TP-Link Talon AD7200 Wireless Wi-Fi Tri-Band Gigabit Router review – CNET
The Good The Talon AD7200 features 802.11ad Wi-Fi and can deliver extremely fast speed to devices that support its high-end tech. It works with all current devices albeit at a lower speed.
The Bad It’s bulky and expensive. Currently there are few devices that can take advantage of its super-fast speed.
The Bottom Line For the small percentage of you with 802.11ad clients in your home, the Talon AD7200 is a good futureproofing purchase, but is otherwise not worth your money.
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The TP-Link Talon AD7200 router is quite bulky.
Josh Miller/CNET
The TP-Link Talon AD7200 is unlike any router I’ve used before: it’s the first 802.11ad router that can deliver up to 4.6Gbps Wi-Fi speed on the 60GHz band, while at the same time serving data on the more traditional 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands. That’s three different bands, all operating at once. A first for a consumer router.
OK. So what’s 802.11ad?
In a nutshell, it’s a new Wi-Fi standard that operates on the 60GHz frequency band, has incredibly high ceiling speed — up to 7Gbps, compared with the 1.3 Gbps most users experience today — but extremely short range (about 30 feet at most) and can’t penetrate walls, meaning, devices will only work if they’re within the line of sight of the router. The new standard is meant to supplement the existing 802.11ac, which is slower but has much longer range. So conceptually, all 802.11ad routers will have access to the superfast 60GHz band, but also work as a normal 802.11ac router, which is the standard most routers on the market use today. (For more on the 802.11ad, check out this post.)
Note: The Talon AD7200 doesn’t support the full speed of 802.11ad, but just at 4.6Gbps, which is already crazy fast.
What do I need to take advantage of 802.11ad?
To get the full benefits of the 802.11ad standard with the Talon AD700, you’ll need at least two clients (a smartphone, laptop. etc) that support 802.11ad.
Unfortunately, there are very few of these kinds of laptops, smartphones or tablet etc. currently on the market. Fortunately, I had access to an 802.11ad-compatible laptop, the Acer TravelMate P446. I used a network cable to connect the router to a file server and then copied the file to the Acer via Wi-Fi. While the transfer took place in seconds, it still did not reach the full speed of 802.11ad, topping out at 1Gbps (the same connection speed as the connected file servers.)
There are a few reasons for this:
The router and a the laptop could only connect at a maximum of 2.3Gbps using the 60GHz band, which was the top Wi-Fi speed of the laptop itself.
The router was physically connected to the file server using a Gigabit connection which tops out at 1Gbps, effectively bottlenecking the wireless performance of the router
Still, it’s refreshing to confirm that 802.11ad devices are at the very least Gigabit speed capable.
CNET Labs 5GHz Wi-Fi performance
Arris SBR-AC3200P
652.5
247.7
Linksys EA9200
577.8
242.7
TP-Link Talon AD7200
574.2
192
Asus RT-AC68U
521.4
336
Linksys WRT1900AC
520.67
340.7
Asus RT-AC3200
513.7
289
Linksys E8350
511.1
304.6
Asus RT-AC87U
504.4
278.6
Netgear R8000
482.2
241.6
Linksys EA8500
437.8
272.4
Netgear R7500
381.7
242.4
Legend:
Close range
Long range
Note:
Measured in megabits per second. Longer bars mean better performance.
Since there are so few 802.11ad clients, why should I care about this router?
Faster is always better, and the Talon is futureproof. When 802.11ad devices are more readily available, the Talon will give you the option of wirelessly connecting them together at extremely fast speeds, as long as they are in close proximity to the router. Imagine being able to quickly connect your laptop to a big-screen TV and instantly stream 4K video to it. That’s why you’d care about this router.
iSmartAlarm iCamera Keep Pro Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
Watch iSmartAlarm’s iCamera Keep Pro pan to follow motion activity.
iSmartAlarm
The majority of today’s DIY home security cameras come with fixed wide-angle lenses. That means you can’t pan or tilt them to capture motion happening outside of a specific field of view. But what if you want your camera to actually follow the action?
iSmartAlarm might have your fix. The security company is in the midst of an Indiegogo campaign for its latest device, the $200 iCamera Keep Pro — an updated version of iSmartAlarm’s first-gen iCamera Keep.
Available for preorder now on Indiegogo for the reduced price of $79 in the US and roughly £80 in the UK, iSmartAlarm expects to ship the earliest batches of iCamera Keep Pro’s to US backers beginning in March 2017 (April for folks in the European Union).
iSmartAlarm
Here’s a rundown the iSmartAlarm iCamera Keep Pro’s basic specs and features:
- 1080p live streaming
- 30 free 30-second cloud video clips
- 30-foot motion detection range
- 30-foot night vision range
- 140-degree lens
- 350-degree pan and 40-degree tilt capabilities
- Activity zones that let you designate custom motion detection areas
- Time-lapse of events
- MicroSD card slot for local storage (card not included)
- Companion app for Android and iOS
- Sound detection (can supposedly “hear” smoke and carbon monoxide alarms and alert you)
- Compatible with Amazon’s Alexa
- Compatible with IFTTT
- Works with broader iSmartAlarm security system
Related Links:
- iSmartAlarm’s next-gen security camera does more for less
- A promising little camera with a lot of room to grow
- Do-it-yourself home alarm system changes the security game
Everything in this list looks good, but iSmartAlarm certainly isn’t the only company offering this sort of camera. Traditional internet protocol (IP) camera brands like Foscam have offered pan and tilt functionality for years.
The newer 360-degree Zmodo Pivot cam is also fairly similar to the iCamera Keep Pro. At $150, Zmodo’s Pivot has 360 degrees of built-in motion sensors that detect activity even when the lens isn’t pointed in the right direction. That’s where its 360-degree panning capabilities come in — the camera rotates to the right spot and records activity.
