HP MAKES THE ENVY NAME PREMIUM AGAIN WITH NEW LAPTOPS, ALL-IN-ONE, MONITOR

The history of HP’s Envy line-up has been tumultuous. At their introduction, in the latter half of last decade, they gave Apple serious competition, but cost-cutting and brand expansion eventually made the Envy name all but meaningless.

Recently, HP has made efforts to get Envy back on track. It has gradually improved the quality of Envy across the board, and in July the company released the HP Spectre, a tour-de-force of hardware and design. Now, HP is keeping the pedal of progress firmly pressed down with a major update of its entire product line.

The largest update comes to one of HP’s oldest Envy systems, the HP Spectre x360. As with earlier iterations, the x360 is a 2-in-1 device with a folding hinge. The new model, though, is significantly smaller. Thickness is down to 13.8 millimeters, from 15.9mm, while weight is down to 2.85 pounds. Its overall profile is smaller, too, thanks to a new edge-to-edge, 13.3-inch, 1080p display. Like Dell’s XPS 13, this design makes the overall footprint more similar to a 12-inch laptop.

Big changes have also come to the battery. It’s now a massive 57.8 watt-hour unit, and HP quotes battery life of up to 15 hours. That’s a very long time, and as is always true of manufacturer figures, it’s probably a best-case scenario. Given the battery’s size, though, we expect good things when the x360 hits the road.

Other updates include an edge-to-edge keyboard with 1.3mm of travel, a wider glass touchpad, four front-facing speakers, two USB 3.1 Type-C ports (joined by one standard USB), 7th-generation Intel Core processors, and PCI Express solid state drive with capacity of up to 1TB.

Though it carries the name of its predecessor, this is a huge update. It’s basically an all-new laptop, and among the thinnest in its category.

A number of configurations will be available. The most affordable, with a Core i5-7200U processor, 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD, will run you $1,049. You should be able to purchase it immediately from HP’s online store.

HP has also updated the Envy 13, the “standard” laptop cousin to the x360. Its update is less substantial, as the Envy 13 doesn’t gain an edge-to-edge display. However, it has received many updates under the hood.

Battery life is, once again, the most important. It has the same 57.8 watt-hour battery found in the x360. That means battery life, with the 1080p display, is up to a quoted 14 hours. Its predecessor promised only 10 hours, at most.

Screen options for the 13.3-inch display include 1080p and, unlike the x360, a 2,560 x 1,440 panel. The Envy 13 also has front-firing speakers, designed to improve audio quality in real-world use.

Inside, the Envy 13 has been updated to the latest 7th-generation Intel Core processors. It can handle up to 16GB of RAM, and PCI Express solid state drives up to 1TB (with a small, 128GB SATA SSD available in the most basic model). There’s just one USB 3.1 Type-C port, but it’s joined by two regular USB 3.0 ports.

Pricing will start at $849 for the Envy 13 with a Core i5-7200U processor, 8GB of RAM, a 128GB solid state drive, and 1080p display. A variety of additional configurations will join it, but HP didn’t detail their prices ahead of release. You can buy the new Envy 13 on HP’s online store starting on October 26.

Next up we have another huge re-design with HP’s Envy All-in-one 27. Again, though it shares a name with a previous model, the new edition is entirely different.

HP has opted to put the hardware powering the new Envy All-in-one 27 inside the base, rather than behind the PC. This makes the display strikingly thin, with bezels that are only 9.5 millimeters wide on the sides and top, and 11.1mm at the bottom.

Resolution comes in at 2,560 x 1,440, and HP boasts that the display can render 99 percent of the sRGB gamut. It also has a Blue Light Filter, to cut down on wavelengths of light that keep you restless late at night.

Front-facing speakers are again in attendance. Here, they’re designed in partnership with Bang & Olufsen. The sound bar is actually in the base, and is controlled by a unique audio dial, something you almost never see on PC desktops, all-in-ones, and laptops.

Intel hasn’t released 7th-generation processors for desktops yet, so the base processor is a Core i7-6700T. The system has 16GB of memory, a 128GB PCI Express solid state drive, a 1TB SATA hard disk, and GeForce GTX 950M graphics with 4GB of GDDR5 memory. Connectivity includes four USB 3.0, one USB 3.1 Type-C, and HDMI-out/in. The latter is important to note. Many all-in-ones don’t have HDMI-out, so they can’t be used with an external monitor.

