The responsive touch screen on the ZenPad Z8 allows for fast animations between home screens and when scrolling through web pages. For the most part, I was satisfied with the tablet's performance, though I did notice a delay of a second or two when switching between open apps. This mixed performance shows in the ZenPad Z8's scores on synthetic benchmark tests.Asus ZenPad Z8The ZenPad Z8 scored 3,355 on the Geekbench 3 general performance benchmark, which beats the scores of the G Pad F 8.0 (933) and average tablet (2,286) and edges out the Predator 8's showing (3,112).The ZenPad Z8 is OK for gaming, notching a 17,846 on the 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited test, which beats the marks of the G Pad F 8.0 (3,735) and average tablet (11,245). The built-to-game Predator 8 (20,785) earned a higher score.The tablet didn't fare as well on our video-editing test, taking 4 minutes and 19 seconds to transcode a 1080p video to 480p using the VidTrim app. The average tablet finishes this test in less time (3:13), but the Predator 8 (6:48) and G Pad F 8.0 (13:00) took even longer than the Asus.
Asus ZenPad Z8The ZenPad Z8's cameras capture vivid color and fine detail, but the preloaded camera app defaults the selfie shooter to the overzealous beautification mode. The tablet's 8-megapixel rear camera captured solid landscape images from our roof, accurately reproducing the calm blue sky, lush green shrubs and details of the wooden boards in faraway water towers.The rear lens isn't as great with video. Its 1080p footage may capture bright orange trucks and yellow taxis, but playback is a little choppy and almost triggered a bout of nausea.Asus put a 4,680-mAh battery inside the ZenPad Z8. On our battery-life test (continuous web surfing at 150 nits of brightness) over the carrier's 4G LTE network, the tablet lasted 8:22. That beats the G Pad F 8.0's time on ATT's 4G network (7:11).When we ran the battery test over Wi-Fi, the Asus chugged along for 9 hours and 17 minutes, which is longer than the times of the Wi-Fi-only Predator 8 (5:36) and the average tablet (6:53).
The ZenPad Z8 is exclusive to Verizon, which sells the tablet for $249.99 off-contract, for $149.99 with a two-year contract and for $0 down and $10.41 per month for qualified customers. The tablet is offered only in the 16GB model we tested.Verizon offers monthly data plans that start at 2GB for $35 a month and top out at 24GB for $110 per month. The service provider also tacks on an additional $10-per-month connection fee plus taxes and other contractual fees.From its brilliant display and strong sound to its speedy processor and lightweight design, the Asus ZenPad Z8 is one great, pint-size tablet. Unfortunately, its user experience suffers from minor dings like slight pauses while switching apps and lackluster video-shooting.The Predator 8 may have a more vivid display and even louder audio, but it costs an additional $30. If you're looking for a small Android tablet, you need to check out the Asus ZenPad Z8.
Samsung’s gone and done it guys. It’s made a perfectly wonderful laptop that retails for under $US1000, is of exceptional quality, and is neither under-powered nor teeming with crappy finishes. This is the college-bound laptop everyone, including Apple, has failed to make for the last couple of years.AU Editor’s Note: The Notebook 7 Spin isn’t sold in Australia, unfortunately. But you can buy it internationally if you like the look of it, and have it shipped from a reseller like Amazon to your doorstep.
We’ve been busting Apple’s balls a lot lately, and it definitely has everything to do with my four-year-old Macbook Pro being on its last legs and my refusal to spend $2000-plus on the paltry-arse upgrade that is the current Macbook Pro. While other laptop companies furiously pack whiz-bang features and new ideas into a slab of aluminium and plastic, Apple’s been moseying along with a product so long in the tooth you might mistake it for an elderly relative who says inappropriate things at family gatherings.
Meanwhile, there is Samsung. Last year it had exactly one laptop in its line up. It was a great laptop, but it was hardly going to help the company take the computer business by storm. This year Samsung has been quietly rolling out a multitude of devices. It started with the brutally efficient Samsung 9, and now it’s back with the chunkier, and much more affordable, Samsung Notebook 7 Spin. The Notebook 7 Spin is the rare quality “do everything” laptop for under $US1000.Yeah, it’s bigger than the laptops we usually prefer here at Gizmodo — large enough that it feels clunky opening and closing and making use of the 360-degree hinge. And at 2kg for the 15-inch, it’s heavy enough to be used in your daily workout routine. Yet it’s also got a 1TB hard drive, space for a zippier M.2 SATA drive, a 15.6-inch 1080p display, USB and USB-C ports, and the 15-inch even has an Nvidia Geforce 940M video card — in case you need to get in some clutch play of the games in Overwatch. More importantly, it’s a lot more satisfying and easy to use that similarly priced laptops like the Dell Latitude 5000 series or HP Envy 15.
Samsung Finally Gave Us the Laptop Apple Should Have
This may sound shocking to a lot of you cheapskates, but it is actually very hard to find a really good Windows laptop for under a thousand dollars. There’s always a drawback. They’re all huge, and screens are washed out and ugly, or keyboards feel like your typing on marshmallows. The worst offender, though, is the trackpad. Budget laptops always have trackpads designed in the seventh pit of hell and put on this earth to destroy our will to compute.The Notebook 7 Spin has a remarkable trackpad. It’s every bit as intuitive and responsive as a MacBook trackpad — the gold standard. There are no misclicks. No accidental icon draggings. No “oops” right clicks when you meant to click left. The trackpad doesn’t feel buggy and the mouse doesn’t hop around the screen as if possessed. For a Windows machine it’s exceptional.
There are other little nods of quality that are unexpected in a laptop so cheap. The 45Wh battery in the 15-inch variant gave me a solid 6 hours of Nyan Cat streaming at full brightness, and the 13-inch version, which features the same battery and much less battery-consuming screen, should perform even better.
The Notebook 7 Spin also features “fast charging,” so in my testing it went from zero to 20 per cent battery in under twenty minutes, and it would be fully charged in less than two hours. I don’t know if I would characterise it as the fastest-charging laptop available, but it’s certainly in the upper echelons.
The ability to upgrade keeps it up there. The bottom of the laptop is covered in soft-touch plastic and held together by glaringly shiny screws. Remove the screws and you have instant access to the hard drive, M.2 SATA slot, and RAM slots. You can also peer at the latest generation i7 Skylake processor, if you really want to (the 13-inch comes with an i5). That means in addition to being cheap and powerful, it’s also user upgradable. This instantly tags another two years onto the lifespan of the computer.Samsung’s also included an Ethernet port. That’s usually the first port to get sacrificed to the thinness gods, especially in a world in which Wi-Fi is more or less a given just about everywhere you go. Its inclusion here is a deliberate move and not just a vestige of the wired times of yore. Thin laptops and super-light laptops are still a luxury in Samsung’s book, and Samsung is betting that most people would be happy to forgo that luxury to experience a laptop that can tackle any need that might arise.
Samsung Finally Gave Us the Laptop Apple Should Have
In other words, Samsung is trying to build a Swiss Army Laptop for everyone. So there’s an ethernet port for lugging this thing to college where the dank library basement or science lab might have spotty wireless. A USB-C port for the nerd who needs to run their 4K monitor, an HDMI port for streaming anime on a TV, and three regular USB ports for thumb drives, hard drives, and the charging of the countless USB-powered devices we’re all stuck with.There’s an SD card slot for the photographer too. There’s also a touchscreen for the dad who insists he needs one (whether he actually uses it or not), and there’s a 360-degree hinge because some people actually like to use their 15-inch laptop like a tablet, or prop it up so they can lie on their beds watching new episodes of Orange is the New Black.