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Category: TouchXPRT

The XPRT Spotlight Black Friday Showcase helps you shop with confidence

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on November 15, 2018

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are almost here, and you may be feeling overwhelmed by the sea of tech gifts to choose from. The XPRTs are here to help. We’ve gathered the product specs and performance facts for some of the hottest tech devices in one convenient place—the XPRT Spotlight Black Friday Showcase. The Showcase is a free shopping tool that provides side-by-side comparisons of some of the season’s most popular smartphones, laptops, Chromebooks, tablets, and PCs. It helps you make informed buying decisions so you can shop with confidence this holiday season.

Want to know how the Google Pixel 3 stacks up against the Apple iPhone XS or Samsung Galaxy Note9 in web browsing performance or screen size? Simply select any two devices in the Showcase and click Compare. You can also search by device type if you’re interested in a specific form factor such as consoles or tablets.

The Showcase doesn’t go away after Black Friday. We’ll rename it the XPRT Holiday Buying Showcase and continue to add devices throughout the shopping season. So be sure to check back in and see how your tech gifts measure up.

If this is the first you’ve heard about the XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight, here’s a little background. Our hands-on testing process equips consumers with accurate information about how devices function in the real world. We test devices using our industry-standard BenchmarkXPRT tools: WebXPRT, MobileXPRT, TouchXPRT, CrXPRT, BatteryXPRT, and HDXPRT. In addition to benchmark results, we include photographs, specs, and prices for all products. New devices come online weekly, and you can browse the full list of almost 150 that we’ve featured to date on the Spotlight page.

If you represent a device vendor and want us to feature your product in the XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight, please visit the website for more details.

Do you have suggestions for the Spotlight page or device recommendations? Let us know!

Justin

Posted in Chromebooks, CrXPRT, HDXPRT, Interactive tools, Laptops, Mobile devices, MobileXPRT, PCs, TouchXPRT, WebXPRT, XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

The 2018 XPRT Spotlight Back-to-School Roundup

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on August 9, 2018

With the new school year approaching, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve just published our third annual XPRT Spotlight Back-to-School Roundup! The Roundup allows shoppers to view side-by-side comparisons of XPRT test scores and hardware specs from some of this school year’s most popular Chromebooks, laptops, tablets, and convertibles. We tested the devices in our lab using the XPRT benchmarks and provide not only performance scores, but also photo galleries, PT-verified device specs, and prices. Parents, teachers, students, and administrators who are considering purchases for use in their education environments have many options, and the Roundup can help make their decisions easier by gathering product and performance facts in one convenient place. We’ll continue to add devices to the Roundup, including the new Microsoft Surface Go, as they arrive over the next few weeks.

The Back-to-School Roundup is just one of the features we offer through the XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight. Every week, the Spotlight highlights a new device, making it easier for consumers to select a new laptop, phone, tablet, or PC. Recent devices in the Spotlight include the Acer Chromebook Tab 10, the 2018 Samsung Chromebook Plus, the Intel Hades Canyon NUC mini PC, and the OnePlus 6 phone. The Spotlight device comparison page lets you view side-by-side comparisons of all of the devices we’ve tested.

If you’re interested in having your devices featured in the XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight or in this year’s Black Friday and Holiday Showcases, which we publish in late November, visit the website for more details.

If you have any ideas for the Spotlight page or suggestions for devices you’d like to see, let us know!

Justin

Posted in Battery life, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, Benchmarking, BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, CrXPRT, Education, Mobile data, TouchXPRT, WebXPRT, XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight | Tagged , , , , , , , |

New opportunities for TouchXPRT

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on March 29, 2018

Next week’s XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight will feature a unique device: the HP Envy x2 2-in-1. The first device of its kind on the market, the Envy x2 runs Windows 10 on ARM hardware—in this case, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 platform. ASUS and Lenovo will release similar devices in the coming months. Using the ARM chips found in many flagship phones, these devices aim to power robust operating systems on 2-in-1s and laptops while providing extended battery life and always-on LTE connections.

