Reviews 51952 Published by

Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

39 Days to Mars Review
ASUS ZenFone Max Pro M1 (ZB601KL) - Everything You Need To Know
ElectriQ 32″ 4K FreeSync IPS Monitor Review
EVGA DG-77 Mid-Tower Chassis Review
Gamer Storm Captain 240EX RGB AIO CPU Cooler Review
Genius Mouse and Earbuds Mobile Package MH-8015 Review
Intel Optane DC P4800X 750GB Review
Kingston A1000 480 GB NVMe SSD Review
Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs Xbox One Review
Roccat Khan AIMO 7.1 Gaming Headset Review
Samsung 970 EVO 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD Review
Samsung 970 EVO M.2 500GB NVMe SSD Review
Samsung 970 EVO SSD Review
Samsung 970 PRO 512GB and 970 EVO 250GB, 500GB, 1TB NVMe SSD Review
Samsung SSD 970 Pro And 970 EVO Review: Faster, More Endurance Than The 960
Samsung SSD 970 PRO NVMe 512GB SSD Review
Samsung's 970 EVO 1 TB SSD reviewed
Tesoro GRAM XS Keyboard Review
The Kingston A1000 480 GB NVMe SSD Review
The Mainstream Phoenix Rises: Samsung's 970 EVO (500GB & 1TB) SSDs Reviewed
VIVO CASE-V10G Review
Xiaomi Mi 6X specs and looks are out
Xiaomi Redmi Note 5: The Camera Beast Revealed



39 Days to Mars Review

It’s the sense of humour that It’s Anecdotal, the one man studio, are going for. It hits more than it misses as well, I certainly chuckled a few times. It’s also the absurd tied into this, and the stereotypical British perseverance through any trials. Who else would think to fix a landing ship with a rusty bed screw, a rock, an old leather boot and a ball of gunk?

More than a good sense of humour, 39 Days to Mars doesn’t outstay its welcome with incomprehensible puzzles either. That’s what it is, first and foremost, a puzzle game. Only this is a puzzle game for two people. Much like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, it is designed for co-op couch play. In an ideal situation you’ll have a person you can unchain from your dungeon for the purposes of controlling the second character. Unfortunately, I didn’t.

Read full article @ Wccftech

ASUS ZenFone Max Pro M1 (ZB601KL) - Everything You Need To Know

The ASUS ZenFone Max is the popular series of smartphones ASUS has even produced, and for very good reasons. They offer mid-range smartphones with good performance and an incredible battery life.

They practically hold within their slim frames a power bank. In fact, they are all capable of acting as a power bank to recharge other smartphones and portable devices! Hence, the Max moniker.

Read full article @ Tech ARP

ElectriQ 32″ 4K FreeSync IPS Monitor Review

Investing in a big screen high-resolution monitor can be expensive, but it seems all that is about to change. While many 4K IPS monitors from, shall we say “more established brands” can cost many times this, the ElectriQ monitor will leave you with some change from £250. That’s crazy cheap for a panel, and after finding out just how popular this monitor is, we wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

Ah, it’s a cheap no brand monitor, so you get nothing right? Wrong. Equipped with a 4K 32″ IPS panel that runs at 60 Hz, that’s a freaking huge amount of panel real-estate right off the bat. Add to that AMD FreeSync support, a slim bezel, built-in speakers, good connectivity, VESA support, and even an HDMI cable thrown in the box.

Read full article @ eTeknix

EVGA DG-77 Mid-Tower Chassis Review

When it comes to cases, EVGA is not usually one of the first companies that come up in conversation. From what we have seen in the past from EVGA, we think they should. We are nearly sure the first chassis we saw from them was the Hardon Air which was stylistically a trendsetter, packing a ton of options in a tiny chassis. We then looked at the DG-87 chassis, and it was a beast of a case. Not only was it feature-rich, but the styling was also something we had never seen and is a case that would compete with many of the best full-tower cases offered even today.

Falling in the middle of both cases, EVGA has made a move into mid-tower cases as well. The solution we have is something we have just seen on the inside, but the outside is sleek and clean, with minor traits of the DG-8 Series cases. Following the same idea of the DG-8 Series, the chassis we are about to see is one of four in the lineup. All of them come with various options, and at varying levels of cost, but at the heart of them all are mostly the same chassis.

Read full article @ TweakTown

Gamer Storm Captain 240EX RGB AIO CPU Cooler Review

Gamer Storm has quite a unique range of products and concerning manufacturing make a lot of sensible decisions. For example in many of their cooler releases, not only do they release a standard model, but they also release an equivalent with RGB lighting. At the very least, this allows consumers to make a choice based on the divided opinion on RGB lighting in systems.

