Google’s virtual museum tours tell you more about the art

Google has built tools to explore art since 2011, when it began uploading gigapixel images of classic pieces. The tech titan introduced museum floor plans and walking tour info to Google Maps as well as its Art and Culture app, released last July, to dive deep into collections. Now the search giant is combining all those efforts, adding annotations to famous works seen in Street View to give users on digital tours of museums all the artistic context shown to folks walking around the actual institution.

As the video demonstrates, just pop open Google Maps and navigate to an institution with walking tours to find clearly-marked pieces with uploaded context, along with hyperlinks out for further information. Google used its machine learning systems to visually recognize annotations, but only pieces from participating museums are included, amounting to 15,000 works worldwide. Still, it’s bringing remote users that much closer to art they might never witness with their own eyes.

Source: Google

App Highlight: The Little Ball That Could

The App

Developed by NaissusWorks, The Little Ball That Could is a new app with only around 500 installs. Having been updated on May 23, 2017, the developer is constantly fixing various bugs with the latest update fixing a number of issues users were experiencing in a few levels. The Little Ball That Could is a roll the ball type platform game that has taken inspiration from titles such as Marble Madness, Super Monkey Ball, Manic Marble, Marble Blast and Hamster Ball.

What it does

You have to roll the ball as fast as you can to the end of the level while avoiding various traps such as spikes, portals, and lasers. With 120 levels spread across 5 worlds, there is a ton of challenges to test your speed and precision. The more you play the more you unlock with new skins and new ball types that will change the way you play the game.

The Little Ball That Could has the following features:
• Roll the ball through 5 worlds and 120 large levels, each containing a maze of twisty paths and giving you three tasks to perform.
• Test your speed, precision and curiosity without frustration – the checkpoint system will help you out with that nasty platform, and you can skip the level if you feel puzzled and just can’t escape the room with spike fields.
• Unlock beautiful marble skins using puzzle pieces, and if you are up for a challenge, win fun ball types that will let you play the game in radically different ways.
• Experience the best platforming action with our tight and responsive controls – you’ll have a blast whether you prefer to play using touch controls, tilt or physical controllers.
• Push the limits of your phone with our high-definition, console-grade 3D graphics, or reduce the level of detail to get better performance and battery life.
• Listen to our awesome soundtrack that includes nine piano-driven melodies and an original music piece specifically created for TLBTC.

Why we like it

I love games that you can just pick up and play, and this is a perfect example of one of those puzzle games. It takes a concept that is familiar with bigger titles and builds on it by adding further challenges to make it even more challenging. The controls could do with some work as they can be frustrating sometimes, but otherwise with the improvements the developer has made in the latest update, this one is definitely a game to try out.

How to get it

The Little Ball That Could is available for free from the Google Play Store. You can download it right here.

Review: Invisible Defender Full Coverage Screen Protector for the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus

As I sit here staring at my beautiful new Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus, I’m a bit worried. You see, this thing is all glass. Well, maybe not entirely glass, but enough to worry me. We’ve already been treated to the news that the S8 and S8 Plus are the most fragile phones on the market. There’s also some buzz going around about how easy Gorilla Glass 5, the glass that sits on both the front and the back of the Galaxy S8, is to scratch.

So, I basically have an $850 piece of glass that if I breathe on it wrong it’ll scratch, shatter, or in some other way be destroyed. But, at least this one won’t blow up from the inside, I suppose.

Invisible Defender

Recently, Ringke reached out with an offer to take a look at some of its accessories for the Galaxy S8 Plus and I took them up on it immediately. I’ll touch on the cases it sent over in a later post, but the first thing I (or rather, my wife who has much steadier hands than me) put on my phone was the Invisible Defender screen protector.

Just to get this out of the way early, I’m a screen protector snob. I generally hate them and the ONLY ones that that ever reach my phone’s screen are tempered glass. I generally hate how plastic screen protectors feel, the grease that collects on them and how they can get deep grooves in them easily. While some of my frustrations bare out with the plastic Invisible Shield, there are more positives than negatives.

First off, this is one of the only screen protectors on the market that covers the entire curved screen of the Galaxy S8 Plus. Not only does it cover the entire curve of the display, it wraps around to the back of the device and covers a few centimeters of the back too. It’s not enough to prove the back of the device any kind of real protection, but we have cases for that, right? The only part of the display the screen protector not covered are the cutouts for the sensors and cameras and a very small sliver at the bottom.

