windows OEM revenue overall, including pro licenses, grew 1 percent in total, likely because of the strong prior Windows 7 upgrade schedule for businesses.
Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox consoles.Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
This is the first quarter of sales of Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Series S consoles. While both debuted toward the end of the quarter (November 10th), Microsoft says hardware revenue has grown 86 percent, thanks to the next-gen consoles.
Xbox content and services revenue has also increased by 40 percent compared to the same quarter last year. Gaming has been incredibly popular throughout 2020, and many have clearly turned to Xbox Game Pass and services like xCloud during the pandemic. That’s pushed Microsoft’s overall gaming revenue up 51 percent.
Over on the Surface side, Microsoft’s updated Surface Pro X and Surface Laptop Go also debuted during this quarter. Surface revenue is up 3 percent, but it’s crucially now a $2 billion business for the first time ever. That’s significant for the long-term health of the Surface business, and it comes during an increased demand for laptops and PCs.
Microsoft also just announced an updated Surface Pro 7 Plus device, available only for businesses and schools. The new model includes a bigger battery, Intel’s 11th Gen processors, a removable SSD, and LTE.
Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 3 lineup.Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Microsoft 365 Consumer subscribers have also increased to 47.5 million, a 28 percent bump. Microsoft has been focusing on Teams and Microsoft 365 services for consumers, launching a renewed effort to attract more subscribers last year.
Cloud services continue to be a big boost to Microsoft’s revenues, thanks to the general pandemic shift in work and learning behavior. Both Office commercial and consumer are up, with Office 365 Commercial revenue growth up by 21 percent. Server products and cloud services revenue has also increased 26 percent as more businesses rely on cloud services. Azure revenue itself grew 50 percent.
“What we have witnessed over the past year is the dawn of a second wave of digital transformation sweeping every company and every industry,” says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “Building their own digital capability is the new currency driving every organization’s resilience and growth.”
Microsoft is planning to hold an investor call at 5:30PM ET, and we’ll update this article with any relevant information.
Plex, well known as a service for streaming movies, music, and TV shows from your own computer, is now adding another thing you can stream: video games (via Protocol). Plex announced the new service, called Plex Arcade, on its blog and also launched a website for it. The service will cost $3 a month if you’re a Plex Pass subscriber, and $5 a month if you’re not.
Instead of focusing on modern console or phone games like its competitors, Plex lets you play Atari games. It’s taking the arcade name seriously, as you can play arcade classics from Atari, like Centipede, Super Breakout, and Missile Command, as well as games from the Atari 2600 and 7800. Overall, there are 27 games available on the service.
Unlike other game subscription services where you can simply sign up from your console and start playing, Plex Arcade has a few requirements. First is a Plex media server running on a Windows or macOS computer. There isn’t Linux support because Plex is using Parsec to stream the gameplay.
This means that you’ll have to sign up for a Parsec account, if you don’t already have one, and log in to it on Plex. There is a bit more freedom when it comes to what you can stream the games to, as Android devices and TVs are supported, as well as Google Chrome and Apple’s iOS and tvOS. Plex says you can play with “just about any Bluetooth-enabled controller.”
The service also supports you adding your own emulators and ROMs, which is nice, but it’s overall a bit of a tough sell. Even at the Plex Pass price of $3 a month, you’re paying a lot for games that, at this point, can basically run on a microwave. To be fair, it does let you run them on something like an iPhone or Apple TV, but the games are readily available on Android and PC.
If you’re interested in playing them for nostalgic purposes, it could be worth a try, but you may want to set aside some time for it — getting it set up was an exercise in frustration for me, and I wasn’t ever actually able to successfully play a game. (The iOS and tvOS clients got stuck at a loading spinner, and keyboard controls didn’t seem to do anything when trying to play on Chrome.)
If you want to try it out for yourself, there’s a free seven-day trial, though you will have to put in a credit card or link your PayPal. Plex says this is mostly a skunk works-type project, saying in the blog post that “[i]f there’s interest and we see some subs, it’ll grow into the glorious pheasant we know it can be. But if you guys drop the ball, it’ll die on the vine like a stomped ass goomba.” Harsh.
The Gigabyte Aorus 17G pushes out solid RTX-30 series performance while offering a mechanical keyboard.
For
300 Hz Screen
Physical Mechanical Keyboard
Against
Not much faster than prior-gen laptops
Slightly dim screen
Slightly low color gamut
Ampere has finally landed on laptops, with Gigabyte’s 2021 refresh of the Aorus 17G in particular representing our first chance to look at how RTX 3080 performs on mobile. This refresh also brings a 300Hz display to an Aorus laptop for the first time, plus sees the return of Aorus’ mobile physical mechanical keyboard. But the GPU still steals the show here, for two particular reasons. The first is to see if mobile Ampere is enough to propel this to our list of the best gaming laptops, and the second is that this represents yet another way to buy the notoriously rare RTX 30-series of GPUs.
Still, transitioning to mobile always comes with its tradeoffs, so the question remains- does the mobile RTX 3080 live up to the reputation set by its full-size cousins, or will PC owners still be left without many ways to get their hands on the best Ampere has to offer?
Specifications
CPU
Intel Core i7-10870H
Graphics
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GDDR6 8GB
Memory
32GB DDR4-2933MHz
Storage
1TB M.2 NVMe SSD
Display
17.3 inch, 1080p, 300Hz, IPS-level
Networking
802.11ax Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0
Ports
3x USB 3.2 Gen 1 (Type-A), 1x Thunderbolt 3, 1x UHS-II SD Card Reader, 1x RJ-45 Ethernet, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x Mini DP 1.4, 1x 3.5mm Headphone jack, 1x 3.5mm Microphone jack
Camera
720p
Battery
99Wh
Power Adapter
240W
Operating System
Windows 10 Home
Dimensions(WxDxH)
15.9 x 10.8 x 1.0 inches
Weight
5.95 pounds
Price (as configured)
$2,699
Design of Gigabyte Aorus 17G
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Like Gigabyte’s other Aorus laptops, the 2021 refresh of the Aorus 17G unabashedly wears its gamer branding on its sleeve, with an angled hinge, copious vents and a full physical mechanical keyboard. It does look a little cluttered upon opening the lid, mostly due to all the stickers advertising this laptop’s new features, like an RTX GPU and 300Hz screen. But removing those stickers reveals a slick look that speaks to its gaming nature while still not coming across as embarrassing.
Take the lid, which has a simple matte black finish that mostly resists fingerprints and is only accentuated by a single logo in the center. And the hinge, while angled, is also pleasingly rounded. The webcam placement is questionable- it’s under the screen- but that affects usefulness more than looks and at least allows for a thin bezel.
Despite looking reasonably restrained for gamer gear, the Aorus is still bulky enough to draw attention. When compared to other high-end gaming laptops, its 15.9 x 10.8 x 1 inch dimensions were only matched by the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17’s 15.7 x 11.53 x 1.02 inch dimensions. The Razer Blade Pro 17, meanwhile, is far more compact at 15.5 x 10.24 x 0.78 inches, while the similarly RTX-equipped, 15-inch Alienware m15 R4 is also smaller at 14.2 x 10.9 x 0.7 ~ 0.8 (depending on model) inches.
Despite its girth, though, the Aorus is slightly lighter than its competition at 5.95 pounds. While by no means lightweight, only the Alienware’s 5.25-pound weigh-in beat it. The Scar 17 and the Blade Pro 17, meanwhile, came in at 6.28 and 6.06 pounds, respectively.
The Aorus’ size also means it has plenty of room for ports. On its left side, you’ll find two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A ports, an SD card reader, an RJ-45 ethernet port and 2 separate 3.5mm audio jacks, one for headphones and one for microphones. That last feature in particular is a nice upgrade from, well, pretty much every other laptop I’ve reviewed. The laptop’s right side, meanwhile, has an additional USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A port, a single Thunderbolt 3 connection, plus connections for both Mini DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1. You’ll also find the DC In here, but there’s no lock slot anywhere on the Aorus.
Gaming Performance of Gigabyte Aorus 17G
What makes the Aorus 17G’s 2021 refresh special is that it’s the first laptop we’re looking at with a mobile RTX 3080 inside. Nvidia Control Center suggested the the laptop is utilizing Max-Q technologies. The Aorus 17G is also packing an Intel Core i7-10870H CPU and 32GB of RAM. So, how does the Aorus compare to both the m15 R4, which has the same CPU and 16GB of RAM, as well as powerful Turing laptops like the Scar 17 (i9-10980H, 2080 Super, 32GB RAM) and the Razer Blade Pro 17 (i7-10875H, 2080 Super Max-Q, 16GB RAM)?
In general? It sat towards the top of our results but didn’t make the RTX 2080 feel obsolete.
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In Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, the Aorus 17G hit an average 65 fps at 1080p on its highest settings, which was slightly behind the m15 R4’s 67 fps average but slightly above the 63 fps average of both the Scar 17 and the Blade Pro 17.
In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, both the Aorus 17G and the Scar 17 had average frame rates of 86 fps, while the m15 R4 was significantly lower at 77 fps and the Blade Pro 17 hit the bottom of the ranking at 75 fps.
Far Cry: New Dawn was fairly close across all contenders save the Blade Pro 17, with the Aorus 17G scoring 92 fps, the Scar 17, hitting 95 fps and the m15 R4 lagging imperceptibly behind at 91 fps. The slowest contender here was the Blade Pro 17, with 87 fps.
I also personally played Control for about a half hour on the Aorus using DirectX12 and High settings. With ray tracing off, I tended to fall between 79 – 84 fps, and with ray tracing on its high preset lowered that to 46 – 55 fps. The computer never felt hot to the touch during this time, nor did the fans get loud. The frame rate was also stable regardless of the amount of action on screen, though I did notice that it tended to load in at 94 – 105 fps before dropping a few minutes into play, I assume as more assets get loaded.
