Tag: 4k
Grand Theft Auto 6 is in ‘active development,’ Rockstar confirms
Watch the Super Bowl in style on this 58-inch 4K Vizio TV for $398
Football's annual showdown is just 10 days away. If you've been thinking of getting a new TV for the Super Bowl, Walmart has the deal for you. The big box retailer is selling a 58-inch Vizio 4K Smart TV for just $398. That's $130 off the sticker price.
The Vizio V585-J01 has an excellent array of features such as built-in Apple AirPlay 2 and Chromecast, which allows you to send all kinds of content from your phone to your TV. This includes YouTube videos, iTunes, Apple TV+ shows and movies, Netflix, and more. The TV also integrates with Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant, and Amazon Alexa. That means you can view compatible video doorbells, security cameras, and more.
Vizio says this TV supports Dolby Vision HDR and HDR10, but we couldn't find the max brightness specification. The reviews we saw online, however, suggested that this isn't a true HDR TV that hits 1,000 nits brightness. Those HDR features may still improve the overall picture, but not to the extent a brighter TV would. It also features all the various streaming apps you're looking for such as Apple TV Plus, Disney Plus, HBO Max, Netflix, YouTube, and more.
The V585-J01 is a nice smart TV available right now for a very good price.
Gran Turismo 7 State of Play spotlights a deep, highly polished sequel
Shut Up and Drive Last night saw Sony hold a brand new State of Play presentation, entirely focused on Polyphony...
The post Gran Turismo 7 State of Play spotlights a deep, highly polished sequel appeared first on Destructoid.
Lenovo Yoga 9i review: This premium 2-in-1 laptop keeps going and going
At a glance
Expert's Rating
Pros
- Sturdy and sleek all-metal chassis
- Long battery life
- Impressive audio output
- Comfortable keyboard
Cons
- 16:9 screen feels cramped
- Included stylus is too skinny
- Undersized touchpad
- Limited ports all on left side
Our Verdict
The Lenovo Yoga 9i is an exceptional 2-in-1 in many ways, but the 16:9 display is too wide for its intended use as a versatile productivity laptop and tablet.
Best Prices Today
Most of the updates Lenovo made to its flagship 2-in-1 convertible are on the inside, from 11th-gen Intel Core processors and integrated Iris Xe graphics to Thunderbolt 4 support. Outside of these upgrades and slightly rounded corners, the Lenovo Yoga 9i remains similar to the preceding Yoga C940. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Like the Yoga C940, the Yoga 9i delivers a thin and light yet durable all-metal chassis, a satisfying typing experience, and all-day battery life.
The biggest drawback to the Yoga 9i is the display's aspect ratio. At 16:9, it's wide with less room from top to bottom than a 16:10 display affords. More vertical space means less scrolling through long documents and web pages and provides more room to work in general. And, when you move from laptop to tablet mode, the 16:9 display feels awkward for anyone who has used an iPad with its boxy 4:3 screen.
Luckily, the wait for a taller screen will be a short one. Lenovo announced at CES that the next version of the Yoga 9i will feature a 16:10 display. As currently assembled, the Yoga 9i is a stellar 2-in-1, but it might be worth waiting for the update due out this spring if the idea of a taller display intrigues you.
[The best laptops: Premium laptops, budget laptops, 2-in-1s, and more]
Lenovo Yoga 9i Specifications
Lenovo's 14-inch Yoga 9i line starts at $1,299.99 for a configuration that features an 11th-gen Intel Core i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a Full HD (1920×1280) touch display. Our test system features upgrades to the CPU, RAM, and SSD. The above link will send you to a model that's similar to our test configuration. The only difference is that it has a 1TB SSD.
