Category: video

New Video: Amazon Fire 7 Tablet

Some of the most popular hardware products from Amazon are their Fire tablets. Their new Fire 7 tablet is the subject of my latest review.

Fire tablets are stock commodity Android hardware running with a forked version of Google’s Android operating system. Because they’re a gateway to digital purchases Amazon makes these things super inexpensive. But even though they are running a version of Android they don’t work with the Google Play store or its apps.

To get the best price on this you need to put up with lock screen advertisements. The ads are getting more aggressive now with some of them featuring video in addition to still images. Amazon does sell versions of the tablet without ads for a little more money.

This new tablet is about twice as powerful as the prior model, with the same guts now as the more expensive 8″ HD tablet. It has double the RAM of the previous model (2GB vs. 1GB) and 16 GB of storage on its base unit vs. 8GB before. Its SD card slot will accommodate up to a 1TB microSD card for additional storage. Even though it is faster it’s much more sluggish vs. an entry level iPad or Samsung tablet. But it’s also half to a third of the price of those devices.

The new Fire 7 has the same look and feel of prior models with large bezels and a plastic casing. But it’s pretty rugged and I would argue more-so than an iPad even without a case on it.

If you’re happy living in the Amazon app ecosystem or just mostly stick to web browsing and media watching (Prime, Netflix, etc), the Amazon tablets are fine. But I’ve found a number of apps where the Amazon version lacks features found in their Google equivalents.

For example the Xbox app does not support GamePass streaming even though the Google Play version does. And because this doesn’t run Google Play services you can’t run any official Google apps like Gmail, Chrome, or YouTube. The Youtube “app” Amazon offers is just a web wrapper of the YouTube website and lacks features found on their android app.

All in this is more of the same from Amazon with a little more performance. If you’ve had good experiences with prior Amazon tablets you’ll like this one. But tablet enthusiasts will feel a bit more restricted unless they hack Google Play onto their device – a process that is not supported by Google or Amazon and comes with some security concerns.

iPhone at 15 – Original Box and Shopping Bag

The iPhone started shipping on June 29, 2007. I can’t believe it’s been that long. Incidentally I also got married that year so it’s easy to remember how many years I’ve been married based on the age of the iPhone :).

I posted this video on the extra’s channel the other day in recognition of the iPhone’s 15th birthday. It’s kind of a re-run as I made this short on the main channel a little while back.

Those of us suckers who bought an iPhone on release day also got a cool shopping bag to take it home in that you’ll see in the video. I called it the “mug me” bag as it clearly gave away its contents as you left the store. My original receipt was still in there too:

June 29, 2007!

My then fiancé was on a trip with her family and I was bored. So I drove up to the Apple store and bought the phone. There were no lines and they had plenty of stock. Of course that would soon change in future iterations. AT&T’s activation servers that were set up specifically for the iPhone were so overloaded I couldn’t actually use the phone until the next day.

Back then it only worked on AT&T’s network and I had to switch from Verizon. What a mistake that was – the phone part of the iPhone didn’t work anywhere in my house! I had to get a “Femtocell” in order to receive phone calls which barely worked. As soon as Verizon got the iPhone on its network I switched back.

The phone had pretty slow data speeds.. 3G networks were prevalent at the time but the iPhone only supported “Edge” which was about a 135k bits per second – not much faster than a dialup connection. There was no front facing camera and the rear camera was pretty lousy.

I think I traded in my old iPhone at one point to save money on a new one. I regret that now. It sure would look nice on my gadget shelf!

New Video : Plex HTPC Overview

Each month Plex (affiliate link) sponsors a tutorial video on the channel covering one of the many, many features of their personal media server and streaming service. This month’s video is about Plex’s recently released an official Home Theater PC (HTPC) client for Windows, Mac and Linux. You can see my review of it here.