We also ran the Aorus through our typical Metro: Exodus stress test, where we ran the game’s 1080p RTX benchmark on a loop 15 times in a row. This is to simulate a half hour of intense gaming. The laptop scored an average frame rate of 59.6 fps, with a CPU clock speed of 3.47 GHz and a GPU clock speed of 1.19 GHz. The average CPU temperature during this time was 77.32 degrees Celsius (171.18 degrees Fahrenheit) while the average GPU temperature was 75.62 degrees Celsius (168.12 degrees Fahrenheit).
Productivity Performance of Gigabyte Aorus 17G
We’ve seen how the Aorus 17G handles games, but what about the productivity software that gaming laptops so frequently moonlight in? The Intel Core i7-10870H and 32GB of RAM provide a solid amount of power.
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In Geekbench 5.0, which is a synthetic general productivity benchmark, the Aorus 17G scored 7895 points on multi-core tests and 1,265 on single-core tests. That puts it above both the Razer Blade Pro 17’s 5776/1,179 points and the Alienware m15 R4’s 7642/1,252 points, but behind the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17’s 8708/1,290 points.
In Handbrake, where we track how long it takes laptops to transcode a 4K video down to FHD, the Aorus 17G jumped down to third place, with a time of 8:33. That’s slower than the Scar 17’s 7:06 and the m15 R4’s near-identical 7:07, but still beats the Blade Pro 17’s 9:31.
The Aorus 17G was also in third place in our file transfer test, where we test the rate at which laptops can move 4.97GB of files. The Aorus did so at 845.02 MBps, which was about on par with the Blade Pro 17’s 844 MBps. That’s a far cry from the 1570.76 MBps score from the Scar 17 or even the m15 R4’s 1,055 MBps.
Display of Aorus 17G
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Aside from its GPU, another key innovation for the Aorus 17G is its 300 Hz
IPS
-level display. I tested this screen in two separate ways. First, I watched a trailer for Wandavision (one with color and widescreen, don’t worry), and second, I played Overwatch on it.
In Wandavision, I was impressed by the color quality and even the depth of blacks, but found viewing angles and reflectivity to be a big problem. While vertical viewing angles were almost complete, the screen’s image washed out whenever I strayed more than 45 degrees away from it horizontally. More problematic than this, though, was glare. I had to be certain my screen was pointing away from light, or else my image would reflect back at me even within perfect viewing angles.
In Overwatch, I was in love. While I’m doubtful that refresh rates over 144 Hz can really make one better in a game if they haven’t trained for professional esports, high refresh rates just feel responsive and pleasing to my eyes. I love being able to see as many frames of Overwatch’s gloriously detailed animation as possible, and to feel like my screen is almost instantly reacting to me. That said, I’m not sure I noticed too much of a difference between this display and the 240 Hz display I saw on the last Aorus I reviewed. How well you can distinguish between frame rates, however, tends to be highly personal.
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Looking at our benchmarking results, I was surprised to see that the Aorus 17G actually covers less of the DCI-P3 color spectrum than competitors. It tops out at 79% versus the Scar 17’s 88.5% score, the Razer Blade Pro 17’s 84.1% score and the Alienware m15 R4’s whopping 149.5% score (thanks to a slower OLED screen). This is something I didn’t notice much in practice, though while my colors didn’t come across as flat, neither were they especially vivid.
The same pattern applied to brightness. The Aorus 17G had 300 nits of average brightness, while the Scar 17 had 336 nits, the Blade Pro had 304 nits and the m15 R4 had 362 nits. 300 nits of brightness was plenty for my purposes, and was a welcome increase over the unfortunately-dim 243 nits I saw on my last Aorus laptop.
Keyboard and Touchpad of Aorus 17G
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While not new to the Aorus line, another key way this laptop differentiates itself from the competition is the inclusion of a full physical mechanical keyboard. It’s got a number pad and full-size keys, plus an easy to read Arial font and media controls baked into its Fn row. Full per-key RGB and clicky low profile Omron switches with 2.5mm of key travel and a 1.6mm actuation point make the gaming implications obvious, so I tested this in both general typing and Overwatch.
In general typing, I scored an average word-per-minute count of 65 – 70 on 10fastfingers.com. That’s lower than my usual score range between 75 – 80 wpm, which isn’t what I’d expect from a mechanical keyboard. However, I found that because these keys sit higher than the typical laptop keyboard (despite resting inside a divot into the case), my wrists had to come at them from an awkward angle where I had to manually raise them above where the wrist rest encouraged me to place them. Additionally, the perfectly smooth keycaps leave my fingers without any identifying features to use as landmarks when typing by touch alone.
In Overwatch, by contrast, I found button presses were satisfying and easy to register through touch and audio alone. This made actions like triggering my shift ability feel like second nature, and more importantly, made spamming A/D to stay evasive and help with aiming both easy to perform and easy on my fingers.
The 4.1 x 2.8 precision touchpad, meanwhile, is comfortably smooth without losing the friction needed for precise input and handles multitouch well. It does have a fingerprint reader in the top-left corner, though, rendering it unusable for input.
Audio on the Gigabyte Aorus 17G
The Aorus 17G has two bottom-firing speakers, one on either side, that tend to produce accurate sound but have an issue with volume.
I tested these speakers by listening to Driver’s License by Olivia Rodrigo. The most noticeable issue I had was that the song didn’t become audible until I hit about 30% volume and didn’t get comfortable until about 55 – 60% volume. On max volume, that song was able to fill my whole office, but didn’t hit much of the rest of my 2-bedroom apartment.
Sound quality was full-bodied during the test, with clear voices and bass and no sign of tinniness. However, throughout my whole test, the song also sounded somewhat muffled, as if the laptop was struggling to push it out.
Upgradeability of Gigabyte Aorus 17G
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Being a 17 inch laptop, the 17G has plenty of room for extra storage and memory. It’s a bit of a hassle to open — you’ll need a Torx screwdriver (we used a TR 6 bit) — and a spudger, but upgrading is easy once the case is off. Inside, you’ll have easy access to the two RAM slots and two M.2 SSD slots, plus the networking card. Our configuration came with both RAM slots filled with unsoldered memory, plus one of the SSD slots already taken, but there’s nothing to stop you from substituting your own parts.
Battery Life on Gigabyte Aorus 17G
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The Aorus 17G has the type of battery life you’d expect from a high-powered gaming laptop, which is to say “not much.” It clocked in at 4:42 during our battery life test, which continuously streams video, browses the web and runs OpenGL over Wi-Fi tests at 150 nits of brightness. That’s about on par with the Razer Blade Pro 17’s 4:41 hours of battery life and longer than the Alienware m15 R4’s 4:01 battery life, but still falls short of the ROG Strix Scar 17’s 5:25 battery life.
Heat on the Gigabyte Aorus 17G
We tested the Aorus 17G’s heat after 15 minutes of streaming video on YouTube, and found that it stays cool during non-gaming use. Its touchpad was the coolest touchpoint on the laptop at 71.4 degrees Fahrenheit (21.89 degrees Celsius), while the center of the keyboard (between the G&H keys) was slightly hotter at 75.2 degrees Fahrenheit (24 degrees Celsius). The bottom of the laptop generally hit 81.9 degrees Fahrenheit (27.72 degrees Celsius), but the center of the bottom, which is just below the vents, did hit 85.5 degrees Fahrenheit (29.72 degrees Celsius).
Webcam on the Gigabyte Aorus 17G
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The Aorus 17G suffers from what we like to call a “nosecam.” Placed below the screen rather than above it, this webcam has the unfortunate tendency to look directly up your nose. The idea here is usually to save bezel space, but we have to wonder if the unflattering angle is worth it? You can rectify it a little by stretching in uncomfortable ways, but if you’re looking directly at your screen, be prepared to show off your nostrils, your chin, pretty much everything a good selfie avoids.
Quality is mixed, with accurate color and decent shadows, but fuzzy texture. On the plus side, the Aorus 17G’s webcam does come with a sliding privacy cover.
Software and Warranty on the Gigabyte Aorus 17G
The Aorus 17G comes gracefully free of bloat, with the only examples we could find being standard Windows pre-installs like Microsoft Solitaire Collection and Spotify. In addition to these, you’ll also find utility apps like Nahimic Companion, Intel Graphics Command Center and Thunderbolt Control Center. These let you adjust and customize your audio and display as well as check what’s attached to your Thunderbolt ports.
Gigabyte Aorus 17G Configurations
The Aorus 17G has two different configurations, one with an RTX 3080, dubbed the Aorus 17G YC and one with an RTX 3070, listed as Aorus 17G XC. We reviewed the 3080 configuration, which is $2,699. Both configurations are otherwise identical, each packing an Intel Core i7-10870H, up to 64GB of DDR4-2933MHz RAM (our unit had 32GB) and 1TB of SSD storage. They also both have the same 17.3 inch 300HZ IPS-level display.
The version we reviewed costs $2,699, while the 3070 version costs $2,099.
Bottom Line
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I’m of two minds on the 2021 refresh of the Aorus 17G. While I was hoping for a laptop equipped with a mobile RTX 3080 to far outperform its 2080 and 2080 Super cousins, what I instead got was a machine that was largely on par with them in performance. However, the Aorus 17G is also about $1000 cheaper than its competitors, even with the same CPU and memory/SSD loadouts.
That means you can now regularly hit frame rates anywhere from 60 – 90 fps on ultra settings in graphically intensive games for less than $3000 on a laptop.
Which brings us to the display. This is the first Aorus with a 300Hz option, and it’s just as responsive and satisfying as you’d think. The tradeoff here is that the screen is limited to FHD, and while it is IPS-level, its color and brightness don’t quite hit the peaks of its competitors. The 2021 refresh of the Aorus 17G also sees the return of its physical mechanical keyboard, though its featureless keycaps and awkward height leave it a little more useful for gaming than typing.
While I’d love to see an Ampere laptop pushing out significantly more frames than the competition, I have to compare it to what we have benchmarks for right now. And doing that, it’s still plenty enticing. The Aorus 17G gives you similar power to what you may find in a Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 G732 or Razer Blade Pro 17 for almost $1,000 less, plus a 300 Hz screen and a physical mechanical keyboard.
