Razer Blade Stealth
Thanks to a clever dock, the stylish Razer Blade Stealth can tap into the power of an external graphics card and charge its battery at the same time. We went hands-on at CES 2016.
Sunday, July 31, 2016
MSI GT72S G Tobii-805 - 17.3" - Core i7 6820HK - 32 GB RAM - 256 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD $2,599.00
MSI GT72S Tobii
Join us as we check out the MSI Gaming 27XT desktop. It too supports a discrete desktop-class graphics card, grafted onto the rear of its screen. Origin's Omni ups the ante by cramming an Nvidia Titan X and an octa-core Intel Core i7-5960X into its all-in-one, but MSI's implementation looks like the PC is wearing a funky backpack, and I'm a sucker for flashiness.
There's no word on a price, detailed specifications or a release date, so we'll need to see this one in the flesh to get the rest of the details.
MSI has seen the future of PC gaming, and it's awesome.*
Consider the GT72S Tobii, a beefy gaming laptop with Tobii's eye tracking hardware baked right in. We gave the GT72S Tobii's eye-tracking a shot back in June at Computex 2015, and it didn't disappoint. Three infrared sensors sit below the laptop's display, tracking your eye's movements and translating them into inputs. In an action game like Assassin's Creed Syndicate, that might mean aiming at a target just by looking at them. In a space shooter like Elite: Dangerous, you'd be able to look around your ship's cockpit with a glance -- leaving your mouse hand free to steer.
Eye-tracking isn't a new concept, and you can buy Tobii's trackers as standalone peripherals. But it could be a neat little diversion, if your favorite games are supported, and eye-tracking picks up steam with more developers. Unfortunately there's (still) no word on a price, but the GT2S Tobii will be available later this month.
Then there's the Vortex Gaming Tower. It's a 6.5-liter bucket that you can fill to the brim with high-end gaming hardware, including dual Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 GPUs in SLI and an unspecified Intel processor. There's no mention of overclocking and what cramming all of that hardware into such confines is going to sound like. But MSI does claim that the 360-degree cooling design will keep things manageable.
Better still, the Vortex is apparently easy to upgrade; we'll need to see the machine up close to see how roomy that internal layout could possibly be. The Vortex will be available sometime this year, but there's no word on a starting price.
And finally, not to be overshadowed by Origin's Omni all-in-one PC, there's the Gaming 27XT. It too supports a discrete desktop-class graphics card, grafted onto the rear of its screen. Origin's Omni ups the ante by cramming an Nvidia Titan X and an octa-core Intel Core i7-5960X into its all-in-one, but MSI's implementation looks like the PC is wearing a funky backpack, and I'm a sucker for flashiness.
There's no word on a price, detailed specifications or a release date, so we'll need to see this one in the flesh to get the rest of the details.
*Your definition of awesome may vary.
CES 2016 Alienware 13" OLED
Alienware 13" OLED
For no additional cost, the Alienware 13 gaming laptop will soon come with a gorgeous OLED screen.
Choose your keyboard for Dell's slim new Latitude 12 tablet $1,049.00
The Slim Keyboard for the Latitude 12.
The Slim Keyboard (yes, that's the name) has full-size, backlit keys, despite being very thin, much like the keyboard cover on a Surface Pro. The Premium Keyboard acts more like a dock than a cover, with deeper keys, a better touchpad and a channel along the back that allow you to slot the tablet half in single-handedly.
Both use magnetic connections, rather than physical hooks, buttons or latches, making for an easy transformation between modes. Having used every manner of hybrid connection out there, this remains my favorite for a balance of security, speed and usability.
The "professional" version here is made of carbon fiber, includes Thunderbolt and USB-C, the new, smaller USB port turning up in premium laptops and hybrids. Because it's a business system, it offers a smart card reader, fingerprint reader and RFID reader.
Toshiba dynaPad WT12PE-A64K - 12" - Atom x5 Z8300 - 4 GB RAM - 64 GB SSD
At 6.9mm thick and just 1.28 pounds (580 grams), it's among the most travel-friendly of Windowstablets, but you shouldn't expect performance on par with something like the Surface Pro series. Inside is an Intel Atom CPU, along with up to 4GB of RAM. But for drawing and sketching, you may not need much more, especially as the active pen promises Wacom support and 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity.
