#its only slightly better than the built in windows 10 video editor. but only a little. they both suck balls

[arielluva]

i have such a love hate relationship with clipchamp... i like having a free editing software on my computer but it shits itself and gets sent to buffering purgatory the more clips you add. ironic for something called clipchamp

[realstraykids]

One of the most frequent asks I get is “how do you make your gifs?” Previously I had just linked my FAQ where I have some resources on how to gif listed, but I figured to (hopefully) stop receiving the same ask over and over, I’d just make a tutorial on how I personally gif!

* Please note that everyone has different giffing styles and settings preferences, so the following is just how I make my gifs. Other people are likely to do things differently!

This post will be a comprehensive guide that includes details about DOWNLOADING VIDEOS, USING VAPOURSYNTH TO MAKE GIFS, USING PHOTOSHOP TO MAKE GIFS (+ a blurb on TOPAZ), and COLORING.

This post was last updated on July 30, 2020. Keep reading to get started!

DOWNLOADING VIDEOS

I use a number of sources to download videos/get video clips, depending on the origin of the video.  In general, I try to gif from videos that are at least 1080p - the higher, the better.  It’s almost impossible to make gifs look high quality if they don’t originate from a high quality video! Below are the sources I use:

TS files: kpop24hrs (you need an account), kpopexciting, occasionally torrent links from Google or download links from Twitter (search the group name + date in YYMMDD format + .ts)

Youtube videos: 4K Video Downloader

Vlive videos: Soshistagram

Twitter videos: Twitter Video Downloader

Instagram videos: Dredown

Long videos: If I don’t have the space (or patience) to download a certain video, or if it’s not a downloadable video (e.g. Fanship, paid online concert, etc.) then I screen record with Quicktime Player

(Side question: what’s a TS file? A TS file is essentially a very high quality video that you can find for live show performances and aired music show interviews! TS files are generally 60fps, so they’re how gifmakers can make those super clear and smooth live performance gifs. If a TS file is available for what you want to gif, use it.) 

USING VAPOURSYNTH TO MAKE GIFS - OLD AND NEW VERSION

05/2020 update: I have re-installed Vapoursynth to its latest version, so I am including updated instructions/screenshots for both the old version (that I downloaded ~mid-2018) and the latest version.

After I’ve downloaded my video, I use Vapoursynth to crop, resize, sharpen, and denoise gifs.  Vapoursynth is like Avisynth in that both programs can be used to crop and resize gifs without losing video quality, but VS has the added capabilities of sharpening and denoise.  VS is the reason I don’t need to use Topaz on any of my gifs! You can install Vapoursynth here.

First you drag your video file to the Vapoursynth app installed on your computer. You’ll be prompted to enter a start timestamp in HH:MM:SS format (so if you want the video to start 5 seconds in, you would enter 00:00:05). Then you put the encoding duration also in HH:MM:SS format (if you want the video to be 8 seconds long, you would enter 00:00:08).  Generally I’ll look for the exact moment I want to gif and enter the start timestamp 1 second earlier and have the encoding duration be between 3-5 seconds.

After you’ve entered this, a resizer.html window will automatically pop up. Below are screenshots of examples of my normal settings for my performance gif 4sets (ex. here or here) for both the old and new versions of Vapoursynth.

Old version:

New version:

Below is an explanation of the parts:

GIF Size | The gif widths (the first number) recommended for Tumblr:

1 gif per row: 540px

2 gifs per row: 268px

3 gifs per row: 177px

You can use any height, but these are the ones that I tend to use:

1 gif per row: 243px or 300px most frequently, but sometimes I’ll do 220px/201px/400px/450px/540px depending on how large or small I want them

2 gifs per row: 350px

3 gifs per row: 300px, occasionally I’ll do 375px or 400px if it’s a very long video (e.g. some fancams)

Opacity | Don’t worry about this; it just changes how you view the video in the window.

Preprocessor | This refers to how the video will render! Super important because you’ll be given the option of 60 vs. 30 - these numbers refer to frames per second.  For live performance gifs, I always use qtgmc 60 fast (slow in theory gives you better quality gifs but I’m far too impatient for that). For all other gifs, I do not use any preprocessing method. A basic rule is that if you’re using a TS file, you should preprocess it because it’ll de-interlace the file. If you’re using an mp4 or mkv or any other file, you don’t need to preprocess.

Extra Sharpening/Sharpening | Pretty self-explanatory.  You can move the slider up or down depending on personal preference! I try to keep the sharpening low unless the video quality is especially bad. In the new version, I use FineSharp over VCFreq because I find the latter a little harsh for my tastes.

Denoise/Denoise Filters | Will help remove noise from gifs. In the old version, I almost always used the Light setting unless the video is super grainy, and then I might have chosen Medium instead. In the new version, I use KNLM at its lowest setting. I’ll only bump it up if the original video is quite grainy.

Once you’ve configured all your desired settings, you can copy & paste the output in the resizer.html window to your Vapoursynth editor file and enter the beginning and end frames.

The editor file for the old version:

The editor file for the new version:

To make the gifs in the old version, just save the file and then wait until everything finishes processing! In the new version, you have to go to Script > Encode video, and then under the gif preset click ‘start.’ Wait until it finishes encoding. On my laptop, this takes anywhere from 20 seconds to 3-4 minutes, so sometimes you have to be patient. This is the end of the Vapoursynth portion of gifmaking.

USING PHOTOSHOP TO MAKE GIFS

To create gifs in Photoshop, go to File > Import > Video Frames to Layers and then select your video file/output file from Vapoursynth (output.mov). These are my settings to create the frame animation:

Once your frames have been imported, you can delete frames and add a coloring psd on top of all your layers. 

Photoshop is also where you adjust the timing of your gif. In general, these are my settings:

30fps: 0.04/0.05

60fps: 0.02/0.03/occasionally 0.04 if I want it to be super slo-mo

Honestly, just use whatever timing setting that looks good to you! Some prefer faster gifs, others prefer slower, so just do what you like and things will be okay.

Save through File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy) with these settings (you can play around with selective vs. adaptive or diffusion vs. pattern; they all have slightly different looks, but 256 colors is a must):

Make sure your gif is under 8mb - to decrease a gif’s size, I usually delete frames and/or use selective color to increase the black percentage for whites, neutrals, and blacks.

After you save, you’ll have your gif! Below is the same moment giffed in different ways to illustrate how much a difference that file type + giffing style can make. You can tell that the TS file is higher quality and less grainy than the mp4 file, but it really isn’t unless you use Vapoursynth that the gif becomes super sharp and smooth. This is because if you import a TS file straight into Photoshop, it will only import at 30fps because the video itself is interlaced. You have to run it through a de-interlacer (like VS) to actually get a 60fps clip.

With regard to TOPAZ*, I mentioned above that because Vapoursynth has sharpening and denoise functionalities built into the program, I no longer use Topaz.  However, if you do not have access to Vapoursynth, then I highly recommend downloading Topaz (download links can be found through quick searches on Tumblr) and using Denoise and Clean to adjust your gifs. A warning: Topaz can take a long time to process and many gifmakers have a love/hate relationship with it, so be prepared for that. The way you apply Topaz is to select all your frames and layers, then do Filter > Convert to Smart Filters. Add the Topaz/smart sharpen adjustments, then Flatten Frames Into Layers. Once that has happened, hit Convert Frames > Flatten Frames to Clips and then Convert Frames > Make Frames from Clips.

COLORING

I get questions a lot on coloring and the truth is that coloring is an art - I by no means consider myself an expert, but I do experiment a fair amount with different settings and layers so I at least have a decent understand of what’s possible when it comes to coloring.

A few tips I’ll give:

Everyone has different coloring preferences! Whatever coloring you like may not be what others like, and that’s okay. Don’t be afraid to experiment!

PSDs are good for learning how to color - download premade ones and look at how other people made them: what layers did they use? in what order did they put them? what blending mode? at what opacity? These are all questions you’ll need to ask yourself when you create your own PSDs. (Remember not to edit others’ PSDs if they do not allow it, and given them due credit when necessary. Also don’t claim as your own!)

Tips to bring out idols’ natural tan/unwhitewash: increase vibrance, decrease brightness + increase contrast, use selective color and decrease cyan and increase black on the reds channel, use a gradient map that goes from a black/dark red to light pink/coral and change the blending mode to soft light or decrease opacity of the layer to 20-40%.

Below are some examples to show how much a difference coloring can make. I’d consider a basic PSD one that has less than 10 coloring layers/doesn’t make much change to the actual coloring of the gif besides lighting adjustments.  More complex PSDs generally have 15 or more layers (the ones I used below in have 16-25+) and drastically change the colors in the original gif. You can also mix PSDs too - for a lot of my performance gifs, I’ll first add a basic PSD that increases the contrast of a gif to make the skin glow, and then I’ll add an additional PSD that adjusts colors and other various lighting aspects.

You can see just how much of a difference coloring makes:

Don’t be afraid to experiment with different layers/styles! Everyone has individual preferences for how they like their gifs to look, and in a sense, coloring is the main way you can make gifs “yours.”

FINAL NOTES

Giffing is hard and requires a lot of patience - you definitely won’t be able to make amazing gifs right when you start! Even though I’ve been giffing for close to a year now, I still dislike many of the gifs I make and think that I can definitely improve. Don’t be afraid to reach out to other gifmakers for advice and help - 99% of the time, they’ll be happy to answer your questions!

I have posted a sped-up version of my gifmaking process here that you can also use as a resource!

Please let me know if I’ve missed something, and feel free to reach out if you still have questions. Good luck!

[meterhunter889]

Best Macbook Pro For Video Editing

Best Macbook Pro 16 For Video Editing

What Is The Best Macbook Pro For Video Editing

Best Video Editing Computer

May 11, 2018. Jul 22, 2019. Apr 07, 2020.

Final Cut Pro. First on our list of 12 best video editing software for Mac is Final Cut Pro. It is Apple’s. Best MacBook Pro for Video Editing. The comparison chart below enlists all the best macbook pro for video editing to help you choose the best. Top 8 Best MacBook Pro for Video Editing. We have covered some of the best available options in this list. So, spend some minutes in reading to find the best.

Apple didn’t get its reputation for performance and accuracy from nowhere.

Everything from phones to paper-thin notebooks are engineering to work efficiently, and this makes their MacBooks ideal for all levels of video editing.

AVG Free is an excellent product which does not slow my machine down (I have had it running in Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and now in Windows 10), it has never crashed, it is simple to update and possibly most importantly it seems to catch 990/0 of any viruses I come across on the fly (any it doesn't catch are found during a weekly. Monthly scan of my system). Best antivirus for windows 7. Mar 07, 2016.

Besides integrating extremely well with the Adobe Creative Cloud suite and many other third-party photo/video editing software, they offer a streamlined experience that will work well in any freelance or industry position.

In this guide, we’ll point out some key points for choosing the best MacBook Pro that will most effectively work for video editing at various levels, and showcase some of our own recommendations as well.

Quick Summary

For the casual creative, we recommend the 13-inch MacBook Pro with 256GB SSD, which offers quality performance without unnecessarily bulking up the specs. It doesn’t offer touch bar, but it is portable and sturdy.

If you certainly aren’t a hobbyist but not a pro either, 13-inch MacBook Pro with 512GB SSD is a better choice. The storage has been beefed up a bit, and the touch bar offers a new dimension of functionality.

Lastly, the professional creative looking to max out their performance power would be best served with a 15-inch MacBook Pro with i9 Processor and 512GB SSD. This model offers insane amounts of processing power, though you’ll likely still want an external monitor for the sake of screen space.

Is MacBook Pro Good for Video Editing?

In this case, it isn’t about whether or not a Mac will be effective for video editing, but a matter of how much power you really need.

If you just plan on doing minor work for youtube, you won’t be troubled by extensive renders or clamoring for screen restate, so it doesn’t make sense to pay for specs built for something ten times as processor-intensive.

However, if you plan on doing digital animation or working in 4K, it’s definitely time to look at higher-end machines that will be able to handle what you’re throwing at them.

If you’re not planning on editing videos in some way, you should not treat this article as a collection of the most powerful MacBooks overall.

Intensive computer work demands different specs depending on what you plan on doing, so you can’t assume the best for editing will be the best for say, gaming.

Best MacBook Pro for Video Editing: What to Consider in 2020?

Graphics

The key to a fast render is a high quality dedicated graphics card, and while lower-level work will likely be fine using an integrated card, you’ll want a dedicated one for anything beyond the casual home video or Youtube vlog. Dedicated graphics allow your computer to utilize RAM (Random Access Memory) specifically for the high-quality visuals you’ll be rendering as effectively as possible.

Processor

The processor is going to be handling every detail of your video as you build it, so you’re going to want to look towards the latest generations of the Intel i5 and i7 lines. Since video software can make use of multiple threads as well, these will benefit you while creating your project.

RAM

The final element that will make or break the performance of your MacBook while working on video editing is RAM. It’s used in every aspect of your computer’s execution of processes, and you’ll want a minimum of 8GB for amateur work, with a goal of 16GB if you’re editing professionally.

Best MacBook Pro for Video Editing in 2020: Our Picks

1. Casual Video Editing: 13-inch MacBook Pro (2.4GHz, Intel Core i5 processor, 256GB)

If you’re going to be editing home videos and content for Youtube, you probably won’t be doing intensive 3D renders or completely utilizing heavy programs even if they are installed. This version of the 13″ MacBook Pro comes with the processing power to reach your goal without unnecessarily overcompensating.

Pros:

The 13″ model is extremely portable, so you’ll have editing power at your fingertips wherever you go.

RAM is the perfect amount for this type of user and should last several years.

SSD drive means that renders and saves will be completed faster than with a physical HDD disk.

Cons:

SSD is pricey, which is why this model only comes with 256 GB in disk space. You’ll definitely want to purchase an external drive to compensate for this when storing your videos.

Additionally, this model uses an integrated graphics card which will be fine for this level of editing but doesn’t offer room for growth.

2. For Amateur Movie Making: 13-inch MacBook Pro (2.4GHz, Intel Core i5 processor, 512GB)

Whether college student or budding short-film director, you need power and a modern flair without the expense of a professional setup. This model of MacBook is a great compromise, offering Apple’s latest touch bar and touch ID technology packed into a 13″ body powered by an integrated Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655.

Pros: Bluestacks mac os.

Offering both portability and power, this modern masterpiece has all the specs to get you where you want to go without any unnecessary bulk.

The brand-new touch bar is also included and known to have great integrations when working in Final Cut Pro or the Adobe Suite.

Cons:

While offering more space than the aforementioned 256GB model, it’s still a bit on the small side for storing large video files.

It also has an integrated graphics card, which is slightly less than ideal.

3. For Professional Creatives: 15-inch MacBook Pro (2.3GHz, Intel Core i9 processor, 512GB)

Truly a top of the line machine, this MacBook Pro model was built for precision and nothing less. The 8-core i9 processor can stand up to just about anything you throw at it, it has a powerful graphics card UHD Graphics 630. The 15″ screen offers some more real estate than the smaller 13″ models.

Pros:

It has nearly unbeatable power between the mix of RAM, dGPU, and processor.

The beautiful screen will produce accurate colors and the touch bar will allow you to work even more effectively in your favorite editing programs.

You have the option to choose more storage space if needed.

Cons:

When editing professionally, you need all the screen space you can get, and no size laptop is going to be able to offer that. If you don’t have an external monitor, check out our recommendations.

Useful Mac Video Editing Resources

Just getting started with editing your own videos? LifeWire offers a great tutorial on getting started, from which software will be the most useful to whether you’ll fare better with some peripherals. Also, check out this complete video editing tutorial for non-editors on Mac:

A fan of iMovie? MacWorld has made a fantastic list of best tips on how to get the most out of Apple’s video editing software for macOS.

Best Macbook Pro 16 For Video Editing

You could also check out this list of free and paid Mac video editing apps (TechRadar), which will let you experiment before deciding exactly what you need in a paid program.

Click Save to copy the download to your computer for installation at a later timeIT professional resourcesIT professional working in managed environments can find complete resources for deploying Office updates in an organization on the. Click Run to start the installation immediately. Microsoft office 2016 crack free download 64-bit. Command line instructions can be found in Knowledge Base article. .To start the download, click the Download button and then do one of the following, or select another language from Change Language and then click Change.

What Is The Best Macbook Pro For Video Editing

Final Words

Video editing is a prime example of technical work that eats RAM and CPU power like no other. Luckily, a MacBook Pro was made to stand up to these things and is sure to perform if you’ve picked an adequate model.

Best Video Editing Computer

What set up do you currently use to edit videos? Let us know and share which specs you think are most important for productive work.

[sharengayonline]

iPad Air – Wikipedia

Sharengay Trang Tin Tức Độc Đáo VIDEO iPad Air – Wikipedia

iPad Air

iPad Air in Space Gray

Developer Apple Inc. Manufacturer Foxconn Product family iPad Type Tablet computer Generation 1st Air generation Release date November 1, 2013; 7 years ago[1] Discontinued March 21, 2016 Operating system Original: iOS 7.0.3, released October 23, 2013 Current: iOS 12.5.4, released June 14, 2021[2] System on a chip Apple A7 with 64-bit architecture and Apple M7 motion co-processor CPU 1.4 GHz dual-core 64-bit Memory 1 GB LPDDR3 RAM[3] Storage 16, 32, 64, 128 GB[a] flash memory Display 9.7 inches (250 mm) 2,048 × 1,536 px color IPS display,[4] (264 ppi) with a 4:3 aspect ratio, oleophobic coating Graphics PowerVR G6430 Sound Stereo Input Multi-touch screen, headset controls, M7 motion co-processor, proximity and ambient light sensors, 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyroscope, digital compass, dual microphone Camera Front: 1.2 MP, 720p HD Rear: OmniVision Technologies OV5650 5.0 MP AF, iSight with Five Element Lens, Hybrid IR filter, video stabilisation, face detection, HDR, ƒ/2.4 aperture Connectivity

Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + Cellular:

Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n at 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz and MIMO

Bluetooth 4.0

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Wi-Fi + Cellular:

GPS & GLONASS

GSM

UMTS / HSDPA

850, 1700, 1900, 2100 MHz

GSM / EDGE

850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz

CDMA

CDMA/EV-DO Rev. A and B.

800, 1900 MHz

LTE

Multiple bands

A1475: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26; A1476: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 18, 19, 20 and TD-LTE 38, 39, 40

Power Built-in rechargeable Li-Po battery 8,827 mAh 3.73 V 32.9 W⋅h (118 kJ)[5] Online services App Store, iTunes Store, iBookstore, iCloud, Game Center Dimensions 240 mm (9.4 in) (h) 169.5 mm (6.67 in) (w) 7.5 mm (0.30 in) (d) Mass Wi-Fi: 469 g (1.034 lb) Wi-Fi + Cellular: 478 g (1.054 lb) Successor iPad Air 2 Related articles iPad Mini 2 Website Apple – iPad Air at the Wayback Machine (archived December 14, 2013)

The iPad Air is a tablet computer designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. It was announced on October 22, 2013, and was released on November 1, 2013. Part of the iPad line of tablet computers, the iPad Air features a thinner design than its predecessors with similarities to the contemporaneous iPad Mini 2.

The iPad Air’s successor, the iPad Air 2, was announced on October 16, 2014, with the first generation iPad Air being discontinued on March 21, 2016.[6]

Features[edit]

Software[edit]

The iPad Air launched with version 7 of the iOS operating system.[7] iOS 7 introduced a major aesthetic redesign of the operating system, departing from skeuomorphic elements such as green felt in Game Center, wood in Newsstand, and leather in Calendar, in favor of flat, colorful design. Jonathan Ive, the designer of iOS 7’s new elements, described the update as “bringing order to complexity”, highlighting features such as refined typography, new icons, translucency, layering, physics, and gyroscope-driven parallaxing as some of the major changes.[8]

It can act as a hotspot with some carriers, sharing its Internet connection over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or USB, and also access the Apple App Store, a digital application distribution platform for iOS.

