Twitch is officially available on a Nintendo console — the Amazon-owned brand has released a Twitch app for the Switch (yes, that rhymes) that lets you watch the livestreaming service on the hybrid console. The free app offers the same core functionality as Twitch on other consoles, including on-demand videos. However, the Switch's nature might give it an edge — you can watch docked if you want the largest screen possible, or handheld if you have the itch to tune in from bed.
There is a potential hitch in the Switch version, though. As you might have predicted, this Twitch app is strictly for viewing. You can't natively broadcast your Metroid Dread session, and you certainly can't show your face when there's no selfie camera. You'll still have to route video through a PC (typically using a capture card) if you're more interested in creating content than watching it.
Not that you'll want to expect broadcasting any time soon. While Nintendo hasn't been adamantly opposed to Twitch, former president Reggie Fils-Aime told Polygonin 2014 that the company preferred more focused video sharing instead of simply streaming whatever you happened to be playing. The video game pioneer also has a long history of trying to control online videos and share profits from video producers' work. Although Nintendo has softened its stance since then, it's not exactly in a rush to make Twitch a two-way affair.
Chrome OS tablets don’t have a pretty past. In 2018, Google released the Pixel Slate, its attempt to jumpstart the market, but poorly optimized software and expensive hardware made the device a non-starter for most people. Since then, Google stopped making tablets entirely, while most manufacturers making Chrome OS devices have also stuck with more traditional designs.
That started to change last year, when Lenovo built an inexpensive but useful Chrome OS tablet, the Chromebook Duet. This year, HP has followed a similar pattern with the HP Chromebook X2, an 11-inch tablet that’s pricier and higher-end than Lenovo’s Duet (the model I’m reviewing costs $600). But, like the Duet, it uses a mobile processor (in this case, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c) and includes a keyboard and pen at no extra charge. Based purely on specs and design, the Chromebook X2 should be a fine performer — but is its convertible form factor worth the premium over a more standard laptop?
Hardware
We’ll get into how useful Chrome OS tablets are soon, but based purely on hardware alone, HP’s Chromebook X2 makes a great first impression. The tablet itself is a metal-clad slap that feels sturdy and well built. There’s a small camera bump on the back, along with metallic HP and Chrome logos, but overall it’s a simple device with few adornments. The device has squared-off sides with rounded corners, much like the iPad Pro and iPad Air, but it feels different enough from those devices despite the fact there are only so many ways to make a tablet.
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
When looking at the front, you’ll notice a small camera on the top bezel, with stereo speakers positioned near the top of the screen. On the left side edge you’ll find two USB-C ports and a volume rocker. In the top left corner there’s a multi-function power button with a fingerprint reader. When you’re using the Chromebook X2 with a keyboard attached, pressing the power button shows options to shut down, log out or lock the device. When you’re using it as a tablet, though, the button has the more standard “lock the device and turn off the screen” function. The fingerprint scanner is easy to set up, and I wish that more Chromebooks had them.
The right side of the tablet is basically unadorned, aside from a mark that shows where you can magnetically attach the Chromebook X2’s pen to its side for easy access. The iPad Pro and various Microsoft Surface devices also let you magnetically attach a stylus, so this isn’t really a big innovation — but it’s still nice to have.
When I reviewed the Pixel Slate back in 2018, my main takeaway was that Chrome OS still required a keyboard. As such, I was glad to find that the Chromebook X2 had one included. To turn the X2 from a tablet into a functional laptop, HP designed a two-piece case. The keyboard cover goes on the front, much like Microsoft’s Surface Keyboard. But instead of having a built-in kickstand, the X2 has a second cover that serves as a kickstand which magnetically snaps on to the back. Once you have that set, the X2 is basically identical to the Microsoft Surface Go, at least in looks.
The Chromebook X2’s keyboard is pretty good considering it has to fit a relatively small device. The keys have solid travel and are quite responsive, though they’re a little bit loud. It feels a little cramped, but not any worse than the Surface Go’s keyboard. But it definitely feels more cramped than the Magic Keyboard I use with my 11-inch iPad Pro. (That’s a $300 accessory, though, so it really should be better than a keyboard HP includes with every X2.)
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
The main issue with the X2 keyboard is that it’s not ideal for using on your lap. As I’ve noticed with some other keyboard folios, applying just a little pressure on palm rests often causes the trackpad to register a click, which can be infuriating when you’re, say, typing a review and keep getting interrupted. It’s much better on a desk, where the keyboard is more stable. Microsoft’s Type Cover for the Surface lineup doesn’t have this problem, so it’s just a matter of build quality in the end. And for a small, light device meant to be used on the go, having a keyboard that only works on a hard, flat surface is less than ideal.
Despite occasional accidental clicks, the X2 trackpad is pretty good. It’s larger than the one on the iPad Pro’s Magic Keyboard and as well as the Surface Go’s keyboard, and it’s fast and responsive for both single-finger and multi-finger gestures. It’s still pretty small, though, so you might prefer an external mouse for extended work sessions.
The Chromebook X2 may be a small machine, but its 11-inch touchscreen with a 3:2 aspect ratio is a standout. It’s a high-resolution display, coming in at 2,160 x 1,440, and the taller aspect ratio makes it feel a lot less cramped for work than a 16:9 screen would, especially at this smaller size. It’s also a very bright screen, almost painfully so — even when working in a sunny office, I rarely turned brightness up higher than halfway.
