Mobile
When Microsoft released the original Surface Pro five years ago, the mobile market was completely different – Windows tablets were an afterthought and weren’t the svelte and snappy performers you can buy today. The first-generation Surface Pro wasn’t perfect, but it was a huge step in the right direction for Windows 2-in-1’s and tablets. Today’s mobile computing device landscape is completely different versus five years ago and one could argue it was significantly re-shaped by the success of the Surface Pro. Each notebook manufacturer has its own interpretation of...
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Microsoft just announced a few brand new products: a pair of powerful new Surface Book 2 devices featuring 8th Gen Intel Core Processors and NVIDIA graphics, and a Surface Precision Mouse designed to be the perfect companion to the devices. The new Surface Book 2 borrows virtually all of the physical design cues of the original, but this latest iteration features more powerful hardware, better battery life, enhanced display technology, and a myriad of other refinements that improve upon the first Surface Book. We have a quick hands-on video to share if you’d like a visual tour before we dig in...
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A funny thing happened as we were evaluating the latest iteration of Microsoft's Surface Pro, a now iconic 2-in-1 that the company describes as "the most versatile laptop," despite its tablet-first design. A rumor emerged suggesting Microsoft would phase out its Surface line within the next couple of years. It was really more of a prediction than a rumor. During the EMEA Canalys Channels Forum in Venice, Canalys CEO Steve Brazier pointed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella being a software guy who is more interested in the cloud than hardware. Lenovo COO Gianfranco Lanci backed his assessment during...
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Lenovo introduced their Moto Z family last year with high hopes of being something different. The evolution of smartphone design has been more iterative than innovate in recent years from most manufacturers. The Moto Z smartphones, however, offered modularity to allow the phones to adapt to a user’s in-the-moment needs. The Moto Mods concept is an intriguing one, but was ultimately met with mixed reviews. It is certainly the best execution we have seen to date with a growing selection of mods and simple plug-and-play operation, but many users are put off by needing to keep the phone-sized mods...
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Last year’s release of the Moto Z family of phones introduced the world to Mods – magnetic accessory attachments that added features to the phones, like higher-quality speakers, a portable projector, or optical zoom camera. However, the US release of the Moto Z was limited to Verizon and unlocked customers only. This year Motorola is back with the new Z2 Force, packing support for the same Mods, but launching on AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon. While the latest Moto Z2 Force has all the makings of a flagship smartphone with its Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, Super AMOLED display, and...
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Moto introduced the Moto Z family back in July with the launch of the Moto Z and Moto Z Force. Packed with flagship worthy hardware like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820, both phones made a serious statement (click for full review) thanks to their modular capabilities, by way of Moto Mods. Moto Mods tune the already premium smartphones to a whole new level when attached. We were impressed by the Moto Mods we played with, including JBL's SoundBoost and the Moto Insta-Share Projector. Unfortunately, these phones were tied to Verizon at the time of our review, but unlocked variants are now trickling...
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Although most of us would prefer to own all of the latest and greatest smartphones, there are plenty of us who don’t need all of the power and features today’s top phones have to offer. In addition, the high price tags on today's flagship phones presents a barrier for many. For casual smartphone users, there isn’t enough to gain by spending many hundreds of dollars more on a high end phone versus a more modest (and budget-friendly) model. It is for these reasons that Moto created the Moto G4 Play. As the third member of the new Moto G family, the Moto G4 Play is designed for fundamental smartphone...
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A good rule of thumb when purchasing a gaming laptop is to buy one with the fastest GPU you can afford. Unlike desktop PCs, you usually can't rip out the graphics adapter and upgrade to something faster (not in most cases, anyway), so when that once shiny and fast laptop starts feeling a little sluggish, you're looking at dialing down in-game settings until you've saved enough scratch to buy a new laptop. That's an expensive proposition (it's called throwing the baby out with the bath water), but if gaming on the go is what you're after, you don't have much choice in the matter.That's still the...
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Motorola recently launched two new flagship Droid offerings, the Moto Z and Moto Z Force. We really liked them for their ultra-premium design, strong performance, and innovative Moto Mods add-on features. However, Moto is also ushering in a refresh of their more mainstream, cost-effective Moto G family as well. We last looked at the Moto G in 2014. We weren't blown away by performance, however, we were impressed how much the device managed to offer for just $149. The Moto G delivered Android’s core experience with good enough web browsing and general productivity performance to stand...
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Last month, the partnership between Motorola and Lenovo seemed to crystalize when the combined company stepped out with its first co-branded smartphone products that will ship here in the United States. Lenovo acquired Motorola's Mobility division from Google a couple of years back, but has rightfully lead with the iconic Moto brand for new smartphone (and smartwatch) product introductions since the acquisition. It wasn't until we saw Lenovo's Product Engineer/Spokesman, Ashton Kutcher take the stage last month at Lenovo Tech World to launch the new Moto Z and Moto Z Force, that it became apparent...
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Forget almost everything you’ve read about the Microsoft Lumia 950 XL up to this point. We know that’s a bold statement, but bear with us here. Save for the phone’s specifications, if there’s one thing we’ve learned evaluating the 950 XL over the last few weeks it’s that virtually everything from the OS to the camera app has been changed or updated very recently, and it has affected battery life, responsiveness, and browsing, among many other things. Information published about the Lumia 950 XL that's any more than a couple of weeks old is simply outdated. It seems that Microsoft was tweaking a...
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While discussions about the best desktop gaming PCs tend to be divided between do-it-yourselfers and fans of pre-built PCs, gaming laptops spark a different debate, typically between large system builders versus, smaller boutique system integrators. Many of the industry behemoths kick-started or bolstered their gaming system lines by acquiring boutique SIs (think of Voodoo, which was swallowed by HP, and Alienware, which is now a part of Dell), but some niche builders are still going solo, including well-known players like Falcon Northwest and Maingear. Mythlogic is another custom builder providing...
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If three's company, we'd say Motorola has gone and made a full-on family out of its Moto 360 smartwatch. Hot on the heels of its second-generation Moto 360 comes the Moto 360 Sport, an Android Wear timepiece designed to compete not with TAG or Sony or Samsung, but with FitBit, Polar, Garmin, and TomTom. The ruggedized or sports smartwatch field is an interesting one. The target market isn't your typical smartwatch buyer. Instead, it's the fitness tracker buyer that a company hopes to upsell to. At $300, the Moto 360 Sport isn't exactly cheap. It's a full $50 cheaper than the Apple Watch...
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The Lumia 950 and 950 XL are important products for Microsoft, but not for the reasons you may expect. Microsoft isn’t trying to set the mobile market ablaze with these two smartphones. They are not necessarily meant to be explosive sales successes that take significant market share from Android and iOS. If they were, Microsoft would have thrown huge amounts of marketing muscle and dollars behind them, launched a massive advertising campaign, and worked deals with every major wireless carrier it could. But Microsoft didn't. The Lumia 950 and 950 XL are more about laying a foundation and setting...
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