Texture Drops Premium Pricing to $9.99 for Existing Subscribers

Texture, the digital magazine service that Apple acquired earlier this year, recently dropped its $14.99 Premium price point for existing subscribers.

Texture Premium, which allows for access to both weekly and monthly magazines, is now priced at $9.99 for all customers, new and existing.

The price change was shared in an email from Harry McCracken yesterday, and confirmed today by Texture. Texture is streamlining its pricing plans and opting to sell a single $9.99 plan instead of multiple plans.

Texture, now owned by Apple, just got cheaper. pic.twitter.com/lqEekkuDjU

— Harry McCracken (@harrymccracken) July 12, 2018

The price of Texture Premium for new customers was dropped to $9.99 some time ago, while existing customers had still been paying $14.99 per month. With the new pricing update this week, all Texture customers are now paying the lower cost for full access to all Texture content.

Prior to the pricing change for Texture Premium, Texture charged $9.99 per month for access to monthly magazines, and $14.99 per month for access to both weekly and monthly magazines, but now there’s just one plan.

For customers who may have been paying less than $9.99 due to previous promotions, pricing has not changed, and they will still get access to Texture at the lower price point.

Texture provides unlimited access to more than 200 digital magazines, including titles like People, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, GQ, Rolling Stone, National Geographic, People, Wired, and more.

Rumors have suggested that in the future, Texture will be bundled into an Apple subscription news service that will offer digital magazine content.

Tag: Texture
Discuss this article in our forums

Thanks to CERN, your next X-ray scan could be in full color

Previous

Next

1 of 3

Mars Bioimaging

Mars Bioimaging

Mars Bioimaging

Your next X-ray could be a whole lot more colorful — and you’ve got Europe’s CERN physics lab and a New Zealand startup to thank for it.

The color X-ray technology, which could help improve the field of medical diagnostics, utilizes particle-tracking technology developed for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. According to the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, it could be utilized to produce clearer, more accurate images compared to the traditional black-and-white X-rays hospital doctors have been using routinely since at least the 1930s. This should prove particularly valuable in diagnosing diseases, including cancer and heart disease, because it provides greater detail concerning the body’s chemical components.

The technology is now being commercialized in the form of a dedicated scanner by a New Zealand startup called Mars Bioimaging, which recently performed the world’s first ever color X-ray of human body parts — in this case, the ankle and wrist.

“Mars scanners use a detector that uses the color or energy information of the x-rays that traditional x-ray detectors don’t use,” Professor Phil Butler, a physicist working at New Zealand’s University of Canterbury who helped invent the Mars scanner, told Digital Trends. “This color or energy information from the x-ray, also known as spectral information, is used to distinguish different atoms or materials from each other, [such as] calcium from iodine. In addition, Mars scanners have a much smaller pixel size, meaning its possible to generate 1000x more information than existing CT systems for the same dose.”

Phil Butler co-developed the scanner with his son Anthony Butler, a radiologist and professor at the Universities of Canterbury and Otago. The technology is already available in the form of a small-bore scanner for carrying out medical research. The pair now plan to produce commercially available body part scanners for use on patients.

“There are wide applications for this technology,” Phil Butler continued. “We have already demonstrated using our small-bore system that it can be used for investigating composition of plaques that cause strokes, measuring the deterioration of cartilage, viewing bone-metal implant interfaces, and detecting small cancers in mice.”

Hopefully it won’t be long before this is a standard piece of equipment in hospitals everywhere.

Editors’ Recommendations

• X-ray laser heats water to 180,000 degrees in a fraction of a second
• The best Dolby Atmos movies, from ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ to ‘Gravity’
• Fujifilm X-H1 review
• Win an iPhone X and rep your soccer team with Speck Presidio World Grip cases
• MIT can charge implants with external wireless power from 125 feet away

Ironically, tech will save us from the horror of Cell Phone Courtesy Month

July is National Cell Phone Courtesy Month. An entire month dedicated to back-patting among those who likely already display such values, and chastising the poor saps unlucky enough to use their phone in a situation deemed inappropriate by the tech police.

It’s an almost complete waste of time. The boorish, the rude, and the cretinous will continue to use their phones in places where it’s a common courtesy not to, entirely unaware of what month it is, while the rest of us have to hear about what a societal blight we are every time we dare to look at a notification.

