Tag: tech

GEEKOM A7 Mini PC (Hardware) Review

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You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/geekom-a7-mini-pc.2461/

Oh boy we’ve got a beast on our hands this time. In the past few months I’ve looked at a bunch of Mini PCs across the vast spectrum of price and power. I’ve found great amusement in playing Wii U games on a £250 N-Series CPU, and usually find myself impressed at the options on offer for these tiny machines. Today we look at Geekom’s latest and greatest in the A7, a sleek Mini PC packing AMD’s Ryzen 7 7940HS, a 2TB SSD, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM. For the £799 they’re asking, does it do enough?

Ports, Ports, Ports!

Aesthetically speaking the A7 is slightly removed from the designs we’ve seen from Geekom in the past. A shorter package, we see much more rounded edges and large grills on the left and right sides of the unit. Despite the smaller form factor, you’re not missing out on any ports either. The front holds two SuperSpeed USB As, as well as a 3.5mm combo jack and a power button. On the left you get a full-sized SD card slot, and on the back you get a barrel connector for power, one USB 4 type C port, one USB 3.2 type C port, two HDMI 2.0 ports, a further SuperSpeed USB A port, a USB 2.0 type A port, and a 2.5G Ethernet port. It’s a good bit, and between your HDMIs and DP functionality of both USB C ports, you’re able to connect up to four monitors to this thing. There was a single casualty in this slimmer design, that being the lack of Kensington security lock for those that rely on those. I’ve never met somebody who does, but it could yet be a dealbreaker for you. Amusingly the spec sheet does say it features one, so if you’re able to spot it on the body please do point it out to me. I really don’t think I’ve missed it though.

In terms of upgradability, the slimmer case also does indicate slimmer options, notable here being the lack of space for a 2.5inch SATA drive. Opening the A7 up as a whole is slightly more annoying than I’m used to as well, with you needing to pry away the four rubber feet to get to the screws underneath. I’m not sure why they took this approach when they already had such a nice system on their other PCs; it does look a little more sleek, but usability is king for me in this department. If you do open it up, you’ll be able to swap out the 32GB of RAM and stick in up to 64GB, and also replace the SSD. Assuming you pick up the configuration I have on hand though, I don’t really see a reason to be poking around. The jump from 32GB to 64GB of RAM really won’t see much of a performance boost for the vast majority of people, and a 2TB SSD is going to be ample for most.

I’ve included the full spec sheet below if you want to peruse it for yourself:

Size: 112.4* 112.4* 37 mm
CPU:

  • Ryzen™ 7000 (R9-7940HS & R7-7840HS)
  • AMD FP7r2(Phoenix)  TDP up to 45W

Video Engine Processor: AMD Radeon™ Graphics 780M
Memory: Dual channel DDR5 5600MHz SODIMM, up to 64GB
Audio: HDA CODEC
Storage: 1 x M.2 2280 SSD Slot, support PCIe Gen4*4, up to 2TB, or SATAIII SSD, up to 1TB
I/O Ports:

  • 1 x Rear USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A
  • 1 x Rear USB 2.0 Type-A
  • 1 x Front USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A support Power Delivery
  • 1 x Front USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A
  • 1 x  USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C support Power Delivery (back panel)
  • 1 x  USB 4 Gen3 Type-C support Power Delivery (back panel)
  • 1 x 3.5mm front stereo headset jack
  • 1 x RJ45 (back panel) RTL8125BG-CG
  • 2 x HDMI 2.0 (back panel)
  • 1 x DC in (back panel) 
  • 1 x CIR
  • 1 x Power Button
  • 1 x Kensington Lock
  • 1 x SD Card 
  • 1 x Fingerprint, top side (HW design reserve)

Internal Connectors:

  • 1 x M.2 key-M slot for PCIe x4 Gen 4 NVMe or SATA SSD (SATA only for Rembrandt)
  • 1 x M.2 key-B slot (SATA) (SATA only for Rembrandt)
  • 1 x M.2 2230 for WIFI PCIe card only
  • 1 x FAN
  • 2 x USB 2.0
  • Speaker Header (HW design reserve)
  • 1 x 5.5mm x 2.5mm barrel plug power connector
  • 1 x Front Panel Header 2*6 pin
  • 1 x 16-pin FPC SATA connector to connect an FFC SATA cable to a 7mm 2.5″ SATA 

