Hardware – Page 2

Acer predator tab – Gaming tablets from the yesteryear part 1

Dec 142019

When you think about anything gaming, you get a little bling in mind. Come on, yes you do. Well, I do. The design language is sure to include some good red and shininess, some sharp highlights and some more.

The Acer predator in its 8 inch 1920X1200 (16:10) goodness flaunts an IPS LCD screen, a memory card slot, a volume rocker, a power button topped up by 2 Gigs of RAM, 32 gigs of storage and an Intel Atom processor (X7-Z8700).

These aside I want to particularly mention the 4 speakers on the 4 corners of the device. Sharp to touch and hear they pack a good punch in the audio department. Watching movies and YouTube, listening to music on device or online, are a treat. Whats more, the tab has a vibration motor, not seen in many, if any tab(which doesn’t have call functionality).

The ROG phone 2 – after a month of usage

Hardware, Mobile No Responses »

Nov 072019

I have used the ROG phone 2 as my daily driver for a month now and it is about time I give what I feel like would be a minimum usage period to understand what you just bought. As I said in my earlier post on the unboxing and early impressions, there should be a follow-up, and here it is. The first impression was a bit neutral and perspective ridden. More so it is after a month of use.

In the first week I was into a lot of buyer’s remorse. So much felt like selling it someone interested. The main reason for that was its bigness. It doesnt fit into medium size pockets and since the protection isnt much, you have to be very careful when carrying it. There were no cases or screen guards available at that time and it was a bit hard handling the device.

Game play was hard too, fitting the hand to cover all trigger actions ideally, calibrating the sensitivity, changing the controls in pubg, whew, it is hard work. But now that I had spent the cash to buy it, I decided to learn to use it.

By the second week I was kinda used to the phone’s size and hardships involved, so much so that I had then started liking the size. Believe me, this isn’t where the liking started cause there are some discoveries which made me question my choice in buying the phone. At the end of the second week I found out about the red tint problem with the amoled screen and with a lot of experimenting and online discussions it was clear that this is with all devices and at low brightness over a grey colour background. Based on some local nerdy conversations it felt that the calibration of the screen on how it should output grays at low brightness settings needs to be tweaked at the kernel. But hey, “local” “nerdy”. And I am no expert in screen calibrations.

The ROG Phone 2 is here – Unbox and first impressions

Hardware, Mobile 2 Responses »

Oct 102019

Yay!!!! I waited for this day since long and wow has it been a wait. Nevertheless, the day has come, the phone is in my hands and I am ready to tell you about what to expect when you unbox this phone (beast apparently). Also,a disclaimer, there are lots and lots of videos and posts on the unboxing, reviews etc. I will try not to go deep into areas already covered.

Let me start this by saying that my daily driver is a S10e, and so I am used to a 5+ inch screen with an AMOLED display and an extreme frame rate in PubG. Yeah, I’ll delve into it later on. Just the first impressions for now.

The box is a regular cuboid with a tightly packed phone, case, and the charger with a type A to type C cable. Mind you. This is the cheaper version available on Flipkart, the 8GB/128GB one and Asus has made sure to skimp on everything, other than the phone. What you see with most YouTubers is NOT what you get. I guess the company had to do it to make the phone more affordable but I felt, meh. I would have shelved 2-3k INR more if I would have gotten better in-box contents. But that’s me. There isn’t even a sim card ejection tool, so yeah, cost saving.

The big phone is really big. It spans 6.6 inches corner to corner and it should be called a phablet. A gaming phablet. Not a phone. It will not fit in your pockets well, and there are no cases aplenty right now to safeguard its glass make. And yeah, even if you manage to find a bumper case with reasonable cushioning effect, I seriously doubt the pocket-ability. It is bitter sweet that you will need protection, and the case they provide isn’t that strong. Flimsy too while at it.

Now that my rant on the box and dimensions is over let us look at the phone more carefully. The device has two USB C ports, one 3.5 mm jack, one sim port with two sim cards support, a two camera setup, a dual tone LED flash, a front camera, a dual front speaker setup and a mostly glass body. Phew. That’s the externals. There is also an in-display fingerprint sensor, which is based on light and is not ultrasound. It differs slightly from other devices due to the two air-triggers on the side and the glowing logo at the back. Sneak-peek to my next post, the air-triggers are so awesome. The vibration and feedback……whoa, not going into too much. Let me save it for a dedicated gaming feedback post.

