Asus NovaGo TP370QL: Win10 on Snapdragon

[NumLock21]

The guys over at ultrabookreview managed to get their hands on a early version of the Asus NovaGo TP370QL laptop running on Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor. They took it for a quick test drive and this is what they found out.

 

Quote

 

• The NovaGo TP370QL feels and looks much like one of the Asus VivoBook Flip models based on Intel hardware. In other words, it’s a standard 2-in-1 laptop with a 360-degrees convertible touchscreen, ports on the sides, a full-size keyboard and the hardware tucked beneath it.
• The construction is pretty good, with a metallic lid-cover and a plastic main body. There’s some noticeable flex in the lid and the keyboard’s deck though.
• This laptop is fairly compact and light, yet not as compact or as light as some of the other hybrids out there. At 3 lbs and .6″ in thickness it should be a fairly good travel companion,
• The bezels around the screen are fairly small on the sides, but pretty hefty on the top and bottom, which somewhat make this cumbersome to use in tablet mode. They shouldn’t be an issue if you plan to use the NovaGo mostly as a laptop though.
• The underbelly gets a very simple design, with just the rubber feet and the speaker cuts on the front. There are no air intake/output grills, as the platform is passively cooled.
• There are two USB-A slots on this computer and full-size HDMI for video, as well as a headphone jack and some status lights, all placed on the left and right edges. The novelty is however the small tray on the left side that takes a microSD card and a nanoSIM, for that LTE connectivity.
• The keyboard gets a standard layout with proper sized keys and well spaced arrows. It types well, but they do feel somewhat shallow and spongy
• it’s important to mention that there’s no backlightning
• As far as the trackpad goes, it’s spacious and slightly indented into the frame. It gets a smooth glass surface and Precision drivers, so it feels nice to the touch and it performs well with swipes, taps, gestures, you name it.
• For the screen Asus went with a 13.3-inch IPS panel with 100% sRGB/ 70% NTSC color coverage.
• the AU Optronics B133HAN05.3 (AUO532D) panel that Asus went for is about what you should expect from a mid-range notebook: roughly 250 nits brightness and 700:1 contrast, with good viewing angles, decent colors and no noticeable light bleeding.
• The screen includes support for Asus’s Active Stylus Pen, but the Pen is sold separately and was not included with out sample, so I can’t tell you much about it.
• On top of that, even if I could install most apps on this computer, some of them did not launch. I could use Chrome and my favorite video player and so on, but some programs will not work, at least for now
• Office, Photoshop or even some older games worked fine on my sample, although performance with these games was limited.
• As far as we know right now, Microsoft compiled the Windows 10 core systems to run natively on ARM
• 64-bit Windows programs aren’t supported yet, nor are applications that use kernel mode drivers.
• Asus NovaGo feels snappy and fast, even with 15+ Tabs open in Chrome, some music playing the background and some Word documents.
• Asus NovaGo is one of the coolest running notebooks we’ve seen lately
• It’s also completely silent, as it’s passively cooled and I also didn’t notice any traces of coil whining or electronic noise.
• One of the biggest selling points for these Snapdragon powered computers are the integrated cellular connectivity and always-on features.
• Always-on features are made possible by the integration of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X16 LTE modem inside the Asus NovaGo, one of the fastest solutions out there, capable of transfer speeds of up to 1 Gbps.
• The laptop comes with a SIM tray, but there’s also support for eSIM, a technology that allows to switch between carriers when needed without having to actually swap out physical SIM cards

At stock specs the Asus NovaGo comes with just 4GB of onboard LPDDR4x memory and a 64GB SSD with a MSRP of $599. Going with the one with the better specs with 8GB of onboard LPDDR4x and a 256GB SSD will set you back a extra $300 dollars with a MSRP of $799. Connectivity, there is Wireless AC, Bluetooth, USB 3.0 Type A, a HDMI, combo audio jack and a MicroSD reader. The system is preinstalled with Microsoft Windows 10 S, which is almost like Windows RT and it can only run Windows Store apps. Asus does allow a free limited time upgrade Microsoft Windows 10 Professional. Battery life is advertised at 22 hours, but this wasn't tested out cause their battery life testing utility will not run on it.

 

Early performance benchmarks. By the time the laptop officially launched into the retail market and drivers are more optimized, scores should improve.

Quote

 

• 3DMark 11: P826 (Physics – 1493, Graphics – 786);
• 3DMark 13: Sky Driver –1711, Fire Strike – 453;
• 3DMark 13 – Graphics: Sky Driver – 1692, Fire Strike – 518;
• Geekbench 3 32-bit: Single-Core: 1144, Multi-core: 3960;
• Geekbench 4 64-bit: Single-Core: 814, Multi-core: 2952;
• PassMark: 650.0;
• CineBench R11.5 32-bit: CPU 1.50 cb, CPU Single Core 0.50 cb.
• JetStream 1.1 (Chrome): 79.857;
• JetStream 1.1 (Edge): 80.363;
• Octane 2.0: 3086;
• Sunspider 1.0.2 (Chrome): 2498.0 ms;
• Sunspider 1.0.2 (Edge): 210.0 ms;
• WebXPRT 2015 (Chrome): 161;
• WebXPRT 2015 (Edge): 167.

 

 

https://www.ultrabookreview.com/19015-asus-novago-impressions/

[dizmo]

I can't help but think...why. What advantage does this have over an Intel laptop?

Is it really that much cheaper? Wouldn't a new i3 perform just as well, if not miles better?