- CPU: Quad-core Intel Core i7-1195G7
- Memory: 16GB
- Graphics: Intel Iris Xe
- Storage: 512GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD
- Display: 14-inch, 1920×1280 IPS touch
- Webcam: 720p with physical camera shutter
- Connectivity: 2 x Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C) ports, 1 x USB SuperSpeed 10Gbps Type-C port, combo audio jack
- Networking: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0
- Biometrics: Fingerprint reader
- Battery capacity: 60 Watt-hours
- Dimensions: 12.57 x 8.51 x 0.61 inches
- Measured weight: 3.07 pounds (laptop), 0.7 pounds (AC adapter)
Lenovo offers both Windows 11 Home and Pro, and our test system features the former. There's also a display upgrade option that we didn't get, which trades the baseline Full HD panel rated for 400 nits of brightness for a 4K panel rated for 500 nits. The only other upgrade not included on our test system is a 1TB SSD. We received the 512GB middle child of the three solid-state storage options.
Big sound, wide display
Lenovo offers two color options for the Yoga 9i, one of which comes with a leather lid. If you choose the Shadow Black model, you'll get the swanky leather cover. We received the Mica option, which is Lenovo's name for silver. It doesn't feature the leather lid, unfortunately.
The Mica model is metal from top to bottom. With the added layers needed for the touch display and a sturdy 360-degree hinge, 2-in-1 convertibles weigh more than a comparably sized laptop and the Yoga 9i is no exception to this rule. It weighs a hair over three pounds where many 14-inch laptops weigh closer to 2.5 pounds. Still, the all-metal chassis feels rock-solid with no flex in the keyboard deck and very little flex in the lid.
IDG / Matthew Elliott
The lid is positioned just a bit off centered from the keyboard deck so that when the laptop is closed, it ov erhangs off the front edge to create a lip that makes it easy to flip open the display. When the display is rotated all the way around into tablet mode, however, the misalignment between the lid and deck is less appealing when gripping the system in tablet mode.
One feature that works equally well in laptop and tablet mode is what Lenovo calls the Rotating Sound Bar — a speaker cleverly built into the system's 360-degree hinge that projects sound toward you no matter the mode (laptop and tablet as well as tent and presentation modes). With speaker grilles on the front and back of the sound bar, the sound is always moving toward your ears.
IDG / Matthew Elliott
Lenovo manages to squeeze in a pair of tweeters and two subwoofers that result in surprisingly dynamic output. Most laptops omit subwoofers and their presence can be felt with a bass response that you'll literally feel in your palms as you type while listening to music. The Yoga 9i's audio features impressive separation between highs and mids that you usually don't hear in a laptop — so much so that I hope Lenovo's idea of putting the speaker into a laptop's hinge catches on with other manufacturers.
The FHD display looks sharp across its 14 inches and sufficiently bright at its rated 400 nits of brightness. It's so bright that I wouldn't recommend the UHD 500-nit upgrade. I measured the FHD panel at a maximum brightness of 410 nits with good uniformity, so it definitely lives up to its claims. Colors appeared accurate and vibrant, and the contrast was excellent with deep blacks and bright whites. Really, my only complaint about the display is its wide 16:9 aspect ratio.
After using a number of laptops in the past year with 16:10 displays, having a taller screen is a much better fit for general use and productivity. I'd argue that entertainment-focused laptops have the only cause to use a 16:9 display, as it's a better fit for watching movies. Also, the Yoga 9i's glossy screen coating can produce distracting glare and annoying reflections, but that's usually the case with 2-in-1s and their touch panels.
IDG / Matthew Elliott
The Yoga 9i features a standard 720p webcam, but it produces a remarkably well-balanced image. Colors and skin tones looked accurate and the image was largely devoid of the graininess I usually see with 720p cams. This is the rare instance where I don't desire a 1080p upgrade. It lacks IR capability, but Lenovo includes a fingerprint reader for biometric logins. Lastly, the webcam features a physical privacy shield to lend peace of mind when the camera is not in use.