As I mentioned earlier, HP included a stylus with the Chromebook X2. I’m no visual artist, so I’m not qualified to really judge its performance — but there’s no question stylus performance on this device lags behind Microsoft's Surface Go 3 and any iPad I’ve tried. But again, HP included a stylus for free, whereas Microsoft and Apple charge extra for it. That doesn’t make performance better, but at least you’re not shelling out additional cash for a sub-par experience. The pen might be fine for quick sketches or notes, but it doesn’t feel like something I’d want to use for very long.
Tablet mode
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
Even though there aren’t many Chrome OS tablets, Google has made improvements to the OS’s tablet mode over the years. It’s quite a bit more stable and user-friendly than it was when the Pixel Slate came out in 2018; the main UI concepts are a mix of what you’ll find on iPadOS and Windows. Apps automatically launch in full screen, and the home screen is a grid of all the apps you have installed. Swiping up when you’re using an app brings you back to the home screen, and a more deliberate swipe from the bottom shows the Chrome OS dock. Finally, you can run two apps in split-screen mode when you want to multitask.
I haven’t used the Chrome OS tablet mode in a while. I’ve reviewed a ton of Chromebooks with 360-degree hinges that can be used in tablet mode, but they’re usually too heavy for that. But the Chromebook X2 feels great in the hand; with its 11-inch screen and a weight of 1.23 pounds, it’s not too big or heavy to be used as a tablet. The main issue with Chrome OS on a tablet is familiar to anyone who has used Android tablets: there just isn’t much software optimized for a large screen. That said, using the X2 to casually browse the web, watch videos and play the occasional game worked well. HP knows that this isn’t the primary way anyone should use a Chrome OS device, hence the included keyboard — but for casual couch browsing or watching a movie on a plan, the X2 does the trick.
As a laptop
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
The main way I used the Chromebook X2 was as a laptop, with the included keyboard attached. The biggest question I had was whether the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c processor was enough for my normal workflow. The answer was “more or less.” The X2 ran better than I expected, and I could usually have most of my normal apps running at all times. That means a couple Chrome windows with a handful of tabs in each, plus Chrome apps for Slack, Todoist, Keep, Trello and Tweetdeck. I also often had the Android version of Spotify running for music.
This all ran acceptably, but it definitely wasn’t the fastest — particularly if I had too many Chrome tabs going. The X2 that I tested has 8GB of RAM, and that helped keep most of my programs running without the need to refresh when I switched between them, but I ended up instinctively limiting how many tabs I had going at any given time to avoid pushing the X2 too hard. I also didn’t play music directly from the X2 much when I was running a lot of other apps, as I eventually would run into slowdowns or low memory skips if I had too much going on.
While I wish performance was a little better, it’s important to look at it in the context of how HP designed the device. Given its small size, I thought of it more as a secondary or travel computer rather than something most people would sit down and use for hours on end every single day. The display is certainly too small and performance not quite robust enough for me to use it that way, anyway.
One advantage of using a Snapdragon processor is that the Chromebook X2 had excellent battery life. While it’s too small of a computer for me to comfortably use all day long, I routinely got around eight hours of work when I used it as my primary machine, and still had charge left at the end of the day. It also performed extremely well in our battery drain test, which loops an HD video with the screen set at 50 percent brightness. The X2 lasted about 11 and a half hours in that test, which means this device should be a solid movie-watching companion if you’re on a long flight.
At only 1.23 pounds as a tablet and a little over 2.25 pounds with the keyboard and kickstand attached, the Chromebook X2 is an extremely portable computer for when you don’t need the full size and power that you get in a larger laptop. It again reminds me of Microsoft’s Surface Go 3, not just in the way it looks. Both devices are a bit underpowered, and I wouldn’t recommend either be someone’s primary computer. But, they can be great secondary computers if you’re aware of their limitations.
Pricing and the competition
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
Of course, price is a big part of the equation. That was probably the biggest problem with the Surface Go 3 when I reviewed it recently: The kit I tested cost $860, and for that money it should be powerful enough to use as your only computer. But the Chromebook X2 is cheaper; the model I reviewed costs $600. That gets you the aforementioned Snapdragon 7c processor, 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, the keyboard and pen. And the X2 has already been on sale numerous times at Best Buy for only $400. At that price, it’s a pretty great portable secondary computer.
At $600, it’s a little pricey for what you get, though. That’s mostly because you can buy a larger, more powerful Chromebook for a little more money. Both the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 and Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 cost $700 and come with faster Intel chips, better keyboards and larger displays. You have to be really committed to the tablet form factor to not give those computers a look instead. Or, you can get Lenovo’s Flex 5 Chromebook for only $300 on Amazon as of this writing; you’ll save yourself money and have a better overall experience. If you can find the Chromebook X2 on sale for $400, it’s a much more compelling buy, but it’s still not the best Chromebook in that price range.
