Xiaomi Redmi 4A review: One of the best entry-level smartphones, but only if you can get your hands on it

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  Other smartphone players have also caught on to Xiaomi’s strategy, and there has definitely been stiff competition in the last one year, but Xiaomi still has a star product in most of the under Rs 30,000 price segments. The only annoying aspect is actually buying a Xiaomi handset. Its flash sales or open sales are notorious for making you wait weeks before you finally get one handset. After these many years, it is high time Xiaomi got this aspect right. It is a pain for mobile phone buyers to wait for weeks before they get lucky in purchasing one handset off the sales.
  
  
  Recently, Xiaomi released its entry level Redmi device — the Xiaomi Redmi 4A, which is priced at Rs 5,999. Will this be the phone to go for someone thinking of making the switch from a feature phone? Let us find out

Build and Design: 7/10

Xiaomi’s mid-range devices have started to sport metallic builds. The Xiaomi Redmi 4A being an entry level device, comes with a polycarbonate finish. It weighs in at 131 grams and feels quite light, but sturdy to hold.

The volume rocker and power/standby button on the right hand side give good feedback. The SIM card tray is located on the left hand edge. The phone measures around 8.5 mm thick.

Xiaomi Redmi 4A ensures that there are no sharp edges on the phone, thanks to bevelled edges. This also helps in giving a good grip to the phone. On the rear of the phone there are fine grooves at the top and bottom, but it’s just a design element and it is not meant for antenna bands. The 13 MP rear camera is housed inside a metallic ring and is located on the top left hand corner with an LED flash unit beside it. The Mi branding is prominent on the lower half of the rear side. Towards the base there is a speaker grille section, with a minor chin just below it.

The phone comes with an infrared blaster on the top edge, which also houses the 3.5 mm audio jack. At the base, you have a microUSB port for charging and data transfer. On the front there is a 5-inch HD display with thick bezels on the top and bottom.

Overall, the build quality at this price point isn’t bad at all. The design is nothing out of the ordinary. The one-hand fit element will certainly attract a lot of buyers.

Features: 7/10
Xiaomi Redmi 4A comes with a 5-inch HD display and houses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 SoC with a quad-core Cortex A53 processor clocked at 1.4 GHz. The graphics portion is taken care of by an Adreno 308 GPU. The chipset is paired with 2 GB RAM. It comes in 16 GB and 32 GB storage variants. We got the 16 GB model to test, which gives around 10.3 GB of usable space. You can expand the storage using a microSD card by up to 256 GB.

The Xiaomi Redmi 4A comes in a hybrid dual SIM configuration (micro SIM + nano SIM), supports Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS and BDS. It comes with a micro USB port for charging and data transfer, and there is no support for fast charging.

Thankfully it bundles in an FM radio as well. On the camera front, you get a 13 MP rear camera, along with a 5 MP selfie camera. All this is powered by a non-removable 3,120 mAh Li-ion battery.

Publish date: April 25, 2017 12:48 pm| Modified date: April 25, 2017 12:48 pm

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Dell PowerEdge R830 review: Four into two does go

Dell PowerEdge R830 review

PROS

• 4-way server in compact 2U format
• Broadwell-based Intel Xeon E5-4600 v4 processors
• Wide processor choice, up to 22 cores (44 threads) per socket
• 16 internal storage bays
• Optional NVMe add-in cards
• iDRAC8
• DDR4 RAM

Price
£35,942 (ex. VAT)

The 2U PowerEdge R830 is the latest addition to Dell's 13G range of PowerEdge servers, propelled to this position courtesy of Intel's 14nm Broadwell processors. On the face of it, this would seem unremarkable as there are lots of servers built around Broadwell, except that the R830 can take four of the latest Xeon E5-4600 v4 processors based on this technology, with up to 22 cores (44 threads) per socket and more cache than previous-generation Xeons. Team these together with faster DDR4 RAM and the end result is a server that can be significantly quicker and more capable than its predecessor (the 12G PowerEdge R820) and ideally suited to compute-intensive applications such as heavy-duty database hosting, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and other large-scale virtualisation and server consolidation projects.


The Dell PowerEdge R830.
Image: Alan Stevens/Tech Pro Research


The same, but different

At first glance the R830 appears to have changed little compared to the R820 it replaces. There's a new badge up front of course, but with the same 16 drive bays alongside that can take 2.5-inch drives -- either SSD or magnetic disks. Dell offers SATA, SAS or nearline SAS implementations as required.