The reason that Ringke decided to cut out the screen protector around the sensors and camera instead of covering them up is, in my opinion, because the screen protector really holds onto a lot of dirt and grease that can interfere with these sensors. I’m really not a fan of how much grease ends up on my screen now with the screen protector on it. The S8 was pretty bad about holding onto grease before, but this is even worse. If you don’t mind wiping off your screen several times a day then you’re golden. I suppose it’s just the price you pay for keeping your screen scratch free.

I don’t expect the Invisible Defender to hold up for the life of my phone. After a few days it’s pretty deeply scratched and dented. Luckily, these scratches and dents aren’t on my actual display so, there’s that. Plus, these things are cheap enough ($12 at the time of publishing) to replace it once a month for almost two years still not equal the cost of replacing your screen.

The single biggest thing I was surprised by was the complete lack of added friction after applying the Invisible Defender. Normally, these types of screen protectors add a ton of friction and make the screen much less enjoyable to use. Except for the big potholes in the screen protector, it was hard to tell the difference to the touch between the regular display and the screen protector. I definitely count that as a win.

Conclusion

Look, nothing is perfect. There are going to be tradeoffs when you add an accessory to your phone. If you’re looking for more protection, you’ll add bulk. If you’re looking to keep your screen scratch free, you’ll need to invest in one of these screen protectors. It changes the experience you have with your phone, but if you’re all about protecting your investment long term, I would definitely recommend the Invisible Defender.

You can grab the Ringke Invisible Defender for the Samsung Galaxy S8 or Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus over on Amazon.

App Highlight: Custom Navigation Bar

The App

Developed by paphonb, Custom Navigation Bar is a new app with only around 10,000 installs. Having been updated on May 30, 2017, the developer is constantly fixing various bugs with the latest update improving the startup time and adding more button icons. Custom Navigation Bar brings Android O’s customization features to any Android N device.

What it does

Android O adds the ability to customize the nav bar but with Custom Navigation Bar you can get that right now on your device. The app allows you to add custom buttons to your existing nav bar. The best bit is, no root access is required.

Features:
– Add custom buttons to your navigation bar
– Customizable navbar layout
– Tasker integration for contextual navbar
– Easy to setup
– No root or xposed required

Be aware you will need a PC to grant a custom permission via ADB to allow the app to work.

Why we like it

I used the app on my Galaxy S8 to put an extra camera icon to quick launch the camera app in the nav bar. It worked flawlessly and put to use some of that wasted black space. The only hurdle, and it is a small one, is granting the permission via ADB. Once that is set up, you’re good to go and you only have to do it once. It’s a small price to pay to not have to root your device.

How to get it

Custom Navigation Bar is available for free from the Google Play Store. You can download it right here.

Sony Xperia XZ Premium first impressions

The Sony Xperia XZ Premium was announced back in February during MWC 2017, but the phone is just now going up for pre-order in various markets around the world, like in the US on June 12. We will have a full review shortly, but while in Taipei for Computex 2017, I was lucky enough to be able to spend some time with Sony’s latest flagship. Here are my first impressions about the Sony Xperia XZ Premium!

Starting off with the design, the Xperia XZ Premium does feel a touch too big, despite featuring a 5.5-inch display. The display doesn’t feel too large given what other OEMs are doing with smartphone designs nowadays, though the top, bottom, and side bezels around the display make the phone feel chunkier than it needs to be. It certainly appears as though Sony doesn’t really know how to make their devices compact. Plus, with the current focus on bezel-less designs, this could be a letdown for some.

The unit I’m using features a blue hue that shines through the metal and glass construction, and the finish is also very glossy. While that allows for a nice mirror-like effect, it also makes it a huge fingerprint magnet. It will take some work to keep the phone in a pristine state. It is definitely a great looking phone though, even if handling takes a bit of a hit because of its size.

Part of why it’s a great looking phone is because of the 5.5-inch display, which comes with an incredible 4K resolution and HDR capabilities. I’ll dive into the display capabilities more in the full review. However, one thing I can say now is that the resolution makes everything look incredibly sharp.

One thing I did notice was that the display settings includes a few options to change the coloration of the screen. These include a Super Vivid mode that really bumps up the saturation, and there is also an sRGB mode if you’re looking for more accurate color reproduction.