The good news is seismic changes in the industry itself have the potential to stop it happening from 2020 onwards, but in the meantime we could all do with adjusting our phone use a little, to make sure we don’t need similarly irksome courtesy months in the future.

Stop the hate from spreading

It’s genuinely astonishing the message still hasn’t got through to people that sometimes, it’s best to put the damn phone down. Not only have smartphones been around for more than 10 years — the iPhone launched in 2007, and they were around before then — but even National Cell Phone Courtesy Month isn’t a new idea either. It pre-dates the iPhone itself, with coverage being found online as far back as 2005.

Let’s be clear. I hate National Cell Phone Courtesy Month.

Let’s be clear. I hate National Cell Phone Courtesy Month. I hate that it has to exist at all, and I hate that there is a website where you can buy a t-shirt of a mug with the name splashed across it. The turgid smugness that comes with vocally “supporting” this cause is no different from the eye-rolling calls for kids to spend more time kicking balls, and for adults to disconnect and go convene with nature. It’s the domain of busybodies that should really mind their own business.

The busybodies do have a slight point though, and in preparation for a more pleasant tech future, we can make a few behavioral changes now.

Three steps to heaven

Carry on using your phone on the street, in the office, at dinner, in bed, in the bath, in Starbucks, and even in the middle of a conversation. It’s fine. It will still hurt the feelings of a few, but not to worry. That tweet needed liking. This is not a call to use your phone less, it is a call to curb usage in a select few very specific situations. They’re sensible ones, and will go along way to placating the complainers.

An easy one to start with: The movie theater, or anywhere a performance is happening. We’re there to watch and be entertained by someone, so let’s do that. Few establishments take measures beyond an on-screen announcement, apart from the Alamo Drafthouse, which clearly states on its website that it has a zero tolerance to phone use and says, “We’ll kick you out, promise. We’ve got backup.” Good for it.

Musician Jack White took a more drastic approach when he banned phones at several gigs earlier this year. He called it an art experiment, and complained people can’t clap anymore because they’ve got a phone in one hand and a drink in the other. We’re sure the lack of attention is frustrating, so let’s appease Jack and our fellow cinema-goers by just not touching our phones for 120 minutes or so.

Next is in the car. All the tools are there to help us not touch our phones. For example, the Android Auto app minimizes interruptions by automatically activating Do Not Disturb, or use Apple’s driving mode in iOS that does the same. If you have a new car with Android Auto or CarPlay, use it instead of your phone. The AAA says it’s safer in many situations. Don’t become, or force someone else to become, another of the 3,500 deaths on the road due to distracted driving.

Don’t become, or force someone else to become, another of the 3,500 deaths on the road due to distracted driving.

Finally, on a plane. Like the movie theater, someone always loudly tells you to put your phone in airplane mode when the door is secured. Countless people don’t, because obviously the rule applies only to other people. I’ve sat next to someone who hid their phone away when the steward walked past to check seat belts, and continued sending messages after they’d moved on. Congratulations on being a complete arse. Just turn on Airplane Mode and go to sleep.

See a theme here? They’re all easy, and situations when we’ve actually got something else to occupy our time, so boredom can’t be used as an excuse. The effort, in the long run, will be worth it.

Tech has the answer

While National Cell Phone Courtesy Month squarely puts the onus on you to make changes, ironically it’s the tech industry itself that has the long-term solution. Screens, and our need to stare at and touch them, are the main reason smartphones are considered “rude,” as we’re seen to be giving it our complete attention. That’s going to end, and with it the view that the geeky are all ignorant, or socially inept. Gartner, in a late 2016 report, predicted that by 2020, “the majority of devices will be designed to function with minimal or zero touch.”

It foresees voice, gestures, biometrics, and ambient tech as being key replacements to the way we interact with devices now. By minimizing or completely doing away with touch interfaces, our reliance on screens will also lessen. In his book on the future of technology, author David Rose said screens slow us down anyway, but “enhanced objects” connected to the cloud and operated with gestures — an evolution of smart home devices we’re seeing now — will reduce distractions generated by a screen, and make tech more convenient and inclusive.

The emergence of artificial intelligence, augmented reality (AR), and next-generation hardware that supports it such as Magic Leap, is another piece of the puzzle that will shift us away from handheld devices, and towards something that doesn’t require that eyes-down level of involvement like a phone. Apple CEO Tim Cook said AR would change the way we use technology forever, and we’re not going to argue. At the moment we tend to think about AR being all about games, but it’s not. It’s a part of the complex equation that will shift personal tech away from the phone.

