Google’s Voice Access app gives Android users total hands-free control

Google has launched a new app aimed at helping those with limited mobility to make full use of their smartphones and tablets.

Currently for Android only, Voice Access had been in beta for a couple of years, but ongoing development work has finally made the app suitable for a full rollout. While it’s long been possible to control elements of your Android device via voice, the app takes such functionality up a notch.

Indeed, Patrick Clary, product manager of Google’s Central Accessibility Team, points out that Voice Access offers “more fine-grained controls than other voice commands you might use on your phone — for example, letting you use your voice to ‘click’ buttons and controls within apps, or scroll and navigate app screens.”

Using only speech, Voice Access lets you navigate through all your apps, compose and edit text, and, of course, talk to Google Assistant.

Tasks are initiated through a system that places numbers (see insert) on the screen that let you tell the app where you want to begin. Settings can be changed by speaking instructions like “turn up volume,” “turn on Bluetooth,” and, when you’re done, “turn off device.”

You can also interact with the current screen by calling out gesture commands such as “scroll down,” “scroll to top,” and “swipe forwards.”

It’s all very intuitive. Editing can be performed simply by telling the app to change particular words. For example, you could request the software to “replace ‘Saturday’ with ‘tomorrow’,” after creating a sentence such as, “Shall we meet Saturday?” Likewise, if you want to delete the entirety of, say, the third line, simply say, “Delete the third line.”

A full list of commands can be found by navigating to Voice Access’ settings and selecting “Show all commands.”

Clary explains that while the app offers a wide range of benefits for individuals with conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, and paralysis, Voice Access could also prove useful for those who simply have their hands full, such as “people juggling with groceries or in the middle of cooking.”

In the U.S. alone, more than 50 million people have some form of mobility impairment that may impact hand function, data that suggests Voice Access will be a useful tool for many of those with an Android device.

Google’s Voice Access app is free and available globally. It supports English commands, with additional language support on the way. You can download it from Google Play here.

Editors’ Recommendations

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• How to use Android 9.0 Pie’s gesture navigation, and how to turn it off
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Simplenote: Straightforward and reliable note taking in the cloud (Review)

Just as in any category at this point, there is a wide variety of applications for note taking in the Play Store. Applications like Evernote, Microsoft’s OneNote, and Google’s own Keep Notes are the most popular ones available, offering a plethora of tools and features. However, if all you want is to take notes in a dead-simple app with a minimal interface, astounding performance, and unlimited syncing across platforms, then you should definitely give Simplenote a chance.

Developer: Automattic, Inc
Price: Free

Setup

Upon installation of the app, you can login with your current account or sign up for a new one. In case you have a WordPress account, you can login with that as well. After logging in, Simplenote will create a new note for you with instructions tailored to the Android app.

Overview

Unlike competitors like Evernote or Google Keep Notes, the interface of Simplenote is dead simple. No notebooks, no image attachments, no grocery lists, nothing. Just a notepad and you.

Depending on the usage you want to give to it, this might be a good thing or a bad thing. If you just want a way to organize your random notes in a place while syncing them across devices (and for free!), then Simplenote is perfect for you. However, if you want more robust capabilities, then that is not what Simplenote was created for, and trying to use it in a complex workflow would just bring frustration to you.

Note Taking

As the name implies, Simplenote wants to make the note-taking process as simple as possible. This is apparent in every feature of the app. For starters, there is not even a title field or something similar. The first line of your note is used as the title automatically. After that, everything is plain text.

The good thing is that, if you want different fonts, titles and subtitles, and lists, Simplenote also supports markdown. In case you don’t know what it is, markdown syntax is a markup language that you can use to format documents. You can read more about it here. However, markdown support for a note is turned off by default, and you have to go manually into the note’s options to activate it.

This will change the interface to have a tab bar at the top: one for editing and one for previewing. This way, you can easily see how your markdown-formatted note will look. It is pretty neat and works without hiccups.

Tags

One of the flaws of the lack of notebooks or other types of categorization is that having a lot of notes starts to get disorganized pretty quickly. Simplenote’s answer to this is the addition of tags. At the bottom of the note, you can add tags to a note. Each one will then appear on the sidebar of your application, letting you filter by them.

For people coming from Evernote and OneNote, this might not seem enough. Then again, people coming from those apps are not Simplenote’s target. For people like me, who prefer a simple, streamlined, no-nonsense way of managing notes, tags are enough.

Publishing, history, and more

Regardless of the simplicity of Simplenote, it still has some tricks up its sleeve. There’s an option to publish a note, which will generate a link to it. You can then share this link and other people will be able to see it, even if they don’t have a Simplenote account. Also, you can delete this public link at any time.

There is also a Collaborate option, which lets you share a note with someone else. This will allow them to edit the note as well, similar to how Google Docs works for collaborating with documents.

In case you want to go back to a previous version of your note, Simplenote has the History option at your disposal. This takes snapshots of your notes and lets you go back in time to restore something you have done previously.

