My technology set up
I love reading about technical specifications (tech specs) of all kinds of electronic devicies: Laptops, handphones etc. While the general population may shy away from these mundane details, I actively seek them out, crawling the net for the article with the most detailed spec sheets of products. I learnt how to read the mosaic of numbers and letters that depict the specific processor used, the generation which it was from, and whether it belonged to the lower-end or higher-end of the spectrum. I studied clock speeds, memory capacities, differences between solid state drives and HDDs, and how they translate to real world performances. I liked to compare the value of the components with the actual prices of the products, hoping to find the product that would give the most bang for my buck. I belive that such knowledge is imperative towards trying to source for the best deals, and avoiding “scams”, which are overvalued laptops marketed with hype. Today I would like to share with you my technology set up, the electronic devices that I spent a large majority of my time interacting with, how it came to be, and why you should not be afraid to spend more time and money to upgrade your tech setups as well.
Laptop 1 – Lenovo Ideapad L340 Gaming
I was previously using a Lenovo Y480 laptop for the majority of my university life up to April this year. It was around 7 years old when the graphic card decided to give up on itself. A pretty impressive shelf life that impressed me considering the lack of carefulness that I lent to it on a daily basis as i lug it back and forth frome home and school, knocking it into countless hard surfaces everytime i boarded a bus or set it down on the floor. Nevertheless, it was really slow, and it was difficult to run multiple applications on it, such as excel files or programming environments. As such, performing any sort of work on it, whether for academic or for self learning web development purposes, was possible but painfully long and inefficient. It actually made me dread opening up microsoft applications, or trying my best not to run too many programs in parallel (which was extremely difficult since Dota had to be on most night for leisure purposes). It was probably a blessing in disguise that it blew out when it did, otherwise I would not have been able to chance upon this steal of a laptop hiding in a corner of the Challenger Store at Bugis Junction, with a price tag of $1,300. It was the laptop with the best specs for its price, offering the following specs below
- I7-9750H, a 9th Gen 6-core processor. I was not expecting to get such a powerful processor. At this price point, most other laptops were offering 4-core I5 processors only. This was an upper end chip with some emphasis on gaming and graphic capabilities.
- 512GB SSD, most SSD laptops offer 256GB of memory in order to cut down on cost. While I don’t need that much memory yet, it is still a welcome luxury.
- GTX1050 graphics card. An upper end graphic card some years ago. The current flagship model is GTX1080. It still gets the job done. It is able to run most games without significant frame drop at a medium setting, but its certainly not as mindblowing as some of the better offerings.
- 8GB RAM, standard stuff. Could have been 16GB but at least it is easily upgradeable.
Overall, when I brought the laptop home and turned it on, I could immediately feel the massive difference in speed from my Y480. The processor and SSD combination enabled the laptop to boot almost immediately. I could run several processes in parallel without having to worry about speed issues. I could run virtual environments, visual studio code, excel sheets and Dota at the same time with no visible signs of lag at all. If an application crashed, it did not throttle the entire system, and I could still work on other applications as if nothing was wrong. The 6 core processor really ensured that I could do everything at once with no issues. Mirosoft word and powerpoint booted almost immediately upon a click. It was essentially a joy to work on since all of the changes that you make would be immediately reflected.
There were of course some drawbacks due to the 8GB of RAM and also having the previous gen GTX1050 graphics card, especially in the visuals category. 8GB of RAM was still insufficient to handle certain game stages where alot of animations have to be running, and that would throttle the frame rate. While I am yet to start using video editing software in order to do a proper test, I would imagine that the process would not be as smooth as I would like it to be. Still for $1,300, it was impossible to find another laptop that could offer the same performance and speed.
There were several reasons that my purchase was able to offer so much for such a small price, and there are some drawbacks still as well. Firstly, I found out at the corner that this was actually a display set, and it was bumped $300 lower (lucky me, since I did not mind). So the original cost was $1600. Secondly, it was a gaming laptop, and that meant that what it offers in powerful specs it gives up in other areas, such as weight, battery life, and design. At 2.1kg, it was about 30-40% heavier than other business class laptops, making it quite a pain to carry around, especially on long days. It’s battery life was also much lesser due to the power hungry processor, offering only about 4 hours of use before going dry. Still, those were the concessions that I was willing to make. I have become much more efficient on the laptop, since loading times were now non-existent.
