FOUR MORE 8-CORE MEDIATEK CHROMEBOOKS ON THE WAY

I’m not saying that we’ve given up on the hopes of seeing a Qualcomm-powered Chromebook arrive by CES but at this point, I’m not holding my breath. The inexplicable delay of Snapdragon devices could very well help secure MediaTek’s market share of the Chrome OS space as development moves forward on a number of octa-core MT8183 devices.

To date, we have been tracking four baseboards being built on MediaTek’s unannounced chipset but this week, that number has literally doubled. Over the past two weeks, four devices built off of the ‘Kukui’ baseboard have been added to the Chromium repositories and are actively being developed. ‘Damu’, ‘Kappa’, ‘Kakadu’ and ‘Juniper’ are the four machines to join the lineup that already includes ‘Kukui‘, ‘Flapjack‘, ‘Krane‘ and ‘Jacuzzi‘.

Now, eight new Chromebooks may not seem that impressive in the grand scheme of things but we’re expecting the latest MediaTek chipset to be a major improvement over the previous model that powered the Acer Chromebook R13 and a number of Lenovo devices. With the relatively lower cost of ARM processors, these improvements could result in a large number of cost-effective consumer and EDU Chromebooks, tablets and detachables that actually offer decent performance when compared to the older MediaTek chip and even the OP1 RockChip processor found in the Samsung Chromebook Plus V1.

We don’t have a lot of details on the four new MediaTek devices but we’ll be digging into the commits to find out more as it arrives. Two of the Chromebooks are being produced by Bitland which has historically manufactured MediaTek devices for Lenovo. I suspect we’ll see a number of Chromebooks in varying form-factors from Lenovo and hopefully other OEMs as time passes. The Chrome OS universe is expanding rapidly and it is exciting.

iFixit’s full 16-inch MacBook Pro teardown highlights new thermal system, improved speakers, Magic Keyboard, more

iFixit did an initial teardown of the scissor switch Magic Keyboard that comes with the 16-inch MacBook Pro last weekend and now they’ve given Apple’s latest notebook a full inspection. Follow along for a look at the new and improved thermal system, six-speaker system, Magic Keyboard details, and more.

iFixit noted in its initial peek inside the 16-inch MacBook Pro that the Magic Keyboard looked like it should solve the woes that the butterfly keyboard brought to users over the last several years. We also got a sneak peek at the inside of the rest of the machine.

Now that iFixit has completed its full teardown, we know how Apple evolved its thermal system for improved venting and the ability to push 28% more air to dissipate heat more effectively.

Pardon us while we vent for a minute. Stacked atop its slightly-older sibling (the 15-inch 2019 model), the new MacBook Pro has some noticeably larger exhaust holes.

That combined with these new fans, which feature bigger impeller blades, pushes 28% more air through the new Pro.

As iFixit previously shared, the Magic Keyboard is almost exactly the same as the stand-alone Magic Keyboard, except for the components being slightly thinner. Another positive sign for long-term reliability and ease of cleaning, the Magic Keyboard doesn’t have a silicone membrane like the more recent butterfly keyboard was revised to include.

There’s slightly less space surrounding these new keys, and pundits will celebrate those reconfigured arrow keys—but everything else looks nigh identical.

News flash: there’s not even a dust-proofing membrane on these new switches. We’re inclined to take this as a very good sign. (It means we can finally eat Doritos during teardowns again.)

However, a disappointing find for repairability is the fact that the keyboard frame is riveted in place.

Nooooo! Once again, the keyboard assembly is riveted down. Though the switches are likely less vulnerable to crumbly assailants, the keyboard itself isn’t any more repairable than the Butterfly boards.

iFixit also shared a look at the new speaker system and three-mic setup found in the 16-inch MacBook Pro.

While the 16-inch MacBook Pro brings a variety of solid improvements, to no surprise it continues to fail iFixit’s repairability standards earning a 1 out of 10 for that metric.

On the bright side, it does still feature an easily replaceable trackpad and hey, we’ve got a reliable keyboard again!