This app runs full screen right when loaded and replicates the living room interface experience found on smart TVs and set top boxes. Notable in this release is full support for lossless audio passthrough, client-side “tone mapping” to convert HDR content to a SDR color space on non-HDR displays, and the ability to switch a television into HDR mode for content that supports it.

HDR is a tricky beast with PCs and unfortunately the HDR here is more of a generic profile vs. one based on the metadata of the individual media files. It also does not support Dolby Vision.

Here’s a little more technical detail from the Plex team as to how HDR works:

HDR10: This works when using Windows. MPV creates a Rec.2020 swapchain in D3D11, which outputs to the display. There is a switch in HTPC’s settings to switch the display from SDR -> HDR when you play HDR content.

HDR10 with Static Metadata Passthrough: One of the users in the forums has done a writeup on how to use some of the more experimental features of MPV to do HDR10 with static metadata passthrough. So the maxCLL and maxFall values from the content are sent through to the display. See https://forums.plex.tv/t/hdr-metadata-passthrough-plex-htpc-for-windows/794358 for more information.

So for the best experience I’d still stick with the most recent Nvidia Shield Pro (the 2019 version). But it’s nice to see Plex showing some love to their most technically inclined users looking to build out their own home theater PC experience.

Time to Talk about the Weekly Wrapup

This week’s Weekly Wrapup Video is about the Weekly Wrapup itself! As mostly a commodity content creator I’ve long struggled with the best ways to engage my subscription audience which grows slowly and steadily each and every day.

8 years ago I uploaded the first Weekly Wrapup that received some great comments from viewers at the time. In the video I went through the videos I had posted earlier that week and previewed what was coming next (very similar to my weekly email today). Over time the Wrapup evolved to work in viewer Q&A which is what sparked the topical nature of the show.

That’s when the wrapup started exceeding 30-40 minutes in length and viewers noted that the week in review stuff was eating up about a third to half the total run time. So I cut that stuff out, stuck to the topic, and found that viewership improved.

But even though viewership improved it’s still a fraction of what my regular videos get. And from a revenue perspective my mainline videos run at about 10 times the performance of the wrapup even on the most watched wrapup episodes.

So the show is at a cross-roads. I find myself struggling some weeks to come up with a topic to talk about and many times pick a topic for the sake of picking a topic to fill the Monday timeslot.

This week’s video dives into the analysis and seeks your input on where to go next. I posted a poll with some of the most mentioned ideas which you can find here.

Dispatch Video from the June, 2022 Pepcom Show!

A company called Pepcom puts on mini-trade shows in NYC for the media every couple of months. As with everything the pandemic really disrupted indoor gatherings like this but they are now getting back to a more normal cadence. My latest video is from the Pepcom event that took place on Thursday, June 24th.

The June show is usually the lightest of the year but there were a few things that interested me. From a gadget perspective the Drop Keyboards were the standout item. These are super high quality artisanal keyboards designed for people who like typing. Their flagship keyboard weighs over 10 pounds and is hand crafted in New Jersey! I also picked up a sample of a Kidde smart smoke alarm and air quality sensor that I’ll likely be looking at this week.

The highlight of this video is catching up with my friend Dick DeBartolo who has co-hosted the Gizwiz podcast for the last sixteen years but also had a long career at Mad Magazine where he was known as Mad’s maddest writer! Dick also appears regularly on ABC News and I grew up watching him on Nickelodeon back in the 80’s.

This is the first of these shows that I shot “one man band style” with my GoPro. I think it worked out pretty well but I’ll probably attach a light to the rig next time. Here’s a livestream I did the other day setting it all up.

You can see all of my previous dispatch videos here. These are always fun to do.

New Video: MeLE Quieter3Q Mini PC

I picked up this fanless Mini PC on the suggestion of a viewer for review. You can see my full review here. It is powered by an Intel N5105 Celeron chip (part of the Jasper Lake family) along with 8 GB of DDR4 RAM in dual channel mode. This model also came with 128GB of eMMC storage as its boot drive.

