CES 2021: Intel announces 11th Gen Core vPro, Evo vPro, Core H-Series and Rocket Lake-S processors

Intel has announced over 50 processors at CES 2021 for the desktop and mobile form-factors. These include, N-Series 10nm Intel Pentium Silver and Intel Celeron processors; 11th Gen Intel Core vPro and Intel Evo vPro processors, 11th Gen Intel Core H-Series processors for mobile i.e. laptops; and 11th Gen Intel Core S-Series desktop processors (code-named “Rocket Lake-S”). Also revealed were details pertaining to Intel’s Alder Lake processors which will follow Rocket Lake-S.

“Only Intel has the breadth of products spanning multiple architectures; the large, open ecosystem; sheer scale of manufacturing footprint; and deep technical expertise customers need to unlock opportunities in this era of distributed intelligence,” said Intel Executive Vice President Gregory Bryant. “With an intense focus on execution for our core products and across our broader portfolio, we’re introducing a series of leadership products at CES with more following throughout the year.”

11th Gen Intel Core vPro processors

The first announcement of the day was centered around Intel’s 11th Gen Core vPro processors based on Intel’s 10nm SuperFin transistors and are designed for laptops. vPro processors feature several software and hardware technologies which are designed for enterprise environments. Features such as Intel Hardware Shield for security, Intel Stable IT Platform Program for long-term stability, Intel Active Management Technology for remote management and more are built within the vPro platform.

For thin-and-light machines, Intel unveiled the Intel Evo vPro processors across a wide gamut of power profiles from high-productivity machines to Chromebooks. These processors will be powered by Intel Iris Xe graphics and will sport integrated Intel Wi-Fi 6/6E.

Intel Pentium Silver and Intel Celeron N-Series processors

Intel’s latest family of processors released under their N-Series is targeted at laptops for education. The newly announced Intel Pentium Silver and Intel Celeron N-Series processors are also based on the 10nm SuperFin transistor technology. The Pentium and Celeron families are known for low-power and economical SKUs and we can expect low-cost laptop designs to feature the same. The N-Series would be Intel’s way of meeting the market demand for low-cost laptop designs that arose due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

11th Gen Intel Core H-Series Mobile processors

Next up is the 11th Gen Intel Core H-Series Mobile processors for laptops that need more power such as those built for gaming, 3D modeling, design and content creation. Intel aims to enable laptops as thin as 16 millimeters with this latest generation of H-Series processors. Up until now, laptops based on Intel H-Series processors tend to be slightly thicker to accommodate thicker heatsinks and with the new H35 Intel Core i7 Special Edition processors, Intel hopes to make gaming laptops even thinner.

The new 11th Gen H-Series processors will also feature PCIe Gen 4.0 and manufacturers such as Acer, ASUS, MSI and Vaio have already announced laptops featuring them for the first half of 2021. On the higher end, we’ll still see a maximum of 8-cores for the H-Series.

11th Gen Intel Core S-series (Rocket Lake-S) desktop processors

The last consumer process lineup announced at CES 2021 by Intel was their 11th Gen Intel Core S-Series desktop processors codenamed “Rocket Lake-S”. These reportedly boast of 19 per cent gen-over-gen improvement in IPC (Instructions Per Cycle or Clock). The top of the line SKU in the 11th Gen Core S-Series will be the Intel Core i9-11900K. Rocket Lake-S a.k.a. Intel 11th Gen desktop processors will launch in the first quarter of 2021 i.e. by March 2021.

Also showcased was the successor to Intel’s 11th Gen desktop processor which is codenamed Alder Lake. This would be Intel’s first proper lineup of 10nm desktop processors and are slated for launch in the second half of 2021.

For more CES 2021 coverage, head over to our CES 2021 hub.

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TCL announces Mini LED, QLED and 4K HDR TVs at CES 2021

TCL has an impressive lineup of TVs internationally and was the first to introduce Mini-LED TVs in the US. At CES 2021, the company has showcased some of the TVs we can expect to see launching during the year. TCL’s 2021 TVs will also bring with them support for the new Google TV UI. Sony has also announced that its 2021 TVs will come with support for the new Google TV UI. 

