LeEco Le S3 review – CNET
The Good LeEco’s Le S3 is fast and affordable.
The Bad The phone lacks a headphone jack and NFC, has a clunky interface and its video streaming service doesn’t offer many compelling shows.
The Bottom Line The LeEco Le S3 is a decent budget phone, but the Motorola G4 Plus is better.
The Le S3, the second widely available phone from Chinese phone/TV/video streaming/electronics/basically everything company LeEco, is a less expensive variant of the more powerful LePro 3. At $250 it’s relatively cheap, and packs in some pretty decent hardware. But it isn’t as good as the Moto G4 Plus, our current favorite for the price range. (UK and Australian details have yet to be announced but the US price converts to £200 or AU$340.)
LeEco’s Le S3 phone shines silver
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A few things I liked:
- Clean design: At sub-$300 you’d expect a cheap-feeling phone made out of plastic. But the S3 has a polished aluminum body and shiny metallic trimmings that give it a smart look.
- It’s fast: On paper, the S3 was much faster than other similarly priced Android phones (like the G4 Plus and Samsung Galaxy J3) in benchmark scores to popular testing apps. Day-to-day tasks like launching the camera and scrolling through sites were smooth.
Live content from the internet is accessible with this Live button in the center of your home screen.
Josh Miller/CNET
Things I didn’t like:
- Clunky interface: Just like the LePro 3, the software layer that dresses up Android needs work. Navigating around can be unintuitive, there’s no app drawer (Huawei and Xiaomi do this, too) and your recent apps are merged together with quick settings in one messy page.
- All the video stuff: LeEco’s live broadcasting video service — which sits in your home screen dash and can’t be removed — has clips you can browse from time to time. But there’s nothing really there that I’d actually watch on the regular. The other Le video app and the LeView YouTube video curator don’t have compelling content either.
- Camera’s meh: The phone takes good enough shots for casual pictures and social media, but they aren’t as sharp as other 16-megapixel cameras. And while you can’t tell on a smaller phone screen, images look a lot blurrier and muddier when zoomed in or on a computer desktop.
- Battery life is only OK: The phone has enough battery life to last a workday without a charge and during our lab tests for continuous video playback on airplane mode, it ran 11 and a half hours. While that’s decent, other rival phones lasted 13 to 16 hours.
- No headphone jack or NFC: Unless you love dongles, it’s a drag not to be able to plug in my regular headset to listen to music and calls. And without an NFC chip, you can’t do things like purchase stuff with Android Pay.
The phone also doesn’t have a headphone jack.
Josh Miller/CNET
Other phones you should consider for $200-$250
- Moto G4 Plus ($250, £229 and AU$399): It’s got expandable memory, is water resistant and takes sharper pictures.
- Asus ZenFone 3 ($199, which converts to £159 and AU$269): This one has a more advanced camera that also includes laser-guided autofocus.
- Samsung Galaxy J3 ($110-$180 depending on US carrier, £140 and AU$329): Super cheap and available through major carriers and retailers. Not as powerful as the Le S3, but it’s easier to use and has a long-lasting battery.
- The Google Nexus 5X or OnePlus 2 (prices vary): If you’re willing, look into deeply discounted devices that were released in 2015. Though they may have “last year’s technology,” they are reliable and are still more powerful than the S3.
Samsung Gear S3 Frontier review: Lots of features, not enough apps
It seems like everyone is talking about how the smartwatch market is collapsing, but that hasn’t stopped Samsung from taking another stab at high-end wearables. Who could blame them, really? Last year’s Tizen-powered Gear S2 was full of good ideas, from that rotating bezel to its compatibility with non-Samsung Android phones. Not trying to build on that foundation would have been a shame.
Enter the Gear S3 Frontier. It’s a bigger, better, more refined take on Samsung’s smartwatch formula, and the company threw in every feature it could think of. That rationale is Samsung through and through, and it makes the Gear S3 worthy of your consideration, even if now might not be the best time to buy a smartwatch.
Hardware
Last year’s Gear S2 had a sleek, pseudo-futuristic vibe — so much so that the white model I reviewed looked like a prop straight out of THX 1138. Samsung ditched that clean aesthetic this time around — the S3 Frontier rocks a rugged look, with a knurled, rotating bezel and a chunky stainless-steel body. More often than not, people who saw the S3 on my wrist thought it was just a well-built mechanical timepiece. If you’re like me and enjoy thoughtful mashups of old and new, the S3 certainly scratches that itch. That is, unless you like your watches nice and thin.