LEDs:

  • 2 x POWER LED (Power On: White)
  • 1 x Multi LED (M.2 R/W: White, SATA R/W: White, Bluetooth: White)

Ethernet: Intel 10/100/1000/2500 Mbps RJ45 RTL8125BG-CG
Wireless LAN:

  • M.2 Wi-Fi 6E AW-XB560NF, Bluetooth 5.2, 22mm*30mm*2.25mm or
  • M.2 Wi-Fi 6  AW-XB547NF, Blutetooth 5.2, 22mm*30mm*2.25mm or
  • M.2 Wi-Fi 6  AW-XB468NF, Blutetooth 5.2, 22mm*30mm*2.25mm

Kensington Lock: Yes
DTPM 2.0: Support DTPM 2.0
Battery: RTC coin battery
Adapter: 19V power supply adapter (120W) with geo-specific AC cord (IEC C5)
PCBA Dimension: 105.75*102.9*1.6mm 
Certification: CE, FCC, CB, CCC, SRRC, RoHS
Operating System: Microsoft Windows*11(64-bit) support Modern Standby

When I’m Cleaning Windows

Powering the PC on for the first time you get what appears to be an entirely stock Windows 11 Pro experience. Setup is as smooth as you’d expect from any Windows install, and the PC is up and running within a few minutes. Expect to throw a further ten or so minutes at cleaning away the standard Windows junk though; it doesn’t take much effort, but it’s an annoyance all the same. Having had a minor issue in the past with Geekom PCs, the first thing I rushed to check was whether Paint still had a Japanese UI when saving and loading images. I still have no idea what causes this to happen when the rest of the UI is English, but it does appear to still be an issue here. A fresh install of Windows 11 might just be the answer, but that is an annoyance that shouldn’t be expected of a buyer. It doesn’t really affect much to me though, so I’ve just left it as it is.

In terms of day to day usage this thing is more than capable of powering multiple monitors, and doing it without compromise. 4K video playback is smooth, and Windows feels about as good as it can do in use. For those interested in the synthetic benchmarks, I’ve once again had Geekbench 6 and Cinebench R23 running. Looking at the CPU benchmarks, we get numbers of 2575 for Geekbench’s single-core score, and 13192 for multi-core. On the Cinebench side of things, we’re looking at 1783 for single-core, and 15120 for multi-core.

A Mini PC for Gaming?

With each of these reviews my testing ideology is improving slightly, and with me being on a quest to get my games backed up locally, I’ve got much more on hand to be able to play with. To really put the 7940HS through its paces I grabbed a small assortment of mostly-modern games with the intention to run them on their various low, medium, and high settings at a baseline resolution of 1080p. I was really surprised by just how well the games ran, especially considering the lack of fine-tuning done, and notably the lack of FSR at play. These numbers can definitely go higher if you’re eager to experience the games at their best, or are just happy to trade a lower resolution for a higher framerate.

The results of my play session are all shown on the table above, but I will just talk through a few standouts. I really wasn’t expecting such a good showing from Baldur’s Gate 3 to begin with. Being able to get a consistent 30fps at 1080p really did impress me, and the game manages to look amazing even on that low setting. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake put out similarly good numbers for those happy to play at 30fps, which again baffles me for just how great the game looks. I will note that for Final Fantasy 7 and Scarlet Nexus in particular these numbers do reflect the first 30 or so minutes of the games with me not having played them prior to this. If there are heavy sections later on, numbers may obviously dip. That said, there is definitely room for improvement if you did get stuck in and found things lacking later on.

In terms of raw numbers, the real standout is Monster Hunter Rise. At low settings, which does admittedly look quite rough, the game managed to maintain a spectacular 185 FPS average. I always knew the game was optimised to be able to run on the Switch, but this was wild to see. Were I to stick with the A7 as a gaming machine, I would definitely settle for the stable 60fps on the more attractive medium settings, but you really can get the most out of a high refresh rate monitor here if the frames do matter to you.

