Google Pixel 4a Review: Great Camera, Killer Android Value

Google’s Pixel phones are well known for their superb cameras, timely updates, and unique features (Call Screen, Now Playing, etc...) But the company’s handset strategy -- and its lineup -- is difficult to decipher. It’s like Google is beating its own drum, blissfully (or purposefully) unaware of the market. On one side, you have the Pixel flagships, which are tough sells due to their relatively high prices, lackluster specs in light of competitive offerings, and other compromises (like middling battery life). For example, there was the Pixel 3 XL, with its massive notch...

Samsung Unveils Galaxy Note 20 And Note 20 Ultra With Precision S-Pen And UWB Support

by Marco Chiappetta - Wed, Aug 05, 2020

Samsung just announced the brand-new Galaxy Note 20 and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, along with a host of additional wearable and tablet products, at its latest Galaxy Unpacked Event. The new Galaxy Note 20s bring with them an array of enhancements and improvements over previous generation offerings -- including even the current flagship Samsung Galaxy S20 -- like a faster processing platform, camera and video recording updates, Ultra Wide Band wireless support and deeper Microsoft app integration, among many other features. The new Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra are both built around Qualcomm’s...

ASUS ROG Phone 3 Review: Fastest Android On The Planet

by Paul Lilly - Tue, Aug 04, 2020

Since its inception, ASUS has gone the extra mile to bill the ROG Phone as a gaming-first smartphone, and not simply another high-end handset with a flagship processor and fast refresh rate. Now in its third iteration, the ROG Phone 3 takes what we liked about the previous two models and improves upon the brand's gaming-oriented features, to enhance the experience even further. And yes, it's also delightfully fast, armed with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Plus 5G SoC that ASUS claims gives the ROG Phone 3 a double-digit (10 percent) performance advantage over top-shelf phones rocking a regular...

OnePlus Nord Review: Excellent 5G Android Phone, Great Value

by Myriam Joire - Mon, Jul 27, 2020

It’s hard to believe that OnePlus is already six years old. The company’s all grown up now. You can find the OnePlus 8 in T-Mobile and Verizon stores, and the OnePlus 8 Pro competes directly with the best flagships from Apple and Samsung. But this has come at a price -- literally. With the OnePlus 8 costing $699+ and the OnePlus 8 Pro $899+, OnePlus is no longer first and foremost a price leader -- especially in fiercely competitive markets like Europe and India. And now there's the OnePlus Nord. In an outstanding example of masterful marketing, the company has spent months building...

OnePlus Buds Review: Great Sound, Battery Life And Price

by Myriam Joire - Fri, Jul 24, 2020

If there’s still any doubt that truly wireless earbuds are a thing, let us introduce you, dear reader, to the second wave -- exemplified by the OnePlus Buds. See, the first wave really took off when Apple introduced the original AirPods -- meh sound, OK battery life, high price. The focus was on convenience, reliability, and calls. Other major brands followed suit, like Samsung, Sony, Jabra, Amazon, Microsoft, and most recently Google -- some offering special features like long battery life, or active noise cancellation, or tight AI assistant integration. You either spent upwards to $200...

ASUS ROG Phone 3 Hands-On Preview: The Fastest Android On The Planet

by Dave Altavilla - Wed, Jul 22, 2020

If you're a mobile gaming enthusiast, you're likely going to be in your happy place this morning. ASUS has just announced the third coming of its ROG Phone, aptly named the ROG Phone 3. Hailing from the ASUS Republic Of Gamers line of products, everything about this new mobile beast is dialed in for serious gaming, from its 6.59-inch 144 Hz OLED display to Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 865 Plus mobile platform that powers it for measurable gains in performance. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 865 Plus has both goosed-up CPU and Adreno 650 GPU clocks, in a specially-binned octal core SoC that scales up to 3.1GHz....

Sony Xperia 1 II Review: A Beautiful Phone With Caveats

by Myriam Joire - Mon, Jul 20, 2020

Depending on your age and background, the Sony brand might be synonymous with Bravia TVs, Alpha cameras, PlayStation game consoles, or even Walkman audio players. And you’d be right in thinking that way, but did you know Sony also makes Xperia smartphones, and even sells them in the US? Well, it’s true. Sony's Android handsets also often include features found in the company’s TVs, cameras, game consoles, and audio players. They’re always quite premium, differentiated in a unique way, and always very "Sony".  However, for years now, Sony has struggled to stand out in...

