Gadgetoid - Latest Comments

Re: Gamer Advantage Blue Light Filtering Glasses

yaaraaja4 — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 07:45:47 -0000

Had few pairs and some worked better then others (cheap or fake) using them occasionally but try to play in lid room or allows natural light in as well. In the dark your eyes get fatigued faster and become red. You don’t need to use them if you take breaks from looking at static point (monitor) if you are concerned about your eyes use the glasses but also train your eyes when taking breaks by looking and focusing on something (point) far in the distance then focus on something near you. Remember my doctor in uni told me this years ago.

Re: Anker 737 Power Bank / PowerCore 24K Review

Gadgetoid — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 11:55:34 -0000

I haven’t tried it with anything but Anker’s own GaN Prime charger yet- since that tends to charge at 60W+ which is very very convenient.

Most of my batteries just get charged from whatever USB C cable/supply I have handy, though, and I’ve yet to have trouble. I’ll try some other chargers with this battery and see what happens.

Re: Anker 737 Power Bank / PowerCore 24K Review

André (makerbymistake) — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 11:10:08 -0000

Is it finicky with chargers? I have an anker power bank that is not compatible with a lot of PD charges (won't charge)

Re: Starlabs Star Lite MK IV Review

marrbhi — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 08:54:50 -0000

I tested the Mk III back in Dec 2020 before it dropped out of existence (parts shortage I think.) Due to relocating during the Covid chaos I actually daily drove it as my workstation for a few months (using VSCode/Slack/Discord and writing C++ for RP2040 and running more MicroPython recompiles than I'd care to imagine). The keyboard left a little to be desired (inconsistent actuation force), but having a Linux-first, mini laptop at that price point was compelling. The decent resolution (1080p at 11") screen, SATA SSD (rather than eMMC) and backlit (!!) keyboard made it worthwhile and I still use it for work.
If they've revised the keyboard/trackpad in Mk IV then it could be a pretty solid little machine.

I also had some weirdness with the USB Type-C power adapter (ha I wish this was the only hardware I could say this about) but that may or may not have been fixed (in the Mk III) with a recent firmware update. Though it did take them the best part of the year since my vague and difficult to reproduce bug reports. A 12v barrel jack supply was rock solid. No surprise there.

I know it's no Framework, but it's nice to have a System76-a-like this side of the pond.

Re: Elden Ring Is Awesome

John Cranston — Sun, 22 May 2022 07:10:17 -0000

Can confirm, is awesome.
Somehow they managed to encapsulate all the things I've enjoyed from their prior games and smash it into this huge open world. Considering a large part of development took place during a global pandemic, that's no mean feat!

Re: Star Labs Lite MKIII Reviewed

ajfriesen — Sat, 20 Nov 2021 18:35:28 -0000

Thank you for this review!
It is so hard these days to find such good content about a niche topic.

I am in the means of getting the new StarLite MK IV.
Was not sure about the processor since I never owned a low power one.
I guess for writing markdown, my blog and surfing with chrome this will be a good fit.
I am still a little shocked that you had Slack and other things open at the same time. And even video calls! These are the end boss for Linux laptops because of the bad hardware acceleration support AFAIK.

Thinking in progress...
Buy or not to buy?

Re: Kioxia U365 256GB USB Flash Drive Reviewed

ashleylose07 — Thu, 02 Sep 2021 06:10:14 -0000

I read this article! I hope you will continue to have such articles to share with everyone! thank you!

Re: Star Labs Lite MKIII Reviewed

embee999 — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 09:03:59 -0000

Thanks for this. I've been hoping something would come to along to replace my Tosh iba 2 (runs GalliumOS but that's out of support). It's still a stalwart at ChromeOS and middling with the linux boot but getting long in the tooth as well as running out of OS support in September.

Re: Jabra Evolve2 85 Reviewed

Bhavith M — Sun, 06 Jun 2021 13:23:18 -0000

Can you use the boom mic with a wired connection (either 3.5mm or USB-A/USB-C) on this headset?

Re: Azulle Byte 3 Reviewed

Gadgetoid — Wed, 12 May 2021 12:31:34 -0000

That’s distressing- it’s very difficult to prove a manufacturing flaw in order to make an out of “warranty” claim against your consumer rights… assuming you have any!

All I can say is that the BYTE 3 they sent me is still running, despite a rather long period of time (several months in fact) whereupon it was mistakenly powered by a 19v AC adapter.

Have you tried leaving them both off and unplugged, and doing the classic “pressing the power button several times while unplugged” trick to ensure any residual charge drains from capacitors onboard and any controllers are fully reset?

It *could* easily be your AC adapters- IIRC they are 12v at 2A with a standard barrel jack. Might be worth grabbing a cheap generic power supply to try them with- anything that’s 12v with the right size barrel Jack connector (some come with additional converters to different sizes) and >=2A should work.

Good luck and let me know how it turns out. If you have any records of communication with Azulle that you don’t mind sharing then I’m always willing to back up my coverage with details of their support quality/responses. As a reviewer I don’t often get the opportunity to properly test their support!