The iPad Air comes with several applications, including the Safari web browser, Mail, Photos, Video, Music, iTunes Store, App Store, Maps, Notes, Calendar, Game Center, Photo Booth, and Contacts.[9] The iPad Air can optionally sync content and other data with a Mac or Windows computer using iTunes. Although the tablet is not designed to make phone calls over a cellular network, users can use a headset or the built-in speakers and microphone to place phone calls over Wi-Fi or cellular using a VoIP application, such as Skype.[10] The device has a dictation application. This enables users to speak and the iPad types what they say on the screen. An Internet connection is required, as the speech is processed by Apple servers.[11] Apple also began giving away its iLife (iPhoto, iMovie, Garageband) and iWork (Pages, Keynote, Numbers) apps with the device.

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iOS 9 was released in 2015. A major focus for the iPad was the introduction of three new multitasking features[12] The Air supported two of these features, called Slide Over and Picture in Picture. Slide Over allows a user to “slide” a second app in from the side of the screen in a smaller window, and have it display information alongside the initial app. Picture in Picture allows a user to watch a video in a small, resizable, moveable window while remaining in another app. The third feature, dubbed Split View (which allows the user to run two apps simultaneously in a 50/50 view), was not supported by the device.[citation needed ]

In June 2019, Apple announced that it would drop support for the iPad Air with the release of iPadOS 13 in September 2019.[13][14] The iPad Air is supported to iOS 12, with the latest 12.5.4 update released on June 14, 2021.

Design[edit]

The iPad Air marked the first major design change for the iPad since the iPad 2; it has a thinner design that is 7.5 millimeters thick and has a smaller screen bezel similar to the iPad Mini. Apple reduced the overall volume for the iPad Air by using thinner components resulting in a 22% reduction in weight over the iPad 2.[15] It retains the same 9.7-inch screen as the previous iPad model.[16] The new front-facing camera is capable of video in 720p HD, includes face detection, and backside illumination. The rear camera received an upgrade as well; now being called the iSight camera, in addition to the same functions as the front camera it also contains a 5MP CMOS, hybrid IR filter and a fixed ƒ/2.4 aperture.[17][18] The device was available in space gray and silver colors.[citation needed ]

As with previous generations, Apple continued to use recyclable materials. The enclosure of the iPad Air was milled from a solid block of aluminum making it 100% recyclable. The iPad Air is also free of the harmful materials BFRs and PVC.[15]

Hardware[edit]

The iPad Air inherits most of the same hardware components from the iPhone 5S, such as its Apple A7 system-on-chip and Apple M7 motion processor. The A7 present in the iPad Air is slightly different however, in that it does not use a PoP design which stacks the RAM on top of the SoC.[19] It also features a metal heat spreader to compensate for the slightly faster clock speed and better thermal management. The Air also includes a 5 megapixel rear-facing camera (iSight), a FaceTime HD front-facing camera, support for 802.11n, and an estimated 10 hours of battery life.[16] It boots faster than any previous iPad model.[20]

As with all previous generations of iPhone and iPad hardware, there are four buttons and one switch on the iPad Air. With the device in its portrait orientation, these are: a “home” button on the face of the device under the display that returns the user to the home screen, a wake/sleep button on the top edge of the device, and two buttons on the upper right side of the device performing volume up/down functions, under which is a switch whose function varies according to device settings, functioning either to switch the device into or out of silent mode or to lock/unlock the orientation of the screen.[21] It uses the same home button that was built in previous iPad models and therefore does not include a fingerprint scanner.

In addition, the WiFi only version weighs 469 grams while the cellular model weighs 478 grams – over 25% lighter than their respective predecessors.[21][22] The display responds to other sensors: an ambient light sensor to adjust screen brightness and a 3-axis accelerometer to sense orientation and switch between portrait and landscape modes.[citation needed ] Unlike the iPhone and iPod Touch’s built-in applications, which work in three orientations (portrait, landscape-left and landscape-right), the iPad’s built-in applications support screen rotation in all four orientations, including upside-down. Consequently, the device has no intrinsic “native” orientation; only the relative position of the home button changes.[21]

The iPad Air was available with 16, 32, 64 or 128 GB[a] of internal flash memory, with no expansion option. Apple also sells a “camera connection kit” with an SD card reader, but it can only be used to transfer photos and videos.[21] As of the announcement of the iPad Pro 9.7-Inch on March 21, 2016, the iPad Air was discontinued.

All models can connect to a wireless LAN and offer dual band Wi-Fi support. The tablet is also manufactured either with or without the capability to communicate over a cellular network. The iPad Air (and the iPad Mini 2) cellular model comes in two variants, both of which support nano-SIMs, quad-band GSM, penta-band UMTS, and dual-band CDMA EV-DO Rev. A and B. Additionally, one variant also supports LTE bands 1–5, 7, 8, 13, 17–20, 25 and 26 while the other variant supports LTE bands 1–3, 5, 7, 8, 18-20 and TD-LTE bands 38, 39 and 40. Apple’s ability to handle many different bands in one device allowed it to offer, for the first time, a single iPad variant which supports all the cellular bands and technologies deployed by all the major North American wireless providers at the time of the device’s introduction.

The audio playback of the iPad Air is in stereo with two speakers located on either side of the Lightning connector.

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Reception[edit]

Critical reception[edit]

The iPad Air received mainly positive reviews. Writing for AnandTech, Anand Lal Shimpi writes that the iPad Air “feels like a true successor to the iPad 4,” praising it for its reduced weight and size. Shimpi further states that the Air “hits a balance of features, design and ergonomics that I don’t think we’ve ever seen in the iPad.”[23] UK Editor-in-Chief of TechRadar, Patrick Goss, gave the iPad Air a positive review, giving praise to the A7 chip and camera upgrades, as well as the crisp and colorful display. He concludes by stating: “It’s hard to put into words how much Apple has improved the iPad, offering a stunning level of detail and power with a build quality that’s unrivalled.”[24] Christina Bonnington of Wired awarded the Air a rating of 8 out of 10, calling the performance “outstanding” and noting that high-definition video streams and gaming animations are “smooth and stutter free.” She also praised the loading speeds of Safari, the web browser.

Bonnington criticized the speakers for being slightly muddled.[25] Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak criticized the focus on decreasing size and weight rather than increasing storage space and stated that he did not want an iPad Air as it did not fit his personal needs.[26][27] Dave Smith of the International Business Times wrote that while the device was nice, it did not bring anything new to the iPad. Smith strongly criticized the lack of a fingerprint reader, and noted that the updates, such as the increased speed and the decreased size and weight, were only slight improvements.[28][29]

Commercial reception[edit]

The launch date for the iPad Air did not see as large of a turnout as usual for Apple products; however, this was expected by analysts due to the delayed release of the iPad Mini 2.[30] The Air sold out in Hong Kong two hours after becoming available online.[31]

Timeline[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to IPad Air.

Notes[edit]

^ a b 1 GB = 1 billion bytes, 1 TB = 1 trillion bytes

References[edit]

^ “Apple – Press Info – Apple Announces iPad Air—Dramatically Thinner, Lighter & More Powerful iPad”. Apple (US). Retrieved April 4, 2014.

^ “About the security content of iOS 12.5.4”. Apple Support.

^ “Apple iPad Air and new iPad mini 2 with Retina still sport 1 GB of RAM, service chat reveals”. https://bit.ly/3AsGkeI. Retrieved November 1, 2013.

^ “Flagship Tablet Display Technology Shoot-Out”. displaymate. Retrieved November 10, 2013.

^ “iPad Air Teardown”. iFixit. Retrieved November 1, 2013.

^ “Apple has discontinued its older iPad Air”. The Verge. Archived from the original on November 8, 2020. Retrieved April 12, 2021.

^ Souppouris, Aaron (September 10, 2013). “iOS 7 will come to iPhones and iPads on September 18th”. The Verge. Vox Media. Retrieved October 22, 2013.

^ Cue, Eddy; Cook, Tim; Federighi, Craig; Ive, Jony et al. (June 10, 2013). WWDC 2013 Keynote. Moscone West, San Francisco, California: Apple Inc. Event occurs at c.1h 25min, to end. Retrieved October 22, 2013.

^ “The new iPad – Amazing iPad apps, built right in”. Apple. March 7, 2012. Retrieved October 22, 2013.

^ Sarno, David (January 29, 2010). “Apple confirms 3G VoIP apps on iPad, iPhone, iPod touch; Skype is waiting”. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 22, 2013.

^ “The new iPad: It’s a Breakthrough because it features are”. Apple. March 7, 2012. Retrieved October 22, 2013.

^ The Apple shows off iPad split-screen multitasking in iOS 9 preview. Retrieved 9 June 2015.

^ “iPadOS”. Apple (US). Archived from the original on December 15, 2019. Retrieved December 15, 2019.

^ Miller, Chance (December 10, 2019). “Apple releases iOS 13.3, watchOS 6.1.1, and tvOS 13.3, here’s what’s new [U: HomePod]”. 9to5Mac. Archived from the original on December 15, 2019. Retrieved December 15, 2019.

^ a b “iPad Air – Design”. Apple. Archived from the original on October 23, 2013. Retrieved November 1, 2013.

^ a b Seifert, Dan (October 22, 2013). “Apple announces the iPad Air, its thinnest and lightest full-size iPad yet”. The Verge. Retrieved October 24, 2013.

^ “iPad Air – Technical Specifications”. Apple. September 1, 2013. Retrieved November 1, 2013.

^ Stevens, Tim (October 28, 2013). “Apple iPad Air Review”. CNET. Retrieved June 11, 2020.

^ “Anandtech Review of the iPad Air”. October 29, 2013. Retrieved December 17, 2013.

^ George, POPA (December 3, 2013). “iPads boot time”. Mobilesmug. Retrieved December 3, 2013.

^ a b c d “iPad Air – Technical Specifications”. Apple. Retrieved October 24, 2013.

^ Stevens, Tim (October 30, 2012). “iPad review (late 2012)”. Engadget. Retrieved October 24, 2013.

^ Anand Lal Shimpi (October 29, 2013) “The iPad Air Review” AnandTech Retrieved on November 1, 2013

^ Patrick Goss (October 29th, 2013) “Hands on: iPad Air review” TechRadar Retrieved on November 1, 2013

^ Christina Bonnington (November 6, 2013). “Apple iPad Air: Air Worthy” Wired. Retrieved on November 9, 2013

^ Marc Chacksfield (October 23, 2013) “Steve Wozniak: The new iPads just aren’t for me” TechRadar Retrieved on November 1, 2013

^ Matyszczyk, Chris (October 28, 2013). “Woz: No, no, I wasn’t criticizing the new iPads”. CNET. Retrieved November 1, 2013.

^ Dave Smith (November 02 2013). “Apple iPad ‘5’ Air Review: 3 Major Disappointments In The New Fifth-Generation iPad.” International Business Times. Retrieved on November 14, 2013.

^ Dave Smith (November 09 2013). “Apple iPad Air Review: Don’t Believe The Hype, A.K.A. The Unpopular Opinion.” International Business Times. Retrieved on November 14, 2013.

^ Chris O’Brien (November 1, 2013). “Crowds are light for the new iPad Air”. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved on June 11, 2020.

^ Jeremy Blum (01 November, 2013). “iPad Air sells out in two hours on Hong Kong Online Apple Store” South China Morning Post. Retrieved November 3, 3013

^ Apple Inc. (2010–2011). iPad News – Newsroom Archive. Retrieved June 7, 2018.

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G4

G5

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Flash After Effects

Flash After Effects

Flash After Effects Tutorials

The Flash After Effects

Flash over after effect? Or After effects over flash? Just recently I have worked out how to animate sprites in after effects. Previously I would animate my sprite animations in flash then convert it into a video file and add the sound effect on after effects, and any other further effects. Here is something I created a few years back which I made in flash, then converted and edited in after effects.

Subscribe Now:More:light flashes on After Effects is.

Flash Player's end of life is December 31st, 2020. Please see the Flash Player EOL Information page for more details. This document lists the file formats which Adobe After Effects can import and export. You can add support for additional file formats to After Effects by installing a third-party plug-in.

Hello!Today I'll be showing you how to make black flashes in after effects, enjoy!If you have any questions, feel free to ask me in the comments! After months of waiting - It's time to learn how to use STRIKE the right way! Recreating Flash running in Adobe After Effects!Download it here: https://www.

But recently I worked out that sprite animation was possible in after effects. So i created this very short animation.

So this in mind, it got me thinking. What program was better for sprite animation?

In flash, sprite animation is easy because you can add all the images and take the character frames out of the original image then put into the work space. In after effects to get the frames for the animation, you have to key out the background to the sprite sheet, then mask out each picture frame that you want. It’s a slightly different way to flash, however in both pieces in software it is quite tedious and time consuming.

Flash is also very handy for creating animation loops, like walk loops. These are obvious where it comes in handy, but I have not found any way of making an animation loop in after effects for this sort of thing.

After effects however can produce better quality images compared to flash because you don’t have to convert any file, and because the software won’t mess up any of the images. You don’t have to change any of the options to get a better image, whereas in flash to view high quality animations you had to go into the JPEG option and increase the quality.

After effects is also handy with how you can manipulate the objects, as the rotation, scale, position and other aspects are split into their own sets on the timeline, in flash all the manipulation is on one timeline for each object, which means if you wanted to manipulate two different aspects of an image, but at different times, it may get a little more complicated and time consuming in flash, than it would in after effects.

After effects has a much more powerful and flexibly virtual camera. Flash on the other hands has an actionscripited camera that, don’t get me wrong works effectively. However cannot do 3D effect at all, whereas the camera in after effect has to be in 3D to work. This give it an edge because it means you can make more elaborate animation with foregrounds and backgrounds, and also make more than one angle, rather than it just being a platform.

Adding effects is also easier in after effects because you can add proper effects on to any file, whereas in flash you can only add effects onto movie files. After effects has an input motion blur which reacted to the movements of the file and adds the blur in relation to the movements. In flash you have to add them manually. Any blurred camera looks have to be manually done too, but after effects has it built in.

The last thing is that after effect allows you to animate in a 3D environment, this can also be done in flash, but is more complicated and time consuming as part of it has to be scripted to do it properly right. No scripting is involved in after effects.

Flash After Effects

Well-rounded and powerful program which enables you to create professional-looking photos, render 3D graphics and add motion to them

What's new in Adobe After Effects CC 2021 18.1:

Bugs Fixed:

Fixed an issue that could cause After Effects to crash when copying layers using Linear Color key.

Fixed an issue with 3D Scene Navigation that caused spring loaded “C” AND “V” keys to not work correctly.

Read the full changelog

Professional multimedia editors are already aware of the importance of their software, as the application they use needs to be both feature-packed and intuitive enough to allow users to easily locate each function with ease. Adobe After Effects is one of the most complex tools one can work with in regards to designing motion graphics or cinematic visual effects.

Time-consuming installation and a few tips

First and foremost, it needs to be mentioned that this software comes with a large installer, therefore it takes a while to download, go through the entire setup and load.

When first launching the software, the Welcome Screen comes in handy to beginners and pros alike, as it displays some tips meant to optimize the manner in which you operate Adobe After Effects.

Import images and take advantage of incorporated presets

When creating a new composition, users can customize it by adding text strings, solid colors, camera, lights, as well as new distinct layers. Alternatively, the composition can be viewed as a flowchart, to ensure smooth manipulation of its components.

The application also supports inserting common images or Photoshop-based ones, and users can apply effects such as stylize, distort, and shatter. All the elements can be combined, adjusted and edited so as to obtain a custom high-quality animation - presets can also be of use when looking for inspiration for a new project.

Includes a standalone animation tool that helps users bring characters to life

The Adobe Character Animator is deployed alongside Adobe After Effects, providing users with a powerful animation tool they can use to bring to life models created with Photoshop or Illustrator.

The great thing about Adobe Character Animator is that it can track facial expressions and motion using a simple webcam, and apply them to two-dimensional characters. Moreover, it can mimic mouth movement and enables users to use audio recording to become the voice of their characters, with worry-free lip-syncing.

Apply an array of effects and set up various parameters

Considering the numerous types of effects and layer actions (such as time-reverse, mask, blend, switch) supported by Adobe After Effects, it is best to experiment with them before applying them to your final creation.

Experts are bound to access the Preferences section when they want to adjust the amount of RAM that can be used by the software, or to configure the video preview and audio hardware settings.

Conclusion

It might burden your computer’s performance, yet you should know that all jobs are finalized in a fair amount of time without running into issues such as errors, crashes or bugs.

Although the interface might seem a bit overwhelming, it is quite professional and there are plenty of Help contents integrated. All in all Adobe After Effects is an efficient and reliable piece of software, which deserves all the credit it has been given over the years.

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Adobe After Effects was reviewed by Elena Opris

5.0/5

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Free Software Like Photoshop For Mac

January 01, 2020

18 min to read

If you need to make a few tweaks to your images, but do not want to use Photoshop, you are in luck as there are several superb solutions. Here are the 15 best alternatives in no particular order:

GIMP: A Great Photoshop Alternative and It's Open Source. Gimp has a strong user community that supports its product and a large feature set, though it has a different interface and way of doing things than Photoshop. For those used to doing things in Photoshop, but who are interested in checking out this free software, look into Gimpshop. There's no question that Adobe Photoshop is excellent image editing software. But for those of us that can't afford up to seven hundred dollars or more to buy it, we now have the same image manipulation power at our fingertips as the high-priced, closed-source programs.

1. Luminar 4 (Free Trial 7 days)

When time for editing your photos is a luxury, Luminar 4 can help. Luminar 4 lets you transform your photos in a flash and synchronizes all the edits that you have made effortlessly. What makes it so great is that you can easily browse all your photos as it automatically organizes your photos which makes navigation simple. Luminar Libraries also boast a very modern interface which optimizes the viewing experience.

Luminar 4 offers many great adjustable styles, features, and tools that you will fall in love with such as its AI Sky Enhancers, Advanced Contrast, and Dehaze to mention only a few.

2. Pixlr (Free Version Available)

Pixlr boasts an interface that is really not much different from Photoshop. It offers hundreds of overlays, borders and other effects. If you simply want to crop your image or whiten your teeth on your iOS or Android device, Pixlr is the right tool for the job. With Pixlr, you can complete all the editing tasks that a good basic photo editor will allow.

3. PicMonkey (Trial 7 days)

The beauty of PicMonkey is found in its easy-to-use interface. If you need to put together a collage, this is your tool to use. All you have to do is upload your images and drag them into the right spot.

4. Adobe Photoshop Elements (Free Trial 30 days)

Do not be fooled by the name, Adobe Photoshop Elements is not the actual Photoshop. However, countless users have experienced that the Adobe Photoshop Elements app offers all the tools that they require to enhance their images. In short, this app has been reduced to the essentials.

With the help of its Adjustment and Blend layers, you can turn any photo into the most amazing image in barely any time at all. Thanks to its guided mode, it is also geared towards beginners.

When it comes to finding a Photoshop alternative, your only challenge will be to identify the software solution that works the best for your unique needs. Why not give them all a try? You might just discover that the best course of action will be to use a couple of these tools instead of just one.