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
Wrap-up
The main issue with the Chromebook X2 is neither its price nor its performance. It’s the fact that most people will be better served with a standard, laptop-style Chromebook. Sure, most Chromebooks are a little bigger and heavier than the X2, but they’re also generally more powerful and have better keyboards. The X2 only makes sense if you value portability and battery life over performance. If you can find the X2 for $400, it’s worth considering if you’re a Chrome OS user looking for a secondary computer that you can take with you anywhere. Otherwise, you’re probably better off considering one of the many other Chromebooks on the market.
Much like Steam and the Epic Games Store, the Xbox PC app will soon let folks install games in any folder of their choosing. Xbox insiders (i.e. people who've signed up to test new features) will be able to pick a default drive and folder for game installs.
The Microsoft Store hosts both games users can buy individually and Xbox Game Pass titles. Until now, all apps and games have shared a single install location. It's not uncommon for PC gamers to have more than one storage drive. They might use one as a boot drive and for day-to-day apps, and a solid state drive for games. So, after this update rolls out more broadly, installing games on a secondary drive should be a cinch.
Insiders "will also find that downloads of those games have improved over time, so it's even easier and faster to get to your next game," Jason Beaumont, Xbox's partner director of experiences, said in a video discussing the updates. What's more, players of many Xbox Game Pass titles will soon have access to local files, so they'll be able to install mods and move files. The Xbox app will show whether a game is moddable.
A Steam update released in September made it straightforward for players to move an installed game and all of its files to another drive. The process is a little more convoluted for games installed from Epic's store, but it's still possible. These are welcome moves, as they give players more choice over how to manage their games, and it's good to see Microsoft offering folks more flexibility too.
Elsewhere, the Xbox PC app now has a cloud gaming tab, giving Game Pass Ultimate subscribers a quick way to find cloud-enabled console games. Beaumont added that Microsoft is continuing to improve the app's performance, including "making it more reliable to download and play your games." The team's also trying to make it easier for developers to add features like cross-saves and achievements.
We at Engadget spend a lot of time thinking about the best tech gifts for anyone and everyone in your life. But during that process, we often can’t help but think about the things we’d like to receive as gifts. We encourage everyone to treat themselves in some way while scrambling to find gifts for those they love, and it’s about time we take our own advice. Here, we’ve compiled a list of gadgets on our staffers’ wish lists with the hope that it may inspire you to splurge a bit on yourself this year.
Bandai Original 90s Tamagotchi
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget
All I wanted as a kid was a Tamagotchi and my parents knew it. When I was eventually given one, I spent hours doting on my virtual pet, doing my best to keep it alive and happy. Even now, a couple of decades and the addition of one cat later, there remains a soft spot in my heart for Bandai’s egg-shaped toy. Although I’d probably have less patience now for a beeping Tamagotchi in distress, I’d be overjoyed if someone dropped one onto my doorstep like a proverbial stork with a baby basket. Part of me wants to see how long I can keep the thing alive, and part of me wants to once again experience that childlike wonder inspired by a new toy that will, inevitably, suck up time that I don’t have to spare. — Valentina Palladino, Commerce Editor
One of the ways you know you’re a full-fledged adult is when a new vacuum excites you. I definitely fell for the hype surrounding Dyson cordless vacuums and thankfully, when I pulled the trigger and bought myself the V11 Torque, I was happy to find the machine to be just as good as everyone said. It is, without a doubt, the best vacuum I’ve ever owned even if it’s slightly less convenient than a robot vacuum that I can set and forget. The suction power is remarkable — it captures cat hair that I can’t even see around my apartment — and the various adapters that it comes with lets me clean my couch, cushions and even hard to reach areas like baseboards and room corners. It has three cleaning modes with various suction levels and battery lives, but I’ve never had to stop mid-cleaning to charge it.
But you may struggle to find the V11 Torque right now. Although it’s only about a year old, it’s basically been replaced by newer Dyson cordless vacuums like the Dyson Outsize and the V15 Detect, the latter of which uses a laser to illuminate dust on your floors. Regardless of whether you get a refurbished model or splurge on the latest and greatest, a Dyson cordless vacuum is the mother of all “adulting” gifts. — V.P.
Dyson’s beauty gadgets are more expensive than most, but boy are they worth it. Sure, its hairdryer is orders of magnitude pricier than those you’d find in a drugstore, but it lasts longer and makes your hair look smoother. The Dyson Airwrap is also quite costly, but it pulls triple duty as a curler, straightener and dryer. Your friend can get tight coils or sleek tresses with the hot rod and its accompanying attachments, and thanks to the temperature limit of 302 degrees Fahrenheit, their hair won’t burn to a crisp.
If you can get a group of friends to chip in, this would be a lovely present for a bride-to-be or glamorista who loves playing with different styles. Plus, since we’re all cutting down on going out to stylists due to the pandemic (or when it’s awfully cold out), this can keep you chic buddy perfectly coiffed all winter. — Cherlynn Low, Reviews Editor
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget / Instant Pot
Time is the most precious gift one can receive as an adult, and the Instant Pot Duo Plus delivers it in spades. The pot will help your lucky recipient focus more on enjoying dinner than preparing it, and might save them from buying a host of counter-cluttering appliances. They can start cooking a stew in the morning and serve up in the evening, for instance. This may be just the ticket for a loved one who’s eager to make slow-cooked meals, or craves a pressure cooker to make short work of a time-consuming roast.
