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Samsung Odyssey OLED G9 49 Inch DQHD Curved Gaming Monitor Samsung 49" (124.4cm) Odyssey OLED G9 Curved Gaming Monitor Amazon.in Meet the Samsung Odyssey G9 OLED, a massive 49 in curved ultra wide monitor that looks like something straight out of the future. But is it worth nearly 1 lakh rupees in India? Let’s find out.
This is not just a monitor. It’s a command center.
The 49 in 32 in to 9 aspect ratio is like having two 27in QHD displays fused together.
The curve is 1,800 R wrapping around your vision for full immersion. It’s big and moderately heavy and it demands the space.
So you make sure you got the room for it. With a resolution of 5120 x440, a super ultrawide 32:9 aspect ratio. It is a very wide screen. Also the 1800R curvature makes the monitor not too curved but that also makes it need more space horizontally. 1000R is the maximum curvature I have seen. R stands for the radius of curvature.
The curve allows for better visibility for corner items as it peaks into your peripheral vision. It allows for more immersion.
The build quality is excellent with a mix of plastic and metal.
We have the option to adjust the monitor height and tilt. No portrait mode as this is outrageously wide monitor.
We do have a VESA 100x 100 mount which would allow using custom stands or arms.
The base is flat and pentagonal in shape and it manages to keep the monitor up without any problems.
We have the space to place items on the stand which is helpful as that space is not wasted.
And to power the monitor we have this huge power supply. This is as big as the one I use with my laptop.
The panel is OLED and meaning perfect blacks, infinite contrast and vibrant colors that just pop. It covers nearly 99% of the DCIP3 and supports HDR10 plus.
In dark rooms, movies and games look incredible. As per many, the HDR brightness is supposedly not as strong as some mini LED monitors, but from my point of view, the brightness is really good, eye-searing good, especially in HDR. And highlights and colors and contrast looks great.
Connectivity, we have one HDMI 2.1 port, display port 1.4, for mini HDMI which they have not provided a cable for. On the right we have three USBC ports. First is for the service and or connecting peripherals and the lowest one is for connecting to a PC as a USBC hub. The USBC port does not allow for display input. That’s also surprising but also does USBC allow for 240 Hz refresh rate? I’m not sure. There’s also a headphone jack if you want to connect speakers or also headphones to the monitor directly.
Another point to note is graphic cards like my AMD Radeon 7900 XTX supports display stream compression and you can take full advantage of its max refresh rate. Make sure your GPU supports DSC for full compatibility.
We have this cable organizer which helps root all your connected cables through.
The RGB lighting is cool but it’s not really bright. If you have a dark room, it will be visible.
We can also connect two inputs and have them side by side as if you’re using two monitors separately. So you could also have a PlayStation connector to one side and the PC on another or you can also have two separate PCs connected to the same monitor.
The PS5 doesn’t seem to be able to support the ultra wide resolution and it looks like this on the monitor.
As this is an OLED panel, there is no backlight as each OLED generates its own light. So there’s no backlight bleed. Also, it doesn’t have the bloom problem as we would with the MINI LED. For gamers, this thing is a beast. You get the blazing fast 240 Hz refresh rate, near instant response times at 0.03 milliseconds, and free sync premium pro support. Motion clarity is buttery smooth, and the sheer width gives you peripheral vision you just don’t get on standard monitors.
But not every game supports 32:9. In some titles, you’ll either get black bars or stretched UI elements.
I’ve seen some games that support the odd resolution, but they have black bars during the cinematics, but that doesn’t bother me as during game play, it covers the whole screen.
Being able to see more on screen while playing is a plus. I did see a fisheye effect where the objects look closer on the edges, but when you turn around, it is a bit more of a distance away. That’s how games render to cover the entire screen, like we see here in Last of Us Part Two.
There are games like Returnal which covers the whole screen quite well. But here we notice the second problem.
Sometimes your health bar and your messages are located at far ends of the screen. It’s in your peripheral vision but not clearly visible. FPS shooters will take advantage of the 240 Hz refresh rate giving you an edge in both responsiveness but also a larger field of view.
Here’s Forza 4. The immersiveness that you get from this monitor is mind-blowing. You feel wrapped in the view and I have seen multiple users have this monitor for their racing rig. The monitor supports all common variable refresh rates like FY, G-Sync, HDMI, VRR.
The 32:9 format is great for gaming, multitasking, and workspace setups.
This monitor isn’t just for gaming. For productivity, it’s like having a dual monitor setup without the bezels.
And video editors, streamers, stock traders, you love the real estate.
But for text heavy work, only triangular sub pixel layout is supposed to make fonts look slightly crisp compared to an IPS panel. But I have found no problems whatsoever.
Here’s a comparison between IPS and the Odyssey G9.
Using Adobe Premiere Pro on this monitor is a boon.
You can have all your source clips, monitors, and timeline fit into one screen. Everything is easy to access and the colors being OLED. It has a strong gamut coverage. If I need more screen real estate, I do have a 4K monitor attached to my PC.
Now, OLED does come with risks. Uh, it’s burn-in is possible if you keep static elements on screen for long hours. Samsung has built-in pixel shifting and screen savers, but you’ll still want to be careful and at nearly one lakh. This is not a casual purchase. Plus, the size and stand ergonomics can be challenging for smaller desks.
I measured a dozen times before ordering this monitor. I am glad that it fit. I do have more space free on the left, so it can overlap, but mine fit in just right. Backlight bloom is another mini LED problem, but it looks clean on OLED.
The reflections are handled moderately well as you can see here.
There is a model which has Tizen OS built-in with streaming apps and also provides a remote, but this model which I have doesn’t, which at this price it should have, and it doesn’t even have speakers. So, should you buy the Odyssey G9 OLED? If you want one of the most immersive displays ever made for gaming, for content creation, or just to flex your setup, this is a showstopper. The picture quality, the smoothness, the wraparound feel, it’s unmatched.
But if you’re mainly into bright HDR, heavy text work, or you’re worried about OLED burn-in, you might be better off with a MINI LED alternative or a traditional dual monitor setup. So, that’s my review on the Samsung ODC G9 OLED. What do you think? Dream monitor or overpriced gimmick? Drop your thoughts below.
VinayakSelf-confessed geek from the days when computer memory was measured in Kilobytes
vinayaknair.comThe post Samsung Odyssey OLED G9 49 Inch DQHD Curved Gaming Monitor first appeared on talkingStuff Network.
Legion 7i 14th Gen, 40.64cms – Intel i9 (Eclipse Black) Processor14th Generation Intel® Core i9-14900HX Processor (E-cores up to 4.10 GHz P-cores up to 5.80 GHz)Operating SystemWindows 11 Home Single Language 64Graphic CardNVIDIA® GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU 8GB GDDR6Memory32 GB DDR5-5600MHz (SODIMM) - (2 x 16 GB)Storage1 TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 TLC Lenovo I’ve been using Legion line of laptops for years now, and I find them to be overall the best performing laptops in it’s class. And the laptop I have here, the Lenovo legion 7 16IRX9 is no slouch either. Let’s take a look at the specs and find out why.
This is the Lenovo legion 7i 16IRX9, the 16 in the name indicates that it is a 16 inch laptop.
Legion 7 is the top end model of the Lenovo legion line, and look at this , the unboxing is so premium, beautiful. I like nice boxes.
Here’s the Legion 7i, it comes with an RTX 4070 which has a tdp of 140 watts, and it’s paired with Intels 14900HX CPU. That’s really cool.
The laptop is soo thin and light too, surprising all that powerful hardware is crammed within. Surprisingly light at 2.28 Kg, makes it easy to carry around, and you don’t lose the enthusiast gamer level hardware.
The thermal system has been redesigned, with the airflow being directed in a certain way.
No vents are present on the sides and everything is sent via the exhausts at the back.
The laptop runs intel’s core i9 14900HX which is their flagship CPU and if you are looking for the best of the best this is the one you get. 24 cores of which 8 are performance cores and 16 are efficiency cores with a total of 32 threads.
Max turbo frequency for the performance cores is 5.8 Ghz and efficiency cores is 4.1 Ghz.
GPU we have the RTX 4070
The pro model can be equipped with an RTX 4090 if you need more GPU grunt.
RAM in this laptop is 32 DDR5 with a speed of 5600 mega transfers per second.
Wireless connectivity is Wi-Fi 6E 2X2 AX and Bluetooth 5.1
Storage we are provided two slots, but only one is populated with a 1 TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 TLC.
Ports wise this is a bit different , we have a full size SD card reader, a usb-c port , a camera e-shutter switch, and a usb-a port.
On the right we have a USB-A port, two USB-C’s and a headphone jack.
Behind we have a HDMI port and Lenovo’s power port.
Webcam is 1080 FHD with dual microphone and the laptop also comes with an
Electronic privacy shutter, which is controlled using this switch here.
The AC adapter is 230 watts which has the standard Lenovo power connector.
The Lenovo keyboard is similar to the ones I’ve used on other Lenovo’s, this one supports RGB and it’s per key, the effects you can run on this are awesome.
Typing key travel is good, and are easy to type on and being a gaming centric keyboard the response is fast too.
The power button also serves as a fingerprint sensor, which is really cool.
This is one cool option on the keyboard, when you hold down the function key, all the available shortcuts light up.
Function Q allows changing the fan profiles, and function R allows on the fly changing of the refresh rate. No need to look through the options or open any software, it’s just so easy to reach.
We also have a dedicated co-pilot button on the keyboard, this is now being added to all new windows laptops
The keyboard RGB lighting can be changed using the Lenovo Vantage software which is preinstalled on the laptop.
The display is a 16 inch IPS, Anti-Glare, Non-Touch PureSight gaming display with a resolution of 3200x 2000 and a max refresh rate of 165 hz. Response time is 3.6 milliseconds. The display also supports 100% of the DCI P3 colour space and has a max brightness of 450 Nits. the bezels are quite narrow.
Os is windows 11 home .
Benchmarks we have
Cinebench
3d Mark
Timespy Extreme we get a healthy score of 5667, TimeSpy extreme is more taxing on the system
as compared to the standard TimeSpy test which scored 11740.
Port Royale a ray tracing test we get a score of 6977
Firestrike we get a score of 24,320 and
in Firestrike ultra we get a score of 6682 which is quite good.
A new DirectX Raytracing test is available which gave us a score of 35.95 fps
This is the first time I’m running the steel nomad test, and we get a score of 2620
Speedway we get a score of 2800
Gaming is what we want to see on this laptop.
GTA V, a golden oldie,
At 4k ultra we get 120+ fps which is really good, if this laptop is this good at 4k then at 1440p we get at least 150+ which is a big jump in fps maxing out around 180-185 fps. There are a few jerks, which is a problem with gta V as it wasn’t written for such powerful hardware. Just max out everything and everything runs smoothly, especially at 4K.
At 1080p the GPU has no problems churning out 180+ frames per second but we have the same frame jumps especially within the city levels.
GTA V is best played at the highest settings on this laptop. Check these clips out,
This problem is only with GTA V
Red Dead redemption 2
Even though is by the same publisher rockstar games, they seem to have ironed out the problems that GTA V had, and
At 4K resolution and ultra settings we get a healthy average of 58 Fps, max it hit was 133 fps.
1440p the fps averaged out at 82 with a max of 158 fps.
1080p we get an average of 105 fps with a max of 149 fps, the max fps seems to have taken a hit.
Cyberpunk 2077
A favourite of many as it used to bring many systems to their knees, but with updates and fixes it has become more smoothened out with much better optimization.
1080p DLSS set to quality we get an average of 80.70 fps and in balanced we get 89.79.