That said, we have recently reviewed another Ampere laptop, the Alienware m15 R4, which comes with a mobile RTX 3070 as opposed to a 3080. The upside here is that the Alienware lets you choose between a 300Hz screen or a 4K OLED, which drops the refresh rate to 60Hz but far eclipses the Aorus on color and brightness. You’ll also gain some performance on Handbrake and file transfer speed, but will generally be weaker on gaming. At $2,499 against the Aorus’ $2,699 (or $2,099 if you go for the RTX 3070 configuration), it’s up to you if those seem like worthwhile tradeoffs.
The Asus TUF Dash F15 is an attractively thin gaming clamshell with an eSports-ready screen. But you can squeeze more frames out of other RTX 30-series laptops.
For
Decent battery life
Fast screen
Successful software-based noise cancelling
Easy upgrades
Against
Frame rates could be better
No webcam
Flat keyboard
Gaming laptops are trying to slim down. This growing trend finds vendors promising power comparable to the best gaming laptops, which often require bulky chassis and cooling to support high-end components, in a PC that’s closer in size to a mainstream notebook.
The Asus TUF Dash F15 ($1,100 to start, available as tested on March 8 for $1,450) is a next-gen example. It offers the latest in Nvidia RTX 30-series mobile graphics and is one of the first machines to use an Intel H35-series chip. The Dash F15 is 20% thinner and 10% lighter than Asus’ usual TUF gaming laptop.
But while the Dash F15 can handle high-end titles, its gaming performance overall feels more like a last-gen Super card than the latest and greatest.
Asus TUF Dash F15 Specs
CPU
Intel Core i7-11370H
Graphics
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 (8GB GDDR6)
Memory
16GB DDR4-3200
Storage
1TB M.2 2230 NVMe PCIe
Display
15.6-inch IPS panel, 1920 x 1080 resolution @, 240 Hz
Networking
Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), RJ45 Ethernet, Bluetooth 5.2
Ports
Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C), 3x USB 3.2 Gen1 (Type-A), HDMI 2.0, 3.5mm audio jack
Camera
None
Battery
76 WHr
Power Adapter
200W
Operating System
Windows 10 Pro
Dimensions (WxDxH)
14.17 x 9.92 x 0.78 inches (360 x 252 x 19.9mm)
Weight
4.41 pounds (2kg)
Price (as configured)
$1,450
Design on the Asus TUF Dash F15
Available in moonlight white or a more subtle eclipse gray, the Dash F15 can be striking or muted. Its trim build won’t grab attention on its own, but if you opt for the bolder white or decide to activate the keyboard’s “bolt blue”-colored backlight, you may make a head or two turn.
It’s not the striking visage that many gaming laptops proudly carry but with the large TUF block typography that may or may not have been inspired by Alienware (Asus hasn’t stated) on the lid accompanying the TUF logo, there’s enough to keep this more mature laptop from being a complete snooze. But if you’re looking for more fun, the aqua backlight sure looks special coming out of white keycaps compared to our review unit’s more traditional black ones.
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The Dash F15 isn’t the only trim gaming laptop on the block. At 4.41 pounds and 14.17 x 9.92 x 0.78 inches, it’s a little lighter and wider than the Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model (4.7 pounds, 14 x 9.3 x 0.7 inches). The Acer Predator Triton 300 is also of a similar build (4.4 pounds, 14.3 x 10 x 0.7 inches), but the Alienware m15 R4, which also holds an RTX 3070 graphics card, is heavier than the Dash F15 (5.25 pounds).
When you open the Dash F15, you’re greeted by a more gamer-friendly font and a darker deck. The deck loves to attract fingerprints and is side-flanked with diagonal line carvings that complement the vents north of the keyboard. Liberties were also taken with the shape of the power button. White WASD keys also add to the gamer aesthetic but can look kind of cheap, as you can see the keys’ cross-armed-like white retainers, especially if you turn the blue backlight on.
You get some offset media controls, including a mute button, which is particularly handy as we do more conference calls from home offices. Less welcome is the button for launching Asus’ Armoury Crate software. I’d much rather have the volume mute button here, alongside the other volume buttons (it’s on the FN row instead). There are also no play or pause functions on the keyboard.
Thankfully, the Dash F15 doesn’t sacrifice ports in its quest for sleek. The left side hosts the port for charging the laptop, along with an Ethernet jack, HDMI 2.0, USB 3.2 Gen 1 (Type-A) and even Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C). The right side carries two more USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports. All the ports are closer to the laptop’s lip, and the charger is shaped like a right angle, so it can be easy for attached cables to get in the way of one another or you.
The Dash F15 isn’t the only trim gaming laptop on the block. At 4.41 pounds and 14.17 x 9.92 x 0.78 inches, it’s a little lighter and wider than the Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model (4.7 pounds, 14 x 9.3 x 0.7 inches). The Acer Predator Triton 300 is also of a similar build (4.4 pounds, 14.3 x 10 x 0.7 inches), but the Alienware m15 R4, which also holds an RTX 3070 graphics card, is heavier than the Dash F15 (5.25 pounds).
Accompanying the travel-friendly form and backing the TUF moniker is military-grade MIL-STD-810H certification for durability. The machine was tested for drops, extreme temperatures, humidity and vibration. Its plastic deck feels a little more solid than the average laptop, especially a budget one, but there’s a little bit of give when pressing the function row buttons. The lid is thin and also has a small amount of flex. The laptop doesn’t open all the way flat, which was a rare nuisance.
Gaming and Graphics on the Asus TUF Dash F15
The Dash F15 we reviewed uses an RTX 3070 (we confirmed that it’s a Max-Q design; however, Asus isn’t using the Max-Q label anymore) mobile graphics card, a member of Nvidia’s newest lineup. With Nvidia’s Dynamic Boost 2.0 AI feature, Asus says the card can clock to over 1,390 MHz (Nvidia specs the card to run from 1,290-1,620 MHz with boost). This is combined with Intel’s latest H35 series processor, a 35W, 4-core/8-thread part based on 11th Gen “Tiger Lake,” rather than the 45W parts we often see in gaming notebooks.
The machine handled Control well on high settings with ray tracing off. The game typically showed frame frame rates in the high 60s to low 70s, going as low as 57 frames per second (fps) and as high as 75 fps. With ray tracing set to high, the average frame rate dropped to the mid to upper 40s. However, it was sometimes down to 33 fps and managed as much as 53 fps.
There’s an obvious hit to frame rate, but ray tracing does provide a noticeable change in graphics in Control, since it uses ray tracing in five ways (on reflections, transparent reflections, diffuse lighting, contact shadows and debris). With ray tracing on, an office wall inside the Oldest House looked very high-end, with a shiny mirrored finish. I could see Jesse’s reflection, as well as that of the light fixture behind her. The wall’s gold paneling reflected a large staircase. But with ray tracing off, I could no longer see the light fixture or my reflection. The wall looked less like a pricey, executive border and instead had a large rectangular area that just looked whiter. The paneling was so washed out it barely looked gold and also lacked reflections.
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The Dash F15 and Alienware both rock the midrange card in Nvidia’s latest mobile GPU lineup; however, the pricier Alienware was able to push out much more impressive frame rates with its RTX 3070 in the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark (1920 x 1080 resolution, highest settings). Even the Razer and Acer laptops, which use a last-gen RTX 2080 Super Max-Q and RTX 2070 Super Max-Q, respectively, did better than the Asus, though those are also paired with 10th Gen 45W Intel CPUs.
Our review focus ran the Grand Theft Auto V benchmark (very high) at an average of 87 fps, tying with the Razer and beating the acer (77 fps). But at 108 fps, the Alienware is starkly on top.
The Dash F15 fell to last place when it came to Far Cry New Dawn (ultra), with a 74 fps average. That’s 17 fps slower than the fastest machine in this benchmark, the Alienware. The two last-gen graphics systems were in the mid-80s.
In Red Dead Redemption 2 (medium), the TUF Dash F15 landed a solid second place finish with a 61 fps average. The Alienware beat it by just 8 fps.
The Dash F15 continued to outshine the Razer and Acer laptops on the Borderlands 3 benchmark (badass). The Razer was just 2 fps behind though, and the Alienware, again, took the crown, this time by a notable 16 fps.
To measure ray tracing prowess, we also ran the 3DMark Port Royal benchmark. The Alienware got the highest score (6,411), followed by the Razer (5,048). As a next-gen RTX card, it’s a little disappointing for the Asus to rank third (4,982), albeit a close third. The Acer took last place (3,989).
As a stress test, we ran the Metro Exodus1080p RTX benchmark on a loop 15 times, simulating 30 minutes of gameplay. During this time, the game’s frame rate was very consistent and averaged 51 fps. The RTX 3070 ran at an average clock speed of 1,238.64 MHz and average temperature of 70.8 degrees Celsius (159.44 degrees Fahrenheit). Meanwhile, the CPU averaged 3.66 GHz and 72.19 degrees Celsius (161.94 degrees Fahrenheit).
Productivity Performance on the Asus TUF Dash F15
The Dash F15 stands out as one of the first machines to arrive with an Intel H35-series CPU. Announced in January, these chips were designed specifically for ultraportable laptops and can operate at a TDP between 28W and 35W. Our Dash F15 configuration opts for an Intel Core i7-11370H. It runs at up to 35W, has four CPU cores, eight threads and a clock speed of up to 5.0 GHz. Our review laptop combines that with a 1TB M.2 2230 NVMe PCIe SSD and 16GB of DDR4-3200 RAM.
That proved ample for 21 Google Chrome tabs, with one streaming a TV show, Spotify and the Epic Games launcher. The 21st tab caused the fans to kick up for a second, but not so powerfully that the sound overpowered the audio. I could quickly toggle through tabs and programs without delay or interruption to my show. Even tracking through the show was easy, with just a 1-3 second delay.