Laptop 2 – HP Spectre X360 (Model 13t-ap000)
While the Lenovo L340 was superior in terms of computing power for my daily needs, I decided to invest in another laptop for the sole purpose of work. The Lenovo L340 was also too heavy and bulky to be actively transported around from Serangoon to Jurong on a regular basis. also, i would ned to unplug and replug all of the USB receivers everytime I brought t out, which made it more of a hassle. I found this HP Spectre X360 on Carousell for a mere $1,000 and proceeded down to the seller’s location to seal the deal on the same day. It has quite decent specs as follows:
- I5-8265u Processor, an 8th generation i5 processor that is slightly faster than the basic i5-8250u. It is the actually the same processor that most laptops utilises, so its nothing to write home about.
- 256GB SSD.
- 8GB RAM
As you can tell, hardware wise its pretty similar with other base business laptops on the market. It was sufficient to run graphic design applications like Gimp, Darktable and Inkscape for work use as well. What made the Spectre stand out was the design, screen and speakers. It was simply one of the most beautiful laptops that I have ever set my eyes on. My spectre had a rose gold design, which captures and reflects the light very well. The entire outer parts of the laptop seem to have been built with aluminium as well, which makes it really sturdy and feels great. It’s sleekenss makes its a joy to carry around and I am proud to carry this laptop around to show it off. The touchscreen was sensitive and I had no troubles using it at all. The colours on the screen were extremely vivid and the brightness could be turned up to a point that it hurt my eyes. (That is a testament to the insane nits ouput of the screen which is a good thing).
The sleekness and modern look of the HP Spectre came with its own set of drawbacks. The designers must have, for the purpose of looks and aesthetics, stripped down the number of ports of the laptop to its bare necessities. There were 2 USB C lightning ports and one standard USB port. This means that I had to purchase an adaptor if I wanted to connect the HP Spectre to a monitor. Having only one USB port also meant that it was impossible to use a mouse without bluetooth capabilities and a thumbdrive/hard drive at the same time. The Spectre X360 was also heavier than it looks at ~1.3kg, especially since I was looking at getting a laptop that I could carry around without feeling its weight weighing down my back several hours a day.
Overall, despite the slight inconveniences in terms of connectivity and weight, I was still very happy with my purchase at $1000 SGD. However, I would most likely not buy a new HP Spectre due to its exorbitant price tag. New models can go for > $2500, and I believe that there are laptops with better specs and weight that you could purchase at that budget level. However in terms of looks, it is still second to none.
Phone – Samsung Galaxy S20
There are still some benefits of using Singtel over Circles, one of them being the recontract option every 1 year and 9 months. With every recontract cycle comes the opportunity to upgrade your phone to the latest models, which was exactly what I did on May this year. During my last recontract, I chose a mid range phone in favour of a higher end one due to budget. The speed upgrade was still tangible over my previous model, but it was still not as mindblowing. Near the end of the recontract cycle, my phone had all but slowed down to a crawl, in part due to age, and in part due to the massive amount of exchange media that I had recorded on it. I browsed through the Singtel shop, initially hoping to purchase a Xiaomi model, but alas they had no phones from there. In fact, the selections were so meager that I only found two choices to contemplate between: the Galaxy S20, and the Galaxy S10 Lite. The Galaxy S20 required at $488 top up on my end, while the Galaxy S10 needed only $258. After comparing between retail prices and spec sheets, I concluded that the Galaxy S20 was the better option despite the increased cost because of its awesome specs:
- Samsung Exynos 990 Processor. The top-end processor from Samsung’s own in house manufacturing. While it is blisteringly fast, it lags behind the Snapdragon 865 in benchmark tests and energy efficiency. This is quite disapointing since I was expecting the best processor to be used in Samsung’s flagship, but that was a premium reserved only for the US releases.
- 1440×3200 pixels WQHD+ display. This is an absolutely insane display.
- Quad camera module setup at the back, featuring a 64MP High res camera and a 12MP camera. You can even take 8K videos, although I never saw the need to use that function
- 6GB RAM, certainly on the higher end, more than sufficient for running several apps at once in the background
- 4,500 mah battery, which was extremely impressive, allowing for a full day of use without any worries.