Snappy keyboard, skinny pen
The Yoga 9i's keyboard is roomy and comfortable but lacks the plush feel of a ThinkPad keyboard. The keys are flat with shallow travel, providing a quick response that's firmer than that of a ThinkPad. The only keys that are shortened are the up and down arrow keys. Everything else about the layout feels natural. You also get two-level keyboard backlighting, but you'll need to keep it turned off during daylight hours because you lose the contrast between each silver key and its icon when the backlighting is on and you aren't typing in a dark room.
The touchpad felt responsive with a pleasing click, but I would've liked Lenovo to make it wider to match the aspect ratio of the display. Or, better yet, keep the touchpad as is and change the display to 16:10.
IDG / Matthew Elliott
The Yoga 9i includes a garaged pen that hides in the upper-right corner of the laptop on its back edge. The pen charges in its port and features a rubbery Elastometer tip that creates a bit of friction against the touchscreen that approximates writing on paper instead of a glass surface. The pen is too skinny and difficult to grip, however, which prevents it from providing a natural writing and drawing experience.
IDG / Matthew Elliott
The Yoga 9i features four ports and they're all located in a neat row on the laptop's left edge. There's a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports flanked by a USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port and a combo audio jack. While having two Thunderbolt 4 ports is appreciated, I would've liked to have had them split up with one on each side of the Yoga 9, so you could charge the system from both the left and right side. A volume rocker to use while in tablet mode is also on my 2-in-1 wish list but goes missing on the Yoga 9i.
IDG / Matthew Elliott
Yoga 9i performance
Our Yoga 9i features the Core i7-1195G7, 16GB of RAM, integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics, and a 512GB SSD. While models with the Core i7-1195G7 are currently unavailable, you'll see some with the Core i7-1185G7 chip. Both are quad-core CPUs from Intel's 11th-gen Tiger Lake family of processors that are nearly identical.
We compared the Yoga 9i against other premium 2-in-1s. HP gets two entries in the Intel-based HP Spectre x360 14 and AMD-based HP Envy x360 15. We also included Dell's premium XPS 13 2-in-1 and the midrange Dell Inspiron 14 7000 2-in-1. The former features the Core i7-1165G7 and the latter features the Ryzen 7 5700U. Rounding out the charts is a business-minded convertible from Lenovo in the form of the ThinkBook 14s Yoga based on the Core i7-1165G7. Each laptop features integrated graphics.
IDG / Matthew Elliott
Our first benchmark is PCMark 10, which measures performance on everyday computing work including office productivity tasks, web browsing, and video chats. The Yoga 9i gets off to a strong start with a first-place finish on PCMark 10. The above 5,000 score indicates that the Yoga 9i is more than equipped to run Office and other productivity apps and handle a variety of multitasking scenarios.
IDG / Matthew Elliott
The Yoga 9i finished ahead of the other Intel machines but behind both AMD systems on our HandBrake test, which involves encoding a large 30GB video file. The Ryzen 7 5700U has double the processing cores and threads as the Yoga 9i's Core i7-1195G7 chip and allowed the Dell Inspiron 14 7000 and HP Envy x360 15 to finish the test in roughly half the time.
IDG / Matthew Elliott
If our HandBrake test is a marathon, then Cinebench is a sprint. This test renders a complex 2D scene over a short period of time. More processing core and threads also lead to better performance on Cinebench and the two AMD systems are clearly a step or three ahead of the Yoga 9i and the Intel competition.
IDG / Matthew Elliott
The Yoga 9i doesn't offer the best multitasking performance, but it performed admirably on our 3DMark test. A first-place finish among a group of laptops with integrated graphics, however, does not make it a good fit for gamers. Although Intel's Iris Xe integrated graphics is surprisingly good, as our tests have shown, you'll need a discrete GPU if you plan to use your laptop for gaming.