However, the Duo Plus may be particularly helpful if that recipient is a new parent. They can easily sterilize baby bottles and food jars, or produce healthy meals like sweet potatoes and yogurt. This could easily be one of your special someone’s most-used gadgets, and it might be useful for the whole family long after the novelty wears off. — Jon Fingas, Weekend Editor
For various reasons, I’ve been slowly weaning myself off Amazon over the past few years. I try to support local independent bookstores as much as possible, and I’ve turned to Libro.fm for my audiobook needs. I do still use my Kindle, however, when I want to read ebooks from the library. That’s what made me look into non-Amazon e-readers, and Kobo’s line of devices caught my eye. In particular, Kobo’s Libra H2O looks like a viable alternative to Amazon’s top-of-the-line Kindle Oasis. It has the same premium features including physical page-turn buttons, a large 7-inch screen, color temperature adjustment and it’s waterproof, to boot. What’s more, it’s also significantly cheaper than the Oasis. This just might be a gift I give to myself. — Nicole Lee, Senior Editor
Whether your friend is a seasoned climaxer or a newbie looking to learn about their preferences, the Lioness smart vibrator can bring some pleasure. Though it may be intimidating for complete beginners compared to a bullet or egg-style device, the Lioness dildo has temperature and pressure sensors that detect when the user is experiencing orgasm. You can tag that data with labels that help you better understand what gets you going, like whether you used a specific lube, fantasy or technique.
Those who already know what they enjoy can still appreciate the biofeedback either by letting the app convert their results into artwork or by looking out for patterns. Most importantly, the info about orgasms can help broach potentially awkward conversations about one’s preferences between the sheets and bring great Os all around. — C.L.
The best thing about Lora DiCarlo’s Tilt is that the company designed it to be “versatile, vibrating, and to please all genders and anatomies.” It’s a dual-headed vibrator and plug that can stimulate either the G-spot and clitoris or prostate and perineum at the same time. The Tilt also warms up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) for extra sensation and you can wear it for hands-free use. If there’s someone on your list for whom traditional vibrators and dildos are too difficult to use, the Tilt may be a great option.
Samsung’s best foldable might be the truly pocketable Galaxy Z Flip 3. Unfurling into a more typical looking 6.7-inch-inch phone, you get the premium screen, build quality and cameras of a flagship Samsung phone, while also drawing a crowd of curious onlookers whenever you flip it out. And flipping it open and shut, is just so darn satisfying, you won’t need much of an excuse to show it off.
Making the most of the still-new form factor, the Flip 3 includes a Flex mode when you half-fold the phone. It’ll work on Camera and YouTube apps (as well as others), splitting the screen in half to show your content on the upper half, and controls and detail on the lower half, like a sort of mini laptop.
Due to its $1,000 price tag, it’s up against the very best flagship smartphones — including Samsung’s other devices — but this is a statement phone, a conversation starter. You can’ t really say that about the latest iPhone. — Mat Smith, UK Bureau Chief
I was gifted the Theragun Mini and it’s become a big part of my recovery routine. I run three to four times a week and strength train on top of that, and the Mini has helped work out knots in my hamstrings, calves, shoulders and (most importantly for me) lower back. If I had been given the Theragun Pro originally, I would have been intimidated by it. But now? I would be thrilled. As its name suggests, this is the company’s top of the line percussion massager with a rotating arm, a high-powered motor, two swappable batteries and a mobile app that lets you control speed. It also uses QuietForce technology to keep the noise level at a minimum and that should prevent you from waking anyone up while you’re using it.
The Pro gives you more control than the Mini does, not only with its companion app, but also in its ergonomic grip and the on-device buttons that let you adjust speed and force. Since I’ve never had a true massage in my life, I can’t say for certain if the Theragun Pro could replace that experience entirely — my guess is that it couldn’t, but it might get close. But if you’re someone who wants the instant gratification that comes from basically being your own masseuse, the Theragun Pro could help you get that. — V.P.
The ProArt line of creator-oriented devices was a stroke of marketing genius by ASUS, helping separate them from rivals with a line of premium devices. A prime example is the Studiobook 16 OLED H5600 laptop, tempting artists with high performance, a beautiful 16-inch 4K OLED display, and an “ASUS dial” for video or photo editing.
ASUS’s previous ProArt laptops like the StudioBook One were workstation-like creator devices with expensive parts like NVIDIA Quadro 6000 GPUs. With this model, ASUS is focusing more on bang-for-the buck with components like an RTX 3070 GPU and AMD Ryzen 9 eight-core CPU. (The more expensive StudioBook 16 Pro models offer Xeon processors and Quadro GPUs.)
The question is, can a reasonably priced laptop like this keep up with more expensive models or even high-end gaming laptops when it comes to performance? To find out, I got a hold of a well-specced but modestly priced Studiobook 16 OLED model and put it to work on some photo and video editing jobs.
A key feature of all the Studiobook devices is the businesslike looks that are far away from ASUS’s gaming designs. To that end, it has a basic black, square-edged body with the only noticeable design touch being the subtle ProArt logo on top. It has bezels that are reasonably small but not what I’d call thin, and isn’t the lightest or smallest 16-inch laptop out there. Still, with a .77-inch thickness and 5.28 pound heft, it’s relatively compact — especially considering that it offers “military-grade durability” (MIL-STD 810H), according to ASUS.
