“My whole desk setup now easily fits into a backpack and I can take it anywhere”
Man, I guess I’ve been fooled using laptops this entire time. IM SO STUPID
He addresses this by saying a laptop doesn’t allow you to replace components, doesn’t have mechanical keyboard and there’s no ultra wide support.
The funny thing is, this device he’s using doesn’t allow you to replace components either. And there are 21:9 laptops and mechanical keyboards available.
Seemed like he’s trying to reverse-engineer his way into justifying a use case for it, but just failed.
I read that as well, and it addresses none of that. Also, you can replace components on a lot of laptops, and ALL components on a Framework. This is why they are so sought after.
Whoever wrote this is making a bad faith argument and throwing an ignorant assertion out to serve a specific purpose, which…is not stated 🤣
Yeah, you can swap more on a framework laptop than the mini PC he’s using.
However glasses, a mini PC, keyboard and battery is smaller than a laptop. Using whatever keyboard you want instead of what came with the laptop for forever is also nice.
However glasses, a mini PC, keyboard and battery is smaller than a laptop.
It relaxes the X and Y dimensions — no screen. But it might take up more volume, depending upon the configuration. Like, laptops use flat keycaps and scissor switch keys to save space. He’s using a keyboard with traditional, full-height keys and regular keyswitches. That alone is a not insignificant amount of volume.
EDIT: I have a split-ergo keyboard with standard full-size keyswitches that fits into a folding case, one half on each side. If I were going to carry an external mechanical key keyboard with a portable PC, that’s probably what I’d use. Split ergo keyboards are expensive, though, so not as cost-effective as a standard one-piece mechanical key keyboard. [email protected]
I mean if it did multiple virtual monitors the way vr headsets can I could see this being worth it…
Yeah they make laptop monitors but no ones gonna carry two 24" panels and a 30" ultrawide in their pocket.
It might be able to do that.
From memory, those Xreal glasses have this optional doohickey called a Beam that you can plug them into. If you have that, it can “project” a monitor into reality, not have it move with your head. So they can do the projection bit. Like, they aren’t just dumb HMDs that throw an image in front of your eyes. They’re AR, so like VR goggles, they do headtracking and such, but they’re intended to have you view a mix of the real world and the virtual projected elements.
The problem is that if you’re rendering a virtual image of a screen on a screen, you need to have the physical screen be significantly-higher-resolution to look right — you have to throw away some of your resolution on this. True of VR or AR googles. I’d think that the first practical monitor replacement HMD is gonna avoid doing any 3D projection of virtual monitors.
EDIT: Yeah, those goggles can do it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Xreal/comments/182wwxb/can_i_use_3_virtual_monitors_and_2_physical/
I do this with 4. I have 3 floating ones above and then look at the regular monitor thru the lenses. I also do this when watching TV and working in bed. I rest my head against the headboard looking up at the floating windows and straightforward when looking at the tv.
Here, follow this affiliate link to this overpriced portable machine.
You’re not wrong but this is a distinctly different experience. Some these AR glasses allow you to have multiple giant virtual displays instead of the tiny ~14 inch one. Hence the reference to a “desk setup”.
Although I would argue that it would make more sense just to plug the glasses into a laptop.
But also you can use your preferred keyboard and mouse (with more space for the mouse).
The point is that this is a fake assertion to push a product.
I can work at my desk using only my laptop. Do I want to, and is it my actual setup? No, and no. My laptop is plugged into my ultra wide screen, my mechanical keyboard and my mouse. That’s what he meant, and that’s what I found interesting.
How is it fake?
Oh look, another Tom’s guide advertorial masking as original content…
I also suspect ArsTechnica of running sponsored AI stories these days.
They’re all doing it. Most tech these days just isn’t exciting enough to attract attention without them hyping it.
I would quite honestly be surprised, they have been vocal in the past about having no such thing.
Anyone who makes a living off of reviews is going to be suspect whether it’s tech journals, youtubers, reddit shills, Amazon reviewers, review sites, etc. This is why I launched my own proprietary review methodology which I’m willing to share with others in my 16-week online course. Sign up with the code BUTTSTUFF for 10% off now!
Have they ever not been?
Before the sale when Igor still wrote for them, Tom’s was pretty well respected as was Anand.
A guy at work asked if he could use some similar pair of AR glasses at work and was rejected because the companion app for it required to always be running as elevated in windows. Was a solid no there.
Depends the type. Some are essentially just a monitor.
This article reads like satire… it’s sentence after sentence of “and I did it using one of the [best office chairs]” which is a link to some review by themselves. Every bit mentioned had an affiliate link and there wasn’t an actual review of what the experience (software, setup, visual fidelity) is like??
Wait I saw this on the game Heavy Rain.
My whole desk setup now easily fits into a backpack and I can take it anywhere
My laptop easily fits in a backpack. Hell I can fit TWO laptops in my backpack.
Or, and hear me out, I could just carry a single device with a charging cable that weighs less than 5lbs that does all of that without all of the cables and BS associated with trying to be a tech edgelord for clicks. Hell, if that device is a Framework is will probably be way more repairable than that mini PC and probably super fragile AR glasses as well.