5. Sketch (Free Trial 30 days, MacOS only)

If you are working on a Mac and in need of a budget-friendly alternative to Photoshop, Sketch is the answer. Sketch is a vector graphics app that has the design field all excited, specifically website designers. As it is so popular, you will be able to access countless plug-ins that have been created by the community that will make this app even more functional.

Its user interface is easy to understand and boasts several features such as gradients and layers that are similar to Illustrator and Photoshop. What is more, it also offers a color picker and style presets. You can use one of the basic shapes to create your own graphic or start from scratch with the help of the pencil tool. This app is really so flexible!

6. GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)

GNU is an open-source cross-platform image editor. As its interface is very similar to Photoshop, it will not take you too long to familiarize yourself with GIMP. Though, users who do not have any image editing experience will find the different GIMP tutorials very useful.

It offers color correction, enhancement as well as painting tools to mention only a couple of its features and is compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac.

7. Acorn (Trial 14 days)

Mac users who are searching for image editing software need to look no further than Acorn. It is a cost-effective solution if you do not have access to Photoshop. What makes it so great is that it is quick, enjoyable to use and offers useful features.

Some of its features include non-destructive filters, custom brushes and layer styles to mention only a few. The software is easy to use, but, you can rest assured, there are tutorials available for both beginners as well as image editing experts.

8. Affinity Photo (Trial)

Affinity Photo is for sure one of the best Photoshop alternatives. It is ideal for professional designers and photographers as it is completely compatible with Photoshop as well as other file formats. What makes it such a great alternative is that it is not nearly as expensive as Photoshop. Though, users can rest assured as it will still deliver the same performance (if not better).

It is compatible with Mac and Windows. If you are using an iPad, you will be happy to know that Affinity Photo for iPad is also available.

9. Pixelmator Pro (Trial 30 days)

Pixelmator is not a new Photoshop alternative, but recently the Pixelmator Pro version which uses a user-friendly single-window interface has been added to the mix. On top of that, the Pixelmator Pro version also boasts non-destructive image editing and offers features that include split view and a hidden interface that allows you to view your images without any distractions.

It is only available for Mac users.

10. SumoPaint (Online + Desktop)

The different standard features that you would expect in a Photoshop alternative, SumoPaint has to offer. There are shapes, brushes, gradients, text, and pencils that you can effortlessly access.

Though a word of warning to Photoshop users - a couple of its tools work differently and there are some limitations. Overall, this image editor remains very capable and can load in a flash.

11. Paint.net

Paint.net is a powerful and practical tool that Windows users can rely on instead of Photoshop. It is a capable and functional tool that concentrates less on artistic creation and more on photo editing.

It offers a decent variety of tools and special effects that include brightness/contrast and repeat selections. It might not boast all the serious editing tools, but that only means that it is not as difficult to master making it the ideal image editor tool for beginners.

12. Canva (Free Basic Plan + Trial 30 days)

Canva is where you will find countless layouts, stock photos, fonts and other great design elements. The best part is that several of these you can use at zero cost. You can use this app to design your business card or put together a birthday card.

13. CorelDRAW Graphics Suite (Trial 15 days or Full Paid or Monthly sub)

Windows users will love the tools that CorelDRAW has to offer. This Photoshop alternative boasts an interactive tool that will help you to straighten your image or adjust the perspective. Though, one of its most impressive features is its stylus control that reacts to a different pressure.

If you are working with Windows 10, this is the perfect fit. Windows users will also be happy to know that it supports 4K displays and multi-monitor viewing.

14. Photolemur (Free Version with watermark available)

Best choice for beginners or people who have no time to edit photos. Enhancing your images has never been easier thanks to Photolemur. By using AI, this automatic photo enhancer app enhances your images without you having to lift a finger. You simply need to import your images to Photolemur and it will get the job done automatically. This means that you do not require any prior editing experience to complete tasks like getting rid of imperfections. It is oh-so easy and available for both Mac and Windows.

15. Serif PhotoPlus

Many people have already relied on this app for years. It is ideal for users who are only starting with image editing now as it offers great support for new users in the form of videos and tutorials. What is more, users can get great tips on their active forum for fellow users. Thanks to its latest release, Serif PhotoPlus users will be also able to work with their RAW image files much easier.

For many photographers and designers, Adobe Photoshop is the standard in image editing. While it’s complex software and covers a lot of areas, Photoshop can be unpractical in specific situations. It’s more natural to use a photo editor suitable to your needs than buying the most complicated product available. GoToAndLearn presents a comprehensive list of programs that constitute a viable alternative to the leading products on photo editing market.

1. Apple Photos

Apple Photos is the built-in alternative to Photoshop. It raised a lot of expectations and many users were slightly disappointed after its release, but it’s free and ready to use from the moment you buy the device. It even has a version for iOS.

Photos replaced two older applications and marked the beginning of a new era in software collaboration and synchronization. You can keep your photos and videos stored in iCloud and access them from all your Apple devices. It’s well-balanced and trustful, provides intuitive image organizing tools, and has a lot of cool features.

Apple Photos offers image manipulation and editing tools for beginners and advanced users. Among its features are lighting effects, automatic image enhancement, filters, drawing tools to add text, shapes, and sketches to your photos, and tools to transform your pictures in videos. Photos provides basic image adjustments such as saturation, tone, and contrast, black and white conversion, curves and levels for color control, clarity, and vignettes.

It gives you the possibility to choose between three usage levels. Each level reveals more complicated tools and features. For example, the lowest level provides three automatic tools controlling exposure, brightness, shadows, contrast, etc. The more advanced levels provide histograms, color levels, noise reduction, white balance controls, and more.

You can return to the original file or adjust specific parameters at any time. Apple Photos doesn’t offer batch processing, but it allows you to copy all the changes you’ve made and transfer them to other pictures.

For people used with Photoshop and Lightroom, Photos may seem a bit unusual. Still, in many cases, its capabilities are up to 95% of what other editors can do.

2. Photolemur (free with watermark)

Free Photoshop Software Download

Photolemur is an automatic photo editor that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms to enhance your pictures. It has a free version that gives you access to all its functionalities. The only drawback is a watermark applied to images at saving.

Photolemur provides Face Finish technology, dedicated features for skin and face retouching. It’s able to automatically smooth skin and remove imperfections, enhance the eyes, and whiten the teeth. Moreover, it uses powerful algorithms that recognize and enhance the sky and the foliage. Photolemur supports RAW files, fixes exposure, and recovers colors. It offers presets for special styles and batch processing.

3. Luminar (free trial)

Luminar isn’t actually a free photo editing software for Mac but it offers a free trial you can use to edit your photos. Luminar is one of the best editors and the free trial includes all its features. In addition, it’s so straightforward and easy to learn that the 30-days trial will be enough to finish your projects.

Luminar provides automatic tools powered by AI and allows you to enhance and perfect your photos using just sliders. It’s able to recognize people and faces and applies different adjustments for portraits and other types of photos. It also provides over 70 instant Looks that give you the stylish photos you need. You can fine-tune any style and filter and save custom Looks for later use. You can also apply the same style to multiple images as Luminar supports batch processing.

Luminar works with layers and masks and allows you to mix several filters and blend them together for unique results. Among its best filters are Accent AI 2.0 for image enhancement, Sun Rays for adding sunrays into your images, Sharpening for clear pictures, and Golden Hour for warm sunlight effects and romantic mood.

Don t starve mac download. The latest version of Luminar includes digital assets management and the future version is announced to have amazing new features. So even if it’s for a limited period of time, Luminar deserves a look.

4. Fotor

Fotor may be one of the best photo editors for Mac. It’s free, provides a considerable set of filters, and can successfully compete with other free Photoshop alternatives such as VSCOcam and Snapseed. But advanced users like Fotor for other reasons: it provides support for publishing photos, crops all existing pictures in a folder, and saves the changes conveniently. For example, it can take a folder with 1000 high-resolution photos, reduce the size of all of them to FullHD, and apply a filter to all the pictures.

5. Pixlr

If you are looking for a free image editing app for Android and iOS that has good reviews and includes more than 600 effects, overlays, and frames– try Pixlr. It allows you to crop and resize photos, fix the red-eye effect, and even whiten teeth in a few seconds.

Pixlr is an online image editor that provides versatile drawing tools, image retouching tools, exquisite filters for style and atmosphere, and a neat workflow.

6. Affinity Photo (free trial)

Despite what some may think, it’s not a clone of the famous vector editor Affinity Designer for Mac. Affinity Photo is the one of the best Photoshop alternative and an independent product. It has replaced older programs developed by Serif like Serif PhotoPlus X7 and added many new functionalities and a modern look. But this makeover came with a price: Affinity Photo is no longer free like its predecessors. Still, it has a free trial version you can check out.

Affinity Photo is designed to cover all Photoshop’s features. It provides RAW editing, HDR merging, batch processing, multi layering, professional image retouching, and even PSD files editing.

7. DxO OpticsPro 10

The main functionality of DxO OpticsPro 10 is to process RAW and JPEG files. It provides a default preset that automatically corrects your images as soon as you open them. In addition, it offers the DxO Optics Module that provides corrections based on camera/lens combinations.

8. Acorn (free trial)

Acorn has been launched in 2007 and has won the hearts of many artists since then. In 2015, Acorn was awarded Mac App Store Best. It provides a lot of photo editing features and the latest version added an improved interface, nondestructive filters, several opacity options for Clone tool, crop improvements, and feathering selections. It’s definitely on the right path.

9. PhotoScape X

PhotoScape X is a free photo editing software for Mac and Windows that provides quick and fun functionalities. It allows you to cut out pictures, create collages and GIFs, process RAW files, make screen captures, and add a wide variety of filters and effects. Among its best features are MagicColor, an effect that enhances colors, film effects and light leaks, more than 200 figures and 1000 patterns to add to your photos, and more than 40 textures and 20 lens flares.

PhotoScape X also provides drawing tools such as brushes, paint bucket, drawing functions, objects and stickers, and batch processing.

You can find a lot of tutorials and videos on their website. PhotoScape X is a fun editor that can be used by amateurs to create holiday photo albums or by professionals to create fun products.

10. Gimp

Best Photoshop Software For Mac

Gimp (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is an open source photo editing software for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It has almost all the features of Photoshop and even the interface looks a lot like Photoshop. Nevertheless, it’s free, fast, and efficient and can be successfully used by photographers, designers, and artists.

Gimp provides high quality photo editing tools. It works with layers and masks, offers a lot of filters and effects, and allows you to retouch and manipulate photos. It also provides tools for creating icons, graphical design elements, and artworks and color management tools.

It’s frequently updated and improved. If you want to add your own features, you can get the source code and customize it.

11. Pinta

Cxz game engine mac free download pc. Pinta is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It’s free and dedicated mostly to drawing but it provides image editing tools too. Among its features for image editing are 35 adjustments and effects, layers, and history tracking.

12. Image Tricks

Image Tricks is a fun image editor that helps you transform common pictures in unique products. It’s a free image editing software for Mac and provides a lot of filters (over 100), photo frames, and image masks.

Free Adobe Photoshop Like Software

Image Tricks offers a wide range of filters, from image enhancing to special effects. You can use it to adjust exposure, shadows and highlights, color, tone, and contrast. Filters are customizable and can be mixed using 35 Quartz Compositions. Image Tricks also provides image generators to create random backgrounds and textures.

If you want to create frames for your photos, you should know that Image Tricks offers 20 customizable frames. Fine-tune them to create unique artwork.

Free Photoshop Download For Mac

13. Darktable

Darktable is an open source image editing software, available for Mac, Windows, Linux, BSD, and Solaris. It’s designed as a virtual darkroom and lighttable for photographers and provides tools for managing negatives in a database, professional color management, and non-destructive editing. Darktable supports many file formats and offers smart searching tools. It also has powerful export options and allows you to use Lua to create scripts for repetitive tasks. It even supports live view for some camera brands.

Darktable isn’t just an image editor; it’s an entire virtual studio. It works with layers and masks, offers presets and filters, and provides all the image enhancing tools you might need. Darktable is a great image editor for both digital and analog camera enthusiasts.

14. Polarr

Polarr is an online photo editor that provides artistic tools and effects for image retouching and manipulation. You can apply weather and flare effects, create filters and share them, retouch portraits based on face detection features, create overlays and double exposure effects, and change your photos’ appearance using sliders and simple controls.

Among its features are automatic enhancements, geometric transformations, spot removal, color controls, light effects and filters, vignettes, color curves, borders, and custom filters. Polarr offers a monthly subscription that gives access to advanced features such as LUTs, tools for removing noise, additional blending modes and masks, batch processing, and premium filters.

15. Topaz

Free Photoshop On Mac

Tobaz Labs develops several editing tools for Mac but only five of them can be used for free. They are Adjust AI, Gigapixel AI, Denoise AI, Sharpen AI, and JPEG to RAW AI. All tools use AI algorithms to provide automatic functionalities.

Free Photoshop Apps For Mac

For example, Adjust AI offers automatic image enhancement. It adjusts colors, shadows and highlights, details, and other parameters in a single step. Gigapixel AI enlarges photos up to 600% while preserving image quality and JPEG to RAW AI converts JPEG files to high-quality RAW files. Denoise AI is dedicated to noise removal and aims to recover all the details, while Sharpen AI covers shake reduction and creates sharp images in seconds.

Free Software Similar To Photoshop For Mac

While these tools don’t cover all the requests of a photographer, they are really good at their job and can save you a lot of time and energy. So if you have a precise task to do, give them a try.

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Age Of Empires The Age Of Kings Full Version Download

Visit Age of Empires III site and Download Age of Empires III Latest Version! Why Download Age of Empires III using YepDownload? Age of Empires III Simple & Fast Download! Works with All Windows (64/32 bit) versions! Age of Empires III Latest Version! Fully compatible with Windows 10; Disclaimer Age of Empires III is a product developed. This program is a product of Microsoft. The most popular versions among the program users are 7.1, 2.0 and 1.0. Age Of Empires II - The Age Of Kings is sometimes referred to as 'Age of Empires II. The Age of Kings'. This download was checked by our built-in antivirus and was rated as malware free. Age of Empires, the pivotal RTS that launched a 20-year legacy returns in definitive form for Windows 10 PCs. Bringing together all of the officially released content with modernized gameplay, all-new visuals and a host of other new features, Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is the complete RTS package. Age of Empires II: Age of Kings Demo Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is the sequel to the award-winning, best-selling real-time strategy game Age of Empires. Age of Empires II spans a thousand years, from the fall of Rome through the Middle Ages in which players lead one of 13 civilizations into greatness. Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is a real-time strategy video game that is set in the Middle Ages, specifically the Dark Age, the Feudal Age, the High Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. You will progress through each age chronologically by gathering your resources, creating towns, and building armies that can topple rival empires.

Age of Empires combines great graphics, real-time strategy and an intriguing plot (our own history!) to raise a phoenix from the ashes of wayside, ordinary strategy games. Some of the more memorable features that make this game truly enjoyable include hunting and foraging for food, building and upgrading armies, establishing and strengthening a society and, ultimately, fighting war.

Food gathering is one part of Age of Empires that is truly impressive. Instead of mining gold to support your society (although you DO have to mine gold), food is a separate issue unto itself. You can build farms, fish, forage for berries or--my favorite--gather a hunting party and seek out prey. Beware, however, that if you choose to take on an elephant, you better have a bunch of hunters or the irate elephant may decide to trample you instead.

One thing that is annoying is the maximum limit on men. When a larger army is needed but your population is maxed you will have to send out workers to be slaughtered in order to make room for more military units. This seems slightly unrealistic when you have city is large enough to accommodate many more people.

The complex features of Age of Empires are engrossing. In addition to having the above choices of gathering food for my people, players also had to chop wood and mine both gold and stone for their needs. As your society progresses through the ages, so does its need for different minerals (e.g., gold and stone). As the ages pass, you'll find the new technology (as it becomes available) allows you to create bigger and better armies.

Going head-to-head with famous war strategists is also interesting. Although it is doubtful a player's soldiers would stand up to the likes of any of history's finest warlords, it is still neat to see names recognizable from history as well as the armies they lead. All things considered, Age of Empires is an enjoyable gaming experience which is enough to quell even the hungriest real-time war strategists among us.

Graphics: Intricate detail and bright, beautiful backgrounds.

Sound: Great ambient sounds, music, and battle sounds.

Enjoyment: Although the building at the beginning of a mission is slightly repetitive at times, the game is still extremely enjoyable.

Replay Value: Real-time strategy games are always replayable.

Age of Empires is not only a different game each time you play. It's a different game, period. Beautiful graphics, twelve civilizations, a comprehensive technology tree, dozens of units, randomly generated maps, and a rich soundtrack, add up to a more complete gaming experience. Age of Empires sets you within an historical context, not in a purely fictional world.

Features:

In Age of Empire, you are one of twelve powerful ancient civilizations, ranging from the Persians to the ancient Greeks. Though you start as only a small village, with just a few tribesmen, you must hunt and gather food, advance to more a sophisticated age, start learning self-sufficiency and technology, and then make the full leap to civilization. Competing against you are other cultures with whom you can fight, trade, or negotiate as you all try to progress from the Stone Age to the Iron Age.

Graphics:

The incredible hand drawn and 3D rendered graphics create an unparalleled, involving experience. This attention to detail brings your gaming experience into focus. Because in a great gaming environment there is no substitute for quality.

Sound FX:

In addition to this engaging and fun graphical world, Age of Empires includes a captivating and original musical score - a dramatic backdrop for your adventures. The CD-quality sounds of Age of Empires adds to the epic flavor and enriches the gaming experience.

Gameplay:

Age of Empires sets you within an historical context, not in a purely fictional world. But of course, if you would rather diverge from the beaten path, Age of Empires includes a built-in scenario editor so you can create your own conflicts and scenarios. Finally a game with real-time decision making. You will see the real-time results of your resource management decisions. Consider your options and move forward - assign civilization members to hunt, explore, conquer, or build. Know your place; not all civilizations will excel at the same skills -- if you are from the desert, you might not be an expert on ships and marine warfare. As you move through time you will be able to apply new technology to advance the state of buildings, weapons, tools, and ships.

Overall:

Age of Empires also brings you the expanse of the unknown. You have room to roam -- the maps are large, plenty of room for you, and up to eight other players, to play in a multiplayer forum. In Age of Empires, there are many different multi-tribe scenarios you can choose from. Each with one or more victory conditions. Do you want to take part in a quick race to domination? Or an epic affair involving exploration of the known world and the accumulation of wealth? It's up to you. Choose your favorite form of world domination. Players can conquer or cooperate with existing tribes in a multiplayer environment via the Internet (through the Internet Gaming Zone), over a LAN or modem-to-modem.

People who downloaded Age of Empires have also downloaded: Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings, Age of Empires III, Age of Mythology, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, StarCraft

Age of Empires II [HD] Game for MacOSX Free Download

Free Download Game Age Of Empires 3 The Age Of Kings Full Version

In-game Age of Empires II Mac Game [HD Edition], get ready to fall in love with the amazing experience of the classic age of “Empires 2”. Explore all the campaigns of single-player mode from both expansions of Age of Kings and The Conquerors expansion and select one from 18 civilization history revolving around the history of more than 1000 years. Enjoy challenging others online.

Improving the quality of life may not seem like a major attraction, but Age of Empires 2 Mac Game needs it as well as new campaigns and visual improvements. Queuing for different units and upgrades, being able to drag and choose soldiers by accidentally capturing villagers, queuing for orders – most of which I expect from the first kingdom age: the final edition included was introduced here. The result is a more consistent step that gives you more time to devote to the development of your civilization and your commandos.