1440p with DLSS set to quality we get an average of 50.69 fps and in balanced we get 60.77 fps
4K with DLSS set to quality we get an average of 28.90 fps and in balanced we get 36.20 fps
The GPU did heat up all the way to 77 degrees when gaming/ benchmarking which on a laptop is not bad, the performance didn’t drop which is what we want and the cooling system kept the laptop running at it’s best.
The webcam is quite clear, and this is how it looks, the dual microphones should allow for better noise cancellation too.
Boosting performance is possible through the vantage software which allows selecting between various modes, and the balanced mode has a new AI option which would help keep the laptop performing well using AI core which would detect what you are doing and change settings on the fly as necessary.
Battery is 99.9 watt hour which is the max allowed on an airplane, and as with all gaming laptops we get around 2 hours 9 minutes of battery life while gaming at max load, light loads like browsing, video streaming we can get around 6 hours 32 minutes of battery life. These laptops are performance focussed so battery life is not going to be it’s strong suite, also the best performance as usual is only attainable when connected to power, else the laptop goes into a power saving mode, where we can game but not at peak performance.
The Lenovo vantage software allows changing multiple settings on the laptop, and also overclock your CPU/GPU to churn out even more performance.
This laptop is great for students who are into 3d modelling, designing in applications such as blender, fusion 360, video editing and also run AI models locally, This would work well. This laptop truly fuses portability with performance.
So how did you guys like this laptop, would you pick one up for college, it is expensive at 2.09 lakhs, but with the spec’s its packing, it’s understandable, but you guys make sure to comment below on other laptop options.
So that was the video, make sure to like, subscribe and also hit the notification bell to be notified when new videos are added. Thank you for watching and see you all next time.
VinayakSelf-confessed geek from the days when computer memory was measured in Kilobytes
vinayaknair.comThe post Lenovo legion 7 16IRX9 first appeared on talkingStuff Network.
ELEGOO PHECDA 20W Laser Engraver & Cutter ELEGOO PHECDA 20W Laser Engraver & Cutter with Air Assist, CNC Laser Engraving and Cutting Machine for Wood and Metal, Dark Acrylic, 400x400mm Engraving Area ELEGOO PHECDA 20W Laser Engraver & Cutter This is the Elegoo Phecda, phecda,
also called Gamma Ursae Majoris, is a star in the constellation of Ursa Major.
The laser engraver / cutter comes in two models , 10W and 20 W. I have the 20 W version with the air assist module.
Opening up the box, we have a FAQ flyer,
Also included is a manual, it’s quite detailed, but hard to follow. I will share the ELEGOO setup video here, which is way simpler to follow. I noticed later that the same video is included in the memory card that comes with the engraver.
This box includes the extension legs, these are the end feet, and another set of extensions if you want more room for taller projects.
This is the air assist module, the dial here controls the speed of the pump.
Rubber feet, so as to reduce sound due to vibration. The air assist module uses a 10 amp power plug.
We have an adapter which helps connect the laser module with the air assist module.
Power supply, for the cutter/engraver.
Air filter, which helps filter out the fumes and dust when the engraving takes place.
We are provided 5 replacement filters for the air filter.
Safety goggles and cleaning cloth.
Screws, tools, and stickers.
Now for the main parts, the frame is constructed using aluminum alloy. These parts are also called baffles as per their video.
This is the laser mount, with connectors,
and here’s the laser module.
Another part of the frame, light but strong being aluminium alloy.
This is the controller, basically a motherboard where the cables all meet up and has the logic to control the engraver, both in movement and cutting.
We have the ELEGOO logo on the side,
and the touch screen control on top.
This is the other part of the frame which controls y axis movements,
and this is the opposite side.
USB cable for interfacing the machine with a PC.
Tube which connects to the air assist module.
Fixed rear cover plate, which protects us from the laser when cutting takes place.
Big shading plate, which has magnets and can be easily attached and removed as needed.
Optical shaft.
Honeycomb panel, which also has a steel plate below.
Rotary module, this is cool, i will show how it works later.
Ok, now for the assembly,
I wanted to make a assembly tutorial, but I hit a roadblocks and Elegoo have a well made video tutorial too so find it here.
Now that everythings put together,
Connect the power.
And the engraver is ready.
Hmm error code 60, one quick google search and I find that the memory card is not installed. Can’t they tell me that in the first place.
Before I can engrave, I need to set the laser module to the correct height, pull out the focal length bar and tighten the screws to the laser module up or down to the correct height. I’m engraving this piece of plywood.
All features are controllable via the touchscreen.
X-axis control
Y-axis control
Origin set
Axis speed
Live coordinates
Laser adjustment
Info and Wi-Fi
Card files access for engraving
I’m now selecting a sample design from the memory card and first I select mark parameter, this enables us to know where the engraving is going to take place.
We can see a light, its not engraving but just showing us the border of where it is going to engrave.
Adjust as required
make sure we attach the magnetic shading plate and hit carve.
The ELEGOO PHEKDA has a 400x400mm working area. Make sure to wear the protective glasses provided, to protect your eyes.
Wow, eh it’s totally burning. Stop, stop.
I think the laser power is too high.
I’m now using a piece of cardboard, and still the same, I need to lower the power.
First time I didn’t use the air assist, and the room was smelling of burning wood.
I’ve now connected the air assist module,
this is the controller to control the speed,
and this tube goes all the way upto the laser module. Now when ever it engraves or cuts, the smoke is directly pumped away.
I dialled it down to the right setting and now it’s cutting onto cardboard without a problem.
This aeroplane images is a sample file on the micro sd card. This is how the final output looks.
The ELEGOO PHEDA can engrave/cut the following materials
Wood
Acrylic
Leather
Stone (engraving)
Bone (engraving)
MDF
• Bamboo
Tile (engraving)
Metal (engraving)
Stainless steel (engraving)
Aluminum (engraving)
Brass (engraving)
Ceramics (engraving)
Glass (engraving)
Mirrors (engraving)
Plastics & PVC
LaserGrbl is the software provided by elegoo on the memory card, and this software can link via a usb cable to the engraver and the commands can be sent to it directly.
I’m using a trial version of lightburn which has more features, but it is a paid option.
To test I imported the talkingstuff logo, and it automatically made it grayscale. The transparent areas are not engraved, and the darker it is the more power is set.
Dithering the image provides better gradation, but as my logo is solid color it just has the dark and light parts.
Export the file to the memory card.
Open it up on the engraver and wow this is so cool, it’s cutting into cardboard,
and the dark areas have completely cut through.
We have some sample materials such as leather and aluminium, let’s try the same logo on leather.
Checking out the perimeter where it’s going to be cut and then I start carving. To make sure the leather piece doesn’t move, I stuck it down using duct tape, just make sure the laser doesn’t hit the tape as it can burn.
This is the filter which removes the smoke and dust particles from the air,
making this engraver usable in a closed room. It is recommended to use the same in a well ventilated room though.
And this is how it looks,
the t and s being dark are cut deeper into the leather. Custom keychains.
I’m going to try metal, aluminium to be exact , and I have this image of hanuman , export and carve.
I ran the carving for 5 passes, where the laser traces on the same area multiple times.
Came out well, if I do say so myself.
Another cool attachment is this rotary module, and in order to use it, we need more height.
These risers are provided in the box, add them to the four feet on each side and the engraver is elevated to the perfect height.
We can set the width of the rotors using this screw here.
To connect this module to the engraver we use the cable provided, and replace the cable marked Y on the motherboard with the other end of this cable.
Now the process is the same as earlier, we need the laser module to be moved higher, and I’ve mounted it here.
Let’s check if the rotary module works, using the controls via the touchscreen, it’s rotating when I hit the y+ and y- buttons on screen.
Let’s try this jug, nope it’s going to hit the sides.
https://talkingstuff.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Pasted-72.png
Let’s try a silver cup, hmm, its odd shape is not allowing it to stay in place.
I’m now using this removable side table leg, and it works perfectly.
We do need a perfect cylinder for best results.
Set the focal length using the guide on the laser module.
Check the engraving perimeter.
Add the protective plate, and hit carve.
Wow so cool, it’s engraved on wood, that too a cylindrical shape.
The engraver can also be controlled using a mobile phone, enable WI-FI on the engraver and you will need to connect to the engravers hotspot to control it.
Now we can send an image directly to the engraver, draw and engrave and also control the engraver manually.
The Elegoo Phecda laser engraver is surprisingly fast, accurate and quite powerful, especially as I have the 20 watt version with me. The manual is not easy to follow so find the assembly video on Youtube and you’ll be ready much faster. Also the assembly instructions are available on the memory card, so make sure to open that first.
Once the assembly hurdle is passed the Elegoo Phecda engraver is really easy to use. Ive tested it on wood, cardboard, leather and also aluminum and it works like a charm. Also make sure to connect the air assist module else your entire room will be filled with smoke. It doesn’t completely remove the smell, but would gauge it to be around 50-70 % filtered.
It’s a great machine for members who like to put things together, and it’s really fun to do so. Absolute beginners might have some problems, but it is mostly easy to put together. A really cool addition for DIY’ers.
What do you guys think, would you pick one up. The Elegoo Phecda is available via Protomont technologies and I will add the link to the description.
VinayakSelf-confessed geek from the days when computer memory was measured in Kilobytes
vinayaknair.comThe post Elegoo Phecda Laser Engraver Cutter first appeared on talkingStuff Network.
The card’s I’m comparing are the RX7600, 7700XT, 7800XT, 7900XT and the big daddy the 7900XTX.
All these GPU’s are based on the RDNA3 architecture, which consist of compute units featuring ray tracing and AI acceleration.
From smallest the RX7600 has 32 compute units, 32 ray accelerators, gpu clock 2250 Mhz, infinity cache which is 32 MB, max memory is 8gb GDDR6 Memory.
The 7700XT up’s the compute units to 54, and ray accelerators to 54 too, gpu clock is 2171 mhz, 48 mb of infinity cache and 12 gb of GDDR6 Memory.
The 7800XT has 60 compute units, 60 ray accelerators, 2124 Mhz gpu clock, 64 mb infinity cache, 16 gb of gddr6 memory.
Then we have the 7900XT with 84 compute units, 84 ray accelerators , 2000 mhz gpu clock , 80 mb infinity cache , 20 gb of gddr6 memory.
There’s also the 7900GRE or Golden Rabbit edition just below the 7900xt but I didn’t get a chance to check it out as it was not available at the store. Also it’s called the golden rabbit edition as 2023 is the year of the rabbit in Chinese culture, also outside China it’s not available separately but only in a full system build.
And lastly the flagship card from AMD’s stable, the 7900XTX which has 96 compute units, 96 Ray Accelerators, gpu clock of 2300 mhz, 96 mb of infinity cache, max memory size of 24 gb GDDR6 memory.
You will notice that the 7800xt onwards the cards have much more vram than their competitors at that price point.
You might have noticed the word infinity cache in the list, AMD refers to Infinity Cache as a “massive bandwidth amplifier” that can deliver up to 3.25 times the bandwidth of 256-bit 16Gbps GDDR6. This means the cache can be seen by the entire graphics core, allowing it to access data instantaneously and allowing for faster rendering during gameplay.
The benchmarks I’m running are only between these Radeon models,
My testbed consists of a AMD Ryzen 9 7900X, 32 GB of DDR5 RAM at 6000 mega transfers per second, motherboard is the ROG CROSSHAIR X670E HERO, OS is windows 11 pro
The AMD Adrenaline graphics driver is 23.10.1 which is the latest version at the time of recording.