“We are excited to partner with TCL to bring Google TV to customers around the world. Google TV is a more helpful and delightful TV experience that helps users find the content they love,” said Shobana Radhakrishnan, Senior Engineering Director, Google TV.

“The introduction of TCL Google TVs will take our partnership with Google to the next level,” said Kevin Wang, CEO of TCL Industrial Holdings and TCL Electronics. “Our theme at CES this year is ‘Experience More’ and by combining cutting-edge displays with smart and convenient content powered by Google, I am confident we will allow people around the world to do just that in 2021.”

Moving over to the TVs that TCL has announced at CES, we have the 4K Mini LED TV C825, TCL 4K QLED TV C725, TCL 4K HDR TV P725.

TCL C825 4K Mini LED TV

This will be TCL’s second-generation mini-LED TV, and it will be interesting to see the performance of the TV. To begin with, TCL says, “C825 adopts straight down backlight mode reducing the grain size of traditional LED to 100 ~200 μm”. Put simply, this means that with more LEDs will power the backlight source and full-array local dimming, one can expect better brightness and contrast from the TV. The C825 also features Quantum Dot Technology which should help enhance the colours and overall picture quality of the TV. 

In addition to supporting HDR and Dolby Vision, the TCL C825 also supports Dolby Vision IQ. So, what is Dolby Vision IQ? Well put simply, Dolby Vision IQ uses the metadata from the content being consumed along with the TVs light sensor to give viewers an optimal viewing experience. This means that the settings of the TV can be adjusted automatically to offer the best possible viewing experience based on the lighting of the room. It will be interesting to see this in action. 

The TCL C825 also supports HDMI 2.1 which should be great for gamers as the TV will support VRR (Variable Refresh Rate), ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode) and 4K at 120Hz. You can also use the TV for video conferencing as it features “A magnetic split-type camera (4M Pixel)”.

C725 QLED TV

Next up we have the TCL C725 which is a QLED TV. TCL claims that “With nearly 100% ultra-high colour gamut (DCI-P3), the Quantum Dot Display Technology in the C725 will deliver even more vibrant and diverse colours without the limitations of lower colour volume or shorter lifespans found in other colour technologies”.

The TCL C725 supports HDR 10, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos along with audio tuned by Onkyo. The TV also boasts of hands-free voice, a feature we first experienced on the TCL C715 (review). It also supports HDMI 2.1 along with offering content from all popular streaming services. The TV also supports the Google Assistant. 

TCL P725

Last up, we have the TCL P725 which is a 4K TV with support for Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. The TV does not have QLED backlighting but does support hands-free commands. It is an LED-backlit LCD TV with support for all popular streaming services. 

In addition to the TVs and partnership with Google TV, TCL will also debut its OD Zero Mini-LED technology at CES 2021. Users can expect TCL TVs with OD Zero Mini-LED to be very slim. 

According to TCL, “ODZero represents the optical distance between the Mini-LED backlight layer and the LCD display layer (diffuser plate), which has now been reduced to an astonishing 0 mm, to create an ultra-thin high-performance backlight module”. This means we can expect the TV to have numerous dining zones and offer deep blacks and good contrast.

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Hike Sticker Chat messenger app shutting down on January 14: How to export all your chats

Hike Sticker Chat instant messaging app is shutting down but CEO Kavin Bharti Mittal has revealed the way forward. Hike Sticker Chat is used by millions of users who spend around 35 minutes every day on the app but it couldn’t gain mainstream popularity like WhatsApp after debuting back in 2012.

12/ Today we're announcing that we will be sunsetting StickerChat in Jan'21. We thank you all for giving us your trust. We wouldn’t be here without you  All your data will be available to download in the app. Your HikeMoji will continue to be available in both Vibe & Rush!