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In Geekbench 5.0, the Dash F15 bested the Alienware (same specs as our review focus but with an octa-core i7-10870H), Acer (six-core i7-10750H / 16GB DDR4-2933 / 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD) and Razer (eight-core i7-10875H / 16GB DDR4-2933 / 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD) by a few hundred points. When it came to multi-core productivity, the Dash F15 naturally couldn’t compete with its beefier rivals here. All the competing machines’ CPUs have higher core counts than that of the Dash F15. They also all use older 10th Gen chips, but they’re configured at a higher 45W TDP. If you’re running heavily threaded tasks or games, you can get better performance out of the competitors here.
The Dash F15 fared better against the competition in our file transfer test, moving 25GB of files at a speed of 1,052.03 Mbps. Only the Alienware (1,147 Mbps) was faster. The Razer meanwhile, was at a crawl compared to the other machines here.
In our Handbrake test, each system is tasked with transcoding a video from 4K resolution down to 1080p. The TUF Dash F15 accomplished this in 10 minutes and 41 seconds. That’s 3:34 slower than the winner here, which is, again, the Alienware. The Triton 300 came in third place, completing the task 1:30 faster than the Dash F15.
Display on the Asus TUF Dash F15
Asus opted for a 15.6-inch IPS panel for the Dash F15 and even went the extra mile to include Nvidia G-Sync, a high 240 Hz refresh rate and 3ms response time.
A speedy screen like that has obvious benefits to gaming, especially if you’re playing an eSports title, where it’s easier for your graphics card to near 240 fps. Keep in mind that more graphics-intensive games will be harder to hit high frame rates on.
IPS is known for good color reproduction, and the shades, including the hints of brown cabinets in the darkest shadows or the pale robin’s egg blue of cabinets, came through. Smoky effects with rainbow prisms looked smooth and realistic with hints of purple, blue and red striking through. The area I was playing in is quite dark, however, and in my sunny room I did find myself wanting to nudge up the brightness a smidge.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout didn’t lose its luster on the Dash F15. Subtle shades, like pink in a light purple sky, were apparent, and reds were especially strong. The movie was bright enough head on, but from a side view, I could see reflections on about 80% of the screen.
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The TUF Dash F15 is a bit shy of our 300-nit preferred minimum. At 265 nits, it’s in last place here, although the Triton 300 isn’t too far ahead (286 nits). Not surprisingly, the Alienware’s OLED ran away with both the brightness and color tests. The TUF Dash F15’s more equal color competitors are the Razer and Acer machines, and the Asus tied with the Razer with 79% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, while just barely edging out the Acer.
Keyboard and Touchpad on the Asus TUF Dash F15
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The keyboard on the Dash F15 is a mixed bag. There’s backlighting, but it’s only a teal-ish blue. On the plus side, you can toggle it across three brightness settings or turn it off straight from the keyboard. There’s also an Aura button on the keyboard that toggles through effects, which are all basically flashing blue at different speeds.
The keys have a good amount of travel at 1.7mm, but they’re excruciatingly flat. Typing felt swift and snappy, but it was harder to figure out where my fingers were without any grooves to help them feel grounded in between presses. The travel makes most of the keys comfortable to press, but larger keys, like backspace, enter and shift (interestingly, not the spacebar) felt a little loose and hollow.
On the 10fastfingers.com typing test I averaged 112 words per minute (wpm) with a 93.97% accuracy rate. That’s slightly below my typical 115 wpm average and 98% accuracy rate, and I attribute all that to the flat keys.
Making the keyboard even more home office-friendly, Asus built the keyboard to be quiet and claims that the keys exude less than 30dB of noise. They certainly shouldn’t drum up any complaints. Their gentle clicking is neither silent nor annoying or distracting.
The 4.1 x 2.9-inch touchpad on the Dash F15 is on the smoother side, but doesn’t offer the ice rink-like gliding that some premium competitors offer. Clicks are heavy and clunky, but Windows gestures worked well though.
Audio on the Asus TUF Dash F15
The Dash F15 has two speakers that pump out virtual 7.1 surround sound audio via four cutouts on the laptop’s underside. They’re clear and accurate for gaming, but I wished for a little more volume.
When I played Control, it was sometimes hard to hear voices, such as those chanting in the background or my character’s voice. I also wanted to pump up the volume to better focus on key dialogue providing instructions. Footsteps were also hard to hear, sometimes, especially if the laptop’s fans were whizzing, and the experience wasn’t comparable to the virtual surround sound experience you can get with some of the best gaming headsets. Gunshots, however, sounded crisp and with solid pop.
Again, when I listened to music I want to turn it up about 15% louder for stronger effect. It was loud enough to enjoy but not to blast. Chaka Khan’s “Through the Fire” came through accurately and without sounding tinny. But some of the strength and echo in her voice, along with the instruments, didn’t come through, and there was little bass. More electronic sounds, such as those in ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” suffered more. The song’s sound lost warmth and sounded tinny at times. Playing around with the equalizer and presets in the included Realtek Audio Console software didn’t yield significant improvements.
Upgradeability of the Asus TUF Dash F15
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The Dash F15’s back covers prys off easily after unscrewing 14 Phillips head screws. Once inside, there’s space for a second PCIe Gen3 x4 SSD. You can also add up to 32GB of RAM, but you’ll have to get past some thermal tape to get to the SO-DIMM slots, as is the case with the Wi-Fi card.
Battery Life on the Asus TUF Dash F15
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Despite its trim build, the Dash F15 packs decent battery life for a gaming laptop. Our battery test surfs the web, runs OpenGL tests and streams video while connected to Wi-Fi and set to 150 nits brightness. The TUF Dash 15 kept up the workload for 6 minutes and 32 seconds, which is 41 minutes longer than the closest competitor, the Triton 300. The Alienware has been a favorite among our benchmarks, but all that power cost it battery life, and it placed last.
The Dash F15 comes with an AC charger, but you can also charge it at up to 100W via USB-C. Sadly, our review unit wasn’t bundled with a USB-C laptop charger. Still, it’s a nice feature to have. If you’re ever in a pickle, it keeps getting more likely that you or someone around you has something that uses a USB-C charger.
Heat on the Asus TUF Dash F15
As you might expect with a slender laptop, this isn’t the coolest machine around, but the Dash F15 still manages to keep warm temperatures relatively at bay. Although, it gets harder not to sweat when you get gaming. When I fired up Control, my right hand controlling my mouse immediately felt warm air blowing out of the side of the laptop, which remained as long as I was playing.
After 15 minutes of watching YouTube, the Dash F15’s hottest point was the center of the underside, where it measured 93 degrees Fahrenheit (33.9 degrees Celsius). The spot between the G and H keys was 90.5 degrees Fahrenheit (32.5 degrees Celsius), while the touchpad was 78 degrees Fahrenheit (25.6 degrees Celsius).
After 15 minutes of gaming, the touchpad was still a cool 78 degrees Fahrenheit, but the spot between the G and H keys jumped up to 101.5 degrees Fahrenheit (38.6 degrees Celsius), and the hottest point reached 117.5 degrees Fahrenheit (47.5 degrees Celsius. For comparison, the Alienware hit 108.7 degrees after YouTubing and 111.4 degrees when gaming.
To keep a 0.78-inch machine cool, Asus implemented its ROG Intelligent Cooling hardware-software solution. The Dash F15 uses 5 copper heat pipes (covering the CPU, GPU, VRAM and VRM) and two 83-blade, liquid crystal polymer fans to pull heat away from the CPU, GPU, VRAM and VRM and disperse it through the machine’s four heatsinks and fan outlets. There’s venting by the WASD keys to let the fan beneath generate airflow. Additionally, Asus upgraded the self-cleaning capabilities over last year’s TUF lineup with 5% more airflow space.
On the software side of the cooling solution, the TUF Dash F15 uses Nvidia’s Dynamic Boost 2.0, which switches power to the CPU or GPU, depending on what needs the most push. There’s also Armoury Crate, which, once downloaded, lets you choose among performance modes, including a “Silent” one that promises a max sound level of 35dB.
Webcam on the Asus TUF Dash F15
There’s no webcam integrated in the slim bezel on the Dash F15’s display. There’s no making up for that, especially with more people taking so many video calls these days, but Asus tries by offering software-based artificial intelligence (AI) to block out background noise on both ends of a call.
That’s right, Asus claims its tech can remove the sound of your noisy keyboard while also silencing your friend’s dog annoyingly barking in the background. Once you activate AI noise cancelling in the Armoury Crate software and switch to the appropriate speaker and mic in your chatting platform, it provides a helpful service.
In a video call with a friend, I was able to silence his TV and banging in the background. And on my end, he could “barely” hear me tapping my pen right next to my laptop on my desk.
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Asus claims its software can reduce noise by 95% and eradicate 500 million “types of background noise.” The technology purposely uses the laptop’s CPU instead of its graphics card, so as to not interfere with gaming performance. You can also tweak its settings in Armoury Crate, and Asus provides recommended settings based on the scenario.
Software and Warranty on the Asus TUF Dash F15
Asus kept the Dash F15’s bloatware light. Our review unit came with RealTek Audio Console, McAfee Personal Security, Skype, Your Phone, Xbox Game Bar and Xbox Console Companion, courtesy of Windows 10, but not much else — not even your usual smatterings of Candy Crush Sagas.
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Asus does include Armoury Crate, but it’s worth keeping for the AI noise cancelling and, partially, because two of the keyboard’s buttons are useless without it. If you do download the app, you’ll also get access to other perks, the most helpful being the ability to select and tweak different cooling profiles and display presets.
Asus backs the TUF Dash F15 with a 1-year warranty.
Asus TUF Dash F15 Configurations
We tested the middle configuration of the Dash F15 (SKU FX516PR-211.TM15). Available on March 8 for $1,450, it includes an Intel Core i7-11370H CPU, RTX 3070 graphics card, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, a 1TB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD and a 240 Hz display.