IDG / Matthew Elliott
To test a laptop's battery life, we loop a 4K video using Windows 10's Movies & TV app with the laptop set to Airplane mode and earbuds plugged in. We set the screen brightness at a relatively bright 250 nits to 260 nits, which is a good brightness for watching a movie in an office with the lights on. The Yoga 9i's 4-cell, 60 Whr battery lasted nearly 16 hours on our battery-drain test, a hugely impressive result and a longer runtime than other 2-in-1s we've reviewed.
Conclusion: Wait for the next update
The Lenovo Yoga 9i has a lot going for it. It really lives up to its premium billing with an all-metal enclosure that is both gorgeous and rock-solid. Its display is bright and vibrant. The innovative speaker bar pumps out impressive sound. The keyboard is roomy and comfortable. The battery runs all day and into the night. As a pure laptop, it's great. But despite its many charms, I recommend waiting a few months for the updated Yoga 9i to arrive that will introduce a taller, 16:10 screen if you plan on using your laptop in convertible touchscreen form.
This model's wide 16:9 display feels cramped and awkward in tablet mode. The taller display will let you view more content on the screen with less scrolling and provide more room to juggle open windows when multitasking. It should also feel more natural when you rotate the screen all the way around into tablet mode. The new model will also feature a thicker pen for a more natural grip for drawing and scribbling. The current Yoga 9i is good, but the next version coming soon looks to be even better.
First CS:GO Major of 2022 will be in Europe
Click here to read the full article.
PGL Unveils the CS:GO Antwerp 2022 Major
After only a month into 2022, PGL revealed the CS:GO Antwerp 2022 Major, which starts on May 9 in Belgium. The best teams worldwide will face each other for a share of its massive $1 million prize pool. Kicking off from May 9 to 22, the Major includes nearly two weeks of esports action. The […]
The post PGL Unveils the CS:GO Antwerp 2022 Major appeared first on Esportz Network.
Gran Turismo 7 Wants You To Love Car Culture Again
Gran Turismo is 25 years old. Over a quarter of a century, and more than 80 million copies sold, longtime producer Kazunori Yamauchi has strived to create a virtual driving experience as close to the real thing as possible. A month before the seventh numbered entry in the series drops, Yamauchi has revealed how he and his team are attempting to bring realism to Gran Turismo 7 and how he intends to bring car culture to the masses.
After Gran Turismo Sport had a somewhat bumpy beginning, GT7 will launch with a number of ways to enjoy single-player racing. Starting from a new world map (cross your fingers for a return of GT's signature smooth jazz menu music to go with it), players can leap to Licence Tests, Missions, World Circuits (34 to choose from, and over 90 layouts--including the legendary Trial Mountain), a tuning shop, custom modes, multiplayer, a used car lot, Brand Central (to buy and read about most cars), a Legendary Cars store for the iconic stuff, Sport, Scapes, Showcase (for sharing and downloading content), your garage, and, most interestingly the Café.
…players can, just like the old days, leap to the game’s core features from there.
- License tests - to hone your driving skills
- Missions - Events and situations beyond the usual racing, for example drag racing.
- World Circuits - 34 to choose from with over 90 layouts, some real-life, some GT originals (including the legendary Trial Mountain)
- Tuning Shop
- Custom - for your own race setups
- Multiplayer
- Sport - Gran Turismo’s competitive online mode
- Showcase - for sharing and downloading UGC
- Scapes - a place to position cars in specific spots and create beautiful pictures (or terrible ones, talent depending)
- Your Garage
- The Café - Perhaps the most interesting new addition to the game
Plenty of features are carried over from previous games, and the basic premise remains the same: buy a car, do your license tests, race, buy better cars, race more, win more, keep driving until GT8 is a thing. But Yamauchi seems to be thinking more about the wider world than simply of racing. He said in a pre-recorded video: "Today you won't find as many people talking about car culture anymore. Less people are talking about the beauty of cars, or focused on the fun of driving."