Finally, there is also a Trash, to which all your deleted notes go to die. Unlike how the Recycle Bin works in Windows or Gmail, the notes in Simplenote’s trash can are not cleared after a period of time. In order to delete them completely, you have to empty the trash, which fortunately is just a button away.

Settings

There’s a few settings that, while not truly earth-shattering, can make your experience a bit better. You can activate a “condensed note list” option, which strips away the note’s text and shows an interface with the title only. Also, you can change the sorting order of the notes. The default is “newest modified date”, but you can select options like newest created date, oldest modified date, alphabetically, among others.

For those of you who prefer a dark theme, I’m happy to tell you that, while Google shifts into making everything whiter and whiter, Simplenote offers a dark theme option. You can also change the fonts, select if links are formatted and ready for their opening in the browser of your choice, and protect the app with a custom PIN code.

Conclusion

If I have not been clear enough throughout the review, Simplenote follows the always-reliable KISS method for its app. There is no unneeded, flashy functionality. There is no power user options. There is no silly two-device limit. With Simplenote, just as with old HTML editors, what you see is what you get.

This, however, does not mean that Simplenote is a bad application or that it doesn’t have any useful features. Simple note taking, markdown support, collaboration tools, filtering through tags, and unmatched performance are all available in a package that has the accessible price of free. What more can one ask for?

Download and install Simplenote from the Google Play Store.

Here’s why you’re not getting Netflix in HD or 4K, and how to fix it

You’re home from a long day at work, you just fired up your killer 4K Ultra HD TV, and you load up your favorite show. But when you press play, it takes a while for the show to load, and when it does start playing, it looks terrible. Netflix very clearly states this show is in 4K UHD, but what you’re looking at is standard-definition at best, and “early days of streaming video” at its worst. What’s the deal?

First off, if you’ve suffered such a problem, know this: You’re not alone. The culprit could be any number of connection points, but the first place to check is your own setup. So before we start pointing fingers and blaming Netflix or evil internet service providers, let’s start with your TV and work our way backward to eliminate as many potential bottlenecks as possible. Then we’ll take a look at other factors that could be preventing you from getting the best possible Netflix experience, whether that means HD or UHD.

Go to the source

Before you bring your holy inquisition down upon your network connection and internet service provider, your first step should be checking your Netflix plan and settings. Chances are your plan supports HD streaming, but there are plans that only allow for streaming in standard def, and UHD streaming is only available on the most expensive plan, so it’s worth at least double-checking. If you’re not sure, we’ve got a clear breakdown of all plans.

If you’ve got the right plan, the next order of operation is to tweak Netflix’s streaming options. Begin by opening your account, and under the “Your Profile” section, find the Playback Settings. Here, you will see four different options: Low, Medium, High, and Auto. It’s probably obvious what those mean, but here’s a detailed breakdown of how each setting affects your picture quality (and, potentially, your data cap).

• Low: Streaming at this level will use up about 0.3 GB per hour. Streaming in low quality will force the content to play back at standard definition. This is the best option for those with poor connections, or those who are streaming with data limits.
• Medium: Medium-quality streaming will tick your data use up to around .7 GB per hour. At this limit, you’ll still be locked into standard definition.
• High: Streaming in high quality opens you up to HD and UHD streams with the proper plan, but that also means your data usage could vary quite a bit. Depending on your network, you could be using 3 GB per hour for basic 720p streaming or up to 7 GB per hour for UHD streaming.
• Auto: As the name implies, this will let your streaming quality fluctuate in accordance with your current internet speeds and network connection to provide the most stable streaming experience. With that stability, however, comes a greater likelihood of drops in quality.

If you’re streaming on any option other than High, you won’t be getting HD or UHD quality from Netflix. Be aware that any change to these settings can take up to eight hours to take effect, so if you switch and don’t notice an immediate change in your picture fidelity, be patient. Again, higher streaming resolution can impact your data plan, so be mindful of your usage if you have a data cap.

Browser limits

Not all browsers were created equal, and that’s especially true when it comes to streaming. While pretty much every popular internet browser is capable of streaming Netflix content in HD, just how HD it is will vary between browsers. Here’s a simple look at what maximum resolution each browser is capable of on a computer.

• Google Chrome: Up to 720p
• Firefox: Up to 720p
• Opera: Up to 720p
• Safari: Up to 1080p (on Macs running OS X 10.10.3 or greater)
• Microsoft Edge: Up to 4K (requires HDCP 2.2-compliant connection to a 4K display, with at least Intel’s 7th gen Core CPU, plus the latest version of Windows)
• Internet Explorer: Up to 1080p

We’re just as surprised as anyone that Internet Explorer outperforms Chrome or Firefox at anything.

Are you geared up to stream HD or UHD video?

You might be paying for a fast internet connection, but that doesn’t mean you necessarily have fast internet access. Try visiting testmy.net to see what kind of downstream speeds you’re getting. If you get anything under 10 Mbps and there is more than one device in your residence using the internet, you’ll be hard-pressed to see a full HD stream — and definitely not UHD — from Netflix, ever.