While it’s not possible to upgrade the RAM you can add a M.2 2280 NVME SSD. It also has a microSD card slot on the back. It supports dual 4k 60hz displays and would work well as a Plex server, but I do not recommend Windows PC as home theater devices these days. The Nvidia Shield is still the best choice for media consumption IMHO.

A few other value-adds here is its built in Wifi 6 radio which performed quite well in my testing along with a fully licensed copy of Windows 11 Pro. In my testing I also found it to be compatible with the latest version of Ubuntu and other flavors of Linux. Just note that right now Linux based browsers do not seem to decode 4k video from YouTube very efficiently.

Performance-wise this is a nice bump from prior Gemini Lake PCs in graphics and CPU performance making this a good choice for old games & emulators along with game streaming. Performance is light years beyond what you might get out of a Raspberry Pi 4 for light server and desktop usage.

The only real downside on this one is their decision to not follow the USB-C PD standard for charging and making the USB-C port only for power. You will need to use its included AC adapter to power it. Other Mini PCs at or around this price point have full service USB-C ports that work with docking stations.

Other than that I can’t find much to complain about here. This is a nice PC that can do a lot of basic PC and server tasks silently with great performance.

New Video: Synology RT6600ax Router Review

My latest video is a review of the new Synology RT6600ax router. Synology got into the routing business a few years back with products that by far have the best user interface in the business.

Their previous router was released 5 years ago (wow!) and I found in my review of it at the time to be a solid product. In fact it is still running a portion of my network today. Still, users wanted more out of it including the ability to set up network segmentation using VLANs and of course WiFi 6 capabilities.

The RT6600ax resolves many of those wants but still leaves me desiring more. The good news is that it does include VLAN support with the ability to have five separate networks managed by the device. The even better news is that this functionality is also coming to the prior router too. I also found its WiFi 6 performance to be outstanding.

But it leaves me desiring more.

Oddly the unit only has one 2.5 gigabit port on it. If you have a multigig connection none of your other ethernet clients can connect at full speed. And for a router that supports so many segmented networks it unfortunately only has four ethernet ports on its switch and only 3 if using the 2.5 port for connecting to an ISP. I’m sure cost factored into this decision but it’s a shame its performance potential is hindered by a lack of connectivity options.

Another issue is that Synology doesn’t offer much in the way of meshing options other than buying a second RT6600ax and turning it into a mesh access point. Hopefully they release some WiFi 6 mesh points at a lower cost in the future.

But for a small home or office network it’s a good choice. It’s not very complex even when setting up more complex networks.

New Video: Is Tesla Autopilot Safe?

The media went haywire over a recent government report on crashes involving Level 2 driving technologies like Tesla’s autopilot.

I took a deep dive into the report to see what was (and was not) in it.

The report covered 392 incidents and said Tesla’s vehicles were involved in 273 of them. By comparison there were an estimated 6.7 million car accidents and almost 43,000 highway deaths nationwide during the period of time the report covers.

Having used this technology for the past four years I believe it is safer when used appropriately. Tesla’s own data backs that up.

About half of the report’s narrative is spent telling readers how inclusive the data is. This includes the fact that the only cars that actually report telematics data on crashes are Tesla’s. So for other brands the driver would have to explicitly report that the car was under automated control to a police officer or the government. Tesla is also shipping far more cars with this technology than any other automotive brand.

But that didn’t stop the media from jumping to conclusions as I spell out in my latest Weekly Wrapup video. I also give a short demo of Tesla’s full self driving in action.

Incidentally the same radar cruise and lane keeping technology that Tesla started with was installed in many other cars but those manufacturers dialed it back out of fear of government regulators.

It’s astounding that with only 392 incidents to investigate the government report does not indicate who was at fault in these accidents.

Tesla isn’t guilt-free in this either – as I point out in the video they didn’t counter-message against influencers who were using the system inappropriately beyond what it was designed to do. The name autopilot also suggests a capability that goes beyond what it could actually do. This was especially true with their first generation technology that relied on radars that don’t detect stationary objects at highway speeds.