— Kavin Bharti Mittal (@kavinbm) January 6, 2021

Mittal took to Twitter to announce that the Sticker Chat app is being discontinued in January and will be replaced by two new apps called Vibe by Hike and Rush by Hike. Vibe is an extension of the HikeLand that the company debuted in 2018 and focuses on building a safe place online where people can make friends. Vibe is an approval-only platform for now and Mittal claims over 100k people have already signed up.

3/ HikeLand will now be 'Vibe by Hike'! pic.twitter.com/ZjPuQEZkoX

— Kavin Bharti Mittal (@kavinbm) January 6, 2021

Rush by Hike is a mini-games app and the first version will include Carrom with subsequent versions bringing in Ludo. Rush is already available on iOS and Android version will also launch soon. 

6/ Today, we're also excited to announce a brand new product → Rush by hike. pic.twitter.com/TpXm20Yazg

— Kavin Bharti Mittal (@kavinbm) January 6, 2021

Mittal has also announced that Sticker Chat will be discontinued at 11:59 PM on January 14 and users can instead use Hike stickers on WhatsApp and Telegram with the new Stickers by Hike app. Hike users are being notified to export their existing chats to their email accounts as the service will be stopped January 14 onwards.

While explaining the rationale behind the revamp of Hike, Mittal tweeted, “With Vibe & Rush, we now have 2 Virtual Worlds that focus on a single 'Job to be Done' each thus simplifying the UX. A much better approach for today's world that is unconstrained by cheap, fast data & powerful smartphones.”

Here’s how to export your Hike Sticker chats to email?

Hike is offering a way for users to access previous Hike messages after the service gets discontinued on January 14. For this, users will have to provide an email account for the chats to be sent to automatically. To export chats from Hike, go to the Team Hike chat and check for a message with the option to Export Chats. 

The link will redirect to a page that will ask you to provide your registered phone number. After entering the phone number, you will receive an OTP following which you will be able to provide an email address to receive all the Sticker Chat data.

 

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Honor Band 6 launched globally alongside Intel-based MagicBook Pro

Honor Band 6 and Honor MagicBook Pro powered by Intel processor has launched globally during CES 2021. The company had released its fitness band back in November and now has brought it to the global market. Additionally, the Honor MagicBook Pro with Intel Core i5 processor has also launched for the global market.

The Honor Band 6 was launched in China back in November 2020 featuring a large display and two-week battery life. It is equipped with a slew of sensors including SpO2 blood-oxygen saturation monitor, heart rate sensor and more. As for the MagicBook Pro, it has the same configuration as the AMD version from last year just with Intel Core i5 processor.

Honor Band 6 features and pricing

The Honor Band 6 features a 1.47-inch display with AMOLED screen and 2.5D curved glass. The touchscreen supports upto 100 watch faces for users to personalize the band. The Honor Band 6 is also 5ATM certified making it resistant to water ingress for upto 50 metres. 

It is equipped with a SpO2 blood-oxygen saturation monitor, optical heart rate sensor and can also track sleep cycles. The Honor Band 6 also offers women health tracking and stress monitoring features. 

The fitness band claims to offer 14-day battery life on normal use and upto 10-day battery life on heavy use. It is also pre-loaded with ten sports modes and activity tracking including running, cycling, swimming and more. 

Honor Band 6 is priced around $35 globally, but the company is yet to reveal availability details.

Honor MagicBook Pro features a 16.1-inch display and is powered by the Intel Core i5-10210U processor with GeForce MX350 graphics. This is paired with 16GB RAM and 512GB storage and the MagicBook Pro supports 65W fast charging. Honor MagicBook Pro is priced around $1,000 and availability details are yet to be revealed.

 

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How to Pre-Order PlayStation 5 in India

PS5 India pre-orders go live 12pm on Amazon, Croma, Flipkart, Games The Shop, Reliance Digital, Sony Center, and Vijay Sales online. PS5 price in India is Rs. 49,990. PS5 India release date is February 2.

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Skullcandy Hesh ANC Review: Democratising Active Noise Cancellation

The Skullcandy Hesh ANC is a pretty decent purchase at Rs 10,999. If you’re someone looking for a pair of headphones that come equipped with ANC, have a good battery life, and decent sound quality without breaking the bank, these are good headphones to consider.