The same solid and superbly engineered chassis is also employed as before, with a completely removable lid for ready access to clearly marked hot- and cold-swap components inside. You also get redundant power as standard, now with beefier 1,600W supplies, if needed, to cope with the demands of the new silicon.


Redundant power supplies now come in 750W and 1,600W formats.
Image: Alan Stevens/Tech Pro Research



Fully configured, the R830 chassis is a heavy old beast, requiring two people to slide it into the rack, and when you take the lid off there's not much empty space inside. That's mainly because squeezing four large Xeon processors plus heatsinks and 48 memory modules into a 2U chassis is a real challenge. Dell has opted to solve this by splitting the load between the motherboard and a Processor Expansion Module (PEM) -- effectively, a mezzanine card that plugs in on top. There are two processor sockets and 24 DIMM slots on the motherboard, and a similar arrangement on the PEM.


The R830 motherboard has two processor slots and 24 DIMM sockets.
Image: Alan Stevens/Tech Pro Research



First used on the R820, it's worth noting that the PEM is entirely optional but, with plenty of more affordable dedicated 2-way server alternatives to choose from, we doubt many customers would leave it out and start with just two sockets.


The other two processors and 24 DIMMs are accommodated on a Processor Expansion Module (PEM) that plugs into special sockets on top of the main R830 motherboard.
Image: Alan Stevens/Tech Pro Research



Our review system shipped with this option fitted and, as such, came fully populated with Xeon E5-4650 v4 processors (14 cores/28 threads) clocked at 2.2GHz with a 105W TDP (Thermal Design Power). However, there's a lot of choice here, from eight up to 22 cores per processor and varying TDP ratings of up to 135W for the 22-core E5-4669 v4.

Support for DDR4 RAM is available across all members of the E5-4600 v4 family, although the headline speed of 2.4GHz is only available on the high-end processors, starting with the E5-4640 v4. In theory up to 6TB of memory can be handled in total, but until 128GB DIMMs become available the R830 is limited to just half that (3TB), just as on the R820. Our review unit came with a more modest 512GB of RAM using 32GB ECC modules.
Power and cooling

On the cooling front, the R830 keeps the same bank of six hot-swap fans as its predecessor. These are located in a pull-out module sat between the storage at the front and the electronics at the rear of the server. Although noisy, they proved no louder than most. Similarly, power consumption is average for a four-socket server, determined both by what processors you go for and how hard they're worked.


Six hot-swap fans keep the server cool.
Image: Alan Stevens/Tech Pro Research


Storage to go

With just 16 hot-swap drive bays to play with, the R830 isn't the ideal platform for those seeking the ultimate in storage capacity. That said, it's not bad and you can always add external drives or hook the server up to a SAN to overcome this limitation.

Our review system came with a couple of 400GB SSDs to handle the host software together with six 1.2TB magnetic SAS drives for data. These were all cabled to a Dell PERC H730P controller and configured as a RAID 5 array. Other controllers from the PERC range can be specified if preferred, while customers looking for the ultimate in storage performance are directed towards Dell's NVMe add-in cards.


The R830's 16 internal drive bays can accommodate a mix of SSD and magnetic storage.
Image: Alan Stevens/Tech Pro Research


Connectivity, management and more

Network attachment is handled by an on-board controller and daughter card combination, with choices including dedicated quad-port Gigabit and dual 10GbE setups. Our review system had a mix: two 10GbE ports, with two Gigabit ports alongside. Support for TOE and iSCSI offload is also available on some of the configurations.


The network daughter card on the review server equipped it with two 10bE and two Gigabit ports. The iDRAC management controller has its own, dedicated, Gigabit interface.
Image: Alan Stevens/Tech Pro Research



A separate Gigabit port, meanwhile, provides connectivity to the Dell management controller which, on the R830, is upgraded to iDRAC8 to work with the latest Dell OpenManage platform.


The R830 benefits from the latest Dell iDRAC 8 remote access controller.
Image: Alan Stevens/Tech Pro Research



Other options include Dell's embedded hypervisor option with redundant SD Card modules and seven PCIe 3.0 slots for expansion. One of these was occupied by the RAID adapter on the review system, with a QLogic-based Fibre Channel card in another.