Zmodo’s 360-degree Pivot camera banishes blind spots
The Zmodo Pivot security camera can auto-pan to capture 360 degrees of motion events.
by Megan Wollerton
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Interestingly, iSmartAlarm’s Indiegogo page says, “The iCamera KEEP Pro is the first DIY smart home security camera to offer Motion Tracking.” Its original iCamera Keep had the same pan and tilt capabilities as the new Pro version, but it wasn’t able to follow activity automatically. That makes the Pro’s motion tracking a first for iSmartAlarm, but I don’t agree that it’s new for the broader DIY security industry.
There’s still a month left on iSmartAlarm’s iCamera Keep Pro campaign and the team has already nearly doubled its original $50,000 funding goal. I’ve asked iSmartAlarm for a model to test out, so check back to see how it compares to Zmodo’s Pivot.
Civilization VI review – CNET
The Good New diplomacy, research and city building systems make this the most in-depth Civ yet. It looks gorgeous, and it’s the best of a 25-year-old series.
The Bad The learning curve can be brutal, especially for newcomers and the playtime required to get through even one round could send some screaming for the hills.
The Bottom Line If you’re a fan of the franchise, or you’re curious enough to dip your toe in the water, Civ VI is the best that 4X strategy gaming has to offer.
Sid Meier’s Civilization series has been, for my money, the be-all end-all in strategy games for as long as they’ve been coming out. And they’ve been coming out for a while, with 2016 marking the 25th anniversary of the franchise. Now Civilization VI is here on PC, and the 4X strategy game has never played better.
If you’ve never stayed up till 3 in the morning mashing the “next turn” button, the Civ games all have one thing in common. They’re all turn-based, 4X (“explore, expand, exploit and exterminate”) strategy games where you, playing as a great historical leader, lead your people from prehistory to global domination. Or just keep starting new games over and over.
The devil, of course, is in the details. Every leader and civilization comes with different unique bonuses, there’s a handful of different paths to victory and the maps are randomly generated with each new game. Civ VI is the product of 25 years of refinement of this formula, and it absolutely shows.
New Civ games have an adoption rate worse than new versions of Windows. The common wisdom is that a newly released version of Civ won’t be as good as the previous version with all its expansions. Civ VI bucks this trend by hanging onto all of the best features from V (and its expansions), while introducing a host of new ones.
Cities now cover multiple spaces on the map.
Screenshot by Luke Lancaster/CNET
The home front
The most obvious change is that your cities, previously confined to one tile on the hex-based map, are now spread out over multiple spaces. That not only leads to a balancing act over things like choosing whether to harvest natural resources or use the space for developments like economic districts, it means your cities just look more impressive as they expand.
Civ VI feels more dynamic. It’s moved away from a static progression style for your civics, government and research where once you picked an option, it was there to build on for the rest of the game. VI lets you do things like gear your social policies toward producing a more effective military, and after the completely justified war, shift focus to rebuilding your cities and keeping your post-war populace happy.
Speaking of war, you can now also use casus belli — justified reasons for conflict with enemy Civs — to massively reduce the diplomatic penalty for warmongering usually tacked on to declarations of war.
Progression on the huge scientific research tree is now no longer entirely determined by an abstract “science” production value, and you can get contextual bonuses based on how you play. Kill an enemy with slings, get a bonus to discovering Archery.
The breadth of the new civic system, the expanded cities, deeper diplomacy and research tree make your choices feel more personal, important and specialised. You feel like your Civ is your own, not like you’re racing to the end of the tech tree for the umpteenth time.
Xiaomi Mi Note 2 Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
Xiaomi
Xiaomi has a new phone for those who are looking for a replacement for the Samsung Galaxy Note 7.
Sporting a design that, like the Note 7, is curved on both front and back, the new 5.7-inch Mi Note 2 also offers a 23-megapixel camera, 6GB of RAM and 128GB of onboard storage.
It’s set to launch on November 1 China for 3,299 yuan (approximately $485, £400 and AU$640). A cheaper model, with 4GB RAM and 64GB onboard storage, will retail for 2,799 yuan (roughly $410, £340 and AU$540). There’s also a special model with support for 37 LTE bands that retails at 3,499 yuan ($515, £420 and AU$675).
The phablet is similar to the Mi 5S Plus, which launched last month. Both phones have a similar 5.7-inch display and are powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor, though the Mi Note 2’s display uses OLED technology to curve the screen on the front while still retaining the curved back of the first Mi Note.
Instead of designing a glass display with a hole for the fingerprint sensor, the Mi Note 2, like the Mi 5s Plus, uses Qualcomm’s ultrasonic fingerprint scanner technology that reads the fingerprint through the glass. Xiaomi has been pushing its Mi Pay mobile payment system lately, so the Mi Note 2 will come with NFC.
Powered by Android, the Mi Note 2 runs Xiaomi’s custom MIUI 8 skin. It, like most skins out of China, lacks an app drawer, but has some nifty features. You can turn on the flash light by holding the home button without unlocking the phone, for instance, and can use a second finger to swipe through home-screens while holding down on an app to move it.
Check back soon for my first impressions soon.
Key specs
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 2.35Ghz
- 6GB RAM, 128GB onboard storage
- 4,070mAh battery with Quick Charge
- 23-megapixel rear camera
- Comes in black an silver
Xiaomi Mi Mix Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
Aloysius Low/CNET
Xiaomi has a new concept phone — but it’s not actually a concept, because it’s real. And it’s crazy.
Designed by French designer Philippe Starck and announced at Xiaomi’s Beijing event today, the 6.4-inch device features a striking bezel-less display. Where other phones usually keep a top and bottom area available for the front camera and home button, the Mix does away with both, leaving only a small space in the bottom right corner for the front camera.
The phone will be available in China on November 4 and will come in two models. One, housing 6GB of RAM and 128GB of onboard storage, will retail for 3499 yuan ($510, AU$680, £420) while a premium model with 18k gold embossing and 256GB onboard storage will cost 3,999 yuan ($590, AU$770, £480).