When smartphones are tech dinosaurs, then Cell Phone Courtesy Month will also become extinct. Worryingly, AR Courtesy Month will probably be ready to replace it. But if we all try a bit harder now, perhaps we’ll be better prepared, courtesy-wise, for the imminent future of mobile devices, leaving the busybodies with no choice but to turn their attention to something else.

Editors’ Recommendations

• OnePlus 6 vs. OnePlus 5T vs. OnePlus 5 vs OnePlus 3T camera shootout
• Save hundreds with the best MacBook deals for July 2018
• Swapping an iPhone for a BlackBerry made me appreciate the physical keyboard
• Debating between Apple and Samsung phones? Open your eyes a little wider
• Oppo Find X hands-on review

Microsoft patent paves way for a touch- and smudge-free tablet future

While touchscreens are great for navigating on smartphones and tablets, your greasy fingers leave annoying prints on the surface, blurring the view. Microsoft aims to change that, at least on future Surface devices, by implementing a design that relies on touch-free input. This design appears in a granted patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on July 10 simply named as “Touchless input.”

Similar to how Apple’s TrueDepth camera on the iPhone X maps your face to eliminate the need for login credentials, Microsoft’s design would rely on a similar camera that captures a series of depth maps of an entire scene, including a human subject. A detection system built within the device scans each pixel in each map to determine what is static junk and what consists of the device owner.

According to the patent, this process includes “modeling the human subject with a virtual skeleton including a plurality of virtual joints including a virtual hand joint and one or more other virtual joints.” These virtual joints are compared across all captured depth maps to determine a finger gesture based on machine learning. The system can track more than one human user and/or physical objects.

In an example, as the device owner is navigating the user interface, the integrated tracking system is tracking the position of the user’s finger in physical space. The device maps the physical location of the finger to the on-screen cursor. That said, the user can simply move the finger in physical space to move the cursor in the same direction without having to actually touch the screen’s surface.

But the tracking system doesn’t just support simple cursor movements. Given that it can track multiple fingers, users can click and drag files and folders, zoom in and out, pan across the screen, double-tap, rotate, and more. To that extent, Microsoft is emulating mouse functions and physical gestures used on touchscreens and trackpads, only they are performed in the air instead of on a hard surface.

“In embodiments in which the depth camera has sufficient resolution, fingerprints of a human subject may be identified and matched to a user,” the patent states. “In this way, the user can be identified, and cursor control or other computing attributes may be set to preferences associated with the identified user.”

Device configurations may include an additional visible-light camera that may or may not have the same resolution as the depth camera. It would be used to detect the light intensity of a surface using red, green, and blue values, thus adding color to the depth maps to provide more detail. Another configuration would use a “structured light” depth camera that projects a structured infrared illumination.

Microsoft notes that the touch-free control would be integrated into the operating system as a natural user input, joining your typical mouse, keyboard, touchscreen, and game controller. Processing the actual finger gestures via machine vision and/or gesture recognition may be handled on- or off-board, depending on the setup.

Editors’ Recommendations

• HoloLens virtual touchscreen is the futuristic tech we’ve been waiting for
• Microsoft’s Surface Mobile Mouse is the ideal companion for your Surface Go
• The creator of Internet Explorer wants to read your mind with a bracelet
• 7 ways we’ll interact with computers in the future
• What kind of mouse do you use most on a daily basis?

A new digital picture frame is nearly indistinguishable from a real canvas

Back in the 1990s, the idea of having a painting on your wall which was actually a digital display was something only the likes of Bill Gates possessed. Today, digital picture frames are such old news that your grandparents might own one without you raising too much of an eyebrow.

The news, then, that yet another digital display has popped up on Kickstarter is hardly the kind of thing to get your blood pumping — except that Canvia has a pretty darn good hook to make it stand out from the crowd. As its creators describe it, Canvia uses proprietary image processing and built-in sensors which adapt curated art to your room’s ambient visual conditions and décor. To put that into real-world terms, it means that just as is the case with, for instance, a real oil painting on canvas, it will subtly alter its appearance to reflect surrounding light sources. That should make it superior to many digital displays when it comes to showcasing the color, texture, and brushstrokes of a particular artwork.