The 19 MP rear shooter is definitely one of the marquee features of this phone. Not only is it capable of recording slow motion video at 960 fps (which I’m really excited to try out), but the quality of the pictures and videos the phone is able to capture are incredible as well. I’ve been using the camera a lot of vlogging and to take a lot of pictures around Taipei.

Recording video is something I’ve been particularly happy with so far. Color reproduction looks great, there’s a lot of detail in each video, and the Steady Shot set to Intelligent Active mode does a good job of making sure that my jitters aren’t showing up on the screen. And if there is one thing I’m always going to love about Sony Xperia smartphones, it is the availability of the physical camera shutter button on the side.

If there is one negative about the camera experience so far, it has to do with the camera interface. Navigating around the camera app is a bit cumbersome at the moment, mainly because the features you’d normally want to quickly access are hidden in different mode selection menus. For example, to record a video, you have to slide over to enter video mode, or open the mode selection screen just to get to 4K video. These are a few too many steps in my opinion.

The rest of the specifications of the Xperia XZ Premium include the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, 4 GB of RAM, 64 GB of built-in storage that is further expandable via microSD card, and Android 7.1 Nougat out of the box. The phone comes with a 3,230 mAh battery that is backed by Quick Charge 3.0 and an adaptive charging layer on top of that so you should be able to get back to a full charge very quickly. Finally, the device also features an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance.

The software experience on the Xperia XZ Premium is extremely smooth and snappy. I have yet to see any type of lag or stutter when navigating through various applications, or when using the camera.

 

I think the design of the Xperia XZ Premium shows that Sony is set in its ways when it comes to designing smartphones. But while the design may seem a bit dated at this point, the impressive specifications make this phone a solid competitor in the current flagship space.

A 4K screen means that you could be getting one of the best smartphone display experiences around, especially with everything that Sony packs into their Triluminos display. There is also the excellent camera with the 960 fps slow motion recording capabilities, various Intelligent modes, and a dedicated camera shutter button that will make for a great shutterbug companion.

Stay tuned with Android Authority for the comprehensive review of the Sony Xperia XZ Premium!

Google beefs up Gmail security to fight phishing attempts

Google has just added a bunch of new security features in order to protect Gmail users from spam and phishing messages.

Though they didn’t say as much, the bumped-up protection is likely in response to the phishing scam that went around earlier this month. The attack peddled a bogus Google Docs file in attempts to gain access to users’ Gmail accounts. Google took measures to boost its security shortly after the incident, but the features announced today go even further.

First, Google has implemented a machine learning model to keep spam out of your inbox and to better detect phishing messages. The company estimates that between 50 and 70 percent of Gmail messages are spam and the new system blocks them with 99.9 percent accuracy. The machine learning system works with Google Safe Browsing to selectively delay emails (less than 0.05 percent of them) for added phishing analyses. It then generates URL click-time warnings for suspicious links.

Additionally, G Suite users trying to reply to someone outside of their company will get a warning asking if they really want to send the message. But users’ existing and regular contacts will be picked up by Gmail so you’re not bugged with excessive warnings.

Finally, Google also announced improved detection of malicious attachments in order to keep out sneaky ransomware and malware pushes, saying, maybe a little dramatically, “While the bad guys never rest, neither do we.”

Source: Google

The world’s largest aircraft prepares for testing

We last heard about the Stratolaunch in August 2015, when Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s company Stratolaunch Systems announced plans for test flights with the massive airplane meant to help launch satellite-bearing rockets more efficiently. Those test flights apparently didn’t happen, but Allen did tweet a picture of the huge aircraft coming out of its equally gigantic hangar today for “fuel testing.”

The Stratolaunch is the largest all-composite plane ever built, with six Boeing 74 engines, a payload capacity of over 500,000 pounds and a functional range of around 2,000 nautical miles. The idea is to attach rockets to the center of the craft and then let them perform an airborne launch, which minimizes the amount of fuel they need and will help rockets take off in inclement weather. The plane itself is being made by famed aerospace engineer Burt Rutan’s company, Scaled Composites, at the Mojave Air and Space Port in the California desert with plans to be fully operational “by the end of this decade.”