Upgrading to 4k!

This weekend I had some time to see if switching to a 4k workflow was feasible. Before doing this I had to upgrade the GPU in my production machine, fix a network problem that you’ll see in another video I uploaded this week, and of course ensure that our editing workflow could handle larger files and resolutions.

Let me know how everything works in today’s video.

As many of you know I shoot my videos the same way livestreamers work in that I shoot everything live to disk vs having to edit everything together later. So while I own cameras that can do 4k, processing and recording multiple 4k streams in realtime with no frame drops needed some additional hardware. I was also reluctant to throw a wrench in a very smooth and efficient workflow – especially one that likely won’t result in increased viewership.

But the stars aligned this weekend – I was ahead on content and had a good runway of opportunity now that all of the hardware upgrades were done to the production machine.

The best part is that because I use the same workflow for live and recorded productions I am now able to livestream in 4k too! Check out what it looks like here on YouTube. Right now I’m sending YouTube a 4k 30fps stream at 30 megabits per second. I will continue to stream to Amazon too but they are limited to 720p at 2.5 megabits per second. Still I think the Amazon stream looks better downscaling from 4k vs. 1080. Check out the Amazon version here.

There is still one 1080p video left in the hopper. I’ll be going 4k from now on provided I don’t have any deal breaking gotchya’s in the week ahead.

New Video: Using Fiber Optic Patch Cables & NICs vs. RJ45 Ethernet

My latest video was initially going to be something for the Extra’s channel but when I put it together it was clear it would do well on the main channel. You all love networking!

Last year I upgraded my network to a 10 gigabit backbone. This was to support the Comcast Gigabit Pro service I had installed at my house which at the time ran at 2 gigabits per second symmetrical but has now been upgraded to 6. The only problem was that me the cheapskate installed only Cat 5e wiring in the studio and throughout my home.

The good news is that I’ve found my 5e runs are relatively short and can support multigigabit speeds reliably. The only problem I’ve had so far is with my main Vmix production machine that on rare occasions errors out and locks up my entire network when I’m pushing large volumes of data in or out of it. I initially thought it was a problem with NDI video and my Unifi switches but it also recently triggered itself when I was running an Internet speed test.

I am not known for my cable management or wiring skills but the run to my production machine is very short to my equipment closet and there’s also a drop ceiling. This made it really easy to wire up a new connection. Rather than stay on copper I instead ran a short fiber run and purchased a new networking card with an SFP+ connector vs. RJ45.

It was a very simple installation and so far (knock on wood) everything is working great.

The problem could have been due to the inexpensive non-Intel based 10 gig NIC I was using but I didn’t want to bother troubleshooting more ethernet solutions when I am not using the recommended cabling.

You can see the parts I used in the video here!

New Livestream: Checking out TMNT Shredder’s Revenge!

Here’s the deal: if you were a fan of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game you’re going to love the new reincarnation called Shredder’s Revenge. It captures the original’s vibe perfectly yet adds modern gameplay elements. It has beautiful retro graphics that are true to the original but new at the same time. The best part is that it’s already on Xbox Game Pass on the console and PC.

On the PC the system specifications are pretty minimal and the game itself takes up less than a gigabyte on your hard drive. It ran great on the Surface Laptop Go 2 we reviewed the other day.

Check out the livestream I did playing through the first five or six levels here.

The game supports couch co-op and online co-op, allowing six players in at a time. With a full complement it gets pretty crazy and I’ll admit it’s hard to keep track of where your character is when that many people are playing at once. During the stream I opened my game up to the world and we had quite a brawl going on with Shredder’s agents.

The game adds some new moves and each character has unique attributes. And like the console version there are skateboard levels to break up the repetitive nature of the gameplay a bit.