The cheapest configuration (SKU FX516PM-211.TF15) will be available on February 15 for $1,100. It comes with the same CPU and RAM as our review focus but drops down to an RTX 3060 GPU, a less roomy 512GB SSD and a slower 144 Hz refresh rate.
The most expensive version of the Dash F15 is $1,700 and matches our review configuration, except it bumps up to an Intel Core i7-11375H and RTX 3070.
Bottom Line
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The Asus TUF Dash F15 continues the trend of slim gaming laptops and does it justice, but there are inherent limitations to a gaming laptop focused on staying thin.
For one, frame rates might not match what you expect from Nvidia’s next-gen RTX 30-series on thicker machines. The Dash F15 fell behind the Alienware m15 R4 using the same GPU in our gaming benchmarks, and overall, its gaming performance was more similar to an RTX 20-Series Super card. .
At $1,450, our configuration of the Dash F15 seems fairly priced . It performed similarly to the Acer Predator Triton 300, which was $1,600 when it came out with a six-core Intel Core i7-10750H and RTX 2080 Super Max-Q. The aforementioned Alienware, meanwhile, is $2,499 as tested. So the Dash F15 offers good gaming performance for the price; it’s just not much of an upgrade over last-gen machines.
In terms of the new Intel H35-series chip, the Dash F15 excelled with lightly threaded workloads, even compared to pricey rivals. But for workloads requiring more cores, the Dash F15’s 11th Gen quad-core chip can’t keep up with beefier 10th Gen CPUs.
The performance conundrum of a slim gaming laptop is something Asus hasn’t fully solved with the Dash F15. But if you’re after a lightweight laptop with the premium screen and components that can handle high-end gaming with good frame rates for the price, the Dash F15 may be for you.
The Alienware m15 R4 packs plenty of RTX 30-series performance in an attractive design with an amazing screen.
For
Sleek design
Strong performance
Snappy Keyboard
Vibrant optional OLED Screen
Against
Warm temperatures
Relatively short battery life
Nvidia’s RTX 30-series “Ampere” graphics cards have been burning up the desktop market since they launched last fall, and now they’ve come to laptops. Alienware’s m15 R4 is among the first laptops to offer RTX 3070 and 3080 GPUs and has paired them with 10th Gen Intel Comet Lake H CPUs for speedy performance.
But the Alienware m15 R4 ($2,149 to start, $2,499 as configured) is more than just a speedy system with the latest components. Ready to compete with the best gaming laptops, it sports a spaceship-like chassis that’s relatively thin and light, a fantastic tactile keyboard and an optional 4K OLED display that offers epic image quality.
3x USB Type-A Gen 3.2, microSD, Thunderbolt 3, Mini DisplayPort, HDMI 2.1
Camera
1280 x 720
Battery
86 WHr
Power Adapter
240W
Operating System
Windows 10 Home
Dimensions(WxDxH)
14.19 x 10.86 x 0.78 inches (360.43 x 275.84 x 19.81mm)
Weight
5.25 pounds (2.38kg)
Price (as configured)
$2,499
Design of the Alienware m15 R4
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Available in lunar light (white) or dark side of the moon (black), the Alienware m15 R4 has the same sci-fi-inspired chassis design — Alienware calls it “Legend” design — as its immediate predecessor, the Alienware m15 R3. A sloped front lip and a large rear exhaust with a honeycomb grille and RGB light ring make the m15 look like an alien spaceship. The number 15 adorns the back of the lid in a sci-fi font that looks like it comes straight from a warehouse at Area 51. The space theme continues on the inside, where a honeycombed grilled appears above the keyboard, which matches the color of the deck.
Like other Alienware laptops, the m15 R4 is loaded with RGB. The keyboard comes with either 4-zone or per-key lighting, depending on your configuration, and there are also lights around the rear exhaust and on alien heads on the back of the lid and power button. You can customize all the lights and create your own themes that launch along with your favorite games using the preloaded Alienware Command Center app.
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As befits a laptop of its price and stature, the Alienware m15 R4 is made from premium materials with a magnesium alloy shell and clear coat paint. On the inside, Alienware’s own Cryo-Tech cooling technology uses a CPU vapor chamber, 12-phase graphics voltage regulation and 6-phase CPU voltage regulation to improve performance.
At 14.19 x 10.86 x 0.78 inches (360 x 276 x 20mm) and 4.7- 5.5 pounds ,(depending on your configuration; ours was 5.25 pounds), the Alienware m15 R4 is pretty compact for a 15-inch mobile gaming right with all the trimmings. It’s only a little larger than last years’ Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model (14 x 9.3 x 0.7 inches, 4.7 pounds), which had a last-gen RTX 2080 graphics card, and slimmer than the MSI GE66 Raider (14.1 x 10.5 x 0.8 inches, 5.3 pounds). The 17-inch Gigabyte Aorus 17G YC with its RTX 3080 measures 15.9 x 10.8 x 1.0 inches while weighing 5.95 pounds.
The m15 R4 finds room for plenty of ports. On the right side, you’ll find two USB Type-A Gen 3.2 ports, while on the left live a third USB Type-A port, a 2.5 Gbps Killer Ethernet port and a 3.5mm audio jack. On the back side, there’s HDMI 2.1, a Mini DisplayPort, a Thunderbolt 3 port and Alienware’s proprietary graphics amplifier port.
Gaming Performance on the Alienware m15 R4
One of the first laptops with an RTX 30-series inside, the Alienware m15 R4 is powerful enough to do real 4K gaming with the effects turned up. Our review configuration came with the optional 4K OLED display that’s limited to 60 Hz, but it’s so damn sharp that to some, the spectacle may make up for the refresh rates.
With the RTX 3070 in our unit and its Core i7-10870H Comet Lake H CPU, we were able to play Cyberpunk 2077 at RTX Ultra in 4K, the highest possible settings, and the visuals were impressive (more on that in the display section below). However, we were limited to around 42 frames per second (fps) during action scenes, which is more than playable but a tad below the 60 fps that would max out the display’s capabilities. Turning down the settings to RTX Medium improved the frame rate by a few fps, as did setting DLSS to prioritize performance
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The Alienware m15 R4 returned an impressive 108 fps in Grand Theft Auto V at 1080p resolution with very high settings. That rate was surprisingly a little higher than the Gigabyte Aorus 17G YC laptop (100 fps) with its RTX 3080 GPU and the same Core i7-10870H CPU. The Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model (RTX 2070) and MSI GE66 Raider (RTX 2080) were about 10% slower.
When we tested with the very-demanding Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1080p and medium settings, the story was much the same. The m15 R4 managed a strong 68 fps, while the on-paper more powerful Aorus 17G YC was slightly behind (64 fps), followed by the two laptops with older cards.
On Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1080p, highest settings, the m15 R4 returned an impressive 77 fps, but this time the Aorus 17G YC pulled ahead (86 fps) and the Razer and MSI laptops were just a few fps behind.
The numbers for Far Cry New Dawn, running at 1080p and ultra settings, weren’t the strongest. The m15 R4 managed a buttery smooth 91 fps, which is about on par with the 17G YC’s 92 fps but a little behind the GE66 Raider’s 99 fps. Though the Raider has an older GPU, it has a faster CPU in the Core i9-10980HK.
It’s worth noting that, as you might expect, playing these same four games at 4K dramatically reduced the frame rates to a modest 34 fps for Grand Theft Auto V, 33 fps for Shadow of the Tomb Raider, 56 fps for Far Cry New Dawn and a barely playable 27 fps for Red Dead Redemption 2. To run at higher resolutions, you may want to turn down other settings.
To see how the Alienware m15 R4 and its cooling system perform when you’re playing a demanding game over time, we ran the Metro Exodus benchmark at the RTX preset 15 times, simulating about 30 minutes of gaming. The system averaged 60.2 fps, but performance declined steadily from 63.9 fps at run 1 to 58.9 on the final run. During that time, the GPU clock speed averaged 1.4 GHz, and the CPU clock speed averaged 3.5 GHz. It had average GPU temperature and CPU temperatures of 77 and 88 degrees Celsius, respectively (170.6 degrees Fahrenheit and 190.4 degrees Fahrenheit).
Productivity Performance of Alienware m15 R4
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With an Intel Core i7-10870H CPU, along with 16GB of RAM, a speedy 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD and RTX 3070 graphics, our configuration of the Alienware m15 R4 was more than capable of productivity work and heavy multitasking. Even with 35 tabs open and a 4K video playing, the laptop didn’t miss a beat. In fact, we were able to set the webGL Aquarium test to show 4,000 fish during this multitasking workload and still got 60 fps.
The Alienware m15 R4 scored a solid multi-core score of 7,642 on Geekbench 5 , a synthetic benchmark that measures overall performance. The Gigabyte Aorus 17G with the same Core i7-10870H scored a bit higher at 7,895.T he Core i9-10980HK-enabled MSI GE66 Raider understandably fared much better with 8,379, and the Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model with its Core i7-10875H was slightly behind the rest at 7,319. When it came to single-core performance, the numbers were much closer with the Alienware dipping behind all three of its competitors by a few points.
The 1TB PCIe M.2 SSD in our review unit delivered a speedy 1,055 MBps on our file transfer test, which copies 4.97 GBps of mixed media files from and to the storage drive. That rate is quicker than all of the Alienware m15 R4’s direct competitors except the GE66 Raider, which hit an impressive 1,696 MBps.
It took just 7 minutes and 7 seconds for the m15 R4 to transcode a 4K video to 1080p using Handbrake. That time is faster than the Aorus 17G (8:33) and Blade 15 Advanced Model (8:04) but a few seconds behind the GE66 Raider (6:59).
Display on Alienware m15 R4
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Alienware sells the m15 R4 with two different screen options: a 1080p, 300 Hz screen and a 4K OLED display with vibrant color but a 60 Hz refresh rate. Our review unit came with the OLED screen, and it was just eye-popping to behold. When I watched a 4K nature video, colors, like the red in a parrot’s feathers and the green in a frog’s skin, seemed incredibly vibrant — as colorful as I’ve seen on any laptop screen.