Apple Mac Pro finally gets a release date… sort of

After its much talked about unveiling at Apple’s WWDC 2019 event this summer, eager content creators and other professionals have long been waiting for the release of Mac Pro (2019). 

And, what a long wait it has been, with the words “Coming This Fall” seemingly taunting us for months. Especially considering that Apple has been very busy the last few months, refreshing both its MacBook Air and MacBook Pros, rolling out not just one but three new iPhones and releasing the new 16-inch MacBook Pro since the announcement. That’s just on the hardware side.

The good news is, after what seemed like forever and the company finally securing the FCC approval for the Mac Pro, Apple is ready to officially commit to a release date. 

Tom’s Hardware reports that the long-awaited dedicated desktop and follow up to the Mac Pro 2013 is set to be released in December. That’s right; if you’ve been good this year, you might just find a brand spanking new Mac Pro (2019) under your Christmas tree come Christmas morning.

With “might” being the operative word. While we know the month, we still don’t know the exact date. In addition, the Mac Pro page on the Apple website still hasn’t been updated and still has “Coming This Fall” for a release date. However, if Apple were to keep that Fall release, we should see the Mac Pro hit the streets before December 22nd.

Mac Pro configurations and the Pro Display XDR

The Mac Pro will be available is several configurations. Its base model touts an octa-core Intel Xeon W chip, AMD Radeon Pro 580X graphics and 32GB of memory. This will set you back $5,999 (about £4,730, AU$8.720). On the other hand, its most souped-up configuration rocks a 28-core Intel Xeon processor, dual AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo GPUs and 1.5TB of memory. An estimate suggests that this could cost as high as $45,000 (around £35,000, AU$65,000).

Alongside the Mac Pro release announcement, Apple also revealed that the Pro Display XDR, which will start at $4,999, will come as a 32-inch Retina display with a whopping 6K (6016 x 3384) resolution and a 10-bit panel for 1.073 billion colors with DCI-P3 wide color space.

MSI launches Cubi 5 mini PC with 10th-gen Intel Core chips

The MSI Cubi line of tiny desktop computers are getting a spec bump. MSI added the new Cubi 5 10M to its website this week, with support for up to a 10th-gen Intel Core i7 U-series processor.

Since Intel hasn’t officially launched its upcoming Frost Canyon NUC yet, (even though we know it’s coming), that makes the Cubi 5 the first compact desktop computer in this category to feature 10th-gen Intel Core processors (Comet Lake, in this case).

The Cubi 5 measures 4.9″ x 4.9″ x 2.1″ and has room inside for an M.2 solid state drive and/or a 2.5 inch hard drive or SSD.

There are two SODIMM slots for up to 64GB of DDR4-2666 memmory.

And on the outside you’ll find:

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C port

3 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports

2 x USB 2.0 ports

1 x RJ45 Ethernet jack

1 x HDMI 1.4 port

1 x DisplayPort 1.2

1 x mic input

1 x headphone/speaker output

MSI will also offer 802.11ac or 802.11ax wireless cards.

With a VESA mount kit, you can attach the little computer to the back of a monitor. And there’s support for an optional external power switch so you can turn it on and off easily even if the PC is stuffed in a hard-to-reach spot.

MSI Prestige 15 Core i7 is really fast, but expect high Core temperatures

We recently checked out the MSI Prestige 15 aimed at both office users and content creators who may need more power than your typical Ultrabook. While its 4K display and GTX 1650 Max-Q graphics proved to be brighter and faster than most other ultra-thin laptops, the brand new Comet Lake-U Core i7-10710U processor was a mixed bag when under 100 percent utilization.

To test this, we would run Prime95 to stress the CPU while observing clock rate and temperature behavior with HWiNFO. Our screenshot below shows that once the Prime95 stress test begins, clock rates would jump to 3.6 GHz for the first few seconds until hitting a core temperature of 92 C. Clock rates and temperature would then stabilize at ~3.2 GHz and ~94 C thereafter, respectively.

After about 4.5 minutes of Prime95 stress, however, clock rates and temperature would suddenly cycle between 800 MHz and 3.2 GHz and 67 C and 95 C, respectively. Power consumption during this time would also cycle between 37 W and 92 W to be in tandem with the clock rate and temperature cycling.

