The Absolute 3D1 is the first handheld
gaming PC with support for stereoscopic 3D gaming with
no glasses required. That is a pretty
wild proposition. How did they manage to bring this technology to market first?
Well, it's possible that they out competed all the other teams who were
trying to build such a product. It's also possible. [laughter]
Wow, it's really big.
It's also possible that nobody else was
trying to build glassesfree stereoscopic
gaming into a
[cough] [clears throat] handheld PC form factor.
Oh my gosh. In fairness to Absolute,
their marketing materials for the 3D1 do
kind of lean pretty heavily on eh using
it as more like a gaming tablet with a
kickstand and then ah yeah detaching the
removable controllers, which almost certainly makes a lot more sense,
especially when you consider how the 3D screen works. But we'll get to that in a
minute. First, let's finish taking a look at the included accessories. You
get this USBC to C cable. We also get a
actually really nice carrying case with kind of a velvety interior.
Shout out my Australian viewers. Ooh, [cheering]
a charging grip for the controllers. So,
they do have their own internal battery. They'll run for a little while off of
that. Or you can put them on this ergonomic central piece.
[gasps] It's kind of like a Joycon grip except
if it was a spaceship.
[screaming] Wow. Is it ever bottom heavy? Man,
you'll need one of these. This is kind of like the the setups that they have
for like RC. No, no, I'm kidding. Uh this is a strap for the carrying case,
which makes a lot of sense. Goes on the loops right here. And finally, you get a
uh wamping charging brick. This boy is
rated at 100 watts maximum. We only ever saw it charge at an average of about 35
watts with both this charger and a known good third party one. So, it took a
little over 2 hours to charge. Not the fastest charging device we've ever seen.
The last accessory I want to look at right now is a keyboard cover. Goes on a
little something like that. Oh, nice strong magnets though. Got to give them
credit for that. Let's do a tour of all the IO. At the back, we've got the
kickstand that we already took a look at. Metal, by the way. Pretty
satisfying. And we've also got an intake vent as well as a hint as to what
hardware we might find inside. Oo, Intel. But we'll get into that in a
little more detail later. We've got programmable buttons on the back. They
can be programmed with single functions, but we didn't have any luck programming
them with macros. Then we've got these releases for the detachable controllers.
Up at the top, things get a little bit more exciting. We've got linear triggers
as well as our shoulder buttons alongside a vent, which the cooling
system of this thing performed admirably in our testing, holding up well against
the MSI Claw AI8 Plus, which features a very similar hardware platform. We've
also got a micro SD [music] slot, 3 and a half millimeter audio jack,
Thunderbolt 4, as well as what they call
a full function USBC port. I think that
is to say that it supports display out, a USB type A port, volume rocker, power
button, and a toggle switch between 2D
and 3D mode that is not in fact a toggle, but is rather a momentary
switch. Okay, we'll have to talk about that later. On the bottom, we have the
interface for our keyboard folio as well as downfiring speakers. On the front,
we've got an eight direction D-pad as well as hall effect joysticks, full size
ones, I might add. Some buttons I'm going to have to figure out along with
our start select and our actually pretty
nice feeling ABXYs. We also get a pair
of touch pads just like the Steam Deck.
Ooh, it's kind of hard to see, but finally, we've got a front-facing webcam
as well as, that's right, an eyetracking
sensor. So, Absolute didn't disclose the
exact technology that they're using for their glasses free 3D on this display,
but we know that similar products use a combination of eyetracking and
adjustable lenticular lenses over top of the display to help defract the light
and ensure that each eye sees only the correct side image. Let's go ahead and
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our link in the video description. >> Oh, okay. Is this Absolute launcher? You
know, that really is what the world needed is more interfaces to look at all
of my games. There's non-game stuff in here as well. There's some key settings.
Can go ahead and adjust your performance profile, change your joystick dead zone,
as well as your trigger dead zones. Oh, and you can remap buttons, specifically
these two buttons, and specifically to these functions. Let's play a game.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is apparently a great choice for experiencing this
device both in 2D as well as 3D. The
device features a whopping 10.95
in 2560x600
120 Hz IPS type display that maxes out
at they claim about 480 nits, but we
actually measured just a hair shy of 500
nits. So, no, it's not HDR, but what it is is high density, flipping gorgeous,
and fluid thanks to its 120 Hz refresh
rate. I don't think there's any point in us trying to run this at native
resolution. So, let's go with 1600 by 1200. That may be doable. Oh, here we
go. Here we go. Big moment.
Okay. Not quite what I was expecting. Full screen, please.
Now 3D.
Whoa. See, you guys can't see this, but I can.
