We’ve designed each of the XPRT benchmarks to assess the performance of specific types of devices in scenarios that mirror the ways consumers typically use those devices. While most XPRT benchmark users are interested in producing official overall scores, some members of the tech press have been using the XPRTs in unconventional, creative ways.
One example is the use
of WebXPRT
by Tweakers, a popular tech
review site based in The Netherlands. (The site is in Dutch, so the Google
Translate extension in Chrome was helpful for me.) As Tweakers uses WebXPRT to
evaluate all kinds of consumer hardware, they also measure the sound output of each
device. Tweakers then publishes the LAeq metric for each device,
giving readers a sense of how loud a system may be, on average, while it
performs common browser tasks.
Other labs and tech
publications have also used the XPRTs in unusual ways such as automating the
benchmarks to run during screen burn-in tests or custom battery-life rundowns. If
you’ve used any of the XPRT benchmarks in creative ways, please let us know!
We are interested in learning more about your tests, and your experiences may
provide helpful information that we can share with other XPRT users.
Recently,
Tom’s Guide published an interesting article
about how they used ChromeOS Flex to turn a
ten-year-old Apple MacBook Pro into a functioning Chromebook by replacing the
laptop’s macOS operating system with ChromeOS. ChromeOS Flex is a free Google
tool that allows users to create a bootable USB drive that they can then use to
install ChromeOS on a wide variety
of hardware platforms that traditionally run other operating systems such as
macOS or Windows. Because ChromeOS is a cloud-first, relatively low-overhead
operating system, the ChromeOS Flex option could breathe new life into an old
laptop that you have lying around.
Never having encountered a MacBook Pro with ChromeOS, we were interested to learn about Tom’s experience running XPRT benchmarks in this new environment.WebXPRT 4, WebXPRT 3, and the CrXPRT 2 performance test apparently ran without any issues, but we have not yet seen a CrXPRT 2 battery life result from a ChromeOS Flex environment. We plan to experiment with this soon.
We
were happy to publish the results on our site, and will consider any ChromeOS
Flex results we receive for publication. If you submit results from ChromeOS
Flex testing, we ask that you use the “Additional information” field in the
results submission form to clarify that you ran the tests in a ChromeOS Flex
environment. This will prevent any possible confusion when we see a submission
that lists a traditional macOS or Windows hardware platform along with a
ChromeOS version number.
Do you have experience running CrXPRT or WebXPRT with ChromeOS Flex? We’d love to hear about it!
The new school year is
upon us, and learners of all ages are looking for tech devices that have the
capabilities they will need in the coming year. The tech marketplace can be
confusing, and competing claims can be hard to navigate. The XPRTs are here to
help! Whether you’re shopping for a new phone, tablet, Chromebook, laptop, or
desktop, the XPRTs can provide reliable, industry-trusted performance scores
that can cut through all the noise.
A good place to start looking
for scores is the WebXPRT 4 results viewer. The viewer displays WebXPRT 4 scores from
over 175 devices—including many hot new releases—and we’re adding new scores
all the time. To learn more about the viewer’s capabilities and how you can use
it to compare devices, check out this blog post.
Another resource we
offer is the XPRT results browser. The browser is the most efficient way to access the XPRT
results database, which currently holds more than 3,000 test results from over 120
sources, including major tech review publications around the world, OEMs, and
independent testers. It offers a wealth of current and historical performance
data across all of the XPRT benchmarks and hundreds of devices. You can read
more about how to use the results browser here.
Also, if you’re considering a popular device, chances are good that a recent tech review includes an XPRT score for that device. Two quick ways to find these reviews: (1) go to your favorite tech review site and search for “XPRT” and (2) go to a search engine and enter the device name and XPRT name (e.g., “Apple MacBook Air” and “WebXPRT”). Here are a few recent tech reviews that use one of the XPRTs to evaluate a popular device:
The XPRTs can help consumers make better-informed and more confident tech purchases. As this school year begins, we hope you’ll find the data you need on our site or in an XPRT-related tech review. If you have any questions about the XPRTs, XPRT scores, or the results database please feel free to ask!
Testers
new to the XPRT benchmarks may not know about one of the free resources we
offer. The XPRT results database currently holds more than 3,000 test results
from over 120 sources, including major tech review publications around the
world, OEMs, and independent testers. It offers a wealth of current and
historical performance data across all the XPRT benchmarks and hundreds of
devices.
We update the results
database several times a week, adding selected results from our own internal
lab testing, reliable tech media sources, and end-of-test user submissions.
(After you run one of the XPRTs, you can choose to submit the results, but they
don’t automatically appear in the database.) Before adding a result, we
evaluate whether the score makes sense and is consistent with general
expectations, which we can do only when we have sufficient system information details.
For that reason, we ask testers to disclose as much hardware and software
information as possible when publishing or submitting a result.