The Mix is quite the game changer. In order to accommodate the lack of a top and bottom bezel, where the speaker for making calls usually is, Xiaomi is using piezoelectric ceramic actuator to deliver voice calls to your ears. It’s not the first phone to operate with a tiny bezel though, with
The whole phone is encased in beautifully glossy black ceramic, though this may end up being a fingerprint magnet. Located at the back is the 16-megapixel rear camera and a fingerprint sensor.
Check back soon for our hands-on impressions.
Key specs
- Snapdragon 821 processor
- 4,400mAh battery featuring Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0
- NFC
- 16-megapixel rear camera
ZTE Axon 7 review: Outstanding with a few faults
ZTE is making waves this year by pushing out a phone most Android enthusiasts crave, at least on paper. For the increasingly common and competitive $400 price, the Axon 7 offers a stylish metal unibody, QHD AMOLED screen, dual-front facing speakers, a rear fingerprint sensor and the latest Snapdragon 820 chip with 4GB of RAM. Oh, and you’ll be getting 64 GB of storage too. However there’s some serious competition in the field for the same price or less. Let’s find out if this phone deserves your money.
Build
As soon as you hold the Axon 7, you’ll notice its heavier than just about every flagship phone today. This can be credited to the all metal body and the larger 3250 battery, but there are other phones with similar features that weigh noticeably lighter. To most people, the slightly heavier weight may not matter, but I did find it uncomfortable to hold horizontally for awhile while watching Netflix in bed with the phone or a lot of YouTube videos as it added a strain on my wrist when holding with one hand.
Heaviness aside, this feels like a truly premium phone. The aluminum body is smooth all over with no sharp edges on the sides or bottom, and it’s curved just right on the back to fit in the palm nicely.
I’m impressed that ZTE was able to keep this phone so compact. For a 5.5 inch phone with a decently sized battery and front facing speakers, this phone is still shorter than the 5.5 inch OnePlus 3. The phones shares the very common top and bottom antenna line like many other metal devices today, and I’ve found reception to be more than acceptable where I’m located in Athens, Ohio using AT&T LTE. WiFi speeds have been very fast, however I’ve noticed it takes a little longer to connect to my house and school WiFi than other smartphones I’ve tested recently.
The fingerprint sensor is located on the back of the device which will be a hit or miss to all of you. After using this and the Nexus 6P, I’ve easily gotten use to having my index finger on the sensor as I’m pulling the device out of my pocket, waking up the screen as soon as I look at it. The sensor used on the Axon 7 is very fast, and I would place it between the Nexus 6P and OnePlus 3 (the 3 being the fastest I’ve used).
My biggest complain about the phone’s build is the capacity navigation keys at the bottom. From left to right, these act as the back, home, and recent buttons. I suppose I like how minimal they look, but they are took close together and it makes it difficult accurately tap them. I really wish ZTE allowed us to toggle software navigation keys, because these aren’t even back-lit, making them impossible to see at night.
ZTE knew exactly what a hardcore Android enthusiast wanted here and placed two front-facing speakers on the phone backed up by Dolby Audio. I was really impressed with the sound that was coming out of these. Dolby Surround is on by default with this device, but you can toggle it in the quick settings to hear the difference. Turning Dolby on while playing out the speakers provided a much more area effect to the audio, which was very apparent in videos and movies. When Dolby is off, movies and music sound a bit louder actually, but lose the surrounding effect and clarity. I always kept Dolby on.
Overall though, I found these speakers to be very clear, but not as loud as some phones I’ve listened to. The Alcatel Idol 4S takes the cake as having the best phone speakers I’ve ever heard.
Display
The Axon 7 gives us the same panel used on the Samsung Galaxy S6, which is a damn good screen. Samsung has yet to sell its latest generation of AMOLED panels to other companies, so this screen as good as AMOLED screens get except for the newest Galaxy S7 phones.
With the 1440×2560 QHD resolution, I could not see any pixels even if I squinted close up. The phone got very bright, but in direct sunlight I did have some trouble seeing smaller text and overall detail. It’s not on par with Samsung’s ability to “overdrive” their displays in sunlight.
Regardless, this screen can easily be featured as the highlight of this phone for how great the colors are and how crisp everything is. However going back on fourth between this phone and my OnePlus 3 daily driver, I can notice the improved clarity of the QHD panel closer to my face, but I’m still completely satisfied with 1080p screens and am not sure is QHD is worth the cost yet. Still, these two phones are the same price, so if the higher resolution is really worth it to you, you’ll be glad to know this screen is noticeably better.
Performance
ZTE is giving us almost the best the market can offer with the Axon 7 in terms of performance. The Snapdragon 820 chip coupled with 4GB of RAM offers a quick and pleasant Android experience, but isn’t perfect.
Because most high-end Android phones offer near identical performance, the best way to rate the Axon 7’s performance is to compare it with the other big hitters this year, as I have used several of them.
After using the Galaxy S7 Active, Idol 4S, OnePlus 3, HTC 10, and for a limited time, LG G5, I can say the multitasking is slightly worse on the Axon 7, as apps take slightly longer to hop back into even when it’s still in memory. I also ran into a few hiccups during my time of use where I tried to go back into an app I just used to see it had closed and needed to reopen. While the Snapdragon 820 chip is plenty fast enough to open apps in 1-2 seconds, there is no excuse as to why an app so recently used should have closed down. Like I said though, this only happened a few times.
Small problems aside, this phone just doesn’t offer a jaw dropping fast experience as I had witnessed when first using the HTC 10 and OnePlus 3. It’s fast, don’t get me wrong, but not the fastest by a long shot.
Camera
In daylight, the Axon 7 takes some amazing photos. With the 20 megapixel rear-shooter, I loved being able to zoom into photos more than other phones I’ve used this year. Colors and brightness all looked great during the day, and detail was very crisp.