These new devices bring ample opportunities for benchmarking. Consumers will want to know about potential trade-offs between price, power, and battery life—incentivizing tech reviewers to dive into the details and provide useful data points. But for the new Windows on ARM systems, the usual benchmarks have presented challenges. Many traditional laptop benchmarks just won’t work on the new systems. TouchXPRT, however, works like a charm.

TouchXPRT assesses performance on any Windows device. Since it’s a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app that runs on both x86 and ARM systems, it can evaluate how well a Windows device running on ARM hardware performs compared to traditional laptops and 2-in-1s. It’s easy to install, takes about 15 minutes to run, and you can download it directly from TouchXPRT.com or install it from the Microsoft Store. Labs can also automate testing using the command line or a script.

If you’ve been looking for a Windows performance evaluation tool that’s easy to use and has the flexibility of a UWP app, give TouchXPRT a try. Read more details about TouchXPRT here, and please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions you may have.

Justin

Posted in Benchmark metrics, Benchmarking, Mobile devices, TouchXPRT, TouchXPRT 2016, TouchXPRT results, Windows 10 |

MobileXPRT: evaluate the performance of your Android device

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on July 27, 2017

We recently discussed the capabilities and benefits of TouchXPRT, CrXPRT, BatteryXPRT, and HDXPRT. This week, we’re focusing on MobileXPRT, an app that evaluates how well an Android device handles everyday tasks. Like the other XPRT family benchmarks, MobileXPRT is easy to use. It takes less than 15 minutes to run on most devices, runs relatable workloads, and delivers reliable, objective, and easy-to-understand results.

MobileXPRT includes five performance scenarios (Apply Photo Effects, Create Photo Collages, Create Slideshow, Encrypt Personal Content, and Detect Faces to Organize Photos). By default, the benchmark runs all five tasks and reports individual workload scores and an overall performance score.

MobileXPRT 2015 is the latest version of the app, supporting both 32-bit and 64-bit hardware running Android 4.4 or higher. To test systems running older versions of Android, or to test 32-bit performance on a 64-bit system, you can use MobileXPRT 2013. The results of the two versions are comparable.

MobileXPRT is a useful tool for anyone who wants to compare the performance capabilities of Android phones or tablets. To see test results from a variety of systems, go to MobileXPRT.com and click View Results, where you’ll find scores from many different Android devices.

If you’d like to run MobileXPRT:

Simply download MobileXPRT from MobileXPRT.com or the Google Play Store. The full installer package on MobileXPRT.com, containing both app and test data, is 243 MB. You may also use this link to download the 18 MB MobileXPRT app file, which will download the test data during installation. The MobileXPRT user manual provides instructions for configuring your device and kicking off a test.

If you’d like to dig into the details:

Check out the Exploring MobileXPRT 2015 white paper. In it, we discuss the MobileXPRT development process and details of the individual performance scenarios. We also explain exactly how the benchmark calculates results.

If you’d like to dig even deeper, the MobileXPRT source code is available to members of the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community, so consider joining today. Membership is free for members of any company or organization with an interest in benchmarks, and there are no obligations after joining.

If you haven’t used MobileXPRT before, give it a shot and let us know what you think!

Justin

Posted in Android, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, CrXPRT, HDXPRT, Mobile devices, MobileXPRT, MobileXPRT 2015, Performance benchmarking, TouchXPRT, WebXPRT |

BatteryXPRT: A quick and reliable way to estimate Android battery life

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on May 25, 2017

In the last few weeks, we reintroduced readers to the capabilities and benefits of TouchXPRT and CrXPRT. This week, we’d like to reintroduce BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, an app that evaluates the battery life and performance of Android devices.

When purchasing a phone or tablet, it’s good to know how long the battery will last on a typical day and how often you’ll need to charge it. Before BatteryXPRT, you had to rely on a manufacturer’s estimate or full rundown tests that perform tasks that don’t resemble the types of things we do with our phones and tablets every day.