It's here that the Café comes in to play. Players are invited to sample 30 'menus,' each featuring a different type of car (Porsche 911s in one, BMC Minis in another, etc), and features their own driving missions. Once you complete a menu, you end up with a few new cars for your collection and will have learned something about the car and its history. The Café will also play host to various guest speakers of sorts--designers will 'drop by' to talk about the cars they worked on. Hearing, hypothetically, someone like Ian Callum, the designer of the original Aston Martin Vanquish, wax lyrical about his greatest hits would be something special, wouldn't it?
During a roundtable interview, Yamauchi revealed that while it's something of a roadmap to GT7's systems, the Café's there to help players form a deeper connection with the culture he holds dear: "The cafe's a place where you may meet some of the designers or the engineers that were actually involved, or actually created these cars that you've collected. So, what that is, it's a part of the car, or the culture revolving around the cars. And of course, we had the museum first appearing in Gran Turismo Sport. But this takes one step further, where you get to know the people that are involved in creating these cars." Much like real cars and coffee meets, or events like Monterey Car Week and the Goodwood Festival of Speed, Yamauchi wants to get as many people as close to the thing he loves as possible, to keep car culture alive for the next 25 years of Gran Turismo.
Sharing car culture goes a little further than the Café. There will be 'meeting places' and lobbies to congregate with friends, two-player local split-screen for settling sibling riv alries, and the Showcase to share liveries. By the sounds of things, Yamauchi is making it very hard to avoid getting wrapped up in his world.
While the focus of the game remains racing, Yamauchi seems keen to add modes that take the pressure off the player to post ever-decreasing lap times, and just enjoy their cars. In the new Music Rally mode, players are tasked with having a pleasant drive around a track of their choice while listening to one of GT7's myriad tunes. You start with a number of 'beats' on screen that decrease as you drive. Top your beats up by hitting various gates on circuit, and, hopefully, you'll finish the song. Fail to collect enough beats and it's game over. You're still against the clock, but one that gives you room to play and explore.
"The biggest objective of the music rally is that we really wanted people to enjoy the music," Yamauchi explained. And the other important point is that, we wanted to make it [for] people who are playing this for the first time, who've never played a car game before, new kids playing a car game for the first time, we wanted it to be something that they can enjoy."
It wouldn't be a Gran Turismo game without tuning options to delight the deeply nerdy and terrify everyone else. In GT7, the list of things to tweak, fettle, and adjust appears to be just as massive and unnerving as ever. Thankfully, the game measures a car's Performance Points in real time using almost certainly incomprehensible maths. Once you've adjusted a setting, hit the big red MEASURE button on the stats screen and you'll see whether your tweaking has made the right kind of difference. Yamauchi said, "This is like having a minigame inside the settings screen and is one of my favorite screens out of the various features in GT7." You won't be able to share your settings via the Showcase though, as, Yamauchi said the different parts on cars might not sit well with another player's tinkering. The settings screen has been designed to be screengrabbed and shared, though.
Different parts on cars? Tuning is back, of course. With about 60 tuning parts per car, everything from a new air filter to suspension setups are available to turn a tiny hatchback into a surface-to-air missile--or, y'know, make your McLaren even more potent. Performance upgrades are all well and good, but if you're going to go fast you need to look the part. You can make sure your car's clean, sure, but you can also paint it in your preferred hue, or go wild in the livery editor. You're able to do more in the latter now, adding stickers in places you previously couldn't. What may appeal to the aesthetically minded are the 650 aerodynamic parts and 130 wheel types. You can give your old Beemer box arches now. If you're in to that kind of thing, that's unbelievably cool.
On PS5, GT7 will include a few technical tricks that'll make the most of the system compared to the PS4 version. Loading times will be much quicker, for one. There are two resolution modes to pick from: Frame Rate Mode that'll run as high as possible from a 60fps baseline in race and replays, and Ray Tracing Mode, which is best deployed when you want to focus on visuals instead of performance, such as while playing with the endlessly adjustable photo mode and the Scapes function, showing GT7's detailed models off in full 4K HDR ray-traced splendor.
