TR Forums

So

I'm looking for a good laptop alternative. With my current position, I've got a desktop at work, and several purpose built high end desktops at home, but I'm going to be doing a fair bit of traveling in the near future.
As a result, and since my laptop that was 6 years old finally died, I'm looking into windows tablets. The kind I'm looking for are what were called Slates or sometimes 2in1s.

The features I'm looking for are as follows, mostly in order of preference:
x86 system
3:2 screen
USB C
Decent Type Cover type option for documents, spreadsheets and emails, not so much coding
Magnetically Attached pen
Charges using USB C

Low priority but nice,
at least 1 USB A
more than 1 USB C to be able to charge and attach at the same time.

If the new Surface Pro had usb C it'd be a cinch but it doesn't so now I'm looking at options.

ETA I'm going to be pulling the trigger within a week or two so that I have it on hand to travel to my new posting.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-no ... Id=6074500


oops, doesn't look like the screen format you want. (..it is however a "2 in 1", and it looks like a lot of 2 in 1's are NOT 3:2.)

The 15" is better but costs a bit more. (..it's actually quite a bit better with it's wacom screen.)


Something similar from China for a lot less (and lower processor performance) on pre-order w/ March date (..and Chuwi is now absolutely reputable):

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/core ... t-laptop#/



..and here is a Surface Pro 4 knockoff from Chuwi (having the 3:2 and higher res. screen) with USB C (..though not really what I'd call a "2 in 1"):

https://www.banggood.com/Chuwi-SurBook- ... rehouse=HK

-pen and keyboard are extra.

Review (w/ several flaws noted):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xNMR26o-YE

I have one of these: https://www.acer.com/ac/en/CA/content/s ... tchalpha12
mi
It is water cooled so there is no heat from this thing. I don't have the pen but I don't use it anyways. They are fairly cheap so you can always get one. The system is quite snappy, and although most people don't trust Acre (including me), it is a nice machine. very solid. every connection you want.

I really bought it cause my wife stepped on my old laptop 5 years ago and cracked the screen so it wasn't mobile anymore but worked connected to the TV. I already have a chromecast and a miracast little box, not to mention the wireless AC was a must.

I just bought my wife one of these: https://www3.lenovo.com/ca/en/tablets/a ... ZITZTOYB1F

haven't really tried it out yet, but i'm sure i will get some feedback this week when she comes home and tries it out. She travels for work alot and thinks this will be the tablet she was looking for.

that aspect ratio is tough to find outside of surface products.

Here is another Surface Pro knockoff:

https://www.amazon.com/Huawei-MateBook- ... IJ640?th=1

..and it also has USB-C. (..and a range of prices with different hardware spec.)

..and a newer version.

https://www.amazon.com/Huawei-MateBook- ... 145FK&th=1

lex-ington wrote:

I have one of these: https://www.acer.com/ac/en/CA/content/s ... tchalpha12
mi
It is water cooled so there is no heat from this thing.

Eh, it's a heatpipe. Nearly every laptop CPU cooling solution for 10+ years has one. The fanless design is nice, though, it must mean they're channeling enough heat into the chassis to not require one.

It may be a heat pipe, but this article here at Tech Radar reports its liquid cooled, and that's not the only site where I saw that reference: http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac ... 444/review

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it is a great laptop alternative, but for the price...there was nothing else with the power, ports, and the keyboard. I thought there may be an option with 16GB of ram, but I was not prepared to pay over $1000 for anything but a house or a car.The 2-in-1 cost me $790 CDN from Staple on sale...and that's after taxes. The 8GB of RAM does a good job.

lex-ington wrote:

It may be a heat pipe, but this article here at Tech Radar reports its liquid cooled, and that's not the only site where I saw that reference: http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac ... 444/review

Again, though, marketing jargon. Acer concedes it's a heatpipe solution if you dig into their specs page. Since the device employs an aluminum chassis (instead of the many cast magnesium bits that are common in ultraportables), they're able to use it as a giant passive heat sink.