Indeed, the Gear S3 Frontier is a big watch, and it won’t work on every wrist. That’s not just because of the bright, 1.33-inch Super AMOLED display either. Between an integrated LTE radio and a relatively large 380mAh battery, the Gear S3 could not have been much smaller. Speaking of the screen, it’s a real standout — it can display up to 16 million colors (up from the Gear S2’s eight million) when the always-on display mode is enabled, so it almost looks like a real watch even when you’re not touching it. The Frontier tries to project an image of sturdiness, and that’s only helped by a new Gorilla Glass coating meant specifically for wearables. More important, the screen was crisp and readable in every situation I tested it in, even though its size and resolution (360 x 360) mean it’s less pixel-dense than the Gear S2. Whatever — when it comes to screens, bigger is almost always better.
So yeah, the Gear S3 Frontier won’t fit everyone. By now it’s probably clear that I don’t mind the size, though. There’s something undeniably cool about wearing a big timepiece, especially one as well constructed as this. It also helps that Samsung used a more traditional — and more flexible — design for its lugs. Last year’s Gear S2 required you to buy a watch strap specifically made for it, but with the S3 you can attach any standard 22mm band. That’s good news for people who don’t love the included textured silicon strap.
And the style options don’t end there either. If the Frontier’s masculine aesthetic doesn’t do it for you, there’s another version of the S3 called the Classic that’s a bit more elegant. To be clear, though, there are bigger differences here than just style: The Frontier has an additional LTE radio for messaging, voice calls and the occasional SOS from the wilderness, while the Classic is left with your standard Bluetooth/WiFi/NFC radios. Everything else is the same across both models, and that’s a long list of similarities. Both have heart rate sensors, a 1GHz dual-core Exynos processor, 768MB of RAM, IP68 waterproofing, 4GB of internal storage and MST (magnetic secure transmission) for Samsung Pay transactions.
Overall, the Frontier is impressive, but I’m still a little puzzled by Samsung’s decision to omit LTE on the Classic: The two devices cost the same! Spokespeople have said that it’s about offering consumers different options, but surely some who prefer the more elegant Classic would also want cellular data on their wrists. Samsung hasn’t officially ruled out a cellular version of the Gear S3 Classic, though, so it’s possible we’ll eventually see full feature parity between the two devices.
Software
The Gear S3 runs Tizen (version 2.3.1, for those keeping track) and, as usual, it’s very smartly laid out to take advantage of that wonderful spinning bezel. Crank it clockwise and you’ll get all of your notifications in one place. Spin it the opposite direction to breeze through the widgets you’ve added (by default, the watch shows you the current weather, favorite contacts, calories burned and what’s in your calendar). If you can handle that, congrats: You’ve basically just mastered the Gear S3’s interface.
That said, people responded so well to the spinning bezel that Samsung decided to use it for a few more things on this year’s model. Instead of having to swipe on the screen to dismiss a call or disable an alarm, it now takes just a quick twist of the dial. It’s much more convenient this way, but one could argue it’s a little too easy; I’ve woken up late just about every day this week because I could just smack and twist my alarm to shut it up.
You can also theoretically use the bezel to play games on the S3, but I wouldn’t recommend it, for two reasons. First, you’ll notice a tactile clicking whenever you turn the bezel, and that could make precision control tricky for some games. Second, and more important, there’s a noticeable shortage of great games — or other apps, for that matter — available on Tizen.
According to Samsung, there’s something like 10,000 apps in the Tizen Store, but just a fraction of those are tuned for the Gear’s small display. Even smaller is the number of apps that actually seem worth using, a fact made all the more ironic by the Gear S3’s newfound ability to install apps straight from the store, no smartphone connection required.
That’s not to say the platform is completely bereft of good software; the preloaded Flipboard app is excellent for skimming headlines at a glance, and Uber does a fine job telling you when that dude in a Toyota Camry is going to show up. Trulia, meanwhile, is a capable tool for learning about the real estate for sale around you; in addition to showing you pictures, the app delivers a primer on local crime levels and school quality before offering you directions. If every major web service could be this conscientious about creating Tizen apps, we’d be golden. Too bad that’s definitely not the case.
At the very least, the rest of the features here work well. S Voice springs to life when you tap the bottom button, and you can use it to send messages, initiate calls and launch apps, among other things. I rarely had trouble with S Voice interpreting what I was saying, but the delay between issuing a command and seeing the watch respond usually took just a moment longer than I expected. Then again, this sort of delay seems typical of wearables; it’s slower than Siri on the Apple Watch Series 2, but only very slightly.