One of the latest coolers of their to come to our attention is the Gamer Storm Captain 240EX RGB. Yes, the game might be a little bit of a mouthful in a sentence, but this cooler promises a lot of action. Featuring an RGB water block, this might not appear to be anything different than many other RGB coolers, in this instance, however, Gamer Storm is offering something a little extra and different. The cooler may not have lighting on the fans or radiator, but it does come with a totally separate LED lighting strip. This lighting strip adds a whole new dimension to the case and chassis design meaning that you get the RGB lighting where you want it.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Genius Mouse and Earbuds Mobile Package MH-8015 Review

Today we will be covering the Mouse and Earbuds Mobile Package MH-8015 from Genius. So have you been shopping late at night and wished you could get your laptop mouse and earbuds in the same flavor by the same company in one convenient package? Well guess what the guys over at Genius have heard you battle cries and I present to you the MH-8015! You have several color options to choose from and the Genius products are primarily featured on Amazon. They also do have a website that shows off the products in a little more detail. We at FunkyKit, have covered Genius products in the past and so far I have been impressed with them so I am excited to see what they have to offer with this unusual combo!

Read full article @ FunkyKit

Intel Optane DC P4800X 750GB Review

Since the rise of SSDs, they have been using flash memory, also called NAND. Compared to traditional hard disks, this memory has much lower access times, where most of the speed gain comes from. In terms of sequential speed, the nano-chips are not particularly fast by themselves, but because they are controlled in parallel, high speeds can still be achieved.

The move from SATA SSDs to NVMe mainly brought up the speeds in workloads with a high queue-depth. In normal English: If there is a long queue of commands waiting, they can be processed very quickly thanks to the faster interface. What still went almost as fast were the assignments with shorter queues. The controller will not be able to perform smart tricks and is limited by the speed of the NAND.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

Kingston A1000 480 GB NVMe SSD Review

Solid State Drives (SSD) have advantages for gamers over using Hard Disk Drives (HDD) by saving game level and loading times, and by giving many apps a noticeable performance boost. SSD pricing has recently softened, and we now use a 480 GB SATA III 3D NAND SSD as our C drive. Last week, Kingston sent us their entry-level 480 GB A1000 NVMe SSD (SA1000M8/480G) which they claim is ‘affordable’ as well as “twice as fast as a SATA-based SSD”, and we are here to test it.

BTR uses two identical boot drives – one for AMD and one for NVIDIA – together with a 1.92 TB SanDisk SSD for our primary game storage and a 2 TB Seagate FireCuda SSHD (Solid State Hard Drive) for additional storage. In addition, we just purchased a 2 TB Micron 1100 SSD from Rakuten/Platinum Micro on sale for $269 which will replace our 2 TB SSHD, and we now have an all-SSD PC.

Read full article @ BabelTechReviews

Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs Xbox One Review

Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs is a great JRPG that's worth a look if you like to laugh.

A lot of Japanese role-playing games (JRPGs) tend to be serious and mature in tone and theme. This isn't a bad thing, of course, but its rare that this genre opts to take a more lighthearted approach. Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs, a popular PC game recently brought to the Xbox One, does just that. The game sometimes feels a little unfair, and the story itself isn't that gripping, but past these issues Regalia offers a very enjoyable experience that is worth your time.

Read full article @ Windows Central

Roccat Khan AIMO 7.1 Gaming Headset Review

Roccat has added a splash of intelligent RGB lighting to their new HiRes audio headset and given it a new name: the Khan Aimo. More than just a name change and some lighting, this update of the Khan Pro keeps the HiRes designation but swaps the 3.5mm cable for USB to add some new capabilities. This allows for a new 7.1 Surround Sound feature, powered by the built-in 24-bit @ 96 kHz DAC sound card – a first for HiRes audio headsets. Will enhanced surround sound in high resolution change your game? Benchmark Reviews has a chance to take a closer look at Roccat’s Khan Aimo headset, so listen in and let’s find out!

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

Samsung 970 EVO 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD Review

When Samsung launched the 960 EVO over a year ago, it was by far the highest performing consumer TLC SSD ever made. However, the competition was not only able to catch the 960 EVO over time, they have been able to surpass the 960 EVO. Case-in-point would be the newest Western Digital Black and SanDisk Extreme Pro NVMe SSDs.

The 970 EVO has been a long time coming. Normally before any competitor has a chance to pull even or take the crown from Samsung, they release something new and disruptive that keeps the performance crown firmly in their camp. Not so this time around. For the first time, Samsung has serious competition on the consumer TLC front. Samsung knows this and has come to the battle armed with a new NVMe controller, 64-layer 3-bit V-NAND, a new NVMe driver, and new "Intelligent TurboWrite" algorithms that take the EVO series to new performance heights. But is it enough?