Dell XPS 15 9500 Review: A Case Study In Laptop Excellence

by Paul Lilly - Thu, Jul 02, 2020

Remember when Coca-Cola reformulated its popular soft drink in the mid 1980s? The so-called New Coke formula barely lasted a few months before it failed and the original was brought back. The company already had a good thing on its hands and it was a valuable real-world lesson in not trying to reinvent the wheel when the one you have spins well. On the surface, soft drinks and laptops like Dell's new for 2020 XPS 15 9500 don't have anything in common, so why bring it up? Generally speaking, this concept also applies to what Dell has done with its XPS 15 series of laptops, or not done, as the case...

Samsung Galaxy Tab Active Pro Review: A Rugged Battery Life Champ

by Ben Funk - Thu, Jun 25, 2020

Personal electronics take quite a beating. Think for a moment about all the places your smartphone can end up: on top of the car, buried in a bag, shoved into a pocket along with keys, tossed on a seat where it may bounce off and hit the floor, and so many other situations. Just like a phone, a tablet can end up in a lot of those same places, too. Environmental factors come in to play for users who are active as well, be it in a delivery vehicle, on a factory floor, or as a first responder in a vehicle. In those situations, the peace of mind brought by paying for extra-durable devices can be totally...

Nubia RedMagic 5G Review: An Unruly Android Gaming Beast

by Myriam Joire - Tue, Jun 23, 2020

For better or for worse, gaming phones are a thing. What started out as a trickle of pricey, specialized handsets from established gaming brands like Razer and Asus ROG has turned into a steady stream of affordable, tricked out smartphones from Chinese sub-brands like Xiaomi’s Black Shark and Nubia’s RedMagic. Which brings us to today’s review of the Snapdragon 865-equipped RedMagic 5G ($579) -- a 5G handset that undercuts the OnePlus 8 ($699) yet offers similar features and a blazing fast 144Hz AMOLED display. If you’re not familiar with Nubia, it started out as a...

ASUS TUF Gaming A15 Review: Ryzen Power With GeForce RTX Pop

by Ben Funk - Fri, Jun 12, 2020

It's official: from what we've seen so far, AMD's Ryzen 4000 series of mobile APUs are a hit here in the HotHardware labs. It started with the svelte ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 gaming notebook, which impressed us with excellent performance at a reasonable price point, all packed into a lightweight 2.7-pound 14" chassis. After that came the Dell G5 15 SE, which brought together Ryzen and Radeon in an exclusive (for now) combination with similarly excellent performance and an even lower, more entry-level starting price. Talk about a strong showing for AMD yet again, with both Ryzen 4000 and Radeon RX...

Dell XPS 17 9700 Review: The 17-Inch Laptop Gold Standard

by Chris Goetting - Tue, Jun 09, 2020

Dell’s premium XPS family of notebooks is growing, literally. The company recently announced the all-new XPS 17, and as the name implies, this new Dell laptop features a spacious – and gorgeous – 17-inch display. It also features the updated design language introduced with the company’s redesigned XPS 13 9380, and the new 2020 XPS 15 9500 carries that DNA as well. A 17-inch laptop may sound cumbersome to some folks that might travel a lot with their notebook. Fortunately, Dell did more than simply scale up the previous generation XPS 15. The new design language features...

AI Benchmarks For Mobile Devices And What You Should Know

by Dave Altavilla, Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Jun 02, 2020

Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are hot topics in virtually all tech sectors at this moment in time. The technology is gaining traction in many industries, from massive social networks that are analyzing mountains of data, to the tiniest of IoT smart home and mobile devices. Even during our everyday workflow here at HotHardware, we currently utilize a few key AI-enabled applications to enhance our content. Further, if you’ve ever talked to a smartphone for speech-to-text messaging or for Google Assistant recommendations, AI has impacted your connected experiences as well. For...

Samsung Galaxy Book S Review: Thin, Sleek, Big Battery Life

by Ben Funk - Fri, May 29, 2020

Always-on, always-connected PCs like the Samsung Galaxy Book S -- the kind of machines that are ready to go first thing in the morning and last all day and night, while never losing an internet connection thanks to cellular connectivity -- are a potential game changer for some users. Manufacturers have tried to make this happen with tablets, but haven't entirely been successful. Half-computers like the iPad Pro may have been "blessed" with $300 keyboards, but iPadOS can be pretty limiting for real work. This seems like a job for full-blown Windows and a proper clamshell, but x86 notebooks...

Lenovo Yoga C940 Review: A Great Ice Lake 2-In-1 Laptop

by Ben Funk - Wed, May 27, 2020

Variety is the spice of life. Nobody would be happy with just one flavor of ice cream, a single car, or the monotony of a single video game. Thankfully, we don't live in a world like that, so even premium 2-in-1 laptops come in all sizes, shapes, and colors. Today we're going to take a look at Lenovo's Yoga C940 convertible notebook, which is a bit different than some of the other foldable computers we have evaluated over the last few months. You see, the C940 is one of the bigger convertibles around. It's got a full 14-inch display and ample bezels, all of which make it larger than the Dell XPS...