In terms of emulation I picked a bit of a spread of Wii U, 3DS, GameCube, Wii, and Switch, as well as a couple of PS2 and PS3 games. I’d be happy to feature more Sony games in the future if there is interest in them, I frankly just don’t know which PlayStation games to be testing having never really been in Sony’s gaming sphere before. That aside, there really are some decent results here.

Wii U as a whole runs great, with Breath of the Wild just falling short of that 60fps mark at 1080p. It’s more than capable of a stable 1080/30 or 720/60, so you can pick and choose which you’d prefer. The rest of the Wii U was largely uneventful, with Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate always bringing a smile to my face when I boot it up on a new platform. 3DS as a whole ran great, even at the 5x internal resolution required for a 1080p-ish image. There did appear to be some small stutters around loading new areas and effects for the first time, but it never dropped to the point where I’d say it put me off. GameCube and Wii via Dolphin seemed solid, with Mario Kart Wii being the surprise disappointment. The inconsistencies do iron themselves out if dropping to 720p, but I’ve never really seen the game as a particularly problematic title in the past.

Shadow of the Colossus ran completely fine upscaled to 1080p with no observable drops at all, while my limited PS3 experience was incredibly shaky. Demon’s Souls did on paper run relatively close to 30fps. Having said that, I don’t think I could say it’s a great experience; the game just feels really choppy.

Finishing up with the Switch, I dipped into some of my recently dumped games with a bit of variety. Captain Toad is a pretty light game and it shouldn’t be surprising to see good numbers here. Fire Emblem Engage did surprise me a little, with the game running with even fewer stutters than Fates did on the 3DS. Tears of the Kingdom was a very mixed bag, with gameplay being genuinely smooth given enough time. The slowdowns when moving into a new area or seeing a new effect however were drastic this time. It’s on the borderline of playable, and you could probably get it to a better state if you’re happy to lower the resolution or mess with the emulator a bit more.

Closing Thoughts

The A7 is an absolute beast of a Mini PC, but it’s a beast with a similarly beastly price tag. £799 is a lot of money, but between the power, ports, storage, included RAM, and three year warranty, I do feel it does a good job in justifying it. This is a PC that could absolutely replace a desktop for folks happy to run modern games on lower settings, and I really do feel that I can recommend it.

MonsGeek M1W Wireless Mechanical Keyboard (Hardware) Review

ScarletLeave a comment

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/monsgeek-m1w-wireless-mechanical-keyboard.2449/

Taking the M1W out of its packaged shell for the first time I was pretty stoked. Here we have a full purple aluminium case with some gold accents on each side, paired with some really great-looking gradient keycaps. These keycaps are shine-through to support the RGB backlighting, but actually have their legends on the bottom side of the key, giving a really nice aesthetic from the top down while still being usable for those not confident with touch typing. I will also mention here that the lighting is south-facing, as you can probably guess by how it shines through the south side of the keycaps. This is pretty great for those who enjoy cherry profile keycaps, with north-facing lights causing a few issues with them. Outside of the RGB we also see complete hot-swapability of the switches for simple customisation, with there even being an option to pick up a barebones model if you happen to already have some keycaps and switches to hand.

As a barebones kit you do have a lot of bases covered, with the knob in the top right being something I always appreciate having. Here it’ll control both the volume and lighting, with pressing the knob in being the way to switch between what it’ll do. You also get ample connectivity options with the choice of wired, Bluetooth, and a 2.4GHz dongle. On paper this is really solid, and the fact you can save up to three Bluetooth connections is great for those who are frequently moving between devices. To activate the wireless functionality initially you have to remove the Caps Lock key and flick a switch. At its default position the internal battery is disabled entirely, with the top position enabling the battery in Mac mode, and the bottom position enabling the battery in Windows mode. From there, you switch between each wireless mode by holding Fn and pressing E, R, or T for your three Bluetooth connections, and Y to connect to the dongle. If you want to use the keyboard wired, you have to hit Fn and U. I did at first find this setup quite annoying, especially when trying to use the keyboard wirelessly. A notable omission of the keyboard is any kind of physical power switch, putting you at the mercy of its auto-sleep functionality. This does a good job of keeping the hefty 6000mAh battery going, but it can be frustrating to be waiting a few seconds for the keyboard to reconnect after watching a YouTube video or something similar. I did later find out that the time required before sleeping can be configured in the driver software, but it would’ve been nice for that to be mentioned somewhere in the manual.