This phone is blisteringly fast and responsive during everyday use. Everything loads in double quick time, and there is no lag at all despite the number of tabs that are kept open. It was light years in speed ahead of my previous phone, the Oppo A75. Replying to messages on my handphone became a joy, and working food delivery became efficient because I could search locations immediately. But thats just talking about the core processes. The extra bells and whistles on this phone continue to amaze me even further. This phone is fully capable of ALL the functionalities that you would expect to have: NFC for mobile payments, in-built QR code scanner, screen recorder function, split screen settings, secure folder options and of course biometric security through fingerprint scanning/face detection. The user interface was highly optimised and user friendly as well, allowing for easy manipulation of settings and quick access to functionalities through the top panel.The extremely powerful and full speakers, combined with Dolby Atmos sound software, allows it to give smaller portable speakers a run for their money. In terms of battery, the 4,500 mah capacity allows it to run on heavy usage for a full day with no trouble, and the 25W fast charging capacity enables it to be fully juiced within an hour, so you never ever have to wait for your phone to be charged sufficiently before leaving the house again. There are other cool features such as Wireless charging and powershare (which allows you to charge other phones with wireless charging enabled), Bixby routines, focus modes, among others as well should you need to use it. Of course, there are still some things that I would like to change about it. Firstly, graphic intensive games on this phone were not up to par. Games like PUBG suffer from frame rate drops after a few minutes of use, and the phone gets noticeably quite heated. This problem only seemed to affect the Exynos versions (which I am unfortunately on). Secondly, my grey phone looked really boring without a cover. Just a plain grey glass backing with no additional designs, making it a huge aesthetic downgrade from the colored back panel of Samsung A70. After paying such a premium price for the phone, I was a little disappointed with the performance in these two areas, especially since the Samsung flagships were suppose to boast the highest performance and aesthetics among their offerings. Overall, I still enjoyed using this phone to such a degree that I am constantly finding an excuse to it.
Earphones – Klipsch R6i
When you spend a significant portion of your day listening to music/webcats/video calls on your earphones, it makes sense to get a good quality earpiece that is able to deliver the sonic landscape of your desire to your auditory senses, especially in light of the amoung of auditory input that you receive through it on a daily basis. I was fortunate enough to receive a Klipsh R6 as my 21st birthday present. Before that I was constantly buying cheap sports earpieces in the range of $20-30, because to me, the audio from those were satisfactory to me, but that was because I had never used a quality earpiece before. I held off opening the box for a few months until my then earpiece went dead in one side (not a big surprise considering it was a generic brand from a dollar store). I hesistantly opened the packaging because I did not want to use something so expensive, but the moment I put those earbuds into my ear was when my eyes (ears) were opened. The clarity was unbelievable, unlike the overly bassy ones of the sports earpieces that I had come to love and expect. I knew then immediately that I could never ever be satisfied with those ever again. I had the pleasure of using the R6 for almost 3 full years and even brought it through my European exchange trip. While I have heard less-than-ideal stories about the durability of Klipsch earpieces, I have never encountered such a problem before. In fact, the only reason my R6 spoilt was due to the rubber casing on the jack wearing down and cracking, exposing the copper wires which were damaged through the lack of protection. I was immediately sold and sought to purchase the same model. I did not manage to get the exact model, but I got an iphone variant R6i (because there was a cheap one on sale on Carousell and I was impatient to have a good earpiece once again). I could not pick up any differences in the audio experience from the R6 to the R6i, so I was really happy in that regard. Other than the durability, the shape of the R6 and R6i earbuds fit my ears quite well, which was quite rare considering most earpieces would fall out rather easily, possibly due to my ear canals having a weird shape? Overall, I think the Klipsch r6 series are extremely well priced for the audio quality that they can deliver. Couple this with its durability, and I don’t think that you can get better value.