A workhorse of a server that can host a range of workloads, the Xeon E5-4600 v4 processors and DDR4 RAM in Dell's PowerEdge R830 deliver a significant performance boost compared to the previous-generation R820. Furthermore, it's possible to do this without, necessarily, adding to the core count and the associated licensing costs -- which can be considerable on this kind of platform. Of course, other vendors have similar offerings, but there's plenty in the R830 to commend Dell's solution, which is worth investigating by anyone seeking a powerful 4-socket server in a compact and incredibly well-engineered 2U format.

Asus ZenFone 3 Max 5.5 review: Good build, great battery; but for Rs 17,999 look elsewhere

From the moment Asus announced its ZenFone 3 lineup in India way back in August, I was worried. Asus appeared to be charging a premium for decidedly mid-range specs and it was with that fear at the back of my mind that I approached the new ZenFone 3 Max.

This phone is the successor to Asus’ own ZenFone Max. The Max gets its name from the humongous battery it packs in. The original Max came with a 5,000mAh battery while this new ZenFone 3 Max packs in a smaller 4,100mAh unit though. The ZenFone Max was also a decidedly budget smartphone with a starting price of just Rs 9,999.

There are two units of the ZenFone 3 Max available. The first is a 5.2-inch variant with a MediaTek chip and 5.2-inch screen that costs Rs 13,999. The other is a 5.5-inch variant with a Snapdragon 430 for Rs 17,999. The smaller one is called the ZenFone 3 Max 5.2 and the larger one the ZenFone 3 Max 5.5.

The ZenFone 3 Max we received for review is the 5.5-inch model.

So what has Asus done to justify that 80 percent bump in price over the original? More importantly, has the company done enough?

Build and Design: 7/10

There’s nothing much to say about the design. All smartphones look largely the same these days and the ZenFone 3 Max is no different.

You get a white, rectangular slab of a phone with 2.5D glass on the front. The back panel is made of metal and there are two plastic panels at the top and bottom to allow for wireless connectivity.

The buttons on the front face are capacitive, but are not backlit, making them a little difficult to use in the dark. The upper half of the front portion features the earpiece speaker, front camera unit and ambient light sensor. An LED is embedded under the surface of the front panel as well and it serves as a notification LED.

The rear features the camera and fingerprint sensor, both of which are aligned to the centre-line at the back. A dual-LED flash and laser focus-assist sensor grace the sides of the camera unit.

Given that the back panel is made of an aluminium alloy, the phone gets bonus points for build quality. The finish isn’t very good, however. The border where the metal meets plastic is rough, as is the transition from glass to metal on the sides.

That said, the build quality is leagues better than the cheap, plasticky feel of the original ZenFone Max.

The dimensions are also great. The phone is just 8.3mm thick and weighs 175g. The iPhone 7 Plus, by comparison, is 7.3mm thick. The ZenFone 3 Max also has a much better screen-to-body ratio of 73 percent as opposed to the iPhone 7 Plus’ 65 percent.

The phone feels nice to hold, if a touch too slippery and it’s way more pocketable than many phones with the same screen size. The buttons are also nice and clicky, which I like.

I’m personally not in favour of a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, but I can’t really dock points for a personal preference of that nature.

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Acer Aspire S13 review: This might just be the best Windows-based Ultrabook in its price range

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By Anirudh Regidi /  23 Aug 2016 , 11:45

The MacBook Air has been the gold standard for ultrabooks almost since its unveiling. At the time it launched, it was the only thin, light and solidly built ultrabook around with decent specifications. Today however, there is a plethora of powerful, gorgeous devices to choose from.

Acer’s Aspire S13 is one such device. It’s slim, light, well-built and more powerful than the Air; it’s also more expensive. It does seem like a great device, but is it worth it?

Build and design: 8/10

First things first. This laptop is thin, very light and looks rather nice. It’s meant to be a business laptop and the muted black finish does help with that image. The entire device seems to be made of metal, though the lid does have a coating of some sort of plastic.

There’s metal under that plastic though, an aspect that we discovered in a rather unfortunate fashion, as you can see below:

Sorry, Acer!

The device is built very well, with one exception. Everything feels solid and unbendable, but the hinges, they feel like cheap plastic. The hinge mechanism itself is made of metal, but the caps are silvery plastic and very flimsy plastic at that.