Read full article @ TweakTown

Samsung 970 EVO M.2 500GB NVMe SSD Review

Samsung releases the new 970 EVO and PRO models M.2. SSDs, these offer even faster than the 960 series and come with increased TBW values as well. The new M.2 EVO units will be the most popular ones for the desktop end-users, and can be purchased in volume sizes up-to 2TB. NVMe Storage technology is advancing with extremely fast paces and steps. Oh my, NVMe Storage technology has been with extremely fast paces and steps as we now already reach the 970 series from Samsung. Armed with 64-layer (3-bit per cell) NAND flash memory, DRAM caching the new 970 series are based on the Samsung Phoenix controller, which have been introduced in there OEM PM981 already. Phoenix really is the Samsung Polaris Gen 2 controller now delivering up-to 3,500 MB/s sequential read speeds on even the smaller 500 GB and 1 TB versions, with up-to 2,500 MB/s sequential writes for the EVO series. For a little more shock and awe, Random 4KB numbers run up to 500,000 IOPS read and 480,000 IOPS write, which is pretty crazy.

The 970 EVO has been fitted with 64-layer3-bit per cell (written NAND. Today we will focus on that new EVO model, we have received a 500GB model for testing. The product is only slightly slower compared to the PRO model (which can do 2700 MB/s writes). Samsung is to release the new 970 EVO model in capacities of 250 GB, 500GB but also a 1 and 2TB volume sizes. Performance wise you'll get a smile on your face.

Read full article @ The Guru of 3D

Samsung 970 EVO SSD Review

The 970 EVO is available in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities, using 3-bit MLC V-VAND and a newly enhanced Phoenix controller. Samsung have also improved their TurboWrite technology, used to improve speeds within many scenarios. The 970 PRO is also launched today, which we will review later in the week.

Read full article @ Vortez

Samsung 970 PRO 512GB and 970 EVO 250GB, 500GB, 1TB NVMe SSD Review

We have been overdue for a Samsung NVMe SSD refresh, and with the launch of their 860 PRO and EVO back in January, folks have been itching for the 970s to come out. The 950 and 960 (PRO) lines were separated by about a year, but we are going on 18 months since the most recent 960 EVO launch. Samsung could afford to wait a bit longer since the 960 line already offered outstanding performance that remained unmatched at the top of our performance charts for a very long time. Recently, drives like the WD Black have started catching up, so it is naturally time for Samsung to keep the competition on their toes:

Today we will look at most of the Samsung 970 PRO and EVO lineup. We have a bit of a capacity spread for the EVO, and a single PRO. Samples are hard to come by so far since Samsung opted to launch both lines at the same time, but we tried to get the more common capacities represented. EVO 2TB and PRO 1TB data will have to come at a later date.

Read full article @ PC Perspective

Samsung SSD 970 Pro And 970 EVO Review: Faster, More Endurance Than The 960

Samsung has been at the forefront of NVMe-based solid state storage essentially since the standard’s inception. The Samsung SSD 960 Pro and 960 EVO that were released all the way back in 2016 have been among the best performing, most sought after M.2 NVMe-based gumsticks available. It’s kind of hard to believe the 960 Pro and 960 EVO have been riding high for so long in such a rapidly advancing space, but it’s true. Samsung, however, is finally ready to supplant its popular drives with the brand-new – you guessed it – SSD 970 Pro and 970 EVO series that we’re going to be showing you here today.

The Samsung SSD 970 Pro and 970 EVO are the company’s latest flagship sold state drives for high-performance desktop and mobile applications. They feature new controllers, the latest NAND, updated firmwares, and some subtle new features, all designed to boost performance and reliability. We’ve got both drives in hand and have put them through their paces on our freshly-updated test bed, alongside a quartet of competing products. But before we dive into the numbers, let’s check out some specifications...

Read full article @ HotHardware

Samsung SSD 970 PRO NVMe 512GB SSD Review

Samsung has led the NVMe SSD market since the first consumer drive was released in 2015, but in recent months the NVMe market has been flooded with drives from other brands. The Samsung SSD 950 PRO NVMe series in 2015 and the Samsung SSD 960 PRO NVMe series in 2016 allowed Samsung to have the performance crown, but other manufactures have been able to catch up to Samsung this year. Samsung hopes to swat those other brands back down today with the introduction of the Samsung SSD 960 PRO successor, the Samsung SSD 970 PRO. The Samsung 970 PRO will be available starting May 7th, 2018 in 512GB and 1TB capacities. Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Prices (MSRP) will be $329.99 and $629.99 USD, respectively. These drives are only available in M.2 form factor standard and use the PCIe Gen 3×4 lane interface.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Samsung's 970 EVO 1 TB SSD reviewed

It's been more than a year since Samsung's 960 EVO wowed us with its combination of ludicrous speeds and palatable price points. At that time, the NVMe SSD market was just beginning to expand, and manufacturers were starting to find room in their lineups for attainable drives in addition to their halo products.

