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In theory, this device has everything to be my favorite: it can be a handheld, a tablet,
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and even a laptop. It has powerful hardware, an amazing screen, and even a Face ID. I can
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connect an external GPU with almost no loss of performance and replace a desktop PC with it...
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but in practice, I feel like a beta tester, only instead of being paid for funding bugs, I've paid
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a lot of money for this suffering myself. And if you watch the video till the end, you'll see that
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I'm not just talking about software bugs, but also some dirty tricks that OneXPlayer is not
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ashamed to use.
I've been using it for over a
month now and I have a lot to say about it.
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But let's start with the specs, they can be different
since you get to the configurator before ordering.
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I settled on the version with 32gb of RAM, 2tb of storage and Intel Core Ultra 7
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In terms of IO, things are very generous. We have 2 USB4 ports, which means you can connect a Thunderbolt eGPU,
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a full-fledged USB-A 3.2, a micro-sd card up to 2 TB, an Oculink port, which gives you variability
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in connecting eGPUs, and a 3.5mm jack (which is hidden for some reason). A Power button, and Turbo
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button to call overlay with settings.
It also came with a 100-watt charger, magnetic kickstand,
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keyboard, case, and controllers
I don't know in which scenario you would use such a device,
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but personally, I have used it in all
three scenarios. But for most people,
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it's a handheld in the first place.
The main feature of this handheld is the screen. A damn
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big screen. 11 inches, 1600p resolution and 120 hertz refresh rate. And quality of this
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screen can easily be matched by my iPad Air 4, and ipads are known for their quality screens.
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Immersion in the game at the appropriate level. It
would be perfect if it was OLED
Controllers are
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connected in the same way as in the Legion Go, but there they can also work wirelessly when detached.
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Here you need to buy an additional connector for $30, which has a battery and wireless connection.
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I would show it to you, but no one received it yet.
When the controllers are attached,
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it's the most comfortable grip compared to the Steam Deck or Legion Go. It feels like I'm holding
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a very heavy xbox gamepad with the screen in the
middle. But there is a catch in games where you
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need to use the right stick. And problem is the
location of that stick. Usually in gamepads the
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right finger goes from the buttons straight to the stick, but here it s placed roughly in the
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center of the finger, which is not convenient to use at all.
Despite the fact that it's
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comfortable to hold, you don't want to hold it for a long time, especially when sitting in this
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position or lying down. Hands get tired quickly, and if you want to use the right stick in that
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position - just forget about it.
And in general, usually when I use it, I always want to lean it
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against something - a pillow, a table or some kind of stand.
So it can be called a "handheld console"
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but with controversial aspects
But at the same time, there's a paradox. Despite the large screen,
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it's the easiest thing to carry around with you. We connect the keyboard (so now we have
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not just a handheld, but also a laptop) and throw it into a backpack. It will take up as
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much space as a tablet or a small laptop, and we can put controllers in a separate pocket.
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Compared to Legion Go or Steam Deck, you had to throw them in a case, which takes up a lot of
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space in the backpack.
OneXplayer X1 also has its own case, but after unpacking it, I
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immediately throw it to the balcony for a week to get rid of the unpleasant chemical smell. It stank
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for several meters. In addition,
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it fits only the tablet, without controllers or a charger. So It can safely be called useless.
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It's pretty hard to tell about performance. Because the number of dependencies here is
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incredibly large, judge for yourself: Steam Deck just works, but you can limit TDP if you want,
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Legion Go has TDP presets and manual settings, but here we have manual TDP, Turbo mode,
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and in additional settings - Intel Turbo boost. And there are no descriptions of these modes.
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They were probably inspired by the Dark Souls interface, where you have to figure everything out
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yourself or look it up on the forums
I still don t know what Intel Turbo Boost does in practice. I
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didn't find any performance increase in my list of games. But I found statters when working with
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an external monitor.
On the other side Turbo mode
significantly improves performance in many games,
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but it will consume 100% of the TDP preset, even if your CPU is idle. So be ready to
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switch settings every time, depending on a task or a game.
If you just want to play some games,
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it's a Steckdeck, if you love puzzles, X1 is for you.
Then came the second BIOS update,
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in which they wanted to simplify this and now in advanced settings, we can enable Intel Dynamic
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Performance mode. When enabled, the manual TDP
setting is replaced by presets just like in the
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Legion Go. But performance in these presets
is often worse than with manual settings.
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And I just recently realized why. Look, I set
the TDP to 15 watts, then I set Performance
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mode and we can see that the TDP limit is still at 15 watts.
I additionally checked at 20 watts
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and the result was the same. Either it's another bug or a genius invention of mankind. So I just
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stopped using it. But no matter how hard you try, last year's integrated GPU from AMD is simply
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better. And here you'll always have to tinker with the settings. The only advantage of this
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CPU is running applications like Adobe Premiere Pro. All this video was completely edited on it,
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even without an external GPU it handles 4k footage quite well. So sometimes I was
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connecting it with a Type-C cable like this and had a mini-PC with an additional monitor.