“All artworks that we see — or for that matter any physical objects — are defined by the amount and types of light they reflect,” Thomas Stimson, vice president of Marketing and Communications for manufacturer Palacio, told Digital Trends. “We, therefore, spent a long time analyzing the behavior of physical art under a wide range of visual conditions, such as natural light, artificial light, low light, and others. [Our ArtSense technology] combines the ‘reflection profiles’ based on these findings with real-time sensor data to adapt digital images of artwork and ensure they behave as though authentic physical paintings or prints.”

As an example, Stimson said that when you cover your windows and turn on artificial lights at the end of a day, Canvia’s display will immediately adapt in a way that means it looks less like a screen than just a regular piece of art.

The other big selling point over regular digital photo frames is the library of content which you can choose to display, rather than only pictures you upload yourself. The service plans to offer a free tier — with works from more than 3,000 artists, ranging from old masters to modern and contemporary art — along with a premium subscription tier adding famous and upcoming current artists, illustrators, and photographers. An accompanying app will even recommend images based on your surroundings and previously expressed preferences.

As ever, we offer our usual warnings about the risk inherent in pledging crowdfunding campaigns. However, if you’re keen to get involved, head over to the Canvia Kickstarter page. A Canvia display starts at $250, which includes a three-month subscription to the service’s premium tier alongside the display. Shipping is planned to take place in January.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Samsung’s updated Frame TV brings an artist’s touch to your living room
• Could this easy-to-learn tactile typeface replace braille?
• Keep your shiny bezel-less phone safe with the best LG G6 cases and covers
• Canon’s new large sensor is too big for you, but not for scientists
• Awesome Tech You Can’t Buy Yet: Self-healing tents, jellyfish lamps, solar ovens

Microsoft’s pressure-sensitive software keyboard is ripe for dual-screen laptops

Microsoft’s work on a new pressure-sensing on-screen keyboard virtual keyboard could make it easier to type on a new crop of laptops emerging this year with dual screens. Intel is working with partners Asus and Lenovo to bring its Tiger Rapids concept prototype to consumers — it’s essentially a laptop that replaces the bottom keyboard portion with a secondary touchscreen. While the second screen adds more versatility for users to view, create, and interact with content, typing on a glass surface will  be a challenge, and now Microsoft has a solution.

According to a patent application that was filed on January 9, 2017, with the United States Patent and Trademark Office and published just this Thursday, Microsoft wants to add support for pressure and gestures to the virtual keyboard to make typing faster.

“Virtual keys are often smaller and tightly packed and the mechanics of typing may differ from the mechanics of typing on a physical keyboard,” Microsoft said of the challenges of typing on glass. “Due to limited space, some key may be overlooked with multiple permutations of a character, multiple user steps or interactions may be needed to specify a permutation of a symbol associated with a virtual key. Generally virtual keyboards are less efficient to use due to obvious differences between physical keyboards and virtual keyboards.”

Image from Microsoft’s USPTO patent filing

So, in addition to being able to recognize that a key has been activated by touch, Microsoft’s innovation also calls for software to recognize if the pressure is hard enough to activate additional commands. For example, touch the key lightly and swipe to the right, and the keyboard will recognize that you’re typing a lowercase letter. Press down hard and swipe firmly to the left, and you can trigger a capitalized word. On virtual keyboards where multiple symbols are packed onto a single key, the swiping gestures can make it easier to use symbols and characters without requiring users to activate the function or alternate character key.

“By using pressure measures for symbol selection, it is possible for a touch input to control which symbol permutation (of a virtual key selected by the touch input) is selected without having to display additional graphics or user interface elements and without requiring possibly slow and elaborate interactions by the user to specify permutations of a virtual key’s symbol,” Microsoft said. Additionally, you can also map multiple key combinations using pressure sensitivity. Microsoft details that for the copy-and-paste functions, you can map it to the “c” key for cut and “p” key for paste. “When one of those virtual keys is selected with an appropriate pressure feature, the function mapped to the virtual key is invoked,” the patent application detailed.

For certain applications, the keyboard can also display additional graphics when a key is pressed to call on additional symbols or functions, Microsoft said, such as a radial menu or a pop-up palette of user-selectable permutation symbols.