Not seeing a good number? There are several things you can do to make sure you’re getting the speeds you should, from picking the right internet plan to installing the right kind of router. We suggest checking our list of the best wireless routers to make sure you’re getting the fastest connection possible on your network.

With your home’s network in tip-top shape, you can rest easy knowing your internet pipes aren’t the ones that are clogged. With that in mind, it’s time to take a step back and consider whether the lines feeding your home are as open as they should be.

Is your ISP to blame?

After much pressure, Netflix started paying off a few ISPs, including Comcast and Suddenlink, for so-called “fast lanes,” which are meant to ensure its video streams get to its customers using those ISPs more quickly and reliably.

You could be doomed to poor Netflix picture quality…

If you’re using an internet service provider that hasn’t made some sort of arrangement with Netflix, be it a paid fast-lane agreement or through Netflix’s “open connect” program, it’s possible you could be doomed to poor Netflix picture quality — especially if you live in a large market with lots of internet users. You can consult the Netflix ISP speed website to get some idea where Netflix stands in your ISP’s graces. If it looks like your ISP ranks poorly, it’s possible — though difficult to prove — that your ISP could be throttling you and all Netflix users on its network. If you suspect that might be the case, one way to hide what you’re doing from your ISP is with a virtual private network (VPN). We have a handy guide to everything you need to know about VPNs that will likely come in handy here.

Check your watch

If you haven’t noticed, Netflix will start playing a stream sooner than it can be played at its full quality, buffering for the full-resolution version along the way. As soon as it is possible to do so, the stream will be displayed at full resolution.

If bandwidth slows down, video resolution will drop until the full-res stream is sufficiently buffered again. Ostensibly, Netflix does this to keep the load times short so you don’t feel like it’s taking forever to watch your show. This intelligent adjustment makes Netflix feel snappy, but at the wrong time of day, it can also make it look like garbage during the first few minutes of viewing.

As we experimented with Netflix quality over the course of an entire day, we discovered that the biggest factor influencing stream quality is the time of day and whether that time falls under typical peak hours for watching. You’ll want to keep peak hours (essentially prime time hours after 6 p.m.) in mind and adjust your expectations.

What else can I do?

If you know for certain your home network is solid, and the ISP you subscribe to offers good Netflix streaming speeds, yet your experience is bad, then call your ISP and report the issue. Make sure the agent knows that you know what you’re talking about before they drag you through a 45-minute scripted troubleshooting session, and cross your fingers that they will try to do something about it rather than just point a finger at Netflix.

Fortunately, this is a problem you will run into far less than you used to. On the other hand, depending on where you live, you may not have the option to switch ISPs or do anything else to get a better streaming experience. If this is the case, there isn’t much you can do aside from canceling your subscription to tell Netflix that if they can’t get you a better experience in your area, you’re not going to pay for it. Otherwise, it’s possible nothing will change.

Editors’ Recommendations

• HDR TV: What it is, and why you’ll want one
• The best streaming devices
• How much does Netflix cost? A pricing breakdown of the streaming giant’s plans
• These are the best 4K Ultra HD Blu-rays to show off your home theater
• Ultra HD Blu-ray: Everything you need to know

JLab JBuds Air review: A decent pair of cheap true wireless earbuds?

More and more flagship phones are ditching their headphone jacks, compelling many of us to join the ranks of true wireless listeners. While truly wireless earbuds tend to be more expensive than their traditional wireless counterparts, the JLab JBuds Air make a case for cheap true wireless earbuds. Sure, its sound quality doesn’t knock my socks off, but for just $49 these IP55 earbuds are hard to pass up.

Full review available at our sister site, SoundGuys.com

What is the JLab JBuds Air like?

The JLab JBuds Air truly wireless earbuds lack aptX and AAC support but stay connected within a three-meter range.

What starts with a “P” and ends in “-lastic”? Oh, right, plastic, which is what the JLab JBuds Air is made of, from the charging case to the earbuds. It may be unsightly to some, but it keeps the earbuds durable. Something that’s more difficult for me to overlook is the sheer size of the earbuds. Despite the bulbous housings, though, the ‘buds remain firmly in place when worn with the included Cush Fins.

While the JBuds Air excels in nearly every category for its price range, the omnidirectional microphone falls short of expectations.

The earbuds are IP55-certified and can withstand sweat or a spill — just don’t submerge them. These aren’t just ideal for the gym, though; outdoor running is a pleasure since the earbud shape mitigates wind noise. And while the 3.07-hour standalone battery life isn’t anything to write home about, it’s more than sufficient for most of our workout regimens. 

Headed to the gym? How long do you typically listen to music while exercising?

— Sound Guys (@realsoundguys) September 11, 2018

How do the earbuds sound?

Editor’s Pick

Best fitness trackers (September 2018)

Fitness trackers have come an extremely long way over the years. No longer are they glorified pedometers; they’re much more than that. Most standard fitness trackers nowadays can track your steps taken, distance traveled, how …

Bass notes are emphasized, which is appropriate given the exercise-oriented nature of the earbuds. Although the exaggerated bass degrades clarity, I don’t mind it as I’m not deconstructing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons; rather, I’m working out with these earbuds. To get a detailed rundown of the frequency response, read the in-depth review at SoundGuys.