Dell G5 15 SE: Testing AMD Radeon Vega 7 Integrated Graphics

by Ben Funk - Mon, May 25, 2020

When we reviewed the Dell G5 15 SE, an all-AMD gaming laptop that features an AMD Ryzen 7 4800H processor and a Navi-based Radeon RX 5600M, we didn't have a chance to dive into integrated graphics performance. The gaming battery life with powerful discrete graphics left something to be desired of course—the system lasted just an hour on battery with a gaming workload—but bypassing the discrete GPU should give a bit more time away from the wall socket. Folks wanted to know how this integrated AMD GPU performs, and come to think of it, so did we. So now it's time to find out.  If...

Dell G5 15 SE Laptop Review: All-AMD Gaming With SmartShift

by Ben Funk - Thu, May 21, 2020

AMD is in an enviable position in the gaming laptop world. Not only does the red team arguably produce some of the fastest mainstream mobile CPUs around in its Ryzen 4000 series, there's also formidable graphics horsepower in the same camp. As a result, AMD can control the whole platform, hardware and driver stack in a PC with its CPU, GPU, and accompanying chipset, if a manufacturer chooses to use those components. The first of these gaming laptops to hit the lab with an all-AMD bent comes from Dell. The G5 15 SE launches today with a feature set, performance target, and price point that makes...

TCL 10 Pro And 10L Review: Sleek, Budget-Friendly Androids

by Myriam Joire - Fri, May 15, 2020

What do the Alcatel, BlackBerry, and Palm smartphone brands all have in common? They’re all owned by Chinese electronics giant TCL -- which also manufactures products under the RCA brand in the US. TCL is best known for its stratospheric rise in the TV business, where it regularly battles with LG for second place in terms of number of TVs shipped globally (Samsung being number one). It also designs and manufactures its own display panels, unlike many other TV brands, which is no small feat. Anyway, back to smartphones... Alcatel makes budget phones sold by various carriers and MVNOs -- mostly...

Google Pixel Buds 2 Review: A Triumphant Second Coming

by Myriam Joire - Tue, May 12, 2020

True wireless earbuds are all the rage these days, and with many phones lacking a headphone jack, it’s really no surprise. You can mostly blame Apple for the missing port, but you can also thank them for giving the entire industry a reason to copy the AirPods. And Google is finally in the game. See, the first Pixel Buds, which were neckbuds, were a bust back in 2017. So, we were pretty excited when Google announced these new, true wireless earbuds last October. And in terms of first impressions, the $180 Pixel Buds 2 deliver. Google Pixel Buds 2 Design Picture an egg. Now imagine you...

Oppo Find X2 Pro Review: Powerful, Super-Premium, Pricey

by Myriam Joire - Fri, May 08, 2020

As a HotHardware reader, we’re pretty sure you’ve heard of Oppo before. But if you live in the US and don't follow the latest developments in mobile technology, it’s possible you’re not (yet) familiar with the brand -- unless you’re a hard-core A/V geek and remember the company’s critically acclaimed range of upscaling DVD and Blu-Ray players from the mid-2000s. What you also may not know is that in 2019, Oppo was the top smartphone brand in China and was number 5 worldwide. And if that doesn’t get your attention, Oppo is a subsidiary of BBK Electronics,...

iPhone SE 2020 Review: Apple's Latest Value Play Impresses

by Ben Funk - Tue, May 05, 2020

Apple seems like a company divided these days. While the technology juggernaut's Mac lineup continually stagnates between long-overdue updates, Cupertino's iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch families march ahead to a yearly cadence of updated designs, new features, and enhanced performance. It's almost like Apple is really two different companies—one that produces the latest in personal electronics, and another that takes long naps as the PC market passes it by. At any rate, older iPhone designs also stick around, to serve additional market segments. Last September's iPhone 11 release merely relegated...

Moto Edge+ Review: Gorgeous But Living On The Edge (Of 5G)

by Myriam Joire - Thu, Apr 30, 2020

Here’s a question for you: what’s Motorola’s most recent flagship phone? Take your time, we’ll wait... Perhaps the lovely Moto X from 2013 comes to mind, or the Moto X 2nd gen, or even the Moto X Pure/Style? Or maybe you’ll recall the Moto Z and Moto Mods? We’re here to tell you that, technically, Moto’s most recent flagship was the Z2 Force back in 2017. Yes, there was a Moto Z3, but it came with a Snapdragon 835 back when the 845 was still king. And while Moto eventually made an X4 and Z4, these were mid-range phones. So, needless to say, Moto’s...