Today's solid-state landscape is totally different. Every company and their grandmothers have brought multiple NVMe drives to bear for performance freaks and mainstream builders alike. Some NVMe drives' prices dip so low they even encroach on SATA drives' traditional downmarket dominance. It would take a truly special drive to make as big a splash today as the 960 EVO did back in 2016.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Tesoro GRAM XS Keyboard Review

Tesoro adds another set of unique switches to their growing portfolio, and the new GRAM XS keyboard uses ultra-slim mechanical switches in linear or tactile/clicky versions. Combine this with chiclet-style thin keycaps and a low profile case, and we have a keyboard that looks like an OEM keyboard at ~23 mm in height while offering the features of a modern high-end mechanical keyboard.

Tesoro first hinted at a low profile mechanical keyboard back at Computex 2017, and even though they did not have a suite/booth at CES this year, I just had to get my hands on it as soon as possible. Tesoro was kind enough to actually meet TechPowerUp during the CES week, and some hands-on time with the keyboard, now with a proper name as well, was had. It was a teaser, however, of a longer experience with the product—something many people have been wanting for a while now. Mechanical keyboards are great in offering a variety of options in terms of feedback, force required for actuation, and add-on features, including dust and spill resistance. To many, the travel distance is a selling point, but this is a con to some others. The chiclet-style keyboard has retained its popularity for this very reason, with a flat and thin profile overall. Tesoro thinks their GRAM XS keyboard can compete with that, and today, we take a look at it in detail.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

The Kingston A1000 480 GB NVMe SSD Review

Solid State Drives (SSD) have advantages for gamers over using Hard Disk Drives (HDD) by saving game level and loading times, and by giving many apps a noticeable performance boost. SSD pricing has recently softened, and we now use a 480 GB SATA III 3D NAND SSD as our C drive. Last week, Kingston sent us their entry-level 480 GB A1000 NVMe SSD (SA1000M8/480G) which they claim is ‘affordable’ as well as “twice as fast as a SATA-based SSD”, and we are here to test it.

Read full article @ BabelTechReviews

The Mainstream Phoenix Rises: Samsung's 970 EVO (500GB & 1TB) SSDs Reviewed

Today, Samsung is launching two new stacks of SSDs: the 970 EVO and the 970 Pro. The new Samsung 970 EVO is the more mainstream TLC-based option from Samsung's new generation of consumer NVMe SSDs, while the 970 PRO is using MLC NAND flash memory. From our perspective, the much more affordable 970 EVO will be the more interesting product.

The broad strokes of the 970 EVO have been obvious for months thanks to availability of the Samsung PM981 client SSD for OEMs. From that drive, we knew that the replacement for the 960 EVO would move from 48-layer 3D TLC to 64-layer TLC, and the Samsung Polaris controller would be replaced by the Phoenix controller. That combination was beating some records set by the 960 PRO when we tested the PM981 in November, so we've been looking forward to the 970 EVO for quite a while.

Read full article @ Anandtech

VIVO CASE-V10G Review

The fit and finish are on the same level that I saw with the V07 and V08. The front fans are quiet and with the top and bottom of the case being non-vented, the air only has one path straight through the case - front to back. This seems to get the job of cooling done even without a rear exhaust fan. You can add one if you like, but you probably don't need to. The blue LED fans provide a cool lighting effect, too. Several years ago, a $50 case would not have been worth of showing off, but the VIVO CASE-V10G brings good looks and value to the table. The V10G proves that a budget case can still deliver on features and quality. The V10G will also keep money in your wallet to put towards other components.

Read full article @ OCC

Xiaomi Mi 6X specs and looks are out

This could be an indication that Xiaomi Mi 6X might end up to be a long awaited native Android Xiaomi MI A2 phone too and offer native Android without the MIUI skin. Google confirmed some previously leaked specs including 4GB RAM, 32 and 64GB storage and a six inch 16:9 screen.

According to the latest information, Xiaomi MI 6X will sell for 1799 Yuan ($285.21/ €230) for the 4GB+64GB model and 1999 Yuan or ($317/€260) for the 6GB+64GB phone. The fact that the phone comes with  Snapdragon 660 will definitely bring some premium features to this market segment.

Read full article @ Fudzilla

Xiaomi Redmi Note 5: The Camera Beast Revealed

Xiaomi officially revealed two variants of the Redmi Note 5 today. Find out why Xiaomi calls it the Camera Beast, and what other killer features this new smartphone offers!

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 is powered by the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 platform, which boasts eight Kyro 260 processor cores, and an Adreno 509 GPU. Xiaomi calls it the Camera Beast because of its flagship-level photography capabilities.

Read full article @ Tech ARP