Skullcandy has grown to become one of the most recognisable audio brands across the globe, that is primarily associated with providing bass-forward headphones and earphones. In this review, we are checking out the Skullcandy Hesh ANC, a budget pair of Active Noise Cancellation-enabled over-ear wireless headphones, priced at Rs 10,999. They are the cheaper variant of the Skullcandy Crusher ANC headphones which we reviewed in the past. Let’s see how the Skullcandy Hesh ANC fares in our review.

Build and comfort

The Skullcandy Hesh ANC comes in two colour options - True Black and Mod White. We received the former for review which sports a rather Plain Jane look. The white variant, on the other hand, is more interesting visually with its dual-tone design. The headphones are made out of plastic and have a mix between matte and glossy texture which provides some variation to the otherwise monotonous look. 

The ear cups are soft to the touch and are extremely comfortable to wear since the pads are made out of memory foam. The headband, on the other hand, is a bit too thin for our liking. Wearing the Hesh ANC for hours, we didn’t experience too much discomfort, although the lack of thick padding on the headband did create a slightly uncomfortable hotspot on the top of our head, during testing.

The Hesh ANC features a collapsible design where the earcups can be folded inwards to make them easier to carry around. Skullcandy has also included a carrying bag for the headphones, albeit a pretty thin bag that doesn’t seem like it will provide too much protection. The earcups can also swivel 180 degrees. 

The right earcup houses all the buttons and ports. On the bottom, there’s a USB Type-C port for charging and a 3.5mm audio jack for wired usage, which is pretty handy if the battery dies out. Just above you have all your controls including a pause/play button, a plus and minus button for volume control and skipping tracks, and an ANC/Ambient Sound control button. You can even summon the voice assistant using these controls. The buttons are well-placed, easy to use and have a sufficient amount of tactility.

Active Noise Cancellation and other features

One of the most eye-catching features of the Skullcandy Hesh ANC is Active Noise Cancellation. It is refreshing to see a pair of headphones just over 10K sporting ANC. Not only that, but the headphones also come with Ambient Sound, that allows background sound inside. Now, the ANC cannot really compete with the heavyweights in the Bluetooth headphones segment such as the Sony WH-1000XM4, Shure Aonic 50, and the Bose NC 700. However, the ANC performance is perfectly acceptable for this price range. The headphone manages to muffle low, constant sounds pretty convincingly, however, it doesn’t do well with human voices, high-speed fans, mechanical keyboards, and other mid-high range sounds.

The Ambient Sound Mode is pretty decent as well, with the headphones audibly amplifying the surrounding sounds. It does sound a tad unnatural at times, but it’s not something most people will find too jarring. 

The headphones are powered by Bluetooth v5.0 and have an effective wireless range of about 10m (33 feet). In real-world testing, we found that the headphones stayed connected to the source device even if we moved to the next room. However, if you go behind a wall, the connection is severed. 

The Hesh ANC does miss out on some features such as an IP rating, multi-connect, and auto-pause/play. At this price range though, we can forgive Skullcandy for skipping these features. However, one feature we sorely missed that we wish Skullcandy had incorporated was app support. The headphones don’t come with app support, so you don’t get access to an adjustable EQ to change up the sound profile as per your preference. 

Performance

Moving onto the sound quality, the Skullcandy Hesh ANC comes with a bass-forward sound profile that adds an extra oomph to genres such as hip hop, EDM, rap, and Bollywood. No surprises there. Although, keep in mind that if you activate ANC when listening to music, the punchiness of the bass will be taken down a few notches. So, if you do prefer toned-down bass to listen to the intricacies in the mids and vocals more clearly, you could turn on ANC to tame the bass response.

Even with ANC off, however, the bass response is not overwhelmingly boosted and the mids and vocals aren’t shrouded completely by it. There’s slight auditory masking in the mids in bass-heavy tracks such as bad guy by Billie Eilish but it isn’t extremely jarring. Vocals are pretty clear, for the most track, apart from tracks such as Selkies by Between the Buried and Me, which features a ton of instruments that veil the vocals slightly. The headphones support SBC and AAC codecs, which is acceptable at this price range. The highs are decent enough as well, although, they can be slightly tinny at times.