We developed BatteryXPRT to estimate battery life reliably in just over five hours, so testers can complete a full evaluation in one work day or while sleeping. You can configure it to run while the device is connected to a network or in Airplane mode. The test also produces a performance score by running workloads that represent common everyday tasks.

BatteryXPRT is easy to install and run, and is a great resource for anyone who wants to evaluate how well an Android device will meet their needs. If you’d like to see test results from a variety of Android devices, go to BatteryXPRT.com and click View Results, where you’ll find scores from many different Android devices.

If you’d like to run BatteryXPRT:

Simply download BatteryXPRT from the Google Play store or BatteryXPRT.com. The BatteryXPRT installation instructions and user manual provide step-by-step instructions for how to configure your device and kick off a test. We designed BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android to be compatible with a wide variety of Android devices, but because there are so many devices on the market, it is inevitable that users occasionally run into problems. In the Tips, tricks, and known issues document, we provide troubleshooting suggestions for issues we encountered during development testing.

If you’d like to learn more:

We offer a full online BatteryXPRT training course that covers almost every aspect of the benchmark. You can view the sections in order or jump to the parts that interest you. We guarantee that you’ll learn something new!

BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android Training Course

If you’d like to dig into the details:

Check out the Exploring BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android white paper. In it, we discuss the app’s development and structure. We also describe the component tests; explain the differences between the test’s Airplane, Wi-Fi, and Cellular modes; and detail the statistical processes we use to calculate expected battery life.

If you’d like to dig even deeper, the BatteryXPRT source code is available to members of the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community, so consider joining today. Membership is free for members of any company or organization with an interest in benchmarks, and there are no obligations after joining.

If you haven’t used BatteryXPRT before, try it out and let us know what you think!

Justin

Posted in Android, Battery life, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, Benchmark metrics, Benchmarking, BenchmarkXPRT development community, CrXPRT, TouchXPRT, What makes a good benchmark? |

Getting to know TouchXPRT

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on May 4, 2017

Many of our community members first encountered the XPRTs when reading about WebXPRT or MobileXPRT in a device review, using TouchXPRT or HDXPRT in an OEM lab, or using BatteryXPRT or CrXPRT to evaluate devices for bulk purchasing on behalf of a corporation or government agency. They know that specific XPRT provided great value in that context, but may not know about the other members of the XPRT family.

To help keep folks up to date on the full extent of XPRT capabilities, we like to occasionally “reintroduce” each of the XPRTs. This week, we invite you to get to know TouchXPRT.

We developed TouchXPRT 2016 as a Universal Windows Platform app for Windows 10. We wanted to offer a free tool that would provide consumers with objective information about how well a Windows 10 or Windows 10 Mobile laptop, tablet, or phone handles common media tasks. To do this, TouchXPRT runs five tests that simulate the kinds of photo, video, and music editing tasks people do every day. It measures how quickly the device completes each of those tasks and provides an overall score. To compare device scores, go to TouchXPRT.com and click View Results, where you’ll find scores from many different Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile devices.

TouchXPRT is easy to install and run, and is a great resource for anyone who wants to evaluate the performance of a Windows 10 device.

If you’d like to run TouchXPRT:

Simply download TouchXPRT from the Microsoft Store. (If that doesn’t work for you, you can also download it directly from TouchXPRT.com.) Installing it should take about 15 minutes, and the TouchXPRT 2016 release notes provide step-by-step instructions.

If you’d like to dig into the details:

Check out the Exploring TouchXPRT 2016 white paper. In it, we discuss the TouchXPRT development process, its component tests and workloads, and how it calculates individual workload and overall scores. We also provide instructions for automated testing.

BenchmarkXPRT Development Community members also have access to the TouchXPRT source code, so consider joining today. There’s no obligation and membership is free for members of any company or organization with an interest in benchmarks.

If you haven’t tried running TouchXPRT before, give it a shot and let us know what you think!

Justin

Posted in BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Mobile devices, Performance benchmarking, Performance testing on tablets, TouchXPRT, TouchXPRT 2016, TouchXPRT development process, TouchXPRT results |

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