Should you buy the JLab JBuds Air?

Silicone ear tips keep things comfortable, while the Cush-Fins effectively keep the ‘buds in place.

Yes, worthwhile cheap true wireless earbuds are currently few and far between, but those included with the JLab JBuds Air are unique. While the earbuds don’t provide any innovative or groundbreaking features, they function well and reliably which is what most of us want when buying cheap earbuds or headphones. Yes, the lack of aptX or AAC support is frustrating, but it makes sense at this price point. If you’ve been wanting to give true wireless a shot, but couldn’t bear the hit to your wallet, the JLab JBuds Air is an affordable, low-risk option that deserves a fair chance.

Read the full review

Buy the JLab JBuds Air at Amazon!
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Honor 8X hands-on review

Research Center:

Honor 8x

Honor has found itself in a very good position. The company has a range of phones — at least two of which are brand new this year already — and all are priced sensibly, have solid specifications, and are easy to recommend. The latest is the Honor 8X, and at first glance it seems to be another to add to the list, but the line between them all is becoming increasingly blurred, and knowing which to buy over another is difficult.

While definitely not a bad thing, we don’t want it to become complacency. We’ve been using the Honor 8X to see whether it not being drastically different to other Honor phones really matters.

Glass design

The Honor 8X is a sleek, colorful, and very capable smartphone with a large screen, an octa-core processor, dual cameras with artificial intelligence, and a price tag so low that you could put one in your hand, your partner’s hand, and even someone else’s hand for less than the price of a single new Apple iPhone XS Max. We mention Apple’s largest ever phone because the Honor 8X also has a 6.5-inch screen, with a 2,340 x 1,080 resolution here.

Replace the Honor 8X name in the above sentence for the Honor 10, the Honor Play, or to a certain extent the Huawei Mate 20 Lite, and not much will change, and you have to drill right down to find the small differences in the specification. No obvious differentiators arrive when you pick up the Honor 8X either, but it is a clear upgrade over the Honor 7X. This time it has a glass rear panel for added class. The new  design looks great — one edge reflects light differently to the rest of the back panel — and choosing between the blue and the red color is a real quandary. It’s prettier than the Honor Play, and comes close to the utter delectability of the Honor 10.

The Honor 8X is a sleek, colorful, and very capable smartphone with a large screen.

As a consequence of the screen’s 19.5:9 aspect ratio, the body is long, emphasized by the reduced chin bezel that measures 4.25mm, all for an impressive 91 percent screen-to-body ratio. The body is 7.8mm thick and like the Honor Play the edges are rounded for in-hand comfort, and the screen’s 2.5D curve means it blends into the metal body well. It’s all very polished, but there is nothing we haven’t seen before from Honor here.

At first the screen didn’t look great, a disappointment after the brilliant Honor Play, and we wondered if there was some issue with the new eye comfort mode on the Honor 8X. Honor says the 8X is the first phone to have a TÜV Rheinland-certified comfort mode to reduce blue light output. In fact, after digging through the menus we discovered Vivid viewing mode was active by default, resulting in the Honor 8X’s screen looking like an LSD trip. Pro-tip: Always check your settings, kids.

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Vivid mode also affected the camera, where photos took on an overly blue tinge in preview and the gallery. It’s still there a little, but this is less to do with the screen and more to do with Huawei’s artificial intelligence features in the camera.

Camera

The dual-lens rear camera has a 20-megapixel lens paired with a 2-megapixel depth-sensing lens, and the A.I. is an option activated with a special AI button. The effectiveness varies. In the worst cases, the colors are so amped up the scene becomes completely removed from reality. The best cases come when it balances out an HDR-style glow with subtly enhanced colors.

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The bokeh mode is a winner, accurately capturing edges and blurring out the background around them.

When the Honor 8X gets a photo right, it’s hard to believe the shot comes from a phone that costs so little.

There are plenty of other features to play with, ranging from a 3D portrait mode, slow-mo video, and the addition of a Night shot mode with Huawei’s image stabilization powered by AI. In our brief tests this isn’t as effective as the Huawei P20 Pro, where we saw the feature initially. It opens the shutter for around four seconds and doesn’t require a tripod, and instead uses AI to steady the shot. it’s worth experimenting with, provided you take a photo in normal mode too as sometimes the Night mode shot can be very noisy.

When the Honor 8X gets a photo right, it’s hard to believe the shot comes from a phone that costs so little, just don’t expect it to be consistent. This is true of the bokeh mode, and when taking photos in generally good lighting. It’s certainly one of the main reasons to own the Honor 8X.

Honor 8x Compared To

Sony Xperia XZ3

Moto E5 Plus

LG V30

HTC U11

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge

YotaPhone 2

Sony Xperia Z3

HTC One Remix

Huawei Ascend Mate 2

LG G Flex

LG Optimus 4X HD

HTC One S

Samsung Galaxy S II

Google Nexus S

T-Mobile myTouch 3G

Selfies are taken with a 16-megapixel lens found in the notch above the screen, and we’ll be doing more testing to see how it fares.