These are the two areas where most business is as usual. You start with the city centre and some villagers, gather resources, destroy buildings and expand until you have a large army and an impressive walled city. Throughout campaigns and battles in Age of Empires II HD for Mac, these familiar routines are repeated, changed, and sometimes reversed, but although the curator of Age of Empires 2 has now updated a lot around him, the management of civilization and the army has been defended from time to time.

Unlike the first age of the kingdom, large armies were easier to manage thanks to training and increased search for routes. They try to take the most efficient route, and although units can still be blocked when blocked by their partners, you can change formations to give them more space to move. But once they got into a long-distance flight, the formation collapsed and became a giant fight where every inch of space was filled with warriors further.

Short-range combat is fast and, even with the useful new zoom function, it can still be difficult to decipher what is going on in the Scrum itself – there are just a lot of health bars that decrease – so exercise your strength can give the impression of being in control. Units in Age of Empires 2 HD for Mac Game that is desperately trying to catch the nearest enemy, or whoever you choose, often have to adjust it as a close spread. You must organize a lot of them or leave them alone and only hope that you have sent the right units to fight your opponents.

Fighting means more than just throwing a lot of soldiers at your enemy, especially if they hide behind a few walls. One of the best additions to the original Age of Empires 2 MacOSX is a decent fortress and the accompanying siege. Attacking the walled city is a big investment in gold and labour and a small logistical puzzle. The siege machines are expensive, slow and messy when the enemy looks at them. They need troops to escort them and fight the AI ​​- which seems to do a very good job of prioritizing targets even under standard difficulties – and a safe position to start the attack. Although chaos may occur, the siege and major clashes still require a lot of planning.

Microsoft and the developers of Forgotten Empires have made clear their intention to avoid major changes in the battle, citing comments from the Age of Empires 2 Torrent community. Even if that doesn’t happen, the change in the heart of the game is not what you would expect in the final edition, but elsewhere, the changes are surprisingly significant and significant, making the gap more visible. When you have new 4K art everywhere, a reworked user interface and improved controls, the chaos and lack of clarity in a fight can be a bit discordant. However, Combat does not exist in a vacuum and always benefits from the increase in its orbit.

GamePlayScreenShots:

System Requirements:

Minimum Requirements

OS: OS X 10.8

CPU: 1.2GHz

RAM: 1GB

You May Also Like: Command & Conquer Mac Game Download

Installation instructions:

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Age of Empires II [HD] MAC Game Free Download

File Size: 1.01 GB

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MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk Review

With the dawn of the latest in-the-middle chipsets—AMD's B550 and Intel's H470 and B460—midrange desktop motherboards just keep getting better. That arguably goes without saying, but in this generation we're seeing more pronounced improvements. Case in point: MSI's MAG B550 Tomahawk ($179.99), which might be mistaken at a glance for a premium ATX pick. And the similarities go deeper than just appearances—with PCI Express 4.0 support, a 2.5Gbps NIC, and two 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports on the back panel, this board has a modern feature set that's comparable to what we have seen on many AMD X570 and Intel Z490 motherboards. This makes the Tomahawk a hard option to pass up in the midrange market, and our latest Editors' Choice winner among mainstream Ryzen desktop boards.

Design: An Axe-cellent PCB

MSI opted to color the MAG B550 Tomahawk in a mixture of black and gray. Black is the more prominent color, but there's a good amount of gray that adds contrast and keeps the board from looking too dull. MSI also put some RGB LEDs around the chipset heatsink that add some much-needed color to the board when it's powered up.

The chipset heatsink itself is average-size for a midrange motherboard, and smaller than you would expect to see on a high-end board. MSI configured this board with 10 digital power phases for the CPU, and three additional phases for other components. These are cooled by two relatively large heatsinks and should work well enough for everyday use and a bit of overclocking.

This board also has a rear I/O shroud and a permanently attached rear I/O plate, which makes installing the board in a case a bit easier. I don't always mention this aspect of boards because most upper-end boards I review nowadays have shrouds and plates. But midrange and low-end boards usually don't, so it's worth noting.

Two M.2 slots (down by the PCI Express slots) are covered over by heat spreaders. The uppermost M.2 port is set above the primary PCI Express x16 slot, and there is room here to install M.2 drives in the long Type-22110 (110mm) form factor. This slot also runs off the CPU's PCIe controller and can operate using either PCIe 4.0 lanes or 3.0 lanes. It also supports SATA M.2 SSDs.

The lower M.2 port connects to the board's chipset and is therefore locked into using PCIe 3.0 lanes; it supports PCI Express M.2 SSDs only. This slot is also in a more cramped location and can only accept drives measuring 80mm or shorter. I wouldn't consider this a drawback, however, as few M.2 solid-state drives nowadays use the longer 110mm form factor, and PCIe 4.0 support isn't so ubiquitous that every slot needs it.

A Look at the Networking, Audio, and Rear I/O

The MAG B550 Tomahawk doesn't sport a built-in Wi-Fi chip (likely due to cost reduction), but it does have two LAN controllers. (Serious gamers, for one, are going to opt for Ethernet anyway.) The main networking controller is a Realtek RTL8125B chip that supports internet speeds up to 2.5Gbps. This chip is becoming a regular collaborator on modern midrange and high-end boards, and it offers a significant step up in terms of performance over aging 1Gbps solutions. The second networking controller is one of those aging 1Gbps solutions I just mentioned—a Realtek RTL8111H. It can't compare with the RTL8125B chip, but it's a sensible option for a low-cost secondary NIC.

MSI chose a Realtek ALC1200 codec to drive the audio to the 3.5mm jacks on both the front and back panels. Information on this chip is scarce, but it appears to be a budget variant of Realtek's more widely used ALC1220. Most users probably won't be able to tell the difference between the two audio chips, so it should work fine for casual use.

The B550 Tomahawk's rear I/O panel could use a few more USB ports, but it's not bad for a midrange loadout. You get a total of six USB ports on the back panel, including one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A and one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, both supporting 10Gbps peak throughput. Two of the remaining ports are also USB 3.2, but these are of the slower Gen 1 5Gbps variety. The last two ports on the back panel are legacy USB 2.0 ports best reserved for mice and keyboards, and beside these is a PS/2 jack for antique peripherals.

Alongside the USB ports are two RJ-45 jacks for the wired NICs mentioned earlier, and five 3.5mm jacks plus an S/PDIF port for audio. Video connections on the board include one HDMI port and one DisplayPort connection, if you opt for a late-model Ryzen G series chip with integrated Radeon graphics. The rear I/O panel also has a button that can be used to flash the BIOS to a new version, which is a useful function to have, especially if you need a BIOS update to make the board support a newer processor. (It's important to note that the B550 chipset does not support first-gen and second-gen Ryzen AM4 chips. The only chips supported are the Ryzen 3000 and 5000 series.)

The Building Experience

The configuration of the MAG B550 Tomahawk makes it one of the easiest boards that I've ever set up in a case. Due to the limited amount of space, getting cables plugged into the correct place can be difficult, and this actually tends to be worse on high-end motherboards. Midrange boards like this tend to make the job relatively easy.

The CPU's power connector is typically one of the hardest connections to get plugged in, but the connector on the B550 Tomahawk is set far enough away from the VRM heatsinks that it's not too difficult to get at. The rear I/O shroud does get in the way slightly due to its height, but the heatsinks themselves are short enough to stay safely out of the way.

The CPU fan headers are similarly set far enough away from everything that they can be plugged in with ease. Other connectors, like the USB-C and USB 3.0 headers, are set so they stick straight out of the board. Some people prefer to have these set at a right angle along the edge of the board, and while that can result in a cleaner finished build (depending on the chassis), I actually find them easier to plug in when they are straight up like this. The only ports that are set at a right angle are the SATA 3.0 connectors, which, as I just noted, can have some advantages even if they aren't quite as easy to plug in.

A Brief Look at the BIOS

Like most MSI motherboards, the MAG B550 Tomahawk comes equipped with the company's Click BIOS 5 user interface. Upon first boot, this loads you into an EZ mode menu that has essentially everything you would want in a simplified interface. From here, you can select a boot device, enable a memory profile for the RAM, flash the BIOS, and view spec information about the system's hardware.

There are a few extra options here, as well, such as a menu for adjusting the speed of the system's fans, as well as a button to enable MSI's Game Boost auto-overclocking feature. Overall, though, the EZ mode remains quite simple, and it shouldn't cause much confusion for beginners.

Over in the Advanced section of the BIOS, you get the usual fare. There are several options for changing the less notable system settings, and of course there are overclocking tools. The layout for these is essentially the same as on other Click BIOS 5 boards, with quite a few options to help you eke out extra performance from the CPU and RAM. (Ryzen's general lack of much overclocking overhead is another matter, though.)

While testing the board, I ran into a minor issue with its RAM support. I test most motherboards (including this one) with a high-end Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB memory kit that's rated to operate at a max frequency of 4,266MHz with timings of 16-22-22-39. The MAG B550 Tomahawk wasn't able to run this RAM with the XMP profile enabled, however. I was able to get the board to operate the RAM at 3,200MHz and 3,600MHz, though, and realistically this isn't a shortcoming. MSI says on the board's support page that its peak supported RAM speed with two single-rank DIMMs installed is 4,000MHz, dropping to 3,600MHz for dual-rank DIMMs. (Various overclocked modes are also supported, according to the spec sheet.) Just know not to overspend for higher-speed RAM than you can use.

The Bundled Software

MSI includes just a handful of drivers and utilities with this board. All of the drivers installed without any issue, and they don't warrant much discussion. As for the utilities, you'll find a customized version of CPUID's popular CPU-Z tool, along with MSI's Dragon Center software.

Dragon Center provides a wide range of features in a single app. Before I go into what Dragon Center does, I should note that this version of Dragon Center is available as a straight download from the board's support page—which I'm far happier about than I probably should be for such a small detail. With all the previous MSI motherboards that I've reviewed, the company didn't provide the full program in one download on its support page. Instead, the support page offered an installation tool rather than the program itself, requiring you to download a separate SDK package to complete the installation. I've complained about this at least half a dozen times to date, and I'm delighted to see that MSI has now opted to provide an actual download from the start.

As for the program itself, there's quite a bit to explore. If nothing else, you'll want to install it to control any RGB LEDs connected to the system, but it also offers a useful hardware monitor, in-Windows overclocking tools, a network manager, and a few gaming-related tools.

Verdict: B550 Priced (and Feature-Packed) Just Right

The MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk is a solid value at $179.99. It's not quite as feature-rich as a deluxe motherboard, and it wasn't able to handle my Corsair Vengeance LPX RAM kit at its full speed, but this is a midrange board, not a high-end one.

It's not likely that the board will need to operate with RAM clocked that high, and while it may not have all the latest bells and whistles, it has enough of them not to feel lacking. Its 2.5Gbps LAN connection is excellent for a midrange board, as are the two high-speed USB ports. This board nails the B550 balance and delivers exactly what a midrange platform should. It's a fine complement to the value monster that is the late-model Ryzen CPU family.

[allenmendezsr]

Lunarphase Pro - Astronomy Software For Moon Observers

New Post has been published on https://autotraffixpro.app/allenmendezsr/lunarphase-pro-astronomy-software-for-moon-observers/

Lunarphase Pro - Astronomy Software For Moon Observers

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Discover Earth’s Nearest Neighbor – The Moon Predict Moon Phases And More, Past, Present or Future Get Prepared For A Global Explosion of Interest In The Moon!

Lunar phases prediction software used by amateur astronomers, teachers, military people, photographers, gardeners, fishermen, hunters, hikers, researchers, psychologists, astrologers, stockbrokers, Wiccan, new-age, religious groups and more!

Not just an interactive Moon Atlas, LunarPhase Pro (for Win98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista/ Windows 7/Windows 8/Windows 8 tablets/Windows 10) is a moon observer’s software toolkit designed to help you discover more about the Moon and make your lunar observing sessions more productive.

Very happy to hear you have updated your fine program, Gary. One of my all time favorites! Rod Mollise, Contributing Editor, Sky & Telescope Magazine

Still the best program on Earth regarding the Moon. – Eam Keyers

LunarPhase Pro’s Main screen shows data at a glance (click for a full-sized view)

The Moon has seen a resurgence of interest in the last few years, both in space exploration and among amateur astronomers. Of course, it’s always been of interest to military people, hunters, fishermen and gardeners as well as to those where the Moon plays a large part in their religion.

Telescope sales have exploded in the last five years as the cost of a decent instrument has fallen so low that very good ‘scopes now only cost a couple of hundred dollars. This has opened up the skies to a whole new generation of skywatchers.

As our cities grow ever larger, the amount of lighting has also increased and many city-dwellers are hard-pushed to see anything but the brightest stars in their neon-glow skies. But the Moon, being the second brightest object in the sky (after the Sun) suffers no such indignity. It serenely crosses the sky, ever visible (providing clouds allow!) regardless of the amount of light pollution.

Discover the Moon with the Lunar Explorer

LunarPhase Pro produces a calendar of Moon Phases (a moon phase or lunar calendar) amongst many other features. By using the integrated observation planning tools and the general lunar data presented on screen, you’ll be able to easily plan for an observing session and be productive while observing.

Zoom into the Moon map

Want to know when the next full moon occurs or the moon phase today, when the moon will be visible tonight or when is the full moon this (or any) month? LunarPhase Pro answers these questions and includes a huge range of features, all integrated together into one low cost solution.

No other moon astronomy software package matches the range of tools included.

Described by one reviewer as the Swiss Army Knife of Moon software, LunarPhase Pro has been written with you, the observer, in mind and is very easy to master and use. Its simple, yet powerful features will provide you with the information you require to make your Moon observing sessions more fun!

Astronomy For Kids

If you’re into astronomy for kids, then the software is a great teaching tool and many teachers have bought it to educate their pupils about the Moon and its motions.

Astronomy For Beginners

If you’re a beginner in the world of astronomy and new to amateur astronomy, then there’s no better object to start your astronomical journey with than the Moon. No matter how light polluted (or not) it is where you live, the Moon can always be observed, apart from when clouds get in the way.

Emulate view through a telescope

And there’s far more to the Moon than an orb that moves about the sky. With LunarPhase Pro, you’ll discover the phases of the moon, lunar libration and where and what features are on its surface. And the software has a telescope simulator just for those cloudy nights when they do occur!

Moon Phases

While the Moon’s phase is constantly changing, there are four well-known lunar phases: full moon, last quarter, new moon, and first quarter.

In between these four major phases, the moon goes through additional phases, changing slightly each day: gibbous waning moon, crescent waning moon, crescent waxing moon and gibbous waxing moon. These all make up the 8 phases of the moon.

Using LunarPhase Pro, you’ll be able to see these phases occurring at an accelerated rate (with the animation of the moon for a month) and you’ll see how the changing phase, combined with lunar libration changes how the moon looks from day to day.

An animation in LunarPhase Pro showing lunar libration and the changing phase of the moon

Astronomy Tools

LunarPhase Pro has been built to a large degree on the suggestions and comments from users and I’m only an email away if you have any queries, comments or suggestions. Here are some screenshots from the software, showing what it can do (this is only a selection, not a comprehensive set)…

Monthly Ephemeris Screen Moon Visibility Screen Moon Phases Diagram

Main screen displays all the information you need at a glance incl. current moon phase

View moon information for different times and dates

Simulates the Moon exactly as it appears in the sky

Tells you what constellation the Moon is in for the selected time and date

Shows monthly Moon phase diagrams

Get Sun & Moon rise/set times and twilight times for where you live

Tells you when when lunar eclipses happen and if they can be seen from where you live

Moon visibility diagrams show when the moon is visible from your location

Tells you when the Crescent Moon becomes visible and for how long it’s visible in the sky

Lists Max. and min. Apogee and Perigee dates and distances for a selected year range

Find out when major Moon phases occur near Apogee or Perigee

Link to online lunar web resources

Configure the display to match the view through your telescope/binoculars

Find the dates of the Equinoxes and Solstices and duration of seasons

Store multiple observing locations

Print out diagrams, maps and calendars

Moon maps can be scaled for printout (saving ink/toner)

I have had both LunarPhase Pro and Jupsat Pro on my desk computer for about 1 year now and use them a lot. I love them! – Len Nelson

I’ve been doing computers since the CP/M days, and you provide the best support that I’ve seen in almost thirty years! – Nick Taylor

I really do love my LunarPhase Pro. Of all the Moon software programs I have it is the one I have grown to use the most. Lots to learn in LPP and I have just started. – David James

Thanks Gary. Awesome tech support. You set a high standard. – Roger Anderson

You provide the most amazing tech support for your product. Have you ever thought about consulting for Bill Gates? – Del Croom

Moon and Sun positions during the day Labelled lunar features Rukl Chart Outline (e.g. Chart 14)

Explore the moon’s near and far sides using 2D and 3D moon maps

Lunar maps are fully corrected for libration

Maps can be panned, zoomed and printed out

Different map textures can be selected – mineral, gravity and a Clementine Near infra-red maps

Over 9,200 lunar features are included in the inbuilt database, including the Lunar 100

Search the database for features matching your criteria

Identify features on maps with a simple mouse-click

Identify features on maps from feature lists

Identify features on maps using labels you can set up yourself

The list of features lying along the Terminator is updated in real time

Label only those features along the Terminator on the map for easy identification

Print out the list of Terminator features along with any associated observing notes

View Very High Resolution Maps

Rukl Chart outlines can be overlaid on moon map

You can see lists of features for each Rukl Chart and label them on the map

Thank you for creating LunarPhase Pro. What an incredible blessing it is for my children, actually the whole family. – Rebecca Burns

Gary! Great job! I love the Very High Resolution maps!…Very nice. The straight wall and surrounding area are magnificent on first look! Well done. Love it! – Steve Smythe

Great software package! There’s more information about the moon than I can possibly grasp or even yet understand. – Phil Brotheridge

The CD arrived today and from what I have seen so far is superb!! Thank you very much, I can not imagine how I ever managed without it! – Ian Sharp

Just a quick note to let you know I got the LunarPhase Pro CD that you sent me and everything is working great. Although I’m just getting started with backyard astronomy, I’m hoping it will encourage me and my family to learn more about the moon. I’ll be happy to promote your software to other astronomy enthusiasts we meet. – Bob Cochran

Rukl Chart Features and Labels Rukl Chart Features – Clementine Map Lunar libration information

See lunar features from overhead with the Top-Down view

Rotate the Moon to the angle you want to see what those limb features really look like

Download, pan over, zoom and print out hundreds of detailed Moon charts

Link directly to many online books about the Moon and the Apollo Program

Emulate the view of the moon as seen through your own telescopes and eyepieces

Get the latest news stories and Podcasts relating to the Moon

Find the compass directions (graphic and numeric) for the rising and setting Sun & Moon

Find future times and dates for when lunar features are under the same illumination

Find out if the Moon interferes during meteor showers

Record your own observation notes – comes with preinstalled notes for 800 features

Animate the moon showing libration effects and a traveling terminator

Link multiple images to specific lunar features

Monthly Libration diagrams show the best limb-features to view

Bought a plot of land on the Moon? – Record your property’s position – See its location on the Moon and link to satellite images of the area

Watch over 150 Moon and astronomy-related videos.

