Gadgetory

welcome back to hardware unboxed today I'm looking at a brand new and very interesting product from the wonderful people at Acer who raced this down to Melbourne on a weekend just days after it hit our shores it's the new asus switch 7 a high-end surface light tablet with a kickstand and detachable keyboard complete with Black Edition branding and according to ASA Black is timeless it's not only rational but emotionally constrained its luster gives a chic and performance visual sensation so interesting marketing aside the key feature of the switch 7 is at least in my opinion very impressive this is a fan 'less 13.5 inch tablet yet despite what should be obvious thermal constraints ASA has crammed in both an Intel Core i7 8550 u processor along with discreet nvidia geforce MX 150 graphics discreet GPUs are usually restricted to 15-inch laptops or larger with the occasional 14 unit seen in the wild so it's a feat in itself that the switch 7 a much smaller device contains a discrete GPU but on top of that that have included this GP along with the new Intel quad-core CPU without a single fan instead using what ASA calls a jeweled liquid loop cooling solution descent heat away from these components and distribute it around the chassis that's entirely passive cooling for a 15 watt CPU and around a 25 watt GPU all in a 13 inch tablet form factor so you can see why I might be a little bit excited about taking a look at the switch 7 our hardware includes 16 gig of ram and a 512 gig SSD as standard along with the 22 56 by 15 or 4:3 to aspect ratio IPS LCD but just a 35 point 1 watt hour battery cramming in discrete GPU into this device has taken its toll in at least one area and that does appear to be the battery capacity more on that later for now I want to talk about the build quality of the switch 7 this is a premium price product that commands a high price tag around 1,700 US dollars so I was a bit disappointed with the final build both the tablet and the included keyboard cover the materials used a good smooth glass on the front metal on the sides and rear but there are a lot of seams in the construction particularly around the right side i/o and around the display which doesn't make it look or feel as high-end as the best tablet or laptop designs out there the Microsoft Surface pro for example features a more refined a metal design in keeping with its price tag there are also a few alignment and symmetry issues with the switch 7 that you wouldn't get with the better design product the webcam for example is offset to the right by a large distance for seemingly no reason at all even worse is the display position and bezels the right side bezel is about 2 millimeters larger than the left side bezel which means the display is slightly off-center as soon as I saw the unit I thought something wasn't quite right about the bezels and after about 10 measurements just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating I indeed confirmed 1 bezel is larger than the other and that's pretty bizarre for a modern high-end product the hinged kickstand assembly is a neat concept in that it automatically pops out the kickstand when the bottom edge of the tablet contacts your desk there are two buttons located along this bottom edge that released the spring-loaded hinge mechanism and from there you can adjust the exact angle to your liking it's a convenient system as all you have to do is place the tablet on your desk and it's already propped up and ready to use whether you have the keyboard attached or not however the system does have a few significant flaws the stand itself doesn't look great at least in my opinion and the groove it leaves in the rear of the tablet is a significant dust magnet after this a few days dust and dirt had already accumulated in the hinge cavity that's hard to remove or clean with that compressed air while you can set an angle for the kickstand and it can go fairly flat like the surface pro the spring-loaded hinge prevents you from setting an angle more acute than the angle that pops out at this default angle is suitable for desk work but there are times I like to use a more acute angle particularly in glare environments which the spring mechanism prohibits the other issue is you can't pop out the hinge without pressing both protruding buttons along the bottom edge this isn't a problem for desk users but say you want to open up the kickstand on a soft surface like a on your lap where the buttons might not contact your legs in this situation activating these buttons is much harder than simply reaching back and flipping out in the stand that's probably way too much data on the kickstand but it's a neat idea that I think needs a bit of refinement in a future of revision I was much happier with the i/o included on this tablet a single full-size USB port along with Thunderbolt 3 and a microSD card slot is pretty decent for a space limited tablet style device though using a proprietary power connector over USB C for charging is a little annoying the evie in my opinion still has the best ire of any of these sort of productivity tablets the switch 7 does include a fingerprint reader on the front next to the display which exhibits average performance further up the edges our front-facing speakers of a surprisingly decent quality perhaps due to the limited volume that prevents awful distortions the keyboard cover is obviously a key feature of the switch 7 and it's nice to see it included in the price unlike with a certain microsoft product the cover is a bit hit or miss though in that the build isn't that impressive using a plastic around the casing and okay but not amazing fabric on the other side however the typing speeds is pretty good with a similar tactile fuel to most laptop case if a bit lighter than normal there is a bit of flex when typing though not as much as I expected considering the build and it attaches neatly and effectively to the bottom using pogo pins and magnets perhaps the best feature is the include stylus it's a Wacom unit without power yet it supports 4096 levels of pressure and best of all it slots into the body along the top edge yes I said does include a dedicated style slot which many of these devices did not which makes it a lot harder to lose the pen for annotating on the go it's a great solution so it's time to talk about performance I'm really excited about this section because build quality aside this is the star of the show again we're looking at an Intel Core i7 85 52 quad core configured to use the standard 15 watt TDP along with an NVIDIA GeForce MX 150 discrete GPU with 2 gigabytes of dedicated vram we already know how the eye 78550 you should perform however its pairing with the MX 150 does make it considerably more capable at graphics and compute workloads both these chips in a family's chassis is a huge feat of Engineering I'm not going to spend a lot of time discussing the