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The latest addition to my list though more tablet adjacent than our general topics.
Besides it being very cool looking and Teenage Engineerings overall reputation for very high quality products, I have a great fondness for what is the essentially the latest evolution of the portable tape recorder.
Early in my career I worked very briefly for Sony in their commercial/business products group specifically the high end cassette based dictation and field recording devices.
I have a peer that has contacts with Teenage engineering and am hoping to angle at least an extended demo
Teenage Engineering’s TP-7 field recorder costs an eye-watering $1,499 | Engadget
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Despite having the ordering window open for a few weeks, I couldn’t pull the trigger on the Tab Ultra C. But now that early reviews are gushing over it, when pre-orders opened again yesterday, I got one. It should ship on the 24th.
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Couldn’t even order one on the UK site. Grrrr.
Latest addition to my list. If I won the lottery I’d replace my Kobo Elipsa with it.
We tested one of these for a customer this week and overall it performed admirably even though battery life was a bit weak likely due to the OLED windows side.
I’m glad that Lenovo continues to iterate on this, but OTOH they seem to be heading toward the top end of the market. That being said, unlike previous iterations, this one feels truly in the Thinkpad/Thinkbook ethos in terms of quality build.
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Both screens retain stylus support, according to early previews:
The e-paper display is full color, unlike the average e-reader, and also backlit for use in low-light environments…the choppy 12Hz refresh rate makes it feel sluggish, it’s surprisingly functional and fine for writing or drawing, since the Lenovo Smart Paper has stylus support too).
Since the main display is a 13.3-inch 2.8K OLED panel with full touch and stylus support
Did you get a chance to confirm if both were still using Wacom AES 2.0 (appears to be still using the Lenovo Digital Pen 2). Any noticeable improvement to pen latency on the Windows environment? (eg. Lisa’s demo @~1:30)
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Unfortunately both I and my pen expert were on the road and did not get to participate in the testing.
Typically we don’t do in depth pen testing unless the customer specifically requests it and/or either of us wants to invest the time (over 6.5 hours for the full suite).
The customer in this case was most concerned about WIFI and bluetooth performance, as it was somewhat problematic in prior versions.
That all said, my engineer as part of the tests does attempt to collect a full set of specs from the manufacturer and Lenovo told him AES 2.0 for the OLED but that pen was not supported for the e-ink display, only touch, though of course that would not preclude using a capacitive stylus on the e-ink side.
Two other notes.
One the OLED display is among the top we’ve tested especially in accuracy; and color e-ink still has a long way to go IMHO to be possible to use as full time display under windows (though this is arguably the best yet, but that’s a pretty low bar to clear)
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Let me add a device I can’t bring myself to pull the trigger on. “A gaming PC”. I’ve been using my X1 Yoga 3rd gen (i7-8650U) with GTX1070 eGPU which is fine for modded Skyrim VR, but doesn’t quite cut it for the badly optimized No Man’s Sky. The main thing holding me back is figuring out the right balance between price an performance, and deciding prebuilt or custom build.
Haha, what are the odds, this is what I run into one minute later:
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I recommend custom, if only because I’ve never done prebuilt =P
Used eBay (or other) GPUs are a good option too from a bang/buck perspective. The used supply is pretty high because of bitcoin mining. I almost went that route with my current build, but then decided I wanted DLSS 3. So far I’m not impressed with DLSS 3 though. I have found the interpolation artifacts pretty noticeable in the games I’ve tried it in. However, I’m really happy with the performance of DLSS super resolution (which you can get on 30 series cards).
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Ok that’s weird, in this video it shows that the pen does register on the e-ink screen (@~10:18)
And the reviewer makes no mention of the pen being limited to the OLED side.
P.S. The device is lookin’ pretty sleek!
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@Marty I’m going to send you a bill for services… 
Like I said In my initial response we didn’t do full pen tests. However based on a couple of data points, I suspect that it’s using AES on the OLED side and MPP on the e-ink side.
That’s based on the fact that the refresh rate on the e-ink side is only about 12hz which would be incompatible with the AES spec but not MPP and that the supplied precision pen supports both protocols.
“P.S. The device is lookin’ pretty sleek!”
Like I also said, they definitely improved the overall build level in this iteration.
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I still keep eyeing a Raytrektab 8" tablet with EMR…
After all this fiddling around with a Fold 3, Superdisplay, Asus MPP, Xreal glasses and on and on, I keep thinking about how “just right” the Asus Vivotab Note 8 felt with “old” EMR. And I could run window apps on it such as Sketchbook, Clip Studio, and Blender (sort of).
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