.@Stratolaunch came out of the hangar for fuel testing. More pictures soon! pic.twitter.com/RCNgSpgG6W

— Paul Allen (@PaulGAllen) May 31, 2017

Source: Paul Allen/Twitter

CrowdJustice, a Kickstarter for public interest lawsuits, has landed in the U.S.

Why it matters to you

This innovative crowdfunding site wants to make it easier to hold the powerful to account.

Like a mashup of Change.org, Kickstarter and, um, the law, CrowdJustice is a U.K.-based startup that applies the crowdfunding model to public interest legal cases which might otherwise struggle to secure the necessary financial support.

Having launched a couple of years ago, this week CrowdJustice announced that it has secured $2 million in funding to bring its unique brand of crowd-backed justice to the United States.

“We are expanding from the U.K., where we launched in 2015, to the U.S., where accessing the legal system and using the law as a tool to defend and protect rights — and hold the government to account — has never been more important,” founder Julia Salasky, an ex-United Nations lawyer turned tech entrepreneur, told Digital Trends.

“The truth is that the law is not accessible to most people, and particularly for legal cases that engage social justice issues, where the law can be a powerful tool for change, the barriers to entry can be high,” Salasky continued. “CrowdJustice helps democratize the law so that it becomes a social good that is available not just in theory, but in practice.”

Cases which can be used to raise funding on CrowdJustice may be anything from small local issues to larger, far more complex ones, such as mass surveillance or the use of torture. CrowdJustice has a team of experts on staff who make sure that a qualified lawyer is engaged for each campaign, as well as ensuring that the money is put to good use. So far, its campaigns have raised $3.5 million in total.

“What’s been really powerful is seeing thousands and thousands of people coming together around legal issues — often interfacing with the law for the first time,” Salasky said. “We are excited to now be in the U.S., and to have the opportunity to give people a practical and powerful way to access the law — and to make a difference.”

YouTube moves navigation bar to bottom in redesign for Android app

Why it matters to you

If you’re an Android user, the new YouTube update should create a more comfortable browsing experience.

After months of testing, YouTube has officially rolled out a redesigned layout for its Android’s app. The navigation tabs, which used to live at the top of the screen, have moved to the bottom.

The navigation bar includes the standard home, trending, and subscriptions tabs, but the new design replaced the Accounts tab with Library. The Library tab still tracks your activity such as history, playlists, uploads, and likes. Your account settings can now be accessed by clicking on the user icon in the right-hand corner, next to the cast and search icons.

The main three tabs still serve the same purposes: The home screen brings you to a feed of recent uploads from channels you’re subscribed to, as well as recommended videos based on your viewing history; the trending tab gives you access to videos that are new and currently popular; and the subscriptions tab shows videos and posts from your subscribed channels. Clicking on the user icon, you’re brought to your channel, notifications, settings, and the option to switch between different accounts.

YouTube iOS app.

Even though it no longer allows you to swipe through different sections, the tabs now save where you left off scrolling so you won’t lose your spot as you switch back and forth on the app. The redesign also includes a minor switch in color scheme with the navigation bar in white, and the action bar (top bar) and highlighted tabs in red.

The new interface is almost the same as the YouTube app for iOS devices, where the only difference is an “Activity” tab which tracks all your notifications in one section.

As smartphone screens become commonly bigger in size, the new interface is meant to help improve the navigation process — giving you quicker and more comfortable access when holding your phone.

The bottom navigation redesign has been available on iOS for some time, but the update is now gradually rolling out to Android.

AVADirect Avant Midsize Gaming Desktop review

Research Center:
AVADirect Avant Mid-Size Dekstop

Buying a gaming desktop is tricky. The market is an odd one, ranging from small set-top machines that can fit in an entertainment center beside a PS4 or Xbox One, to towering desktops humming with power.

Somewhere between those two extremes is the AVADirect Avant Gaming Desktop. It’s just one of many put out by manufacturer AVADirect, from whom customers can order any manner of personally customized machines. Our review unit arrived with an Intel Core i7-7700K processor, 64GB of RAM, and two Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards running in SLI, all packed neatly into an airy case filled with customizable lighting.

How is this desktop different from any other high-end gaming behemoth? Well, AVADirect isn’t so much a computer manufacturer as it is a computer assembler. All of the Avant’s components, including the case, can be purchased separately. Add them all up, and AVADirect’s total price comes out to about $3,850. That’s a lot, but it’s less than you might pay elsewhere.