ASUS has developed an “IceCool Pro” thermal solution that’s supposed to boost airflow by up to 16 percent, while keeping noise levels below 40 dbA in standard cooling mode. It does that through the use of dual 102-blade fans, six heat pipes and multiple ducts.
If you need more punch, you can switch to performance mode which boosts power to 95 watts, or up to 135 watts in “full-speed” mode. Fan noise is still reasonable in performance mode unless you’re doing GPU/CPU intensive chores, but the full-speed setting can get very loud indeed. Still, it could be a handy mode if you’re planning to leave the room while doing a render. Overall, heat and noise are very well managed.
The headline feature on this laptop is the 3,480 x 2,400 16:10 OLED display, the first on a 16-inch laptop, ASUS claims. As you’d expect, it’s sharp, vibrant and beautiful in person — by far the best laptop display I’ve ever seen in terms of fidelity and “wow” factor.
Steve Dent/Engadget
The panel is factory-calibrated to Pantone and Calman color accuracy, with a delta E of less than two, a fact that I confirmed with my X-Rite i1 Display Pro calibrator. I used it with a $4,000 ASUS mini-LED ProArt monitor and despite the display technology differences, they matched very closely to my eyes, color wise.
The true 10-bit panel offers 100 percent DCI-P3 color coverage, in workstation laptop territory and well beyond rivals like the MacBook Pro (78 percent) and Dell’s XPS 15 (85 percent). Along with the color accuracy, that allows for precise color correction controls in apps like DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Lightroom Classic. The 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio with inky OLED blacks also makes it ideal for content creation, with a side benefit that it’s the best entertainment laptop I’ve ever used.
Given that the display is suitable for color correction, ASUS should have perhaps included a way to easily change the color profile for video editing ( Rec.709, DCI-P3 and so on) or photos (AdobeRGB, sRGB). That could be a handy setting in the Creator Hub, for example, or at least as an .icm profile for Windows Color Management.
You can crank the brightness up to 550 nits in HDR mode, so it conforms to VESA’s DisplayHDR True Black 500 standard for OLED displays — very bright indeed for a laptop display. However, it’s well short of the 1,600 nits peak brightness available on the latest MacBook Pros, which use mini-LED displays. That raises the question of whether OLED or mini-LED is more desirable on a creator laptop, but personally, I’d take the superior OLED blacks over eye-scorching brightness and haloing.
Steve Dent/Engadget
The other attention-grabbing feature is the ProArt Dial. I wouldn’t blame you for thinking it’s a gimmick, as it takes up space and adds complexity. Also, similar control surfaces can look cool but often end up in drawers, never to be used.
This one has a few things in its favor, though. It feels nice thanks to the textured grip, smooth rotation and clicky detents. Mainly, though, it’s just convenient as it’s located directly below the keyboard. In that way, it makes more sense than something like Microsoft’s Surface Dial or an external control surface, as those are usually placed outside easy grabbing distance.
With no apps loaded, you can use the dial to turn up the sound or increase monitor brightness more easily than using the function keys. To make the most of it, though, you really need Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite. With Photoshop open, pressing the dial launches a dedicated pie chart-like menu with “slices” for brush options, layer zoom, and so on. Pressing it again on the brush menu, for instance, opens sub-options for hardness, flow, opacity and more. Premiere and After Effects have similar custom menus.
Steve Dent/Engadget
If the stock menus won’t do, you can go into the ASUS ProArt Creator Hub software. There, you can reprogram the functions the way you’d prefer via drop-down menus. As it stands now, the dial only supports four Adobe apps: Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects and Lightroom Classic. As someone who uses other apps, particularly DaVinci Resolve, I’m hoping ASUS will add more down the road.
I’ve used control surfaces in the past as part of my former video editor career, but I haven’t been a big fan of them on PCs. However, after trying the ASUS dial with Photoshop and Premiere Pro, I got used to it pretty fast. It was natural to keep one hand on the keyboard and the other on the dial to jog video, swap tools and so on. Before long, it was second nature and sped up my workflow.
Moving to the front of the laptop, the trackpad is smooth, responsive and sports not just two, but three buttons — taking me back to the 2000s when all PC mice had this. The third one adds an extra control that could be useful for 3D or CAD apps, video editing to mark “in” points and so on. It’s also the first laptop touchpad from ASUS that supports styluses using the MPP 1.51 standard, which includes its own. That allows artists to use the touchpad as a precise drawing tablet. I wasn’t able to make use of this functionality myself (I can’t really draw), but it’s nice to have it there.
Steve Dent/Engadget
The keyboard has decent travel and a nice amount of spring back, and offers a separate number pad that’s nice to have. However, the entire keyboard is shifted upwards more than usual and the keys are perhaps a touch small, because the ASUS dial effectively increases the space between the touchpad and keyboard. I got used to it pretty quickly, though, and it was never bothersome.
Port-wise, it’s well-equipped with two fast USB-C 3.2 gen2 10Gbps connections, two USB-A 3.2 gen 2, HDMI 2.1, an audio jack and RJ45 ethernet. The HDMI 2.1 jack is nice, as it allows you to connect, say, a supported TV and get 4K at up to 120 fps. It’s good that one of the USB-C ports supports DisplayPort, because a lot of monitors only work with that standard. However, given that creators often connect tons of gadgets, I would have liked to see an extra USB-A port or two, though.