Checking out cyberpunk 2077 the RX7600 has a fighting chance at 1080p with a decent 83 fps, as you go up the chart we get 119 fps on the 7700XT, 141 fps on the 7800XT, 7900XT we have 170 fps and 192 fps on the 7900XTX
1440 p the 7600 did have problems but the 7700XT runs at 78 fps, 7800XT at 94 fps, 7900XT at 116 fps and the 7900XTX runs the game at 136 fps.
At 4k at native resolution it’s suggested to run the games on the 7900XT and 7900XTX which manage to churn out 55 and 67 fps respectively.
Grand theft auto V at 1080p the RX7600 runs the game at 123 fps, the RX7700XT ups it to 164 fps , the 7800XT takes it to 176, the top dogs the 7900XT and 7900XTX run the game at 178 and 180 fps respectively.
At 1440p we have 113 fps on the RX7700XT, 147 fps on the 7800XT , 174 on the RX7900XT and 178 fps on the 7900XTX
At 4k, the 7900XT and XTX run the game at 95 and 144 fps respectively.
The 7800XT has been crowned the 1440p gaming king, with great price to performance with the RX7700XT not far behind.
PUBG: Battlegrounds at 1080p, We have 148 fps on the RX7600, 204 fps on the 7700XT, 243 fps on the 7800XT, 276 on the 7900XT and 298 fps on the 7900XTX
At 1440p, the 7700XT runs the game at 136 fps, the 7800XT at 167 fps, 7900XT at 208, and 7900XTX at 243 fps
Now at 4k the 7900XT runs the game at 119 fps, and the 7900XTX runs it at 144 fps.
Resident evil 4 at 1080p, the RX7600 runs at 77 fps, the 7700XT at 121 fps, 7800XT at 143 fps, 7900XT at 179 fps and the 7900XTX at 213 fps.
Upping the resolution to 1440p the 7700XT runs the game at 90 fps, the 7800XT at 108 fps, 7900XT at 137 fps and the 7900XTX runs the game at 162 fps.
At 4k, the 7900XT runs the game at 78 fps and the 7900XTX runs the game at 96 fps.
Three important features of Radeon GPU’s are
RSR – Radeon Super Resolution
Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) is an in-driver upscaling feature that uses the same algorithm found in AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution. Basically you reduce the resolution in the game, and RSR upscales the image to your native resolution. Higher resolution means better visual quality, and lower resolution means more performance, and this is a balance of the two, better visuals and better performance. An advantage is that the game doesn’t need to support RSR. Also RSR is only supported by AMD GPU’s
FSR – FidelityFX Super Resolution
AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR)1 uses cutting-edge open upscaling and frame generation technologies to help boost your framerates in supported games and deliver amazing high-quality, high-performance gaming on virtually any hardware.
FSR3 is the current iteration and is only supported on RDNA3 GPU at present via beta drivers.
FSR2 is GPU agnostic, so it’s usable on non AMD hardware too. Kudos to AMD for bringing new life to older GPU’s.
SAM – Smart Access Memory
AMD Smart Access enables AMD Ryzen processors to harness the full potential of the graphics card memory, by giving the CPU access to all of the VRAM. Most CPU’s can only access 256 mb of gpu memory at a time, but with SAM a cpu can write to the entire VRAM.
Make sure Above 4G decoding and Re-Size BAR support are enabled in your BIOS to use Smart Access Memory.
AMD Radiance Display Engine brings the support for DisplayPort 2.1 connections on the cards.
This opens up long-term support for much higher refresh rates.
At 1440p the connection is capable of 900 Hz where 480 Hz is the limit for DP 1.4. This bandwidth becomes more important at higher resolutions like 4k which is capped at 240 Hz with DP 1.4 but can do 480 Hz with DP 2.1. Then at 8K DP 1.4 is limited to 60 Hz but DP 2.1 can do 165 Hz.
The 7900XT and 7900XTX cards have AV1 support which is going to be an important feature when consuming video content online and especially for streamers as it can open up higher-quality video streaming at lower bandwidth. AMD has included support for two simultaneous encode or decode streams.
The RX7600 is a good budget card for 1080p gaming.
Want to game at 1440p, the 7700XT and the 7800XT are great choices. Of course the 16gb vram and 6 extra compute units on the 7800XT provides a bit more edge over the 7700XT, these are great cards for 1440p gaming.
Now for 4k gaming and even beyond, AMD have their 7900XT and 7900XTX models. These are high performance cards and with 20+ gb video memory they’re future ready for games that need a lot of VRAM. These cards allow running your games at 4k ultra without a hitch, but if you need more performance just turn on FSR.
Now what you would like to know are the costs.
The Sapphire pulse Rx7600 costs around ₹31,699 online which at an offline store costs Rs 26,200.
The 7700XT basically costs around Rs 45,000 but the Asus TUF model costs around 53,299 online which at an offline store costs Rs 52,000.
The Sapphire Nitro 7800XT costs around Rs 59,990 online, which at an offline store costs Rs 56,500.
The MSI Gaming Trio Classic RX7900XT costs around Rs 90,126 which at an offline store costs Rs 86,500.
The Sapphire AMD RADEON RX7900XTXcosts around Rs 1,09,000 which at an offline store costs 1,06,000.
I would suggest purchasing at a store as
One: You get lower costs,
Two: You can try the hardware out at stores like Vishal Computech who have their experience zones, which can help with your choice,
Three: Exchange the product if anything does go wrong easier at a physical store. Best to open the box and check the item before leaving the store too.
So that was a quick rundown of the 7000 series gpu’s by AMD, and the features supported. Hope this clears any doubts you had on these cards, and if you still do have any questions makes sure to comment below.
VinayakSelf-confessed geek from the days when computer memory was measured in Kilobytes
vinayaknair.comThe post AMD Radeon RX 7000 Series Graphic Cards first appeared on talkingStuff Network.
I have access to the AMD pro series of GPU’s, the pro moniker in the name should indicate that they’re meant for workstation tasks, they can game, only it would cost 4 times more. But let’s check them out shall we.
The first in the set is the AMD pro w7900 workstation graphics card. It comes equipped with 48 gb of ECC vram and uses the RDNA3 architecture.
This one is the big daddy of them all, at present
These cards are made by AMD themselves.
Love the premium white box.
Open for exceptional performance. The inside slides out and wow, so cool. AMD pro cards are designed for performance, stability and reliability. These cards are used to crunch tons of data, and they have to be designed to run for days, years even continuously, and the pro cards do just that.
Remove the cover on top and the card looks so beautiful.
I love the chrome accents on the card, and it has only one fan on the side.
Heavy, we have Radeon pro w7900 written on the back.
It’s a triple slot card and it supports and connectivity wise we have 3 DisplayPort 2.1 ports and one enhanced mini display port.
This big vent here indicates that it’s a blower type and the hot air would blow out the back through here.
And there are two power connectors on the side which are both 8 pin.
Here’s the connector PCI express 4.0 ready.
Here’s the back of the card.
Specs wise the w7900 uses the rdna3 architecture, has performance of 61.32 teraflops
Comes with 96 ray accelerators, 864 Gb/s memory bandwidth, using a 384 bit memory interface with a peak 295 watt TBP.
It’s designed for workstation applications like architecture and construction, Film effects and animation, AI computation.
The drivers are certified so there should be no stability issues which are required in a work environment as downtimes cost money.
Load up larger 3d Models, multitask with ease, handle decoding heavier RAW media, run larger displays, compute complex simulations faster. That’s what AMD pro cards bring to the table.
Stability and reliability are a priority for the AMD Pro GPU’s.
Supported technologies:
AMD Remote Workstation – AMD Radeon Media Engine – AMD Software: PRO Edition – AMD Radeon VR Ready Creator – AMD EyefinityTechnology6 (Professionals)
AMD Remote Workstation: Access your physical workstation from virtually anywhere with rich graphics acceleration via leading remote visualization tools.
AMD Software: PRO Edition comes with a graphics driver you can trust and offers intelligent features to help improve your productivity, all accessible through a modern and intuitive user interface.
AMD Radeon VR Ready Creator: Empowering VR content creators with amazingly powerful and capable development tools.
Supported API’s
DirectX®: 12.0 Ultimate – OpenCL: 2.0 – OpenGL®: 4.6 – Vulkan®: 1.3.2xx
Rendering Formats:
– 2x Encode (H265/HEVC, 4K H264) – 2x Decode (H265/HEVC, 4K H264) – 1x Encode & Decode (AV1)
Now this is something to take note of, due to the implementation of display port 2.1 we can run upto a 12k display, that’s just mind blowing.
So the resolution combinations supported are
4 , 4k DCI (digital cinema initiative) displays at 120 hz or 2 , 6 k displays 12 bit hdr at 60 hz, or 1, 8k display at 12 bit hdr at 60 hz or one 12k display with DSC.
4x 4096 x 2160 (4K DCI) @ 120Hz with DSC – 2x 6144 x 3456 (6K) 12-bit HDR @ 60Hz Uncompressed – 1x 7680 x 4320 (8K) 12-bit HDR @ 60Hz Uncompressed – 1x 12288 x 6912 (12K) @ 120Hz with DSC
So I don’t have many professional workstation class workloads to run on these cards, but let’s see what we can. To take advantage of this card we need a cpu that can push the data to it fast enough, so for the test bed we have
The AMD threadripper 5975WX
128 Gb of RAM
Samsung 980 pro 2tb nvme ssd
The Asus WS WRX80E Sage SE motherboard to tie them all down
And the a 1600watt psu to power the whole thing.
Unreal Engine
Running Davinci resolve and adobe premiere benchmarks which are not dependent of the GPU per se , they do take advantage of the hardware encoder/decoders. Pugetbench allows for benchmarking software like Davinci resolve, Adobe premiere, unreal engine, blender with repeatable and consistent tests.
The w7900 performed of course better than the 6000 series siblings which is good, as newer is getting better. The hardware decoders are available on chip for H.264 and HEVC also called h.265 for encoding and decoding.
I ran SPECviewperf® 2020 benchmark which is the worldwide standard for measuring graphics performance of professional applications running under the OpenGL and Direct X application programming interfaces and these are the benchmark results. It is an 18 gig download, but if you would like to check your system performance too, this is the tool to use.
So would you pick one up, make sure to comment below.
VinayakSelf-confessed geek from the days when computer memory was measured in Kilobytes
vinayaknair.comThe post AMD Radeon Pro W7900 GPU – First Look first appeared on talkingStuff Network.
This is the AGARO Supreme Cordless Stick Vacuum Cleaner. Included with the vacuum are, a manual, a warranty card, a motorized rolling brush. A mattress brush, which is also motorized. Crevice nozzle, for hard to reach corners. Multi purpose brush, which acts as a nozzle and a brush. Extension tube. An extra filter. Charger for […]
The post Agaro Supreme Stick Vacuum Cleaner first appeared on talkingStuff Network.
This is the Npet pet water fountain, they’ve shown a cat on the box, but it works for dogs too. The fountain can disperse 1.5 liters of water at full capacity. Some more features are listed on the side here, and we have the specifications on the back. Opening it up we have the manual […]
The post Npet Pet Water Fountain | Pamper your Fur Babies first appeared on talkingStuff Network.
This is Qubo’s smart dashcam pro GPS, Qobo is part of the hero group of companies. Smart features are listed on the side, which we’ll check out. Opening up the box we get, a user manual and warranty card. The users manual is accessible via this qr code. Car charger, it has the Qubo branding […]
The post Qubo Smart Dashcam Pro GPS | Quick Review first appeared on talkingStuff Network.
This is the mobile pixel trio max, a novel way to add more monitors to your laptop. I had reviewed the cloud walker portable external monitor earlier, but this one makes it easier to carry around as it’s attached to your laptop. I have only one display, but you can get two for the triple […]
The post Mobile Pixels Trio Max | Best Laptop Screen Extender first appeared on talkingStuff Network.