View, zoom, download, print out hundreds of Moon Charts Moon In The News – Web News & Podcasts Overhead views of features (like Mare Orientale)

I am in Iraq stationed north of Baghdad, and I saw your program and really liked it. I fly Apache helicopters for the U.S. Army and the phase of the moon has a lot to do with our missions at night. The Apache doesn’t need illumination from the moon for night flying because our night system is infrared imagery, but we support ground troops who use night vision goggles that do require illumination from the moon. This program will help me keep up with moon phases without checking our weather reports. – Glenn Phelps

I have now had a good explore of LunarPhase Pro and I must say it is a really nice piece of software, well worth the money. I can only give it a thorough ‘thumbs-up’. Very nice and I’m sure it is going to come in very handy with all my lunar explorations. – Mark Zambelli

I am very happy with your product. It is more than I thought it would be. I have spent hours studying the moon on my first day with Lunar Phase Pro. I have learned more tonight than I have learned the last number years of reading and sighting the moon through my telescope. And the weather hasn’t bothered a bit! Thanks, Gary, for helping me through the installation process. Your customer service is excellent. I am very happy. – Gary Cowles

Let me be the first to say…I am OVERWHELMED!!!!! The program is simply OUTSTANDING!!!– Chuck Lee

I am completely gobsmacked with what you have produced. When my LX200 arrives at the end of October I can assure you I will be making good use of the Rukl map, both the book and definitely the LunarPhase Pro version as well. A bloody good job cobber, keep up the good work.– Richard Arnold

Positions of Moonrise and Moonset Positions of Sunrise and Sunset Lunar Eclipse Circumstances

For detailed descriptions of LunarPhase Pro’s features, click here

Mankind is also going back to the Moon within the next few years. Many nations now have Moon programs underway, either in the planning stage, as exploratory spaceprobes or as fully commissioned ventures to return humans there. It’s about time! It’s been 51 years since Neil Armstrong first set foot on the Moon and 48 years since Gene Cernan, the last man on the Moon, removed his foot back in 1972. It’s been far too long! LunarPhase Pro will let you dip your toes in the water and discover the Moon’s Phases and various other phenomena. Get acquainted with our nearest neighbor!

LunarPhase Pro will work on Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP/Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8/Windows 8 tablets/Windows 10.

No matter what your interest in the Moon is, this package has something to offer you. Order it now!

The purchase price also covers 12 months of updates to the software. Updates are released every 1-2 months.

I take pride in the reputation I’ve built among LunarPhase Pro users for my timely technical support so you can rest assured that if you have any problems, you won’t be left in the dark.

Please feel free to contact me with any suggestions for improving LunarPhase Pro. The software has been improved over the years with suggestions from people like you.

Don’t forget, you also get the Observing the Moon ebook as a bonus when you order.

Digital Download [72Mb file]

Get Your Copy Of “LunarPhase Pro” Now For Only $39.95

Please note that the software is a 80Mb download.

P.S. But That’s Not All! I’ll Even Throw In a Free eBook When You Order:

Our Moon eBook

If you’re new to Moon phenomena and cycles or Moon observing and don’t know where to start or you want to discover some historical tidbits or about some misconceptions about the Moon, this 25 page ebook will give you that information.

Some of the topics covered in the “Our Moon” PDF eBook are:

Why the Moon Always Looks the Same

The Nature of Tides

Has Anyone Ever Seen a Meteor Strike the Moon?

The Distance between the Earth and Moon

Phases of the Moon

The Lunar Month

Observing Projects

Does the Moon’s phase affect the crime rate?

What is a Lunation

Lunar Libration

How the Moon looks below the Equator

Moon Illusions

Photographing the Moon

Who Was the First Person to Point a Telescope at the Moon?

P.P.S. Feel free to contact me with comments and suggestions – LunarPhase Pro has been built on the suggestions of people like yourself.

P.P.P.S LunarPhase Pro is now used in these countries around the world: USA, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Bahamas, UK, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Canary Islands, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Hungary, Croatia, Czech Republic, Poland, South Africa, Greece, Mauritius, Israel, Cyprus, Indonesia, Thailand, Bahrain, Brunei, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand.

While the software was originally written with astronomy in mind, it’s now used by an eclectic mix of people: amateur astronomers, teachers, fishermen, gardeners, military people, photographers, stockbrokers, astrologers and Wiccan!

Want to know more about the Moon? Check out my site dedicated to the Moon!

Looking for a quality telescope? Find out what types of telescope are available and where you can get quality discount telescopes and astronomy equipment.

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[magzoso-tech]

Samsung Galaxy S20+ Review

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/samsung-galaxy-s20-review/

Samsung Galaxy S20+ Review

Samsung’s bouquet of premium Android smartphones this year looks promising. We have the S20 series for photography enthusiasts, and the Galaxy Z Flip for those looking for the bleeding edge of smartphone technology. We haven’t even counted the next Galaxy Note smartphone, which should come later in the year, and will no doubt have unique features to brag about too.

The big focus for the new Galaxy S20 series this year are the cameras. Samsung is making a lot of noise about its new ‘Space Zoom’ feature and the fact that the S20 models are the first to offer 8K video recording at a useful framerate. The phones looked quite impressive when we first saw them at Samsung’s Unpacked event last month, and now it’s time to take a closer and more in-depth look, starting with the Galaxy S20+.

This is the direct successor to the Galaxy S10+ and like with every iteration, we should expect a sleeker design, better battery life, improved camera performance, and of course, a more powerful processor.

Priced at Rs. 73,999 in India for the sole 128GB version, is the Galaxy S20+ worth it? Let’s have a look.

  Samsung Galaxy S20+ design

The Galaxy S20+ is instantly recognisable as a Samsung smartphone. Compared to the Galaxy S10+, Samsung has refined the design. The upper and lower bezels of the display are narrower, and the glass back has a wider curve at the sides, covering more of the aluminium frame. This phone is still very comfortable to hold but the glossy finish does make it quite slippery. It’s not too thick at 7.8mm, but it’s slightly heavier than its predecessor at 186g.

The narrow display borders and slightly taller body have allowed Samsung to use a much larger display. The Galaxy S20+ features a 6.7-inch QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel, with support for HDR 10+ and, for the first time, a 120Hz refresh rate. You can set the display to run at 60Hz at its full resolution, or 120Hz at or a lower, full-HD+ resolution (which is the default setting) if you like. However, you can’t have the 120Hz refresh rate at the full resolution, at least not yet. There have been rumours about Samsung planning on allowing this with a software update in the future.

The Samsung Galaxy S20+ has a gorgeous display with a 120Hz refresh rate

The Galaxy S20+ loses the secondary selfie camera that the Galaxy S10+ had, and instead there’s a single, centre-mounted hole-punch cutout. It’s not obtrusive in any way, and apps generally block out that area, so the cutout doesn’t interfere with menus or other UI elements from fullscreen apps. The volume and power buttons are on the right, and Samsung has done away with the dedicated Bixby button. Instead, you can customise the long-press function of the power button to either wake Bixby or launch the power menu. A double-press action can also be set to launch the camera, open Bixby, or any other app.

The SIM tray is on the top of the phone and can either house two Nano-SIMs or a single SIM and a microSD card. At the bottom of the phone, Samsung has gotten rid of the headphone socket for its flagships since the Galaxy Note 10, and so here, we just have the microphone, USB Type-C port, and a speaker. There is an earpiece just above the camera hole, cleverly camouflaged between the outer frame and display, making it virtually impossible to see.

We have the Cosmic Gray colour variant of the Galaxy S20+, but it’s also available in Could Blue and Cosmic Black trims in India. There is a rectangular camera bump on the rear, which houses four camera sensors, a microphone, and the LED flash.

The design of the camera cluster reminds us a lot of some of the recent Galaxy A-series offerings we’ve seen, which we feel dilutes the Galaxy S20 series’ street presence a little. We would have liked a more distinctive design for the rear of this phone, much like what Apple did with the iPhone 11 (Review) series, just to give its flagships better flaunt value.

The back of the Samsung Galaxy S20+ looks a bit bland in our opinion

Having said that, the Galaxy S20+ feels a lot more premium than any of Samsung’s mid-range phones, once you actually hold it. It’s extremely well built, has a higher screen-to-body ratio, and is still fairly light. In the box, you can expect to find a 25W fast charger, a Type-C to Type-C charging cable, an AKG-branded headset, a silicone case, and the usual leaflets. The Galaxy S20+ ships with a screen guard which for once is well applied and not intrusive when performing gestures.

Samsung Galaxy S20+ specifications and software

Globally, Samsung is marketing the S20 series as 5G smartphones, however in India, the entire S20 series will only support 4G. The 5G version of the Galaxy S20+ comes in multiple storage variants but the LTE-only version, which we have, is sold in just one configuration with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The latter is expandable, which is something we don’t see too often these days on flagship phones. Samsung has also used LPDDR5 memory here, which promises higher data rates and lower power consumption.

Like all previous Galaxy S flagships sold in India, the Galaxy S20+ is powered by an Exynos chip rather than a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, and the one used here is the Exynos 990. You can read more about it here, but essentially it’s a 7nm octa-core SoC with two custom Samsung cores for heavy-duty tasks, two Cortex-A76 cores and four Cortex-A55 cores for lighter workloads. Graphics is handled by the Mali-G77 GPU, which claims to offer a 20 percent boost in performance over the previous generation. Overall, we should expect performance along the lines of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865 SoC.

The in-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensor in the Samsung Galaxy S20+ is quick and never fails

You also get all the other flagship connectivity features you would expect such as Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5, stereo speakers tuned by AKG, Hi-Res audio support for wired headphones, IP68 dust and water resistance, fast wireless charging, NFC, and MST support for Samsung Pay.

The Galaxy S20+ runs One UI 2.1 which is based on Android 10, and our unit originally shipped with the February security patch. However, we received a software update, during our review with the March security patch. The latest version of Samsung’s Android skin feels extremely refined, and even though there are a tonne of features to explore, it doesn’t feel cluttered or overwhelming.

Features such as Samsung Dex and Link to Windows are present, and you also get the usual Samsung staples such as a built-in screen recorder, a screenshot editor, Edge screen, and a highly customisable always-on-display. Augmented reality (AR) features are all grouped together in an app called AR Zone, so you don’t have to launch the camera app just to use features such as AR Doodle.

One UI will show you promotional messages as notifications but this can be fixed by simply disabling a few toggles in the Privacy menu of the Settings app.

Samsung Galaxy S20+ performance and battery life

The Galaxy S20+ delivered rock-solid performance in the time we used it, and we expected nothing less. One UI has really grown on us, and today it’s easily one of our favourite Android skins. The 120Hz display makes scrolling through menus feel snappy and gives the overall usage experience a more fluid feel. However, we preferred using the Galaxy S20+ at the QHD+ resolution just for that extra bit of sharpness in the UI, but that’s just us. It’s a little surprising that 120Hz is not enabled by default (which should have been the case), as we suspect many users might not discover that this option even exists.

The Samsung Galaxy S20+ offers very good app and gaming performance

The Exynos 990 is a solid performer, and the benchmarks solidify our experience. In AnTuTu, we got a score of 5,17,291 points, while the 3DMark Slingshot Extreme graphics test returned 6,721 points. These numbers were slightly lower than the scores we got from the Realme X50 Pro 5G (5,69,618 in AnTuTu and 7,202 in 3DMark). In any case, you’d be hard-pressed to notice any difference in real-world performance and even games. The usual heavy-hitters such as PUBG Mobile, Asphalt 9: Legends, and Warhammer 40,000: Freeblade ran absolutely smoothly at the highest settings. The Galaxy S20+ got quite hot after about 20 minutes of gaming, but it was nothing we couldn’t handle.

The display is easily one of the best we’ve come across. Colours are rich with very good saturation, and brightness is more than adequate. The ambient light sensor can be a little sluggish at times, when it comes to adjusting brightness to match ambient light, but this isn’t a big complaint. HDR content looks very good, and thanks to the slimmer bezels, watching videos felt very immersive.

Audio quality from the stereo speakers was quite impressive too. The earpiece and the bottom-firing speaker sounded well balanced, and with Dolby Atmos enabled, the spatial separation was audibly better. Bass is still a little weak but there’s enough warmth in the sound to prevent it from seeming tinny. The bundled AKG provides equally good audio as well as passive isolation from ambient noise.

We should touch upon the phone’s biometric authentication systems. There’s the ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor, which is fast and didn’t fail us during the review period. Face recognition is also an option, and it works well but isn’t as fast as we would have liked. It also tends to struggle in very low light, in which case, we had to resort to our fingerprint for authentication.

The hole-punch cutout is small and not too intrusive

All of this does take a toll on battery life, which is why Samsung has bumped up the capacity to 4,500mAh for the Galaxy S20+. It’s safe to say that battery life is pretty solid, but not exceptional. We were able to get a 24-hour runtime on most days, when our usage wasn’t very heavy. However, on days when we used the camera a lot or played games for a long time, we did have to charge the phone a little sooner.

Thankfully, it doesn’t take long to charge the Galaxy S20+. With the bundled 25W adapter, we managed to charge the battery up to 55 percent in half an hour and up to 93 percent in an hour. It also supports Fast Wireless Charging 2.0, if you have a compatible 10W or higher wireless charger. Like before, the Galaxy S20+ also supports Wireless PowerShare or reverse wireless charging, which can be used to charge accessories such as the Galaxy Buds+.

Samsung Galaxy S20+ cameras

The Samsung Galaxy S20+ has a brand new camera setup with two of the highlight features being 8K video recording and up to 30x hybrid zoom. The primary sensor still has a 12-megapixel resolution with Dual Pixel autofocus, an f/1.8 aperture, and OIS, but the pixel size is now 1.8 microns compared to 1.4 microns on the previous model.

The ultra wide-angle camera also uses a 12-megapixel sensor, but with smaller 1.4 micron pixels, a narrower f/2.2 aperture, and no autofocus. The telephoto camera gets the biggest change, with a 64-megapixel sensor but no optical stabilisation. The ‘Plus’ model that we have has a depth vision camera which is absent in the standard Galaxy S20. Another change, which you’ve probably noticed, is that Samsung has ditched its variable aperture system with the Galaxy S20 series, for better or worse.

The camera interface feels familiar if you’ve used any recent Samsung phone. We have a customisable row of shooting modes just above the shutter button, while the rest of the settings such as the aspect ratio, timer and toggle for ‘Motion photo’ sit on the far side of the viewfinder. The app offers toggles to enable the Scene Optimiser, which detects objects or a scene in the frame. Shot Suggestion will offer tips to better your framing, and there are experimental features such as HDR 10+ video, which can be enabled.

Initial reviews of the Galaxy S20 Ultra highlighted some big issues with the autofocus system, which Samsung has promised to fix. While we didn’t face any such issues with the Galaxy S20+ while we were testing it, we received a software update which promised improvements for the cameras. We re-tested the cameras and didn’t find anything new or different about the usage experience, but we did note that low light selfies seemed to have gotten better.

Landscape shot taken with the Samsung Galaxy S20+ (tap for full-sized image)

Wide-angle shot taken with the Samsung Galaxy S20+ (tap for full-sized image)

Close-up shot taken with the Samsung Galaxy S20+ (tap for full-sized image)

When shooting with the main camera under good light, the Galaxy S20+ captured very good details with pleasing colours and no visible noise in the shadow areas. HDR is handled very well, even when shooting subjects directly against the light. With the wide-angle camera, there’s a lot more of any scene to capture, but you do get some barrel distortion. Close-up shots also turned out great, with excellent detail, sharpness and good natural bokeh.

The really fun part is the phone’s new zoom system. The telephoto camera offers 2x optical zoom, and beyond that, it uses a mix of AI-assisted hybrid zoom and digital zoom. You can directly jump to certain zoom levels with dedicated buttons that appear once you tap the telephoto icon in the viewfinder. You can manually zoom in to a precise point as well, using the traditional pinch gesture.

Zoom samples of the Samsung Galaxy S20+ (tap for larger image)

Photos taken with the telephoto camera were good, given ample light. During our initial testing, we found image quality inconsistent, but following the software update, things seem to have gotten better. After the 10x zoom level, textures on objects look visibly smoothened as grain and noise are removed. At the full 30x zoom, the Galaxy S20+ is able to resolve a decent amount of detail. Compared to cropping a native 64-megapixel sample, the same image with a 30x zoom offers better clarity. Beyond 20x, you get a little preview window in the upper left corner of the viewfinder to help you frame your shot.

Low light zoom sample taken with the Samsung Galaxy S20+ (tap for larger image)

Low light close-up taken with the Samsung Galaxy S20+ (tap for full-sized image)

Low light shot taken with the Samsung Galaxy S20+ (tap for full-sized image)

In low light, using high levels of zoom doesn’t yield very favourable results. However, using Night mode with 10x zoom can offer vastly better results than a standard shot with the same zoom level. Speaking of Night mode, this works across all three main sensors and helps get rid of grain and improves exposures. Low-light performance in general is very good too. We managed to get some good details and colours with the primary camera, and noise was handled well too.

Portrait sample taken with the Samsung Galaxy S20+ (tap for full-sized image)

Live Focus mode works well, and we had a good success rate with people, but objects were a bit of a hit or miss. The background depth effect can be adjusted before or after you take a shot, and you can even apply different bokeh effects. Edge detection was also handled well.

A new shooting mode in the Galaxy S20+ is called Single Take. With this, the camera captures a 10-second video along with stills at various intervals, and based on what’s being shot, it will automatically apply filters to some of the shots. This is most effective when you’re capturing an activity, rather than a still scene.

The Galaxy S20+ is a very capable smartphone for video too. The highlight of course is 8K video, which works well, but you’ll need an 8K display or TV to really take advantage of such footage. It’s great that we have a phone that can record at this resolution, but since the frame rate is limited to 24fps, we found it better to simply stick with 4K video. Image quality is very good in daylight, with excellent stabilisation and details. In low light, the stabilisation causes a bit of a wobble effect in video, but other than this, the quality is good.

You can switch between all the cameras, including the selfie camera, when shooting up at to 4K resolution at 30fps. Video quality understandably isn’t very good when shooting with the wide-angle or telephoto cameras in low light. There’s the Super Steady video mode too, which is supposed to offer gimbal-level smoothness. While it does work to an extent, we preferred the quality when using the primary camera for a couple of reasons. In Super Steady mode, only the wide-angle or telephoto cameras (depending on the perspective you select) are used, and the resolution is restricted to 1080p.

Other shooting modes include Live Focus for videos, and there’s even a manual video mode now, just like you have for stills. Super slow-motion mode is present too, but at 960fps, you’re still limited to a 720p resolution.

Selfie taken with the Samsung Galaxy S20+ (tap for full-sized image)

Coming to the selfie camera, we have a 10-megapixel sensor with Dual Pixel AF and an f/2.2 aperture. During the day, the beautification filter that’s on by default smoothens skin textures quite heavily, making photos look unnatural. Switching it off improves results considerably. Live Focus is also a bit of a hit or miss, with incorrect edge detection. Before the software update, we had terrible results with the selfie camera in low light, but things have improved a bit post the update.

Verdict

The Galaxy S20+ might seem very expensive, but Samsung has actually priced it the same as the Galaxy S10+, when it launched a year ago. From that perspective, the Galaxy S20+ offers improved design and performance across the board, which makes it a worthy upgrade. Some of its stand-out features include the new zoom system for the rear cameras, the excellent display, solid battery life, and a sleeker design. Other things such as reverse wireless charging, the stereo speakers, and the lean software make this a very good package to consider.

However this phone does have its share of weakness, such as the fact that it gets quite warm when playing heavy games for extended periods of time, and face recognition doesn’t work very well in low light. The design of the back is also a bit bland for a flagship phone in 2020. Battery life, while good, could have been better, and fast charging isn’t as quick as some of the solutions we’ve seen from other manufacturers.

Another sore point for some buyers might be the lack of 5G support in the Indian models. While it’s not a big loss if you’re only going to be using your phone in India, it could be a deal-breaker for people who travel a lot or who intend to hold on to their expensive purchases for several years. Both Realme and iQoo have launched 5G devices in India for a lot less, making the Indian Galaxy S20+ seem less future-proof.