Starting the phone up now. The huge screen lights up with the ROG and DTS X inside logo. I was greeted by a nice vibration and sound, the first sound I liked after my old predator tab. Both of them are so good at their audio department but I’ll get to it later. There is the usual setup process after which you follow your backup restore transfer process. A few hours later, your device is all setup for use.

Before you go to buy this device, I suggest you to hold it in your hand in case you have access to it. The sheer size can be off-putting to some, not all. There is no good quality screenguard available at the time of this writing, if you are into it, and the device is a fingerprint magnet, as expected with a glass body. Get ready for some scratches unless you are careful. For now, I will game a bit more on it and give you some more inputs on how it really fares with the gaming experience. Hoping to give you much more in my review post.

Circle CH70 – A gaming chair review

Hardware, Review No Responses »

Sep 272019

Ergonomics starts with a good chair. Back and neck support are the two places where any neglect will cause pains during long work or gaming sessions. I learned that the hard way when going through regular 4 hour stretches of TAB.

The Circle CH70 gaming chair comes with the typical gaming flair- the car seat design, adjustable height and angle, a back support pillow and a neck support pillow. It uses a good amount of memory foam (density grade 30) to ensure there is no permanent deformity. Honestly, I would recommend this chair even at offices if it were up to me. Sigh, it isn’t though.

It comes in three colors – black, red and green and the specifications are available pretty clearly on their website and hence I will concentrate on the experience part.

Offbeat Ripjaw – a budget wireless gaming mouse

Game, Hardware No Responses »

Sep 072019

First things first, I bought this mouse about an year ago and have been testing(a.k.a using) it quite a bit. I have used it for gaming, the witcher 3, they are billions being the main use cases. In fact, i have been using it for work too.

Of these uses, I felt that it is very versatile and can be used for gaming and work. Looks, feel and performance are what I will be talking about in this review entry and I hope to have gained enough know how on what to do with it.

Looks first:

The mouse is a big one. It has 6 buttons, including the wheel. It has good lighting options which can be modified with software available on their site. It uses a healthy dose of plastic, rubberized on the top grip and translucent for the lighting areas. Additionally, it has an aluminium exoskeleton kind of a structure which makes sure that the mouse has its shiny chromy exterior. It is a good crowd gatherer, if that’s a thing.

The feel:

Using the mouse gave me mixed feelings about it. It being slightly heavy made sure it doesn’t slip away. Feels quite good for the weight. However, extended gaming sessions can have a gym effect on your arm unless you are ergonomically qualified. The main left and right buttons are a bit mushy for my liking but they advertise it as being silent so I think that is fine. Oh yeah, it is really silent. Not like my G402 fury which beckons attention in clicks. This silence is exactly why I could used it at work.

Asus FX503- a budget gaming laptop

Hardware, Review No Responses »

Jun 052019

When you think about gaming, specially upgrading from a non gaming laptop, budget is definitely a concern. Unless you have been using a serious pro type laptop (pardon my jargon, I am not sure what expensive laptops are called other than expensive), you will think about the next laptop to be up-gradable and not too heavy on the pocket.

Enter budget gaming laptop. Many lightweight ones sport the MX950, which is passable as being a mobile grade graphics chipset. Before the GTX series goes out of stock, the desktop grade graphics card, meaning it will eat your battery life and throw out awesomeness in terms of graphics quality, is the Nvidia 1050. Which is also on the laptop I am reviewing after a lot of usage. There are other chips from AMD too but for the sake of this being a specific laptop review I will skip that part. (Vamspaz is all about gaming so rest assured there will be more articles on other cards too.)

This model in particular comes with a 1080p 15 inch TN display, meaning a wicked refresh rate with bad visibility. It has 2 USB 3.0 ports and one 2.0. One HDMI 2.0 port, one card reader and the usual Kensington lock.

Powering this is a 6 cell battery with an 8GB RAM and a 1TB HDD. I have upgraded this to a 16GB RAM and a 1 TB HDD+ 128 GB(OS drive) SSD configuration. Also, it has the above mentioned GTX1050.

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