As far as new input methods go, you can also reply to messages by scrawling individual letters on the screen when a notification rolls in. I assumed this would be my least favorite way to respond to people, but I was wrong. Trying to peck out texts — even short ones — using a nine-key, phone-style keyboard on my wrist is still more cumbersome.
In use
In general, the Gear S3 Frontier nails the basics, but there’s also a lot of stuff here that doesn’t come standard on other smartwatches. Take that cellular radio, for instance. As mentioned, it allows you talk into your wrist Dick Tracy style, which somehow feels a little silly even in 2016. Still, call quality is surprisingly good, though you’ll have to crank the volume on the speaker all the way up if you ever want to use it outside of quiet spaces. The experience works even better when you add AT&T’s NumberSync to the mix — it routes phone calls and messages from your main device (and phone number) to the S3, provided you’ve added it to a Mobile Share plan. The truth is, most people will never need to do any of this, but either way, it’s nice to know that the cellular experience works well.
This is also the first Gear smartwatch to come with MST for mobile payments. I’ll spare you the tale of Samsung’s LoopPay acquisition — all you need to know is that you can use the watch to pay for your stuff regardless of the registers your favorite stores use. In other words, you’re fine whether there’s an NFC/contactless terminal or a traditional card-swiping one. Just hold down the S3 Frontier’s top button for three seconds and tap away. You can do this up to 10 times before you have to re-authenticate the S3 from a smartphone, which was more than enough to get me through days at the office when I left my wallet at home. You’ll have to punch in a PIN every time you want to try this, though, which can be a pain on such a small keypad.
While Samsung makes fitness-focused wearables like the Gear Fit 2, it built a slew of health-tracking features into the Gear S3 as well. The GPS radio, for instance, tracked my trail runs as accurately as the Apple Watch Series 2 did. Neither will replace a full-blown running watch, though it’s not as if Samsung and Apple are even trying to put Garmin out of business.
At first, I had the Gear S3 connected to a Galaxy S7 Samsung provided. Is it any surprise, then, that everything worked well? But what happens when you try to use the S3 with a non-Samsung Android phone? Long story short, you’ll enjoy almost the same level of functionality, just with more setup involved. See, the beauty of keeping everything within Samsung’s walled garden is that most of the software components needed to make a Galaxy play nice with a Gear are already on the phone itself.
By contrast, when I reset the Gear S3 and connected it to the Google Pixel XL, I had to wait for three apps to download and install before I could start using the watch in earnest. And if you want to use features like Samsung Pay, that requires yet another app download; make sure your phone is set to install apps from outside the Play Store. All told, the process took only a few extra minutes, and the Gear S3 experience was mostly identical regardless of which phone it was connected to.
The competition
The smartwatch market might be shrinking, but the Gear S3 still has plenty of rivals. On the Android Wear side, two devices stand out. Fans of the Gear S3’s rugged style might dig Nixon’s the Mission, a similarly masculine wearable. Beyond the peculiar name, Nixon says the Mission is the world’s first “action sports smartwatch,” because it’s built to be water-resistant up to 100 meters and tailored for days at the beach or on the slopes. At $400, it’s $50 more expensive than the S3 Frontier, but you do get Android Wear’s broader app support, a customizable design and software specifically tuned for surfing and skiing.
For folks who take their exercise seriously, there’s also the Polar M600 ($330). It’s nowhere near as good-looking as the Gear S3, but you weren’t going to buy one of these for its fashion cred anyway. Indeed, the M600 is the most fitness-friendly Android Wear watch to date, pairing an accurate heart rate monitor with an interface tailored to tracking your vitals and workouts.
And of course, there’s still the Gear S2, now priced at $230. Rather than discontinue the year-old smartwatch, Samsung is keeping it around as a cost-conscious option and has updated it with some of the S3’s features to boot. If Android Wear feels stale to you — and it does to me — the Tizen-powered Gear S2 is a fine way to try something new without blowing through your budget.
Wrap-up
With the Gear S3 Frontier, Samsung did a commendable job building a wearable with a little something for everyone. The device still falls short in a lot of ways, including its overzealous automatic fitness tracking and a limited app selection, even after a year. Still, with so few truly interesting smartwatch options out there, the Gear S3 can’t help but feel like a refreshing change of pace. If you’re in the market for a high-end wearable, the S3 is worth considering. Just remember: Android Wear 2.0 is coming early next year, so waiting for the next crop of watches is probably the smartest move.