Overall, the Galaxy S20+ is still a great flagship that offers excellent all-round performance, top-of-the-line features, and of course, brand value.

[technologicalsanbustech-blog]

i phone x

                                                           iPhone X review: face the future    

 After months of hype, endless speculation, and a wave of last-minute rumors about production delays, the iPhone X is finally here. Apple says it’s a complete reimagining of what the iPhone should be, 10 years after the original revolutionized the world. That means some fundamental aspects of the iPhone are totally different here — most notably, the home button and fingerprint sensor are gone, replaced by a new system of navigation gestures and Apple’s new Face ID unlocking system. These are major changes.

New iPhones and major changes usually command a ton of hype, and Apple’s pushing the hype level around the iPhone X even higher than usual, especially given the new thousand-dollar starting price point. For the last few years, we've said some variation of "it's a new iPhone" when we’ve reviewed these devices. But Apple wants this to be the beginning of the next 10 years. It wants the iPhone 10 to be more than just the new iPhone. It wants it to be the beginning of a new generation of iPhones. That's a lot to live up to.

This review is going to be a little different, at least initially: Apple gave most reviewers less than 24 hours with the iPhone X before allowing us to talk about it. So consider this a working draft. These are my opening thoughts after a long, intense day of testing the phone, but I’ll be updating everything in a few days after we’re able to test performance and battery life, do an in-depth camera comparison, and generally live with the iPhone X in a more realistic way. Most importantly: please ask questions in the comments! I’ll try to answer as many of them as I can in the final, updated review.

But for now — here it goes.

Design

At a glance, the iPhone X looks so good one of our video editors kept saying it looked fake. It’s polished and tight and clean. My new favorite Apple thing is that the company managed to move all the regulatory text to software, leaving just the word “iPhone” on the back. The screen is bright and colorful and appears to be laminated tighter than previous iPhones, so it looks like the pixels are right on top. Honestly, it does kind of look like a live 3D render instead of an actual working phone.

The iPhone X basically looks like a living 3D render

But it is a real phone, and it’s clear it was just as challenging to actually build as all the rumors suggested. It’s gorgeous, but it’s not flawless. There’s a tiny sharp ridge between the glass back and the chrome frame that I feel every time I pick up the phone. That chrome frame seems destined to get scratched and dinged, as every chrome Apple product tends to do. The camera bump on the back is huge; a larger housing than the iPhone 8 Plus fitted onto a much smaller body and designed to draw attention to itself, especially on my white review unit. There are definitely going to be people who think it’s ugly, but it’s growing on me.

There’s no headphone jack, which continues to suck on every phone that omits it, but that’s the price you pay for a bezel-less screen with a notch at the top. Around the sides, you’ll find the volume buttons, the mute switch, and the sleep / wake button. The removal of the home button means there are a few new button combinations to remember: pressing the top volume button and the sleep / wake button together takes a screenshot; holding the sleep button opens Siri; and you turn the phone off by holding either of the volume buttons and the sleep button for several seconds and then sliding to power down.

And, of course, there’s the notch in the display — what Apple calls the “sensor housing.” It’s ugly, but it tends to fade away after a while in portrait mode. It’s definitely intrusive in landscape, though. It makes landscape in general pretty messy. Less ignorable are the bezels around the sides and bottom of the screen, which are actually quite large. Getting rid of almost everything tends to draw attention to what remains, and what remains here is basically a thick black border all the way around the screen, with that notch set into the top.

I personally think the iPhone 4 is the most beautiful phone of all time, and I’d say the iPhone X is in third place in the iPhone rankings after that phone and the original model. It’s a huge step up from the surfboard design we’ve been living with since the iPhone 6, but it definitely lacks the character of Apple’s finest work. And… it has that notch.

Display

The iPhone X is Apple’s first phone to use an OLED display, after years of Apple LCDs setting the standard for the industry. OLED displays allow for thinner phones, but getting them to be accurate is a challenge: Samsung phones tend to be oversaturated to the point of neon, Google’s Pixel 2 XL has a raft of issues with viewing angles and muted colors, and the new LG V30 has problems with uneven backlighting.

Apple’s using a Samsung-manufactured OLED panel with a PenTile pixel layout on the iPhone X, but it’s insistent that it was custom-engineered and designed in-house. Whatever the case, the results are excellent: the iPhone X OLED is bright, sharp, vibrant without verging into parody, and generally a constant pleasure to look at. Apple’s True Tone system automatically adjusts color temperature to ambient light, photos are displayed in a wider color gamut, and there’s even Dolby Vision HDR support, so iTunes movies mastered in HDR play with higher brightness and dynamic range.

It’s just a terrific display

I did notice some slight color shifting off-axis, but never so much that it bothered me; I generally had to go looking for it. And compared to the iPhone 8 Plus LCD, it seems like a slightly cooler display over all, but only when I held the two side by side. Overall, it’s just a terrific display.

Unfortunately, the top of the display is marred by that notch, and until a lot of developers do a lot of work to design around it, it’s going to be hard to get the most out of this screen. I mean that literally: a lot of apps don’t use most of the screen right now.

Apps that haven’t been updated for the iPhone X run in what you might call “software bezel” mode: huge black borders at the top and bottom that basically mimic the iPhone 8. And a lot of apps aren’t updated yet: Google Maps and Calendar, Slack, the Delta app, Spotify, and more all run with software bezels. Games like CSR Racing and Sonic the Hedgehog looked particularly silly. It’s fine, but it’s ugly, especially since the home bar at the bottom of the screen glows white in this mode.

Some apps almost look right, but then you realize they’re actually just broken

Apps that haven’t been specifically updated for the iPhone X, but use Apple’s iOS autolayout system will fill the screen, but wacky things happen: Dark Sky blocks out half the status bar with a hardcoded black bar of its own, Uber puts your account icon over the battery indicator, and the settings in the Halide camera app get obscured by the notch and partially tucked into the display’s bunny ears. It almost looks right, but then you realize it’s actually just broken.

Apps that have been updated for the iPhone X all have different ways of dealing with the notch that sometimes lead to strange results, especially in apps that play video. Instagram Stories don’t fill the screen; they have large gray borders on the top and bottom. YouTube only has two full-screen zoom options, so playing the Last Jedi trailer resulted in either a small video window surrounded by letter- and pillar-boxing or a full-screen view with the notch obscuring the left side of the video. Netflix is slightly better, but you’re still stuck choosing between giant black borders around your video or the notch.

Landscape mode on the iPhone X is generally pretty messy: the notch goes from being a somewhat forgettable element in the top status bar to a giant interruption on the side of the screen, and I haven’t seen any apps really solve for it yet. And the home bar at the bottom of the screen often sits over the top of content, forever reminding you that you can swipe to go home and exit the chaos of landscape mode forever.

I’m sure all of this will get solved over time, but recent history suggests it might take longer than Apple or anyone would like; I still encounter apps that aren’t updated for the larger iPhone 6 screen sizes. 3D Touch has been around for years, but I can’t think of any app that makes particularly good use of it. Apple’s rolled out a lot of screen design changes over the years, and they take a while to settle in. We’ll just have to see how it goes with the iPhone X.

Cameras

I haven’t had a lot of time to play with the cameras on the iPhone X, but the short answer is that they look almost exactly like the cameras on the iPhone 8. Both the telephoto and wide angle lenses have optical image stabilization (compared to just the wide angle on the 8 Plus), and the TrueDepth system on the front means the front camera can take portrait mode selfies. It’s nice.

iPhone X rear camera (left) / Pixel 2 XL rear camera (right)

Of course, the main thing the front camera can do is take Animoji, which are Apple’s animated emoji characters. It’s basically built-in machinima, and probably the single best feature on the iPhone X. Most importantly, they just work, and they work incredibly well, tracking your eyes and expressions and capturing your voice in perfect sync with the animation. Apple’s rolled out a lot of weird additions to iMessage over the years, but Animoji feel much stickier than sending a note with lasers or adding stickers or whatever other gimmicks have been layered on. And while iMessage remains a golden palace of platform lock-in, Animoji are notably cross-platform: they work in iMessage, can be sent as videos over MMS, or exported as MOV files. Nice.

Face ID: it works, mostly

The single most important feature of the iPhone X is Face ID, the system that unlocks the phone by recognizing your face. Even that’s an understatement: the entire design and user experience of the iPhone X is built around Face ID. Face ID is what let Apple ditch the home button and Touch ID fingerprint sensor. The Face ID sensor system is housed in the notch. The Apple Pay user flow has been reworked around Face ID. Apple’s Animoji animated emoji work using the Face ID sensors.

If Face ID doesn’t work, the entire promise of the iPhone X falls apart.

The good news is that Face ID mostly works great. The bad news is that sometimes it doesn’t, and you will definitely have to adjust the way you think about using your phone to get it to a place where it mostly works great.

Face ID is cutting-edge tech, but the fundamental concept is pretty simple: it’s basically a tiny Xbox Kinect. An infrared projector flashes out thousands of tiny dots that cover your face, and the front camera clicks on, captures that image, and turns it into a depth map. That map — not an actual image of your face — is stored locally on the iPhone X’s Secure Enclave, which is the same place Apple stored Touch ID fingerprint data.

Setting up Face ID is ridiculously simple — much simpler than setting up Touch ID on previous iPhones. The phone displays a circular border around your face, and you simply move until a series of lines around that circle turn green. (Apple suggests you move your nose around in a circle, which is adorable.) Do that twice, and you’re done: Face ID will theoretically get better and better at recognizing you over time, and track slow changes like growing a beard so you don’t have to re-enroll. Drastic changes, like shaving that beard off, might require you to enter your passcode, however.

Face ID should also work through most sunglasses that pass infrared light, although some don’t. And you can definitely make it fail if you put on disguises, but I’d rather have it fail than let someone else through.

In my early tests, Face ID worked well indoors: sitting at my desk, standing in our video studio, and waiting in line to get coffee. You have to look at it head-on, though: if it’s sitting on your desk you have to pick up the phone and look at it, which is a little annoying if you’re used to just putting your finger on the Touch ID sensor to check a notification.

You also can’t be too casual about it: I had a lot of problems pulling the iPhone X out of my pocket and having it fail to unlock until Apple clarified that Face ID works best at a distance of 25 to 50 centimeters away from your face, or about 10 to 20 inches. That’s closer than I usually hold my phone when I pull it out of my pocket to check something, which means I had to actively think about holding the iPhone X closer to my face than every other phone I’ve ever used. “You’re holding it wrong” is a joke until it isn’t, and you can definitely hold the iPhone X wrong.

You can definitely hold the iPhone X wrong

That’s a small problem, though, and I think it’ll be easy to get used to. The other problem is actually much more interesting: almost all of the early questions about Face ID centered around how it would work in the dark, but it turns out that was exactly backwards. Face ID works great in the dark, because the IR projector is basically a flashlight, and flashlights are easy to see in the dark. But go outside in bright sunlight, which contains a lot of infrared light, or under crappy florescent lights, which interfere with IR, and Face ID starts to get a little inconsistent.

I took a walk outside our NYC office in bright sunlight, and Face ID definitely had issues recognizing my face consistently while I was moving until I went into shade or brought the phone much closer to my face than usual. I also went to the deli across the street, which has a wide variety of lights inside, including a bunch of overhead florescent strips, and Face ID also got significantly more inconsistent.

I’ve asked Apple about this, and I’ll update this review with their answers along with more detailed test results, but for now I’d say Face ID definitely works well enough to replace Touch ID, but not so well that you won’t run into the occasional need to try again.

Recent Apple products have tended to demand people adapt to them instead of being adapted to people, and it was hard not to think about that as I stood in the sunlight, waving a thousand-dollar phone ever closer to my face.

Software

There’s a lot of new hardware in the iPhone X, but it’s still running iOS 11 — albeit with some tweaks to navigation to accommodate the lack of a home button. You swipe up from the bottom to go home, swipe down from the right to bring up (down?) Control Center, and swipe down from the left to open the Notifications pane. That pane also has buttons for the flashlight and camera; in a twist, they require 3D Touch to work, so they feel like real buttons. It’s neat, but also breaks the 3D Touch paradigm. It’s the only place the entire system where 3D Touch acts like a left click instead of a right click. It’s emblematic of how generally fuzzy iOS has become with basic interface concepts, I think.

Switching apps is fun and simple: you can either swipe up and hold to bring up all your apps in a card-like deck, or just quickly swipe left and right on the home bar to bounce through them one at a time.

And… those are basically the changes to iOS 11 on the iPhone X, apart from the various notch-related kerfuffles. If you’ve been using iOS for a while and iOS 11 for the past month, nothing here will surprise you. Apple might have completely rethought how you unlock the iPhone X, but it’s still not giving up on that grid of app icons or making notifications more powerful or even allowing the weather app icon to display a live temperature. Siri is still Siri. If you’re buying an iPhone X expecting a radical change to your iPhone experience, well, you probably won’t get it. Unless you really hate unlocking your phone.

The iPhone X is clearly the best iPhone ever made. It’s thin, it’s powerful, it has ambitious ideas about what cameras on phones can be used for, and it pushes the design language of phones into a strange new place. It is a huge step forward in terms of phone hardware, and it has the notch to show for it. If you’re one of the many people who preordered this thing, I think you’ll be happy, although you’ll be going on the journey of figuring out when and how Face ID works best with everyone else.

It’s a new iPhone

But if you didn’t preorder, I suspect you might not feel that left out for a while. The iPhone X might be a huge step forward in terms of hardware, but it runs iOS 11 just the same as other recent iPhones, and you won’t really be missing out on anything except Animoji. Face ID seems like it’s off to a good start, but it’s definitely inconsistent in certain lighting conditions. And until your favorite apps are updated, you won’t be able to make use of that entire beautiful display.

All that adds up to the thing you already know: the iPhone X is a very expensive iPhone. For a lot of people, it’ll be worth it. For a lot of people, it’ll seem ridiculous. But fundamentally, it’s a new iPhone, and that means you probably already know if you want to spend a thousand dollars on one.

Because this review isn’t final, we’re not scoring the iPhone X yet. Leave your questions and comments below, and we’ll try to address as many of them in our final review as we can. We’ll add the score at that time as.

                                 ............sanket         

[cdrforea]

Wyze Cam Pan Review | Digital Trends

New Post has been published on https://bestedevices.com/wyze-cam-pan-review-digital-trends.html

Wyze Cam Pan Review | Digital Trends

"A high quality 360 degree camera for $ 30? It sounds too good to be true, but the Wyze Cam Pan is anything but a gimmick. "

Attractive, well-built budget hardware

Impressively clear day / night imaging

Responsive control of the pan / tilt motor

Simple and friendly app

Free cloud and local SD recording

Hit and miss motion tracking

Hard audio quality

Acoustic warnings lack advertised intelligence

After Wyze Labs recently blew us away with a $ 20 smart cam, Wyze Labs is back with Wyze Cam Pan. It's a $ 30 pan / tilt / zoom (PTZ) model that offers 360-degree room coverage, 93-degree vertical tilt, and the same Full HD video quality that we got with the Wyze Cam the second Generation impressed.

At just $ 30, the company hopes that the new model will continue to gain momentum in a highly competitive category. Few consumer brands have dealt with the complexity of a PTZ design or smarter ways to provide 360-degree coverage. Those who have done so, like the $ 120 VTech HD pan and tilt camera or the $ 230 Guardzilla 360, have promised a lot, but ultimately disappointed.

So you'll be forgiven for believing that a budget camera may not outperform devices that cost four times their price. However, we had a similar idea about Wyze Cam v2, and we were absolutely wrong.

Clear lines and convincing properties

While PTZ support is big news, take a look at Wyze Cam Pan's extensive list of features and you'll see everything you'd expect from a modern Smart Cam. Like Wyze Cam v2, the new model offers 1080p resolution, night vision, motion detection zones, intelligent notification, two-way audio, and local and cloud recording. What we didn't expect was a wider 120-degree field of view and a motion tracking feature that allows the camera to intelligently follow moving objects in space.

Open the box and you will see a device very similar to a larger version of the original Wyze Cam, which is not a bad move. It's a little light, but the white, matte plastics feel good in the hand, with beveled corners that add a touch of quality. Give it a try and you won't feel the traditional creak, which is the hallmark of a cheaply built device. It's a smart design in every way.

Give it a try and you won't feel the traditional creak, which is the hallmark of a cheaply built device. It's a smart design in every way.

The pull-out (and slightly weak) base of the previous model was replaced by a handy disc on which the camera rotates. It's a bit smaller than the camera body, but the device remains fairly stable on the desktop. While no bracket is included, the base includes a standard quarter-inch screw hole for wall mounting and a micro USB slot for power.

Other connectivity options include a convenient USB-A port on the back of the camera that you can use to daisy chain and power a second Wyze Cam, while a microSD port on the bottom of the device supports up to 32 GB of local storage.

Setup with a beta version of the Wyze Cam smartphone app went smoothly. Voice prompts through the camera's speaker assist you in this process. A quick scan of a QR code that appears on your smartphone screen ensures that you are quickly connected.

Sharp imaging with some exposure problems

After commissioning, we were pleased to see that Wyze Cam Pan provided the same clear, high quality imaging that we enjoyed from Wyze Cam v2. The images were well saturated and balanced, although lighter areas such as sunlit windows and interior lighting suffered from significant overexposure. To be fair to Wyze Labs, this is a problem we've encountered with most of the smart cams we've tested this year. The wide 120-degree field of view offered a generous view of the room, and although a fisheye lens effect was discernible at the edges of the image, this did not cause any problems with monitoring.

When switching to night vision, we were again impressed by reasonably clear and sharp images that were superior to more expensive competitors such as the VTech HD Pan & Tilt camera.

However, audio was far less sophisticated. The integrated microphone has successfully recognized and recorded audio. However, when we played back a recording from the local SD card on a PC, we found that the recorded audio was quite hard. The Wyze Cam Pan loudspeaker was used as an intercom or as an acoustic warning for intruders. As with most of the smart cams we tested, the investment in the image sensor is heavily weighted.

Responsive pan / tilt modes, but motion tracking requires work

Panning and tilting the camera, either by swiping the video on your smartphone or using a circular directional pad, was fluid and responded incredibly quickly. The camera turned on its axis with very little delay. The motor speed of the camera can be set from the standard center. However, we have found that the noise output – which is relatively quiet, if a bit grumpy – increases at higher speeds.

We were delighted to see that Wyze Cam Pan delivered the same clear, high quality imaging that we enjoyed from Wyze Cam v2.

In addition to manual controls, Wyze Cam Pan also supports automated functions, including an adjustable pan-scan mode that changes the position of the camera every 10 seconds and motion tracking that follows the detected movement in the room. The latter option worked fairly well at times, although the camera tracked slower movements much more successfully.

In some cases, especially when moving faster, the camera lost the subject or accidentally turned away to point in any direction. We also found that enabling pan-scan and motion-tracking modes at the same time caused the tracking to stop working, while panning in each mode introduced temporary image pixelation that was quickly corrected as soon as the Camera was refocused.

Over time, Wyze Labs may be able to optimize the camera's algorithm to optimize motion tracking. It looks like it's a useful addition – especially with a $ 30 smart cam – but be prepared to experiment these early days to find the right balance between functionality and performance for your home .

Elsewhere, like the Wyze Cam v2, we found the support features of this device to be a hit or miss. Fortunately, problems with push notifications seem to have been resolved, as Wyze Cam Pan alerted us well to potential threats within seconds of detection. In general, both noise and motion detection worked well, but the announced smoke and carbon monoxide alerts were bankrupt. In tests, both types of alarms were simply identified with a "Detected Sound" notification.