Starting with a few shots I grabbed in glorious Gatlinburg, the detail in these are very impressive in large part due to the optical image stabilization in the camera helping balance pictures being taken. Usually the sun is over exposed in pictures like these taken with smartphone cameras but this one was incredibly well balanced as the trees still held a lot of detail.
The phone’s camera does struggle at night, much more than other high-end phones I’ve used. When capturing our school’s library at night, the lights are easily seen, but not much else even with HDR mode enabled. Detail on the townhouses shown above aren’t very impressive either, and the lights are way overexposed.
Battery
After using the phone for about a month, I’ve always felt comfortable that the phone would last me a whole day. My current schedule includes unplugging the phone at 8:30 a.m. and making till about midnight when I go to sleep with about 15% or slightly less left.
My daily phone agenda involves using GroupMe about all day (I think I’m ready for college to be over), about 15-20 minutes of Snapchat use, occasional SMS texting, heavy Reddit use, about an hour of Netflix and YouTube combined, constant Gmail syncing and a few other apps. About 80% of my day I’m connected to WiFi and the rest I’m on LTE. I don’t usually play games on my phone so I’m using the Axon 7 as I would my daily driver.
I rank the Axon 7 slightly lower than the OnePlus 3 which would rarely reach less than 20% by the end of the day for me, and lower than the Idol 4S (also a $399 phone) which got me the best battery life out of either of these devices. However this phone is still a really solid performer and if it does need a quick sip, Qualcomm Quick-Charge allowed me to charge the phone 0% to 54% in 30 minutes.
Software
This is the first ZTE device I’ve ever reviewed, so I was nervous about their software experience. They’ve clearly tuned things quite a bit from previous devices, as the software strongly resembles stock Android with small cosmetic changes. I actually really like the shade of dark blue that carries throughout the system UI – much more than stock Android. Also the way the pull-down notification bar and quick settings change color with the wallpaper is a really nice touch.
On to the functional side of things, ZTE made the default homescreen launcher their “Stock Android” launcher, a quick and fluid homescreen that includes an app drawer and similar aspects of the Google Now Launcher, except for the actual integration of Google Now. ZTE included another launcher that you can switch to in your settings menu, but I couldn’t stand it as it was just an attempt to mirror iOS. Both of these launchers were pretty basic and lacked customization, so I downloaded a different launcher.
ZTE’s settings menu includes two columns. One for quick access to common categories of the phone, and the other is about the same as stock Android. As part of habit, I always swiped left to get to the normal “All settings” view.
One of the stand-out features ZTE included with the Axon 7 is Mi-POP, a software navigation button and can be dragged around your screen in case you don’t want to use the capacity keys. I liked this feature, and used it for a bit without problems, but I hate having clutter on my screen and eventually disabled it, even if it meant having to use the capacitive keys more.
ZTE allows for a decent amount of customization, at least compared to stock Android, and I always like being able to change the color profile of my display. The three options for the color mode include natural (the dullest, looks more like and LCD panel), normal, and vibrant. Vibrant was a bit too saturated for my eyes so I stuck with normal and really liked it.
My biggest grip with the software by far is the lockscreen, and the way the phone displays notifications. Or should I say hides them? For some reason, the folks at ZTE thought it was a good idea to hide your notifications and only allow you to see them if you tap a small bell icon. I couldn’t begin to provide a solid explanation as to why that would be a good idea. There are phones that can show you notifications without even turning the screen on (thank you, moto). If they don’t do that, you might be able to double tap the screen to see your lockscreen notifications. Pretty convenient if the phone is laying on its back. With the Axon 7, there is no hand wave gesture and no double-tap. I have to press the power button, then tap a small icon on the top left just to see who called me or texted me.
Sure, this is first-world problems, but the worst part is you can’t disable it. Not even after a couple software updates. Sorry ZTE, but just about every other phone offers a better way of doing this.
Conclusion
While there are some notable downsides to having this phone, such as the poor low-light camera, occasional performance stutter, the frustrating “feature” of hiding notifications from you on your lockscreen, and the lackluster navigation keys, ZTE has seriously stepped their game up this year and is offering a flagship phone that I almost wanted to purchase myself.
The all-metal build that carries over to the front-facing speakers has caught more than a few eyes when using in public, and the screen of this phone is a thing of sheer beauty. I can confidently say these are the second best speakers I’ve ever heard on a smartphone and I’ll definitely miss having those. Playing Fallout Shelter and Monument Valley provided the best gaming I’ve experienced on a phone, and to the average user, every day usage is going to feel very fluid. This is a phone that looks excellent on paper, and for the most part is. However some software adjustments are needed before I can recommend this phone over some of the other competition in this price range.
Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.1-inch with S Pen (2016) Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
The Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.1-inch with S Pen will be available in the US starting October 28.
Screenshot by Patrick Holland/CNET
So here’s a question: how does Samsung follow up the battery debacle of its Note 7? Well, release something that’s not a phone: the Galaxy Tab A 10.1-inch with S Pen.
Over the years, Samsung has offered tablets in a wide range of sizes, capabilities and price points. Which is great if you are paying attention, but a little confusing if you’re not. Samsung’s Tab lineup can quickly become overwhelming to decipher.
Then, there’s the S Pen. This summer, one of the things we liked about the Note 7 was the new S Pen — you can write, draw and even select/animate a GIF. The Tab A 10.1-inch brings all these new S Pen features to a tablet. It includes a new app called Samsung Notes — combining its previous apps Action Memo, S Note and Scrapbook into one place.
The Galaxy Tab A 10.1-inch fits nicely into Samsung’s lineup — just under the higher-priced and higher-specced Galaxy Tab S2 and Windows-based Galaxy TabPro S. It brings increased features and value to its Tab A line. The specs are not mindblowing, but they are a significant improvement over last year’s models:
- 10.1-inch WUXGA display with a resolution of 1,920×1,200 pixels
- Exynos 7870 octo-core processor
- Android Marshmallow 6.0
- 3GB RAM
- 16GB of storage
- Expandable microSD storage up to 256GB
- 1.22 pounds (553 grams)
- Wi-Fi-only
- Antiglare screen with blue light filter
The Galaxy Tab A 10.1-inch comes in two colors: black and white. It has a 7,300mAh battery which according to Samsung allows the Tab A 10.1-inch to get 13 hours of video playback. Of course, until we get our hands on one to test, we won’t know for sure.
