Vye S37 arrives a day early, catches Kevin off guard
See, James is away for a few days, so I figured there’s no jkOTR corporate meetings over a Skype video call. That’s why I decided to leisurely lounge around in comfy clothes only to be surprised by the FedEx truck a day earlier than expected. Yup, the Vye S37 loaner from Dynamism is here and I muddle through a brief introduction of the device without coffee or hair product. Oh, the makeup folks will be none too happy…
The 17-minute video is about sixteen minutes longer than I would have liked but I wanted to share a device walkthrough and compare it to my everyday UMPC: the Samsung Q1P. More to follow in the next week or two as I configure and use the device in my daily grind. For now, if you can stomach more of me in front of the camera than I can myself, have at it in the video above. Shoot; I’m so busted when James gets back tomorrow…
That screen is nice, isn’t it..
I trust u leave it with BatteryEater for the next night ?
How the battery life looks without major testing?
Nice video Kevin, I can’t wait to talk about the Vye with you as it looks very capable.
I thought we were clear about the jkOTR overalls uniform?
It has a 2.5″ 5400RPM drive.
With the Vye’s, the 6-cell battery comes standard. With the Kohjinsha’s, the 3-cell is included unless you purchase with conics which gives you the option.
One thing I’d like to know is if the screen has a matte or glossy finish. There have been some reports the screen on the Kohjinsha SH6/8 is different than the Vye S37. Chippy noticed in max brightness, the Vye’s are a bit dimmer although both have very bright screens.
Ooh spooky.
I got half way through that video and then realised I was watching it on an S37!
Nice video overview Kevin.
Battery life indication would be good (2.5hrs max is expected but there’s rumour that they might have improved that.)
Watch out for the silent mode (FN-F9) as it does mroe than reduce the fan speed it reduces the overall processing power of the system!
Enjoy the screen!
Steve.
P.S. Too much information about the power bricks there
jkk: will do a BatteryEater test to compare to the one I did for the Samsung Q1P with extended battery since they’re identical capacity. A quick glance at NHC, which I just installed shows a power drain of around 8 to 9W with WiFi on but that’s just a quick look. More to follow.
James, I must have missed the memo on the overalls. Of course it could be the auto-delete rule I set up re: jkOTR uniforms.
Rodfather, thanks for the drive info; there’s no tech specs in the user manual. I’d call the screen a low gloss; definitely not a high matte, nor a high gloss… somewhere in between. I’ll have to find a better way to describe it.
Steve, I already found out about silent mode the hard way. NHC warned me that the CPU temp was 176-degrees F. It took me a few minutes to realize that silent mode was on by default, so I quickly changed it for more fan use; the temp promptly dropped. In terms of battery life, I expect much more than 2.5 hours; I would guess closer to 4 but it’s too early to tell. I’ll have a better idea tomorrow for sure.
slate mode + ext battery = hideous
i wish they had put in some more R&D time and made the battery a smooth brick along the bottom like the US702 (or OQO). then you would still have a typical UMPC-sized device while in slate mode. could you measure the depth of the unit with the ext battery? i’m curious to see how it compares to the P1610
2.5hrs is on the std, 5hrs is the ext
the HDD should help with performance but also add some power drain (not so much because of RPM but 1.8 vs 2.5)
Sorry Kevin. The 2hrs figure i was thinking of was the 3-cell figure. If you’re seing 4 hours on 6 cells then they havent fixed what i would call sub-standard batery life under McCaslin. The Q1 Ultra would be getting 7 hours on a battery that big!
The hard disk is prety damn fast and contributes well to the speed of the device.
Steve
Interesting to see what’s new but I do have to say that I thought you were off base on comparing the screen to that of an older Q1p. Of course the screen is better – its the same better screen that is now on the new Q1u’s so what was the point?
I realized though just how small that screen is on a laptop and how hard it would be to read. It works on a tablet that you can bring in close but on a laptop at arms lenght I don’t think you can easily read what you are typing.
wls, you have me confused but it could be due to my lack of coffee when doing the video. I thought I mentioned that the screens were the same size but I also pointed out the different resolutions and backlighting mechanism. Well worth mentioning since not everyone is intimately familiar with all of the different UMPCs models, past and present. As far as comparing them in my everyday use, I think it’s perfectly valid as I can run the Q1P in 1024 x 600 mode, just not natively.
too big to be a UMPC
First, just a confirmation to wls: I do have the Q1Ultra with the same resolution as the Vye. Yes, it’s a little tougher to use at arms’ length, for sure. I prefer to use it as a tablet most of the time–but that’s why I bought it, after all. When I do keyboard work, I almost always find myself blowing up the fonts to make it easier to read. And I’m only 30, so we can’t even blame old age!
One thing that really sticks out to me is the size of the unit whilst in slate mode. It’s really big and pretty ugly. About a full 1/3 of the surface area ends up being black plastic. Not nice. I understand and concur with the idea of adding keyboards to UMPCs. I actually have come to like the split keypad on my Q1U. But truthfully, I begin to wonder if HTC is just about the only company that’s gotten it right. Their keyboard implementation is at least unobtrusive.
Extended batteries: I find myself wondering why more companies haven’t adopted the design that HP is using on the 2710. I suppose it has to do with cost effectiveness; I’m sure HP’s battery is significantly more expensive to manufacture. Still, these extended batteries are huge; to me, this defeats the “UM” part of “UMPC,” at least to an extent.