pure CPU performance of the IEEE 78550 I've covered that a couple of times in the past the key observation here is despite the use of just passive cooling the switch seven has no problems matching other I 78550 you devices it doesn't thermal throttle significantly or underperform relative to the active called standard performance razor blade stealth amazingly it's actually faster than the HP Spectre x-360 in most tests sometimes by significant amounts I criticize the spectre x360 in my review for having a weak cooler so maybe they should have ditched the mediocre fan that they used for their fanless design asa uses with the switch 7 because it's much more effective however there are some limits to the switch 7s thermal solution the switch 7 doesn't feature as high CPU boost clocks which leads to lower performance in very short workloads like MATLAB and excel compared to the same 15 watt CPU in the razor blade stealth this chart that shows clock speeds that a Cinebench r15 multi-threaded test shows exactly this phenomenon lower boost clocks but decent sustain clocks as they says prioritize long term performance rather than short hot bursts performance does steadily decline during lengthy tests or back-to-back short workloads though but it can take upwards of 20 minutes for this to become an issue which is longer than a lot of typical laptop tasks the GPU is more effective than the CPU here too as something like repeat 3dmark runners do show larger drops between consecutive runs then we'd normally see passive cooling solutions are also limited by the environment they operate in so our air condition benchmark lab is set to around 23 degrees Celsius but if you're in a hotter summer environment the cooler will suffer more than an active solution and performance will be hit harder as a result however the passive cooler doesn't seem to limit the MX 150 or that much performing around the same level as others have seen from this jpo in similar systems it performs a touch below the best MX 150 laptops out there but it's nothing unusual and still very impressive for a device without a single fan of course the main advantage to having the MX 150 is that it's a lot faster than intel's integrated graphics in the heaviest GPU workloads the MX 150 is about 2 point three times faster than the UHD 620 integrated into the eye 78550 you this gives it a big advantage in computer applications that heavily utilized the GPU premiere for example run as a 4k video with lumetri effects 84% faster with the MX 150 inside than just having the eye 78550 you and it's a similar story with Photoshop smart sharpen filter compared to the Rison 5 2500 you which also includes a powerful Vega 8 GPU along with the CPU comparable to the eye 78550 you the MX 150 power switch 7 is at best around 12% faster in GPU limited tests like 3d marks times by graphics core some applications don't support rising mobile as well as I'd like particularly the Adobe suite so to be good to revisit this comparison when we get better rise and mobile drivers as for gaming the MX 150 isn't a super powerful GPU so you shouldn't expect to play everything on this tablet however as it is so much faster than integrated graphics you can get a decent experience in a handful of titles using grand theft auto 5 is an example you can get a very playable experience at 1080p and even using the displays native resolution using the lowest detail settings civilization 6 is very playable as well at the native wresting x' which is good news for those that want to do some gaming let me go you won't want to touch the back of the switch 7 during any lengthy combined GPU and CPU usage as the passive cooler can get a bit toasty the CPU sits at around 90 degrees Celsius and the GPU got as hot as 60 degrees Celsius in my testing using consecutive 3dmark runs and most of that heat is dissipated directly through the rear panel unfortunately battery life is pretty poor the best 13-inch convertible or traditional laptops use a 50 to 60 watt hour battery but the asus which seven is limited just a 35 watt hour cell and I suspect that's due to the inclusion of the large heat pipe cooler and the discrete GPU to put this in perspective the smaller current-gen surface pro includes a 45 watt hour battery and only needs to power a 12 point three inch display the switch 7 is significantly limited in comparison and you can see the results quite clearly in these benchmarks with the switch 7 falling well behind acceptable levels for a modern laptop style device while not a direct competitor a 13-inch convertible like the HP Spectre x-360 lasts more than 75 percent longer in our Wi-Fi web browsing test which is an enormous discrepancy this sort of battery life affects the usage of a product particularly something as portable as the switch however this level of battery life is quite clearly a trade-off that's been made for the added performance it's a much faster device in the surface Pro particularly when connected to the charger but it also has significantly worse battery life that's something you'll need to weigh up when choosing whether you want to purchase this tablet in the end whether you should buy the Asus which 7 does come down to one simple thing if you want the performance of an Intel Core i7 8550 you and discreet nvidia geforce MX 150 graphics in this tablet plus keyboard cover form factor this is the best option on the market in fact as far as these sorts of hybrid tablets go the switch 7 is the most powerful one you can get all without active cooling or significant thermal throttling but it's not a perfect device by any means I'm not a huge fan of the build quality and while the hinge is innovative it is awkward for some use cases the keyboard cover is decent but it is a bit cheaply built I quite like the high-resolution 3-2 display but it isn't centered in the chassis the battery life also leaves a fair bit to be desired compared to a true laptop or hybrid convertible in the United States the pricing for the switch 7 isn't too bad it does cost one thousand six hundred and ninety nine dollars which might make a few of you budget conscious shoppers sweat but for that price you do get a core i7 sixteen gig of ram and a 512 gig SSD and discreet graphics as standard an equivalent surface pro which doesn't even have an MX 150 or 8th gen CPS costs $2,200 unfortunately us Aussies are slugged with a bit of Australia tax on this product as it costs a whopping 3300 Aussie dollar e dues but it's not too bad over in America the switch 7 should be available soon so if you are interested it links are in the description below and those should work at some point once that you know becomes a bit more available plus we've tracked in a range of other products in there too just in case you want some comparisons as always you can support us directly throughout patreon at patreon.com slash Hardware boxed and I'll catch you in the next one