The Galaxy Tab A 10.1-inch with S Pen will be available in the US for $350 starting October 28. It will be interesting to see how the public will react to this and future products after Samsung’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad summer and fall.
The Galaxy Tab A 10.1-inch with S Pen will come in black or white.
Screenshot by Patrick Holland/CNET
Denon AVR-S920W review – CNET
The Good The Denon AVR-920W offers excellent surround sound performance for the money, especially for an Atmos-capable model. Music playback is accomplished and full-sounding. The comprehensive AVR control app for Android and iOS offers Wi-Fi streaming and source selection.
The Bad Neither HEOS nor Google Cast multiroom audio is supported on this receiver, and the Wi-Fi control app can be flaky.
The Bottom Line The Denon AVR-S920W is an excellent mid-priced Atmos-ready receiver, with plenty of home cinema muscle and excellent usability.
So, you’re looking to buy a receiver, huh? We understand how overwhelming it can be to make a decision sometimes. You have a checklist of features you want and a strong desire not to overspend.
At the competitive under-$600 level there’s a number of models vying for your attention including the Sony STR-DN1070, the Yamaha RX‑V681 and the Onkyo TX-NR656. The Sony has been our favorite all year, but the Denon gives it a serious run. Unlike the Sony it’s compatible with Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, the latest surround sound formats that incorporate special “height” channels for added immersion. We certainly don’t consider Atmos a must-have at this point, especially since only a handful of titles are available, but some buyers place a high priority on future-readiness.
Both the Sony and Denon offer superb sound for the price, so the choice becomes one of priorities. If you want slightly better wireless streaming options the Sony is the way to go, but if you want Atmos capability now or in the future, the answer is the Denon. For the price it’s one of the best Atmos receivers we’ve tested so far.
Design
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The Denon AVR-S920W is an Atmos-capable receiver which includes Bluetooth streaming and 4K compatibility.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Consistent or lackadaisical? Call it what you will, Denon’s receivers have looked the same for at least the past five years, and it’s a look you probably expect: a big black box with a blue readout. What the AVR-S920W lacks in originality it makes up for in usability. While sister brand Marantz favors a rotary knob on the fascia to select sources the Denon also includes handy shortcut buttons for the four most oft-used inputs.
The remote control is streamlined from previous years and now resembles the slim-line Marantz remotes. It has a friendly selection of buttons and is relatively easy to use.
View full gallery Sarah Tew/CNET
Denon offers a minimalist yet powerful on-screen display, and if you’ve used a receiver setup screen before you’ll find it fairly straightforward. The menus on Sony’s STR-DN1070, however, are much more comprehensive and attractive.
Features
The Denon AVR-S920W sits at the top of the company’s S range with a useful selection of advanced features. The most obvious is the seven-channel amplifier which can be pressed into processing Dolby Atmos and DTS:X soundtracks (5.2.2).
View full gallery Sarah Tew/CNET
Denon doesn’t make choosing a receiver at this price easy though, by offering three models within $100 of each other: the AVR-S720W, AVR-S920W and the AVR-X1300W. While the biggest difference between the S models and the X is a more advanced calibration routine let’s say that instead you’re trying to decide between the $479 AVR-S720W and the $579 AVR-S920W. What’s the difference? That extra $100 gets you an additional two 4K HDMI ports (for a total of eight), an additional output (which is helpful if you run a TV and a projector), an extra 15W per channel of amplification, 4K upscaling (meh), and “upgraded Denon sound engineering design.” Both offer HDCP 2.2 and HDR passthrough, which will facilitate the upgrade to 4K/HDR Blu-ray players, game consoles and set-top boxes like the new Rokus.
View full gallery Sarah Tew/CNET
If you are streaming music from a phone, the AVR-S920W has what amounts to today’s minimum wireless connectivity: Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capability onboard. While competitor Yamaha has incorporated its own proprietary MusicCast system into its 2016 receivers, Denon hasn’t followed suit with the S920W. Sadly, you can’t stream using Denon’s HEOS app to the receiver without the use of the separate HEOS Link ($349).
The bottom line: Our quick verdict on the Lenovo Yoga Book
There’s nothing quite like the Lenovo Yoga Book. It’s a small, lightweight clamshell device running your choice of Android or Windows 10 as an OS. Take a tour of the hardware and you’ll find a 360-degree hinge, a screen and, uh, no keyboard. That’s right, instead of where the keyboard deck would be is a flat-touch sensitive surface that doubles as a digital notepad and sketchpad. It works as a keyboard too, except the buttons, as it were, are all virtual, ready to disappear when you’re done using them.
The design is nothing if not inventive, and Lenovo deserves credit for that, but it’s almost ahead of its time. That or just not very well executed. While digital artists might enjoy the doodling features, our reviewer was never able to master the keyboard. Even when she learned to type accurately, she could never do so quickly. And that’s a problem for a $500-plus device designed for being productive on the go. For that, you may as well buy, you know, a laptop.
Razer’s Blade Stealth and ‘Core’ add up to the gaming laptop I always wanted
For as long as I can remember, I’ve dreamed of a computer that didn’t exist: something that could get me through the work day but also transform into a gaming powerhouse at home. It’s taken decades, but that old fantasy is finally starting to coalesce into reality. Laptops from Alienware and MSI can be bought with an external graphics dock that lends them the power of a desktop-class GPU. Earlier this year, Razer even made a bid for my dream laptop — but its Blade Stealth stumbled with middling battery life and by launching before its companion GPU dock hit the market. Recently the company updated the ultraportable with more storage and memory, a faster processor, a higher-capacity battery and the graphics extender that makes it so special: the Razer Core. Now that we finally have the complete package, it’s time to revisit the Stealth and see if it makes good on its promise.