Images were also bright and sharp for gaming. When I played Cyberpunk 2077, the facial lines on character, such as Jackie, were well-defined, and colors, like the reds and pinks of neon lights, were quite vibrant, though they didn’t pop as much as they did in the video. When I fired up Shadow of the Tomb Raider, water rippling in a lake had a very realistic sheen to it, and the green in trees really stood out.
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According to our colorimeter, the screen reproduces an impressive 149.5% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is nearly double that of its competitors without OLED screens, which all covered 79 or 80% of the gamut. OLED screens measure as brighter if only a portion of the pixels are white, so, with a smaller white square, our screen averaged an impressive 461 nits and, with the entire screen white, it was a still-strong 361 nits. Its IPS-based competitors were all stuck at around 300 nits.
Keyboard and TouchPad on Alienware m15 R4
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The Alienware m15 R4’s tenkeyless keyboard is really snappy and great for typing or gaming. Thanks to its generous 1.7mm of travel, I never bottomed out while hitting a strong 99 words per minute (wpm) on the 10 Fast Fingers typing test with a 2.5% error rate. Both were improvements over my typical 95 wpm and 3-5% error rate.
The keyboard features customizable RGB backlighting and comes in two configuration options: one with 4-zone lighting and another with per-key RGB. Either way, you can customize the colors and enable effects using the included Alienware Command Center software.
The 2.4 x 4.1-inch glass touchpad has just the right amount of friction, providing smooth navigation. Using Windows Precision touchpad drivers, it quickly and accurately responded to all our gestures, from pinch-to-zoom to three-finger swipe.
Audio on Alienware m15 R4
The front-mounted speakers produce music that’s mostly accurate and relatively loud, if not overly smooth. When I played AC/DC’s guitar and drum-heavy “Back in Black” at full volume, I could hear a clear separation of sound with some instruments coming from one side or the other. However, there was just a slight hint of tinniness on the drums.
A Taste of Honey’s bass-centric “Get Down, Boogie Oogie Oogie” sounded perfectly clean, thanks to its lack of harsh percussion. The top volume was loud enough to fill a small room, but I wouldn’t recommend using the Alienware m15 R4 to DJ a party, unless you attach external speakers.
The speakers are definitely good enough for gaming. When I played Cyberpunk 2077, the thumping music in a club scene felt really immersive, and gunshots were loud and clear.
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The Alienware Command Center software has an audio settings section, which allows you to control the equalizer and contains profiles for a variety of situations, from music to gaming and movie-viewing. I found that the default profile, labeled “Alienware” sounded nearly identical to the Music profile and is probably your best bet overall.
Upgradeability of the Alienware m15 R4
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You can upgrade the storage on the Alienware m15 R4, and the good news is that there are two M.2 2280 slots. To open up the laptop, all I needed to do was to loosen the eight Philip’s head screws on the bottom, two of which come out, and then use a spudger to pry the cover off.
Underneath, there are two M.2 slots under copper heatsinks. If your configuration only comes with one SSD, this means that you have an expansion slot that’s readily available. You just need to remove the heatsink covering the slot, pop it in and you’re good to go. Unfortunately, the RAM is soldered on and can’t be removed.
Battery Life on Alienware m15 R4
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We don’t expect long battery life from a gaming laptop this powerful, but you will get a few hours of endurance on the Alienware m15 R4. The laptop lasted 4 hours and 1 minute on our battery test, which involves continuous surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. The Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model (5:02) and MSI GE66 Raider (4:57) both lasted about an hour longer but have older-generation graphics cards. The Gigabyte Aorus 17G, however, has a more powerful RTX 3080 and lasted 40 minutes longer than the R4.
Heat on Alienware m15 R4
As with many thin gaming laptops, the skin temperature on the Alienware m15 R4 can get uncomfortably warm. We don’t recommend holding this on your lap with shorts on while you’re gaming.
After running the Metro Exodus benchmark for 15 minutes, the keyboard measured a toasty 53.9 degrees Celsius (129 degrees Fahrenheit), and the bottom center hit 51.7 degrees Celsius (125 degrees Fahrenheit). The back bottom was the warmest spot, reaching a full 57.8 degrees Celsius (136 degrees Fahrenheit), while the touchpad was relatively cool at 36.7 degrees Celsius (98 degrees Fahrenheit). The fan was running loud and nearly constantly during this test.
Webcam on Alienware m15 R4
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The Alienware m15 R4’s 720p resolution webcam captures pictures that were color-accurate but noisy. When I shot a selfie, the red on my hat, shirt and in a set of bins behind me really popped, as did some yellow and blue objects. However, there was a lot of speckling from sunlight coming in through a window.
Like other Alienware laptops, the m15 R4 comes with Tobii eye tracking sensors. The Tobii software comes preloaded, and I found that setting it up was a breeze. It asked me to calibrate it for my eyes. The software then showed a bubble, which moved accurately around the screen to follow my glances.
Software and Warranty on Alienware m15 R4
The Alienware m15 R4’s main piece of first-party software is the Alienware Command Center, which lets you control the RGB lighting, set the power policy, overclock the CPU and GPU (if your CPU allows it) and change the audio profile.
There’s also the Killer Control Center app ,which lets you control the Killer Wi-Fi card that can be set to prioritize gaming internet traffic over other background tasks, such as Windows updates, that might slow down your play. I really like the Wi-Fi analyzer screen on this tool because it showed the relative strength of all the networks in the area, even several of my neighbors’ routers.
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Like every other Windows laptop, the R4 comes with a little bloatware: two free-to-play games, a trial of Microsoft Office, a link to download Photoshop Express and Hulu.
Dell backs the Alienware m15 R4 with a standard 1-year warranty, which you can extend if you pay extra.
Configurations of Alienware m15 R4
Like many other Alienware laptops, Dell sells the m15 R4 with a variety of configuration options. You can get it with a Core i7-10870H or Core i9-10980HK CPU, an RTX 3070 or 3080 GPU, up to 32GB of RAM and up to 4TB of SSD storage in RAID 0. The display comes in either 1080p, 300 Hz or 4K, OLED 60 Hz varieties, and the chassis is either Lunar Light (white) or Dark Side of the Moon (black).
The system starts at $2,149 and comes standard with the Core i7 CPU, RTX 3070 graphics, the 1080p screen, 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD.
Our review configuration of the Alienware m15 R4 is $2,499. For that price, you get the laptop with an Intel Core i7-10870H CPU, RTX 3070 GPU, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, a 1TB M.2 SSD and the 4K, OLED display panel.
Prices for other configurations were not available at press time.
Bottom Line
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The Alienware m15 R4 offers plenty of performance in a sci-fi-styled chassis that’s relatively thin and light for its class. The snappy, deep keyboard feels absolutely fantastic for typing or gaming ,and the optional 4K, OLED panel is one of the most vibrant we’ve seen.
There are some trade-offs here: the laptop skin temperature can get pretty warm, the battery life is mediocre and the 4K display tops out at 60 Hz. On the other hand, getting a AAA game running at 4K and more than 60 fps at high settings can be a challenge, even with RTX 30-series graphics cards. If smooth frame rates are more important than sharp resolution and eye-popping color, the 1080p, 300 Hz panel might be more your speed.
Whatever your display preference, the Alienware m15 R4 is an impressive gaming laptop that’s worth its premium price.
AMD whipped the covers off of its Ryzen 5000 ‘Cezanne’ mobile chips at CES 2021, but today marks the official launch and AMD has unveiled the deep-dive details of the SoC that brings the Zen 3 architecture to the notebook market for the first time. The new chips will power a large range of notebooks, like the Asus ROG Flow X13 that we reviewed today, and finally bring Ryzen to the highest-end gaming notebooks to compete with Intel’s Tiger Lake chips.
On the surface, the Ryzen 5000 chips look like an iterative update to existing Ryzen 4000 Renoir processors, but there’s a surprising amount of ingenuity under the hood. AMD’s Ryzen 5000 Mobile chips bring the 7nm process paired with Zen 3’s 19% IPC increase to notebooks for the first time, largely by replacing the Zen 2 CPU cores with faster Zen 3 cores while leveraging much of the Ryzen 4000 design (like the 7nm Vega graphics cores and existing I/O accommodations) to minimize time to market.
And time is of the essence. For now, Intel will fend off the Ryzen 5000 chips with its Tiger Lake lineup that’s currently capped at four cores and eight threads with its 35W H35 series chips. Intel says its long-awaited eight-core 45W H-series chips are still in development, with headline specs including a 5.0 GHz boost on multiple CPU cores, but the company’s first eight-core 10nm processors won’t come to market until later this quarter.
Meanwhile, AMD is shipping Ryzen 5000 and has wrung out extra performance through clever modifications to its existing Ryzen 4000 SoC design, which we’ll cover below, culminating in a 23% overall improvement in single-threaded work and a 17% increase in multi-threaded performance for the 5000 series.
AMD says the improvements open up new levels of performance and set a new standard for battery life in x86 notebooks, with up to a 20-hour increase in standby life and an additional two hours during general productivity work, all while remaining the only 8-core x86 chips for ultrathin laptops.
The Ryzen 5000 Mobile series looks promising. Provided that AMD can provide sufficient quantities, they could mark yet another escalation in the increasingly-competitive notebook market. Let’s take a closer look.