So, I wouldn't get hung up on 2in1 marketing jargon, I was just using the term that I found online.
I did find two alternatives to the Surface line with 3:2 screens, I'm just wondering if anyone has any experience with either of them.

Latitude 5285 2 in 1
HP Spectre x2 (2017)

Anyone have any opinion about them?
As for the suggestions I am looking at them, but I do want to point out that I'm looking for basically Surface Pro alternatives, 360 degree hinges just don't do it for me.

ETA: There's also the Latitude 7285 which seems to be in a different (higher) class. It's quite a bit more expensive, but it's also got 2 USB C TB ports which doesn't seem to be available on anything else I can find.
Does anyone have it? It seems a very different device especially with the keyboard having an actual battery in it, so I would like some first hand opinions before I look at it.

lex-ington wrote:

I just bought my wife one of these: https://www3.lenovo.com/ca/en/tablets/a ... ZITZTOYB1F

You really don’t like your wife. Even Google has given up on Android tablets.

Both AMD and Intel have just announced really interesting mobile CPU/GPU tech. The next wave of Windows based tablets will be worth the wait.

Are you a Creative Cloud user?

..and some of it is being reported on right now:



..more like a phone w/ processor & battery life/operation:

https://www.pcper.com/news/Mobile/CES-2 ... 630-2-1-PC


Pricey Powerhouse:

https://www.pcper.com/news/Mobile/CES-2 ... R-Displays

There's also the HP Elite x2- that has a 3:2 screen (2736 x 1824). Very pricey for what you get, though.

Speaking as someone who owns a Windows 2-in-1, and has done for several years... are you sure that this is what you want? I've got a Dell Venue 11 7130- I thought that I would be getting a great combo device that would remove the need for both an Android tablet and a laptop. What I've found however is that it has almost no good tablet apps- and even the ones that exist lag far behind their Android versions. The Netflix Windows 10 app is a buggy mess that looks terrible- you're genuinely better off using the website. The performance is just not that good, because the CPU is constantly getting throttled down- Dell set a 7W power limit on this thing, which means that as soon as you fire up anything that uses the GPU the whole thing throttles down to crazy low clock speeds, and performance goes to ***t. It's big and bulky, meaning it's not that comfortable to hold for web browsing, and it doesn't function that well as a laptop due to the fact that it's top heavy and tends to fall over- it's a nightmare to use on the sofa in laptop mode.

A lot of these problems are probably due to the fact that it's quite an early 2-in-1- it has a Haswell CPU which is pretty power hungry, meaning that it needs an enormous, bulky battery, and a noisy and bulky active cooling system. (You can tell whenever Windows starts installing updates in the background, because the fan starts whining away like crazy.) Not to mention that when working hard, it gets warm enough to be uncomfortable to use. Maybe the newer, thinner devices with more efficient SoCs wouldn't be nearly as bad. But to be frank, I wouldn't buy a device like this again.

End User wrote:

lex-ington wrote:

I just bought my wife one of these: https://www3.lenovo.com/ca/en/tablets/a ... ZITZTOYB1F

You really don’t like your wife. Even Google has given up on Android tablets.

If the windows tablet had the offline option for her Google Play movies, she would have had the windows version I bought originally, but for her it was the biggest sticking point. So I git her the Android version. My wife does not even like tech, so when she has a sticking point, I find options because she WILL NOT use it otherwise.

So I've gotten to borrow a few devices of this class in the past and the newer ones are much better from a throttling point of view and the primary demanding use is going to be spreadsheets. It won't really be a media consumption device much rather I will use it for notes and the like in meetings. It's meant to be a more portable laptop ish thing not a tablet. I have an iPad and don't use it anymore except for browsing. I don't even install apps to it anymore.

Well Dell had a clearance going for latitude devices so I got a refurbished 5285 2 in i7 model with 16g ram for ~700 after rebates with one year of support thrown in. It even had a smart card reader which is really useful for me. It was too big a discount to not get, and if I don't like it my father has a surface pro 2 which is getting long in the tooth that I can gift this as a replacement.