2017 Volvo V60 Cross Country review – Roadshow
The Good Comfortable ride, lots of safety tech and all the practicality you’re liable to ever need.
The Bad Its interior tech leaves an awful lot to be desired.
The Bottom Line A rugged and capable all-rounder that will not leave you wanting.
Volvo’s stunning XC90 SUV and S90 sedan leave many of its older cars, like this V60 Cross Country, in a somewhat uncomfortable place. These cars are a link to earlier days for Volvo, remnants of its Ford ownership and somewhat more humble styling. They’re still great machines, but driving one you’re left wondering just how long it’ll be before they, too, are reborn into the same, classier look and performance of Gothenberg’s latest.
But don’t let such doubts dissuade you from including the $42,000 V60 Cross Country on your list if you’re looking for a solid tall-rounder. This lifted wagon has the capacity and comfort to get you through just about everything life has too offer, plus enough off-road chops to handle the worst that a New England winter can throw your way.
2017 Volvo V60 Cross Country lounges…
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V60, embiggened
To get the Cross Country, take a standard V60 wagon and give it a bit of a lift. Two and a half inches worth of lift, to be exact, thanks in part to more generous wheels and tires, but largely due to the revised suspension. The Cross Country also gets a hill descent mode, useful for those steep Vermont driveways, and a somewhat more limited engine selection.
OK, much more limited. The sole choice is the T5 specification, a two-liter, turbocharged four-cylinder delivering a healthy 240 horsepower. That’s connected to a torque-vectoring Haldex all-wheel-drive system via an eight-speed automatic transmission that’s hardly sporty but is plenty smooth.
In fact, smooth is the best way to describe this car. That heightened perspective hasn’t lowered the ride quality one bit and, if anything, the bit of lag from the turbocharged engine just seems to add to the cosseting nature of this car. Things get even more posh in the winter months, when heated seats and steering wheel will help keep your extremities toasty, and the heated front and rear glass will ensure you won’t spend too much time hacking away with a scraper in the mornings.
Practically perfect
A fold-down cargo rack in the back is a smart choice for dog owners.
Tim Stevens/Roadshow
While the trend towards small, crossover SUVs continues, it’s hard not to look at a car like the V60 and think it’s the perfect solution for anyone needing practicality and comfort in a compact package. Both the front and rear seats have plenty of headroom for adults, and while this isn’t the most generously proportioned wagon on the road, it would take one hell of a Costco run to reach full capacity.
My two large dogs had plenty of room in the back with the seats up and the (optional) cargo barrier folded down, but of course they preferred riding with the seats down — and their heads out the window. Should you need more, the roof rails are standard and, if you add on a tow hook, the V60 will haul 3,500 pounds worth of whatever else you have to throw at it.
Unencumbered, the car is rated for 22 mpg in the city and up to 30 on the highway. In our mixed testing we split the difference, coming in at a respectable 26.
Yamaha YAS-106 review – CNET
The Good The Yamaha offers a wide-open sound that is great for movies and surprisingly good with music. Connectivity is up there with some of the best sound bars regardless of price.
The Bad The YAS-106 doesn’t include a subwoofer. Even better sound can be had for an extra $100 or so.
The Bottom Line The Yamaha YAS-106 raises the bar for sound quality at ultrabudget prices.
Sound bars have been one of Yamaha’s greatest strengths in recent times with models such as the YAS-203 earning the company accolades, including our own Editors’ Choice. But in the two years since, the company has struggled to maintain momentum in the face of strong competition from LG and Samsung. In an era when AV equipment is getting both better and cheaper, models such as the YSP-5600 Atmos speaker and the SRT-1500 sound base were simply too expensive for what they did. Yamaha needed a budget hit — and that’s exactly what its new YAS-106 delivers.
The YAS-106 is evolved from the YAS-203 and yet it offers a more affordable price and support for HDMI. It does lack a subwoofer, but that may well be a feature rather than a bug for urban apartment dwellers. (You can add a wired subwoofer, however.) Build quality is top-notch, and sound quality is just as you’d hope for from Yamaha.
Throw in the option for wall-mounting plus Bluetooth streaming, and you have one seriously flexible sound bar for the price of a portable speaker: Just $200 or £169. (The YAS-106 doesn’t appear to be available in Australia, but that US price translates to about AU$276.)
Design
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The Yamaha YAS-106 is an entry-level sound bar which offers excellent sound quality and HDMI connectivity.