Wide load

Most gaming PC cases are large, tall, slender obelisks thrumming with barely contained power. Just look at the Falcon Northwest Mach V or Digital Storm Velox, both of these PCs are towering monuments to PC gaming. The AVADirect Avant has similar dimensions, but it’s wider. It’s almost a cube, which is a bit odd at first, but there’s a good reason for the extra size. Inside, the case is luxuriantly large.

Moving on to aesthetics, the Avant is a handsome computer, even if it does take up a lot of real estate. The internals are lit up by a pair of LED strips along the top and bottom of the case, and the fans are also LED-lit, along with the twin Nvidia GeForce GTX logos on the dual 1080 Ti graphics cards.

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

The lighting is a bit tricky to customize, since the internal lights on the motherboard are controlled separately from the light on the cooling block, which is controlled separately from the lights on the graphics cards, which are controlled separately from the lights in the case itself.

Plus, the two graphics cards and their green-glowing GeForce GTX logos can’t be changed, and neither can the red lighting on the EVGA SLI bridge, or the blue lighting in the front, top and back-side fans. It’s not a big deal, but these static lights can clash with some lighting schemes, so your best bet is just to set everything to blue or blue-green. Even then, achieving any kind of uniformity is impossible without disabling some or all of the lighting.

Other manufacturers like Alienware, Origin, or Falcon Northwest, all provide a certain level of build-quality that’s just absent here. The AVADirect looks nice, but it lacks the polish and craftsmanship you’d get from a custom chassis. In fact, almost everything offered by AVADirect could be replicated by simply hitting up Newegg and ordering all the components yourself.

Everything but the kitchen sink

Despite its unusual size, the AVADirect Avant has a very standard array of ports. The front-side of the case, a Corsair Carbide Series Air 540, features two USB ports and frontal headphone and microphone jacks.

On the back, the Asus ROG Strix motherboard features five USB ports, one USB Type-C port, an HDMI port, a DisplayPort, an Ethernet jack, a DVI port, and of course a PS/2 port for anyone who prefers a classic touch.

AVADirect Avant Mid-Size Dekstop Compared To

MSI Trident 9S6-B90611-02S

Digital Storm Velox (Kaby Lake)

Cybertron CLX Ra

Lenovo Ideacentre Y900

Acer Predator G1

Alienware Alpha R2

Falcon Northwest Mach V (2016)

Digital Storm Aventum 3

AVADirect Avant gaming desktop

Acer Predator G6

iBuyPower Revolt 2 Pro

AVADirect Z170

Maingear X-Cube Z170

Origin PC Omega

Falcon Northwest Tiki (2015)

These days, optical drives are becoming less and less common on mobile computers, but on desktops like the Avant they are still alive and well. Our review unit featured a Blu-Ray disc burner, and room for at least three more if you handle a lot of physical backup files.

The Asus ROG Strix motherboard also features two coax connections for Wi-Fi antennae, but during our tests connectivity was never an issue using the on-board Wi-Fi without them. Still, it’s a nice option to have in case your Wi-Fi is unreliable, or if your router is in a weird location.

Bigger on the inside

So, how about those internals? Well, as we mentioned before, the Corsair case is very spacious inside. Like a big luxury SUV, the Avant looks a bit overlarge on the outside, but once you get in there and have a look around, it all makes sense. There’s so much room to breathe, to just stretch your legs out and lean back. You could set up a whole living room in this thing.

It’s so well laid out that removing hardware can be done without moving even a single cable out of the way, aside from unplugging the component you’re removing.

These are just more examples of what you sacrifice by foregoing a custom-made chassis for something off-the-shelf.

This feat is accomplished, in part, by a secret compartment inside the case, which is partitioned almost right down the middle. On one side the Avant puts all its glowy bits on full display behind a plastic window. On the other side, behind solid metal, the power supply and Blu-Ray drives hide among the cables.

Both sides are accessible via removable side-panels, which makes moving components around, or fiddling with cord management, easy. That’s an important point, because gaming desktops like the Avant are designed to last a long time. Parts will be swapped out for replacements, upgrades, or the occasional deep-cleaning with a can of compressed air. An accessible case takes the headache out of these routine maintenance tasks.