Specs and other features

What else? There’s a fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone — which is mounted quite high on the body, sometimes forcing a grip adjustment to reach it — a fast face unlock feature for convenience, plus a 3,750mAh battery, a MicroSD card slot, dual-SIM, the Kirin 710 processor, and 4GB of RAM. Huawei’s GPU Turbo game tweaks are also onboard. A strong line-up, but nothing we’ve not seen before from Honor. The Android 8.1 operating system has Huawei’s EMUI 8.2 user interface over the top, so that feels very familiar too.

Downsides? Apart from the occasional camera missteps, we’re disappointed to see a Micro-USB charging port rather than a USB Type-C on the Honor 8X. We’re sure there are economic reasons why this is still being used, but we’d rather the newer port was adopted. NFC is also not a guaranteed feature in every market the Honor 8X arrives in, so Google Pay won’t always be available. It will be coming to the U.S., but the time and price has yet to be announced.

Price and availability

The Honor 8X is a strong mid-range package and it sits somewhere between 250 and 300 euros. In China it starts at around $200, which is how much the Honor 7X cost. If it can come in at this price again, it will be great value. What it doesn’t do is stand out. The 8X is Honor on cruise control, following up the Honor 7X with a safe device that if it were on a boat, it would be excel at not rocking it in the slightest. Arguably that’s all you want from a mid-range phone; but not only do we know Honor has got the talent to create talked-about phones like the Magic 2, but there’s also plenty of competition out there too.

We’re going to spend more time with the Honor 8X to see if its personality suddenly shines through, but at the moment we’d point you in the direction of the Honor Play, which as a gaming-centric phone has more of a reason-to-be than the Honor 8X, without ruining the phone for non-gamers. Yes it’s a little more expensive, but it’s a very focused and desirable product.

Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch Review

Research Center:

Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch

Gamers looking to buy a mid-range gaming laptop have all the choice in the world. They also have no choice at all. While there’s plenty of laptops sold for around $1,000, they all have similar hardware – an Intel Core processor with a GTX 1050 or GTX 1050 Ti GPU. No other pairing can beat the value of this dream team.

That makes life difficult for humble laptops like the Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch. Armed with an Intel Core i7-8750H, Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti, 16GB of RAM, and a 1080p screen, nothing about it stands out at a glance.

Yet that doesn’t mean you should dismiss it. In fact, the similarity of today’s many gaming laptops means there’s opportunity for a dark horse to unset popular competitors. Can Legion mount an offense against Dell, Asus, and MSI?

Familiar, but handsome

Lenovo’s has a tight design language, with traits noticeably leaking between the company’s many sub-brands. Past Legion laptops have bucked that trend, mimicking the look of laptops from Alienware, but the Y730 15-inch is firmly inside Lenovo’s wheel-trod aesthetic. Its simple, boxy, slate-like look is reminiscent of an IdeaPad, while the matte gray exterior is reminiscent of the ThinkPad’s workmanlike appearance.

It ultimately lands on the boring side of subtle, but it’s certainly not offensive, and it has some handsome touches. The Legion branding looks great and made us want to slap an X-Men logo on the laptop’s lid.

The Y730 is also thoroughly modern. It has thin display bezels, which cuts down the footprint, and it’s less than an inch thick. It’s not as svelte as the Razer Blade, but the Legion Y730 is quite a bit less expensive, instead competing with laptops like the Dell G5 Gaming Laptop and Asus ROG Strix Hero.

Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch Compared To

Razer Blade (2018)

Digital Storm Equinox

Dell Inspiron 15 7577

HP Omen 15

Origin EON15-S

Asus ROG Zephyrus

MSI GS63VR 6RF Stealth Pro

MSI GS60 Ghost Pro

Alienware 15 (2015)

Asus ROG G501

Digital Storm Triton

Acer Aspire V15 Nitro Edition

AVADirect Clevo P157SM-A

MSI Global GT60 Dominator Pro

Lenovo IdeaPad Y500

While reasonably thin, it’s not so sleek that it compromises connectivity, which includes three USB ports, HDMI, Mini-DisplayPort, a Thunderbolt 3 port, a headphone jack, and Ethernet. That’s a solid array of connectivity that should cover any peripheral a gamer would use.

The keyboard feels off, but boy, is it pretty

The keyboard is another area the Lenovo Legion Y730 cribs from the company’s other designs. It’s a very Lenovo keyboard, with flat keycaps, lots of space between keys, and a slightly strange layout that includes macro keys on the left-hand side.

Riley Young/Digital Trends

We struggled a bit at first. The key layout felt shifted from where it should be due to the macro keys, but we adjusted after a couple days. Key feel is fine, with decent travel but a vague overall motion, and there’s plenty of space to make long typing sessions comfortable.