The plastic pieces around the hinge keep popping open

Another complaint we have with the design of the device is concerning the charger. It’s very compact, smaller even than the MacBook Air’s charger, but the contact point is very flimsy. It doesn’t sit snug in the charging port when plugged in and would have felt at home on a cheaper device.

These are minor niggles in an otherwise great device though. Don’t let those oversights throw you off.

Keyboard and Trackpad: 8.5/10

The keyboard and trackpad are a pleasure to use. They’re comfortable and responsive and the trackpad has just the right amount of friction for my taste.

The keyboard is a compact one and lacks a numpad. There are no shared media keys either, but all other functions such as Wi-Fi toggles, brightness and volume controls, etc. can be adjusted in combination with the Fn key.

The keyboard is backlit

The keys are also very firm in that there’s no wobble when typing. Even if you press a corner, the entire key depresses, which makes for a pleasant typing experience.

The touchpad responds fluidly to gesture inputs and the left-click and right-click buttons are also smooth and responsive. The lack of a touch-screen was a bit of a downer, but overall, I’m very happy with what Acer has done with the keyboard and mouse.

Features: 6/10

The hardware choice for the Acer Aspire is very sensible. You get a 15W Intel Core i7 6500U processor clocked at 2.5GHz (dual-core with HT), 8GB LPDDR3 RAM and a 512GB SSD. The screen resolution is a bit low at 1920×1080, but it’s enough for a 13.3-inch screen and we aren’t complaining.

You get two USB 3.0 ports, one on each side, a USB Type-C 3.1 port and HDMI output. You also get an SD card reader and 802.11ac Wi-Fi with MU-MIMO support, which is to be expected in this day and age.

The fact that all of this is packed into a device that’s as slim and light as the MacBook Air is saying a lot.

The laptop does lose out for its lack of accessories and relatively low-resolution screen – considering we are seeing higher resolution displays from competition.

Display: 7/10

The display on the device is an FHD, 13.3-inch IPS panel. It has a matte finish (Thank you, Acer!) and good brightness levels.

Colours are a bit of an issue, they seem a little muted, and black levels are also not up to the mark. We also found banding to be slight problem. Sharpness was on point however, and so were the refresh rates.

The resolution is a bit odd for a 13.3-inch screen. Without scaling, everything feels a tad too small and to make things feel right, you need to scale to 125 or 150 percent. The problem there is that Windows doesn’t handle scaling very well and sharpness is ruined.

Performance: 6.5/10

In terms of performance, this laptop is right up there alongside the best in its class. Bearing in mind that this device doesn’t come with a graphics card, its CPU performance is actually better than most devices, a step higher up the performance chain.

For comparison, the Acer Aspire S13 scored 44431 in 3DMark Ice Storm Extreme with an i7 6500U, whereas the likes of the Asus G551VW and Dell Inspiron 15 7559, both with the more powerful Intel i7 6700HQ, scored a measly 38,374 and 30,851 respectively. 3DMark Ice Storm Extreme is a CPU intensive test that doesn’t stress the GPU much.

Even without a dedicated GPU, the Aspire S13 managed 48fps in Grid: Autosport at 720p at the medium preset, which is eminently playable. Obviously, light gaming is possible, but that’s not what the laptop is for.

The video conversion time — using Handbrake — was also quite fast at 11 minutes.

Another area where the device shines is in the storage benchmarks. Acer very generously equipped the S13 with a 512GB SSD, which leads to stellar read and write rates of 525 MB/s and 414 MB/s respectively.

This laptop is overkill for the average user, but as long as you’re not gaming, you’ll never be left wanting for performance. In fact, the PCMark score of 2912 is among the highest we’ve seen in this category.

There is one problem in this otherwise perfect performance score and that is overheating. Under heavy load, the CPU temperatures cross the 70 degree Celsius mark and the base heats up to 48 degrees Celsius. This is under heavy load though.

Under normal use, the base gets a little warm, but not uncomfortably so.

Battery Life: 5/10

Battery life was a tolerable 3 hours in our benchmarks, which translated to about 4-6 hours of use. This is not bad for daily use, though we wish there was more on offer.

Verdict and Price in India

I enjoyed every moment I spent with the Aspire S13. It’s lightweight and high-performance made it my go-to option whenever I needed something done quickly (it boots up in seconds). If I bought this laptop for myself, I don’t think I’ll be disappointed.