It’s not overly difficult. I played it on the middle difficulty setting and I breezed through the first third of the game in about an hour. It was even easier when other players came in to help. If you die in a co-op game there’s a short window where your teammates can revive your character. Losing all of your lives will take you back to the beginning of the level similar to other modern beat ’em ups.

My favorite recent beat ’em up by far is River City Girls. My daughters and I had a blast playing through the game. TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge is a close second to it.

New Video: Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2 Review

Full confession: I have a thing for 12″ laptops. I was a huge fan of Apple’s 12″ Macbook that remains one of my favorite laptops of all time. The fact that Apple hasn’t made an M1/M2 version of it is downright malpractice at this point.

I liked that Mac for its convenience. It wasn’t pretty slow and didn’t have the best keyboard, but it made up for those shortfalls in its extremely light weight, portability and battery life.

I have not found many computers on the Windows side that come close to that Macbook except the Microsoft Surface Go laptops. I bought it for review a year or so ago and ended up keeping it because it’s become my go-to Windows device for the times when I need a Windows device. Like the Macbook it comes with some compromises: The Surface Go has relatively short battery life, no backlit keyboard, lackluster graphics performance, a low resolution display and a noisy cooling fan.

But the convenience and utility of an affordable fully featured (and well built) Windows laptop outweighed all of it for me.

The second iteration of the Surface Laptop Go, called the Go 2, brings a substantial performance boost in its graphical performance. While not a gaming powerhouse by any means it is able to run many modern games at 720p at or around 30 fps. In my review we were able to get Red Dead Redemption 2, No Man’s Sky, and the Witcher 3 running at decent frame rates. The cooling fan is also noticeably quieter vs. the original too.

Physically it’s the same high quality piece of hardware as before, right down to the non-backlit keyboard and low res display. But it has a fit and finish that few laptops at this price point have – it is engineered with the same attention to detail as Microsoft’s considerably more expensive devices in the Surface lineup.

Bottom line it’s not for everyone. But for those looking for a full featured Windows PC that’s small, lightweight, and functional there are not many other choices at this price point.

New Extra’s Channel Video: Surface Laptop Go 2 Unboxing

Yesterday on the Extra’s channel I unboxed the new Surface Laptop Go 2 (affiliate link) which I will be working on reviewing today. Physically it feels a lot like the old one but they made some major improvements to its graphics performance and fan noise.

You can get a sneak peek at its performance in the livestream I did yesterday testing it out. I’m sure I’ll get lots of price vs. features discussion in the comment stream on the review but I think there’s a well established place in the market for this device and it’s priced right for it.

In the meantime check out the unboxing here!

New Video: Comcast Doubles “Gigabit Pro” Speeds to 6 Gigabits Per Second

About a year and a half ago I installed Comcast’s fiber optic Gigabit Pro service at my home. I documented the process over the course of several weeks that you can see on this playlist.

When the service was first installed in October of 2020 it offered a 2 gigabit connection over an SFP+ circuit along with a second 1 gigabit RJ45 circuit. A few months later they increased the SFP+ speed to 3 gigabits.

This past week Comcast announced they were upping the speed again, this time doubling it to a full 6 gigabits per second over the SFP+ while still maintaining the 1 gig circuit for a total of 7.

But what can you do with that amount of bandwidth realistically? Well, it largely depends on what you’re looking to do along with network conditions and interoperability agreements.

As you’ll see in this week’s Weekly Wrapup, it’s relatively easy to hit the full speed when running a speed test to one of Comcast’s servers, but it’s harder to reach those speeds when testing servers on networks outside of Comcast’s infrastructure. For example when I upload YouTube videos rarely do I see the connection hit 1 gigabit, let alone 6.

Still having a multigigabit connection has been a real game changer for my workflow. I’m very happy with the service reliability and the dramatic reduction in upload times for my videos.

New Video : HAM Radio Update!