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You can also use it as a tablet that way. After I increased size of the system font - it's
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more or less adapted for touchscreen use. But
as soon as you compare it to a normal tablet,
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it immediately becomes clear that it won't replace
it. X1 is much thicker, heavier, and it also heats
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up like crazy and I don't want to hold it in my
hands. But it is quite possible to put it on a
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kickstand and watch videos because the screen
here is amazing for content consumption.
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Just like on other tablets you can draw on it with a branded stylus...probably, just no one received it yet.
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The sound is provided by stereo speakers tuned with
Harman Sound System... and the sound is flat, bass
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and volume are not perceptible, and in general,
the sound is much worse than in the same iPad Air.
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By connecting the keyboard and
kickstand, we turn it into a laptop. Of course,
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I would like to see a solution like the iPad, but
then we wouldn't have a kickstand for other usage
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scenarios. Usually laptops have a key to reassign
function keys like F1-F12, but there is no such
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thing here. If you need to press F5 to refresh the
page, either use the function key or install a key
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reassignment program. They even have a guide on
their official channel. Why is there no switch on
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the keyboard itself? I don't understand.
The keyboard has 2 levels of backlighting,
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which is nice to see. In general, it s
comfortable to use if you re on a flat surface,
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it will wobble a little If you tilt the screen, but that s not a big deal. The touchpad is small
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and sometimes it zooms while scrolling, but maybe my hands are the problem here. I am glad to have
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Windows Hello (face ID) and a fingerprint scanner.
It works fast most of the time if you don t get
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this error "failed to load camera module".I often make calls using the webcam, and I don't
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want to talk about its quality. In Google Meet or
Discord, it's just upside down, but in the regular
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Camera app, it's fine. With external monitor it
also works fine, so we ll wait for another BIOS
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update I guess. But the quality of the microphone
is unlikely to be fixed, it's just disgusting.
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Even when I am in a quiet room, my partner can barely understand what I am saying.
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One of the main selling points for me besides the screen
was Oculink port for eGPU. I bought an eGPU dock
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beforehand, ran benchmarks with the RTX 4090 on a
PC to see how much performance we were losing and
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made a video about it. And when I connected the same eGPU dock to X1 and heard the fans running
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at 100% I immediately suspected something was wrong, and what a disappointment it was for me
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when the graphics card was not detected. I tried the RTX 2060 and 4090, and result was the same.
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I recorded a video for OneXplayer tech support
and also showed that it works fine on my PC to
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avoid any stupid questions right away.
To give you an idea of the level of support I received,
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here is a brief summary of our conversation.
I was asked to update the bios and I did so - it
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was my first bios update. But unfortunately, it didn't help.
Next, I was asked to provide the
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model of the eGPU dock and the vendor of the GPU.
So I did, and also left a link to the store where
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I ordered this eGPU. It didn't help them, so they still decided to ask me if this was the dock I was
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using, despite the link I left and its perfect match to the video I recorded for them. They
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also asked about the power supply and the cable
used. - I gave them all the information
Later,
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I was asked to test my eGPU with other laptops to see if it worked with them? They also said that
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they have not tested this exact eGPU dock with X1, and in general, you can buy our eGPU. I was
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not happy with this answer and since they couldn't help me - I asked for a refund due to the possible
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defect. They answered me that they are not ready to admit this defect as the problem may be with
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eGPU (even though it worked with PC), and if I make a refund, then I have to pay for:
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Customs duties for the round-trip
System activation fee of $45
Packaging fee of $10
Labor fee of $20.
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How would you react to something like that? Of course, I did not agree to such conditions and
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decided to order another eGPU, if it does not
work, it will be possible to say for sure that
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the defect is in the handheld, and if it works - even better for me.
Its worth understanding
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that this email conversation has been going on for about 2 weeks. Even though I usually answered them immediately.
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But my case isn't so bad. It turns out that the device was shipped from China, but it wasn't mentioned anywhere on the Indiegogo page.
And since I live in Europe,
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the parcel is additionally taxed on customs duty.
But don't worry, OneXplayer took care of its own,
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I mean your wallet, and declared the parcel at $199. The consequences of this can be sad,
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here is a man who had his parcel detained at customs for violations of import conditions.
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According to his messages, OneXplayer ignored it,
but after his post, he was promised to sort it
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out, but after few days he wrote that they forgot about it again.
A little more time has passed,
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and now his messages are unanswered at all.
OneXplayer, what are you doing there? Give the
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person back the product he paid for. And if I were
him, I would demand not handheld, but the money back.
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I pre-ordered this device among the first,
as I really liked the concept, and the company is
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quite famous and so I was sure that they could be trusted.
After all, even ETA-Prime himself,
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who is very hard to please and is widely known for his honest opinion - found no major flaws in it.
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Remember I was offered to buy their OneXGPU? The
site praises it for its compactness and weight,
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but they are not mentioning power supply,
which additionally weighs almost as much. I
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think it's intentionally misleading.