Sarah Tew/CNET
As soundbars get smaller and shorter, there is one recent trend that is actually helping improve sound quality. Designs like the Sony NT5, Samsung K9500 and the YAS-106 put the drivers on top of the unit where there’s more room. By and large, bigger drivers = better sound.
View full gallery Sarah Tew/CNET
The unit is 35 inches (89 cm) wide, and if you operate it in “tabletop” mode — sitting in front of a TV — it is 2.25 inches high and 5.25 inches deep (about 5.7 by 13.4 cm). The speaker is better suited to wall-mounting and comes with a pair of keyholes on the back to attach it — even the rear-mounted control buttons are designed to be used in this upright position.
View full gallery Sarah Tew/CNET
We like uncluttered remotes, and we especially like this one because it puts the speaker volume and subwoofer volume buttons side by side for easy access, why can’t all sound bar remotes be this smartly designed? It may be a “credit card” shape but this is pretty much a “grown-up” design. The rubberized buttons are easier to use than the blisters you usually see on these things and it’s also reasonably ergonomic. (The “subwoofer” volume switch controls the bass level.)
Features
The Yamaha is an affordable stereo sound bar which offers a decent number of connection options and usable sound modes.
View full gallery Sarah Tew/CNET
The speaker features two sets of drivers each consisting a 2.25-inch (5.7 cm) cone woofer, a 3-inch (7.62 cm) bass driver and a 1-inch (2.54 cm) dome tweeter. If you want to enhance the bass output of the unit, the system comes with a subwoofer out; Yamaha offers a selection of matching subs from about $125. The YAS-106 includes an HDMI input which is capable of passing 4K and HDR material in addition to decoding vanilla versions of Dolby and DTS. The unit also comes with optical in, 3.5mm analog and Bluetooth.
Bonavita Immersion Dripper review – CNET
The Good The Bonavita Immersion Dripper makes rich, intensely delicious cups of coffee. It’s one single unit that’s easy to clean by hand and dishwasher safe. Its filter cone is constructed from porcelain that feels more luxurious than plastic. It has a physical lever to turn the flow of coffee on and off.
The Bad It takes some practice to use this coffee maker properly. For the best and most consistent results you’ll need to use it with a quality coffee grinder, accurate scale and electric kettle with variable temperature settings. It’s more expensive than other single-cup pour over brewers.
The Bottom Line Buy the Bonavita Immersion Dripper for single cups of excellent coffee but stay away if you’re unwilling to work a little.
You might know of Bonavita purely by way of its superb BV1900TS automatic coffee maker, but the company’s $40 Immersion Dripper can whip up outstanding joe too. While this gadget is relatively simple and has few moving parts, it has the power to brew cup after cup of intensely flavorful coffee.
The Immersion Dripper looks like what it is, a large cone-shaped filter basket. Its circular mouth tapers down to a triangular funnel that connects to a wide base. At the foot of the base is a switch to open and close a small valve. This valve controls the flow of water (or brewed coffee) through the filter.
Essentially the Bonavita Immersion Dripper is a simple pour-over cone.
Tyler Lizenby/CNET
Aficionados of pour-over style brewing will appreciate that the Bonavita Immersion’s filter basket is made from porcelain and not plastic. The ceramic is preferred for its ability to retain heat, unlike the thin plastic found in a similar product, the Oxo Good Grips Pour-Over.
Another significant difference between these two coffee makers is how easy (or not) they are to use. The Oxo’s water tank, for example, is marked with volume labels, so you don’t need to weigh out your brewing water. By contrast the Immersion Dripper is completely manual and much more involved to operate.
Use coarsely ground coffee and a type #4 paper filter.
Tyler Lizenby/CNET
Assuming you have coarsely ground coffee (hopefully processed through a burr grinder), first drop a type #4 paper filter into the funnel and add your grounds. Next, set your coffee cup on a kitchen scale and then place the Immersion Dripper over it. Now pour in hot water just off the boil (with the filter switch closed) to match the amount of coffee grounds you’ll brew — use the scale to measure.
I recommend an electric kettle with adjustable temperature settings to heat your brewing water. According to the SCAA (Specialty Coffee Association of America), water for brewing shouldn’t exceed 205 degrees Fahrenheit. I also used 23 grams of coffee to 12 ounces of water, the ratio as instructed by the manual.