Re: Azulle Byte 3 Reviewed

john c barker — Wed, 12 May 2021 11:44:29 -0000

I bought 2 Azulle BYTE 3 units in December 2019. One died in January 2021 and the other died in February 2021. Both just over the 12 month warranty. The blue light start button stays on and the green light in the Ethernet port is visible as well. Each unit will not turn on with the remote or the power button. Have tried unplugging, everything I could think of. No luck. Azulle won't fix them or replace them. What is your take? Can I get them fixed? Is it a power supply problem? Thanks John C
barkerworld@yahoo.com

Re: Azulle Byte 3 Reviewed

john c barker — Wed, 12 May 2021 11:23:59 -0000

Re: Gaming Chair Brands Are Lying To You But Nobody Cares

sainivedant41 — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 04:24:27 -0000

I read this article! I hope you will continue to have such articles to share with everyone! thank you!

Re: Gaming Chair Brands Are Lying To You But Nobody Cares

Kristoffer Lending — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 19:58:33 -0000

Did you see the Gamers Nexus video about these chairs? Alarming.

Re: Of Thunderbolt 3, USB Type-C and DisplayPort

Gadgetoid — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 03:26:14 -0000

I never did identify exactly what DisplayPort standards are routed where on the 2016 Blade (I’ve since switched to an Alienware m15 r2), but I did test a QHD 144Hz monitor a couple of years back: https://www.gadgetoid.com/2...

I honestly can’t recall how I hooked this up, but my article mentions HDMI capping out at 85Hz. Presumably I used a USB Type-C or Thunderbolt 3 to DisplayPort adapter. I reckon a passive USB Type-C to whatever sized DisplayPort connector you need should do the trick.

Both the internal and external screen should run fine together IIRC.

Re: Of Thunderbolt 3, USB Type-C and DisplayPort

Wil Jo — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 17:57:55 -0000

Hi, thanks for sharing.

I was hoping you could give me some advice on what would be the best solution to connect an external QHD 144hz monitor to a razer blade late 2016 (same model as yours). The monitor that I'm planning to get comes with a HDMI 2.0 and displayport + displayport cable. I'm trying to get an adapter that is able to hook up with this external monitor while being able to capitalize on that 144hz QHD with the GTX1060.

I would really appreciate it if you can recommend any specific adapter that will work best. Also, I'm really new to these sort of stuff and this will be the first time I'm attempting to connect an external monitor using my razer blade 2016. Was wondering if I could run dual screens (meaning both the blade's 60hz monitor and the external QHD 144hz monitor) decently with this setup. Thanks!

Re: Dell XPS 13 9370 Ubuntu 18.04 to 19.04

Jo — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 04:53:52 -0000

Doing Ubuntu release upgrades through the apt machinery is not recommended, Ubuntu's upgrade scripts may do more than that, and you'll be missing details that may come back to bite you later.
Better do sudo nano /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades, replace "never" with "normal", then sudo do-release-upgrade.

Re: Plantronics Backbeat Pro 2 Review

Gbr Nst — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 14:57:42 -0000

I don't understand the bit about the jack. Do i need just the trs to trrs connector or do i also need some sort of microphone?

Re: Plantronics Backbeat Pro 2 Review

dosporuno — Wed, 17 Apr 2019 02:50:40 -0000

Great review, thank you!

Re: Azulle Access3 HDMI Mini Stick PC Review

Joshua Lowe — Wed, 23 Jan 2019 16:43:58 -0000

Sounds like a nice portable plug and play PC stick.

Re: Azulle Access3 HDMI Mini Stick PC Review

Gadgetoid — Wed, 23 Jan 2019 16:35:56 -0000

You're going to put someone's eye out with that razor sharp wit :P

Re: Azulle Access3 HDMI Mini Stick PC Review

Russell Davis — Wed, 23 Jan 2019 16:21:50 -0000

comment!

Re: Of Thunderbolt 3, USB Type-C and DisplayPort

LeoB — Fri, 30 Nov 2018 20:26:55 -0000

Thanks for an awesome write-up! I'm currently looking for solutions to drive 2 external displays from a Blade 15 (2018), on which I'm running Mac OS X. The issue I have is that Nvidia is disabled in that setup (Mac OS X doesn't support Optimus), which I'm fine with, but that also means that the only working output is the TB3 port (it seems that both the mDP and HDMI are driven by GTX1070). So I'm trying to find information on whether anything has changed with Blade 15 in terms of DisplayPort signals through TB3 and if buying an expensive TB3 to dual-DP would even work at all...

I was wondering if you might have upgraded to Blade 15 since and know something about this, or generally have any information on the topic? :) Thanks a lot!

Re: Of Thunderbolt 3, USB Type-C and DisplayPort

Ujwal Gattupalli — Thu, 20 Sep 2018 14:42:15 -0000

Yeah, that's what even I thought. The optimus should be able to tap the power of 1060 through the iGPU. The only issue is that the number of monitors you can connect to are limited by 3 over thunderbolt 3. There's technically no 1 cable solution if you want to power more monitors.

I will continue to explore this path, let's see what all I can get out of this. I am not setting up a gaming rig, so the ability to support more displays at 60hz is all I am looking for at the moment. Power + Portability with 1 cable.

Yes, it'd be great if the manufacturers can throw more light on situations like these. Unifortunately the support is not greatly helpful either.

Blade 15" has a mDP port which makes it easier for MST through the dGPU (not 100% sure) though.

Re: Of Thunderbolt 3, USB Type-C and DisplayPort

Gadgetoid — Thu, 20 Sep 2018 09:19:20 -0000

This is how Optimus works I believe. There's no hardware multiplexing between the discrete and integrated GPUs, draw calls are forwarded to the NVidia chip if it's in use, and the resulting image is output via the Intel chip. Unless there's a switch from Optimus to hardware routing- which I suspect is unlikely- it will always be an issue :(