Hardware
Like every Razer Blade laptop before it, the updated Stealth is a study of black, anodized aluminum accented with the glow of a customizable LED keyboard. This is hardly a surprise — the new Stealth is less a “new laptop” than a modestly updated version of the ultraportable Razer that came out earlier this year. Yes, there’s a new processor inside and a bit more memory, but all of that is contained in the same chassis as the original Stealth. Not that I’m complaining: Razer’s first take on the Ultrabook was thin, light and well built. This one is too.
The Blade Stealth ticks every box it needs to in order to qualify as an ultraportable. It measures just a half-inch thick at its fattest point, with a silhouette that gently tapers toward the palm rest. Its weight is almost negligible; it’ll add less than three pounds to your bag (2.84 pounds, to be precise). At 12.5 inches at its widest point, it won’t take up much space either. It’s solid and durable, too — there’s nothing like a CNC milled aluminum chassis to lend a device a high-end feel.
As for looks, Razer has always walked a fine line between subtle design and conspicuous branding. Like all Blades before it, the Stealth is draped in an attractive matte black finish and adorned with a glowing Razer logo. And it’s kind of cool. Maybe too cool. For Razer’s line of thin gaming laptops, the standard Blade design language looks sleek and almost sophisticated. But in a professional environment, the Stealth will stand out. Folks thinking about picking up the machine to double as a work and gaming machine should ask themselves, does the Stealth look too awesome for you to be taken seriously in next month’s board meeting? If the answer is “yes,” consider turning off the backlight behind the Razer logo and covering it with a sticker.
There isn’t a lot of room for connectivity on the Blade Stealth’s thin frame, but there’s enough. Each of the laptop’s sides houses a single USB 3.0 port, as well as an HDMI socket on the right, and a 3.5mm headphone jack and a Thunderbolt 3 connection on the left. Short of adding a built-in memory card reader, you can’t expect too much more from an ultraportable. Still, that Thunderbolt 3 connector adds some versatility; Stealth users who buy the Razer Core GPU dock will gain four additional USB 3.0 ports.
Keyboard and trackpad
Like the Stealth’s chassis, the keyboard here is one we’ve seen before — but it may also be the last time we see it. Don’t misread me: The Stealth’s keyboard is quite good. Its full-size keys are well spaced, comfortable to type on and even feature Razer’s Chroma backlighting, which allow the keys to glow in any of 16.8 million colors, with up to six accompanying animations, to boot. It’s not a bad keyboard, but Razer itself has already shown that it could be even better.
Just before Razer announced the refreshed Blade Stealth, it unveiled an iPad case that featured new low-profile mechanical keys. It’s a new kind of key technology that could potentially give laptops keyboards the feel of a full-size mechanical keyboard — complete with defined actuation and reset points and up to 70 grams of pushback force. Razer told us the new key technology was developed too late to make it into this generation of Razer laptops, but we might see it in laptops later down the line. It’s something I’m looking forward to; the Blade laptops already offer a great typing experience, but I won’t say no to something even better.
For years, I searched for the Windows-user’s answer to the MacBook Pro’s excellent trackpad — and Razer nailed it with the original Blade Stealth. The company’s trackpads were always pretty good but tended to suffer from mushy buttons. The Stealth got rid of those, and the mousing surface has been perfect ever since. It’s smooth, spacious and handles multi-touch gestures with aplomb. I couldn’t ask for more.
Display and sound
Perhaps nothing better exemplifies Razer’s attitude toward laptop design than the Blade Stealth’s screen options. The laptop’s 12.5-inch display can be had in two flavors: a 3,840 x 2,160 4K panel with a 100-percent Adobe RGB colorspace, or a 2,560 x 1,440 QHD screen with 70-percent RGB color gamut. Our review unit came with the latter, but both panels represent what seems to be the unspoken philosophy of Razer’s design process: gorgeous at any expense. Both of these display options are indeed stunning, with vibrant colors, deep blacks and wide viewing angles — but the cost is real. These beautiful screens bestow the laptop with the burden of short battery life.
To be fair, this problem isn’t unique to the Stealth — the next generation of high-resolution displays are killing laptop battery life across the board — but Razer’s latest portable was advertised as having longer battery life than the previous generation. It doesn’t (more on that later), and the display is the likeliest culprit. The Stealth’s screens are touch sensitive, too.
As standard as touchscreens have become on Windows systems, reaching across the keyboard to tap the screen still feels odd to me. That said, you have to give the company some credit: The Stealth’s display is beautiful. Movies, web pages and apps all look great, but the screen was at its best when the laptop was hooked up to the Razer Core GPU dock; playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on maximum settings at 2,560 x 1,440 is a thing of beauty.
I’ve consistently found nothing to complain about when it comes to the Razer Blade line’s audio quality, and that’s true of the new Stealth too. The laptop’s stereo speakers live on either side of the keyboard and push out balanced sound with no noticeable distortion and minimal tinniness, but there’s not much depth to the sound either. Razer recently bought THX, so the audio quality could one day improve, but for now these are merely good speakers. Not great, but good. And for laptop speakers, that’s more than enough.