I’m pretty sure that the Xreal glasses have a carrying case, based on when I was looking at them. I carry a pair of headphones with my laptop, and they come with one. Does require some volume in a backpack or bag, though.
I can fit my PC in a backpack. It’s got a mini-ITX motherboard, SFX power supply, 240mm AIO water cooler, and an RX 9070 XT in a Lian Li A4-H2O case.
I went to the trouble of building it small mainly because of the possibility that I decide to flee the US. Thanks, Trump. 😡
I think you have my pc build, except a 9070 XT for a 6800 XT. But the case is huge, I don’t see how it fits in anyone’s backpack.
Maybe you’re thinking of some other case? Mine is a little under 13"x10"x6", about the size of a (large) shoebox:
Granted, not a whole lot else would fit in a backpack along with it, but I’m quite confident it would fit. A stack of three or four textbooks would be bigger.
He has reached douchevana
He needs an actual typewriter instead of a keyboard to go where do douche has gone before.
It’s a novel idea. But despite the article’s claims this is not a practical alternative to a laptop in planes, coffee shops, etc. Nor is a minipc inherently more serviceable than a laptop as others have pointed out.
For traveling, if it’s a longer trip, it almost makes sense to me as you’d have it set up for a while. Though I’d do a mini ITX system. The ones with external power supplies and no drive bays or expansion slots are pretty small. But even then, I don’t feel like this would be significantly better than a laptop. And that’s a lot to buy for a niche use case.
Edit: spelling and grammar
All this trouble just to be able to use a nosy keyboard and covertly watch porn in public.
I’ve thought about doing this too, with a very similar setup.
Larger FOV for your screen than anything else portable. Potentially more power efficient too, as you don’t blast light everywhere to get a tiny bit into an eye. Can be used in very bright conditions, like outdoors on a bright summer day, without issues. More comfortable to use in some other orientations — I use a split ergo keyboard with my laptop when lying back in a recliner or on a couch, lets my hands not be jammed in front of me and obstructing my views of the screen, but an HMD is even more flexible.
Laptops have limited hardware customizability, so it’s really the only route other than carrying a portable display if you want more control over the PC hardware. Want a 100Wh battery or larger? Non-soldered memory and more of it? More expansion ports or storage slots? Moving the hot-and-noisy stuff beneath the table instead of beneath your hands? For the form factor: have airflow vents that aren’t on the bottom and covered up when on a lap (ironically, “laptop”), chest, couch, or bed? If you’re a woman and want to use the thing on your belly while lying down, not having your breasts in between your eyes and the screen? For anyone, not having their hands in the way?
Laptops have a lot of limitations as to input devices. Do you want a Trackpoint? You’re limited to a very few models of laptop. Trackball? Few laptops and it has to be very small. A trackpad with three physical buttons? Very few laptops on offer make that an option. Particular about your keyboard layout? If you’re getting external hardware, there’s a cornucopia of options, and you can mix and match as you’d like. Yeah, you can also do this with laptops and a stand and a docking station and external hardware, if you’re aiming for use at a particular desk, but that’s not really suitable for a couch, say.
The privacy is nice – and I don’t think that that reasonably can be reduced to looking at porn, which I assume most people aren’t going to want to do in public anyway, for obvious reasons. I can throw a password list up onscreen, don’t need to deal with those inane “hide your password as you type it” things that try to mitigate privacy issues with people using computers in public places.
Problem is that at least today, wearing HMDs is not as comfortable and sharp as looking at a display. Easy to get something slightly blurry if it’s not perfectly aligned. My HMD tends to fog up, though the Xreal thing in the article has more airflow and it’s probably less of an issue. Also, VR goggles and headphones tend to compete for the same spot around the ears — circumaural headphones need to seal there, so you may need to accept whatever sound, if any, the HMD can provide. You have less awareness of your surroundings, which matters in some situations.
A lot of work has gone into making laptops particularly low power, and if you build your own system, some of that is on you, to pay attention to component power consumption.
Also, I couldn’t find a way to get some kind of external battery to be treated by Linux as a
power_supplyclass device, which lets Linux do things like automatically hibernate when power gets critical and use nice in-UI reporting of low battery. On the power source side, USB PD power banks, which it would seem would be a good solution, technically have the ability to report a battery level but AFAICT do not actually do this, or even present themselves as visible devices on the USB tree. You could probably work something up yourself with a modular battery bank — at the very least, even if Linux can’t use it as apower_supplydevice, NUT can be rigged up to treat some hardware that you can put on a modular battery bank as a UPS, which accomplishes some of the same stuff, like auto-shutdown. And a modular battery bank is pretty user-configurable. But…that’s not necessarily all that portable.I would definitely do this instead of a laptop if they managed to get HMDs to the point where I’d be willing to dump my displays and go all HMDs. We aren’t there yet, though.
The only thing that really attracts me about these glasses is that you could hold your head up instead of looking down all the time at a laptop or a portable monitor. But most of the time I need more than one display, while the glasses only offer a single, expensive, fairly low resolution screen. I also wonder what it does to your eyes to use this for long periods of time.
Really. That’s a bummer. if there is an advantage to the glasses it should be that you can have as many displays going as you’d want.
US version with an i7 is $900.
