Gadgetory

hey guys and welcome back to hardware unboxed so crowdfunded tech products have a long history of being complete garbage usually shipping years after their original launch dates with missing features broken functionality and no further support so when I heard that I could review the crowdfunder TV which is a lower cost better featured competitor to the Microsoft Surface pro I was expecting to find yet another piece of junk that failed to live up to the hype but I was completely and utterly wrong for my experience with the Eevee over the past few weeks it's not just a great competitor to the surface pro it's a better option in several ways but before I get into the nitty-gritty let's talk basics you'll see the surface pro reference tool order in this review and that's for a key reason the Eevee is very similar from a hardware and design perspective it's a twelve point three inch Windows 10 tablet with the magnetic detachable keyboard cover and a kickstand it's designed for people that want to work on the go and want to combine the flexibility of a tablet form factor you know with the convenience of typing on a physical keyboard the main selling point here is that if you were thinking of getting a surface pro you might want to consider the Eevee instead similar form factor similar hardware but at a lower price and with more features as I'm sure you can appreciate that's an enticing proposition for those interested in the surface pro like with the surface pro there are a range of hardware configurations they come with different processes memory and storage capacity the base model which retails for 800 US dollars packs an Intel Core M 37 by 38 gig of ram and 128 gig of SSD space but you can configure the Eevee up to a core i7 7 Y 75 16 gig of ram and a one terabyte SSD for two thousand US dollars and my review model was one step down from the top with a 512 gig SSD instead of that one terabyte one and it comes with a retail price of sixteen hundred US dollars the Eevee is cheaper across the board for a comparable hardware configuration relative to the surface pro this is partly due to one simple factor every Eevee comes with the detachable keyboard and active stars included in the box while with the surface pro these essential accessories are expensive extras if you need a quick comparison the Eevee with a core i5 CPU eight gigabytes of RAM and 256 gig SSD costs $1,200 with the keyboard and stylus included and if you're after a comparable 2017 surface pro you're looking at a $1300 plus 130 for the tight cover and a hundred bucks for the pen so the Eevee it's three hundred and thirty dollars cheaper and the difference only gets larger at higher-end configurations and I've talked about pricing let's discuss the actual design of this tablet one of the surface pros best features is its beautiful magnesium body the Eevee gets a lot of things right with its own version a solid well-built metal unibody to the point where most of the complaints and nitpicks rather than deal breaking floors the chassis looks great it's extremely solid with no obvious seams of manufacturing defects and it feels wonderful to hold next to the matter metal finish best of all the design doesn't feel like a Genki crowdfunded piece of garbage had a major player like Dell or Lenovo released this exact same design it too would receive praise for its premium construction and a feeling well with their top-tier products the Eevee wouldn't be a surface Pro competitor without a kickstand so it's no surprise to see a near identical kickstand implemented here the EBS kickstand doesn't have the same range of motion as the surface pro 135 versus 165 degrees but it comes close as a smooth hinge allowing any angle to be set yet the hinge is strong enough to maintain this angle with that accidentally sliding to a different angle it's a great kickstand it feels tough enough to resist a beating over the lifetime of the tablet as for features the Eevee raises the bar significantly compared to the limited in comparison surface pro every aspect of the surface pro is included there's a full-size USB 3.0 port micro SD card slot headphone jack keyboard connector and cameras on both sides there's also top firing speakers which are terrible but you know they're there on top of this though the Eevee has everything you wanted the surface pro to include but didn't with there's an additional USB 3.0 type a port for two in total which is extremely handy for attaching multiple accessories but it gets better because the Eevee has both a USB 3.1 type C port and a Thunderbolt 3 port Microsoft has resisted adding Thunderbolt to the surface pro for some reason but you get here with full compatibility for DisplayPort and external GPUs consequently there's no mini DisplayPort but Thunderbolt 3 is a far more useful and allows similar display out connectivity through dongles anyway so the e V includes double the USB a ports as two other USB C port and the widely requested Thunderbolt it basically has the i/o of a modern laptop but in a tablet form factor for charging there's no magnetic wall charger instead the e V uses the universal standard USB C charging through either of the ports I certainly prefer the ability to use other charges to power this device though you know that magnetic charge on the surface pro it's pretty handy the e V also supports Windows hello though it's through a fingerprint reader integrated into the power button rather than through facial recognition the buttons on this tablet are very shallow and hard to press though particularly the volume buttons not so much of a concern with the power button as you only need to tap it to unlock the device and activate the fingerprint lock but the volume buttons they're not particularly great one of the best aspects of a V though is the included keyboard cover and active pen both of which are optional accessories for the surface pro these accessories are basically essential to complete the overall package without them you have just a basic tablet but with them you have a multi mode device so from Microsoft to charge an additional 230 bucks for the combination seems a bit egregious the keyboard cover it's absolutely outstanding it's so much better than the surface pro type cover even the premium signature type cover there it's ridiculous Microsoft charges a hundred and thirty to a hundred and sixty dollars for that accessory alone not only does the Eevee's keyboard cover provide a superior typing experience thanks to very clicky keys it also includes additional features like support for wireless use via Bluetooth and seven color LED backlighting plus the entire thing is covered with premium Alcantara fabric just like the most expensive type other Microsoft sells the track pad has a gorilla glass surface which again feels excellent to use no complaints about the trackpad whatsoever and provides an awesome tracking experience with the soil click and enough usable space there's also been included active pens not quite as good as the surface pen with fewer pressure levels and slightly longer latency but it's still very usable for