And it is something
definitely a bit of like like kind of jutteriness when I when I
move around. But if I get if I get locked in, I I'm I feel pretty good
about this. There's a number of different ways that it can apply a 3D
effect to your game. The first is integration at the engine level where
the engine is actually telling it what the depth values are for all of the
various items on screen. There's about 50 titles for that right now. We'll pop
that up on screen. There's also games that support sidebyside 3D which is
often used when gaming in a VR headset. Finally, they claim to be able to use AI
to add depth to both games and videos. We'll try that a little bit later. In
the meantime, Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the games that supposedly is
supported at an engine level. I can tell you now it's running at about 15 FPS.
So, the first thing we're going to need to do is turn down the resolution a
little bit, which on a display this size, it's not something I really wanted
to do. I want more brightness. Definitely best enjoy it in a darker
environment. That is running like absolute dog poo right now. Um, it's
very 3D though. Like it's, you know, that thing. It's back there, you know.
Can you see how choppy it's running though? Okay. Is this just a Is this
just because Oh, wow. Yeah, we're in 2D
mode now and it's running. Awesome. I thought the performance difference isn't
supposed to be so bad. Wait, this is the AI one. Why is it using the AI
accelerated one? Apparently, they chose Intel's platform because of the strength
of the NPU, the neural processor for this kind of AI enhancement. But, you
know, wow, the the AI effect one works
surprisingly well. Okay, I'm going to relaunch the game because I did notice
when I first launched it, it seems to be running side by side. So, let's give it
another shot from from outside of the game. They have a background utility
that launches when you turn on the system to manage the 3D switching. Okay,
[music] that's the Arc Graphics software. Speaking of Arc Graphics, a major red
flag for me on this device is that Absolute does not recommend that you
update your graphics drivers. That could impact the 3D experience. And uh
[clears throat] ARC drivers are drivers that generally
speaking you would you would want to upgrade. All right, let's try launching
the game again. Okay, there's no like I want to do this in 3D or anything like
that. Oh, nice little overlay, though. Okay. Was it using AI for this? Native
3D mode. Okay. So, this is native 3D. Oh, wow. The the menu looks really cool.
The selected items pop up and stuff. That's cool. Okay. Is there just a 3D
mode in here? Oh, for crying out loud. Here it is. Stereoscopic on now.
Native 3D mode. All right. Okay. It was
user error. It's running better, which is good. There's surprisingly little
cross talk between the eyes. And now that we're using native 3D data, I'm
actually getting not just depth past the display, but I'm also getting things
popping out towards me, which is pretty cool. Should I switch to an all black
hoodie? What does that look like on camera? Oh, yeah. I guess. Wow, that's weird. Yeah, you can see both sides of
the image. >> Yeah. >> So, you guys see the blur, but to me,
it's clean. Really good depth effect. This thing is really heavy. Even resting
my arms, it's like GPD Win five level of
heavy, which is surprising given that it doesn't have that big of a battery. It
only has a 50Wh hour battery, which means that when you're running it in the
highest power profile playing intense games, you're looking at less than an
hour of continuous gaming time. In our endurance test, it did do quite a bit
better at about 5 hours, which I'm honestly kind of surprised by given the
size of this screen. But most of the time you're going to be gaming, not
watching lightweight video. Whoa, that
is a really, really good 3D effect. I
guess now is as good a time as any to kind of talk through the specs. I
already mentioned the processor that we're using. So, it's an 8 core Core
Ultra 7 200 series. We've got 32 gigs of
LPDDR5X memory, Wi-Fi 6E only, which is
a little curious, Bluetooth 5.3, and I
guess I kind of covered most of the other stuff. Oh, this looks so good, but
this is definitely going to be a niche
device at the kind of pricing they have for it. The early bird price is $1,500,
which I kind of get given the price of RAM and the unique value proposition of
the giant screen, the kickstand, the
detachable controllers, not to mention the 3D functionality.
But [sighs] I still think when you look at that compared to something like an RG
Xbox or MSI Claw AI 8 Plus, which has
functionally the same hardware just with a smaller screen, it's going to be a
tough one. And not every game is going to look this good. Let's go ahead and
find a game that doesn't look this good, which will be basically any other game.
Labs didn't love the ergonomics of the controllers. I can't say I love them
either, but if you have big hands, um I
guess you'll be okay. Like, it kind of assumes maybe you're pressing these with
your ring fingers if you want to be able to reach the shoulders and the triggers.
The quality of the controllers is not something that I would fault, but the
layout and the [music] and the way the weight sits on you, I'd say, is a little
weird. They're bottom heavy when you're using them without the actual center
screen, but they're probably weighted about right when you're holding it like
this. Getting that balance where they work great both attached and not
attached was probably a pretty tough challenge. I guess while I'm waiting for
this game to launch, I can try out the trackpad and the keyboard. Trackpad
feels good. That's not something I like to see while I'm typing on something. It
just kind of moving around like that. Let's see if it actually impacts anything. It's a small trackpad, but Oh.