AMD Ryzen 5000 Series Mobile Processors 35W – 45W+ H-Series
Cores / Threads
Base / Boost
TDP
GPU CU / Boost
Cache
Ryzen 9 5980HX
8 / 16
3.3 / 4.8
45W+
8 / 2.1 GHz
20MB
Ryzen 9 5980HS
8 / 16
3.0 / 4.8
35W
8 / 2.1 GHz
20MB
Ryzen 9 5900HX
8 / 16
3.3 / 4.6
45W+
8 / 2.1 GHz
20MB
Ryzen 9 5900HS
8 / 16
3.0 / 4.6
35W
8 / 2.1 GHz
20MB
Ryzen 9 4900H
8 / 16
3.3 / 4.3
45W
8 / 1.75 GHz
12MB
Ryzen 9 4900HS
8 / 16
3.0 / 4.3
35W
8 / 1.75 GHz
12MB
Ryzen 7 5800H
8 / 16
3.2 / 4.4
45W
8 / 2.0 GHz
20MB
Ryzen 7 4800H
8 / 16
2.9 / 4.2
45W
7 / 1.6 GHz
12MB
Ryzen 7 5800HS
8 / 16
2.8 / 4.4
35W
8 / 2.0 GHz
20MB
Ryzen 7 4800HS
8 / 16
2.9 / 4.2
35W
7 / 1.6 GHz
12MB
Ryzen 5 5600H
6 / 12
3.3 / 4.2
45W
7 / 1.8 GHz
19MB
Ryzen 5 4600H
6 / 12
3.0 / 4.0
45W
6 / 1.5 GHz
11MB
Ryzen 5 5600HS
6 / 12
3.0 / 4.2
35W
7 / 1.8 GHz
19MB
Ryzen 5 4600HS
6 / 12
3.0 / 4.0
35W
6 / 1.5 GHz
11MB
The 13 new processors span from low-power 15W chips up to two new overclockable 45W+ HX-series models designed to bring desktop PC-like gaming performance to notebooks. The Ryzen 5000 mobile processors all come with threading enabled, the 7nm Vega graphics engine with higher graphics boost clocks than the prior-gen models, support CPPC (Collaborative Power and Performance Control) technology, which we’ll dive into shortly, and have higher CPU boost clocks than the previous-gen.
As before, the H-series models are designed for notebooks that will use discrete graphics. The two 45W+ eight-core HX models carve out a new high-performance niche by bringing CPU, memory, and fabric overclocking to AMD-powered notebooks for the first time, but overclocking headroom will largely be dictated by the thermal and power characteristics of each notebook. Naturally, bulkier notebooks with more robust cooling and power delivery will unlock better overclockability.
The two H models slot in with eight- and six-core variants and a 45W TDP rating, with the former having eight CUs that boost to 2.0 GHz, while the latter has seven CUs that stretch up to 1.8 GHz.
AMD also expanded its HS series with four chips with boost clocks that reach up to 4.8 GHz within the 35W TDP envelope. AMD segments the HS stack with three eight-core models with varying base and boost clocks, but these models have lower base clocks than the H-series models to accommodate the 35W TDP envelope. AMD also has a lone six-core twelve-thread model to round out the bottom of the H-Series stack. AMD also segments the HS models with either seven or eight Vega CUs, with peak boost clocks weighing in at 2.1 GHz.
AMD Ryzen 5000 Series Mobile Processors 15W U-Series
Cores / Threads
Base / Boost
GPU CU / Boost
Cache
Ryzen 7 5800U – Zen 3
8 / 16
1.9 / 4.4
8 / 2.0 GHz
20MB
Ryzen 7 4800U
8 / 16
1.8 / 4.1
8 / 1.75 GHz
8MB
Ryzen 7 5700U – Zen 2
8 / 16
1.8 / 4.3
8 / 1.9 GHz
12MB
Ryzen 7 4700U
8 / 16
2.0 / 4.1
7 / 1.6 GHz
8MB
Ryzen 5 5600U – Zen 3
6 / 12
2.3 / 4.2
7 / 1.8 GHz
19MB
Ryzen 5 4600U
6 / 12
2.1 / 4.0
6 / 1.5 GHz
8MB
Ryzen 5 5500U – Zen 2
6 / 12
2.1 / 4.0
7 / 1.8 GHz
11MB
Ryzen 5 4500U
6 / 6
2.3 / 4.0
6 / 1.5 GHz
8MB
Ryzen 3 5400U – Zen 3
4 / 8
2.6 / 4.0
6 / 1.6 GHz
10MB
Ryzen 3 4300U
4 / 4
2.7 / 3.7
5 / 1.4 GHz
4MB
Ryzen 3 5300U – Zen 2
4 / 8
2.6 / 3.8
6 / 1.5 GHz
6MB
The 15W U-Series models slot in for thin and light devices and will often lean on the integrated graphics units. AMD recently chose to unify its Ryzen Mobile branding under the same Ryzen 5000 umbrella as its desktop chips to clear up the confusion with the Ryzen 4000 series processors that came with an older architecture than desktop Ryzen 3000 models.
However, AMD also sprinkled in three Zen 2 ‘Lucienne’ chips in the Ryzen 5000 Mobile stack, muddying the waters. AMD says this approach meets specific pricing criteria and customer (OEM) demand on the lower end of its product stack. These Zen 2-powered Ryzen 3, 5, and 7 models slot into the lowest-end 15W U-series category.
The Zen 2 variants come with the same design as their predecessors, but again, the targeted enhancements to the SoC (all of the same modifications listed below apply) and increased clock rates result in higher performance.
The Ryzen 7, 5, and 3 families also include one Zen 3 model apiece with either eight cores and 16 threads, or four cores and eight threads. Unlike the previous-gen Ryzen 4000 chips, all of the 15W models come threading enabled.
AMD Ryzen 5000 Mobile Architecture Deep Dive – Design Goals
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AMD’s performance claims for the Ryzen 5000 chips are quite impressive, with a 23% generational improvement in single-threaded performance being the highlight feature. The increased single-threaded performance over the Zen 2-powered Ryzen 4000 chips stems from the 19% IPC improvement borne of the Zen 3 microarchitecture and more fine-grained SoC-level optimizations that optimize power delivery, among other factors. AMD also claims two additional hours of battery life and a 108% advantage in multi-threaded work over Intel’s 11th-gen mobile processors.
AMD’s design goals focused on three key areas: Performance (particularly in IPC and per-core performance), latency improvements that come via the unified L3 cache and eight-core CCX, and improved power efficiency.
Zen 3 Unification
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The Ryzen 5000 Mobile chips come with all the hallmarks of the Zen 3 microarchitecture, which you can read more about here. Like the desktop chips, AMD increased the L3 cache to 16MB over the prior gen’s 8MB and unified the eight cores and cache into one contiguous cluster inside the CCX (Core Complex). In contrast, Zen 2 had two four-core clusters, each with 4MB of cache.
This new arrangement improves both core-to-cache and core-to-core latency. For highly-threaded applications, this new design imparts a 2X cache increase, and lightly-threaded workloads now have access to a full 16MB of cache, which is equivalent to a 4X increase in directly-accessible cache.
Ryzen 5000’s monolithic die, meaning it is one large die instead of the multi-die arrangements on desktop chips, allows for tighter control of power efficiency. The company also improved performance-per-watt (power efficiency) by targeting the highest-end of the frequency/voltage curve it could maintain while controlling thermal density. That’s a key consideration for thin-and-light devices with limited cooling capability. By sustaining the highest clocks possible while the chip is still in the thermal and power efficiency sweet spot, the company increased single-threaded performance beyond Zen 3’s 19% IPC uplift to a 23% improvement in per-core performance.
The Ryzen 5000 Mobile Die
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In many respects, AMD simply replaced the Zen 2 cores with Zen 3 cores, leaving the rest of the design untouched. AMD’s re-use scheme allowed the company to accelerate time to market; AMD introduced the mobile variants a mere 90 days after the desktop models, which is the fastest transition of a new architecture to mobile in the company’s history (it typically takes a year).
The company’s forward-thinking modular design eased the process: AMD planned for this eventuality when it designed the Ryzen 4000 SoC. AMD also preserved the same pinout (BGA mounting scheme) for the Ryzen 5000 processors, meaning they are backward compatible with existing designs. This also allows OEMs to use the same motherboards and componentry for both existing and future products, speeds the design of new laptops, and allows OEMs to leverage existing supply chains. However, while these design elements largely remain the same, AMD fine-tuned the various elements to extract more performance, which we’ll dive into below.
Although it doesn’t equate directly to the physical layout on the die, the topology in the second slide shows us the design’s basic outlay. Here we can see the eight threaded cores clustered around the central 16MB slice of L3 cache, two DDR4-3200 / LPDDR4x-4266 controllers, and the 7nm Vega GPU with 1MB of L2 cache and eight CUs.
The SoC also has a host of other fixed-function acceleration blocks for multimedia, the System Management Unit (SMU) for power delivery control, Fusion Controller Hub (FCH) for external sensors, audio engine, Platform Security Processor (which comes into play in the Pro models), and the usual external interfaces, like NVMe and three flavors of USB (Type-C, 3.1, 2.0).
As before, the chips have 16 lanes of PCIe 3.0 connectivity, meaning Cezanne will not have PCIe 4.0 support. AMD allocates eight lanes to the graphics, while the remaining eight lanes are split between two NVMe interfaces for storage.
The Ryzen 5000 mobile die spreads 10.7 billion 7nm TSMC transistors across 180mm2 of silicon, with the core complexes, L3 cache, and GPU in the center of the die, while the I/O componentry lines the periphery. This is slightly larger (~15%) than Renoir’s 156mm2 die and comes with 900,000 more transistors (the larger caches contribute to the higher transistor count).
Die Size
Transistor Count
Transistor Density
Ryzen 5000 Mobile Cezanne
180mm2
10.7 billion
59.44 MTr/mm2
Ryzen 4000 Mobile Renoir
156mm2
9.8 billion
62.82 MTr/mm2
Ryzen 5000 Mobile Memory Controller Enhancements
(Image credit: AMD)
AMD’s engineers turned their eye to optimizing the memory PHY to reduce the overall SoC power draw. With Ryzen 4000, the PHY remained fully ‘on’ if the SoC wasn’t in a standby power state, consuming a significant amount of power draw. Ryzen 5000 introduces a deep power state that the SMU engages when the PHY is in a lower-activity state (but not idle). This shifts the digital portion of the PHY into a lower power state, bypassing it to reduce supply voltage. This technique engages a new low-dropout (LDO) power regulator and turns off the primary on-chip voltage regulator for the memory PHY during low usage. This approach reduces power consumption from the PHY and the power delivery network as well.