The configuration listed above will be available at retail on October 16 for $1,599. Two additional configurations will also be available online.

One, priced at $1,249 and available November 2, will drop down to a Core i5 processor, and cut the solid state drive, as well as ditch the Nvidia graphics chip. That’s probably a model you’ll want to avoid.

The second, priced at $1,699 and available October 12, double the capacity of the solid state drive to 256GB, and the hard disk to 2TB. That’s a great upgrade, considering it’s only $100 more than the base configuration.

Last up we have the new HP Envy monitor. It takes a similar design approach to the Envy 27 All-in-one, ditching the former look, which had speakers on each side of the display, for a thin-bezel aesthetic.

The 27-inch display looks very similar to that on the all-in-one. However, it receives an important upgrade – 4K resolution, along with AMD FreeSync technology support. The monitor’s IPS panel supports refresh rates of up to 60Hz.

The U.S. version of the display also has versatile connectivity, thanks to its use of a USB Type-C port which can connect to other devices and deliver up to 60 watts of power. For example, you could plug your HP Spectre 13 into the monitor to use it as a second display, and charge the Spectre 13 at the same time. Other ports include HDMI 1.4 and HDMI 2.0.

Surprisingly, the Envy 27 Display is not that expensive. It will retail for just $499, and be available on December 4.

Read more: Soft Tech
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SAMSUNG CF591 27-INCH MONITOR REVIEW

SAMSUNG CF591 27-INCH MONITOR REVIEW

Samsung’s CF591 is late to the 1080p monitor party, and it didn’t bring a gift

                

HIGHS

• Excellent contrast
• Attractive design

LOWS

• Wobbly stand
• Needs calibration
• Not price competitive on price

With each passing day, 1,920 x 1,080 pixel monitors feel like more and more of a compromise, instead of the standard. As screen sizes expand and refresh rates increase, it’s not hard to make the move from 1080p to 1440p, or even ultrawide, without breaking the bank.

But that hasn’t stopped Samsung from continuing to invest in the resolution. It recently released the CF591, a curved screen with FreeSync support. With a 60Hz refresh rate and four-millisecond response time, the 27-inch display’s specification sheet isn’t anything to write home about.

Its real competition comes from its older siblings. The Samsung SD590C is over a year old now, and it’s almost exactly the same, although it lacks FreeSync. The CF591 is also priced to compete with 1440p panels, which grow cheaper by the day. Has this new Samsung come to market too late to make a splash?Solid screen, wobbly stand

 

The Samsung is attractive, with a silver bottom bezel that anchors nearly invisible, black bezels on the other three sides, which gives the illusion of stretching closer to the edge of the monitor while turned off. The upper part of the screen feels solid, with no flexible panels or awkward gaps.

Unfortunately, the stand doesn’t hold up to the CF591’s sleek upper half. The round platform at the bottom isn’t quite wide enough, so the screen gently wobbles from side to side as you type. There’s no twist or pivot, either, which is an ergonomic problem. The screen just leans forward and backward in its stand.

The CF591 isn’t VESA compatible, either, so you’re stuck with the limited stand. That’s not uncommon for cheaper displays, like the $200 Philips 276E6. But at almost twice the price, we expect more. It’s not like VESA mounting is a premium feature.

The bare minimum

Samsung’s curved 1080p panel is fitted with HDMI, DisplayPort, VGA, and separate audio in/out jacks along the back. That’s a typical selection of ports, and the exact same ports found on the Samsung SD590C. Dell’s curved 1080p, the SE2716H, trades the DisplayPort for a second HDMI, and the Philips opts for DVI only. Thankful that Samsung kept the DisplayPort.

Jogging around

Some monitor manufacturers are fond of buttons, while others go for the touch-sensitive panels. Samsung offers up a third option, the jog button, which is basically a joystick that clicks. The upshot is the jog button is easy enough to use in the dark, or when it’s behind the monitor. There’s no hunting for the right button or turning off the screen by accident. You just find the jog button, and off you go.

The monitor’s budget features wouldn’t be detrimental if Samsung actually slashed the price.