Today I have a new indoor security camera by I-mou, the ranger 2d. This is a 1080p, 360 degree, AI home security camera. So, let’s get unboxing and check it out. This is the Imou ranger 2d, it has night vision, Smart tracking, 1080p recording and 360 degree pan-tilt motion. The camera works with google […]
The post Imou Ranger 2D | 360 Degree WiFi 1080P Full HD Security Camera first appeared on talkingStuff Network.
This is the Baseus 65 watt ,20000 mAh power bank.
It’s got a LED digital display, PD 3.0 and QC 3.0 support.
Two ways of charging up the powerbank, and three outputs.
And last but not least a 20,000 mAh capacity.
Price is marked at 12K+ via iBhejo, but i picked it up for half the price on Ibhejo itself. It’s being sold at a premium on Amazon.in, prices keep changing so keep an eye on it before purchasing.
Opening up the box, we have a warranty card and a manual.
And here’s the power bank itself, wow, the metallic blue looks quite nice. The case is made of aluminum alloy in a matte finish, which explains the weight of around 460 grams and the body is also used to dissipate heat.
We have 65 watt marked here, this is the maximum output it can provide via the USB-C port. So you can also charge thin and light laptops which use a 65 watt power adapter, via this power bank.
This is the display.
We have a Baseus logo on the side.
These are the ports, type-c first which is both input and output. So charge the powerbank or other devices via this port.
The max 65 watt output is via this port.
Micro-usb input and alternate method to charge the powerbank, USB-2 and usb-1 output only max 30 watts via Qualcomm’s quick charge standard.
We have a power button on the side. Tap to enable the power-bank.
The display blinks 38, which indicates the current battery level of the powerbank.
Also included in the box, is a usb-c to usb-c cable.
Let’s use it to charge up my galaxy fold 4. Simple usb-c to usb-c connection, and the phone is super fast charging.
You don’t need to tap on the power-button when connecting to a device, the power-bank turns on automatically.
I have tons of power banks and none can super fast charge, most of them top at fast charging only. The phone supports max 25 watt fast charging , the s22 ultra supports 45 watt fast charging so this power bank would have no problems.
We can check the power output stats via the display, we have first the battery level, and we can see that the “out” LCD is lit up as it’s discharging.
Tap the power button again and we can see the output voltage which is at 9.6, 9.7 volts. Current is at 1.5 amps. Tap the power button to cycle through the stats.
The display turns off after a few seconds to prevent battery drain, by accidentally turning the display on. This option is great as it prevents battery drain, say, it activated in a backpack, or in a drawer where it is kept for future use during an outage or while travel.
It’s a bit hefty at 460 grams.
I wouldn’t consider it pocketable, but it’s easy to slip into a backpack.
Here’s the Steam Deck,
if it doesn’t receive enough power it generally displays a message like so,
but this power bank has no problems powering the steam deck.
Let’s connect a charger. I’m using a 40 watt charger which came bundled with the steam deck, and it’s fast charging the power bank. No charger is included with the power bank, so you will need to use the one that came with your phone.
Input voltage is 19.9 vols and current is at 2 amps. The powerbank can be topped up in around 2 hours if you use a high wattage charger.
I purchased this power bank as it looked like a great option to keep my phones and other devices charged up and importantly keep my steam deck running for longer.
It kept the steam deck charged up, but it did get hot after 30 minutes, but the steam deck stayed at the same level.
It keeps my fold 4 charged up when traveling and it promises around 2 and a half times top up, as the fold 4 has a 4400 mAh battery.
The BPS II tech keeps the charging devices and the power-bank safe from overheating and overcurrent.
You can charge upto three devices at a time, but the power output changes as per how many are connected.
Single port outputs, we get 65 watts off max of the usb-c port, and each usb-a port can output 30 watts.
Charging, the micro-usp port only supports 18 watts, but the usb-c port supports upto 60 watt charging.
If a usb-a port is connected with another device on the usb-c port, the power output off the usb-c port drops to 45 watts and the usb-a port outputs only 18 watts. If two usb-a ports are used each can output only 7.5 watts.
And if three output ports are used the power drops to 20 watts on usb-c and 5 watts on each usb-a port.
The powerbank looks so nice, the metallic blue colour looks really cool. The powerbank is also available in black.
Baseus has been in the market for years, especially for their gan or gallium nitride chargers, which are quite small, but can charge up your power hungry gadgets quite easily.
Being able to output upto 65 watts, we can charge most thin and light laptops which generally top out at around 45 watts. Macbooks chargers can go upto 100 watts so you might be able to trickle charge them, if you’re not running anything taxing.
Tablets, phones and even handheld game consoles like the nintendo switch and even the steamdeck which most users who have one, would be looking for a good powerbank to extend their play time on the move. It works like a charm.
For emergency charging during your weekend getaway, vacation or even camping, this moderately sized powerbank should help keep your devices topped up. I even top up my wireless mics while charging my phone, and with three charging ports, it’s so convenient.
Airports security will have no problems with this charger as it’s way under the max 100 watt hour battery size. Micro-usb charging is available but with most gadgets moving to usb-c, having the older usb port as a backup is still great. But charging via this port is slow.
Overall, it’s a great charger, but do note it’s not officially available in India, so warranty might not apply.
I would guarantee recommend it as a backup power source, especially if you travel a lot. Links are available in the description, if you would like to pick one up for yourselves.
If you have any questions, make sure to comment below, and I’ll try answering.
VinayakSelf-confessed geek from the days when computer memory was measured in Kilobytes
vinayaknair.comThe post Baseus 65 Watt 20000 mAh Powerbank | Best powerbank for SteamDeck! first appeared on talkingStuff Network.
I’ve tested multiple smart door locks, but this one is special as it’s by Qubo which is a division of Hero Electronix. A HERO GROUP COMPANY. The same company that makes motorcycles, they’re now in the smart devices space and the Qubo Smart Door Lock Select, is one of their affordable but feature rich smart door locks. Let’s unbox it and check it out.
Nice box, I always appreciate well designed boxes. They improve upon the unboxing experience.
Let’s open up the box and we have,
the lock parts are well protected within this Styrofoam.
These are the keys for manually opening the door in case the batteries die out.
A packet with screws, required during the installation.
NFC Keys.
This sheet is very important, which is the drilling template, it has the markings for the required holes on the door to install the locks.
Here’s the strikeplate
A microfibre cleaning cloth, the front being glass is a fingerprint magnet.
Here’s the mortise lock, this goes within your door and is made of stainless steel.
This is the front face of the lock, which is installed outdoors.
Wow, just look at it, made of an aluminium alloy body, really sleek and elegant. The mirror glossy finish looks so premium.
Here’s the fingerprint sensor on the handle,
above that is the pin keypad, it will be available once it’s powered on and activated.
This symbol here indicates card access, which uses a nfc key provided in the box.
We have a keyhole in front under this flap, for manual access.
This is the cable which connects the front and back of the lock.
This is the indoor part of the lock. This has a handle, under that is a Child lock switch, which disables anyone from being able to unlock the door, useful in the night. Under that we have the dead bolt knob.
This metal piece controls the deadbolt on the mortise lock.
Water resistance is achieved using this silicone border. The main face is water resistant too.
Here’s the part that is installed inside the house. Here’s where you would install the batteries, it needs 8 AA batteries.
The lock needs a minimum of 3.5 cm depth on your door to be able to install the mortise lock within.
I will be getting the lock professionally installed, so will be waiting for the carpenter.
The carpenter is here, and he has made the appropriate holes to install the Qubo smart door lock.
Mortise lock goes in nice and easy.
It has a reversible door handle – Can be aligned according to where your door opens.
Handle rotated on the front and also the back.
Now the front of the lock goes in like this, by snaking the cable through the mortise lock.
This metal bit needs to be trimmed as per the door depth and this controls the deadbolt.
The back is installed,
the batteries are installed and the lock is ready to pair.
Glad I chose a brand authorized carpenter installation. Qubo provides this service, and he’s done a good job, looks clean.
Qubo Offers Free Home Installation across 43+ cities by trained & authorized carpenters.
Using the qubo app, I paired the lock. I have the Qubo security cam, so I already had the app on my phone.
The door lock is paired and now we can set up the various access features.
First, fingerprint, just tap on the sensor and it’s registered. We can add up to 50 fingerprints to the lock.
Now it unlocks just by tapping your finger on the sensor.
We are provided voice guidance for when the door is locked, unlocked etc. If you don’t want to hear this, it can be disabled via the app.
Once the door is closed it locks automatically.
We also have pin code access, let me set that up. Now the lock can be unlocked using the pin, and it unlocks. Multiple pin-codes can be set up on the app.
Next are the NFC keys, ready to set up via the app, and tap, and it’s ready. Now you can unlock the door by tapping the NFC tag to this part of the lock.
Nice.
Fourth is Bluetooth unlock, tap on the button on the app, and the lock unlocks. You will need Bluetooth to be enabled on your phone for this to work.
We can setup different levels of access, for example, family members will have any time access, but if you have domestic help and they need to access the home, they can be provided timed access, which would work at certain time of the day,
and also a one time access can be provided to surprise visitors, and the pin code can be shared as an otp via whatsapp or even sms.
Those were four smart unlocking methods, the fifth is a manual key. If your lock loses battery power, we can use this key to manually unlock the door.
The keyhole is provided below this plate here.
One more emergency method is using a power bank, just plug it in under the lock and now you can use the smart unlock features. We are generally alerted by the app when the batteries are low. So, you won’t be caught unaware.
In setting’s we have the option for silent mode so the lock will not provide voice prompts or other notification sounds.
This is how the child lock switch works, when enabled you cannot unlock the door, disable the switch and we can unlock the door again.
This is the double locking mechanism, when locked it prevents unauthorized unlocking from outside.
The Qubo Smart Door Lock Select looks really classy on my front door. The smart unlock features allow for ease of access by everyone in the family, when kids come back from school and you’re not home you don’t need to worry about providing them a key, they’ll just use their fingerprint and can get in, no keys to lose.
The lock is tamper proof, no screw holes are visible outside, it has a stainless steel lock with 4 Bolts and 1 deadbolt and an Aluminium Alloy Body.
This just gives it a really premium look.
Qubo has been in the smart space for a couple of years now, with products like smart cameras, smart video doorbells, smart locks, bulbs and more, a whole automation ecosystem. Check out the Qubo website for more information, there’s something for everyone.
I love the ease of access my Qubo Smart Door Lock Select provides and also the security it provides via the tamper proof installation. I would totally recommend it, if you are looking for a smart way to protect your house, and provide ease of access to your family.
VinayakSelf-confessed geek from the days when computer memory was measured in Kilobytes
vinayaknair.comThe post Qubo Smart Door Lock SELECT first appeared on talkingStuff Network.
This is the Nitho Drive Pro One, Nitho’s new entrant in the steering wheel market.
This model has the gear shifter separate, so attach if you need it.
The Nitho Drive Pro One is supported on PC, PS4, Xbox one and the xbox one x/s
The wheel has a 270 degree steering angle, rumble vibration, zero dead zones and supports multiple usb standards.
This is how the steering wheel looks and I like the way the buttons are easily accessible on the wheel itself.
More features are marked on the side of the box.
I just love the box design, let’s open it up and look at what’s inside.
Play hard, Nithos tagline.
Here’s the first item: the gear shifter, the chrome finish gives it a nice premium look.
The gear shifts are only up and down, as you would have it in automatic vehicles in sport mode.
The front has this connector, which connects it to the wheel.
This is the cable you would use.