They even messed up the numbers on their selling website,
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it's hilarious We were given all sorts of bonuses for the pre-order on Indiegogo, but as it
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now turns out, anyone who buys this handheld now
will get exactly the same bonuses, so what's the
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point of participating in the pre-order?
To be among the beta-testers of a device with raw bios
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and save just $100?
Overall, I got impression of a crude device. I haven't figured out under what
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conditions yet, but sometimes stutters appear both in games and in normal Windows usage, and
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the only way to fix it is to reboot it. Now when I start a new game and I don't know what performance
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to expect from it, I wonder if I need to reboot it now as well? And this happens not only when
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using integrated graphics, but also when using eGPU.
Good news - the new eGPU dock arrived,
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and I ordered more expensive option this time.
It is from the same company and the same size as
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my Thunderbolt eGPU. Which means I'll be able to use my case!
I managed to get it up and
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running this time, but not immediately and not without problems. It turns out the X1 is dumb
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and cannot do a handshake with the eGPU without
help. First you have to connect all the cables,
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then use the button to turn on the eGPU, and only
then can you turn on the X1. If your eGPU doesn t
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have a power button - good luck trying to use it.
Also, If you have an NVIDIA video card, it may
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have error 43, but it can be fixed by downloading a certain fix.
Our eGPU is now fully detected.
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And if you think pressing 2 buttons instead of one
isn't that big of a deal. Keep in mind that eGPU
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handshake is lost after a Windows restart. And
once again we get a confused GPU sound. Let's move on.
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Here I am shutting down Windows. The handheld turns off, the power in the eGPU also turns off,
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and after a few seconds, the handheld turns on by itself. This is not an isolated incident, it happens often!
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I hooked it up with an RTX 4070 Super and was hoping to see a good performance.
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And in some games, this combo does a pretty
good job, but in others, I see unstable FPS and
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Frametime, probably because of CPU bottleneck.
It throttles at 25 watts in some games and the
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temperature can reach up to 100 degrees. And that
s weird because I locked TDP at 25 watts and we
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can see average at 25 watts, but the maximum TDP was almost 30 watts.
To my surprise League
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of Legends turned out to be a good benchmark. A game, that runs great on a potato PC, but here we
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get drops in FPS in random cases, and it doesn't
depend on the situation or the number of effects.
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You know what s more funny? I get a more stable
FPS in this game while playing on integrated
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graphics. I had a similar problem while playing Cocoon on the integrated graphics. Look at FPS and
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frametime, the scene in the game doesn't change,
but FPS does. But here it happens in a loop, and
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in League of Legends on eGPU it happens randomly
and regardless of TDP and Turbo mode. I'd like
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to talk more about eGPU with this engineering miracle.
We have 2 ways to connect the eGPU,
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which means that the company assumes that it will
be used frequently in this mode, but they did not
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include the bypass charging option. That means,
while charging, it will always use the battery.
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So expect faster battery degradation, plus this
part of the handheld gets insanely hot while
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gaming.
Want to use original kickstand? Well
then it will block that hole, and I don't think
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it's a decoration considering the temperatures.
Luckily, I found this tablet holder on Aliexpress,
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so the temperature should be at least a little less, and it's just convenient to keep it there.
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And It looks like I was right. I set a maximum TDP of 35watts and ran the game for 10-15 minutes.
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Obviously, we have CPU trotting and annoying fan
noise, but pay attention to the charging, it works
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with intervals due to overheating. And as soon
as I took the fan and cooled it down, charging
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continued to work. And such flaws occur all the time in different situations, for example, a basic
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function - You can assign different actions to the additional controller buttons, and I assigned
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win+tab and win+d, to work with Windows, and it
works fine until you put Windows in sleep mode.
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After that forget about that buttons until you restart their software or a Windows.
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OneXplayer X1 is trying to be a 3 in 1 device. Has it succeeded in this mission? I'll be interested
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to see what you think about it.
I really wanted to like this device, but the longer I had it, the
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more disappointed I became. X1 is now available starting at $1,100 and whether that price is
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justified is a big question.
It's only been 2 months, and their Discord channel is already
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mentioning the X1 on CPU from AMD. Can you imagine the faces of those who bought Intel version?
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And then just in a few days, they already showed a mini version.
But I have an idea, how about to
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stop this pipeline of the new models and fix all the bugs on existing devices already? The biggest
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questions will be: where will you go in a warranty
case? Will they admit it as a warranty case? Yes,
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I got my second eGPU working, but I had to
spend another 170 euros for that. And even so,
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I wasn't sure it would work. They claim it
supports Oculink, but they don't specify which
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eGPU docks are supported and which are not. So I'm still going to assume it's a device issue. X1 can
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be improved, but the company's attitude towards marketing and its customers needs to be changed
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urgently. Because as a customer, I feel fooled. I hope this video will get some attention and reach
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OneXplayer, so they will finally deliver or refund that order.
And I also hope they will meet my
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criticism with dignity and will work on their mistakes so we can get better products in the future.
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So please support this video with a like and let me know what you think about this whole
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situation. And if you decide to subscribe - that
would be my best reward for this beta testing.