While these innovations may be new to the desktop — and convertible laptops and tablets — they already exist in some similar form today on mobile devices. SwiftKey — which Microsoft acquired — creates a software keyboard for mobile platforms that makes it easy to enter alternate keys and symbols on a touchscreen by using a more primitive pressure-sensitive approach similar to the one Microsoft described in its patent filing. Microsoft is also bringing SwiftKey‘s swiping keyboard to Windows 10.

Editors’ Recommendations

• The best keyboards for Android that will help you type efficiently in 2018
• Beginners guide to the BlackBerry Key2’s keyboard
• iPhone users can now access Morse code on Gboard for iOS
• Failure rate of MacBook Pro ‘butterfly’ keyboards is double that of older models
• SwiftKey is coming to Windows 10 to improve touchscreen typing

Photoshop power in a mobile app? Report suggests full Photoshop coming to iPad

The move to split Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic gave mobile photographers a majority of Lightroom’s tools on a mobile device — and a new report suggests Adobe could be bringing a fuller version of Photoshop to the iPad. Anonymous sources from inside the company recently told Bloomberg that the software giant is working on a full Photoshop app for iPad.

Adobe did not confirm or deny the rumors, though Adobe’s Creative Cloud chief product officer told Bloomberg that the company is aspiring to create a cross-platform Photoshop along with other programs. If Adobe does, in fact, release a full Photoshop version for the iPad, the move could potentially create the most full-featured mobile editing app yet, while giving photo editors more mobility and a touchscreen interface.

“While we can’t comment on any specific rumors or speculation, Adobe has always supported customer needs on the platforms and devices that are essential to them, and we’re committed to enabling workflows that unleash cross-platform creativity for all,” an Adobe spokesperson told Digital Trends.

Currently, Adobe offers a limited number of Photoshop tools inside mobile apps like Photoshop Express, Photoshop Fix, and Photoshop Mix. The mobile apps, however, lack the Photoshop prowess of the desktop software. Photoshop Express, for example, lacks layers, a necessary tool for the more intricate Photoshop editing.

Multi-device compatibility has been a major focus for Adobe’s latest products, after splitting Lightroom in order to create a program (almost) identical across mobile and desktop applications. While Lightroom CC is catching up to the original, Lightroom Classic still has a handful of tools that are not available across mobile devices.

Following the Lightroom split, Project Rush is slated to bring more video editing tools to mobile devices. While not as full-featured as Adobe Premiere Pro, the company’s major video desktop editor, Project Rush includes a few more options than the mobile Adobe Premiere Clip.

Adobe’s Creative Cloud is designed for working on one project from multiple devices, but the limited computing abilities inside mobile devices mean the mobile apps don’t have the same features as the desktop software. But as the mobile Lightroom CC demonstrates, mobile technology is starting to close some of those gaps. Time will tell if the iPad is ready to handle a full version of Photoshop — the rumors suggest an October announcement and 2019 release.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Can you spot a Photoshopped picture? Here are 9 ways to identify a fake photo
• Want to find out which viral photos were Photoshopped? So does Adobe
• The best free photo-editing software
• New Adobe XD Starter Plan opens user experience design to all
• The Nik collection lives on with DxO Labs update — but at a cost

Photoshop power in a mobile app? Report suggests full Photoshop coming to iPad

The move to split Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic gave mobile photographers a majority of Lightroom’s tools on a mobile device — and a new report suggests Adobe could be bringing a fuller version of Photoshop to the iPad. Anonymous sources from inside the company recently told Bloomberg that the software giant is working on a full Photoshop app for iPad.

Adobe did not confirm or deny the rumors, though Adobe’s Creative Cloud chief product officer told Bloomberg that the company is aspiring to create a cross-platform Photoshop along with other programs. If Adobe does, in fact, release a full Photoshop version for the iPad, the move could potentially create the most full-featured mobile editing app yet, while giving photo editors more mobility and a touchscreen interface.

“While we can’t comment on any specific rumors or speculation, Adobe has always supported customer needs on the platforms and devices that are essential to them, and we’re committed to enabling workflows that unleash cross-platform creativity for all,” an Adobe spokesperson told Digital Trends.

Currently, Adobe offers a limited number of Photoshop tools inside mobile apps like Photoshop Express, Photoshop Fix, and Photoshop Mix. The mobile apps, however, lack the Photoshop prowess of the desktop software. Photoshop Express, for example, lacks layers, a necessary tool for the more intricate Photoshop editing.