Coming to instrument separation and imaging, the Hesh ANC does a decent job at both. In Hotel California by The Eagles, the instruments are placed in the stage pretty accurately and sound distinct from one another. The soundstage is sufficiently wide as well, which is pretty evident when you hear something like Hunter by Bjork. 

Overall, the Skullcandy Hesh ANC has pretty decent sound quality and we liked it better than the Sony WH-XB900N since the latter has an abysmally exaggerated bass response which tramples the detail and quality of the mids. The microphone quality is pretty decent as well for phone calls, although the headphones do let in some amount of ambient noise into calls.

Battery life

Sporting a battery life of 22 hours with Active Noise Cancellation turned on, according to Skullcandy, these headphones have a pretty impressive battery life, especially in this price segment. In our testing, we recorded 20.5 hours of total battery life with ANC turned on and the volume set to about 80 per cent. If you turn off ANC, the headphones will easily last north of 25 hours, which is pretty decent. We needed to set the volume higher than usual since the headphones aren’t loud enough around the 60-70 percent mark.

The Skullcandy Hesh ANC also comes with Rapid Charge where a 10-minute charge will get you a whopping 3 hours of playtime! This is extremely useful in scenarios where you need to rush out somewhere with your headphones but are running low on battery. You can easily top up these headphones within minutes to give you a decent enough playtime. Also, you can use the headphones with the audio cable as a wired headset in case your battery does run out.

Verdict

The Skullcandy Hesh ANC is a pretty decent purchase at Rs 10,999. If you’re someone looking for a pair of headphones that come equipped with ANC, have a good battery life, and decent sound quality without breaking the bank, these are good headphones to consider. Bass lovers, especially, will enjoy the punch and thump in the bass response that make hip hop, EDM, rap and even Bollywood music sound lively and dynamic. The build quality and fit of these headphones are also pretty good for the price range, making the Hesh ANC a pretty good budgetary purchase. 

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OnePlus Band Review: A worthy first attempt

The OnePlus Band is the company's first fitness tracker and while not a full-fledged smartwatch, is a decently featured fitness band. Its design differs from the rest in the form of a nicely contoured silicone band, which offers a dual-tone finish. The OnePlus Band is extremely light and comfortable to wear, whether it's through the day or while sleeping. The Band has decent accuracy with respect to tracking your heart-rate and steps, but is definitely not ideal for high-intensity interval training type of workouts. The Health app by OnePlus definitely needs tweaking to make access to important health data and workout metrics easier.

It was rumoured for quite some time that OnePlus was working on releasing a smartwatch. This is a rumour that dominated a good part of 2020, finally being put to rest when it was leaked that the watch would be delayed. We’re now in 2021, and we have the OnePlus Band being launched. Not quite the watch we expected, but definitely an interesting product. Why do we call it interesting? Read on to find out.

OnePlus Band Build and Design

When you get yourself the OnePlus Band, there’s a sense of familiarity to it, and then there’s something that sets it apart from the likes of the Mi Smart Band 5 and others. The actual silicon band on the OnePlus Band has a nice ribbed finish to it and has a dual-tone colour treatment. It's grey on the bottom side and black on the top. You could get yours in a grey-orange colour or the simple blue colour. There are no physical buttons on the band for navigation and such, but the 1.1” AMOLED panel offers a fully touch-sensitive area, allowing you to navigate through the band and its functions with swipes and taps. Charging is done by removing the core from the silicon strap and placing it on its dedicated charger. Honestly, for bands, there really isn’t a perfect charging solution. A built-in USB port wouldn’t make a lot of sense due to water and dust resistance concerns, so we’re stuck with an imperfect charging solution for now. What I also found a little annoying is the clasp. In order to get the right fit around the wrist, you’re going to need someone to hold the band in place, so that it doesn’t move while you pull the strap in order to fasten it. It's not a perfect mechanism, but it is neat.