The display is otherwise unremarkable, but that’s not a bad thing.

It’s a colorful keyboard, as Lenovo has stuffed a per-key customizable RGB LED backlight into the laptop. The control of it, which is managed by Corsair’s iCue program, is a bit confusing, but offers a huge range of options. You can even upload an image and have the keyboard do its best to mimic it.

The LEDs behind the Legion logo and the side fan vents can also be changed. MSI’s GP63 Leopard is the only serious alternative that can rival Legion’s extensive lighting customization.

We like the touchpad. It’s not amazing, but it’s large, smooth, and never registered unintended input. Gaming laptops often treat touchpads as an afterthought because gamers don’t use them to play, but the Y730’s is fine, which instantly makes it better than most.

The 1080p screen suits the laptop’s hardware

Every Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch comes with a 1080p anti-glare panel. It’s unusual to see anti-glare in a gaming laptop. Most have a glossy coat, which tends to improve contrast and vibrance, but make the laptop harder to use in bright rooms. Going anti-glare makes the Y730 a more utilitarian option, one that you can haul anywhere and expect to use in comfort.

The display is otherwise unremarkable, but that’s not a bad thing. It offers solid color accuracy and a contrast ratio of 860:1 at the panel’s maximum brightness of 305 lux. The Y730’s competitors are not a tough crowd. The Acer Predator Helio, Dell Inspiron G3 Gaming, and even Razer Blade rank slightly below the Legion in color accuracy and contrast. A truly great display, like that on the MacBook Pro or Surface Book 2, will decimate the Y730’s scores in every category – but such laptops aren’t the Y730’s competition.

Overall, games look sharp, with strong color and lots of detail in dark scenes. Even the 1080p resolution isn’t a problem. It’s not as crystal-clear as 4K, of course, but it’s a more realistic match for the Y730’s affordable hardware.

Riley Young/Digital Trends

Audio is provided by a pair of Harman branded speakers with Dolby Atmos support, and we liked what we heard. Games and movies were crisp, clear, and served with a bit of bass. They’re not better than a good pair of headphones, but they’ll keep you from reaching for your cans the moment you launch a game.

The processor and hard drive overperform

The Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch comes with Intel’s Core i7-8750H processor, which has six cores and a maximum Turbo Boost clock speed of 4.1 GHz. It’s a common processor in high-end laptops and perhaps overkill for gaming – cores five and six won’t be used much in most games. The CPU was paired with 16GB of RAM.

Geekbench had good things to say about the Legion Y730. It did as well as the Dell XPS 15 we reviewed and defeated the HP Spectre x360 15-inch. Our Handbrake test was put the Y730 right alongside these peers. It’s not the fastest laptop ever made, but it’s a strong performer that could even serve as a portable workstation.

Our review unit’s 256GB PCIe solid state drive also performed well, hitting read speeds of over 1.5 gigabytes per second and write speeds of 425 megabytes per second. That easily beats the Dell G3 Gaming, which hit a read speed of 500 MB/s and a write speed of only 209 MB/s. These strong results go well beyond what’s needed to load games quickly.

The GPU is only as quick as you’d expect

As with the display and processor, the Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch comes with just one choice of graphics: Nvidia’s GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. This is by far the most common GPU in affordable and mid-range gaming laptops, which means it’s difficult for laptops to stand out in performance.

Riley Young/Digital Trends

3DMark’s Fire Strike benchmark gives us no reason to think the Legion Y730 will be different. Its score of 7,066 slightly defeats the pair of similarly equipped Dell laptops, but the margin of victory is extremely small.

No surprises so far, then. Let’s load up the games.

Again, the Legion Y730’s performance is no surprise. Yet the results do require some explanation. There’s a wide variety of designs and configurations in the list of competitors we’ve placed the Y730 against. The Dell XPS 15 lags the Y730 in some games due to throttling issues despite the fact its hardware is extremely similar. The older Inspiron 7677 Gaming, with a GTX 1060, mostly wins by a large margin over the GTX 1050 Ti laptops – except in Civilization VI, where a slow processor holds back its results.

On balance, though, the Legion Y730 provides the performance we’ve come to expect from the GTX 1050 Ti. It’s fast enough to play any game, though demanding games like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will force you to abandon hope of playing at 60 FPS and high detail settings. Whether this laptop suits your needs depends on what you expect. Hardcore PC gamers may demand a higher display refresh rate and GPU performance to match, but most players will find the Legion comfortably adequate.

The battery life is bad, even by a gaming laptop’s standards

The Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch ships with a 57 watt-hour battery, and that gave us immediate reason to worry. That’s similar in size to the Dell XPS 13’s battery, yet the Y730 is much more powerful. The math isn’t in Lenovo’s favor here.

Our worries were confirmed by our test results. The Legion Y730 15-inch didn’t even last three hours in our video loop test, our least demanding. It failed to last two hours in the more demanding Basemark browser benchmark loop. Dell’s G3 Gaming laptop offers roughly twice the battery life of the Legion. Even the Alienware 17 R5, a GTX 1080-powered laptop, lasted longer in most tests.