On the other hand, the jog button can be finicky to use. Navigating on-screen display menus can be inconsistent, thanks to an unintuitive scheme and awkward up, down, left and right presses. The on-screen display options run a fairly wide gamut, but are limited by lack of proper specificity. For example, there are color options for RGB on a 0-255 scale, but the presets are “warm 1” or “cool 2” — descriptive, but not exactly precise.

The rest of the picture menu is populated by the standard configurations. Brightness, contrast, and sharpness, plus the color options mentioned above, and options to enable “Game Mode,” which is supposed to reduce response times. Samsung bundles the monitor with a handful of “Magic” features, like “Magic Upscale” and “Magic Bright.” In our experience, these options tend to weaken the image, creating artificial contrast or blowing the gamma out of whack. They seem to exist mostly to check of box on the monitor’s feature list.

Comes up short in image quality

The CF591 isn’t particularly impressive from a technical standpoint. The 1,920 x 1,080 Vertical Alignment panel packs in 82 pixels per inch, with a 60 Hertz refresh rate and four millisecond response time. Apart from its lower-than-average PPI, there’s nothing detrimental about the numbers, but also nothing impressive.

Its 250 nit maximum brightness is acceptable, but the lowest of its curved 1080p competitors. It’s still plenty bright to overcome even our office bullpen lights, though, which is more than we can say for a lot of screens.

With a 910:1 contrast ratio at full brightness, the Samsung certainly takes home a win in that department. It only comes in second to its older brother, Samsung’s own D590C, and by a margin of less than 100. Both screens border on 1000:1, an achievement only the best screens we review can claim.

Color gamut is another high point for the Samsung. The screen renders 99 percent of the sRGB spectrum, tied with the Dell SE2716H after calibration, and 80 percent AdobeRGB, which falls behind the Philips 276E6 with quantum dots. Gamma was high at 2.4, while the other curved 1080p panels had perfect or slightly low gamma.

Color accuracy, though, was downright miserable. At a 6.26 average deltaE, the Samsung is twice as far off as the next panel, which happens to once again be the pre-calibration Samsung D590C. That screen improved noticeably from calibration though, and we’ll hope this new Samsung does the same.

The result is sharply contrasted, if not overly dark, images. High gamma means the grayscale balance is too dark, so black hair and shadows lose definition, blending into backgrounds. Unfortunately, it means a big hit to the overall experience, and one that users are likely to notice in gaming, media, and even viewing pictures. Color accuracy also affects the image, although it’s tougher to tell without a properly calibrated screen right next to the Samsung.

Stop, calibrate and listen

As expected, calibration smooths out the Samsung’s ugliest features. Average color difference in particular drops from 6.26 to just 1.87, putting it within spitting distance of the other curved 1080p panels, including the older Samsung.

SAMSUNG CF591 COMPARED TO

Acer Predator Z35

LG 4K UHD 27UD88-W

Eizo Foris FS2735 gaming monitor

LG 34UC98 monitor

Dell S2716DG

Philips 276E6ADSS LCD monitor

HP Z25n

Dell SE2716H monitor

BenQ SW2700PT

Monoprice UHD Select Series

Acer S277HK

Dell UltraSharp U3415W

Acer XB280HK

Acer B286HK

AOC G2770PQU

Gamma told a similar story. Calibration came down from a noticeably high 2.4, down to an acceptable 2.1. That’s still off the ideal 2.2 rating, but much more acceptable than it was before. This slightly-off reading isn’t uncommon for the category, with both the Dell SE2716H and Samsung D590C sitting at 2.1 as well.

Fixing the color accuracy isn’t immediately noticeable, except in side-by-side comparisons, but correcting the gamma makes a huge difference in terms of viewing experience. The dark spots and lost details come back, and the deep contrast has a chance to shine even more so than before. The downside, then, is the screen needs some love from a calibration tool to reach its full potential.

Premium warranty for a mid-range monitor

The CF591 boasts a three-year warranty on parts and labor. That’s just about the only benefit Samsung has borrowed from its higher-end monitors.

Conclusion

The $350 Samsung CF591 is fighting a steep uphill battle. In an increasingly high-resolution world, we’re finding it harder and harder to recommend 1080p displays. The CF591 doesn’t bring anything new to the table for those screens, and it cuts a lot of the features we’ve grown used to seeing on mid-range monitors.