The Toshiba dynaPad will be sold through the Microsoft Store starting later in January.
Dell has a $199 laptop, and it looks pretty good
Don't expect much in the way of grunt: For $199 (or roughly £135 or AU$280, converted), you're looking at a low-performance Intel Celeron processor, only 2GB of memory and 32GB of solid-state storage, and the older, slower 802.11n Wi-Fi standard for your wireless connectivity.
It also doesn't have a backflipping touchscreen like the old $350 Dell Inspiron 11 3000, which could be a little confusing.
If you want to pay more, you can get up to 4GB of memory, 500GB of storage (or a 128GB solid-state drive), and a quad-core CPU.
Why it's still worth investing in wireless charging for your phone
A wireless future
A few years ago it seemed that wireless charging was the next big thing. The idea was simple: you'd put your phone on the bedside cabinet and it would recharge, no searching for and fumbling around with cables required.
But for some reason it hasn't become mainstream yet - once again, the predicted uptake in a new technology has stalled, despite Samsung's top-end S6 and S7 models allowing you to charge off any wireless base station.
However, wireless charging is still only just getting started - and rather than writing it off as a passing fad, it's actually time to start getting excited about wireless all over again.
Wireless charging's big problem
Many people have used wireless chargers in the past, but they've tended to head back to using a good old cable pretty quickly, because of one rather fundamental issue: wireless isn't fast enough.
Ultra-fast wired charging for Android phones is now very common, enabling you to almost fully replenish the battery in half an hour or so. We've started to expect speed. By contrast, most of today's wireless chargers will take hours to refill a phone, particularly one with a large battery like the 3600mAh Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge.
However, from a technical perspective at least, this problem has already been solved.
The most common wireless charging standard in phones is Qi (pronounced "Chee"), and version 2.0 of it allows for up to 15W power transferral, three times the 'standard' amount of 5W, which is what Samsung's Fast Charge wireless charger offers at the moment.
If you own a top-end Samsung from the last year or so, there's a good chance it'll already support faster wireless charging - the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge and Galaxy S7 family do.
If you have your eye on a Samsung wireless charge pad, though, make sure you buy the one labelled Fast Charge (£40, $41.99, AU$99.99), rather than the normal pad. It outputs at up to 9 volts 1 amp, for 9W of power rather than the usual 5W. Samsung says it'll charge your phone from flat in 120 minutes.
To get the full potential out of the Qi abilities of the top Samsung phones, though, you need a third-party Qi pad. There are a few 10-15W charge pads available, such as those from Choetech and Tenergy; that's right, they mostly come from Chinese brands no one has heard of.
However, in March 2015 LG Innotek announced a full-fat 15W wireless Qi charger, which LG says will charge a phone from 0% to 50% in 30 minutes, not far off what a fast wired charger can achieve.
This is what we need, and what we want. It's just a shame that, as the company that continues to pack wireless charging into many of its top phones, Samsung didn't get there first.
LG's own LG G5 doesn't even offer wireless charging, after all.
Wireless wars
At this point, we need to step back a bit. We've given you a very simple view of how some elements of wireless charging lag behind others, but Qi is just one of several current charging standards.
There's a war going on, and it's a bit VHS vs Betamax. Qi, the bookie's favourite, was devised by the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC), but coming up on the rails is the AirFuel Alliance, which also wants to offer the de facto wireless standard.
This alternative alliance is the ward of a couple of wireless charging technologies, not just one: PMA and Rezence, which you might also see referred to as A4WP, the original body that devised it.
Before we drown in acronyms, the important thing to note here is that while Qi uses inductive charging, the combo of PMA and Rezence means that AirFuel comprises both inductive and magnetic resonance charging respectively.
At a very basic level, inductive and magnetic resonance charging involve comparable concepts. There's a wire coil in the charge base that creates an electromagnetic field, stimulating current in a second coil in the phone/device, which is used to charge the battery.