The screw opens up, to allow mounting to a table.
Here are the pedals, they look really nice.
We have this footrest too, which can be folded out of the way.
Here’s the Racing wheel, looks cool. The buttons seem to have the italian flag colors behind them. Very racey.
Gamepad buttons are also available on the face, for easy access. Below are home, settings etc which can be mapped as per the game you’re playing. The Nitho logo has this pearlescent colour to it as per how the light hits it.
Gamepad buttons are X or square, Y or triangle, B circle and A X.
The rubber grips on the side allow for a good grip and give a nice look.
We have a d pad and an analog stick also easily accessible.
This little red accent is a nice little touch. The wheel has a lot of nice little surprises, which help elevate the aesthetics and also the performance.
We have a 270 degree turning radius just like you would on a real car.
We have three ports at the back, first is for the pedals, second is for the gear shifter and third when you’re connecting to a console, a usb port for connecting a controller.
We have paddle shifters on both sides.
The wheel connects to the gaming device using a USB-A connector.
Also included in the box are a usb-a to usb-c cable and a usb-a to micro-usb cable, which you would choose between as per the controller you’re using.
Some screws to mount the wheel onto the Nitho Drive stand.
A customer service card, stickers, safety notice, suction cups.
This is where the suction cups would be installed, if you don’t want to use the provided table clamps.
This is how they work, insert and twist to lock.
I had problems with it not sticking to the table because of the mat, so I went back to the clamps.
These clamps open up by using these screws on top. One for each side.
It didn’t fit my table even at max, so you will need to unscrew these extensions. Make sure to keep the screws safe, if you need to install the wheel onto a smaller table.
And it worked perfectly.
Similarly if your gear shifter doesn’t fit, we can remove the top of the screw and now this fits too.
Nice and snug, it’s not going anywhere.
Now to install the pedals,
just connect this cable to the port at the back. Now the gear shifter, done.
Plug in the racing wheel to a usb port on your PC and it is ready.
You will notice this purple light here, the wheel is now in d-input mode.
Four led modes are purple d-input mode on pc, yellow a-input mode on PC, blue is playstation mode and green is xbox mode.
There’s even red for the nintendo switch.
I tried a few games on the PC, assetto corsa competizione, this game has a learning curve, you can’t just flat out drive at max speed.
This is how the pedals are, spacing felt a little too small for me and being used to an actual car I could not use one foot for both pedals and instead I used one per.
Forza 4 I had problems with the steam version as the wheel was not being displayed as a controller option.
I had an XBOX game pass, (not a sponsor) and that included both forza 4 and 5, and these versions had no problem.
The wheel is detected, and you do need to set up the mapping and here’s a video on how to do just that. And now the game is working really well.
If your game doesn’t recognize the wheel like Dirt 3, then you need to switch the wheel to x-input mode. This allows you to play the game, but you lose the precision that d-input mode provides.
Just hold down the home button here for a few seconds and the wheel switches to x-input mode.
Now dirt 3 works, with a considerable dead zone, but still playable. Do note that when the wheel is in d-input mode there are no vibrations or rumble feedback, but if you do switch to x-input mode you get the vibrations but the wheel is not as responsive.
There’s this deadzone which makes it tougher to play.
D-input is for more precision, and x-input is for arcade style play.
Now let’s check out how the wheel works on the PS4.
You will need to connect a controller to the wheel using the usb-a to micro-usb cable.
The usb-a cable from the wheel goes to the ps4.
Now turn the console on and use the home button which is equivalent to the PS button to activate,
The led glows in blue indicating it’s in playstation mode.
Now the wheel is detected and you can swipe through the interface using the d-pad or even the analog stick.
Here’s how we can control the interface within the Gran Turism, choose maps etc without needing to pick up the controller.
The controls are so responsive, it makes playing so much fun. Rumble feedback is also available in PlayStation mode.
So that was the Nitho Drive Pro One, a great new addition to the Nitho Steering wheel line. Nitho suggests playing in d-input mode on the PC, but if you want the rumble effects then you will need to switch to x-input mode. I felt precision is more important to me than vibration so I played in d-input mode.
The racing wheel worked really well on my PS4 and the PC. Do note it only supports vibration or rumble as it’s called and no actual force feedback where the wheel would lock up and fight back as in real cars. But force feedback racing wheels cost three- five times as much.
Games were fun to play, and the controls were stable and accurate.
The driving experience is just for fun and would not really teach you how to drive, a bit of steering control maybe but it’s not 100% like a real car. My wife also loved driving around in the virtual world.
If you want a racing wheel which is not that expensive and works with multiple platforms this would not disappoint. I’ve been using this wheel for more than two weeks now, and I really like how it looks.
VinayakSelf-confessed geek from the days when computer memory was measured in Kilobytes
vinayaknair.comThe post Nitho Drive Pro One first appeared on talkingStuff Network.
I have here the Kingston Fury Beast DDR 4 Special Edition RGB RAM which is a 16 GB kit, and has a frequency of 3200 Mhz. Kingston does have DRAM speeds going all the way upto 5333 Mhz, but this one is more targeted to budget builds and still has performance to boot. We have […]
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Today we are looking at a new vacuum from Agaro. What’s different about it, it’s a wet and dry vacuum cleaner. Let’s see how it works and test it out. This is the Agaro ace 1600 watt wet and dry vacuum cleaner. It looks nice in this red and black color and the lower container […]
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Kingston FURY Adds AMD EXPO Certified DDR5 to Lineup AMD EXtended Profiles for Overclocking India– October 3, 2022 – Kingston FURY, the gaming division of Kingston Technology, a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, announced today the release of Kingston FURY Beast DDR5 AM5 and Kingston FURY Beast DDR5 AM5 RGB memory, the […]
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Wow, look at the size of this box. This is a new 3d printer by WOL3d , let’s open it up and check it out. This is the Aster max, and the max in the name should be indicative that it’s big. This 3d printer has a build volume double of the ender 3. In […]
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Kingston strengthens its footprint in North India; Showcases its compelling product range at CCTA IT EXPO 2022 India, July 1, 2022- Strengthening its footprint in North India, Kingston Technology, a world leader of memory products and technology solutions, showcased its compelling range of products across categories at CCTA IT EXPO 2022, a B2B show […]
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I have with me the Hakii Wind smart sunglasses, I also have the Hakii wind dedicated replacement lenses which I will get to later. Nicely designed box, I like the accented purple sections. Hakii sport smart outfit explore, is this another branding for the same glasses. It has Hakii wind on the other side, and […]
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I have been printing on FDM or fused deposition modelling 3D printers for years now and I wanted to get my feet wet into SLA printing. SLA printers are starting to get more affordable now and I have the Anycubic photon mono 4k with me, so let’s see what the advantages and disadvantages are with […]
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I’ve been using electric toothbrushes for years now, from multiple brands. Today’s I have with me a new electric toothbrush from Agaro, so how good is it and is it comparable to the brands I’ve used before? Watch on to find out. This is the Agaro Cosmic Plus sonic electric toothbrush, Looks really premium. It’s […]
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Use Coupon code “LAVNA799” on https://www.lavnalocks.com/ , valid only on L-A24 model Today I have with me a smart lock from the brand Lavna. This was sent to me by Lavna to check out. So, let’s get installing and see how well it works. I have here the Lavna L-A24 Smart Lock. It came […]
The post Lavna L-A24 Digital Smart Lock first appeared on talkingStuff Network.
My Lenovo Tab4 10 being a couple of years old, has started acting up, becoming unresponsive, and visibly slow. I needed a replacement but didn’t want to spend too much. I found the Galaxy A8 tablet which sneaked in just under the 20k mark. How good is it? Watch on to find out. This is […]
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I had purchased a 5 TB Seagate Backup portable plus external hard drive around a year back, being a SMR drive it starts getting slower as it fills up. With around 6+ terabytes of video data to backup, I needed an external backup solution which doesn’t take years to copy to. While searching through amazon […]
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I’m using an AMD 5800X in my main desktop, and this processor is known to run notoriously hot. The Deepcool Castle 240 RGB does it’s best to keep temperatures under control, but on full load it just crosses the 90-degree mark. As the temps increase, there are chances of the processor throttling and you get […]
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Have you ever set up smart lights in your house and someone turns off the switch to them, completely disregarding any automation you have set up? Well, now you can stop worrying about your family member turning your lights off manually, we have here the sonoff switchman, a smart wall switch which should make your […]
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Use Coupon “E6ZK6CJ4″ for 15% off on the Mini R3 and S-Mate valid until January 31st 2022. Today I have two new products from Sonoff the mini r3 and the s-mate. Let’s set these up to see how they’re supposed to be used. Here I have the mini r3 and the s-mate. The mini r3 […]
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Use Code “talkingstuff” for 10% Discount on the headphones on www.supereq.net Today I have with me the SuperEQ S2 ANC Bluetooth headphones. SuperEQ is in a way related to OneOdio, one of my favourite budget wired headphones. So how good are the S2’s, watch on to find out. With work from home becoming the norm, […]
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I’ve been on the fence about whether I should pick theWH1000XM3, but after the XM4’s released prices have gone down, but they’re still pricey. But as you already know, I did pick them up. This is the WH1000XM3, one of Sony’s best noise cancelling headphones. With the advent of the xm4’s it did lose the […]
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As I might have to start travelling for work and being used to working with two monitors at home, I needed one which I can carry on the go and not need any extra power brick to power it. This is the Cloudwalker CTM 15T Portable Touch Screen Monitor. I’ve only heard of CloudWalker in the TV space, but how good is their portable monitor, let’s check it out.
Today I have with me the CloudWalker CTM15T which is a 15.6-inch external monitor.
Opening it up we get an instruction manual. Under this protective foam here, we have the actual monitor.
Here we are, we have a rubberized cover on the screen.
A cloud walker logo is embossed on the bottom right. The rubberized cover is grippy and also tough, thick enough to protect the screen within.
On the back we have the model number and other info. Right above are speakers, which we will test in a bit. But it’s great they’re part of the monitor.
Behind on the right we have the power button, volume controls, a menu button, and a headphone jack.
On the left we have the HDMI port, type-c input and finally a power port.
Opening the cover we find the display and it is glossy.
It’s quite reflective and is also a fingerprint magnet, so make sure you carry a microfiber cloth with you, especially as this is a touch screen too.
We are provided a USB-A to USB-C cable which is basically used to power the monitor.
A HDMI to mini HDMI cable, if you don’t have a type c port on your device, maybe like a game console.
USB-C to USB-C cable, this is what i’ll be using as my laptops support type-c display output.
A stand is also provided, but you may not need to use it because the cover itself can fold into a stand.
On, my monitor is now set, let’s check the display quality. I’m connecting my Legion 5 laptop to the monitor with the USB-C to USB-C cable provided, and as soon as they are connected, we have an image.
USB-C also provides power from the laptop in addition to the display signal. Audio also comes through the same cable.
The touch screen also works. Nice.
The laptop is running Windows 11, and it detected the monitor instantly. Everything seems to be working as expected.
The monitor is super slim, and the bezels are quite thin. Thickness is 4mm. It’s an IPS panel with support for HDR.
Revolution is 1920x1080p which is full hd.
The viewing angle is 178 degrees, and it seems to not fade when viewed at extreme angles.
Refresh rate is 60hz and it supports 16.7 million colours. Text is clear and crisp.
Brightness can go upto 300 nits, which is fine if you’re using the screen mostly indoors.
Build feels like metal, and the monitor feels really well built.
At 0.75 kg, it’s not that heavy, but when you take into consideration the laptop and other items in your bag, it’s something to take note of, as i already have a 2.4 kilo laptop and a 1 kilo charging brick, I’ll effectively be carrying around a little over 4 kilos. That would be quite a workout. Thin and light laptops being much lighter, this would not affect the total weight much.