It’s nice that ASUS incorporated a bleeding edge SD Express card slot that can read data from supported cards at an awesome 985 MB/s. There’s a rather huge problem, though. If you insert an SD UHS II card used by tons of cameras, the StudioBook will only read it at UHS-I speeds — 100 MB/s instead of 300 MB/s. Since no cameras support SD Express yet, I’d rather have seen a standard UHS-II slot. (Hopefully that will change, as Sony, Nikon and Canon are part of the SD Express consortium.)
Steve Dent/Engadget
For sound, ASUS incorporated an audiophile-grade ESS Sabre DAC, promising lower distortion and expanded dynamic range. There are only a pair of speakers rather than four or more like on some recent laptops. However, they’re well above average for a laptop like this, with decent mid-range sound and acceptable bottom end. Other features include a fingerprint reader on the power button along with a top-mounted IR HD webcam with Windows Hello support and a privacy shutter.
Now, let’s talk about performance. The top-end ProArt StudioBook OLED 16 I’m testing uses the RTX 3070 mobile GPU, rather than the top-end RTX 3080. I don’t have a problem with that, as an RTX 3080 wouldn’t speed up creative apps much and adds cost and heat. Everything else is high-end, though. It’s got AMD’s top mobile 8-core Ryzen 5900HX chip, 32GB of RAM, and two terabytes of NVME storage in Raid 0. It currently comes with Windows 10 Pro, but ASUS will offer Windows 11 upgrades early next year.
I ran the ProArt StudioBook through our usual battery of performance tests, including PCMark 10 for productivity, 3DMark’s Time Spy for 3D performance, Atto’s diskbench and others.
ASUS Zephyrus Duo 15 (Intel i9-10980HK, NVIDIA RTX 2080 Super Max-Q)
5,616
3,680
1,365/8,055
3 GB/s / 3.24 GB/s
It performed near the top in all of them, as shown in the chart above, particularly the disk speeds. With the RAID 0 NVMe storage, disk speeds are stupendously fast, with reads at 5.6 GB/s and writes at 5.35 GB/s. It can’t be overstated how much that helps disk-intensive apps like Premiere Pro.
I also ran tests more geared to content creation, like Maxon's Cinebench R23 and Puget Systems’ PugetBench for Photoshop, Premiere Pro and Davinci Resolve. The PugetBench tests offer decent real-world results, as they automatically loop a series of functions that test effects, encoding, playback and so on. Again, I saw top-notch results compared to other recent creative and gaming laptops.
For instance, it hit 938 on the PugetBench DaVinci Resolve extended overall test, a result that stacked up with many desktop machines. Other scores included a 981 on PugetBench Photoshop 22 CC, compared to 781 for the Dell XPS 15 OLED and 998 for Lenovo’s ThinkPad P15 Gen 2. Like most other laptops, though, it was handily bested by Apple’s M1 Max MacBook Pro, scoring 698 on the PugetBench Premiere Pro Standard test, compared to 821 for the MacBook.
Steve Dent/Engadget
Gaming is not this laptop’s raison d’être, but I did some anyway, and it acquitted itself beautifully with Cyberpunk 2077, Destiny 2 and other titles. Frame rates were decent for 4K laptop gaming, though I needed to knock the detail settings well back. The 4K screen is a limiting factor, of course, because of the 60Hz refresh rate.
Synthetic benchmarks and gaming are fine, but creativity laptops need to prove themselves at work, too. To that end, I edited a camera review video for the laptop using DaVinci Resolve 17.2, and this video on the latest version of Premiere Pro. I also dipped into Photoshop, After Effects and Lightroom.
Again, the ProArt Studiobook acquitted itself with honors, offering fluid 4K editing, even with GPU-intensive camera codecs. I was able to export 4K videos at nearly 300 percent real-time speed in Resolve (NVIDIA encoder, MP4, 4K, 12,000 Kbps max data rate), with color correction, text and other light effects on nearly every shot.
Steve Dent/Engadget
For a desktop-replacement laptop that will often run off wall power, the StudioBook has surprisingly good battery life. It ran for 6 hours and 20 minutes in our 1080p video loop rundown test and even longer for normal browsing and work chores — excellent considering the 4K display. The AMD Ryzen 9 chip’s efficiency likely helps a lot here.
That beats most 4K PC laptops, with the exception of Dell’s XPS 15 OLED model that could go over 9 hours between charges. However, it gets stomped by the $2,500 16-inch MacBook Pro M1 Max, which lasted a ridiculous 16 hours and 34 minutes in our tests. Yes, that model has slightly lower screen resolution, but it lasted over 2.5 times longer.
The StudioBook 16 OLED was relatively quiet during all these chores as well, with the fan only kicking in on complex scenes or exports. Even then, it was considerably quieter than my Gigabyte Aero 15X laptop. If you need maximum rendering performance and don’t need to stay in the room, you can select the “full-speed” setting that cranks the fans to the maximum speed.
Steve Dent/Engadget
In the end, is the ASUS ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED laptop worth getting over rival creative models or a comparably equipped gaming laptop? Without a doubt.