However, while inductive wireless charging is picky about the position of the coils/phone, resonance charging is less so. Its 'throw' is wider, and a single pad can even be used to charge two phones at once.
Inductive charging's effective range is around 5mm, maxing out at around 40mm in the latest iteration. The coils have to match up closely.
With greater range, and claimed theoretical power transferral of up to 50W, resonance-based Rezence sounds like a dream technology, but right now it's problematic.
You can't buy a resonance pad yet, and while there are claims it can be more efficient than Qi, as the WPC notes in a late 2015 document "no real-world, public data exist for resonant charging efficiency".
The tech has some major backers, though. WiPower is a third, resonance-based wireless charging standard, owned by Qualcomm. I didn't mention this in the same breath as AirFuel and WPC because it simply conforms to the Rezence standard.
WiPower is already baked into several very popular Qualcomm chipsets too. It debuted in the Snapdragon 808, and was subsequently used in the Snapdragon 810 and 820. We may not be able to use it yet, but millions of phones theoretically support magnetic resonance charging.
Qualcomm's big claim for WiPower (and hence Rezence) is that it's the first wireless charging solution in production that will work with metal-bodied devices - at the moment full-metal phones have to use a charging case, rather than an inbuilt coil, in order to make use of Qi charging.
Wireless charging, then, is a glorious mess right now. And to throw in another complicating factor, Qi designer WPC claims receivers (the parts in phones) are ready for resonance charging, and have been for three years:
"All Qi receivers (phones, sleeves, backdoors, and charging cards) that have shipped in the last 3 years and continue to ship, can be charged in inductive mode as well as resonant mode," says the WPC website. They just need a compatible resonance charge pad, none of which are available yet.
The takeaway: we aren't even necessarily going to need new phones when wireless charging clicks into a higher gear, just a new charge pad.
Wireless charging in the home
Wireless charging is still 'in progress', but that hasn't stopped some companies from trying to add a friendly lifestyle angle to a technology that threatens to become an off-putting torrent of trademarks.
IKEA started making wireless charging furniture and lamps in 2015, and now offers a surprisingly wide range of products that includes plain pads, bedside tables and lights of various shapes and sizes.
The glaring issue with such a bold attempt to make wireless charging mainstream is that no iPhones natively support wireless charging. Much like NFC-based wireless payments pre-Apple Pay, this is a bandwagon begging for Apple to jump onboard. With faster charging now possible, maybe it's time.
To address this lack of support, IKEA makes a range of Qi-enabling phone covers for iPhones and popular Android handsets. However, all of IKEA's charging hardware uses the older 5W max output version of Qi that's a lot slower than a wired charger.
You could argue, though, that it doesn't matter so much if you just want a bedside table you can rest your phone on as you go to sleep.
FoneSalesman's FurniQi range has followed IKEA's lead by building 5W Qi into a small bamboo table, proving that it's more than just a fad for a single brand.
Wireless charging on the high street
Qi dominates the reality of wireless charging in the home at present, but you can actually find some rival PMA points on the high street. PMA is, as mentioned above, similar to Qi in that it's an induction-based technology.
Starbucks sided with the PMA standard rather than Qi for its experiment with in-cafe wireless charging, perhaps because it afforded the coffee giant an extra up-sell angle: there's a PowerMat PMA dongle that just slots into the charge sockets of iPhones and Androids.
There are 10 Starbucks sites in London listed as having PMA sockets in the Powermat app, which lets you find your nearest wireless charge socket. It's a free download if you want to check it out yourself.
An app called Aircharge Qi shows charge locations for Qi pads out on the street and, no great surprise, there are far more of them. And they are spread far more widely.
McDonalds 'restaurants', Ibis hotels and EE shops are just a few of the many places you'll find Qi points in the UK. There are probably far more than you'd imagine, and you can use many of them for free.
Qi charging needs to get up to speed in several respects, but it's no longer a 'future' technology, given how many outlets are offering it to bring free charging to phones.