The display when connected to a laptop, the touch screen works even if your laptop doesn’t have one. 10-point responsive touch is available on this display.
Ok, now to check a thin and light laptop. I have the Hp Envy, and it has USB-C ports too.
Plug in the cable and as before we have an image on the display, as easy as that.
At present the display setting is to duplicate displays, we can also change to extend displays. And we can now move the mouse between screens. We have the external monitor as a secondary display.
You can run any other application on the second screen while working on the primary screen, for example if you are a game streamer, you can OBS on one screen and play on the primary screen. You don’t need to come out of the game to start/stop recording. You can see the status of the recording.
Now for the PS4, I have a ps4 pro, and I will need to use the HDMI to mini HDMI cable. Connect and nothing.
HDMI does not supply power, or enough power, so you will need to connect the USB-A to USB-C cable to provide power. No charging brick is provided, you can use the USB port on the ps4 to power the monitor, or even a power bank as it doesn’t need much power.
Ok, the display is now active. We can hear the audio through the inbuilt speakers too.
HDR was a surprise, and the PS4 did detect hdr and ask to run the hdr setup, before playing.
This is how the audio sounds. (View video for audio sample)
We can also use DEX on your Samsung phones, using just one cable to the monitor. The touch screen works directly, activate the onscreen keyboard and it works as a compact work system. But you need to have the USB-A to USB-C cable connected for external power.
Only If you have external power attached to the lower USB-C port you can raise the brightness and also the volume, else you would see this message.
The menu system is fine, takes a little getting used to, but works.
The cover can be folded into a stand, these slots here are where the screen would sit and you don’t need any external stand.
So, what are my thoughts on the cloud walker CTM15T, well, it solved my need for an external monitor while travelling. The brightness and colours via the display are quite good.
The build is solid, with no flexing or bowing. Worked with both my AMD and intel laptops with only one USB-C cable. PS4 of course needs mini-HDMI and also external power. Samsung DEX also worked well, with the touch screen working, making it a portable workstation. Inclusion of all the required cables is also a plus, but I feel they could have included a power brick.
It worked well, for my use case where I needed a secondary monitor for more desktop space to work. Touch screen function is a bonus. Speakers are not that loud, but they are fine for the size, and you have a 3.5 mm jack if you need to connect headphones. The screen is really glossy and a fingerprint magnet.
Overall, a good monitor, a bit expensive, but for the feature set, it is worth it. Being so slim, it’s easy to tuck into a bag with your laptop too.
VinayakSelf-confessed geek from the days when computer memory was measured in Kilobytes
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Today we have with us a whole host of PS4 gaming accessories, let’s start off with the gaming kits, which are enhancements for the PS4 Controllers.
I have two here, so let’s try out the camo edition first. These fit the official PlayStation DualShock 4 controllers.
It’s basically a silicone skin which protects the controller from sweat and also allows for more grippiness.
Also included are two thumb grips, to improve game control and two mini stick enhancers to improve accuracy.
This is how the camo skin looks on the controller, with the thumb grips. Looks really cool, and all the ports and speaker grill are still accessible.
Here’s the changing port at the back, the skin has perfect cut-outs for the controller.
Here’s another gaming kit and this one has wide grips which attach to the ends of the controller.
A whole assortment of grips are available in various sizes. Pick the one that’s comfortable for you and just snap it on the controller.
There are stickers within the grip to keep it in place. Let’s install it onto the controller. Just slide it in, as easy as that.
We now have an Anti-sweat and soft touch grip for the DualShock 4 controller. I also have the thumb grips installed on the controller.
Next, we have the FPS of First Person Shooter precision kit, which are a set of enhancers and grips for the dualshock4 controller.
We also have anti skid rubber stickers and quick fire triggers included in the kit.
These are the quick fire triggers,
Here are the thumb grips, they come in an assortment of sizes,
Anti skid Rubber stickers,
This is how you would install the quick fire triggers, easy to reach as it extends the standard trigger buttons for faster reactions, especially for competitive FPS games.
These are the thumb grips available.
Charging station, we can charge two controllers at a time and keep the area neat too. Here’s the charger.
You have space for two controllers,
and the front displays a blue light when the charger is active.
It uses micro-usb to charge and the cable is provided in the box.
These safe plugs as they are called attach to the controller at the bottom, and this makes it simple to just drop the controllers onto the charger to initiate a charging.
Much simpler than the standard micro-usb charging docks.
Let’s plug the charger in,
Attach the safe plugs to the controller, that was easy.
Now for the second controller.
Just drop it in and you can see the orange light, it’s charging.
Same for both the controllers, and they can fit with the quick fire triggers installed too.
Now for the charging stand, this can charge two controllers and can also provide more stability to your ps4,
it works with both the slim and pro PlayStation 4’s.
We have a screw provided, which is required to mount the stand to the PS4.
Dual USB-A power cable, which ends in a barrel port ,which connects to the stand.
Here’s the stand, Two USB-A ports in front, so the usb-ports used to power the stand are still accessible. We can see the hole in the centre, that’s where the screw would pass through to mount itself to the ps4.
These are the charging docks for two controllers.
Barrel port for power. This is how the USB cable connects.
Let’s mount the stand to my ps4 pro, line up the holes and screw it down with the screw provided. Done,
Now when the ps4 is standing we have access to the charging ports. Line upt the controller and just plug in the micro usb port, like so.
I did have a problem with the silicone skin as the tolerances are so close, it was not fitting, just lift up the skin here and now it works.
And there you go, they are docked in and once I provide power to the stand they will start charging.
The stand lights up when power is connected, we can see two blue led’s in front displaying the charging status. As the controllers are fully charged it glows blue.
Let me just undock the controller and dock it back and we can see the red light, this would indicate that it’s charging.
It turns blue instantly as it’s already at full charge. We can visually know the status of charge on the controller by just looking at the LED’s.
We also have a light on the side, looks cool.
This is the Nitho Janus PS5 themed Gaming headset. It uses a universal plug which would work with pc’s laptops, ps5, ps4 , xbox’s basically any device with a 3.5 mm headphone jack.
Let’s open up the box and check the headphone out. Looks so cool in the ps5 themes colours.
It has an inbuilt boom microphone
We have a nitho branding on the headband,
The band looks flexible enough to take on mode head sizes.
This is the 3.5mm audio jack.
Here’s the volume control and mic on/off switch. The volume is controlled using this dial here.
40mm drivers with the Janus branding on the side. The ear cushions are designed for full-ear coverage.
The mic is flexible and can be oriented towards or away from the mouth as required. This is how the mic looks.
There’s ample cushioning on the headband, for a comfortable fit, and the whole headphones are just so light, which is good for long playing sessions.
This is how the microphone can be oriented as required.
I’m using it with my ps4 controller, the controller allows plugging in a headphone, so the cable length is enough. We have the Nitho N on the jack.
The ps4 also indicates that it’s using the microphone on the headset connected.
Sound is really crisp, and the highs and lows are really clear. These are budget headphones so don’t expect audiophile quality, these sound great for games and music. Sound was clear while playing games on the ps4.
So those were a lot of cool PS4 accessories by Nitho. Links are in the description to pick one up for yourselves. What did you think about them? Do you want me to review anything specific from Nitho, comment below.
VinayakSelf-confessed geek from the days when computer memory was measured in Kilobytes
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Crucial sent me their new P5 Plus Gen 4 NVMe SSD to try out. All NVMe SSD on my pc at present are gen3, let’s see how much of a performance gain we get using PCI-e Gen 4.
Storage is something I always have a need for especially being a Video creator, but if the same could also run faster that’s icing on the cake.
I have with me the Crucial P5 Plus M.2 NVMe SSD.
This drive is targeted at enthusiast class users with speeds upto 6600 MBps.
The P5 Plus supports PCIe 4.0 which is the reason it can hit those high transfer speeds.
Let’s see what’s inside the box.
Ok, simple packaging, we have the drive and a small m.2 screw. Not every manufacturer provides this screw and the one that comes with the motherboard might have been long lost, so being included in the box is really helpful.
Here’s the drive out of the box, it has a black PCB design with a black sticker over the hardware with the crucial by micron logo in the centre. I have the 500 Gb variant and the form factor is M.2 2280 which basically means 22 mm wide and 80 mm long.
These metal contacts go into your m.2 slot and this small indent is where you would install the screw to hold the drive down. The drive uses Crucial’s SLC caching implementation for dynamic write acceleration which provides speeds of upto 6.6 GBps read and 5.0 GBps write.
The Crucial P5 1TB uses the new Micron eight-channel flash controller.
This controller is known to have full DRAM support and also has dual Arm Cortex-R5 CPU cores. In addition, The controller interfaces with the host over a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface and links through the NVMe 1.3 protocol.
The memory flash chip used is manufactured by Micron and have the 176-layer TLC NAND design.
The P5 Plus supports TRIM, SMART data reporting, 256 bit full disk encryption which is also Windows Bitlocker compliant.
The 500GB model and 1TB model utilize 1GB of DRAM for caching.
It’s available in 500gb, 1tb and 2tb capacities.
Now to replace my existing m.2 drive on my desktop.
This is a 256 GB drive I had procured when updating my HP Envy laptop’s internal drive. The laptop was upgraded to a Crucial P1 1TB NVMe drive.
I will be using the slot closest to the cpu as this has full PCI-e Gen 4 speed, but this being a X570 motherboard both slots support Gen4.
The Aorus motherboard comes with this heatsink mount plate. I will have to remove the existing drive, install the new drive and use the same heatsink to mount the drive.
The heatsink has a thermal pad, and the current drive is stuck to it. Pulling it off, this is the drive at present a 256 gb toshiba drive.
Sizes being a standard both look to be the exact same. I do like the look of the crucial drive.
Installation is simple, just align the drive to the slot and plug it in. INstall the heatsink back, which is in my case, your motherboard might not have a heatsink, so just use the screw to hold the drive down. And that’s it, no cables or power cords. It’s ready to use.
That’s the beauty of m.2 NVMe SSD’s.
System is now booting up and opening up Disk Management on Windows. We are greeted with a dialog box indicating that we have a new drive, and we need to initialize it before it can be used.
Hit Ok and we can see a list of drives available. This 465.75 GB drive is the 500 GB SSD. Windows uses binary bytes when reporting storage space, so it’s 1,024 bytes per Kilobyte, 1,024 KB per Megabyte, and so on. So the actual space available on a 500Gb drive is 465.75 instead of the whole 500 Gb. This is true on any drive, not just SSD’s.
I’m creating a simple volume, using the entire space available. Name the drive and done.
It’s that simple.
Here’s the drive, all empty.
Open up crucial.com/support/ssd to find software and firmware updates.
Let’s run some tests shall we.
Crystal DiskMark
We can see that the drive reaches its max advertised speed of 6.6 GB/s and also manages to cross it, which is great. It does seem lower in write speed at 4.3 GBps.
Compared to my Gen 3 drives the Crucial P5 Plus is more than twice as fast.
BlackMagic DiskSpeed Test
Using HW-Info we can peek at the temperature the drive is running at during idle and under sustained workloads.
44 degrees at idle. Let’s see how high it goes when copying files.
Not the coolest, it is running a bit warm, could also be due to it sitting right above my GPU.
The SSD is 50% full already as the data from the older 256 GB drive is already copied onto it, so these tests are indicative on how well the drive would run when 50% full.
Temperatures are a bit toasty, but it does manage to deliver on the speeds it promises.
