At €39 the Amazon Fire TV Stick is very interesting. For Prime customers it’s a must-buy but for those of us with Miracast-enabled devices it means that the Miracast feature (Screen Mirroring) also brings extra value. Early firmware builds for the Fire TV Stick didn’t support Miracast from Windows 8.1 but I’ve just received a stick here in Germany, upgraded the firmware and tested Miracast on two Windows PCs, a Windows smartphone and an Android tablet. All of them worked but there are still some issues that need sorting out. […]

  I’ve just finished the longest, most detailed review I’ve ever published. My 6400+ word Surface Pro 3 full review is up at UMPCPortal and you might be wondering why it took so long. The fact is that it took me over 5 months to realise that the Surface Pro 3 is an incredible ultrabook alternative, ultra mobile Tablet PC and a great desktop PC. It’s extremely well engineered and the modularity is inspiring, if a little expensive. After 6 months of ownership the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 has definitely earned itself a full review.

Starting at just $329 the 10-inch Dell Venue 10 Pro doesn’t look like anything special but take a look at the high-end package that’s available in the range. It comes with a nice-looking keyboard dock, full HD screen, 64 GB storage and it costs just $429 now at the Dell US site. There’s even a Wacom digitizer pen available for $34.99. Ooh! Do we have another Surface 3 competitor here?  

ASUS and Toshiba have a problem. They both launched 8.9-inch 1KG dockable tablets in Q1 2015 and before they got them to market the processing platform was upgraded and a shiny new product appeared. Microsoft’s Surface 3 runs on the brand new Atom X7 processor and clearly there’s going to be a run of new products leading up to Computex and ‘back-to-school’ period that will use X5 and X7 Atom. Why on earth would anybody want an ‘old’ Baytrail-T based tablet now?  

Is the Surface Pro 3 still good? Are you looking at a second-hand purchase? This extensive review has now been updated for 2019/2020. TLD: It’s positive, and 6500 words follow…

Everyone that has reviewed the Surface 3 so far has been fairly confident that it can be a laptop replacement. Actually it can’t until you buy the keyboard for it but in terms of performance it’s not bad. The issue is that the previous generation Atom arent that much slower. If you look closely at the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 (Windows version) you’ll see a product that makes the Surface 3 look way overpriced. I’m using the Yoga Tablet 2 as the Surface 3 comparison for a number of reasons. It’s got […]

Did you know that Intel makes own-brand tablets, laptops and 2-in-1s? I’ve had a couple and they’re pretty good. The latest is built on the next-generation Core platform codenamed Skylake which is due in late 2015.  Nicole Scott from Mobilegeeks got a close look at the prototype at Intel’s developer conference in Shenzen and I’ve just taken a look at a PDF presentation describing what’s inside. It’s inspirational, and that’s the idea because these products aren’t targeted at consumers, they are early showcases that are meant to stimulate product designers and software developers […]

When I was reviewing the last generation Intel Atom-based low-cost laptops and tablets there was one question that I got more than anything. “Can it run Minecraft?” The same question now applies to the Surface 3. The answer, on devices like the HP Stream 11, Acer E11 and ASUS X205 wasn’t very positive. At low settings you could get 30 FPS but there was a lot of stuttering.  The Atom X7 processor, as found on the Microsoft Surface 3 not only has improved Turbo Boost clockrates but also has an improved GPU. […]