Multi-device compatibility has been a major focus for Adobe’s latest products, after splitting Lightroom in order to create a program (almost) identical across mobile and desktop applications. While Lightroom CC is catching up to the original, Lightroom Classic still has a handful of tools that are not available across mobile devices.

Following the Lightroom split, Project Rush is slated to bring more video editing tools to mobile devices. While not as full-featured as Adobe Premiere Pro, the company’s major video desktop editor, Project Rush includes a few more options than the mobile Adobe Premiere Clip.

Adobe’s Creative Cloud is designed for working on one project from multiple devices, but the limited computing abilities inside mobile devices mean the mobile apps don’t have the same features as the desktop software. But as the mobile Lightroom CC demonstrates, mobile technology is starting to close some of those gaps. Time will tell if the iPad is ready to handle a full version of Photoshop — the rumors suggest an October announcement and 2019 release.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Can you spot a Photoshopped picture? Here are 9 ways to identify a fake photo
• Want to find out which viral photos were Photoshopped? So does Adobe
• The best free photo-editing software
• New Adobe XD Starter Plan opens user experience design to all
• The Nik collection lives on with DxO Labs update — but at a cost

Apple patent hints at better gesture control on the Apple Watch

It looks like Apple is working hard at giving users new way to control the Apple Watch. While these days the Apple Watch is largely controlled by the touchscreen, one day it may also give users extensive control through different gestures, according to a new Apple patent.

The patent, called “Motion and Gesture Input From a Wearable Device,” discusses a wearable device with a series of photodiodes that can sense light through a user’s skin. As the tissue in the wrist expands and contracts, the device can recognize patterns, and hence recognize that a user is performing a particular gesture — all without any use of a camera.

According to images in the patent, the Watch would make use of light sources and sensors on both sides of the wrist — so it might mean that special Apple Watch bands with lights and light sensors built in would need to be developed and worn.

Using this tech, Apple could track the movement of not just the user’s wrist, but also their fingers, hand, and arm — meaning a huge range of gestures could be used for controlling the Apple Watch. But the system could have implications far beyond simply controlling your device. For example, a deaf person could sign a sentence, which could then be translated to written or spoken English for someone who doesn’t understand sign language. It could also be used for better activity motion tracking.

Of course, the tech does face some hurdles. For starters, the Apple Watch already has issues with battery life — and it’s likely that constantly illuminating your wrist would draw even more battery. Because of that, we think it’s probably unlikely that Apple will deploy this tech in the consumer version of the Apple Watch any time soon.

It’s important to note that this is a continuation of patents that date back to 2015, so it’s clear that Apple has been working on the tech for a while now. As usual, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll ever see the company make use of the tech — just that it’s something Apple has been considering and developing over the past few years.

Editors’ Recommendations

• The best Apple Watch faces
• The best Apple Watch apps
• This app lets Amazon hijack your Apple Watch
• The Apple Watch Series 1 has been discounted to an all-time low
• Patent hints at refined Apple Watch power-saving mode that kicks in by itself

Dell G3 Gaming Laptop review

Research Center:

Dell G3 Gaming Laptop

No one likes to make compromises, but with gaming laptops, it’s inevitable. When you head into the sub-$1,000 range, they become even more significant, often ruling them out from receiving a recommendation from us.

Yet the Dell Inspiron 15 5000 series has often been the exception, and its often earned honors as our favorite budget gaming laptop. Now, Dell has re-launched the product line, changing the name to Dell G series – which includes the Dell G3, G5, and G7. They start as low as $750 (currently on sale for $680). Our $850 configuration of the Dell G3 came packing an Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti and a 128GB SSD.

Cutting corners can be a risky business, but our time with the G3 has shown that Dell knows what features matter to gamers on a budget.

Oh, this is a gaming laptop?

Dell is known for its cutting-edge design in laptops like the XPS 13 or 15, shrinking chassis’ and bezels like nobody’s business. You might’ve laid eyes on the Dell G7, which comes in a pristine “Alpine” White colorway. Unfortunately, not much of that style has found its way to the less expensive G3. Between the lid, Dell logo, backlit keys, and keyboard deck, there’s four different shades of blue — and it’s a few too many. It also has thick bezels around the display, reinforcing the outdated aesthetics of the laptop.

Still, it’s nondescript at worst. It doesn’t make a fool of itself with cheap chrome and red color swatches, a trap a lot of budget gaming laptops fall for.