Strangely, we were unable to reproduce the results above when rerunning the same stress test on a second Prestige 15 unit. Clock rates and temperature would instead stabilize at 2.8 GHz and 95 C, respectively, as shown by the screenshot below compared to 2.8 GHz and 82 C on the ZenBook 15 UX534F.

There’s nothing inherently wrong about high core temperatures reaching over 90 C as Intel CPUs are designed to run as warm as 100 C to 105 C in most cases. Nonetheless, stabilizing at 95 C like on the Prestige 15 is undesirable since you are essentially walking a thin line between high performance and the potential for throttling. We recommend keeping a close eye on core temperature if you intend to run the MSI laptop at 100 percent CPU utilization. Thankfully, this shouldn’t be an issue if browsing, streaming, editing, or gaming.

ROG Strix G is a gaming laptop with a GTX 1660 TI for just $899.00

The ASUS ROG Strix G is a gaming laptop that has an Intel 9th generation with a GTX 1660 TI.

ASUS ROG Strix G is a 120Hz monitor that has an Intel 9th Generation along with a GTX 1660 TI for the low price of just $899.00.

When you buy this laptop for Walmart.com you receive this awesome deal and you’ll receive this gift of the Gladius II Origin Mouse. This deal knocks off just about 60% off the original price of $1,499.00.

This Laptop comes with

Intel i5 – 9300H The i5 – 9300H should have similar performance to the i7 – 7920HQ, this processor has a base clock speed of 2.4 GHz with a boost clock of 4.1 GHz.

This processor has 4 cores with 8 threads (via Hyperthreading), the manufacturing has an improved 14mm process which is called 14mm++, from what Intel has stated this will give the 9300H a slightly faster clock speed in both the CPU and the GPU (+100 MHz CPU speed, +50 MHz GPU speed).

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 TI The GTX 1660 TI is a card-based off of the Turing architecture for NVIDIA’s graphics cards which means while no tensor cores are added onto the GTX 1660 TI, this card still performs very well in AAA games.

The power consumption of the GTX 1660 TI for laptops is specified at 80 watts, this is 20 watts higher than the slower Max-Q variant of the 1660 TI.

8GB DDR4

512GB NVMe SSD

Gladius II Gaming Mouse This is a $70 value completely free with the purchase of the ROG Strix G laptop.

This Mouse has a 12000 DPI along with the mouse switch is rated for 50 million clicks before any and all issues.

The Gladius II gaming mouse has LEDs on the bottom of the mouse, along with on the edges of the mouse scroll wheel, and The ROG symbol that has been printed on the palm rest has LEDs below it. The different modes for the LEDs are: Static

Breathing

Color Cycle

Wave

Comet

Reactive

The ROG Strix G is a 15.6″ laptop that comes with the Gladius II Origin mouse, for the low price of just $899.00, makes this laptop an amazing deal. When buying from Walmart.com the NextDay delivery which means if your order today you can have it on your doorstep by tomorrow!

Eurocom Will Let You Spec a Core i9-9900KS in its X4C and X7C Notebooks

If you don’t fear heavy laptops and prioritize performance over mobility, there’s a new Eurocom you may want to consider. As spotted by Anandtech, the company is integrating Intel’s latest gaming chip, the Core i9-9900KS into its notebooks.

More specifically, those models are its X4C and X7C notebooks. We’re curious how much of the time Eurocom’s machines will be able to keep these chips at their boost speeds. Reportedly, Eurocom will also be offering the units with de-lidded CPUs and better cooling setups, claiming that the’ll be able to overclock the chips even further – in a laptop.

The X4C and X7C notebooks are fully-customizable notebooks that come with 15.6-inch and 17.3-inch displays, respectively. They can be configured to hold heaps of memory, up to RTX 2080 graphics cards (or Quadro P5000 cards in the X7C model), and up to 128 GB of DDR4 memory. There is also room for multiple storage devices with RAID setups, and more. The main catch is that they’re heavy, weighing in at 7.5 pounds for the X4C and 8.6 pounds for the X7C, and they’re both about 1.5 to 1.6 inches thick.