THE ACCESSORY PACK

EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB graphics card

$347.29

AmazonBasics metal monitor stand

$15.80

Logitech MK270 Wireless keyboard/mouse combo

$18.26

The budget cuts wouldn’t be as detrimental if they actually resulted in a lower price. The connectivity, stand, and customization limitations are typical of monitors that are much less expensive. That includes Samsung’s own SD590C, which boasts superior contrast, color accuracy, and brightness for $100 less – with a VESA-compatible mounting system. HP’s Z25N is almost the same price, and basically only falls short of the Samsung in response time and contrast, while providing the appreciable jump to 1440p.

If, for whatever reason, you have your heart set on 1080p, there are plenty of options available for a lot less than the CF591. It is not exorbitantly out of range, but its late market entry and slim feature set means you make a lot of compromises without anything to show for it. Unless FreeSync is worth $100 to you, pick a different 1080p option – such as Samsung’s SD590C — or make the move to 1440p.

Read more: Soft Tech
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DIGITAL STORM AVENTUM 3 REVIEW

Custom PCs don't get more excessive than Digital Storm's titanic Aventum 3

HIGHS

• Massive, handsome enclosure
• Easy to open, repair, upgrade
• Incredible performance in all areas
• Relatively quiet

LOWS

• Weight makes system hard to move
• More expensive than similar competitors

Every major electronics or gaming show is littered with extreme, massive computers, crammed with insanely powerful hardware and high-end liquid cooling. They’re incredible in their impracticality, built for seemingly no reason other than “because we can.” Almost none of them actually translate to rigs you can buy — but Digital Storm’s Aventum 3 is an exception.

To call this system a flagship would be an understatement. It’s an entire flotilla all wrapped into one, the PC equivalent of the Death Star. Starting at $3,900, the Aventum 3’s pricing quickly launches itself into “omg, really?” territory. Our review unit’s MSRP, at time of this writing, is about $8,600.

You could buy a used car for that. Still, as you’d hope, this desktop has the most powerful hardware a consumer can purchase. Its Core i7-6950X processor boasts 10 cores, and in our review system was overclocked to 4.3GHz. It also came with 32GB of memory, 512GB of solid state storage, and not one but two GTX 1080 video cards, both overclocked. To keep the hardware stable, Digital Storm shipped our Aventum 3 with its custom “HydroLux” liquid cooling.

Living large

We’ve tested a lot of plus-sized desktops at Digital Trends, such as Origin’s Millennium and Falcon Northwest’s Mach V. But the Digital Storm Aventum 3 is a titan among giants. It shocked us with its shipping weight of 160 pounds. Most people will not be able to move this system far without help. It’s so heavy, in fact, that we wish it had some built-in way of mitigating that fact, like low-friction feet or retractable wheels.

Some of the weight is due to the incredible hardware inside this rig, but the enclosure itself deserves plenty of blame. It absolutely dwarfs even full-tower desktops. We measured it at about 28 inches tall, two feet long, and almost a foot wide. This alone is enough to make the PC a conversation starter.

And that’s before talking about the paint. The Aventum 3 comes with a black metallic matte finish by default, but a variety of metallic gloss finishes are available, or you can even choose your own. The standard paint options are $500, and the custom option is $800.

Size aside, this desktop takes a simple, elegant approach. Its metal panels are straight and true, and punctuated by two large case windows, one on each flank. Customizable LED lighting shines inside, and the Digital Storm logo glows up front. Every box on the custom PC checklist is filled, without deviation.

Still, the sheer size and audacity of the Aventum 3 ensures no one will call it boring. And, on close inspection, the details begin to stand out. This is an expertly produced desktop. Every wire is carefully arranged, every liquid-cooling pipe precisely connected. Like most precision-engineered machines, this rig is beautiful not because of its aesthetic traits, but because it’s the tangible result of serious skill.

Inside the belly of the beast

The Aventum 3’s size is both an advantage and a disadvantage when it comes time to replace or upgrade a component. There’s plenty of room to work with, so there’s no concern about whether a new part will fit, or if there’ll be enough space for proper cooling. But the weight of the system means that it’s hard to move to a proper working location.

