Similarly, in the trailer for the upcoming sci-fi film Kin, the neon lights and colorful explosions burst with rich, saturated blues and oranges. Matte displays don't typically have the same wow factor as their glossy counterparts, but I was in awe every time I visited my favorite websites on the Precision. My main complaint with the display is that skin tones look oversaturated, but you can adjust the color temperature using Dell's included display-calibration software.The display's outstanding qualities were quantified in our testing. The panel reproduced a staggering 211 percent of the sRGB color gamut, achieving among the highest ratings we've seen. While the Lenovo ThinkPad P71 (183 percent) and HP ZBook 17 G4 (173 percent) also impressed, their panels were nowhere near as colorful as the Precision's. The workstation average is much lower, at 149 percent.
With this machine's matte display and impressive peak brightness, you should have no issue using the Precision 7730 in bright environments. The display reached a maximum brightness of 330 nits, which is higher than scores from the ThinkPad P71 (283 nits) and HP ZBook 17 G4 (256 nits). The workstation average is also dimmer, at 325 nits. With an actuation force of 69 grams and a key travel of 1.6 millimeters (1.5mm to 2mm is recommended), the chiclet-style keyboard with numpad is comfortable to use, even during long typing sessions. Weighty and tactile, the backlit keys offer a rewarding amount of feedback and are well-spaced.In the 10fastfingers.com typing test, I reached 114 words per minute, with an error rate of 5 percent. That matches my 95 percent accuracy rate but is slightly slower than my 119 word-per-minute average, likely because of the key's above-average actuation force.
For a device this large, the Precision 7730's 3.9 x 2.1-inch touchpad is inexplicably small. Fortunately, it made up for its size by responding quickly to my gestures, including pinch-to-zoom, four-finger tapping to open settings and three-finger swiping to change apps.MORE: Our Favorite Gaming KeyboardsIf touchpads aren't your thing, you can use the little rubber nub in the center of the Precision 7730's keyboard. That is, if you can find it. The black pointing stick doesn't have a colorful ring around it, so it blends in with the dark deck. Still, I had no problems using the pointing stick and secondary set of left-, right- and middle-click buttons to navigate the web.
The Precision 7730 is a performance powerhouse. Equipped with an Intel Core i9-8950HK CPU and 32GB of RAM, the Precision 7730 quickly loaded 30 Microsoft Edge tabs, four of which played YouTube videos while two others streamed Fornite on Twitch.
You've long been able to buy portable batteries that'll keep your phone running even through a heavy day of thumb-typing. Soon you should be able to get one of those even for your beefy 15-inch MacBook Pro, too.Hyper, a Sanho product line specializing in accessories that fill gaps in an Apple-centric digital life, on Monday announced the new HyperJuice portable USB-C battery that packs a whopping 100 watt-hour capacity. For comparison, the current 15-inch MacBook Pro has a 83.6-watt-hour battery.The 7-inch-long HyperJuice has three ports -- one 100-watt USB-C port for the 15-inch MacBook Pro, one 60-watt USB-C port for smaller laptops that don't draw as much power, and one quick-charge 18-watt old-style USB-A for phones and tablets. You can charge devices with all three of its ports at the same time.
The device shows the versatility of the USB-C standard, years old but still a relative novelty for much of the computing world. The same port can be used for many types of devices, and now it can handle charging PCs as well as power-sipping phones. If you don't have USB-C today, you might well have it on your next laptop or phone, though Apple still hasn't embraced it for mobile devices.The HyperJuice battery pack will cost $300, although an early KickStarter price is half that. It's scheduled to start shipping in October.It'll charge a 15-inch MacBook MacBook Pro as fast as its power cable, Chief Executive Daniel Chin said, since it can pump out more power than that laptop's 87-watt charger. And it holds its charge well while you're on the road, losing only about 20 percent of its power per year, he added.
Because of the cleverness of modern USB charging, you can plug the HyperJuice into the wall to charge it at the same time it's charging a laptop. It takes 60 to 90 minutes to fully charge the 1.2-pound, aluminum-case HyperJuice.Its battery capacity is right up against the current Federal Aviation Administration limit for battery packs.PC gaming is the hardest gaming ecosystem to join since a decent gaming PC, be it a desktop or laptop, can easily run for $2,000 or more. But the Acer Predator Helios 300 laptop disrupts that trend: this $1,199 laptop is fully capable of high-end gaming and VR. If you’re in the market for a gaming laptop but you have a limited budget, you should be excited because, until now, your options have been far more limited.The Helios 300 is a true-to-form gaming laptop with a 15.6-inch 144Hz screen, GTX 1060 graphics, and an Intel Core i7 chip. Specs like these are usually reserved for laptops in the $2,000 range, yet the Helios 300 offers all of them for a fraction of the usual cost.
While it seems like the Helios 300 is a too-good-to-be-true laptop, it does come with some caveats, namely in design and keyboard quality. But even with those compromises, the Helios 300 is a precursor of a trend in cheaper but still-capable gaming laptops.At the very least, I can say Acer designed a gaming laptop that looks the part: bright red accents, chunky corners, and thick bezels with plastic and metal that equal six pounds in weight. The Helios 300’s 1.05-inch chassis isn’t the thinnest, and it doesn’t have the highest quality build I’ve seen in a laptop for this price, but it does well to mask most of my fingerprints, despite its dark metal palm rest.
The Helios 300 reminds me of gaming laptops from two years ago when tasteful styling was unheard of and a gaming laptop that could double as a productivity machine was equally unheard of. I cannot say this design language has aged well — it hasn’t — but the real worth of the Helios 300 is in how well it can play games.A “gaming” laptop, no matter its price, should be able to deliver high-end performance through a decent GPU and CPU and have the bare essentials to take advantage of that performance, such as a high refresh rate screen and reliable cooling. To this point, the Acer Helios 300 delivers a little bit of everything and then some.
The first spec an affordable gaming laptop should focus on is a good screen. Acer used a 144Hz IPS screen on the Helios 300. High refresh rate screens are important in PC gaming because the higher the rate, the smoother your gameplay experience will be. 144Hz is the current standard for high-end desktops and laptops, and it’s a welcome addition to a $1,200 laptop, which are usually equipped with slower, 60Hz screens.There’s a lot I can say about the Helios 300’s gaming and productivity performance. Prior to the Helios 300, I haven’t tested a sub-$2,000 laptop that can play Rainbow Six: Siege and League of Legends, at a consistent 144 frames per second. Overwatch also runs at ultra settings, but it dips to the 80 fps mark in intense firefights. Destiny 2 also runs comfortably at around 100 fps with settings on ultra.The gist of it is that you’ll be able to play most current-generation PC games on high (or the highest) settings, well past the 60 fps mark needed for smooth gameplay, and sometimes you’ll even reach the native 144 fps target.