Frankenstein radio waves
There are several promising futuristic alternatives in this field, though, and a top contender is RF charging. As with induction charging, there's a transmitter and a receiver, but instead of using an electromagnetic field to transfer energy, a radio frequency signal is the power 'source'.
RF charging's lead benefit is that it can supply energy to a whole area, for greater range than resonance or inductive charging. You might have a bowl or drawer in which your device(s) would be placed, for example.
At present this technology is geared towards low-power devices, as the power transferral is, relatively, so low. However, it could make an interesting solution for wearables with small batteries.
Look into ambitious start-ups and the research undertaken at universities across the world and you'll find a handful of comparable longer-distance wireless charging projects that appear to border on fantasy at first glance. Energous's WattUp claims to offer a charge radius of 15ft using its application of RF charging, for example.
Granted, it'll only supply 1W at 10-15ft, and 4W within 5ft, but it's a world apart from the range Qi offers, even if it is ultimately wasteful in its current form, as much of the RF signal that's transmitted is effectively lost.
- Want to know more about long-distance wireless charging? Then check out: No strings attached - why our smartphones will soon be charging by themselves.
The conundrum, regardless of the standard used, is how to focus longer-distance wireless charging. Recent research by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona into doing just that was published in the June edition of Advanced Materials, and referred to experiments with magnetic resonance charging.
"Enveloping the two circuits with metamaterial shells has the same effect as bringing them close together; it's as if the space between them literally disappears," writes the author in the article's abstract.
To explain that a bit better: the wireless power transmitter and receiver can use 'antennas' of a sort to boost efficiency and range, and that can only mean good things for wireless charging using existing methods.
The future of wireless charging is something of an amorphous cloud right now, but it's still an exciting future. We'll get there - it just might take a while longer that we thought.
Razer Blade Stealth review: Razer's slick new laptop will make your MacBook Air jealous
This is not exactly a slim-at-all-costs high-fashion ultrabook. Nor is it a gaming laptop, despite Razer's years of experience in the PC gaming biz. It's an amalgam of many different ideas about what a high-end ultrabook-style laptop should be, including some wish-list items we've wanted for years -- and a few we never thought to even ask for.
The company's previous laptops have been well-received gaming systems with 17-inch or 14-inch displays, all notable for being reasonably thin and light despite packing in mid- to high-end gaming components. The Razer Blade Stealth keeps much of the look and feel of the previous models, such as the matte-black shell, rigid construction, minimalist design and green snake-like logo. But the most important thing to keep in mind is that this is not actually a gaming laptop.
A Razer laptop without a dedicated graphics card sounds like an Apple product without an app store -- unexpected, and potentially not playing to its maker's strengths. But this is still Razer after all. So while the Blade Stealth is not a gaming laptop by itself, Razer plans for it to eventually become one component of a larger gaming ecosystem. Announced in January at CES 2016 -- but not yet available to even preorder -- is the Razer Core, an external box built to house a single desktop graphics card (for example, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 980), and route its graphics rendering power to the laptop via Thunderbolt-enabled USB-C connection. (That single wire will also handle power duties, too.)
At some point later this year, we'll hopefully hook up a Razer Core unit to a Razer Blade Stealth laptop and be able to judge it as a gaming machine. But for now, we're looking at it strictly as a flare-filled ultrabook with an optional 4K screen. If anything, that restriction makes the Blade Stealth even more impressive. It offers a great design and high-end components, plus extras such as the highly programmable and fun to play with backlit Chroma keyboard, all starting at $999 or AU$1,549. There's no separate UK pricing right now, but the US base price works out to around £705.