Of course, minimizing latency when the controller shifts back to its full-performance state is paramount. AMD leverages the data fabric’s hardware-assisted fast entry/exit mechanisms to shift into different power states, thus lowering latency.
Each memory controller supports a single 64b memory channel or dual 32b virtual channels. Each controller supports DDR4-3200 in single-channel (1DPC SR/DR) or two channels of LPDDR4x-4266.
Quad-channel LPDDR4x provides 33% more theoretical bandwidth than DDR4-3200 and has twice the density of standard DDR4, thus improving maximum capacity to 32GB of memory with a two-channel die.
Vega Rides Again
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As before, the Vega graphics unit comes with a maximum of 8 compute units (CU) and 1MB of L2 cache, but AMD increased the peak frequency by 20% (up to 2.1 GHz).
AMD fine-tuned the power management mechanisms, like the on-chip voltage regulator, to improve sustained performance. AMD also reduced Vmin (the minimum voltage required for operation) to improve power efficiency (performance-per-watt). These improvements enable higher-frequency operation in tandem with improved frequency-per-watt throughout the entire voltage/frequency range. That frees up additional power that’s used to sustain higher frequencies in either the CPU or GPU.
AMD’s new intelligent graphics Dynamic Energy Management (DEM) functionality steps in to detect which workloads are impacted heavily by graphics frequency, allowing the GPU to operate at lower frequencies when increasing the frequency wouldn’t result in tangible performance gains (for example, when the workload is primarily memory bound).
Ryzen 5000 uses the latest revision of the 7nm process, which has less leakage. It also marks the debut of per-core CPU voltage regulation to the Ryzen Mobile lineup, which reduces overall power consumption during gaming workloads. The saved power savings from these two factors can be directed to the GPU to boost gaming performance.
AMD also optimized its graphics drivers for enhanced memory management and tweaked anti-aliasing and other functions, with peak performance weighing in at 2.15 TFLOPS (FP32) and 4.30 TFLOPS (FP16). AMD used benchmark results from Timespy, a CPU intensive workload, to quantify the performance improvement, noting a 171% increase over the first-gen Ryzen processors. Notably, the Ryzen 5000 Vega iGPU is 15% faster than Ryzen 4000.
AMD carries all the security features present in the 4000 series to the 5000 series, with the addition of Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET) that eliminates control flow attacks that hijack legitimate applications to run malicious code. As before, the chips also have other security features that serve as the bedrock of the Pro Security suite for Ryzen Pro processors.
Ryzen 5000 Mobile, Boosting Boosts
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AMD’s addition of its Collaborative Power Performance and Control (CPPC) interface was truly a watershed breakthrough for its Ryzen 3000 desktop chips. This tech tells the operating system which cores are the fastest, and the Windows scheduler then targets lightly-threaded workloads at those cores. This allows AMD to bin its chips into higher speed grades based on the fastest available cores on the chip, instead of the older technique of binning the chip based on the lowest common denominator (slowest core).
This technique discards the old paradigm of only having three power states, which provides more granular power control to improve both power efficiency (battery life) and performance. The CPPC interface also allows the operating system to dictate power state transitions on a per-core basis via a broader range of voltage and frequency settings. Now the processor can assign any voltage or frequency within its operating range on the fly. Additionally, this technique reduces transition latency from ~30ms when it is controlled by firmware down to 1-2 ms, which improves performance in bursty workloads and saves power.
AMD also added per-core power and frequency management to provide another layer of granularity. In the past, the CPU cores were tied to the same voltage plane as the GPU, resulting in a 1:1 relationship between CPU vCore and GPU Vgfx, regardless of load on either unit.
The illustration on the right of the second slide illustrates the impact – Ryzen 4000’s cores all ran at the same voltage regardless of voltage, matching that of the graphics unit, while Ryzen 5000 adjusts on a per-core basis regardless of GPU voltage.
During multi-threaded heterogeneous workloads, the chip can match frequency and voltage on all the cores running that specific workload, thus ensuring consistent operation. AMD’s on-chip power regulation also supports software quality of service (QoS) hooks that allow the operating system to more effectively identify higher- and lower-priority workloads, which then is used to dictate voltage and frequency of the affected cores to maximize power efficiency.
As you can see in the last slide, AMD says that the culmination of these technologies delivers significant reductions in SoC power draw, with a head-to-head comparison between the Ryzen 7 5800U and 4800U showing impressive reductions in a few different scenarios. That includes a 26% reduction in standby mode, an impressive 47% reduction at idle, a 33% reduction in video playback, and an 18% reduction when the chip is under load in the MobileMark 2018 benchmark.
Ryzen 5000 Mobile Battery Life
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AMD also made a host of other refinements at the system level to help reduce power draw, including working with audio codec vendors to increase the occurrence and duration of low-power/idle residency states for the audio codec. Likewise, AMD worked with hardware vendors for certain components, like DC-to-DC regulators and embedded controllers, to enable support for new ‘hints’ that trigger lower-power states.
AMD says it has increased standby state time by 20 hours, idle battery life by 3.9 hours, video playback by 1.1 hours, and MobileMark by 2 hours. The company also claims that the Ryzen 9 5900HX is 19% faster in single-threaded workloads than Intel’s flagship 10980HK.
AMD Ryzen 5000 Mobile Performance Benchmarks
AMD provided a host of performance benchmarks in three key areas: Mobile gaming, content creation, and ultrathin performance. As with all vendor-provided benchmarks, you should take these results with a grain of salt. We’re sharing the full slide deck for each category, but without commentary – take the results as you will. We also include the endnotes that contain the test configurations.
Today marks the launch of the chips, so there should be plenty of third-party reviews for another take on performance, like our Asus ROG Flow X13 review.
AMD Ryzen 5000 Mobile Cezanne Gaming Benchmarks
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AMD Ryzen 5000 Mobile Content Creation Benchmarks
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AMD Ryzen 5000 Mobile Ultrathin Benchmarks
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Thoughts
Ryzen 5000 Mobile brings a new level of competition to the laptop market through a more refined 7nm process, the Zen 3 architecture, and good old fashioned engineering. Some will see AMD’s decision to re-use key parts of the design, like the Vega graphics unit and PCIe 3.0 controllers, as a liability. Still, AMD managed to wring out enough extra performance and longer battery life to offset most of the downsides.
AMD’s re-use tactic allowed it to speed the chips to market and also simplify the design process for its OEM partners. That’s important in the face of a much larger and entrenched competitor like Intel. AMD’s deeper levels of engagement with ecosystem partners are emerging as it gains more market share and thus has access to more resources. And this is a virtuous cycle: AMD has made the types of adjustments and collaborations that OEMs appreciate, which should further deepen its partnerships.
AMD’s Ryzen 4000 series mobile processors have already taken the notebook market by storm, granting the company its biggest slice of the mobile market in history, and the Ryzen 5000 Mobile chips look to continue that momentum. AMD pulled off this feat in record time — the Raven Ridge chips didn’t come to the mobile market for a year after debuting on the desktop, while the Zen 3 transition should take roughly four months.
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Speaking of Raven Ridge, those chips came to market in 75 designs, while the next-gen Ryzen 4000 chips landed in 100 devices. AMD expects Ryzen 5000 to power over 150 notebooks by the end of the year, many with the highest-end graphics cards, a distinction that has long eluded the company. As you can see above, the chips will debut in a wide range of devices from leading OEMs.
For now, supply could be AMD’s biggest obstacle. Record demand, coupled with the trade war and conditions associated with the pandemic, has strangled the supply of chips for almost every segment, spanning from automobiles to the CPUs and GPUs craved by enthusiasts, which has lead to price gouging. Hopefully AMD can ensure enough supply to keep OEM pricing within reasonable bounds.
AMD’s partners do have Ryzen 5000 Mobile laptops on the market, but we’ll have to wait and see how long term supply pans out. Given what we’ve seen from the first reviews, it looks like AMD will have plenty of demand for its latest chips.
Government-backed hackers based in North Korea are targeting individual security researchers through a number of means including a “novel social engineering method,” Google’s Threat Analysis Group is reporting. The campaign has reportedly been ongoing for several months, and worryingly appears to exploit unpatched Windows 10 and Chrome vulnerabilities.
Although Google doesn’t say exactly what the aim of the hacking campaign is, it notes that the targets are working on “vulnerability research and development.” This suggests the attackers may be trying to learn more about non-public vulnerabilities that they can use in future state-sponsored attacks.
According to Google, the hackers set up a cybersecurity blog and series of Twitter accounts in an apparent attempt to build and amplify credibility while interacting with potential targets. The blog focused on writing up vulnerabilities that were already public. Meanwhile, the Twitter accounts posted links to the blog, as well as other alleged exploits. At least one of the purported exploits was faked, according to Google. The search giant cites several cases of researchers’ machines having been infected simply by visiting the hackers’ blog, even when running the latest versions of Windows 10 and Chrome.
The social engineering method outlined by Google involved contacting security researchers, and asking them to collaborate on their work. However, once they agreed, the hackers would send over a Visual Studio Project containing malware, which would infect the target’s computer and start contacting the attackers’ server.
According to Google, the attackers used a range of different platforms — including Telegram, LinkedIn and Discord — to communicate with potential targets. Google listed specific hacker accounts in its blog post. It says anyone who’s interacted with these accounts should scan their systems for any indication they’ve been compromised, and move their research activities onto a separate computer from their other day-to-day usage.
The campaign is the latest incident of security researchers being targeted by hackers. Last December, a leading US cybersecurity firm FireEye disclosed that it had been compromised by a state-sponsored attacker. In the case of FireEye, the target of the hack were internal tools it uses to check for vulnerabilities in its client’s systems.
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