Plus, there are two hot-swap bays on the floor of the case where the hard drive rests comfortably. It’s tucked out of the way, with a vacant bay right beside it, so expanding beyond the included storage capacity is a breeze.

There are two big fans on the back of the case, two on top just above the liquid-cooling radiator, and two hiding under the front-side grille. The fans kicked up a bit while running our game benchmarks, but they were never loud enough to drown out even quiet conversation, and the entire machine kept cool.

When inspecting the interior lighting with the case panels off we noticed the top, side, and bottom LED strips were not well secured. The strip was peeling up at the end, and appeared to be hot-glued or stuck down with flimsy adhesive. It’s also worth pointing out that the lighting here is just a standard LED strip you could pick up on Amazon.

Is it a deal-breaker? No, not at all. In fact, during use you might not even notice that these fine details are a little lacking. But, these are just more examples of what you sacrifice by foregoing a custom-made chassis for something off-the-shelf.

Unlocked vs Overclocked

The Intel Core i7-7700K purring away inside the Avant’s generous interior is a very quick and capable processor. It features an unlocked multiplier, meaning it’s ready for overclocking — though this particular review unit was not overclocked. It’s a reliable performer all-around, and it’s built on Intel’s latest 7th-generation “Kaby Lake” architecture, meaning it’s one of the newest chips on the market as of this writing.

It’s one of the chips we test most frequently, along with the pared-down versions used in laptops, and it’s good to see that the i7-7700K inside the AVADirect Avant is just as quick as it should be. For instance, it’s only barely outperformed by the Digital Storm Velox, and its overclocked Intel Core i7-7700K, in our benchmarks.

Looking at single-core Geekbench scores, the Velox took the lead with its 5.0GHz overclocked CPU, while the stock Intel Core i7-6950X — a ten core monster — came in just behind both the Velox and Avant. On multi-core scores, there’s only one key difference — the i7-6950X takes the lead by a big margin, thanks to its 10 physical cores and 20 threads. It’s only natural that it would handily defeat both the i7-7700K chips, with or without a solid overclock.

Moving on to a real-world test, the results are very similar to what we saw earlier. When encoding a 4K video file using Handbrake, the Avant and Velox both took around five minutes to complete the encode, which isn’t bad at all. Only the Cybertron CLX Ra, a gaming PC using an overclocked i7-6950X, finished encoding the same file in under three minutes.

For a look at how a more modest processor performs on this test, we included the Acer Predator G1, a less expensive gaming rig running an Intel Core i7-6700. It’s a quick, and common mid-range processor, and it took around seven and a half minutes to finish the 4K encoding.

Swift storage

The AVADirect Avant featured two hard drives, a 256GB solid-state drive, and a 1TB traditional hard disk drive. As is usually the case here, the SSD performed beautifully, with read and write speeds that kept the Avant rolling along, even while moving big files around. On the other hand, the 1TB hard disk was a lot slower, but that’s not uncommon. Mechanical drives of that size are typically best suited to long-term storage, and that’s definitely the case here.

Comparing its quickest storage option, the 256GB SSD, the Avant comes in very near the top of the heap in our benchmarks. Its read speed was 2,013 megabytes per second, and its write speed was an equally impressive 1,414MB/s.

Compared to the Digital Storm Velox, Cybertron CLX Ra, and Acer Predator G1, the Avant came in second on both tests — but barely. Only the Cybertron pushed past the Avant, in raw hard drive speed, and that’s a system that comes in at about $5,500, to the Avant’s $3,800.

Two cards are better than one, sort of

The AVADirect Avant’s headline feature is undoubtedly its GPU setup. This is a high-end desktop, with two high-end graphics cards running in unison, and it shows. The twin Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti setup provides an unbelievable amount of horsepower, VRAM, and performance, without any real drawbacks aside from price.

After digging into a few games it became clear that the SLI setup in the Avant was just chewing them up and spitting them out, and barely breaking a sweat even at ultra-high settings on 1440p.

Starting with 3DMark results, both the Digital Storm Velox and AVADirect Avant absolutely killed it with their SLI setups, performing within inches of each other in all three tests, despite the slight gulf between their respective horsepower — the Velox features twin GTX1080 graphics cards, while the Avant boasts twin 1080 Ti graphics cards.

Either way, both machines easily eclipsed the single-GPU setup in our test rig — a desktop running an MSI Armor GTX 1080 Ti, and an Intel Core i7-6950X.