everyday annotation drawing and highlighting work though the EBS display it's a 12-point 328 80 by 1920 sharp eggs ooh LCD panel so the same size and 3:2 aspect ratio as a surface Pro's display with a slightly higher resolution and pixel density sharps EXO display technology it's very good so the display has some great inherent qualities viewing angles are excellent as is its peak brightness which is 400 nits well above a lot of other Windows systems you claims a contrast ratio of 1500 to 1 I achieved 1260 to 1 but that's still a fantastic result there is some backlight bleed particularly along the bottom edge which is noticeable when viewing dark images in dark environments as a result uniformity isn't perfect that said the top 2/3 are pretty good from a uniformity standpoint and for creators the demand color accuracy every AV unit is individually factory calibrated to the srgb spectrum with the d65 or 6,500 K white point target and Delta II mm values less than 1.0 the XO displays easily capable of hitting full srgb coverage achieve 99.9 percent in my testing so images appear vibrant and generally outstanding here unfortunately my review nerd actually shipped with an incorrect calibration due to an error in the calibration process did result in a bit of a red tint actual shipping units though destined for you guys backers retail you know crowdfunded all that stuff won't have the issue because after I point out to Eevee they were nice enough to go back and retest every single unit so let's talk about performance which is probably the weakest area of the AV while the surface pro uses a fully fledged 15 watt Intel KB like u series processes at least in their mid and upper tier models the Eevee sticks with 4.5 watt Y series cable 8 CPUs these Y series parts are clocked lower on the same 2 cores and fourth and the intel HD graphics well they aren't as fast I'm gonna put up some benchmarks who I discuss how the Eevee performs in general you know rather than looking at individual results so when the core i7 7y it's 75 in my Eevee reviewnit is tasked with relatively short workloads talking about you know under 20 seconds for example the performance difference between it and something like the core i7 7,500 you it's relatively small in the range of 20% or less this is seen in workloads like Excel Monte Carlo winrar compression and MATLAB a CPU like the i7 is 7660 you which is found in the latest surface pro high-end very variance does clock higher so these margins will extend somewhat but it does give a rough idea of where the seven were 75 sits among other offerings the key thing to take away from these benchmarks is that light or short workloads for most tasks performed on a mobile device like this you know opening apps loading webpages editing documents and spreadsheets like photo editing and all those sort of things hit the CPU for a short period of time and he that the KB like YC recipient Eve V doesn't fall too far behind it's you serious counterparts and the you Series models are always faster in these tasks but it's not buy enough to cause a painful experience for those using y series it's in longer more intensive workloads of the 7 y 75 really suffers video rendering in handbrake for example is 50% faster with the u series 7i 770 500 you and that margin does grow with the i7 7660 you Cinebench another rendering workload is a good 47% faster than the 7500 you in the multi-threaded workload these are prime examples where the higher TDP allows the you series to significantly outperform y series if you're thinking of you know rendering a video for example it could take half an hour less on a new series mystery in for something 60 minutes long GPU performance is another area where the y series skew suffers compared to its you serious counterpart in 3dmark workloads like cloud gate even just the HD 620 graphics pulls away by 30 to 40 percent you know you've thrown iris plus graphics and the 7y 75 adjust keep up the easy and most other low-power devices that aren't well-suited to gaming but even in like graphics workloads or games what you're going to see is better performance um you seriously appears no matter what the evening can be connected to EGP use through Thunderbolt 3 though this isn't ideal all the time for portable use the Eevee at least the model I received a review with 512 gigabytes of storage uses an intel SSD 600 P which is an entry-level PCIe nvme SSD the surface pro uses a samsung PM 9 71 and it's pretty similar in terms of its performance search performance is good often matching a number of top and Ultra portables or even outperforming them in tasks such as sequential reads the 600 P isn't as strong when it comes to write performance though it su provides enough speed to our fast uploading and basic IO tasks the Eevee's battery life as well it's pretty good which basically validates their choice to use a Y Series CPU in conjunction with the 48 watt our internal battery in tasks like PC mark home the Eevee outperforms the HP spectre x360 which uses a larger 58 watt hour battery so 21 percent larger and it has an 8 percent larger display as well so that's a really great result and it falls well within the range of devices we've tested with great battery life so I think people will be really pleased with these results all up the EP is a lesson to all crowdfunded hardware startups are not just how to approach things correctly but also how to take on an incumbent giant and produce a better product simply put the Eevee is better than the surface pro in many ways and that's quite remarkable the Eevee has a great design and packaging loads more features in the surface pro most importantly a lot more IO I also love that the keyboard and pen are included in the price unlike with the surface pro and the factory calibrated display is pretty impressive as well for those that require color accurate displays the only main downside is the performance with the u series CPUs in the surface pro outperforming the y series parts in the Eevee for lighter tasks like web browsing spreadsheet work and some light photo editing the difference isn't that large and the Eevee definitely isn't slow by any means but if you know a video editor or need to run long simulations you might want to stick to the upper-end surface pro models the key thing for me though is the price the Eevee is 300 to 900 US dollars cheaper than equivalent surface pro models with the keyboard and pen price factored in that's a pretty big difference it makes it hard to recommend the surface pro there are some questions on things like AV availability support warranty and so forth because you know this is a new startup first-generation hardware but with such a huge price difference it's definitely worth looking into the e V if you're after something along the lines of a surface pro anyway that's it for this look at the surprisingly good AV tablet if you like what we do here at Hardware unbox consider supporting us through our revamped patreon page with all new reward tiers I'll be back soon with a bunch of display reviews so look out for those and I'll catch you next time you