The new Razer Blade Pro trades gimmicks for 4K gaming power
When Razer made its first laptop, it was a company best known for selling third-party gamepads and high-performance gaming mice. Premium gimmicks were the name of the game. The company routinely released products with 17 buttons, adjustable tension analog sticks or retractable parts. This flair for novelty carried over to Razer’s first gaming notebook, which featured a set of 10 customizable keyboard buttons that each housed its own tiny LED display. It was neat, but the flagship laptop was soon overshadowed by a smaller, more powerful model. Now, the company is finally giving its original notebook the upgrades it deserves: a screaming new processor, the latest in graphics technology and a keyboard without the hindrance of the original’s silly “Switchblade” interface. This is the new Razer Blade Pro.
Design
At first blush, the new Blade Pro looks just like Razer’s other CNC-milled aluminum notebooks: It has a matte-black, unibody chassis with textured details on the lid. Indeed, this is the same design language we’ve seen in every laptop Razer’s ever made — it’s just bigger. Indeed, the Blade is the largest machine the company has built to date, stretching 16.7 inches across at its widest point and measuring 0.88 inches tall with the lid closed. It’s technically “thin and light” for a gaming laptop of its class, but at 7.8 pounds, it’s not exactly portable.
The Blade Pro may have been too big to fit in my usual work backpack, but its large frame at least offers plenty of connectivity. In all, the Pro’s chassis is host to three USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI-out, a single USB Type-C socket, Ethernet and a 3.5mm audio jack. I was delighted to find an SD card reader too — something I’ve missed on every Razer Blade notebook until now.
Keyboard and trackpad
At a glance, the Blade Pro’s keys looks like any other laptop keyboard, but touch them and you’ll find something completely different. Each key falls with a satisfying click and releases with a nearly identical pop — the hallmark tactility of a mechanical switch. It’s weird and slightly wonderful, at least for keyboard snobs like myself who extol the merits of mechanical keyboards. The Razer Blade Pro is the first laptop to ship with the company’s new ultra-low-profile mechanical key switches, a new typing technology that crams the feeling of full-sized mechanical actuation and reset into a laptop form factor.
If that sounds like a lot of buzzwords, don’t worry: All you need to know is that the Blade Pro’s new keyboard is excellent. After a firm click and a soft landing, its keys spring back with a delightful push. It was an odd sensation at first, and clashed with the muscle memory I’d built up from years of typing on traditional keys. Still, the longer I used the keyboard, the more I came love it. Its 1.6mm of key travel is still a little shallow compared to the cherry-mx switches I’m used to on my desktop machine, but the Blade Pro’s keys nonetheless feel like a minor revolution in mobile typing.
The Blade Pro’s trackpad is far less revelatory, but it still defies tradition. Most laptop mousing surfaces are positioned below the keyboard, but the Blade Pro’s trackpad is placed to the right of the notebook’s keys instead. This is odd, but not necessarily bad. After some adjustment, it feels completely natural, mirroring the position one might hold a mouse relative to a desktop PC. Although I grew to appreciate the starboard pad, I still couldn’t shake old habits. I pawed at the empty space below the keyboard at least half as often as the touchpad itself. It’s hard to unlearn years of laptop use.
The Blade Pro’s keys feel like a minor revolution in mobile typing.
That odd placement aside, the trackpad itself is excellent. Razer perfected the Windows touchpad the moment it got rid of the buttons on its Stealth Ultrabook. The Pro’s trackpad area is little more than a larger version of that touch surface, and that’s perfectly fine.
The Blade Pro also has one feature I’ve never seen on a laptop before: a scroll wheel. By default, the wheel merely adjusts the laptop’s volume, but pressing the holding the Fn key will let it scroll through pages and documents. Like everything on the keyboard, you can tweak its functions through Razer’s built-in Synapse software, which also controls keyboard macros, key assignments and Chroma backlight profiles.
Display and sound
Laptop speakers are typically good but never great. The chassis of a notebook simply can’t compete with the acoustics of a home stereo or even just a decent pair of headphones. The Blade Pro, however, makes a fine effort anyway. In addition to gifting the Pro with bigger, amplified speakers than its predecessors, Razer has cut “dual firing” slots into each side of the laptop’s frame. Basically, there are two acoustic holes in the chassis that help push sound away from the machine and out into the room. The result is loud, clear and well-separated audio that can easily fill an entire room. It still doesn’t beat my stereo or headphones, but it’s enough to push the Blade Pro’s sound from “good” to “better.”
Razer laptop displays have a habit of exhausting my vocabulary — there are only so many synonyms for stunning, vibrant and beautiful. The Blade Pro’s 17.3-inch IGZO 3,840 x 2,160 touchscreen is no exception. Between its wide viewing angles, deep blacks, bright colors, 100-percent Adobe RGB colorspace and NVIDIA’s existing G-Sync screen-tear prevention tech, the machine’s display is simply excellent. Games, videos and photos all look wonderful on it.