Real-world results were no better. A few episodes of Disenchanted drained three-quarters of the battery. Light web surfing and document editing ate through a full charge in less than four hours. You’ll need to bring the power brick on most journeys.

Sour software

Lenovo’s Vantage software suite makes an appearance on the Legion Y730. It replaces the standard Windows battery life indicator and offers a few other extras, like extra hotkey support. The keyboard’s lighting is controlled by Corsair’s iCUE app, but there’s also a separate Lenovo menu which…well, we never quite figured out what it’s supposed to do, aside from control the macro keys. McAfee LiveSafe trial edition was installed on our review unit, as well.

Our Take

Handsome and sturdy, the Lenovo Legion Y730 is an enjoyable laptop that’s held back by its price. Our review unit, with a 256GB solid state drive and 2TB mechanical disk, sells for $1,550. That’s way too much for a gaming laptop powered by the GTX 1050 Ti.

Entry-level models start at $1,200 and differ from our review unit only in RAM and hard drive size, so we recommend you go for the base version unless you need more storage. Yet even the most affordable version puts the Y730 up against peers packing the GTX 1060, a substantially better graphics chip. We’d like Lenovo to shave at least $100 from the price.

Is there a better alternative?

Though it has a less attractive display and similar battery life woes, Dell’s G3 Gaming can match the Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch in performance at a lower price.

There’s also a long list of laptops that compete on price but pack a GTX 1060. These include the Asus ROG Strix Hero, the Dell G5 Gaming, and MSI GP63 Leopard. We haven’t reviewed these particular models, but we do know the GTX 1060 is significantly quicker than the GTX 1050 Ti.

How long will it last?

The Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch will last you longer than it’s capable of serving as a gaming laptop. Its sturdy, well-built, and has far more processor power than it needs. The GTX 1050 Ti graphics chip is the weak spot, however, and will start to feel pokey after a few years.

The Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch comes with the usual one-year warranty against manufacturer defects. That’s typical for a system in this price range.

Should you buy it?

Not unless it’s on sale. The Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch is a solid affordable gaming laptop that’s more attractive than many of its peers, but we’d expect to see a GTX 1060 at this price.

This company is recycling your food scraps into 3D printer material

We’ve previously written about the role that 3D printing can play in the future of food, but could additive manufacturing also have a part to play in disposing of food waste? Indeed it can, claim the brains behind a startup called Genecis, made up of graduates from Canada’s University of Toronto Scarborough. With this ambition in mind, they have developed a way to transform today’s restaurant food waste into tomorrow’s biodegradable plastics — useful for everything from creating packaging to 3D printing filament.

“Genecis uses biology to convert organic waste into higher value materials,” Luna Yu, founder and CEO of Genecis, told Digital Trends. “The first product line is PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoates) biopolymers, which is used in combination with PLA to make 3D printing filaments. It is also used to make high-end flexible packaging and containers. In addition, PHAs makes a tougher and less brittle 3D printing filament. The end product is 100 percent biodegradable, and can be mixed with a variety of colors. Currently, all PHAs are made from expensive food crops such as corn, sugar cane, and canola. Genecis has developed a novel technology that produces PHAs from mixed food waste, dramatically reducing the production costs.”

The core of Genecis’ technology involves what Yu describes as “special recipes of bacteria.” These assemble materials automatically at rapid speeds in a way that can be used to produce rare chemicals or materials which are expensive to create chemically.

“Over the past two years, Genecis has collected bacteria from all around the world, and isolated over 200 species that are not present in any existing database,” Yu continued. “This allows us to start developing our own synthetic biology platform, which rapidly creates new synthetic bacteria. These bacteria can be used to make better PHAs for 3D printing, and reprogrammed to make higher value materials used in the cosmetic, pharmaceutical, and nano-materials industries.”

Currently, Genecis is working to commercialize its first product line consisting of PHA bioplastic pellets. It is also seeking partnerships for users of its manufactured polymers. In other words, if any readers happen to be 3D printing filament makers, packaging manufacturers, or general plastic manufacturers that currently use PHAs, now is the time to get in touch!

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Leak shows Intel’s Core i9-9900K comes in a cool 12-sided box, but costs $580

After an initial round of early 3DMark benchmarks in July, the Intel Core i9-9900K leaks just keep on coming. In the latest, a $582.50 price listing and an image of some fancy packaging for the much-anticipated processor reportedly appeared on Amazon, spotted by Tom’s Hardware.

These leaks suggest Intel has clearly now stepped up its game, seemingly taking a shot at the AMD Threadripper which already comes in impressive packaging. The listing has since been pulled, but screenshots captured by Twitter user Momo_Us show that the box resembles a translucent dodecahedron, with a space in the middle part for the processor.

Things look pretty similar to the shape of a twelve-sided die, marking a big departure from Intel’s typical square-shaped processor boxes. Unfortunately, the image suggests there is still no cooler included, despite how big the box may look.

