Samsung Galaxy S21 FE Review: Full-Featured Yet Affordable

Samsung's previous generation Galaxy S20 Fan Edition was met with high praise for its value proposition when it launched last November. The goal of Samsung's Galaxy FE products is to deliver key features most mainstream and enthusiast users want at a price point that's more approachable for the masses. This class of smartphones has been wildly popular with tech-savvy enthusiast consumers, so it's no surprise Samsung is bringing the Galaxy S21 FE 5G out as an extension of its successful Galaxy S21 family, just ahead of its next generation product launch that we should be hearing about in short order....

OnePlus 10 Pro Flagship Shows Off Premium Design In Its Official Launch Unveil

by Jeff Butts - Mon, Jan 03, 2022

Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus has given us an official sneak peek at its newest flagship handset. Rumors and leaks about the OnePlus 10 Pro have surfaced recently, but the company has kept quiet officially until now. With CES 2022 just around the corner, the excitement is building. As it did with the OnePlus 9 series of smartphones, OnePlus has partnered with renowned camera brand Hasselblad. For decades, Hasselblad has produced some of the finest camera equipment money could buy, making things look real good for the trio of camera lenses we can see on the rear of the OnePlus 10 Pro. While the...

OnePlus Buds Z2 Review: Solid ANC Earbuds For Under $100

by Myriam Joire - Thu, Dec 16, 2021

Since OnePlus introduced the original and excellent OnePlus Buds ($79) a year and a half ago, the company has launched two more pairs of TWS (true wireless) earbuds – the affordable ($49) OnePlus Buds Z, and the higher end ($149) OnePlus Buds Pro with ANC and wireless charging. Today we’re taking a listen to OnePlus’ fourth set of earbuds, the brand new OnePlus Buds Z2 ($99), which feature ANC but lack wireless charging. Basically, the OnePlus Buds Z2 are to the Buds Pro what the Buds Z were to the original OnePus Buds – lower specced, but also more affordable. So, what...

Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Benchmarks: Huge AI And Gaming Gains For Next-Gen Android Flagships

by Paul Lilly, Myriam Joire - Tue, Dec 07, 2021

Qualcomm recently announced a new flagship mobile chipset for next-gen Android devices, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, which also kicks off a rebrand of the Snapdragon platform. Going forward, Qualcomm will no longer use three-digit model number designations as it has done with past chipsets like the Snapdragon 888+ 5G. In somewhat vague terms, Qualcomm said it needed a "bigger tent, a longer playing field so to speak," as it aims to broaden the appeal of Snapdragon "while keeping true to its core." The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 gets the party started, with Qualcomm kicking off its rebranding effort with a premium...

Qualcomm And Razer Partner On Impressive Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 Android Gaming Handheld

by Paul Lilly - Wed, Dec 01, 2021

Gaming is a lucrative business, and that includes the mobile front, which generates around $175 billion per year from an audience of 2.5 billion mobile gamers. Compare that to the movie industry that raked in less than $45 billion last year and you'll understand why gaming is such an important consideration for many companies. That's all to say there is ample incentive for chip makers to focus on gaming, and so it's no surprise Qualcomm is expanding its offerings with the new Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 gaming platform, with an assist from Razer (more on that in a moment). The Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 is...

HiFive Unmatched: Exploring A RISC-V Computing Experience

by Colton Westrate - Wed, Dec 01, 2021

Experimenting with SiFive's HiFive Unmatched RISC-V development board over the last few weeks has felt a bit like stepping back in time. The experience left me feeling a bit nostalgic. Picture this. It's 1997. I'm a high school sophomore. I head over to my friend's house after class because a long-awaited CD with something called "Slackware Linux" on it has arrived. It's installed on a 486DX4 100 PC that lives in their poorly-lit, unfinished basement. The day's 30 minutes of free dial-up from the local ISP are used to download "tarballs" with "Kermit." Linux is strange and confusing, but I do like...

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Arrives To Supercharge Next-Gen AI Powered Flagship Phones

by Paul Lilly - Tue, Nov 30, 2021

Last week, Qualcomm teased a fresh new look and colors as part of a bold rebranding effort, with Snapdragon becoming a standalone consumer brand. Now a week later, at the Snapdragon Tech Summit that's currently underway, Qualcomm is ready to share more details about what lies ahead for Snapdragon. To kick off the rebrand, Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, a brand new flagship chipset that not only supplants the Snapdragon 888+ 5G at the top of the stack, it also leaves behind the old three-digit model number designations it had been using. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon At Snapdragon...