The price of Rs 84,000 is also not that bad. You’ll only get Intel i5 powered devices in this price range and few will offer a 512GB SSD.

The Acer Aspire S13 is among the best laptops I’ve ever tested and if you’re in the market for a workhorse Ultrabook, it might just be the one for you.

Diwali 2016: Asus ‘Incredible Diwali’ offers on Zenfone 3, laptops starting on 18 October

By tech2 News Staff /  17 Oct 2016 , 16:00

Brands are trying to put their best foot forward with deals and offers during the festive season. Next in line is Asus with its ‘Incredible Diwali’ sale or rather offers that start tomorrow.

However, Asus isn’t putting up a slew of devices on discount, rather offering users a chance to win its acclaimed Zenfone 3. So, those who buy the Asus Zenfone 3 ZE520KL and ZE552KL get the chance to win 100 percent cashback, provided it is bought from authorised partners. So, users will basically get the device for free, and also stand the chance to win the Asus ZenPower.

The Asus Zenfone 3 comes with a 5.5-inch FullHD display and houses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 chipset which is paired with 4GB of RAM. It is priced at Rs 27,999. Read our in-depth review of the Zenfone 3.

Similarly, it is offering free gifts worth Rs 11,000 by paying a nominal charge for those buying its notebooks. In addition, free EMI offers will be available for all its Core series products. This offer is valid for laptops In the gaming section, its Republic of Gamers series will let users stand a chance to win gifts that are worth Rs 10,600, including Microsoft XBox One controller.

But for all of this, Asus wants users to register on its new microsite especially built for the Zenfone offer season. You can head here to find out more about its Diwali sale.

Nikon D3400 review

By Matt Golowczynski 

Ever since its popular D40 model back in 2006, Nikon has done well to dismantle the idea of a DSLR needing to be a large, cumbersome machine. Of course, since then the company has released many even more compact mirrorless 1-series cameras aimed at a junior audience, although it's maintained its footing in the entry-level DSLR sector with a slew of compact and easy-to-use alternatives for those after something more traditional.

For a number of years, Nikon has chosen to split these into two camps. TheD5xxx series has presented an approachable but reasonably powerful solution for those wanting to get going with DSLR photography, but have

Hands on: GoPro Hero5 Session review

 By Matt Swider 

Update: The GoPro Hero5 Session release date is here and our review has been updated with a new video to show off the Karma drone that launches at the end of the month. Now that the official editing apps have launched, we'll refresh to a full review this week.

The GoPro Hero5 Session is the small, cube-shaped action camera that's now capable of shooting stabilized 4K video and capturing all sorts of new wide angles.

• Buy GoPro Hero5 Session at Amazon Germany for €329.99

It's the scrappy alternative to the new GoPro Hero5 Black, and surprisingly it shares many of the top-end specs within its more compact camera frame.

This is a big improvement over last year's GoPro Hero4 Session thanks to a more advanced camera sensor and the addition of video stabilization.

Here's our test flight with the GoPro Karma drone equipped with a GoPro Hero5 Black camera in high wind:

Your video will look noticeably better at the 2.7K and 4K resolutions, more field of view choices will fully take in your adventurous lifestyle, and

Hands on: GoPro Karma Drone review

By Matt Swider

Update: We added a GoPro Karma drone video using the newly launched GoPro Hero5 Black below. It show how easy it is to pilot and how smoothly the video turns out. More videos to come as the drone release date nears.

The GoPro Karma is the action camera company's long-awaited entry into the burgeoning drone category, and it looks like good things come to those video-capturing adrenaline junkies who wait.

• Buy GoPro Karma at Amazon for £729.99

The Karma is a well-priced drone that provides stabilized video while hovering as high as 3280ft (1,000m) and soaring at a maximum speed of 35mph (15m/s). Its 3-axis camera gimbal keeps everything steady.

We didn't crash the Karma and its GoPro Hero 5 Black 'co-pilot' in our first three hours of flying it at the launch event in Lake Tahoe on the California/Nevada border. And yes, we did put it to the ultimate test – in high wind at the top of a mountain.

In fact, new and experienced pilots we saw aced the inaugural flight. This is helped by the fact that GoPro Karma comes with a gamepad-style clamshell controller. It's familiar, with intuitive buttons.

With its integrated 5-inch screen, the controller is