Keyboard: Logitech G613
A rather premium mechanical wireless gaming keyboard costing $150 featuring Romer G mechanical switches. I was using a standard generic keyboard previously, and had no prior experience using mechanical keyboards. Mechanical keyboards have ta special allure with their ridiculous high key heights, which tower over the standard flat keyboard switches on laptops that we have come to be familiar with. There was only one thought in my mind when I first placed my hands on the keyboard: “Would I be able to type faster on this?”. After all if I was typing faster on a generic flat laptop switch type keyboard then I would see no purpose in using a mechanical keyboard any further. A quick google search yielded poor evidence in favour of this hypothesis. Nevertheless I set about relearning my hand positions, since the spaces between the keys were now greater and the keys required a different biomechanical action on my finger to press. After about 2 weeks, I can safely say that mechanical keyboards do indeed increase your typing ability, not only in terms of speed, but also in preventing fatigue from typing. In terms of typing speed, I have managed to type about 5% quicker on average, achieving an average of 115 words per minute (WPM) and a 130 max WPM record. I was able to continue typing consistently fast for about 30 minutes as well, while I could previously only do so for 20 minutes at a time. Other than the enhancements to the typing experience, the connectivity offered by this keyboard was seamless as well, which was understandable considering that you could not even plug it into your computer even if you wanted to. There were two options for connectivity available: through bluetooth, and through the Lightspeed technology which was basically just inserting a receiver into the usb port of your computer. Both options are equally lightning fast, and I could see no difference at all between using this and a wired keyboard. Being wireless also meant that it cleared up the cable mess on my table as well. There are also 6 special macro keys that are located at the extreme left of the keyboard, which I could program. I have not used this feature yet, but I am looking to incoporate it soon to explore its efficiency savings. The only fault that I have with it would be its massive bulk, with an overextensive palm rest that cannot be detached. This makes it virtually unportable since it would stretch beyond the dimensions of most carrier bags.
Mouse: Razer Basilisk X Hyperspeed
It is a wireless gaming mouse and comes with many bells and whistles which I unfortunately do not use at all. There are two buttons on the thumb side of the mouse which can be programmed to perform some actions, and there is also a button just below the scroll wheel that allows you to toggle between or 5 different DPI settings for your mouse to adjust the sensitivity. (You can reconfigure this button as well).
I must admit that I do not know enough about computer mice specs to give a proper review so I am just going to describe it in the most basic way. The contours of the mouse makes it feel comfortable in my hand and I do not seem to have any problems with it during prolonged usage. The clicks are responsive and has a nice feel. The battery and USB adaptor is stored in an easily removable plate on the top surface of the mouse for easy access. The only gripe that I have with this mouse is the Bluetooth conflict with my Logitech G613 keyboard. For some reason, I was unable to succcessfully connect my mouse and keyboard to my Lenovo L340 laptop simultaneously. When the Basilisk was connected, my keyboard was unable to work via Bluetooth despite my best attempts at troubleshooting. Finally, I relented the fight and decided to use the USB connector for the Logitech keyboard while letting the Basilisk remain on Bluetooth.
Speaker: JBL Clip 3
Not much to write home about here, but a reasonable upgrade over the base speakers of the laptop. I bought it on a whim at a Best Denki store at Djitsun mall because I was obsesseed with the idea of buying a portable speaker to accompany myself on my GrabFood delivery sessions, but ended up connecting it to my laptop for the majority of the day. I believe that its performance exceeds its price tag of just $69 in terms of audio clarity and volume. The only gripe I had was that the rubber cover protecting the charging port and audio connection fell out way too early. The sliver of rubber that was holding it in place with the speaker itself was completely severed within a year of use.
GoPro Hero 7 Black
I purchased a GoPro Hero 7 just before I left for my exchange to Poland in order to document my memories more vividly. It is a great and sturdy device, and recorded videos with great clarity. The most impressive functionality of the GoPro Hero 7 was the auto stabiliser, which works wonderfully in reducing the amonut of shakinig in a video. This was a lifesaver since I did not have a gimbal and that I was constantly on the move from place to place. The colors of the video were also extremely vivid and it performed exceptionally well in low light conditions. While the audio was still sensitive in picking up wind and background noise, my voice still came through clearly. It was also extremely sturdy, and despite rough handling, the screen and lens of my GoPro Hero 7 only picked up a tiny hair of a scratch on both of its surfaces, barely noticeable until you hold it up to the light at the right angle.
The only gripes that I have with the GoPro Hero 7 are: 1. The relatively short battery life (understandable considering the size of the battery). 2. The GoPro would not turn on sometimes and I have to remove and re-insert the battery to get it to work.