Intel’s Core i9-9900K Listing on Amazon (Image from Toms Hardware)

It is hard to verify if this listing holds up to be true, but the photos look fairly convincing. Amazon briefly mentions that the processor comes packed with eight cores and sixteen threads, a boost of up to 5.0 GHz, with Intel Hyper-Threading Technology for sixteen-way multitasking. That’s not necessarily new information, but it is plenty of power and confirms the benchmarks from July which mentioned that the Core i9-9900K was “noticeably quicker than its last-generation predecessors and AMD’s Ryzen 2700X.”

As for the reported price, $582.50 is still quite a bit expensive compared to the $380 Coffee Lake Intel Core i7-8700K. That’s also higher than some of the originally rumored price suggestions, but then again, this is Intel’s first eight-core, sixteen-thread desktop processor — and it’s meant to compete directly with AMD’s expensive Ryzen processors.

Unfortunately, you can’t buy the processor yet, as Amazon notes that it is still temporarily out of stock. We would have liked to see a sixteen-sided Hexadecagon shaped box instead (with one side for each processor thread,) but the translucent dodecahedron will have to do as a bonus.

All the leaks now considered, a reveal might be coming soon. Best keep your wallet near, and your PC motherboards ready for the upgrade by the end of this year.

Editors’ Recommendations

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• Intel’s 9th-generation processor could launch next month with 8 cores

How to watch the October 9 ‘Made by Google’ event

After months of rumors and leaks, Google is finally ready to unveil its latest and greatest creations, including the new Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL smartphones — and possibly a new Chrome OS 2-in-1, a Google Home hub, and more. Here’s what we expect from Google at its October 9 New York event.

The event starts at 11 a.m. ET on October 9 — that’s 8 a.m. PT if you’re on the West Coast, or 3 p.m. GMT for our U.K.-based readers.

Of course, you might be wondering how you can watch the Google event for yourself — thankfully, there are plenty of ways to do so. We’ve done the research so you don’t have to.

How to watch the Google event on YouTube

Perhaps the easiest way to watch the event is straight from the Made by Google YouTube channel, which will livestream the event once it begins. Through YouTube, you can watch the event on any phone and any computer without the need for an extra app, which makes it one of the easier ways to watch Google unveil its new products.

The YouTube stream is scheduled to start around 20 minutes before the event — though if you do log on at 11 a.m. ET on the dot, we don’t think you’ll miss much besides pre-event music and perhaps a few ads.

Stream the Made by Google event on YouTube.

How to watch the Google event on Twitter

As Apple did for its last event, Google will also be livestreaming on Twitter — so if you prefer to use the Twitter app for livestreaming, then you’re in luck. Unlike the YouTube stream, the Twitter stream is scheduled to start at 11 a.m. There may be a benefit to watching on Twitter if you’re interested in seeing what others think of the new products — live tweets related to the event will appear below the livestream.

Stream the Made by Google event on Twitter.

Stay tuned

Whether or not you tune in to watch the Made by Google event, we’ll have all the latest news, updates, and insights for you. Head to our roundup to check out all of our Made by Google event-related coverage.

Editors’ Recommendations

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Look out construction workers; Japan’s new robot might steal your job one day

Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot is capable of some impressive feats, but researchers from Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) institute have created what looks like an eminently more practical and down-to-earth humanoid robot. Case in point: While Atlas is busy showing off its skills by performing picture-perfect backflips, AIST’s robot showcases its abilities by carrying out regular construction tasks, such as hammering up sheets of drywall. Heck, even its name — HRP-5P — carries the no-nonsense, no-frills naming approach of a 1990s desktop PC.

HRP-5P might be designed to carry out regular DIY jobs, but there is nothing regular about its abilities. Based on what we can see in its demo video and accompanying literature, the robot utilizes impressive object recognition, motion planning, and environmental measurement technology — such as the ability to pick up boards, place them against joists, and then secure them in place using a drill. While we’d need to see evidence of it performing these tasks outside of lab conditions to ensure that this is as good as it appears, it certainly looks extremely promising.

Robots that can replace humans at a number of physical tasks is nothing new, of course. From assembling Ikea furniture to picking berries on farms to, frankly, whatever other job you can think of, machines increasingly offer an alternative to pesky human workers with their propensity for taking vacations and refusing to work much more than eight hours a day.

In the case of HRP-5P, the reason its creation is a bit more location-specific, however. Japan has long had a problem with declining birth rates, meaning that there won’t necessarily be enough able-bodied young people to look after the growing elderly population. While we don’t necessarily want to put grandma in the care of a robot that io comfortable using power tools, machines such as this could one day fill gaps in the job market, particularly in manual labor areas like the construction industry.

Given that millions of contractors in the U.S. could conceivably find their jobs disrupted by a robot such as this, it’s difficult not to be concerned about the possibilities of machines like HRP-5P if commercialized. The news isn’t totally bad, though: According to a recent report from the World Economic Forum, although the number of previously human jobs that can be carried out by a machine is on the rise, plenty more roles are being created as a result. Just don’t expect too many of them to involve drywall!

Editors’ Recommendations

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