The last time we talked about my amateur radio adventure I had just passed my technician license exam but didn’t yet have the license! In this latest video I fill you in on all of the things I’ve been doing on the air. Here’s what I’ve managed to figure out:

Contacting the Space Station
The International Space Station has a pair of amateur radios on board and it’s possible with just a handheld radio to communicate through it! Most of the time the astronauts aren’t available but the radio is set in repeater mode so people on the ground can communicate with each other over great distances. In the video I demonstrate how I was able to talk with some 300 miles away using the station as a repeater!

Digital Voice Communications
The Anytone 878UVII Plus radio I purchased works in analog and digital modes. I was able to connect to a local repeater and communicate with the Connecticut ARES group digitally. I’ve found so far that experienced Hams have been very welcoming and helpful with this newbie :).

Packet Radio
I am very interested in sending data through the air without having to use phone lines or Internet connections to do it. In the video I demonstrate how I was able to send an email through a local Winlink server using my handheld radio and a laptop.

What’s next? I need to get a proper antenna mounted on my roof for VHF & UHF communications along with a more powerful base station radio. That’s my next project although I’ll probably hire a professional to install it. I welcome any tips, recommendations and advice !

New Extra’s Channel Video: Unboxing the Wyze Cam Floodlight

As many of you know I use a bunch of Wyze IOT stuff because it’s convenient, cheap, and can work without a subscription fee. I have a long dead motion detector floodlight on my garage and recently came across this Wyze floodlight that has a Wyze Cam Version 3 attached to it.

I haven’t hooked it up just yet (I am having an electrician friend do the work for me) but thought I would unbox it so people who are more handy can see what’s in the box for hardware. The TLDR is not much.

Watch the unboxing here! And see some of my prior Wyze reviews here.

New Video: Lenovo Yoga 6 (2022) Review

Lenovo’s 13″ Yoga 6 2-in-1 laptop has been updated for 2022 with Ryzen 5000 series processors and a 16:10 1920×1200 display. They’ve packed a lot of value into this one. See my full review here.

They checked all of the boxes here: decent casual gaming performance, that nice 16:10 display, a 1080p web cam, backlit keyboard, a fingerprint reader along with face recognition, relatively quiet fan noise, a thin design that weighs just under 3 pounds and excellent battery life. It also has a carpeted display lid if you’re looking for something a little different from an aesthetic standpoint.

Lenovo loaned me the entry level version for this review that is currently on sale for $599 (affiliate link). Its Ryzen 5500U is fine for most tasks and light gaming, although the 5700U option with 16GB of RAM will provide better performance for games and video editing.

Just note that the better performing Ryzen 6000 series chips are now making their way out to laptops like this one. I have no doubt it a year’s time (or less) we’ll see better performing units at around the same price point as this one. But if you’re need an affordable all-rounder right now, this is definitely one worth looking at.

New Video : Your Next Smartphone Might Use Satellites vs. Cellular Networks for Messaging

This week’s Weekly Wrapup Video was inspired by a Robert X. Cringley post about a rumored secret deal between Apple and satellite operator Globalstar. From the post:

Apple will shortly enter the satellite business by acquiring GlobalStar and its 24 satellites. They will use those 24, plus 24 more satellites that Apple has already commissioned, to offer satellite service for iMessage and Apple’s Find My network just like they implied in their denial last year.

The link in Cringley’s post goes to this Space News Article about a recent infusion of cash that Globalstar is set to receive from a top secret potential customer.

The operator said Feb. 24 it picked MDA and Rocket Lab to supply a set of 17 satellites to replenish its constellation after a “potential customer” agreed to fund most of the $327 million project. The agreement includes an option for up to nine additional satellites at $11.4 million each

The potential network will only run at about 10 megabits per second per satellite so it won’t be able to transfer large items like videos or high resolution imagery, but it is enough to provide service even in the most remote locations. In fact this type of messaging is very popular in the amateur radio world, with protocols like APRS transmitting location data in very small bursts at a much slower rate 1200 bits per second.