RAZER BLADE STEALTH
| Price as reviewed | $1,399/AU$2,149 |
|---|---|
| Display size/resolution | 13-inch 3,840 x 2,160 touchscreen |
| PC CPU | 2.5Ghz Intel Core i7-6500U |
| PC Memory | 8GB DDR3 SDRAM 1,600MHz |
| Graphics | 1024MB Intel HD Graphics 520 |
| Storage | 256GB SSD |
| Networking | 802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 4.0 |
| Operating system | Windows 10 Home (64-bit) |
The upgraded configuration is impressive, but the entry-level model represents an especially good overall value compared to other slim laptops. The Dell XPS 13, one of our current favorites, drops the specs to a 1,920x1,080 nontouch display and a Core i5 CPU for the same $999. The 13-inch MacBook Air also has a lower-res 1,440x900 nontouch screen, Core i5 CPU and only 4GB of RAM for $999. TheLenovo Yoga 900 adds a hybrid hinge, but doesn't even show up to the party until you shell out at least $1,200. Also, the Blade Stealth, at 2.75 pounds and 13.2mm, is a little thinner and lighter than the XPS 13, MacBook Air or Yoga 900.
The most notable upgrade in our more-expensive configuration is the 3,840x,2160 resolution UHD/4K screen. This 4K display is one of the brightest I've seen on a laptop in this class, and it presents 4K video content, games and apps with great detail. But this is no Dell XPS 13, with a razor-thin (pardon the pun) screen bezel. In one of the only concessions to the reality of price and performance vs. design, there's a thick black border around the touchscreen display. It doesn't kill the experience, but it's one of the few things about the overall design that feels less than ideal. The 4K screen can show a full 100 percent of the Adobe RGB spectrum (as does the Dell XPS 15), while the QHD screen (which we have yet to test in-person) hits a still-respectable 70 percent.
A colorful keyboard
The Chroma-branded keyboard is another standout feature, and makes for a fun little show-off demo of the Stealth. It's actually the complete opposite of stealthy, with bright colors, strobing lights and more programmable options than all but the most hardcore of standalone gaming keyboards.
Using the Chroma app, different sections of the keyboard can be programmed to show different colors -- such as highlighting the all-important WASD keys in a different color than the rest of the keyboard. Rather than meticulously programming a unique keyboard light layout, I had a lot more fun just running through the different presets, many of which seem to take advantage of the entire spectrum of 16.8 million possible colors.
THE GOOD The Razer Blade Stealth is slimmer and lighter than similar laptops from Dell and Apple. Even the base model includes a Core i7 processor and fun Chroma backlit keyboard, and future expansion via an external graphics box for gaming is promising.
THE BAD Battery life takes a nosedive with the 4K screen. The promised add-on gaming module still has no price or release details.
THE BOTTOM LINE The Razer Blade Stealth is a rare mix of slick design, great performance and top-notch value in a laptop -- but the great-looking 4K screen on the top-end model takes a major hit on battery life.
Samsung's new laptops are so light, you can carry both in one hand
Looking to lighten your laptop load? Samsung wants to help. The new Samsung Notebook 9, which comes in 13-inch and 15-inch screen sizes, are constructed of a lightweight magnesium alloy that barely tips the scales. At just under two pounds for the 13-inch and under three pounds for the 15-inch, I can lift them both with one hand.
We got a peek at these machines in Samsung's posh hotel suite at the 2016 International CES here in Las Vegas, and while we don't know when they'll arrive (beyond "early 2016") or what they might cost, they definitely look like they're worth considering if portability is key.
Magnesium
Typically, high-end laptops are made of aluminum, perhaps with some carbon fiber thrown in if you want to get fancy. Aluminum's strong and shiny, but still a little heavy. Magnesium alloy is even lighter, but the downside is that it can look and feel like plastic. You'll often find it inside laptops (like Lenovo's ThinkPads) but generally, PC manufacturers don't leave it exposed to the elements.
But recently, a few laptops have gone all out with magnesium to get the lightest laptops possible, like the Lenovo LaVie Z and the LG Gram 14. But those laptops lacked creature comforts like great keyboards and trackpads, and they definitely felt a little plasticy.
What amazed me was that the 15-inch Notebook 9 feels a bit more like cool metal to the touch. And with nice bright 1080p screens, Core i5 and i7 processors, up to 8GB of memory and 256GB of solid-state storage and what felt like some pretty decent keyboards and touchpads in a brief test, these feel like pretty well-rounded laptops. (Samsung's also promising up to 10.5 hours of battery life.) If only the company would tell us what they cost.
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