The DualSense's adaptive triggers will offer greater feedback as well. Vibrations under 100 hertz will be run through your hands. In real-world terms, you'll feel the brake trigger lock up with your front wheels, and the controller is said to make you feel under and oversteer. Quite how GT7 does that remains to be seen--can a DualSense do a better job than a 'wheel? We'll see.
Sony's 3D audio tech, meanwhile, will work to put your ears in the game as well--boasting tech that'll make you feel as though the road is below, while competitors buzz by in real time.
All of that sounds very impressive, but what's most exciting for the GT hardcore may well be the used car lot. Just like the good ol' days, you start off buying a jalopy and working your way up the ranks. The lot will change day by day, and occasionally exciting cars will crop up--sadly, a 90’s Impreza WRX and the like are likely to be more spendy than a Mazda Demio. Yamauchi did mention that the Performance Points system might match unlikely cars though: "You can have a car that's really fast to begin with. But then you can take this really modest car and tune it to be just as fast as that car so that they can appear together in a race. Having an actual PP system that is well balanced will allow us to do that."
GT7's multiplayer aspects will be 'equivalent to GT Sport,' with various difficulty modes available for players of all abilities, too, so you needn't be overwhelmed by an overly aggressive AI.
When it comes to multiplayer, Yamauchi said "Gran Turismo 7 is equivalent to GT Sport in terms of what it offers.” For players tackling single-player, whether you’re new to the game or a seasoned pro, there’s an appropriate leaping off point: “When you first begin the game, the game asks you whether you want to start at the beginner, intermediate or on expert level. But those who have already played this series in the past would probably find it not challenging enough if you start on intermediate.”
There's lots to be excited about in GT7, from returning features to new twists on old ideas, but the overarching theme seems to be that Yamauchi wants you to care about cars as much as he does: "I really think it's important to really convey this culture and history to the next generation of people. I almost feel a responsibility to do that." We'll find out in March whether, with GT7, he and the Polyphony Digital team have managed it.
Does Dying Light 2 deliver on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles?
Developer Techland has a reputation for delivering exceptional visuals via its own in-house technology - the C-Engine, taking centre-stage in Dying Light 2. With a focus of straddling the console generations while utilising cutting-edge visuals on the latest hardware, the studio promises us a rich density in detail, seamless streaming, upgraded physics, animation and AI. Our first impression? Dying Light 2 can look astonishing - but it's no secret that it's exceptionally heavy on the GPU.
Three different rendering modes are on offer on PS5 and Series X consoles, all of them delivering something desirable - but the horsepower simply isn't there to offer them all in combination. For that, you'll need a high-end PC (where Dying Light 2 offers even more visual features) and we'll be talking about that in our next piece.
Bitcoin: Recent gains, yes, but are they really enough to reverse BTC’s downtrend
Famous Illustrator Takashi Okazaki Creates MLB The Show 22’s Collector’s Edition Cover Art Featuring Shohei Ohtani
Review: Dying Light 2 (PS5) – Good Sequel Hurt by Expectation
Mirror's undead.
Sequels are a tricky thing to handle. Do you iterate slightly and deliver more of what fans loved the first time around, or reach for the stars with new ways to play and mechanics? Both approaches work, but Dying Light 2 finds itself in the strange situation where it was pitched as the latter but actually resembles the former. Techland talked a big game in the years leading up to the sequel's release, promising meaningful choices and real consequences for your actions. Dying Light 2 is not that game.
Instead, it's a solid follow-up to the 2015 fan favourite. That intense melee-focused combat system is back for a second round along with those sublime parkour mechanics. They're enough to convince you to take up the activity in your spare time — it all feels that good. It's simple, really: if you enjoyed the first game, you'll also like Dying Light 2.
Read the full article on pushsquare.com