MacBook Pro 14 Review: Testing Apple M1 Pro Performance Claims

by Ben Funk - Tue, Nov 23, 2021

Around this time last year, there was much hoopla over Apple's first Macs with the company's home-grown Apple Silicon, dubbed the M1. Almost immediately, rumors swirled about what the follow-up, rumored to be called the M1X, would have in store. Never mind that at the time, Apple released a power-efficient champion with four high-performance cores that could tear through just about any workload, while simultaneously rewriting the book on integrated graphics performance. No, the 2020 Mac mini was old news; we just had to know what was next.  And then 2021 kicked off and it seemed nothing would...

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 Review: A Powerful Refresh

by Ben Funk - Thu, Nov 18, 2021

Ultraportable laptops with 13 or 14-inch displays and low-power processors are great for a certain kind of user. Those folks are usually found running from gate to gate in an airport or catching an Uber to a sales meeting. These machines have great single-threaded performance and good-enough graphics capabilities, but the thermal limits and the laws of physics get in the way of more demanding workloads. Lager format machines have the extra cooling capacity and thermal budget to add in discrete graphics and more processor cores, and the users that value this extra muscle are the target demographic...

Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 Review: Refined Mobile Workstation

by Chris Goetting - Fri, Nov 12, 2021

If there was a poster child for business-class laptops, it is indisputably the Lenovo ThinkPad. ThinkPad notebooks are well known for their matte-black, no-nonsense designs, but their utility in corporate and industrial settings is more than skin-deep. Lenovo has wisely developed an array of ThinkPad models to address a wide range of use cases, while still being able to keep that distinct ThinkPad feel. This familiarity yields a dependable experience which has cultivated a dedicated following. We have recently reviewed several svelte ThinkPad X Series variations, but today’s offering is more...

DJI Mavic 3 Review: Did The Best Drone Get Even Better?

by Keith May - Tue, Nov 09, 2021

DJI's worst-kept secret has arrived. After months of extensive leaks, the new DJI Mavic 3 has landed (or taken off depending on your perspective). DJI has advanced its done line-up significantly since introducing the first Mavic Pro back in 2016. The Mavic Pro line, including the upgraded Mavic 2 Pro, have been workhorses for those in the aerial photography and videography fields, while the Mavic Air line targeted consumers who craved a quality drone with good camera chops, but didn't quite want to jump into prosumer territory. We mention DJI's previous-gen products here hoping to avoid some confusion....

Google Pixel 6 And Pixel 6 Pro Review: A Bold Return To Android Flagships

by Dave Altavilla - Mon, Oct 25, 2021

Last week we gave you an early hands-on look at Google's oft leaked Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. Even Google has teased these new Android flagships a time or two, leaning into the engineering the company has done on the semi-custom design of its Tensor mobile platform processor. Tensor is rumored to be based on Samsung's Exynos 2100 SoC with an amped-up neural processing engine, or TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) for improved machine learning performance, and a few other tweaks as well. Regardless of whether the rumblings of Tensor's silicon lineage are true, the new chip is manufactured by Samsung on...

Intel Is Confident It Can Win Apple Back As A Customer After Being Exiled From Macs

by Keith May - Mon, Oct 18, 2021

Apple may be on the precipice of releasing its latest processors, the M1 Max and M1 Pro, but that doesn't stop Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger from counting Intel out. Apple is now moving to its second generation of M1 CPUs after transitioning away from Intel, following 15 years of partnership. In 2020 Apple announced its own silicon and marked the move away from Intel as its CPU of choice ushering in an entirely new operating system and way of thinking for developers. The Apple M1 is an 8-core ARM-based CPU built on the 5nm architecture and is an absolute unit when it comes to efficiency. This was a sizeable...

Alienware X15 Gaming Laptop Review: A Svelte Stunner With Caveats

by Dave Altavilla - Thu, Oct 14, 2021

Thin and light gaming laptops are a bit of an enigma. They essentially aim to defy the laws of physics, eschewing size and thermal dissipation area in an effort to strike a more portable, stylish design while still maintaining respectable gaming chops. Let's face it, no one really likes the bulk and chunky demeanor of most high-end gaming laptops that are designed for all-out performance. It's a difficult, fine line to walk, but a worthy, noble one to develop a compelling, quality thin and light gaming laptop, and that's exactly what Dell went all-out for with the new Alienware X15. The new...

Dell XPS 15 9510 Review: A Powerful RTX Laptop With OLED Pop

by Paul Lilly - Thu, Oct 07, 2021

The latest version of Dell's XPS 15 (9510) is not a drastic departure from last year's model (9500). In terms of the physical design it is actually no different at all, which is not a bad thing. Last year saw Dell tweak the XPS 15's composition with a handful of subtle refinements, like slimming down the bezels on the InfinityEdge display and endowing it with a much bigger touchpad. The culmination of those and other small changes was a polished laptop inside and out, and the same can be said for this year's revision -- except it's faster. That is to say, Dell retained everything we liked about...