However, a very simple user interface, elegant controls for video verification, free cloud and local SD recording and bonus functions such as the creation of time-lapse videos mean that Wyze Cam Pan is significantly above its weight. It offers a significantly higher value than many competitors.

Warranty information

Wyze Cam Pan has a 1-year limited warranty that covers parts and workmanship defects.

Our opinion

While Wyze Labs has more work to do to improve the device's more advanced, intelligent features, make no mistake. At this price, you really can't go wrong. The new model maintains the formula that made Wyze Cam v2 so special and improves it in some areas. A combination of attractive hardware, strong imaging performance, pan / tilt functions and a choice of free cloud or local recordings would be impressive with a $ 150 camera. At $ 30, that's a complete bargain price.

Is there a better alternative?

For this price? Only one. If pan / tilt functions feel like a treat, save yourself $ 10 and get Wyze Cam v2 instead.

How long it will take?

As a start-up, there are few guarantees for longevity, but this is the third hardware version of Wyze Labs, and the company continues to refine its products with new features and firmware updates. Adding moving parts to support the pan and tilt functions of Wyze Cam Pan increases the risk of a hardware failure. So, let's hope the company wisely invested the $ 10 bonus over Wyze Cam v2.

A community of more than 150,000 registered users indicates that the company is gaining momentum. With their fingers crossed, they have the resources to maintain their high-quality, innovative lead and at the same time keep the light on.

Should you buy it

Do it. A $ 30 PTZ smart camera shouldn't be that good, and what do you have to lose at this price?

Editor's recommendations

[serenemedia]

The 10 Best Tablets of 2018

The 10 Best Tablets of 2018

The market is saturated with thousands of tablets, how do you determine the right one for you? Whether you’re looking for an Android tablet, an iPad or Windows, there are definitely certain factors that you need to have in mind before deciding which ones are the best tablets for you.

Some of the best tablets on our top ten list have been tested by our in-house team to bring you a detailed list that’ll give you options to consider based on your needs and budget. While the Amazon Fire HD 8 makes it to our list as one of the best tablets below the £100 price tag the Apple iPads on our list take it for the more classic tablets. Surface Pro by Microsoft is our darling for a Windows tablet.

  Best Tablets Model Editors Rating View

Amazon Fire HD 8

Amazon Fire HD 10

Apple iPad

Asus 10.1-inch Transformer Mini T102HA-D4-GR

Lenovo Miix 520 IdeaPad

Microsoft Surface Pro

Apple 10.5-inch iPad Pro

Samsung Galaxy S3 Tab

Asus ZenPad 3S 10

Lenovo Tab 4 8

  Factors to Consider When Buying a Tablet

While there are several factors to consider when buying a tablet, the below are should be top of your list.

Operating System

Just like your computer, you need to think of the operating system you need for your tablet. Apple iOS, Windows 10 by Microsoft and Google’s Android (including its Amazon variation) are the three main operating systems that you can consider.

Windows is ideal when you need a full-fledged office software with an added keyboard. On the other hand, Android tablets are suitable for eBook readers, media players and are great devices for kids. Certain Android tablets have better specs for their price range than you can get with the iPad. However, if you need a tablet that has a wide range of general-purpose apps, iPads take the crown.

Apple’s range of tablets has an added advantage over the other tablets due to its operating system –  Apple iOS –  for

two reasons: it’s very intuitive and clean and has a wide range of apps that you can purchase from your tablet and works well with few exceptions.

A hardware choice from multiple manufacturers that are easy to configure, offer a notification system that’s top-notch, seamless integration with Google applications such as Google Maps, video chat, Gmail and Hangouts, a web browsing experience that’s fast and smooth is what you get when your tablet’s operating system is Google’s Android. Android tablets have an added advantage over the Apple tablets as it offers support for multiple user logins. This enables you to share your tablet with friends and family.

For a more traditional computing experience for your Windows software, Windows 10 is the OS for you. Buying a Windows 10 tablet lets, you run the complete Microsoft Office version. Besides, hardware add-ons and connectivity options for most Windows models are infinite compared to other types of tablets.

Apps

Apps are everything on a tablet. iPad tablets are the best when it comes to third-party apps that have been mainly designed for a touch-screen interface. There’s a vast library of games and programs that have been specifically built for Apple tablets. Apple’s App Store has a collection of apps that are well monitored and has every app that you could possibly think of. If you are shopping for a tablet that has a wide range of apps, your best bet is an Apple tablet.

Although Android has made some major strides in their app list by getting more developers on board and giving more apps that are of high-quality especially on tablets, they still can’t beat Apple. While it’s not easy to give an estimate of the number of optimized Android apps, they could be in thousands. Depending on the size of your tablet, the apps could look different. While an Android phone app may look fitting on a 7-inch tablet, the case may be different for a 9 or 10-inch tablet.

Windows 10 has an impressive list of apps that are over 100,000 as well as touch-screen friendly. Windows’ 10 main advantage is the ability to run millions of prevailing Windows desktop apps. However, some of the apps haven’t been designed for touch screens and may need a mouse or add-on keyboard.

Storage and Screen Size

The storage capacity of your tablet should be a no-brainer. Same to the size. Most people assume that the screen size is the same as the size of the tablet. The truth is, when they say a tablet is 9-inch or 10-inch, that’s the screen size.

Small-screen tablets are considered to be 7-inches while large-screen tablets are considered to be 8.9-inches and above. Samsung’s tablets, Apple’s iPads, and Amazon’s Fire are available in both small and large screens. More to it is the fact that there’s a blurred line between phones and tablets nowadays. Big smartphones – also known as phablets – are defying the need for one to carry another tablet. Case in point, the 6.2-inch Samsung Galaxy S8+.

If you"re planning to use your tablet for web surfing and eBook reading, the screen’s resolution is something you need to factor in as well. The highest resolution right now is from the 12.9-inch Apple iPad Pro at 2,732 by 2,048 pixels. Microsoft Surface Pro follows closely behind. If you’re shopping for a 10-inch Android tablet, get one where the screen resolution is 1,280 by 800 pixels.

The one advantage tablets have over laptops is the fact that they are lightweight. While they may not be as light as phones, they are far much better than laptops and much easier to carry around. However, holding a tablet for more than 20 minutes can make your hand tired. Most people prefer placing their tablets on the table or having them propped up when in use. Besides, very few tablets fit into a normal sized pocket. If you’re looking for something that can easily fit your pocket, consider getting a phablet.

Off-device storage (known as Cloud storage) is an alternative for most tablets – OneDrive for Windows, iCloud for iPads and Amazon Cloud Storage for Fire tablets. However, having more storage on onboard storage is always a better option. Photos, music, videos coupled with the apps on your tablets can take up so much space. Most tablets come with microSD memory card slots that allow you to expand the storage of your device.

Cellular vs. Wi-Fi Only Models

Some tablets can only allow for Wi-Fi connection while others have the alternative of cellular connection through your service provider. If a lot of your time will be spent on the go, it’s important to get a model that has a cellular version. This definitely adds the price of the device as you’ll have to pay for the cellular service.

Another option for getting online using your tablet is through your phone’s Wi-Fi hotspot. This option may not work with all tablets, and it’s crucial to ensure that you check with your service provider first. Alternatively, you can but a Wi-Fi hotspot device that won’t drain your phone’s battery.

Tablet Review

The tablets in our review list represent some of the best tablets that we’ve tested in the market – from the operating system to the price range. And with technological advancements, there are more tablets being launched every now and then. As such, we will constantly update our post to keep you up to date. That said, below are some tablets that you can consider when shopping for one. We hope you find something that suits your needs.

Amazon Fire HD 8

If you’re on a budget but still want something that can get the job done, the Amazon Fire HD 8 is your best bet. Retailing below £100, the tablet measures 8.4 by 5.0 by 0.4 inches and is just 13 ounces making it suitable for eBook readers as well

as for light gaming.

While there are tablets on our list with higher resolution, the Fire HD 8 isn’t badly off at 1,280 by 800. The tablet operates on Android 5.1 and has 1.5GB of RAM. The tablet has two different storage sizes: 16GB and 32GB with the latter selling at $30 more.

It also has an external slot card for a micro SD card. While its interface may not be anything like Android’s the tablet runs full Android apps letting you have access to hundreds of apps. However, there are certain apps by Google like YouTube and some from Microsoft that are missing. For its price, the Amazon Fire HD 8 is a nice tablet for someone who has other alternatives.

  Amazon Fire HD 10

While the Fire HD 10 isn’t a modification of the HD 8, it sure can feel that way. Weighing 17.4 ounces and measuring 10.3 by 6.3 by 0.4 inches, this tablet is slightly bigger and heavier than the HD 8. While it’s not waterproof or rugged, the Fire HD 10

can survive a couple of dings and knocks, but if buying it for your kid, it’s ideal to get a case for it.

With a 2GB RAM, it runs on Amazon’s latest Fire 5.5 operating system. The RAM gives it a better user interface when compared to the Fire HD 8. You can open multiple tabs when surfing and has a 10.1-inch screen that has a resolution of 1,920 by 1,200 pixels.

When it comes to storage, you won’t need to sweat about that. It has a 32GB internal storage capacity that can be expanded using an external micro SD card of up to 256GB. For a $150, you get a tablet that can enhance your life in so many ways and is definitely worth the price tag.

  Apple iPad

When it comes to Apple iPads, the price is everything. And they are justified as they don’t compromise on quality and have hundreds of thousands of apps designed specifically for their tablets. The Apple iPad and replaces the iPad Air 2 making it

bigger and heavier.

The tablet measures 6.6 by 9.4 by 0.3 inches and weighs 1 pound. Although it’s heavier than its predecessor, the difference can only be felt if you pay attention. At 2,048 by 1,536 pixels, the screen measures 9.7 inches and is a little brighter than its forerunner.

The Apple iPad runs iOS 10.3 which is the OS that all new Apple tablets are operating on. Its main camera is 8 megapixels while the front cameras is 1 megapixel. This iPad is suitable for reading, gaming, web browsing and watching of videos. If you’re looking to buy something in the Apple family for a start, consider getting this particular tablet.

  Asus 10.1-inch Transformer Mini T102HA-D4-GR

There’s something about a tablet that can also be used as a laptop with just an add-on keyboard. And similar to the Microsoft Surface Pro, that’s what the Asus Transformer Mini offers. Its glass body is made of magnesium-aluminum alloy

giving it a sleek feel on your hands.

Measuring 0.5 by 10.2 by 6.7 inches makes it easy to carry in a bag amongst other documents. It weighs 1.75 pounds with the keyboard attached and 1.18 pounds without. It also comes with a stylus making it easy for you to scribble down notes.

Its resolution, at 1,280 by 800 is typical for most 10-inch tablets. Its screen is bright making it suitable for watching videos on YouTube and Netflix. The best part is that it has 4GB RAM with an internal storage capacity of 128GB. Its battery lasts up to 14 hours giving you ample time to get your work done.

  Lenovo Miix 520 IdeaPad

An upgrade from its predecessor, the Miix 510, there are certain features that underwent some updates to make it qualify on our list of the 10 best tablets of 2018. The Miix 520 also comes with a detachable keyboard and runs on Windows.

The screen resolution is HD at 1,920 by 1,080. The keyboard can be removed when you want to use it in tablet mode. It was designed to compete with high-end tablets/iPads as well as traditional laptops. Most especially, it"s competing with Microsoft Surface Pro and Apple iPad Pro.

This Lenovo tablet looks to give buyers something with multiple features for a fraction of the market price. With a useful stylus and its use of the Intel Core i5 processor, this tablet is ideal if you are looking for something to get the job done both on the go and in the office.

  Microsoft Surface Pro

When it comes to a 2-in-1 tablet, the Microsoft Surface Pro still takes the crown. Designed by the industry leader in office software, its one device that competitors are still trying to create. You can bet that this tablet won’t disappoint. The add-on

keyboard feature makes it usable as a laptop in the office as well as a tablet during office meeting presentations or a late client meeting in the evening. Not only is it one of the best tablets out there, a lot of people use this as their main pc as well.

Top of the range model uses the Intel Core i7-7660U, 512GB SSD and a RAM of 16GB.

All the Microsoft Surface Pro models weigh 2.45 pounds with the pen and type cover, 2.41 pounds with the type cover and 1.75 pounds alone as well as measure 7.9 by 11.5 by 0.33 inches. The screen that measures 12.3 inches has a 2,736 by 1,824 resolution making it suitable for reading, surfing the internet and gaming.

Although it’s expensive, this tablet delivers the build and design quality with the overall performance and speed that media professionals,, as well as artists,, desire in their devices. If you’re not tight on cash and want something that’ll stand out, this is the tablet for you.

  Apple 10.5-inch iPad Pro

Apple has taken seven years to develop a laptop-class tablet that can eliminate the need for your laptop. This model succeeds the 9.7-inch model.

The screen’s resolution is at 2,224 by 1,668 pixels and weighs 1.03 pounds. While other tablets stand out for their battery power, this iPad Pro lasts close to seven hours before a need for a recharge. As for the storage, the price goes up depending on your storage needs, but the starting price is $329 for 32GB.

This iPad is fast, stable and powerful. There’s a lot more that you can do with this iPad if you choose to buy it.

  Samsung Galaxy S3 Tab

At 32GB, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Tab is the most powerful Android slate globally and one of the best tablets out there today. This tablet measures 9.35 by 6.65 by 0.23 inches and weighs 15.1 ounces. The 9.7-inch screen has a screen resolution of 2,048 by 1,536 which is similar to

the Galaxy S2.

With 4GB RAM, this device runs on Android 7.0 Nougat making it more powerful when it comes to its processing capability. For now, the device operates on Wi-Fi only. The tablet comes with one memory size, 32GB out of which the only available space left when you buy is 18.5GB.  However, you can add a micro SD card of up to 256GB.

Its main highlight is the S Pen. This pen allows you to take notes and make drawings on your documents. Besides, you can also purchase a keyboard and have a mini-laptop when you need to use a keyboard.

  Asus ZenPad 3S 10

If you’re in the market for something that you’d like to use for watching videos and reading eBooks, while not spending a large amount of money, then this is the tablet on our list of best tablets to get for yourself.

Weighing 15.2 ounces, this tablet measures 9.47 by 6.44 by 0.28 inches and has a combination of dual speakers at the bottom that are powerful with a USB-C port. The screen has a 2,048 by 1,536 pixel. Running Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, it’s quite fast compared to some of the tablets out there.

However, when it comes to battery life, the Asus ZenPad 3S 10 might not be the best option for you. Still, it’s a good device if you are looking for something that you can watch movies from.

  Lenovo Tab 4 8

This device is not only affordable, but for its price range, it performs remarkably well and has a decent battery life for average media use and easily justifies its position in our list of the best 10 tablets of 2018.

Weighing 10.9 ounces and measuring 8.3 by 4.9 by 0.3 inch, the device is ideal for listening to music or watching videos as well as surfing the internet. Now, it may not have all the feature that high-end devices have, but for its price, it’ll do just fine especially when you are on a tight budget.

The post The 10 Best Tablets of 2018 appeared first on Serene Media.

from Serene Media https://serenemedia.co.uk/10-best-tablets-of-2018/

[tortuga-aak]

Microsoft says its new laptops are twice as powerful as the MacBook Pro — here's what that means (AAPL, MSFT)

Microsoft

Microsoft is mounting a direct challenge to Apple's MacBook Pro laptops.

In recent years, Apple's MacBook Pros have been the high-end notebook of choice for those who need a high-performance laptop. 

Now, Microsoft wants its Surface Book to be that device. The company best known for Windows is making direct comparisons to Apple's aluminum juggernaut. 

Here's how Microsoft's corporate VP of devices Panos Panay compared the two laptop brands during a briefing last week:

“The Surface Book 2 is twice as performant as the MacBooks that just started hitting the market now,” Panay said.

“So if you took the 13-inch and compared it to the 13-inch,” he continued, “you’d see [Surface Book 2 is] two times more powerful. That’s the same as the two 15-inches, you would see it two times more powerful.”

“That includes the fact that [Microsoft's laptops] are both delivering more than 30% pixels in both,” he concluded. 

To translate: Microsoft says its laptop is more powerful that Apple's — and it has a higher resolution screen, too. 

But what does Microsoft's claim that its laptops have twice the performance mean? 

Twice as performant

MicrosoftMicrosoft's claim is based on two benchmarks: A 3Dmark 11 test, which focuses on graphics performance, and a LuxMark test that scores both the computer's CPU and GPU. 

Basically, Microsoft claims that its computers have faster chips inside. Of course, then it depends on which model is being tested, because both Microsoft and Apple offer several different chip options. 

It appears that Microsoft's tests are comparing the high-end to the high-end — pitting the 13-inch MacBook Pro with the fastest chip Apple offers, the Intel i7-7567U, starting at $1799, against the Surface Book 2 with a Intel's i7-8650U chip.

These are not entry-level models. 

It's easy to see why Microsoft is claiming the victory on the 13-inch model. The processor that Microsoft's laptop uses has four cores, and Apple does not offer any 13-inch MacBook Pro models with a quad-core chip. Basically, a quad-core chip has four different units that can perform calculations, whereas a dual-core chip, like those in the MacBook Pro, only have two. 

Generally, quad-core computers score better on benchmark tests, but whether you need the extra two cores often comes down to what you're doing. 

If you're doing tasks like video editing or transcoding with software that can take advantage of multiple cores, you'll notice a big improvement with the extra two cores. On the other hand, more cores means it uses more power and runs hotter, and if you're just surfing Google and Business Insider, you probably don't need the extra cores. 

In addition, the Surface Book 2 model that Microsoft pitted against Apple has a discrete graphics processors from Nvidia — specifically, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050. This is a big deal for people who might want to play games, render video, or run any kind of virtual reality.

Apple won't include a discrete chip at all with its smaller MacBook Pro — users have to make due with the graphics processor that Intel builds into its chips. For many people, the graphics card alone will be enough to pick the Surface Book 2 over Apple's laptop. 

Big laptop situation 

Kif LeswingIt's a little less clear comparing the two 15-inch laptops. Microsoft's test unit had the Intel i7-8650U chip and bigger MacBook Pros use quad-core Intel chips as well, up to the Intel i7-7920HQ, mostly eliminating the cores advantage.

In addition, Apple's bigger MacBook Pros come equipped with a discrete graphics chip, the Radeon Pro 560 with 4GB memory, a comparable chip to the Nvidia GPUs Microsoft is using. 

Microsoft is using "8th-generation" Intel chips, which are one generation newer than the chips Apple's using. They should be slightly faster and more efficient than Apple's chips, simply because they're newer. 

Of course, Apple people may argue that the reason Apple didn't put all this high-powered silicon into its laptops is because it kills battery life. But Microsoft is claiming significantly better battery life than Apple — up to 17 hours for either model. Apple only promises 10 hours of web browsing from its MacBook Pro models — and I personally see less on a daily basis. 

Of course, promises on a spec sheet are just that. Independent analyst will eventually benchmark these new laptops and test their batteries to see how they fare in the real world to confirm what Microsoft is seeing in its test labs. 

But particularly with the 13-inch Surface Book 2, it does look like Microsoft has packed in significantly more powerful chips than Apple. 

Not for everyone

Hollis Johnson/Business InsiderAt first glance, the Surface Book 2 and the current lineup of MacBook Pro are very similar, underscoring the fact that Microsoft is not going for the entire laptop market with its two new Surface Book laptops. It's only going for the extremely high-end. 

The 13-inch Surface Book 2 starts at $1499, and the bigger one costs $2499. Apple's are slightly less expensive, with its least expensive MacBook Pro retailing for $1299 and 15-inch models starting at $1999 — although the prices go up when you start picking out options. 