Wherever you work on it, Digital Storm makes access easy. There’s a total of four case panels, one upper and one lower on each side. The upper half contains the majority of hardware including the motherboard, processor, memory, video cards, and storage. Down below the power supply, radiators, and cooling fans lurk. All of the case panels are secured with easily handled thumbscrews that are permanently attached to the case panels, so you can’t lose them.

4K gaming is the true test of this rig’s power, and it passes without hesitation.

Digital Storm has cleverly made sure that no case wires or fans connect to the large upper panels, so they can be removed freely. Power cables for case fans do connect the lower panels, but they’re arranged so that the cable is long enough to allow the panel to be laid on the floor. The hard drive bays (which number eight in total) are easy to work with, too, as all are secured with a single thumbscrew, and all can be fully removed.

It’s clear a lot of thought was put into how users might upgrade the Aventum 3. It’s a shame, then, that our review unit’s liquid cooling system negates much of it. Coolant pipes block some RAM slots and the M.2. drive, making their replacement tricky. Replacing the processor or video cards will mean pumping coolant out of the system before you take them out. And the massive radiators in the bottom half block easy access to the power supply.

These problems aren’t unique to the Aventum 3. All liquid cooled systems must deal with these issues. Choosing to stick with air cooling would make all these issues disappear, and also significantly reduce the system’s weight, leaving you with a big, spacious, easily upgraded PC. Going dry even shaves over $1,000 from the price.

Meet the fastest consumer CPU, ever

Intel’s Core i7-6950X powers the Aventum 3. We’ve already reviewed the processor, and found it the quickest stock processor we’ve ever tested, at least in multi-core testing. However, the processor didn’t win every benchmark. In some cases, it lost Core i7-5960X processors overclocked by boutique manufacturers.

Fortunately, Digital Storm has overclocked the Core i7-6950X to 4.3GHz. That’s an increase of 1.3GHz, or about 43 percent, compared to the stock chip. Predictably, the chip shattered all our CPU benchmark records.

The Geekbench multi-core score tells the whole story. The Aventum 3 hits 40,438, which is 25 percent higher than the score of 30,069 we saw from Falcon Northwest’s Tiki, which had a Core i7-5960X overclocked to 4.3GHz. The Core i7-6700K systems shown in the graph, which were overclocked to around 4.7GHz, are way behind. Handbrake is the most impressive show of the Core i7-6950X’s power, as it encoded our 420 megabyte, 4K test trailer to x.265 in only 172 seconds. That’s by far the quickest time we’ve seen yet.

There is one test where the Aventum 3 loses, and that’s Geekbench single-core. Remember, the Core i7-6950X in the Aventum 3 was overclocked to “only” 4.3GHz, which is lower than an overclocked Intel Core i7-6700K, which typically hits 4.7 to 4.8GHz. Put simply, any single core in the Core i7-6700K is quicker than any single core in the Core i7-6950X. Fortunately for the ten-core monster, there are exceedingly few scenarios where that disadvantage matters. Any application designed with performance in mind is going to use multiple threads.

A world-class hard drive, too

While hard drive performance isn’t the star of this show, the Digital Storm didn’t wimp out. The Aventum 3 was sent to us packing a Samsung 950 Pro hard drive attached to the motherboard’s M.2 slot. Known as one of the quickest consumer SSDs available, the 950 Pro quickly tore through our benchmarks.

With sequential read speeds hitting almost two gigabytes per second, and sustained reads hitting almost one gigabyte per second, it’s clear this system’s solid state drive will never be a bottleneck.

Gamers are gonna love this

Clearly, the Aventum 3 is powerful enough to qualify as a workstation desktop. It can make quick work of anything a professional video editor or programmer might throw at it. But Digital Storm primarily markets the Aventum 3 as a gaming desktop. Our review unit came with a pair of GTX 1080 video cards, each overclocked to a maximum Boost Clock setting of just over 2GHz, up about 15 percent over the stock Boost maximum of 1,733MHz. The result is pure overkill.

The Aventum 3’s Fire Strike score of 28,829 is by far the highest we’ve ever witnessed, beating the previous record holder, an AVADirect X99 gaming system with two GTX 980 Ti cards, by over 8,000 points. Importantly, we’ve never had much luck getting Fire Strike to consistently recognize multiple cards, so this result is really measuring the margin of victory for a single GTX 1080 with a powerful overclock. It’s an impressive score, to say the least.