Intel Core i7-1195G7 Performance: MSI’s Prestige 14 EVO Flies

by Marco Chiappetta - Fri, Oct 01, 2021

Earlier this year, we took a look at the MSI Prestige 14 EVO, a high-performance thin and light ultrabook, which was packing Intel’s latest Tiger Lake-based mobile processing platform at the time. In our deep-dive evaluation of the machine, we found it to offer strong CPU and integrated graphics performance, with speedy PCIe Gen 4 NVMe storage, and a host of handy features, all in a competitively priced, attractive package. When all was said and done, we gave the MSI Prestige 14 EVO a ‘Recommended’ award and thought users looking for a machine with a similar form factor would...

iPhone 13 Pro Review: Fast, Impressive But Unfinished

by Ben Funk - Wed, Sep 29, 2021

Another Apple iPhone launch event has come and gone, with the company's latest flagship and mid-range phones already shipping to customers, arriving on front porches just a few short days ago. In a second consecutive year of component shortages, Apple's deep resources and influence seemed to mitigate any potential issues securing chip fab space, which means there's plenty of iPhone supply to go around. This year's devices bring a mix of needed catch-up features, improvements and interesting bonuses that are designed to set the company's smartphones apart from its Android-bearing rivals. ...

ASUS ZenBook 13 OLED Review: Ryzen 5000-Powered Excellence

by Marco Chiappetta - Fri, Sep 24, 2021

Much of the conversation surrounding AMD’s continued assault on Intel has revolved around the desktop and server markets, where the company’s Ryzen and EPYC processors have consistently increased in popularity and adoption, gen over gen. AMD has, however, also made significant inroads in the mobile space, with both high-end gaming notebooks – like the excellent ASUS ROG Strix G15 AMD Advantage Edition – and in the thin-and-lite space as well, with a variety of Ryzen 5000U series based machines. We’ve actually had the notebook we’ll be showing you today, the ASUS...

TCL MoveAudio S600 ANC Earbuds Review: Great Sound At $99

by Dave Altavilla - Thu, Sep 23, 2021

When it comes to wireless earbuds, you might say we're fairly particular and almost snooty about them. It's not easy to reproduce decent acoustics with such tiny drivers, never mind with quality active noise cancellation (ANC) that doesn't make it sound like you're listening to music in some kind of weird anechoic chamber. Regardless, at under $100, that's what the TCL MoveAudio S600 True Wireless Earbuds try to achieve. We recently looked at OnePlus' $149 ANC wireless buds offering with the Buds Pro, and found them to be a quality set of wireless buds with a few caveats, most of which could...

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 Review: Third Time's The Charm?

by Ben Funk - Wed, Sep 15, 2021

Samsung has been refining its innovative foldable phone line-up for a couple of years now. While the first iteration of the company's Galaxy Z Fold may not have been terribly robust out in the wild, last year's follow up was by most accounts a solid device. This year, the newest Galaxy Z Fold3 5G seems to have it all: a malleable 7.6" screen, more durable construction, Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 5G Mobile Platform, and enough memory and storage to keep the Galaxy Z Fold3 viable for a long time to come.  There are many questions we wanted to answer with this device. What's it like...

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 Review: The Folding Flagship Refined

by Myriam Joire - Mon, Sep 13, 2021

Two years ago, Samsung ushered the era of folding phones with the daring (but ultimately flawed) Galaxy Fold. In 2020, the company followed suit with three much improved foldables -- the stylish Galaxy Z Flip, Z Flip 5G, and the powerful Galaxy Z Fold2. With most of the kinks worked out (pun intended), these excellent handsets were finally worth recommending, though cost and durability were still obstacles for many. But things are different today. Samsung’s new water-resistant $1800 GalaxyZ Fold3 and $1000 Galaxy Z Flip3 are more affordable and life-proof than ever. While the Fold series...

Logitech Combo Touch Review: Making A Laptop Out Of An iPad?

by Ben Funk - Tue, Sep 07, 2021

Apple's 4th generation iPad Air has a lot going for it. The A14 Bionic SoC at the heart of the device offers great performance in a wide variety of apps and games, and the 10.9" Liquid Retina display looks great under many different conditions. In fact, for some use cases, the iPad Air could rival a full-fledged computer, if only it had the necessary input devices to maximize productivity. There are numerous companies attempting to address this deficiency of the iPad Air though, including industry stalwart, Logitech. Recently, Logitech introduced the Combo Touch, a form-fitting series of cases...