This year, though, the Blade has earned a new adjective: necessary. The Razer Blade Pro is the first gaming laptop I’ve ever used that isn’t hamstrung by an ultra-high resolution panel. This machine is actually powerful enough to play modern games in 4K.
Performance
| Razer Blade Pro (2016 (2.6GHz Intel Core i7-6700HQ, NVIDIA GTX 1080) | 6,884 | 6,995 | E18,231 / P16,346 | 27,034 | 2.75 GB/s / 1.1 GB/s |
| ASUS ROG Strix GL502VS (2.6GHz Intel Core i7-6700HQ , NVIDIA GTX 1070) | 5,132 | 6,757 | E15,335 / P13,985 | 25,976 | 2.14 GB/s / 1.2 GB/s |
| HP Spectre x360 (2016, 2.7GHz Core i7-7500U, Intel HD 620) | 5,515 | 4,354 | E2,656 / P1,720 / X444 | 3,743 | 1.76 GB/s / 579 MB/s |
| Lenovo Yoga 910 (2.7GHz Core i7-7500U, 8GB, Intel HD 620) | 5,822 | 4,108 |
E2,927 / P1,651 / X438 |
3,869 | 1.59 GB/s / 313 MB/s |
| 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 |
| 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 |
For years, Razer’s “Blade Pro” lingered in obsolescence, two full generations behind the bleeding-edge processors and graphics technology the company put in its other laptops. Not anymore. With a 2.6GHz Intel Core i7-6700HQ CPU beating at its heart, 32GB of RAM and NVIDIA’s latest GTX 1080 GPU, the new Razer Blade Pro absolutely lives up to its moniker. This is the most powerful laptop Razer has ever built and the first gaming laptop to cross my desk that can run circles around my game library at ultra-high resolutions.
The Blade Pro chewed through Titanfall 2 and Overwatch at its native 3,840 x 2,160 resolution on their maximum settings, running consistently running each game at 60 frames per second or higher. Games like Just Cause 3, Battlefield 1 and Hitman all stayed above 45 fps on their best configuration at the same resolution. Only two games in my library balked at the Blade Pro’s GPU: the Witcher 3 and Watch Dogs 2. These titles fell just short of a 30-fps average on their maximum settings in 4K, forcing me to pull them back to medium graphics settings or dial the resolution down to 1080p.
That’s not just good performance — it’s paradigm-shifting performance. I’ve lambasted the last two generations of Razer laptops (as well as other gaming notebooks) for having screens that outpaced the capability of their GPUs, forcing players to choose between ugly, non-native resolution or ugly, low-fidelity graphic settings. Now, people don’t have to choose anymore. That’s fantastic.
Oh, and were you thinking about picking up a virtual reality headset? Go ahead: The Blade Pro scored 6,908 in VRMark’s Orange Room test and 1,992 in the more intensive Blue Room benchmark. That’s good enough to comfortably run most anything in today’s VR marketplace. The Blade Pro handled everything in my VR library with aplomb and only stuttered when I used Raw Data’s resolution multiplier feature. Not bad at all.
Battery life
Razer Blade Pro (2016)
3:48
Surface Book with Performance Base (2016)
16:15
Apple MacBook Pro 2016 (13-inch, no Touch Bar)
11:42
HP Spectre x360 (13-inch, 2015)
11:34
Apple MacBook Pro with Retina display (13-inch, 2015)
11:23
Apple MacBook Pro 2016 (15-inch)
11:00
iPad Pro (12.9-inch, 2015)
10:47
HP Spectre x360 15t
10:17
Apple MacBook Pro 2016 (13-inch, Touch Bar)
9:55
ASUS ZenBook 3
9:45
Apple MacBook (2016)
8:45
Samsung Notebook 9
8:16
Microsoft Surface Pro 4
7:15
HP Spectre 13
7:07
Razer Blade Stealth (Spring 2016)
5:48
Razer Blade Stealth (Fall 2016)
5:36
Dell XPS 15 (2016)
5:25 (7:40 with the mobile charger)
ASUS ROG Strix GL502VS
3:03
Razer didn’t tack that “Pro” qualifier on this laptop for professional gamers. Rather, the Blade is intended to double as a work machine. To that end, the Blade Pro ran the gamut of my normal workflow as if it were a light jog, shrugging off my standard mess of browser windows, chat programs and video editing software. Unfortunately, it couldn’t do it for very long. Despite housing a huge 99Wh battery (the largest allowed on airlines, according to Razer), the 17-inch workhorse lasted just shy of four hours on battery. Sadly, that’s kind of normal for oversized gaming laptops with 4K screens, but it’s still disappointing.