Would it work indoors? Who knows. But developments in weak signal technologies lead me to think that it will be able to send small bits of data anywhere in the world with an off-the-shelf consumer smartphone.

Like many other tech leaps the confluence of a bunch of technological developments are coming together here: cheaper launches to space, microprocessor advancements and smaller and cheaper satellites.

8bitdo Ultimate Wired Controller for Xbox Review

8bitdo released a new game controller for the Xbox (affiliate link) called the Ultimate Wired Controller for Xbox. You can see my full review here.

Unlike their last Xbox branded controller that didn’t actually work with the Xbox, this one will work on any Xbox One or Series console along with Windows PCs. I also found it to work with Raspberry Pi’s and the MiSTer project. It does not, however, work on mobile phones or Android TV boxes.

As its name implies this is a wired only controller but its cable is a little short at 3 meters (about 9.8 feet). This might have been ample length back in the 80’s and 90’s but it only got about 3/4s of the way to my couch from my Series X console. While it has a bluetooth radio on board that is only used for its configuration app. It will not function wirelessly.

In my game controller latency test (done by shooting a screen and the controller at 240 frames per second) I found this to be one of the least laggy I have ever reviewed. It was even a little quicker than the first party Xbox One controller connected via a USB cable.

The control sticks have a little more travel vs. the first party Xbox controller so you may notice a larger dead zone in some games. Most Xbox game developers are targeting the Xbox controller for their controller dead zones so you might find yourself having to push the stick a little further to get the same movement vs. the stock controller.

The directional pad looks a lot like the SNES inspired one of the 8bitdo Pro 2 controller. But it doesn’t feel as a precise – I encountered a few errant diagonals when moving my character back and forth in the legend of Zelda. But the d-pad here is definitely better than the stock Xbox controller.

The rest of the controller feels pretty nice. It’s a little smaller than the stock xbox controller but I like the way it felt in my medium-sized hands. Buttons are solid and it even has two buttons on the lower portion of the controller that can be configured.

The configuration software is really the killer app here. It’s possible to configure the controller with your phone and remap its controls while it’s active in a game on the Xbox or PC! You can find that demonstrated in the video – it’s something I’ve never seen on a controller.

It’s possible to configure the controller with a phone while it’s plugged into an Xbox or PC!

While it doesn’t allow for macro functionality you can remap any button on the controller, adjust the sensitivity and deadzones of the control sticks and analog triggers, and invert the stick controls. It stores those settings in one of three profiles that are stored on the controller.

For the price point I think this is a solid offering for more casual gamers who are not looking to spend $100+ on a controller.

New Video: HP Tablet 11 Review

This new 11″ Windows tablet from HP is a bit costly when factoring in all of its accessories but it does have one creature comfort that most tablets don’t : the ability to use its keyboard in portrait or landscape mode. You can see my review here.

It also has a single camera that can rotate from the rear of the device to the front as needed with a button push. Its angle can also be further adjusted via its software interface or manually.

Beyond that it’s a run-of-the-mill Windows tablet running with a lower end Intel N6000 processor. This is a “Jasper Lake” chip which is Intel’s family of low end processors that typically appear on devices like this along with Mini PCs and NAS devices.

For the sorts of things that most consumers use a tablet for the performance is adequate. The bonus here is that it is running Windows 11 so most Windows apps can be installed provided you take the machine out of Windows “S” mode.

At its current sale price of $399 (affiliate link) a fully decked out tablet with keyboard and pen will run about $587. This is competitive against a 9th generation iPad with a keyboard cover and Apple pencil. But the iPad will get better battery life, better performance for comparable apps, and has a much better camera system.

The optional keyboard attachment worked nicely. The trackpad is accurate and not too springy and the keys, while small, are well spaced with nice travel.

Pen support is here too but I found the pen to have more latency than I would like and the screen is a bit slippery when writing. The Apple pencil on the iPad is a much better experience.

But for those looking for a Windows device in tablet form this is one worth checking out. See my other tablet reviews here.