Oh, no. I'd like I like to be able to press here and also drag [music] and
it's really flaky. Oh. Oh, I got it to work.
Oh, wow. Yep. The bounce is as bad as I
hoped it wouldn't be. Also, these arrow keys are [music] ass. And short
backspace keys are ass. But hey, at least you have full size shift. So, uh,
good job. It's usable and keeps your
screen safe. Look at that. I knew the battery life wasn't great, but I have
lost 40% [music] while I've been working on this. That is
not amazing. Hey. All right. Well, this is dog ass. That
right there, that is exactly what it looks like to me. So, the frame rate
[music] cuts to like a third and the
image gets dark and it is blurry. I don't know. The green dot seems to
indicate that it is tracking my eyes cuz you can see it goes yellow and it's not looking at me. Okay, let's try it again.
Let's give it another shot. Utterly illeible. Um, okay. So, your mileage is
definitely going to vary. Okay, Street Fighter 6 demo. I feel better about this
one. Capcom wouldn't let me down. 3D mode. AI 3D. Okay, it works in this
game. And the performance seems fine for
the most part. Wow. Oh, wow. Those
trees, like instead of the little individual bits of foliage, you know,
kind of poking out or poking in or whatever else, it just came out like a
big bulge. Some stuff is handled pretty
well, though. Like my buddy in the foreground here. Like I can almost like
I could almost cup those cheeks, you know? Oh yeah. And like the hair it just
like it's like someone put their fist behind his head and just like [snorts]
stuck it out through the screen. Like it just I mean it's something
like it's cool. Oh, it's it's kind of distracting. where there isn't like a
clear contrast like here like his chest
is coming out like but then his head it it doesn't have
enough contrast against this building. So it's like back like this. So he's
like oh the way the text like wraps around
anything that's popping out or popping in around it is pretty nauseating
honestly. It's not great. Not nauseating but headacheinducing. The 3D headache.
You know, the one that's like right in here, you know, like where your brain
freezes when you have too much ice cream. All right. Fighting in 3D. Whoa.
It's something. It's 3D. It pops out some games. It doesn't completely trash
the performance and it does give it more depth. I personally wouldn't choose to
use it. I think I'd rather just have my display be brighter and have my performance be better for the most part.
Let's try video. We have to be full screen for the 3D effect to work. Okay,
this is pretty cool. I would expect it to work better in animation than other
things. Little bit of cross talk. Okay, the text is doing the funky thing where
it wraps around stuff again. Okay, that was super funky. Like that apple has
weird like grass that's closer to it. If
I wasn't looking for any of this though and I was just, you know, watching this.
Yeah, I'd say it would add some immersion.
Would I rather just watch like this though? Yeah, probably. I am a 3D
enthusiast, but I like good 3D. So,
that's where I'm at on that. You know what? First, crab rave. Wait. Plus is on
the left.
Oh, until I brought up the interface. Oh. Ah, stop. Oh, god. Wow. Until I
brought up the interface, the 3D in Crab
was actually pretty good. Speakers are fine. Basically, no kind of [music]
depth or or bass. They're they're clear. They get pretty loud. Oh man, this
part's really [music] good. I'm [snorts] clearly in the foreground and like the
house is clearly way back there. Man, when it's good, it's really cool. And
then all the rest of the times it's pretty rough.
Oh man. Photos. Apparently, by the way, they have support for Apple's u spatial
photos, which is pretty cool. Oh, dude. Oh, that photo looked so good. This
video is really hard, but th this is crazy.
This is like AI enhanced. Would I watch
the video like this? Maybe sometimes. Selectively, I might turn it on. It's
pretty cool. I'd have a really hard time justifying the price of it, though.
[music] >> I think it adds It adds to it. >> It It does, right? Like I'm not paying
for a 3D movie at a theater, but like just sitting and watching it does feel
like you are more there. >> Yeah, right. >> Yeah, that's impressive.
>> And you're right. You're not paying for a 3D movie at a theater. You're paying a
lot more than what you would pay for a 3D movie at a theater. I think that's
about everything to talk about other than the performance. We did mention the
hardware, but we didn't mention that Absolute has not managed to squeeze as
much performance out of this hardware as the MSI Claw AI8 Plus. Uh we found that
even in the same power profile, we weren't really able to get quite the
same level of turbo and therefore not quite the same frame rates at our
various resolutions across our various games. [music]
This is the kind of product that I wish you could buy with a return policy. You
know that you could try before you buy, but you're just going to have to say,
"Nope, I'm a big 3D enthusiast and I'm going to [music] go for it." Good luck
with that. That's about all I have to say about that now, though. So subscribe
to ShortCircuit.