Pricing for the units starts at $2,187 for the X4C, whereas the X7C weirdly goes for $21 less at $2,166. Adding the 5 GHz Intel Coffee lake chip adds $333 to the price over the standard Intel Core i7-9700K.

Chrome OS will soon show when your Chromebook will reach End of Life

In recent months, we’ve all become more aware of the fact that every Chromebook has a built-in expiration date after which it will no longer receive updates. Likely in an effort to increase transparency, Google is now making information about your Chromebook’s End of Life date easily viewable within Chrome OS.

Every Chromebook has been promised roughly six and a half years of Chrome OS updates — give or take for devices that are closely based on older models — with Google recently extending those dates by another year for over 100 devices.

Up to this point, checking your device’s update expiry date was a bit of a hassle, which required you to find your specific Chromebook in the massive list of every ever Chromebook released and its associated End of Life date. Now, as reported by XDA-Developers, Google has developed a much easier solution, coming with Chrome OS 80.

In recent builds of Chrome OS Canary, a new option has appeared in the Settings app under “About Chrome OS.” Click over to the recently added “Additional details” page, and you’ll find a new section labeled “Update schedule” that lists your Chromebook’s End of Life date, like so.

The “Learn more” link leads to a page teaching you what you should do next when faced with the dreaded “Final Software Update” pop-up on your Chromebook, which is, of course, buy a new one.

While this doesn’t do much to solve the issue of Chromebooks losing updates far earlier than most Windows and macOS computers, it’s at least a nice gesture on Google’s part to make the information more accessible. Hopefully this will help those with older Chromebooks have more notice and be able to buy a new Chromebook before their device reaches End of Life.

This built-in way of checking your Chromebook’s End of Life date is currently only available in pre-release versions of Chrome OS 80, which is scheduled to release sometime in February.

Review: Samsung’s Space Monitor is handsome and minimal — if you have the desk for it

When Samsung announced the Space Monitor, I knew in an instant that it was going to be something I had to try out in person. Now that I’ve had time to do so, I’m happy to say it’s much as advertised, a streamlined and solid monitor with a smart new design — but not necessarily one for everybody.

Samsung Space Monitor

Pros:

Clever space-saving design

Quiet, attractive look

Solid color out of the box

Cons:

Doesn’t rotate and height depends on distance from wall

Sub-par viewing angles

Doesn’t work with every desk

Price: $400 (27-inch); $500 (32-inch)

We don’t review a lot of monitors at TechCrunch — none, really. This was more of a curiosity to me. I’m interested in design and monitors are usually ugly at best. But I was impressed with Samsung’s approach here and wanted to see if it worked in real life.

The big advance of the Space Monitor is its very low-profile mount, which grips the edge of your desk on the wall side and can be folded up flat against said wall. It can rotate up and down, the monitor tilting to taste — not so far as the Surface Studio, but with that same general range of motion.

The monitor itself comes in two varieties: a larger 32-inch 4K one and a smaller 27-inch one at 2560×1440. I reviewed the smaller one, as the large one has a lower refresh rate and I really don’t have any use for 4K in my workflow.

The ideal situation for this thing is a relatively small work space where having the monitor actually sitting on your desk kind of invalidates all the space around it. With the Space Monitor, the stand is flush with the wall, clearing up the area below and in front of it even when it’s folded outwards. It’s easier than piercing the wall for a free-floating display.

The performance of the monitor, as far as I am able to tell, is good but not great. The colors are vibrant and the default settings are solid, if perhaps a little warm (easily adjusted, of course). The refresh rate goes up to 144 Hz, which is more than enough for gaming, and can easily be tweaked to 120 for those of us who are very picky about video pulldown and other deep frame rate stuff.

One thing that isn’t impressive is the viewing angle. I feel like the sweet spot for this monitor is far narrower than on the Dell Ultrasharp IPS panel I’ve used for years. If you’re not sitting directly in front of it, you’re going to get color and brightness falloff at the edge you’re farthest from.