OnePlus Band Fitness Tracking

The OnePlus Band offers 13 activities that it can track which include the usual suspects like running, cycling, swimming, yoga and more. The built-in SpO2 sensor is there to offer more detailed statistics on the workout you perform while the heart-rate monitor picks up the rhythm of your heart while you sweat it out. I used the band to track a few evening walks and cycling sessions and concluded that for walks, the step count was reasonably accurate, and the heart rate data was in line with what was being picked up by the Apple Watch Series 6. While cycling, the band delivers your heart-rate data and if you take your phone with you, you also get GPS data. The net result is that the Health app gives you your calories burned, and the heart-rate metrics. If you go for a ride without your smartphone, however, you lose the GPS-based information since the OnePlus Band doesn’t come with GPS sensors on-board.

OnePlus Band Sleep Tracking

The OnePlus Band also offers sleep tracking and thanks to the heart-rate and SpO2 sensors, is able to deliver quality deep-sleep data. Surprisingly, the OnePlus Band, in my testing, was fairly spot on with respect to the duration of sleep. The OnePlus Band had the duration of my sleep accurate within 15 minutes, although there is no way for me to verify the sleep stages data.

Smart Features and OnePlus Health App

While the OnePlus Band doesn’t require a OnePlus smartphone, it does require the OnePlus Health App to pair and function. Pairing  and setting up the band is extremely easy and swift, and we faced no issues there. The Health App, however, is not the most intuitive app for managing health data that we’ve seen out there. The logic to see detailed stats is applied different to different sections (sleep vs. daily steps or daily steps vs. workouts). The “Daily Acitvity” tab shows you a 7-day calendar which starts with Monday, with the remaining 6 days being the 6 days of the future. This is completely wasted real estate, and should have ideally followed the login of showing today and the previous 6 days instead. This way, you’d have a week’s worth of fitness data available at a single glance. We do not see the point of having so much of a single tab dedicated to showing no data. It makes no sense. Additionally, you don’t get to see a detailed breakdown of your past workouts in the daily activity tab. There’s also no associated heart-rate data available in this part of the app. Step count is available through a different part of the main screen, but will only show you the total number of steps you’ve taken in the week/month/year, with the daily breakdown only showing up as a graph.

The OnePlus Health app is clean for sure, but it still needs a lot of refinement. Ideally, all data for a particular workout should be available in a detailed manner in one spot and not be fragmented over three different sections.

OnePlus Band Battery Life

Now OnePlus claims 14-day battery life on the Band, which would be expected seeing how it offers very bare-bones sensors and limited smart capabilities. You will get notifications on the band, but you can’t do much with them. With no GPS on board, you won’t suddenly find the band’s battery drained by a significant amount, something that tends to happen with other wearable devices that come with onboard GPS. It’s been 4 days since I last charged the band to 100 percent, and it's already at 45 percent.  I’m not so sure the band will make it to 14 days at this rate to be honest, but thankfully, charging the band back up hardly takes anytime.

OnePlus Band vs. Mi Smart Band 5

The closest competition to the OnePlus Band is posed by the Mi Smart Band 5. The latter has gone through various refinements and iterations, both in software and hardware. The OnePlus Band, in comparison, doesn’t offer stress-tracking, a feature that you’ll find on the Mi Smart Band 5. The construction quality feels better on the OnePlus Band, which also happens to have more accurate sleep tracking. The Mi Smart Band 5 as we noted in our review, had very unreliable sleep tracking capabilities at the time of testing.

Should you buy the OnePlus Band

The OnePlus Band definitely looks better than most others in this segment. This is also a band that offers a minimal but well-thought-out feature set. It is, however, lacking in some regards. The OnePlus Health App isn’t as polished as, say, the Mi Fit app or the Xiaomi Wear app. The OnePlus Band is also missing the stress tracking feature, which is weird since it has all the right sensors. I do believe that OnePlus has the engineering chops to refine the app and the software of the Band further. While the experience isn’t poor out of the box, the OnePlus Band does feel like a first-generation device that needs some time to get better.

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