We encourage visitors to our site to explore the XPRT results database. There are three primary ways to do so. The first is by visiting the main BenchmarkXPRT results browser, which displays results entries for all of the XPRT benchmarks in chronological order (see the screenshot below). You can narrow the results by selecting a benchmark from the drop-down menu and can type values, such as vendor or the name of a tech publication, into the free-form filter field. For results we’ve produced in our lab, clicking “PT” in the Source column takes you to a page with additional disclosure information for the test system. For sources outside our lab, clicking the source name takes you to the original article or review that contains the result.
The second way to access our published results is by visiting the results page for an individual XPRT benchmark. Go the page of the benchmark that interests you, and look for the blue View Results button. Clicking it takes you to a page that displays results for only that benchmark. You can use the free-form filter on the page to filter those results, and can use the Benchmarks drop-down menu to jump to the other individual XPRT results pages.
The third way to view
information in our results database is with the WebXPRT 4 results viewer.
The viewer provides an information-packed, interactive environment in which
users can explore data from the curated set of WebXPRT 4 results we’ve
published on our site. To learn more about the viewer’s capabilities and
features, check out this blog post
from March.
We hope you’ll take
some time to browse the information in our results database. We welcome your feedback
about what you’d like to see in the future and suggestions for improvement. Our
database contains the XPRT scores that we’ve gathered, but we publish them as a
resource for you. Let us know
what you think!
Many of our blog
readers first encountered the XPRTs when reading about a specific benchmark,
such as WebXPRT, in a device
review. Because these folks might be unfamiliar with our other benchmarks, we
like to occasionally “reintroduce” individual XPRTs. This week, we invite you
to get to know HDXPRT.
HDXPRT, which
stands for High-Definition Experience & Performance Ratings Test, was the
first benchmark published by the HDXPRT Development Community, which later
became the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community. HDXPRT 4, the latest version, evaluates
the performance of Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices while handling real-world
media tasks such as photo editing, video conversion, and music editing. HDXPRT
uses real commercial applications, such Photoshop and MediaEspresso, to
complete its workloads. The benchmark then produces easy-to-understand results
that are relevant to buyers shopping for new Windows systems.
The HDXPRT 4
setup process takes about 30 minutes on most systems. The length of the test
can vary significantly depending on the speed of the system, but for most PCs that
are less than a few years old, a full three-iteration test cycle takes under two
hours.
HDXPRT is a useful
tool for anyone who wants to evaluate the real-world, content-creation
capabilities of a Windows PC. To see test scores from a variety of Windows
devices, go to HDXPRT.com and
click View Results.
Want to run HDXPRT?
Download HDXPRT from
HDXPRT.com. The HDXPRT user manual provides information
on minimum system requirements, as well as step-by-step instructions for
configuring your system and kicking off a test.
Want to dig into the details?
The HDXPRT
source code is available upon request. If you’d like to access the source code,
please send your request to benchmarkxprtsupport@principledtechnologies.com. Build
instructions are also available.
If you haven’t used HDXPRT before, give it a shot and let us know what you think!
Each month, we send a newsletter to members of the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community. In the newsletter, we recap the latest updates from the XPRT world and provide a summary of the previous month’s XPRT-related activity, including uses or mentions of the XPRTs in the tech press. More people read the weekly XPRT blog than receive the monthly newsletter, so we realized that some blog readers may be unaware of the wide variety of tech outlets that regularly use or mention the XPRTs.
So for today’s blog, we want to give readers a sampling of the XPRT press usage we see on a weekly basis. Recent mentions include:
Tom’s Guide used HDXPRT 4 to compare the performance of the Geekom Mini IT8 and Dell OptiPlex 7090 Ultra small-form-factor PCs.
Intel used WebXPRT 4 test data in promotional material for their line of 12th Gen) Intel Core processors(Alder Lake). Hundreds of press outlets then republished the presentation.
AnandTech used WebXPRT 4 to evaluate the Cincoze DS-1300 Industrial PC.
PCWorld used CrXPRT 2 to provide data for an article listing their top Chromebook recommendations.
TechPowerUp used WebXPRT 3 to compare the browser performance of Intel Core i9-12900KS processor-based systems and other Intel- and AMD processor-based systems.
Other outlets that have published articles, ads, or reviews mentioning the experts in the last few months include: Android Authority, ASUS, BenchLife, Gadgets 360, Good Gear Guide, Hardware.info, Hot Hardware, ITHardware (Poland), ITMedia (Japan), Itndaily (Russia), Mobile01.com (China), Notebookcheck, PCMag, ProClockers, Sohu.com (China), Tom’s Hardware, and Tweakers.
If you don’t currently receive the monthly
BenchmarkXPRT newsletter, but would like to join the mailing list, please let us know! We will not publish or sell any of the contact information you
provide, and will only send the monthly newsletter and occasional benchmark-related
announcements such as patch notifications or new benchmark releases.
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