The bezel is narrow, a bit more than a quarter inch, a little thicker on the bottom side. It’s also nearly flush on the top and sides so you don’t feel like the bezels protrude toward you. All in all it’s a very handsome and understated design, as these things go. It’s worth noting that Samsung appears to have fudged the press imagery a bit and the microscopic bezel you see in official images is not actually what you get.

Installation isn’t quite as easy as just setting something down on your desk, but if you have a compatible desk, it’s literally as easy as sliding the clamp on and tightening it. A custom cable (optional, but convenient) combines HDMI and power into one, and fits into a groove on the back of the stand, eliminating clutter.

But you’ll want to take a good look at your desk to make sure it is compatible. I didn’t, and had to jury-rig a solution.

Basically, unless your desk is more or less solid and has a ledge that the clamp can close down on, you might have a problem. My desk is solid and about an inch and a half thick, but has a sort of wall that juts down about two more inches. I removed and reattached the bottom part of the clamp so it could just barely be slipped around the wall, but then the screw wouldn’t reach the bottom surface of the desk, so I had to fill the gap with a book. (It’s okay, I’ve got lots.)

The stand is plenty stiff and the monitor stays exactly where you’ve put it, but it is a little wobbly — understandable, given that it sits at the very tip of a 14-inch-long arm. I only really noticed when I was typing very hard or bumped the desk, when I noticed it wobbled more and longer than the Dell on its traditional stand.

Now, if you’ve looked closely at the way this monitor and stand is set up, you may have noticed something else: this thing can’t rotate. Yes, unfortunately, the nature of the Space Monitor means that it must always be parallel to the desk edge it’s attached to, and can only move directly perpendicular to it. There is also no way to slide the monitor up and down, or rather to do so you must also move it toward or away from you.

For some this is unacceptable. And although it’s fine for me as a primary monitor, it would never work as a secondary one, like the Dell I now have angled toward me adjacent to the Samsung.

That does significantly limit its use cases, and the spaces in which it works well. But I still feel it’s a great option for some. If you have limited space and plan to primarily work from the sweet spot directly in front of it, this is a solid monitor big enough for productivity, movies and games.

For those seeking a low-profile, space-saving alternative to the usual monitors, the Space Monitor is a great option. But for multiple-monitor setups or people who shift the angle a lot, it probably isn’t the best. At $400 it has strong competition from the usual suspects, but for some people the slight increase in image quality or the ability to slide the monitor up and down isn’t worth losing the desk space or having a clunky design. The Space Monitor is available now, at Samsung’s site or your usual electronics retailer.

Apple Set to Launch MacBook Pro With Bigger Screen, New Keyboard

Apple Inc. plans to debut a new MacBook Pro laptop with a larger screen and revamped keyboard as soon as Wednesday, according to people familiar with the situation. 

This will be the first major update since the MacBook Pro line was redesigned three years ago. Apple is moving from a 15-inch screen to a higher-resolution 16-inch screen, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing unannounced products. The display will likely appeal to video and photo editors, gamers and software developers. 

The new keyboard is designed to be more reliable. Some MacBook laptops have been criticized by users in recent years for sticky keys and other problems, prompting Apple to start a keyboard repair program. The speakers will be louder. The existing 13-inch model won’t be updated.

The 16-inch MacBook Pro will replace the current 15-inch model, which starts at $2,399. The new laptop will cost about the same and is expected to go on sale this week, the people said. It won’t be the last Mac launch of the year. Apple plans to release the revamped Mac Pro desktop computer in December, one of the people said. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

The Mac continues to be a steady seller for Apple, generating roughly $25 billion in annual revenue. This is despite the company pushing more-portable devices such as the iPad and iPad Pro.

The MacBook Pro laptop is Apple’s highest-end portable computer and it is differentiated by faster processors and larger screens. The new models will have main processors from Intel Corp., not Apple-made chips that it plans to add to at least some computers as early as next year, Bloomberg News has reported.

The MacBook Pro and Mac Pro will cap a year of Apple product releases that also included the iPhone 11 line, Apple Watch Series 5 and AirPods Pro.