Riley Young/Digital Trends

What it lacks in distinctive style the G3 makes up for in build quality. The plastic chassis is reinforced in all the right places. Even the hinge felt sturdy, making it easy to open and close with one finger.

The 15-inch version we tested was reasonably svelte considering the price and the hardware inside. At 5.6 pounds and 0.89 inches thick, it’s nowhere near as portable as the Dell XPS 15 or Razer Blade, but it cuts the bulk from the previous iteration. It’s mobile enough to throw in your backpack, but not enough that you won’t notice the extra weight.

No frills necessary

The keyboard on Dell’s budget gaming laptops have always been good, and once again, this is a keyboard we enjoyed.

The display isn’t worst-in-class, but it’s disappointing by modern standards.

It’s no gaming keyboard, though it has some of clicky, tactile feel that gamers love. The keys don’t feel loose and the bottoming action isn’t sloppy or soft. The layout is good, though we would have preferred to remove the numpad and enlarge the keys. While we aren’t the biggest fan of the color of the backlighting, it’s bright and evenly lit.

The touchpad doesn’t fare as well. It’s not glass, so tracking doesn’t feel accurate, which you’ll notice most in detailed work like selecting text or carefully moving windows. It supports Windows Precision drivers for fancy multi-touch gestures, but that only highlights the sub-par touchpad surface.

Dell has removed the physical buttons this time around, which we like, though the click is loud and overly stiff. It’s also wobbly, resulting in frequent mis-clicks. Gamers won’t be caught dead using the touchpad while gaming anyway, though, so saving a few bucks here isn’t the worst idea.

Riley Young/Digital Trends

The ports favor those gamers need like Ethernet, HDMI, and plenty of USB for peripherals. Dell even threw in a full-sized SD card slot for good measure. What’s missing here is Thunderbolt 3, taking external GPUs off the table. Even its predecessor featured at least a USB-C port, but here you’re stuck with USB-A accessories.

The display that’s just barely good enough

Budget gaming laptops are notorious for bad displays. Unfortunately, Dell continues the trend here. The display isn’t worst-in-class, but it’s disappointing by modern standards. The most egregious problem is in color, where it shows 62 percent of the sRGB color space, and only 46 of Adobe RGB. The result is a rather dull screen that lacks saturation, and it shouldn’t be used for something like photography or graphic design.

In games, the display’s poor color is noticeable, but not distracting. A game like Battlefield 1 hinges a lot on the visual quality of its environments — and when you crank up the graphics settings, it really can be beautiful. On the G3, the display’s dullness does impact the experience, making the grim game world feel flatter than it would on a better screen. It’s certainly not enough to ruin the gaming experience on the G3, but you must understand that an affordable gaming laptop forces a compromise in image quality not found on most models sold above $1,000.

Fortunately, it’s not all bad news. The 1080p screen is bright enough, maxing out at 251 nits, and contrast is better than some expensive gaming laptops like the Alienware 17 or Digital Storm Equinox. The screen also boasts good viewing angles. We can charitably describe it as functional.

Riley Young/Digital Trends

The internal speakers are another aspect of the laptop that will go underused by gamers who’ll prefer to use headphones or external speakers. What’s here isn’t terrible, but it’s not great, either.

Excellent performance, minus the storage

The G3 features the Core i5-8300H CPU, a 45-watt Intel chip that’s commonly found in budget gaming laptops like this one. It’s not the most efficient processor in the world, but it’s a huge improvement over the 7th-gen chip used in the G3’s predecessor. With a greatly increased multi-core score in our Geekbench tests, the G3 can better handle heavily multi-thread software, including games that are programmed with quad-core chips in mind.

The strength of the processor is revealing in real-world usage. We encoded a 4K video in Handbrake on the Dell G3 in just three minutes and thirty seconds. That’s only a handful of seconds behind the Core i7-8750H in the Razer Blade or Digital Storm Equinox, while also a whole minute and half faster than U-series in more conventional ultrabooks like the Razer Blade Stealth.

Our configuration came with 8GB of RAM, which was plenty of memory to handle the other components included. It is removable, but with one only slot, your future upgrade options are more limited. An additional slot is featured in other configurations, but it’ll bump up your price a bit.

All the compromises made in design, storage, and display have helped Dell to keep the price low — and performance high.