Performance
| Razer Blade (Fall 2016) (2.7GHz Intel Core-i7-7500U, Intel HD 620) | 5,462 | 3,889 | E3,022 / P1,768 | 4,008 | 1.05 GB/s / 281 MB/s |
| Razer Blade (Fall 2016) + Razer Core (2.7GHz Intel Core-i7-7500U, NVIDIA GTX 1080) | 5,415 | 4,335 | E11,513 / P11,490 | 16,763 | 1.05 GB/s / 281 MB/s |
| ASUS ZenBook 3 (2.7GHz Intel Core-i7-7500U, Intel HD 620) | 5,448 | 3,911 | E2,791 / P1,560 | 3,013 | 1.67 GB/s / 1.44 GB/s |
| HP Spectre 13 (2.5GHz Intel Core i7-6500U, Intel HD 520) | 5,046 | 3,747 | E2,790 / P1,630 / X375 | 3,810 | 1.61 GB/s / 307 MB/s |
| Huawei MateBook (1.1 GHz Core M3, Intel HD 515) | 3,592 | 2,867 | E1,490 / P887 | 2,454 | 538 MB/s / 268 MB/s |
| Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Tablet (1.2 GHz Core M7-6Y75, Intel HD 515) | 4,951 | 3,433 | E1,866 / P1,112 | 2,462 | 545 MB/s / 298 MB/s |
| Dell XPS 13 (2.3GHz Core i5-6200U, Intel Graphics 520) | 4,954 | 3,499 | E2,610 / P1,531 | 3,335 | 1.6GB/s / 307 MB/s |
| Razer Blade Stealth (2.5GHz Intel Core i7-6500U, Intel HD 520) | 5,131 | 3,445 | E2,788 / P1,599 / X426 | 3,442 | 1.5 GB/s / 307 MB/s |
| Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (2.4GHz Core i5-6300U, Intel HD 520) | 5,403 | 3,602 |
E2,697/ P1,556/ X422 |
3,614 | 1.6 GB/s / 529 MB/s |
| Lenovo Yoga 900 (2.5GHz Core i7-6500U, Intel HD 520) | 5,368 | 3,448 |
E2,707 / P1,581 |
3,161 | 556 MB/s / 511 MB/s |
Razer calls the Blade Stealth the “ultimate Ultrabook,” and as far as light, powerful laptops go, it fits the bill. I brought the Stealth with me when I covered Oculus’ Connect 3 conference earlier this month, and it didn’t let me down. For three days, the Stealth juggled multiple active browser windows with half a dozen open tabs apiece, a mess of disorganized Google Drive documents, multiple social media streams, video and image capture and editing tools and a handful of team messaging apps. Yes, my workflow is a complete disaster, which makes the Stealth’s tolerance of it all the more impressive. The Intel Core i7-7500U CPU and 16GB of RAM shrugged off everything I threw at it.
Unfortunately, killer performance is only half the puzzle. Ultraportable notebooks are supposed to be able to handle a full day’s work on a single charge, or at least something close to it. I just couldn’t get that kind of longevity out of the Blade Stealth. Engadget’s standard battery test (looping an HD video at a fixed brightness) exhausted the Stealth’s 53.6Wh battery in a little over five and a half hours — far short of the nine hours promised on the laptop’s product page. A second test, simulating an active browser workflow, lasted just 10 minutes longer.
Battery life
Razer Blade Stealth (fall 2016)
5:36
Surface Book (Core i5, integrated graphics)
13:54 / 3:20 (tablet only)
HP Spectre x360 (13-inch, 2015)
11:34
Surface Book (Core i7, discrete graphics)
11:31 / 3:02 (tablet only)
Apple MacBook Pro with Retina display (13-inch, 2015)
11:23
iPad Pro (12.9-inch, 2015)
10:47
HP Spectre x360 15t
10:17
Chromebook Pixel (2015)
10:01
ASUS ZenBook 3
9:45
Lenovo Yoga 900
9:36
Apple MacBook (2016)
8:45
Samsung Notebook 9
8:16
Dell XPS 13 (2015)
7:36
Microsoft Surface Pro 4
7:15
HP Spectre 13
7:07
Huawei MateBook
6:35
Razer Blade Stealth (Spring 2016)
5:48
Dell XPS 15 (2016)
5:25 (7:40 with the mobile charger)
It’s actually not uncommon for laptops to fall somewhat short of their promised battery life, but the Blade Stealth’s failure stands out because the refreshed model was advertised as having longer battery life than the original. Our review unit didn’t. Not only did it fall 10 minutes short of the first-generation Stealth in our standard test, but it did so with a lower-resolution display than the 4K model we reviewed in the spring. To get the Stealth to run for more than seven hours on the battery, I had to reduce its screen brightness to its absolute minimum, disable all keyboard lighting features and turn off the sound completely. It’s a manageable problem, but I also didn’t see the improvement I was hoping for.
The Razer Core
If you can accept the Stealth’s middling battery life, you’ll have yourself a rather nice ultraportable — but you won’t get the full Stealth experience unless you pick up the Razer Core. This $500 accessory dock lends the laptop the power of a desktop-class graphics card, and it’s what makes my modular gaming laptop dream possible.
The GPU accessory dock is built from the same high-quality black aluminum as the Stealth itself; it’s heavy, durable and looks like a miniature desktop tower. The solid metal body is only broken by stylistic grooves on its front and top sides, a Razer logo on the left and a grated window on its right. On the back, the Core features four USB 3.0 ports, an Ethernet jack, a single Thunderbolt socket for connecting to the laptop and an AC power plug. Just don’t plan on lugging the Core around: It weighs a hefty 11 pounds.
Lifting a recessed handle from the dock’s back panel unlocks it and allows you to slide the Core’s internal components out of the metal chassis. Inside, the Core is as simple as it gets, offering users nothing more than two power supply cables for the graphics card and single PCI-E port in which to install it. Even if you’ve never installed a desktop GPU before, setting up the Core is straightforward; there’s only one place for the card to go.
Using the Core with the Stealth is easy too: As soon as you plug it in, the Core automatically installs its own drivers. I fed the Core an NVIDIA GTX 1080, which it recognized almost instantly. After it finished installing, a new NVIDIA GPU activity monitor appeared in my system tray. “There are no applications running on this GPU,” it told me. Well, let’s change that.
I challenged the Razer Core-equipped Stealth to run two of my library’s most intensive games: Just Cause 3 and The Witcher III: Wild Hunt. Both were playable at the laptop’s native 2,560 x 1,440 resolution, even tuned to their highest graphic settings, but neither performed quite as well as I expected. The Witcher III looked gorgeous at 40 frames per second, as did Just Cause 3 running at a steady 50 — but with a GTX 1080 calling the shots, those numbers should have been higher.