It’s not just fast, but smooth and reliable across creative chores — and the “reliable” part is key for production-oriented laptops. It handles 4K editing and large photos without getting overly hot and noisy. It’s not even a bad gaming machine, though the 60Hz 4K screen isn’t ideal for that.
For the cost of the OLED model, you really get a lot. The model I’m working with will run around $3,000, though ASUS still hasn’t nailed down the final pricing yet. It also offers a better spec list than any rival creative laptops unless you’re willing to go way up in price. And don’t forget that the StudioBook has features not found on any laptop, creative or otherwise, like the 16-inch 4K OLED display and ProArt dial.
The MacBook Pro models with the M1 Pro and M1 Max CPUs are making things more interesting for potential creative laptop buyers. They’re much more competitive than the Intel MacBook Pros, as they’re faster, quieter and have longer battery life. However, as Engadget has discovered in testing, the new MacBooks are better than PC laptops like the Studiobook 16 in some ways (battery and video playback) and worse in others (rendering, GPU performance in general). More on that soon in an upcoming Upscaled.
Still, for the money, the ASUS ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED is the best Windows 10 content creation laptop you can get right now. I haven’t been excited about too many laptops lately, but I can’t recommend this model enough.
The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S debuted one year ago this month. To celebrate, we’ve made a 20-minute video conversation about the pros, cons and future of both consoles, hosted by PS5 enthusiast and Engadget Senior Editor Jessica Conditt, and Xbox Series X fan and Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar.
There may not be a clear-cut winner of this generation yet — in fact, the conversation tries to steer clear of most of the drama — so we’re focusing on what both PlayStation and Xbox have done right (and wrong). DualSense! Game Pass Ultimate! Halo! The Horizon sequel! Debate!
Judges were unimpressed by the attempt to create a class-action suit.
Google has escaped the risk of a lawsuit after violating the privacy of around 5.4 million iPhone users in the UK. The UK’s Supreme Court has ruled it cannot allow a US-style class action suit to be filed against the search giant after it deliberately created a workaround to track Safari users. The judgment focused on procedural matters, like the intersection between Google, based in the US, and the UK’s data protection laws.
The battle began in 2017 with consumer rights champion Richard Lloyd, and many others, forming a group called Google You Owe Us, which attempted to sue the company. It alleged that Google had illegally collected data on iPhone users between June 2011 and February 2012.
While the group lost at the High Court, the UK’s Court of Appeal overturned this initial decision, saying it was fair for Google to face a courtroom after the intentional misuse of personal data without consent.
Apple is introducing another way to ensure its AirTags won't be used for stalking when iOS 15.2 comes out. According to MacRumors, the just-out beta version of the mobile platform has a new feature to let users scan for AirTags that may be tracking their location. Beta users can find the feature under the Items tab in the Find My app. Any trackable item nearby that belongs to someone else will be detected and show up as an unknown item. Apple will then point users to a set of instructions on how to disable the device being used to track them.
Another interesting feature that showed up in the beta is Digital Legacy. It will let users designate people as Legacy Contacts, who'll be able to access their account and digital information when they pass away.
We review smart speakers, robotic vacuums and Instant Pots all year long, and for the holiday season, we’ve compiled a list of our recent favorites in the home-tech space. Whoever’s getting the gift doesn’t have to be tech-savvy to use all of them either — plenty of our recommendations amount to baby steps into the smarthome world. Start with a smart plug and work your way up?
The move could reduce harassment and targeted attacks.
YouTube's experiment with hiding dislikes was apparently successful. The service is rolling out a change to make dislike counts private for videos across YouTube. The button will still exist (and affect your recommendations), and producers can still see the count — you just won't see the numbers as a viewer.
The Google-owned brand is aware that some people used the counts to make viewing decisions, but it feels secret counts would help the community at large. New and smaller creators are more often targeted by dislike campaigns, YouTube said, and the test reduced that harassment.
The new 'Forza' had three times as many active players as its predecessor.
Microsoft’s gaming head Phil Spencer has revealed that Forza Horizon 5 had the best launch day of any Xbox Game Studios title. There have been over 4.5 million people playing the arcade racer across all platforms (Xbox, Windows and cloud) to date, and its peak concurrent players were three times those of its predecessor.
Congress is making its biggest push ever to stop drunk driving with President Biden's huge infrastructure bill. As previously reported, it includes a mandate for anti-drunk driving technology in new cars. Now, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has passed Congress with the measure intact, and it's expected to be signed by the president soon. As part of the legislation, carmakers will have to include technology to detect and stop drunk drivers by as early as 2026.
Even though Apple announced its third-generation AirPods last month, the second-gen earbuds are still around and some may prefer them if they like the fit of Apple's old-school EarPods. You can pick up the previous-generation AirPods for only $89 right now at Walmart, which is $70 off their normal price and $10 cheaper than they were last Black Friday. You'll have to sign in with your Walmart account before you can make a purchase, and we expect these to go quickly. While Amazon isn't currently matching the deal, we expect it to if the AirPods come back in stock soon.
If you're (somehow) unfamiliar, AirPods are Apple's true wireless earbuds that have become some of the most popular buds in the space since the first came out. One of the biggest reasons why many prefer them is how easily they pair and switch with Apple devices. Setup is super quick as your iOS device will recognize the earbuds as soon as you open the case, and then audio playback will switch based on which device you're using. That means you can go from taking a call on your iPhone to listening to music from your MacBook without hassle.