If the only advantage is the SIM slot it doesn't seem like a great buy.

[NumLock21]

1 minute ago, dizmo said:

I can't help but think...why. What advantage does this have over an Intel laptop?

Is it really that much cheaper? Wouldn't a new i3 perform just as well, if not miles better?

If the only advantage is the SIM slot it doesn't seem like a great buy.

It's $800 for the more usable model.

[dizmo]

Just now, NumLock21 said:

It's $800 for the more usable model.

So likely even more expensive than a model with an i3 would be?

[captain_to_fire]

1 hour ago, NumLock21 said:

• Geekbench 3 32-bit: Single-Core: 1144, Multi-core: 3960;
• Geekbench 4 64-bit: Single-Core: 814, Multi-core: 2952;

The woes of x86 emulation in comparison to running applications natively

 

 

1 hour ago, NumLock21 said:

Asus NovaGo feels snappy and fast, even with 15+ Tabs open in Chrome, some music playing the background and some Word documents.

I hope Linus puts this to a test

[Shadestones]

No backlighting? if it's not an OLED panel, then having no backlight is a dealbreaker IMO.

[Dabombinable]

So...its effectively an up-to-dateTransformer Prime/Infinity, but without the design flaws, a detachable screen+secondary battery.

[sof006]

I honestly can't think of anyone who would want to buy this. If someone was going to buy a windows product surely they would purchase it in its full fat form (intel processor/AMD processor). If I wanted a Snapdragon processor I'd look at a Samsung (or equivalent) Android tablet.

[PLME888]

1 hour ago, Shadestones said:

No backlighting? if it's not an OLED panel, then having no backlight is a dealbreaker IMO.

I think they mean the keyboard, but I could be wrong. 

[ScratchCat]

An Atom Z3735f released in 2014 and sold in devices from around $90 performs similarly in the CPU department( 897/2100 GB4).

This definitely needs optimisation in order to not become another ARM and Windows flop. 

[Shadestones]

7 minutes ago, PLME888 said:

I think they mean the keyboard, but I could be wrong. 

Oh.. I feel dumb.

[Nup]

The main selling point, the battery, wasn’t even given a comment. Isn’t looking good... 

[randomhkkid]

Important to note that these performance numbers were generated on a first time run of the applications. Windows on ARM recompiles binaries as and when they are needed. This means that subsequent runs have the possibility of being much faster.

 

Not saying that these things will be way faster but multiple runs will result in more realistic performance numbers.

[Coaxialgamer]

I wonder... These SoC's run on very little power, and should in principle provide great battery life. However , does the overhead of emulation overshadow these benefits in the first place?

[LAwLz]

Oh God those performance numbers are horrible. Truly awful. For a 600 dollar device that should be unacceptable. The performance has to go way up (won't go up nearly enough even with some amazing optimization work) and/or the price of these devices has to go way down. This should be a 300 dollar laptop, not a 600 dollar one.

 

Some comparisons in performance, compared to the same processor you can find in a 700 dollar laptop like this Dell.

 

GeekBench 4 Single

Snapdragon - 814

i5-8250U- 4053

 

GeekBench 4 Multi

Snapdragon - 2952

i5-8250U - 13220

 

CineBench Single

Snapdragon - 0.5

i5-8250U - 1.63

 

CineBench Multi

Snapdragon - 1.5

i5-8250U - 5.98

 

52 minutes ago, randomhkkid said:

Important to note that these performance numbers were generated on a first time run of the applications. Windows on ARM recompiles binaries as and when they are needed. This means that subsequent runs have the possibility of being much faster.

Where in the article do they say they only ran the benchmarks once and reported that number?

They specifically say they ran the Cinebench one several times and the results did not change very much.

[suicidalfranco]

ahahahahah!

 

And they're asking 600 buckaroos for that?

 

 

AHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

[Matu20]

If it doesn't bog down like the reviewers state, then I see this as an amazing device with probably around 15 hours of real time usage. People who don't game or edit videos on their notebooks will be the target audience.

[suicidalfranco]

1 hour ago, Matu20 said:

If it doesn't bog down like the reviewers state, then I see this as an amazing device with probably around 15 hours of real time usage. People who don't game or edit videos on their notebooks will be the target audience.

So the same people who should just get an iPad and have a 1000 time better experience at a lower price point 

[Okjoek]

Is it half the price of a laptop using an i5 8250U or R5 2500U?

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, Okjoek said:

Is it half the price of a laptop using an i5 8250U or R5 2500U?

It costs about the same as an i5-8250U laptop.

600 dollars for the 4GB model. 800 dollars for the 8GB model.

[Matu20]

2 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

So the same people who should just get an iPad and have a 1000 time better experience at a lower price point 

I would never have an use for iPads, no keyboard, no I/O - would be an useless device for me.

[suicidalfranco]

12 minutes ago, Matu20 said:

I would never have an use for iPads, no keyboard, no I/O - would be an useless device for me.

you can get a keyboard, and it would still cost less than the base model, while getting access to better apps than the trash on the microsoft store.

[Okjoek]

24 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

It costs about the same as an i5-8250U laptop.

600 dollars for the 4GB model. 800 dollars for the 8GB model.

Then why would I buy this?

[suicidalfranco]

Just now, Okjoek said:

Then why would I buy this?

for the MS shills point

[Matu20]

33 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

you can get a keyboard, and it would still cost less than the base model, while getting access to better apps than the trash on the microsoft store.

iOS is not even comparable to full Windows.