I can hazard a guess as to why there’s no kind of physical power switch though, with there being a wired-only variant of the keyboard also available in the M1. I would assume in wanting to keep the case the same, they had to have the switch in a place that wouldn’t look odd on a keyboard that doesn’t support wireless functionality. Because of this though, you’re also left with a loose dongle that you’re challenged not to lose and a power switch you’ll need a keycap puller to actually get to. On a desk this may not be the biggest deal, but having the keyboard constantly trying to turn itself back on if traveling isn’t all that ideal.

Hey It Still Sounds Great Though

Despite my irritations with the wireless, I do still really like how this keyboard sounds. The gasket-mounted polycarbonate plate provides a remarkably ridig typing experience, paired with some incredibly muted keys thanks to the porom foam hiding underneath. With the linear Piano Pro switches it all comes together nicely for a remarkably satisfying and quiet pre-built keyboard. My only real complaint is that the space bar rattles a little more than I imagine most would like in a keyboard like this. Personally I don’t mind a bit of space bar rattle, since a loud space press is something I find quite enjoyable to mix up sound of the board a bit. I can certainly see this being a concern to others though. It’s something you could address yourself pretty easily by opening the keyboard up and lubing the stabilisers, but if you’re buying a pre-built configuration, I can understand this not being something you’d want to do straight away.

Having said that, MonsGeek really did go out of their way to cater to those eager to tinker. A first in the keyboards I’ve looked at, the M1W comes with a pre-cut sheet of tape for the glorious “tape mod” so many in the space are fond of. If you don’t know, this is just the process of putting tape on the underside of the PCB to change the sound profile and make the case sound a little less hollow. It’s not a complicated task at the best of times, but having something pre-cut just makes it that much more accessible for those new to the practice.

If you are interested in how the M1W sounds out of the box, I’ve recorded a snippet above, along with brief video tour of the keyboard itself. In short though, I’m a really big fan.

Driver Software…

If you’ve seen one of my keyboard reviews before, you’ll know I am often not too fond of brand-specific driver software. While MonsGeek have, as many before them, put together something that covers all your essentials, I can still say it hasn’t won me over. Functional is the name of the game, and they’ve managed that well enough. Every key can be remapped relatively easily, as well as the function layer accessible by holding the Fn key. You can assign macros or just simple key combinations, though notably cannot edit any default function layer options that relate to keyboard. You can still remap the function keys and what they do while holding Fn past their default setup, but I do at least wish it would tell you what the otherwise unmappable keys actually do from inside the driver software. There’s a good number of these inaccessible keys, and it would just be handy to have an easy place of reference outside of keeping the manual (or its PDF counterpart) to hand. If there is one saving grace here though, it’s in the fact that you don’t need the driver software running in the background for the changes to persist. It’s always a big point for me and it is a area of redemption if you only really have to use the driver software once to get things setup how you like and then never interact with it again.

Looking beyond what’s available now, there does appear to be a flavour of this keyboard in the works with QMK/VIA compatibility according to MonsGeek’s official site. This is something I really do feel is worth the wait, with VIA being one of the simplest and most accessible packages I’ve used for remapping a keyboard.

Closing Thoughts

MonsGeek’s M1W is undoubtedly a solid package, supported by a great assortment of variations to meet whatever needs you may have. At $110 as a barebones kit ($100 if you’re happy to forego wireless functionality) you have a fantastic base for what I can only imagine to be a great keyboard. The pre-build model I have on hand also offers some pretty decent value, with the keycaps and switches only adding an extra $30 to the price. The M1W is a great keyboard, and it’s certainly put MonsGeek on my radar for future projects.