The second-gen AirPods have a similar design and fit to Apple's EarPods, and they have decent sound quality, too. We liked their improved wireless range and good battery life as well — you'll get around five hours of use before needing to recharge. Despite not being the newest AirPods anymore, these buds are a much better buy at this $89 sale price. But if you're willing to spend a bit more, Apple's latest AirPods offer a lot of improvements including a better fitting design, improved audio quality and a longer battery life.
Apple has bolstered its iCloud for Windows app, with the latest version now offering support for the ProRes video and ProRAW photo formats. As such, you'll now be able to access those files on a Windows device through iCloud. The owner of a shared file or folder can now let others add or remove people too.
Apple
Back in August, Apple added a password manager to iCloud for Windows, and it works with Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome extensions. Now, in version 13, there's an option to generate strong passwords through the iCloud Passwords app.
This should prove a useful update for folks with a Windows PC and an iPhone. They'll have better access to their photos and videos. What's more, iCloud Keychain will be a more viable cross-platform password manager for them.
Spotify may not be the first service that comes to mind when you think of blocking other users. However, the streaming app's features could mean someone you no longer jive with can still access your playlists or activity. Today the company is massively updating how you block another user on its platform, giving you the ability to do so yourself for the first time. Before now, you had to contact customer service to get the job done, but now you can complete the task on Spotify app from a desktop or mobile device.
Users have been clamoring for a way to directly block others for quite some time. In 2018, the company designated a block feature as a "good idea," although it wasn't officially on a product roadmap and no timeline for arrival was given. In 2019, Spotify began allowing users to block artists they never wanted to hear with a "Don't play this artist" option. Still, there wasn't an option to keep your ex or anyone else you didn't want to see your stuff from doing so unless you reached out to the company for help.
To block someone on Spotify, simply visit their profile and click the ... button. Select "Block," or "Block User" on mobile, and that person will no longer be able to access your page, public playlists or see your listening activity. As you might expect, there's an "Unblock" option should you ever change your mind.
Spotify says the introduction of a direct blocking feature is part of its ongoing mission to give users the best experience it can while fostering a safe environment for them to listen to music and podcasts. You can expect the new functionality to start rolling out this week.
You can’t keep a fitness company down. Following some rough financial news from one of the companies that thrived during the pandemic as many took up at-home workouts, Peloton is looking to bounce back, like a burpee, but more business-like.
It just announced the Peloton Guide, a strength-training camera system that looks like Kinect, hooks up to your TV and uses machine learning to understand your movements.
The movement tracker feature is compatible with hundreds of existing Peloton strength classes. The idea is to encourage users to carry out all of the exercises in a class and keep up with instructors (but it's not a big deal if you can't stick to the instructor's pace). The Self Mode will enable users to match their form against the instructor's in real-time via smart camera technology. You'll be able to select how you appear on screen, and the aim is to help you make form adjustments during a class.
Peloton will also continue to train the machine learning model on more movements. It will be the company's least expensive device to date — but that doesn’t make it cheap. It will cost $495 when it arrives in the US in early 2022.
NVIDIA has launched a follow-up to the Jetson AGX Xavier, its $1,100 AI brain for robots it released back in 2018. The new module, called the Jetson AGX Orin, has six times the processing power of Xavier even though it has the same form factor and can still fit in the palm of your hand. NVIDIA designed Orin to be an "energy-efficient AI supercomputer" for use in robotics, autonomous and medical devices. It’s apparently capable of 200 trillion operations per second. NVIDIA hasn’t revealed what the Orin will cost, but it will land in the first quarter of 2022.
Microsoft has pushed cheap Windows laptops as the ideal school computers. Matching the capabilities of Chromebooks, they can also run traditional Windows software. But now, Microsoft is finally ready to jump into the affordable, kid-friendly PC fray with the $249 Surface Laptop SE. It's one of the first PCs to run Windows 11 SE, a stripped-down OS targeting K-8 students (and their beleaguered teachers). You can also expect to see Windows 11 SE devices coming from Dell, HP, Acer and ASUS. And that’s just the beginning.
A nice discount on the device that supports master quality audio for wired headphones.
When it comes to improving audio for your wired headphones, a USB DAC (digital to analog converter) can do wonders for sound quality. However, a lot of them are huge. THX’s USB-C version is the size of a thumb drive. And the connectivity means you can use it with both your computer and your phone. After only being available through Razer before, THX's DAC is now available through Amazon, and it's currently on sale for $150. That’s $50 less than the RRP.
Sure, we regularly publish our best console games lists. But buying a game for someone else is a different matter entirely to choosing one for yourself. Unless you know exactly what they want, where do you even begin? How about right here. And no, they’re not all $60 AAA games...
Soon after the iPhone 13 was released, an iFixit teardown showed that Face ID stopped working if the display was replaced by a third-party repair shop, unless the engineer also transferred a microcontroller from the original screen. Apple will soon remedy this with an upcoming software update, so Face ID will still function even without swapping the chip to the new display.
It's not clear when Apple will roll out the update, but questions remain over why the Face ID function broke in the first place.The controversy emerged amid a broader push by the US government to strengthen right-to-repair rules.