The way Microsoft frames those high price tags is that it's making laptops for "creators." Creators, according to Microsoft, are designers, photographers, coders, and even writers. 

Another way to look at that is that it's targeting people for whom a $3,000 computer makes perfect financial sense — they're spending hours on it per day for years. It would be silly to buy a cheap laptop. 

This has been Apple's market. Apple's laptops have never been dominant in terms of market share — Apple currently hovers around a 7% market share — but some estimates have Apple capturing 60% or more of PC profits. 

"The PC market is flat to shrinking, but there is growth on the premium space, right where Microsoft is targeting Surface," Patrick Moorhead, Principal Analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, previously told Business Insider. 

But Apple's latest high-end laptops have disappointed Apple's own creators. Some take issue with the Touch Bar, a touchscreen strip built into the laptop's keyboard. The Touch Bar meant that Apple eliminated the escape key, which is a button that coders — perhaps the most important "creators" to a big tech company — hit all the time.

Others complained that the fact that the MacBook Pro doesn't have a true touch screen makes certain kinds of app testing or development more difficult. The lack of a GPU on the smaller models means that Apple's laptops can't really do virtual reality or augmented reality development, despite the fact that Apple's senior leadership talks up the technology all the time.

Apple's MacBook Pros still sell a lot — more units certainly than Microsoft's Surface Book laptops. But by giving coders and video editors their checklist of must-have features, the newest Microsoft models will be having even die-hard Mac fans taking a second look at Windows. 

NOW WATCH: The 5 most annoying changes in the new iPhone update — and how to fix them

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[jesusvasser]

First Drive: 2018 Honda Accord

BRETTON WOODS, New Hampshire — Hats off to Honda: Every automaker claims to be committed to the ever-shrinking mid-size sedan market, but Honda seems to be the only one actually doing something about it. While other brands keep giving us the same three boxes in slightly reskinned packages, the all-new 2018 Honda Accord is the only midsize sedan that feels genuinely all-new.

My editor would like me to get straight to the driving experience—which is just dandy, I assure you—but the changes to the Accord’s physical manifestation are the big story, so let’s get through those as quickly as possible. The new Honda Accord sports the same fastback shape as the Civic, and it wears it well. The grille is a bit fussy and the chrome-trimmed rocker panels on the Touring model are a bit silly, but the all-LED headlights (standard on all models) look cool and futuristic and the taillights are slicker than goose droppings. Besides, when it comes to design, proportion is king, and the Accord rocks it. From any angle, this is a great-looking car.

Even bigger improvements can be found in the cabin. The previous Accord’s ridiculous dual-screen dashboard has been tossed into the dumpster, where it belongs. Replacing it is a dash that is smooth and sleek and modern. Climate controls have been simplified and the stereo finally has freakin’ dials—two of them, even; one for volume and one for tuning, just as God commanded to Moses. The stand-up display stereo also gets accessory buttons for common functions, and while Honda’s graphical infotainment interface still trails the best in the biz, it’s getting better.

Though the new Accord is smaller on the outside, it’s bigger on the inside. Thanks to an increase in wheelbase and a back seat that nestles deep into the C-pillar, the 2018 Accord offers an absurd amount of rear-seat legroom—2.5 inches more than last the outgoing model—and a decent level of headroom considering the swooping roofline. The trunk is bigger as well, but with the bottom edge of the rear window dragged so far rearward, the opening is rather small—it may be time for Honda to follow Buick’s lead and turn the Accord into a liftback.

One of the coolest details is the semi-digital dash. The speedo on the right is the real thing, but the center display and left-side tach are a 7-inch TFT screen. The tach can be substituted with navigation, phone, audio and trip computer displays, but leaving it in rev-counter mode is a real treat—the animation is classic-era-Disney-movie-smooth, and were it not for the fact that the speedometer needle is a 3-dimensional object, it’d be nearly impossible to tell which of the two gauges is real and which is a video image.

So how is the driving experience? The answer is long, but it can be summed up in three words: Pretty darn good.

The big news for the 2018 Accord is its all-turbo engine lineup, the old 2.4-liter four-cylinder and 3.5-liter V-6 having been replaced by 1.5- and 2.0-liter turbocharged fours. The 2.0T is essentially the Civic Type R’s engine detuned to 252 hp and 273 lb-ft of torque, the latter being the highest torque figure ever applied to an Accord.

Turbo lag is minimal; some other 2.0Ts stumble when floored from a standstill, but the Accord’s jumps off the line, picks up sharply at 2,000 RPM, breaks the tires loose at 3,500, and spins them all the way to redline. On paper, the 2.0T’s torque curve begins to drop off above 4,000 RPM, closely mimicking the behavior of a traditional V-6. In the real world, pickup is terrific: I dropped the hammer to pass an 18-wheeler on a tight two-laner, and by the time I pulled back into my lane, the speedo was brushing the century mark. Honda may be late to the 2.0T party, but it’s used its time wisely: In my opinion, this is the first four-cylinder turbo that is genuinely better than the V-6 it replaces.

Two-liter Accords with an automatic gearbox get Honda’s new home-grown ten-speed, a dream of a tranny that delivers smooth upshifts and prompt downshifts. Sport models can be had with a six-speed manual and while the shift action isn’t quite as tight as the outgoing Accord Sport, it’s still a pleasure to row.

Honda expects about 80% of Accord buyers to opt for the 1.5-liter turbo, which produces 192 hp and 192 lb-ft of torque. Turbo lag is bit more pronounced than that of the 2.0T, but the engine comes alive around 2,250 RPM and pulls strongly and evenly right to the rev limiter, with peak torque delivered right all the way to 5,000 RPM.

Sport models can be had with a six-speed manual (the same gearbox paired to the 2.0T engine), while other 1.5-liter Accord models employ a continuously variable automatic. Honda hasn’t tried to make this CVT act like anything but what it is, and while purists may despise the droning engine note, its smooth, shift-free acceleration should be a hit with the masses. Even the most die-hard stepped-tranny snob will be forced to acknowledge how well the CVT does its job, snapping the engine up into its torque band when power is needed and promptly dropping it down into run-silent mode when the driver eases off the accelerator.

Let’s shift gears to the 2018 Accord’s chassis, which has also been completely reworked. The basic layout is the same, with MacPherson struts up front and a multi-link setup out back. New this year is an adaptive damper system, but it’s only available on the top-of-the-line Touring model, which is a shame; I’d love to see it on the Sport. Also new is a dual-pinion variable-ratio steering system.

Out on the open road, the 2018 Accord puts it all together pretty well. The revised electric power steering system is both heavier and stiffer than the outgoing setup, and while off-center feel and precision are excellent, there’s not much feedback when making mid-corner corrections. Grip and balance felt good, though I was prevented from pushing the Accord to its limits by narrow roads, blind curves, and local drivers. Suffice it to say that if you subscribe to this publication’s “No Boring Cars” mantra, you will find the 2018 Accord a very satisfying drive.

Honda has retained the somewhat-firm ride of the outgoing Accord, but its gone on a witch hunt for noise, slathering the body with sound insulation and adding a third microphone to the standard-fit active noise cancellation system. EX, EX-L and Touring models even get sound-absorbing wheels. The new Accord is noticeably quieter than the old one, though there’s still a moderate amount of road noise, particularly in cars without the noise-nixing wheels.

Honda has taken a big step on the safety front by making its Honda Sensing system (which comprises a collision detection system with automatic braking, adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping assistance, road-departure mitigation, automatic high beams, and a backup camera) standard on all Accord models. Unfortunately, the nifty LaneWatch system, which mounted a wide-angle camera in the right-side mirror, is gone. I thought this was one of the most innovative safety features ever developed, and I asked Honda why it got the axe; they said that while journalists like me loved it, owners were more likely to switch it off. Honda has replaced it with a traditional blind-spot warning system, though it’s only offered in EX, EX-L and Touring models.

The Accord Hybrid will return to the lineup in early 2018. Honda’s two-motor hybrid system returns, but the downsized battery is now small enough to share under-seat space with the fuel tank. That means the Hybrid gets the same 16.7-cu ft of trunk volume as the regular Accord, along with a 60/40 split-fold rear seat. I took a brief drive in an early-production version of the new Accord Hybrid, and liked it just as much as the current-gen Accord Hybrid—in other words, plenty.

The 2018 Honda Accord will keep the same basic trim lineup (LX, Sport, EX, EX-L, Touring) as the outgoing car, with the 1.5T liter engine offered in all five levels; the pairing of the smaller engine with the Touring model is new for 2018. The 2.0T can be had in Sport, EX-L and Touring trims.

The 2.0T Sport is the new addition here, and it gets a few extra standard features compared to the 1.5T Sport. Pricing ranges from $24,465 (including an $895 destination charge) for the 1.5T LX up to $36,675 for the 2.0T Touring, and Honda expects most buyers to gravitate towards the $26,655 1.5T Sport or the $28,345 1.5T EX.

Honda had not revealed pricing for the Accord Hybrid at the time of writing, but they did announce a new base model to complement the EX, EX-L and Touring trims. Once again, all Accords sold in America will be built in America, with the cars assembled at Honda’s Marysville plant and the new turbo engines built in nearby Anna, Ohio.

Bottom line: This is the most innovative Accord to come along in ages. Granted, much of what’s new in the 2018 Honda Accord is merely new for Honda: The Chevy Malibu went to an all-turbo-and-hybrid engine lineup in 2016, the Hyundai Sonata did the fastback roof thing in 2011, and the Galvin Brothers introduced a stereo with knobs in 1930. Still, when you put it all together, what you have is not only the most innovative Accord in years, but the most compelling car on the midsize sedan market. Other manufacturers may be giving lip service to the segment, but Honda is putting its money where its mouth is. I’ll be amazed if the all-new Accord doesn’t turn out to be an extraordinarily strong seller.

2018 Honda Accord Specifications

ON SALE Fall 2017 PRICE $24,445 (base) ENGINE 1.5L turbocharged DOHC 16-valve I-4/192 hp @ 5,500 rpm, 192 lb-ft @ 1,600-5,000 rpm; 2.0L turbocharged DOHC 16-valve I-4/252 hp @ 6,500 rpm, 273 lb-ft @ 1,500-4,000 rpm TRANSMISSION Continuously variable, 10-speed automatic, 6-speed manual LAYOUT 4-door, 5-passenger, front-engine, FWD sedan EPA MILEAGE 30/38 mpg (city/hwy) L x W x H 192.2 x 73.3 x 57.1 in WHEELBASE 111.4 in WEIGHT 3,138-3,428 lb 0-60 MPH N/A TOP SPEED N/A

IFTTT

[jonathanbelloblog]

First Drive: 2018 Honda Accord

BRETTON WOODS, New Hampshire — Hats off to Honda: Every automaker claims to be committed to the ever-shrinking mid-size sedan market, but Honda seems to be the only one actually doing something about it. While other brands keep giving us the same three boxes in slightly reskinned packages, the all-new 2018 Honda Accord is the only midsize sedan that feels genuinely all-new.

My editor would like me to get straight to the driving experience—which is just dandy, I assure you—but the changes to the Accord’s physical manifestation are the big story, so let’s get through those as quickly as possible. The new Honda Accord sports the same fastback shape as the Civic, and it wears it well. The grille is a bit fussy and the chrome-trimmed rocker panels on the Touring model are a bit silly, but the all-LED headlights (standard on all models) look cool and futuristic and the taillights are slicker than goose droppings. Besides, when it comes to design, proportion is king, and the Accord rocks it. From any angle, this is a great-looking car.

Even bigger improvements can be found in the cabin. The previous Accord’s ridiculous dual-screen dashboard has been tossed into the dumpster, where it belongs. Replacing it is a dash that is smooth and sleek and modern. Climate controls have been simplified and the stereo finally has freakin’ dials—two of them, even; one for volume and one for tuning, just as God commanded to Moses. The stand-up display stereo also gets accessory buttons for common functions, and while Honda’s graphical infotainment interface still trails the best in the biz, it’s getting better.

Though the new Accord is smaller on the outside, it’s bigger on the inside. Thanks to an increase in wheelbase and a back seat that nestles deep into the C-pillar, the 2018 Accord offers an absurd amount of rear-seat legroom—2.5 inches more than last the outgoing model—and a decent level of headroom considering the swooping roofline. The trunk is bigger as well, but with the bottom edge of the rear window dragged so far rearward, the opening is rather small—it may be time for Honda to follow Buick’s lead and turn the Accord into a liftback.

One of the coolest details is the semi-digital dash. The speedo on the right is the real thing, but the center display and left-side tach are a 7-inch TFT screen. The tach can be substituted with navigation, phone, audio and trip computer displays, but leaving it in rev-counter mode is a real treat—the animation is classic-era-Disney-movie-smooth, and were it not for the fact that the speedometer needle is a 3-dimensional object, it’d be nearly impossible to tell which of the two gauges is real and which is a video image.

So how is the driving experience? The answer is long, but it can be summed up in three words: Pretty darn good.

The big news for the 2018 Accord is its all-turbo engine lineup, the old 2.4-liter four-cylinder and 3.5-liter V-6 having been replaced by 1.5- and 2.0-liter turbocharged fours. The 2.0T is essentially the Civic Type R’s engine detuned to 252 hp and 273 lb-ft of torque, the latter being the highest torque figure ever applied to an Accord.

Turbo lag is minimal; some other 2.0Ts stumble when floored from a standstill, but the Accord’s jumps off the line, picks up sharply at 2,000 RPM, breaks the tires loose at 3,500, and spins them all the way to redline. On paper, the 2.0T’s torque curve begins to drop off above 4,000 RPM, closely mimicking the behavior of a traditional V-6. In the real world, pickup is terrific: I dropped the hammer to pass an 18-wheeler on a tight two-laner, and by the time I pulled back into my lane, the speedo was brushing the century mark. Honda may be late to the 2.0T party, but it’s used its time wisely: In my opinion, this is the first four-cylinder turbo that is genuinely better than the V-6 it replaces.

Two-liter Accords with an automatic gearbox get Honda’s new home-grown ten-speed, a dream of a tranny that delivers smooth upshifts and prompt downshifts. Sport models can be had with a six-speed manual and while the shift action isn’t quite as tight as the outgoing Accord Sport, it’s still a pleasure to row.

Honda expects about 80% of Accord buyers to opt for the 1.5-liter turbo, which produces 192 hp and 192 lb-ft of torque. Turbo lag is bit more pronounced than that of the 2.0T, but the engine comes alive around 2,250 RPM and pulls strongly and evenly right to the rev limiter, with peak torque delivered right all the way to 5,000 RPM.

Sport models can be had with a six-speed manual (the same gearbox paired to the 2.0T engine), while other 1.5-liter Accord models employ a continuously variable automatic. Honda hasn’t tried to make this CVT act like anything but what it is, and while purists may despise the droning engine note, its smooth, shift-free acceleration should be a hit with the masses. Even the most die-hard stepped-tranny snob will be forced to acknowledge how well the CVT does its job, snapping the engine up into its torque band when power is needed and promptly dropping it down into run-silent mode when the driver eases off the accelerator.

Let’s shift gears to the 2018 Accord’s chassis, which has also been completely reworked. The basic layout is the same, with MacPherson struts up front and a multi-link setup out back. New this year is an adaptive damper system, but it’s only available on the top-of-the-line Touring model, which is a shame; I’d love to see it on the Sport. Also new is a dual-pinion variable-ratio steering system.

Out on the open road, the 2018 Accord puts it all together pretty well. The revised electric power steering system is both heavier and stiffer than the outgoing setup, and while off-center feel and precision are excellent, there’s not much feedback when making mid-corner corrections. Grip and balance felt good, though I was prevented from pushing the Accord to its limits by narrow roads, blind curves, and local drivers. Suffice it to say that if you subscribe to this publication’s “No Boring Cars” mantra, you will find the 2018 Accord a very satisfying drive.

Honda has retained the somewhat-firm ride of the outgoing Accord, but its gone on a witch hunt for noise, slathering the body with sound insulation and adding a third microphone to the standard-fit active noise cancellation system. EX, EX-L and Touring models even get sound-absorbing wheels. The new Accord is noticeably quieter than the old one, though there’s still a moderate amount of road noise, particularly in cars without the noise-nixing wheels.

Honda has taken a big step on the safety front by making its Honda Sensing system (which comprises a collision detection system with automatic braking, adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping assistance, road-departure mitigation, automatic high beams, and a backup camera) standard on all Accord models. Unfortunately, the nifty LaneWatch system, which mounted a wide-angle camera in the right-side mirror, is gone. I thought this was one of the most innovative safety features ever developed, and I asked Honda why it got the axe; they said that while journalists like me loved it, owners were more likely to switch it off. Honda has replaced it with a traditional blind-spot warning system, though it’s only offered in EX, EX-L and Touring models.

The Accord Hybrid will return to the lineup in early 2018. Honda’s two-motor hybrid system returns, but the downsized battery is now small enough to share under-seat space with the fuel tank. That means the Hybrid gets the same 16.7-cu ft of trunk volume as the regular Accord, along with a 60/40 split-fold rear seat. I took a brief drive in an early-production version of the new Accord Hybrid, and liked it just as much as the current-gen Accord Hybrid—in other words, plenty.

The 2018 Honda Accord will keep the same basic trim lineup (LX, Sport, EX, EX-L, Touring) as the outgoing car, with the 1.5T liter engine offered in all five levels; the pairing of the smaller engine with the Touring model is new for 2018. The 2.0T can be had in Sport, EX-L and Touring trims.

The 2.0T Sport is the new addition here, and it gets a few extra standard features compared to the 1.5T Sport. Pricing ranges from $24,465 (including an $895 destination charge) for the 1.5T LX up to $36,675 for the 2.0T Touring, and Honda expects most buyers to gravitate towards the $26,655 1.5T Sport or the $28,345 1.5T EX.

Honda had not revealed pricing for the Accord Hybrid at the time of writing, but they did announce a new base model to complement the EX, EX-L and Touring trims. Once again, all Accords sold in America will be built in America, with the cars assembled at Honda’s Marysville plant and the new turbo engines built in nearby Anna, Ohio.

Bottom line: This is the most innovative Accord to come along in ages. Granted, much of what’s new in the 2018 Honda Accord is merely new for Honda: The Chevy Malibu went to an all-turbo-and-hybrid engine lineup in 2016, the Hyundai Sonata did the fastback roof thing in 2011, and the Galvin Brothers introduced a stereo with knobs in 1930. Still, when you put it all together, what you have is not only the most innovative Accord in years, but the most compelling car on the midsize sedan market. Other manufacturers may be giving lip service to the segment, but Honda is putting its money where its mouth is. I’ll be amazed if the all-new Accord doesn’t turn out to be an extraordinarily strong seller.

2018 Honda Accord Specifications

ON SALE Fall 2017 PRICE $24,445 (base) ENGINE 1.5L turbocharged DOHC 16-valve I-4/192 hp @ 5,500 rpm, 192 lb-ft @ 1,600-5,000 rpm; 2.0L turbocharged DOHC 16-valve I-4/252 hp @ 6,500 rpm, 273 lb-ft @ 1,500-4,000 rpm TRANSMISSION Continuously variable, 10-speed automatic, 6-speed manual LAYOUT 4-door, 5-passenger, front-engine, FWD sedan EPA MILEAGE 30/38 mpg (city/hwy) L x W x H 192.2 x 73.3 x 57.1 in WHEELBASE 111.4 in WEIGHT 3,138-3,428 lb 0-60 MPH N/A TOP SPEED N/A

IFTTT