Configuration options and the competition
The Blade Pro comes in just three flavors: a $3,699 model with 512GB of solid-state storage; a $3,999 build with 1TB of space; or a staggeringly expensive $4,499 machine with a 1TB SSD. Apart from disk size, all three configurations are identical, with 32GB of RAM, a 2.6GHz Intel Core i-6700HQ processor (3.5GHz with Turbo Boost), NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1080 GPU (with 8GB GDDR5X VRAM) and the striking 17.3-inch IGZO 4K G-Sync enabled touchscreen. If those aren’t the exact specs you had in mind, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
If you’re willing to compromise on size, power and screen resolution, there are definitely cheaper 17-inch laptops out there. The super-sized version of ASUS ROG Strix sports the same processor and allotment of RAM for only $1,300, but it only has a full HD display and a GTX 1060 GPU. MSI’s GT73VR Titan Pro can be had with same processor and GPU as Razer’s top build for $3,399, but it’s also more than twice as thick as the Blade Pro. On the other hand, if you were really concerned about size, you probably wouldn’t be looking at 17-inch laptops in the first place.
Wrap-up
For the past few years, Razer’s “Blade Pro” laptop was paradoxically its least advanced machine, but the latest model finally lives up to its name. With enough power to handle high-resolution video editing, 4K PC games and even virtual reality, it’s the most powerful system Razer has ever built. This is a premium laptop with a top-notch display, excellent build quality and quite possibly the best notebook keyboard I’ve ever used.
That said, the new Blade Pro is also the largest and most expensive PC Razer has ever built. There’s a lot of value to be had in its $3,699 price tag, but also some compromise. Its enormous frame makes it hard to lug around, and it fails to overcome the Achilles’ heel of its category: short battery life. If you can live with those drawbacks, though, Razer’s flagship laptop is waiting for you.
Thermomix TM5 review – CNET
The Good The $1,300 Thermomix TM5 is a countertop multicooker that knows its way around a dozen common kitchen tasks, from cooking tomato soup to kneading bread dough. You can connect a magnetic dish to it to access a cookbook’s worth of easy-to-follow, adaptable recipes.
The Bad It costs $1,300. The mixing bowl where the action takes place doesn’t have a pour spout. Dough and other food bits get easily caught in the multicooker’s blades. And, once again, it’s $1,300.
The Bottom Line The Thermomix TM5 is a luxury kitchen gadget worth pining for.
The Thermomix TM5 became available in the US in September, but has been on the international market for more than 40 years.
Chris Monroe/CNET
The Thermomix TM5 is a new addition to the American appliance scene that claims to tackle a dozen common kitchen tasks. The price of this souped-up blender/food processor/cooker/mixer is as lofty as its promises: $1,300 (it’s available in the UK for £925 and Australia for about AU$2,090). The Thermomix’s high cost and bold goals made me skeptical. Then I began to test it.
I used the Thermomix to whip egg whites, knead bread, steam vegetables, boil pasta, blend smoothies, and more. The gadget completed all of these tasks at a proficient level or above. The Thermomix was also easy to use, thanks in large part to an accompanying cookbook chip that you connect to the machine. And the hard copy of that cookbook outlines how to adapt your own recipes for the Thermomix.
I have a few qualms with the Thermomix’s design. The mixing bowl in which you put your food doesn’t have a pour spout. Dough and other gooey ingredients get caught in the Thermomix’s blades. And the Thermomix could make better use of its turn-wheel control.
Overall, the Thermomix lives up to its promises and exceeds expectations. But the price makes it an aspirational product in the same vein as a KitchenAid stand mixer or Viking range. You don’t need any of these products, and a lot of folks certainly can’t afford them. Yet the Thermomix, like other expensive appliances that have become status symbols, is worthy of a spot on your wishlists and Pinterest boards.
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Take a closer look at this German import
A German company called Vorwerk began to sell the Thermomix in France in 1971, and the product eventually spread worldwide. Vorwerk released the TM5 model in 2014, and the company began to make it available in the US in September. Picking up a Thermomix is more complicated than visiting a Target or ordering online, though. You have to contact a Thermomix consultant for an at-home or online demonstration of the appliance before you order it (similar to a Pampered Chef situation, but with only one product).
AIVAnet 