Gaming at 1080p is easy for the Aventum 3. So easy, in fact, that its scores are held back by game engine or driver limitations more often than the hardware. You’ll notice, for example, that it scores about the same as less powerful competitors in Counter Strike: GO and Battlefield 4. Both game engines have a framerate hard cap (300 and 200FPS, respectively.) The Aventum 3 also posts a modest score in Heroes of the Storm. This game does not appear to have a hard cap, but we’ve seen diminishing returns on high-end hardware. So far as we’ve determined, it appears that single-thread clock speed is the limiting factor in that game. Not that it matters – 231 frames per second is plenty.

4K gaming is the true test of this rig’s power. And it passes that test without hesitation, settings records across the board. The most notable wins come in Fallout 4 and Battlefield 4. The Aventum 3 is the first PC we’ve reviewed to exceed 80 FPS in either game at 4K and maximum detail. Aside from the Maingear X-Cube, it’s the first desktop we’ve tested to exceed even 60 FPS at those settings.

There’s only one game that can challenge this mighty system. Crysis 3. At 4K resolution, with all the details turned up to maximum, the framerate averaged 40 FPS. That’s quite far below the ideal 60 FPS, but it’s playable, and eight FPS better than any other desktop we’ve ever reviewed.

Surprisingly quiet

Though liquid cooled, our Aventum 3 reviewed unit had plenty of case fans. We counted a total of nine. That’s way more than most consumer PCs, and it might lead gamers to worry about noise.

In fact, the system is rather quiet. It produced no more than 40.8 decibels at idle, and hit a maximum of 48 decibels at full system load. That’s slightly louder than the majority of Core i7 systems we’ve tested. Origin’s Millennium, for example, was a whisper-quiet 39.6 decibels in even the most demanding workloads. But the Aventum 3 is quieter than the Maingear X-Cube or Origin Chronos.

We also thought the rig seemed quieter than the numbers said. The fans had a lazy, sighing quality to them, absent any harsh rattles or high-pitched whine. While the liquid coolant pump made some noise, its workings calmed within a few minutes of hitting the power button. Most people should find little reason to complain about the overall level and quality of noise.

Confusing warranty terms

Digital Storm ships most of its desktops, including this one, with a three-year limited warranty. It’s not as good as it sounds. By default, the warranty only covers labor, not parts, which are covered for just one year. To make matters worse, many competitors have a free lifetime labor warranty. A few, like Falcon Northwest’s Mach V, come with a standard three-year warranty on parts and labor.

Of course, you can upgrade to a better warranty. A three year parts warranty is $300, and comes with five years of coverage on labor.

Conclusion

The Aventum 3 is an exercise in excess, larger than any of its competitors, and available with high-end options that aren’t offered by most companies. It’s handsome, hugely upgradable, and devastatingly quick, felling all of our performance benchmarks with ease. As you’d expect it to, given its MSRP of around $8,600.

As we noted earlier, though, the high price is a bit misleading. The custom paint job alone adds $500, and the expensive liquid cooling system causes as many problems as it solves. If those options are removed, the system’s price can be dropped to a still extreme, but more reasonable, $6,500.

Where’s that extra cash going? The enclosure. While the systems from Falcon and Origin are attractive, they have drawbacks compared to the Aventum 3. Falcon’s Mach V doesn’t offer case windows, so it lacks the look-at-me presence of the Digital Storm. Origin’s alternative is attractive and customizable, but also has many plastic panels, which don’t look or feel as premium as the Aventum 3.That’s less, but also still a lot. A similarly equipped Origin Millennium rings up to about $6,050, while a similar Falcon Northwest Mach V can be had for $6,150. Both systems can offer roughly equivalent performance, as they offer the same overclocking service as Digital Storm, and the same high-end video cards. When all the figures are tallied, it appears the Aventum 3 is about $400 more expensive than its prime rivals.

Do these disadvantages justify the price gap? The answer depends on whether you’re looking for a computer with world beating performance, or a showpiece. Competitors from Falcon Northwest and Origin can do all the Aventum 3 can, for less, and in enclosures that are ultimately more practical. But they’re nowhere as ostentatious. Digital Storm’s flagship is for geeks who want to brag.

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