Crucial’s P5 Plus looks like a solid M.2 NVMe SSD for the price, the design is also clean and doesn’t stand out. Speeds are as advertised and I’m getting double that of a Gen 3 drive. While copying files it had a sustained speed of around 1.3 Gbps. Warranty is 5 years which is standard with other manufacturers too. The drive manages to perform well in my 4K timeline playing back footage at full res without a hitch.
Game and application load times were quite fast, shaving off a few seconds as compared to my gen 3 drive.
Micron being a behemoth in the DRAM space they did use their knowhow to build a solid value for money drive. Not the fastest, but not slow either. A good all round PCIe Gen 4 SSD which doesn’t hurt the wallet that much.
VinayakSelf-confessed geek from the days when computer memory was measured in Kilobytes
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This is the Sony ZV-1, a camera targeted at Vloggers and released a year back. With the release of the ZV-10 is this still worth considering. Watch on to find out.
The Zv-1 is reminiscent of older point and shoot cameras I have used which have a fixed lens, by that I mean the lens cannot be changed. So, you are stuck with the 24-70 lens that’s present, is that necessarily a bad thing?
The Sony Zv-1 integrates a 20.1 megapixel 1 inch Exmor RS CMOS sensor, and the processing muscle is provided by the Bionz-X. It has 4K HDR recording, Wi-Fi control, sd card support and more.
315 auto focus points and real time AF, this is something I’m hoping is good. Let’s open the box and check out what we get.
Oh, what’s this on the top flap, it’s a memory card. It’s a 64 GB memory card. Make sure you don’t miss it.
Inside we have the warranty card, manuals,
and under this flap we have the camera and it’s accessories.
The camera uses micro-usb to charge which is ok, but that’s another cable I need to pack when travelling.
It uses NP-BX1 batteries which lasts for around 60 minutes of continuous shooting. You can charge the battery using the micro usb port so if you shoot in short bursts, it should last the day.
And here’s the camera. It’s made of a compost material as opposed to the magnesium alloy that the rx100 and above use.
We have the Zeiss 24-70 equivalent lens which is integrated into the camera and can open the aperture all the way to f1.8 when completely zoomed out, but shifts to f2.8 when you zoom in. The zoom range is around 2.7X.
The grips are well placed with a rubberized feel, but the camera did feel a bit too small in my hands and at 294 grams is quite light.
On top we have this hot shoe mount or as sony calls it a Multi Interface Shoe, which can take not only flashes, and even sony’s mics, no other cable required. These devices are also powered by the camera’s battery which is great.
Sony provides this wind screen or dead cat as it’s called to cut down on wind noise, when shooting outdoors, and it can attach to the camera using the hot shoe.
This is a Directional 3-capsule mic which uses spatial filtering to capture clear audio in front of the camera with fewer distracting ambient sounds. Have to test the quality.
We have an on/off button, a mode button. This button with the red circle is to start/stop video recording.
Oh, this is a nice one, this is to toggle Bokeh mode or shallow depth of field. We have the shutter button with the zoom rocker, which needs to be used to zoom in and out. We don’t have any physical zoom ring on the lens.
A thumb rest is present above the buttons.
The camera is a trimmed down version of the Sony RX100, with most of the innards. So what’s missing, the first glaring difference is that the zv-1 is missing an evf or electronic viewfinder. But it does have this gorgeous screen, which I’m glad Sony designed to flip out to the side, it can be twisted and turned to the angle you like.
This is great if you want to get shots from down below or high up without having to bend or tiptoe, also it rotates to the front and you have a selfie point of view, which is where it’s vlogging DNA lies.
You could turn the screen around and bam it’s safe within.
As it flips to the side you are not blocked by any accessories you attach to the hotshoe, as older cameras did have this problem.
As I said this camera is targeted at Vloggers, and hmm I would say it does work, but 24mm is a bit too tight, so unless you use something to hold the camera away from you, it’s going to be too in your face. Sony does sell this tripod/remote stand combo, but it’s just too expensive.
All the options on the camera are controlled via the buttons here, the screen is a touch screen, but the menus are not.
On the bottom we have the tripod mount, and the battery/memory card bay. Let’s install the battery and start the camera up.
The camera comes with a 64 gb memory card, which is fine, but I later upgraded to 256 GB so that the storage doesn’t become a hindrance to how long I can record.
Opening the screen also activates the camera, which is nice as you’re ready to shoot as soon as it’s open. You can also manually turn the camera on or off using the button on top, if you have the screen facing you and closed.
There you go, the camera is now active. The lens pops out when active and completely retracts into the body to keep itself safe when off.
We have a shutter that protects the lens from the front, and closes completely when the lens is retracted.
Using the zoom rocker, allows us to zoom in and out, and you can see the lens physically moving as we make changes.
We have multiple modes, which are accessible via the mode button, higher end cameras have it as a dial, but on this camera you need to use the interface. I’m setting it to auto mode for now as I still need to get used to the camera’s interface.
Ports wise we have a microphone in jack, which is a godsend. We can use any external mic which uses a 3.5mm jack and that’s great. Under that we have a micro-USB and a micro HDMI port. All these ports are covered by a plastic flap and can be opened separately as necessary.
Auto focus is the reason I picked up this camera. I’ve had the Nikon Z6 miss focus so many times, which as I record alone, I would find out only after I complete the recording. Even though I’m monitoring it, a slight off focus is not visible on my Nikons screen at all. But I love the colours I get on the Nikon, so it is still my main camera.
Memory cards supported are SDXC at UHS-I speeds.
One massive problem is that the sd card and battery bay are not accessible when on a tripod, so I had to purchase this cage by small-rig, which when installed provides more mounting holes and also provides access to the battery/card slot even when on a tripod. “WOW”
Being small and compact and not weighing much it’s comfortable to carry around and a lot of places that ban DSLR’s, allow these in as they are similar in size to nonprofessional compact cameras. If you travel a lot this would be a handy camera to carry around.
But I now have three types of travel cameras, now the battle would be which one would I pack when we can travel again.
The dedicated video record and shutter buttons are easy to find even by feel and you can quickly access them.
The fn button provides access to settings on screen to change important options such as drive, auto focus, white balance, ND and more.
We also have a beauty mode available, which I always keep off, but for beauty vloggers it might be helpful.
The 3 inch touch screen is fully articulating and is bright enough, but in bright sunlight you can’t see much and would need to shield the screen with your hands.There is a Sunny weather mode which increases the screen brightness, a viewfinder would have helped, but Sony did have to cut costs somewhere. It’s reasonably crisp at 921k dots. Also, I noticed that It seems to have problems with polarized sunglasses, the screen looks black through them.
We can shoot 4k up to 30 fps and if you choose 1080p we can record upto 120fps.
It does have a HFR mode which can shoot at 240,480 and 960 fps.
But the higher the frame rate the lower the resolution.
We also have advanced profiles such as HLG, SLog-2 and S-Log 3 similar to the ones on Sony’s higher end models which provides more flexibility to fine-tune colors and tones. I shoot in the standard profile.
Bright daylight we have no problems shooting and the autofocus works well.
It does come with built in 3 stop ND or neutral density filters which allows bringing out more detail. Low light and indoor shots can be grainy, so try to bring in as much light as you can.
We can burst capture at 24fps in RAW or Jpeg format.
Holding down the shutter button the buffer can hold upto 75 raw+jpeg shots and 165 jpegs in full burst.
It’s rated for about 260 still shots and video recording time we get around 75 minutes in 1080p and 45 minutes in 4k on a full battery.
If you have it connected to a Power Bank or USB port via your computer it can run longer unless it overheats.
We do have a setting to allow it to ignore the heating and record longer and I have set it to that as I’m never sure how long I need to record.
A Steady shot option is also available which helps for still and also for video. We have two stabilization modes and both of them crop into the video and even more when set to active. This might annoy vloggers, who would want the stabilization but the crop makes it too close for comfort.
315 phase detection autofocus points or PDAF grab focus really fast, and is very accurate.
24mm is a bit tight for vlogging, I use this manfrotto pixi mini to get more reach and it helps quite a bit. Sony has their own Wireless Shooting grip, but that costs almost 10k more, so didn’t go for it.
Eye AF for both humans and animals is available and works for both stills and video.
ISO range is between 100 and 12,800, but being such a small sensor, low light shots are this camera’s kryptonite.
A recording light indicates when the camera is recording, as it shines red, but it reflects easily when shooting reflective products, so I generally keep it turned off.
Stills, be it human or objects close or far it does a decent job. I did find that the macro mode only works when totally zoomed out.
The bokeh mode or background defocus mode is just one one button away, so just tap and you get creamy bokeh with sharp subjects. This is actual bokeh and not software tricks like how the smartphones do it. If you don’t want that feature you can always set to another option as this is the C1 or customisable button.
The built-in microphone is quite capable and the sound is quite clear. You can attach an external microphone which connects to the 3.5mm headphone jack to the side.
If the surroundings are not noisy, the audio sounds really clear, for windy situations use the provided wind screen. It does obscure the on off button, but it is still accessible. There is no audio monitor port so you cannot connect a pair of headphones to monitor audio levels.
The mode button allows toggling between multiple shooting modes, like scene selection, auto, panorama and we have manual and memory recall modes.
Battery life is not that bad at around 60 minutes but if you are shooting at 4k it does drop quite fast. As I mostly shoot in my studio and is connected to the Pc it lasts longer.
I do have this small little charger which can charge three batteries at a time and connects via micro-usb, so you can charge multiple batteries using a powerbank.
We can remotely control the camera and it’s really helpful being able to monitor what’s being recorded, change settings and start stop recording. This application is by Sony and free to download via their website.
We also have the option to control the camera via the phone using Sony’s Imaging Edge app, you can change settings, start stop recording and also copy files over via Wi-fi. This is very important for influencers who want to post their pictures or videos fast online.
Why did I choose this camera, this is to move my main camera the Nikon Z6 off the overhead rig as it’s very expensive. If this falls it will give me less of a heart attack but being much lighter the tripod could support it much better as compared to my 2 kilo Nikon.
A nifty feature specially made for product reviewers is the presenter mode, you bring anything in front of the camera, and it automatically shifts focus to it. Most cameras target the face, but this mode helps keep the product in focus so even if i’m visible the product is prioritized more in this mode.
The Zv-1 is a great camera for casual shooters and also influencers who don’t want a very expensive camera but still get great quality. The autofocus is what I would really pick this camera for, it is just great. There are some limitations such as a small battery as the body is quite small, no viewfinder so viewing the screen in bright sunlight is almost impossible. The lens is fixed, so you cannot swap them like it’s bigger brethren, but that is something I’m actually happy about as it is protected within the camera body and is a light and compact package. Not cheap but still costs half as much compared to their bigger cousins, and do note the camera bodies themselves are much more expensive than the zv-1 not bringing the cost of lenses into the picture. The ZV-10 which released recently has the option to replace the lens but is much more expensive as compared to the zv-1.
I would totally recommend the Sony ZV-1 for first time vloggers and influencers as it’s affordable and the 1 inch sensor will give you better images than your average smartphone camera.
VinayakSelf-confessed geek from the days when computer memory was measured in Kilobytes
vinayaknair.comThe post Sony ZV-1 Compact Vlogging Camera first appeared on talkingStuff Network.
I love mechanical keyboards, but they are outrageously expensive. Not anymore, I guess. Let’s check it out.
I have here the TMKB GK61 60% mechanical gaming keyboard. These are customizable and you have a choice of keycap colours and also the actual switches inside.
The keyboard is also available in white and in Bluetooth or wired configurations.
I have the Bluetooth version here.
Keycaps are available in Black, red, brown, blue, yellow and silver.