All in all, the real question here centers on the Avant’s dual GPU setup. Is an SLI rig worth the money? Looking at our results, the answer isn’t quite as clear as we’d hoped.

In CPU-heavy games like Civilization VI, the benefits of having two GPUs chained together inside the Avant aren’t very apparent. Sure, both the Velox and the Avant outperform our single-GPU test rig, but by a very narrow margin.  In fact, the Velox’s overclocked Intel Core i7-7700K had nearly as great an effect on the results as the second GPU did looking at 1080p performance.

Is an SLI rig worth the money? Looking at our results, the answer isn’t quite as clear as we’d hoped.

Moving on to a more graphically demanding game, Battlefield 1, the results are still a bit unclear. The Digital Storm Velox hit 98 frames per second on average, at 1440p and ultra-high settings, while the Avant hit 143 FPS on the same settings at 1440p. That’s a sizable gulf, but our test rig and its single GTX 1080 Ti hit 141 FPS on 1440p, well within striking distance of the dual-GPU setup in the Avant.

So, are there any games where having an SLI setup provides a big performance increase? Well, yes. In Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the Avant has a clear advantage over our test rig and the Digital Storm Velox, hitting 84 FPS on 1440p at ultra-high settings, while the Velox and test rig hit 77 FPS and 70 FPS respectively.

The performance gains provided by an SLI setup are clearer in For Honor, where the Avant absolutely obliterated our test rig, despite its quicker processor. Running at 1440p on the “Extreme” graphics preset, the Avant managed 150 FPS, to our test rig’s 117 FPS.

While the performance gained by chaining two GPUs together can’t be denied, not every game makes the most of a two-GPU setup, and the added cost is substantial. For instance, each Nvidia GTX GeForce 1080 Ti graphics card runs about $700.

Software

Bundled software, or the lack of it, is yet another advantage of going with a PC builder like AVADirect versus a more typical PC manufacturer like Dell. There weren’t any unwanted utilities lying in wait when we fired up the Avant, and no antivirus trials to uninstall.

Warranty

This AVADirect Avant gaming desktop comes standard with a three-year warranty covering some parts and labor, along with lifetime technical support. That’s good, as not every competitor is generous enough to offer a standard three-year warranty. Origin PC, for instance, usually sticks to a one-year warranty.

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

At checkout, users can customize just how much warranty coverage they need, but both the “Silver” and “Gold” warranty tiers cover the same periods. The Gold version offers priority service, for an extra $130.

AVADirect also provides a lifetime labor limited warranty. This means that AVADirect will not charge labor when replacing a component, no matter when the PC was purchased. Customers are still responsible for paying the price of the component and shipping, however.

Our Take

Taken as a whole, the AVADirect Avant is a killer gaming PC. It has the hardware and the horsepower necessary to stand toe-to-toe with much more expensive competitors like the Digital Storm Velox — but should you go with a more familiar brand-name? Let’s break it down.

Is there a better alternative?

Yes, but you might have to do some shopping around. This AVADirect Avant, as configured, would run you $3,850, and that’s a steal for this much computing power. The Digital Storm Velox, with nearly identical specs to the AVADirect retails for $4,305, and the Cybertron Ra comes in at $4,271 — though that price goes down to about $3,900 if you pick its less expensive case options.

While the Avant isn’t a budget PC by any measure, it does provide superb performance at a surprisingly low price. But keep in mind that competitors do come pretty close, and in some cases even match the Avant’s price when tricked out similarly.

How long will it last?

The Avant is an excellent place to start if you’re looking to buy a high-performing gaming PC that you intend to upgrade over time. This thing could easily be your personal Ship of Theseus — over time each part will likely be replaced, upgraded, or removed to suit your needs, to the point where none of the original components remain. That’s how robust this desktop is — it’s a platform you can continue to build on for years to come.

Should you buy it?

The AVADirect Avant is the next-best thing to just building a PC yourself, and it’s almost as inexpensive. By using off-the-shelf parts, AVADirect is able to make the Avant a relatively inexpensive gaming rig without compromising performance or even aesthetics. The system lacks the unique feel you’ll find at competitors, however, and build quality could be better. AVADirect’s system is more about function than form, which is understandable – but, at this price, we think many gamers will expect both.