At first, I thought the Stealth’s dual-core processor might be holding the Core’s performance back, so I switched to a less CPU-intensive game to double check. Sadly, Overwatch was underperforming as well, struggling to break 50 fps on multiple graphics presets. Eventually, I figured it out: The Core’s Thunderbolt 3 connection simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to pass the graphics processing to the external GPU and pipe the results back to the laptop. Hooking up an external monitor directly to the GTX 1080-equipped core yielded much better results: 76 to 100 frames per second in Overwatch and 60+ in Just Cause 3. The Witcher III still hovered around 40 fps at 2,560 x 1,440, but that might be the processor’s fault — that game is a CPU beast.
And there, we have the rub: The Razer Core can absolutely turn the Blade Stealth into a gaming machine, but it won’t quite match the performance you’ll get with a desktop. It’s also a segmented experience; the Core performs better when it’s outputting games to an external monitor, making games on the Stealth’s gorgeous display a worse experience by comparison. Frankly, I expected that: Thunderbolt 3 is fast, but asking it to farm graphics rendering out to an external dock and pipe those results back to the laptop eats up a lot of bandwidth. That isn’t to say the Core is underperforming, but it’s limited by today’s technology. No matter what GPU you install into Razer’s Core, it won’t be living up to its potential — but to realize the dream of an external graphics dock, you have to be OK with that. That’s where the technology is right now.
Beyond the technical bandwidth limitation, I experienced one other issue with the Core: It got a little confused when I tried to switch graphics cards. Specifically, the GPU dock failed to automatically recognize my AMD Radeon R9 Nano the same way it did with the GTX 1080. It still installed the drivers right away, but the Radeon control panel didn’t realize the graphics card was installed. When I tried to reinstall the drivers manually, the machine suddenly recognized that the Radeon software was already installed, at which point it started working.
Despite these hiccups, the Core works as promised. Getting into a game is as simple as plugging a single USB-C wire into the Stealth, which piped in the GPU, power and any accessories I hooked up to the Razer Core. Going back to mobile mode is just as easy; you can unplug the Core (even while in a game!) without restarting the laptop, and everything works fine. It’s a dead-simple plug and play experience. And it needs to be: The Core’s $500 price tag wouldn’t be tolerable if the machine were hard to use.
Configuration options and the competition
Choosing a Razer Blade Stealth configuration is mostly a question of screen resolution and storage space. The $999 base model will get you a 2.7GHz Intel Core i7-7500U dual-core processor (3.5GHz with Turbo Boost), integrated HD 620 graphics, 8GB of RAM, a 128GB PCIe SSD and a QHD (2,560 x 1,440) display. Tacking on an additional $250 or $400 will net you 16GB of RAM and 246 and 512GB SSDs, respectively. The 4K Stealth starts at $1,599, also with 512GB of storage. Finally, the $1,999 configuration steps up to 1TB SSD.
The Blade is a decent value for an ultraportable with a seventh-generation Intel Core i7 CPU, but if you need something with better battery life, you may need to look elsewhere. Dell’s XPS 13 is still a good option, starting at $800 with an Intel Core i3-7100U, 4GB of RAM and over 10 hours of runtime, and can even be upgraded to match the Stealth’s Core i7. But if you’re dead set on a 4K display, you’re out of luck — the new XPS 13 tops out at 3,200 x 1,800. If you’re not married to Microsoft’s platform and don’t mind having only a single USB-C port for connectivity, you might consider Apple’s latest MacBook, which can handle 4K resolution for more than eight hours.
If you’re looking at the Blade Stealth in the first place, however, that Razer Core GPU dock is probably part of the reason why. Technically, the Core should work with any Thunderbolt 3 equipped laptop that supports Intel’s switchable graphics standard, but it’s only officially supported on Razer’s Blade and Blade Stealth machines. It works great on those, but at $500 it’s hardly the most affordable external graphics dock on the market. Alienware’s Graphics Amplifier sells for about $200 less but only works with Dell’s own gaming laptops, which are significantly bulkier than the Blade Stealth. MSI’s $1,300 GS30 Shadow is a thin and light laptop with an external GPU dock, but it’s stuck with a fourth-generation Intel processor.
Ironically, the best alternative to the Blade Stealth’s GPU dock might actually be a desktop computer. If you’re willing to learn to build a PC yourself, $500 can go a long way toward building a killer desktop gaming setup — one that won’t throttle the potential of your GPU the same way the Core does. In fact, taking this route won’t even hamper your ability to play high-end PC games on an ultraportable laptop: Steam in-home streaming can easily bridge the gap for most games.
Wrap-up
The Razer Blade Stealth initially caught my eye for its potential to fulfill a long-dormant dream: a portable, powerful laptop that could borrow the power of a desktop-class graphics card to transform into a gaming powerhouse. I’ve waited decades to realize this fantasy, and the Blade Stealth finally made it a reality… with some caveats. While the Stealth is indeed a powerful, thin and gorgeous laptop, its battery life keeps it from living up to Razer’s claim of the “ultimate Ultrabook.” The shadow of compromise hangs over the Core as well. At a high level, the GPU dock delivers on its promise, but today’s technology simply can’t siphon the full, unadulterated power of a desktop GPU through a single Thunderbolt 3 cable.
Still, I love the Razer Blade Stealth and Core combo. It’s not the best ultraportable, and it won’t make the most of your desktop graphics card — but it’s one of those products that “just works.” For gamers without the patience to maintain a desktop but aren’t willing to sacrifice size, weight and battery life for a full gaming laptop, it’s worth all of the tradeoffs. Ultimately, the Razer Blade Stealth isn’t for me, but the Stealth is nonetheless going to make a very specific niche of laptop-loving PC gamers very happy.
AIVAnet 