Here’s the keyboard, it’s quite small due to the fact that it’s a 60% keyboard. This is how it looks, great if you don’t have enough desk space this takes up way less space as compared to my standard keyboard.
It’s a bit heavy too, wow. The weight would keep the keyboard in place.
The keycaps are brown, which was an error on my side as I wanted brown switches but not keycaps. But they don’t look bad at all.
We have a warranty card, and a manual.
It’s better to read the manual as a lot of the functions on the keyboard are a combination of keys, especially the Function button. This keyboard has Bluetooth too, so read the instructions to find out how to enable Bluetooth pairing.
Here is a braided usb-c to usb-a cable, the usb-a side looks quite different but it’s just that it’s an exposed connector.
A pair of tools to customize your keyboard. These tools help with removal of the keycaps and switches in an easy manner.
We have two, one is to remove the keycaps and the other is for the actual switch beneath.
These are Gateron tactile switches.
Now for the keyboard, oh this looks nice. Brown and black keycaps, the rest of the keyboard is black. There’s a white option available too.
This is how the keys look. There are a lot of combo keys, it will take some time to get used to it. Even
Let’s remove one of the keycaps and check what we have within.
Using the tool it comes out really easy, these can be replaced with any other keycap if you would like to change the colours or design, as it uses a standard. The keycaps are Double-shot injection moulded offering crystal clear uniform back-lighting and lettering that doesn’t scratch off.
Under the keycap we have a brown switch, you can see the Gateron branding on the switch, it’s just upside down. The deck below the keys is white, which would help with the lighting to pass through.
Let me just place the key back and check out the rest of the keyboard.
I like that the keyboard is using USB-C, this works both to charge the battery to use in Bluetooth mode and also as a wired keyboard.
We have the TMKB gk61 branding on the bottom.
Here we have an on off switch, which is necessary for Bluetooth mode.
We have feet on the back which can be opened to adjust the angle.
Rubber feet help keep the keyboard in place, when placed on the table.
When the feet are open the rear rubber feet don’t contact the table, but there’s rubber on the feet themselves.
The edges are rounded, which looks cool, also it looks angled and not just a standard rectangle.
The keyboard has a standard tilt to it which can be accentuated with the feet if you need more angle. The keyboard has a matte finish, which is great, if it was glossy it would be a fingerprint magnet.
We have a TMKB logo in front.
Turning the switch on, activates the keyboard, but to use Bluetooth you need to use a key combo which I will show in a bit.
The keycaps light up in all its RGB glory, looks nice.
It has 7 static colour backlight: red/green/blue/yellow/purple/white/light green/white,
and 8 RGB light effects (including reactive mode, wave mode, ripple mode, aurora mode, etc.) which you can easily switch the lighting effect with ‘FN + /’.
Let’s connect the keyboard to the PC, I’m using it wired.
It’s detected and it’s working.
We can change the colour of the lighting under the keys, using the function right square bracket key.
Function key plus P and left square bracket are used to decrease and increase the brightness.
You can go all the way to no light, but T, N and space seem to be still lit up. There might be a season for it. They light up when the function key is held down, release it and they follow the colour scheme of the rest of the keyboard.
Let’s increase the brightness.
Let’s test the main reason you purchase a mechanical keyboard, the actuation and the sound they produce.
As I had shown earlier they have the Gateron Brown tactile switches, let’s check how they sound.
That was satisfying. The browns are a midpoint between Gateron blues and reds. Red’s are the most quiet, so if you want a silent keyboard, pick one with red switches. Blue are the most tactile and make the classic mechanical keyboard sound. Like those TVSE gold keyboards used to.
The browns are in-between, it has the tactile actuation and a bit of sound, but not very loud.
The keycaps feel really nice, and the rgb lighting looks bright. At present it’s being overwhelmed by the studio lights in the room.
Let me turn them off and we can get a better look at the lighting.
Looks really cool.
The actuation point on the Gateron browns can be felt, which is 1.5 millimeters. Feels satisfying to type on.
1.5 mm actuation is best for gaming and with a life of 50 million actuations, these are made to last. If you have a problem with the switch, just replace it. I’ve seen a pack of 10 cost around 200-250 Rs.
Brown tactile switches are among the most popular with mechanical keyboard enthusiasts. These switches offer a satisfying bump on actuation, without the loudness of clicky blue switches. If you want more clicky change them to Blues, more silent replace with reds.
Now to test the Bluetooth functionality, tap on function and spacebar, a blue light blinking three times indicates it’s in Bluetooth mode.
The Z,X and C keys allow selecting a certain device you had previously paired. I’m selecting Z as device 1 and pairing it with my phone. It has connected and it’s working perfectly. The typing speed is good.
It promises 8 hours usage time via its 1900 mAh battery. Standby time is up to 280 hours. If you lose power midway, it can still be used wired via USB.
The keyboard is also rated ip64 waterproof. I’m not bringing water anywhere near, but it’s just something to know.
The software which is downloadable from their website allows customizing the RGB colors, add macros, setup custom functions using the function key combo and more. You can save multiple profiles so that you can switch between your settings easily. The QWER keys can be programmed with macros using the software.
The Gateron switches at this price point are great, they have a nice tactile feel and are smooth to operate. Gateron started with making Cherry MX clones and now have begun innovating with their own switch tech. These switches are Cherry MX compatible, meaning they can be used in keyboards using Cherry MX keys.
The keyboard being 60% takes a little getting used to, I could type fast enough after a few minutes. If you are someone who works with numbers, the missing number pad might be irritating.
Also the up, down left right keys needs you to hold down the function key to activate. Look at the lower print on the keys, these need the function key to work, else it works as the key denoted above.
It’s very sleek, very small, the curved edges make it quite nice to hold to move around especially if being used wirelessly. I like the matte finish on the keyboard. RGB is bright, without it being distracting, it is still brighter than my Logitech keyboard.
You don’t get a wrist rest, so you will need one of you don’t want to hurt your wrists.
If you want a budget, customizable, RGB Mechanical keyboard, this one ticks all the boxes. With a whole plethora of options this is great value, a selection of white or black keyboard, colour of keycaps, switch types, it’s highly customizable during purchase or can also be changed later. At this price, it’s a great keyboard option, but if you’re new to 60% keyboards will take a bit getting used to. It will not replace my main work computer keyboard, but will be linked to my iPad instead.
VinayakSelf-confessed geek from the days when computer memory was measured in Kilobytes
vinayaknair.comThe post TMKB GK61 RGB Mechanical Keyboard first appeared on talkingStuff Network.
My son has online classes to attend and the Jabra wireless earbuds he’s using gets uncomfortable after a few hours. I got him a new pair of Headphones; these are the OneOdio Studio 10 Headphones. These are wired and are not very expensive. So, let’s check out how good they sound.
So, this is the OneOdio Studio Pro 10 DJ headphones. I wanted a pair which are affordable and also has good audio quality, the reviews on amazon were good, I have to test the quality out for myself. We have the Hi-Res Audio certification; not sure how legit this is. In order to be Certified Hi-Res, bookshelf speakers and headphones must be capable of reproducing frequencies up to 40 kHz or above.
The specs behind the box does show 20-40 khz frequency range, so I’m hoping for the best. It uses 50mm neodymium drivers, which is good for clear audio.
We have two plug types supported, 3.5mm and 6.35mm.
It lists out the contents of the box too, let’s open it up and check them out.
Ok, first we have the cables both 3.5 to 3.5 and one 3.5 to 6.5mm.
A manual is also present, has instructions in multiple languages and the print quality is really good.
A nice PU bag to keep your headphones safe, we have the OneOdio branding embossed on one side.
They should not have added the warranty information on the bag, it’s spoiling its look.
But the bag feels good, opening it up we have the headphones within.
Wow, these look better than I thought they would. We have sufficient padding on each of them for comfort and the chrome shell looks really nice and I’m happy that it’s not overdone. These are over the ear headphones and should not hurt if worn for long periods. The ear cups look like they won’t fit your ears within, but they sit perfectly and also provide passive noise cancellation to a limit. I will know about the comfort factor from my son in a few days.
The construction is plastic, even the chrome sections, which is understandable considering the price.
We have a 3.5mm jack on the right cup and the 6.5mm jack on the left. The cables are provided separately so you can use the one you need.
The cups have these concentric circle designs, with the logo in the centre, looks nice. The hinges look strong, the cups swivel 90 degrees and can fold down too for storage.
The Left and right cups fold in allowing them to be stowed away into the bag easily.
The headband has the OneOdio logo on top and a leatherette finish, with really soft padding right under. I love the red stitching across the headband, it looks really premium.
It has a metal strip, running across the top, which allows you to customize the length allowing for a comfortable fit as per the size of your head. It’s present on both sides.
This is the 6.5mm to 3.5 mm cable, meant to be used with professional equipment like DJ turntables, mixers etc.
This is the provided 3.5mm to 3.5 mm cable, to be used with phones and it has this small little controller here, which has a button to control audio playback, pick/end calls etc and the hole next to it is a microphone.
You can use this cable to take/make calls which is especially useful during these work from home times. While music is playing you can control playback using this button, single tap is play pause and double tap is previous track and three times is move to the next track.
Just plug in the cable type you need and connect the other end to the phone or other audio device. My phone uses USB-c so I won’t be able to plug it into it, but it will work with my pc and iPad.
The 6.5mm to 3.5mm cable seems to have more length and you can daisy chain another headphone into the 3.5 mm jack for shared listening.
Let me plug this in here and the other end to the PC.
Wow, the clamping force is a bit high, your ears might hurt after a few hours as the pads do sit on them. They might slowly get more comfortable as you use them. Just extend the cups out if you don’t want it to sit too tight on your ears. My son uses it at its maximum length.
The padding on the cups is smaller than what I’m using on my Sennheiser headphones. They do keep the ears out at first, but slowly do move in.
Look’s wise it’s great, now for the audio quality.
I’m connecting it to the 3.5 mm jack we have on the cabinets ,which would use the audio solution on your motherboard which generally is Realtek.
Now let’s test the audio, playing some music. Wow, it’s quite good. The sound stage is smaller than my Sennheiser’s, but instruments are clear, these being touted as studio grade headphones they generally have a flat frequency response, which seems to be accurate. The sound is not totally flat, and the bass is not very high, but is present. Instruments sound clear and so do vocals and they are clearly discernible.
The highs, mid-tones and treble sound really good, surprisingly. I’m spoiled by higher end headphones, and they do have more separation and wider soundstage, the oneodio sound balanced and in no way would they disappoint.
Let’s test the microphone quality, its good, voice is clear enough for online meetings. (Sample available in video)
I would say this sound way better than Bluetooth headphones/earphones in this price range and honestly, they’re really good.
In my opinion, the OneOdio is a good headphone for the price, which is Rs 2,199, as long as you understand what you’re getting. For general music consumption it’s great, it has a solid bass response and good clarity and it’s also comfortable to wear. How long you can wear them would depend on your ear shape. I like the way it folds up when not in use and the PU pouch is a great addon.
The earcup padding is fine and was comfortable enough, but if you want more padding there is a higher end model which has much more padding.
But Studio and DJ in the name is a little misleading. I would not recommend them for mixing or mastering (i.e. “studio” work) but as I said, for normal music, online classes and video consumption they offer good value. We do get Bluetooth earphones at this price, but these sound really good, and with no compression as the audio is not sent wirelessly, we get even more quality audio. Link to the product can be found in the description if you would like to pick one for yourselves. I was sceptical of the reviews on Amazon, but I’m glad I chose these in the end.
VinayakSelf-confessed geek from the days when computer memory was measured in Kilobytes
vinayaknair.comThe post OneOdio Studio DJ Headphones first appeared on talkingStuff Network.