As for storage, Dell offers a wide variety of options. Starting at rock bottom you can buy the $680 model with only a spacious, but slow “hybrid” disk drive. We didn’t test it out, but don’t expect it to be as fast as a standard solid state drive. Fortunately, our unit came with a 128GB SK Hynix SATA SSD, in addition to the 1TB old-school HDD. The SSD had an average read speed of 500 megabytes per second and a write speed of 209 MB/s.

It’s not a lot of space, nor is it fast as the PCIe drives you’ll find in more expensive laptops, but this is where the rubber meets the road with budget configurations. Both drives are accessible and removable, should you ever want to swap them out in the future.

The GTX 1050 Ti is a performer

You might be wondering if you can enjoy play games on an $800 laptop. And we don’t mean scoot by playing Rocket League on Medium settings. We mean really game. Thankfully, all the compromises made in design, storage, and display have helped Dell to keep the price low — and performance high.

At the center of that performance is the Nvidia GTX GeForce 1050 Ti, which is solid choice for a budget gaming laptop like this one. It can be configured with either the Nvidia GTX GeForce 1050 or 1060 as well, but the 1050 Ti handles both games and benchmarks well. In 3DMark Fire Strike, the Dell G3’s 1050 Ti landed right between the 1050 and the 1060. But more importantly, games on the Dell G3 feel really snappy.

We struggled to get playable framerates in 4K with settings not lowered to the bottom, but if you stick with 1080p, you’ll be quite happy with the results. In Battlefield 1 with settings maxed, the G3 cranked out 60 frames per second — and the same goes with Fortnite. We were delighted to see how responsive gameplay felt in games like these where response time is critical.

Nate Barrett/Digital Trends

The only real hurdle was Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, an infamously challenging game. At Ultra, the G3 struggled to rise passed 25 FPS, and even with the settings lowered to High, it managed a barely-playable 34 FPS. In demanding games like this, you’ll want to move up to the GTX 1060 for smoother gameplay.

Better battery life, but still not great

You can’t expect great battery life out of a gaming laptop. Even high-end models like the Alienware 17 R5 max out below four hours of juice. The Dell G3, with its 56 watt-hour battery, performed honorably for what it is and makes an improvement on the previous iteration.

As is common, the G3 did best in our video battery test, lasting for five hours and 43 minutes with a looping 1080p clip with the screen measured at 100 lux. For our iMacro web browsing, the G3 trucked on for five hours and 18 minutes, which again, isn’t all that shabby compared to average gaming laptops.

Dell G3 Gaming Laptop Compared To

Digital Storm Equinox

Acer Nitro 5 Spin

Dell Inspiron 15 7577

HP Omen 15

EVGA SC17 1080

Razer Blade Pro (2017)

Origin EON15-S

Asus ROG Zephyrus

Razer Blade (2017)

Alienware 13 R3

Asus ROG G501

Digital Storm Triton

AVADirect Clevo P157SM-A

Alienware M14x (2012)

Origin Eon 17-S

While that’ll dip significantly while playing games, it’s nice to know you can take it away from the wall for more than few hours at a time. You’ll have to spring for something like a Razer Blade if you need a gaming laptop with close to all-day battery life.

Our Take

The Dell G3 Gaming Laptop isn’t perfect, but it’s the best of its breed. The compromises Dell makes to keep performance high and price low don’t sacrifice the usability of the laptop in the ways that matter. If there is one area where the compromise feels overreaching, it’s the display. We’d like to see another budget gaming laptop come along and up the standard, but so far, the G3 is your best option at this price point.

Any alternatives?

You don’t have a lot of options for gaming laptops at this price, especially not ones that compete directly with the price of the Dell G3. The HP Omen 15t Gaming comes close at $900, though that’s without an SSD, and it’s far uglier. The same goes with the Asus TUF Gaming FX504.

Instead, take a good, hard look at the different configurations of the Dell G3. Between the G3, G5, and G7, there are a nearly endless variety of options of GPUs and storage options. Even the options just over $1,000 provide a strong bang-for-your-buck value.

How long will it last?

The Dell G3 comes with a standard one-year warranty, which isn’t great — however, it’s what we’ve come to expect from large manufacturers (that aren’t Apple). While its components are all up-to-date, the missing USB-C port makes it a bit less futureproof. The replaceable memory and storage do ensure that you can upgrade in the future when you’re ready.

Should you buy it?

Yes. For gaming on the go at under $1,000, the Dell G3 is your best option.