oh yeah so this is a little awkward see
this right here is a laptop but it's also
not a laptop well i guess it depends on how you
define it most people probably expect a laptop to have things that the nextdoc 2
doesn't have like an operating system or storage a RAM or even
a processor this is just a screen keyboard trackpad and some ports there's
a battery inside but it's not just a prop for a display at ikea the next top
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the next doc 2 is part of a very small category of devices known as lap docs
laptop shaped shells that you can dock
some other computing device into motorola was first to take a swing at
this idea in 2011 with the atrix 4g
for just an extra 300 you could get a compatible laptop to run
motorola's web top software complete with browser and a handful of
applications it was basically like me in grade 8. it
was lame and nobody liked it microsoft partially revived the concept
with continuum in 2015 a desktop mode
for Windows phones but well i think we all know what
happened to Windows phones pour one out boys since then we've seen
a few attempts at the concept but razer's project linda never arrived and
there's a ton of people commenting on the crowdfunding pages for the mirrorbook and superbook that they never
actually got their units bringing us back then to the next dock too
most people are expected to use it with a smartphone that has a desktop mode so
samsung phones with decks and huawei phones that support emui desktop but
this is cool you can hook up basically anything you want to it there are some
slightly janky Android forks and home screen launchers that will work with any
phone you can hook up a raspberry pi or a similar micro pc for what is probably
the cheapest overall configuration and if you really wanted to you could even
hook up a game console to it if it's got an HDMI port it'll plug into the HDMI
input that's right over right there now let's take a look at the
rest of the device design wise while the first next docs seem to channel kind of
a cheap chromebook vibe the next dock too goes more toward macbook air
territory it's got this smooth looking blasted metal finish which surprisingly
isn't actually that smooth you know it kind of gives me like a cat tongue or
like a shark skin vibe like it's way rougher feeling than
it looks and the unit is surprisingly
heavy due to a steel inner plate in the bottom and this
crazy rigid screen like i don't remember the last time i saw a screen with that
little flex in it i guess so if you're designing this thing to last for
like multiple compute unit upgrades it
makes sense to build it as ruggedly as you possibly can the screen is a 13.3
inch ips lcd with a 1920x1080 resolution
no touch support and it does have some pretty unfortunate bezels but both of
those things are apparently being addressed in the next next dock which is
due sometime in july below the screen we've got a keyboard
that's got a bit more deck flex than i'd like but is surprisingly nice to type on
with solid non-wobbly keycaps and a distinct
tactile bump and much of this review was actually written on it with riley's only
complaint being that the keys are a little bit on the large side
unfortunately the trackpad well it's usable but then so is a car that only
goes backwards the cursor jumps around sometimes when you click on the bottom
and it'll drift for a half second after you stop moving with your finger also
you can't even fix that problem with like a firmware update because
there's no firmware like there what would you install it to on top of that
the texture of the pad is pretty rough and it's kind of plasticky
feeling so i'd like a little less friction and maybe a glass surface on the next one if you're listening mr next
doc thankfully there's a full-size usba 3.0 port on the right side that you can
use a wired mouse with along with a micro sd card port and a headphone jack
so you can stick it to the phone manufacturers and still use your
existing headphones with your phone through a laptop
optimal on the other side of the machine is of
course where the magic happens so here we've got our HDMI in with three usb
type-c ports next to it but don't imagine that you can just plug
in a bunch of usbc peripherals because all three of these are for very specific
purposes the leftmost one is just for charging the laptop the middle one is a
standard USB-C 3.0 that is intended to provide power to raspberry pi's and
other devices and the one on the right supports the DisplayPort over usbc spec
so that is where your desktop compatible phone would plug in like we've got it
right now inside instead of the 38 watt hour battery that was listed in the
specs on the kickstarter page we actually found a 52 watt hour unit i
guess they upgraded it since the campaign concluded last april but the extra capacity is definitely appreciated
since the next dock will actually charge your phone while it's connected enough
chitchat though let's talk experience we tried it out with samsung dex a
raspberry pi running raspbian and some other things with HDMI outputs and
well i don't really know what to tell you it's a monitor with a keyboard and a
trackpad and a battery now i don't want this video to be about decks or what
it's like to use a raspberry pi but i will say this if you just need to do
some web browsing or use word samsung's desktop environment has come a long way
since when they first showed it off with resizable and snappable Windows keyboard
shortcuts and a sensible ui the unfortunate reality though is that
Android apps on desktop lack the polish
that most people would expect from a desktop or laptop as it were operating
system bringing us to the question then of if you're relying on Android apps
anyway why would you get this instead of say a 250 chromebook which has a screen
keyboard trackpad battery and everything else the answer is
most people probably wouldn't a chromebook can do everything that a
phone-connected laptop can do and more and you don't need to have a little
doohickey hanging off of it the whole time but the appeal of the nextdoc 2 isn't
really that it's the most sensible option price-wise it's that by getting
it you're participating in what could be the future of computing smartphones have
gotten so advanced that many traditionally heavy workloads like even
video editing are bottlenecked by the cramped user interface rather than by
the performance of the actual hardware in the future devices like the nextdoc
could allow occasional users of these types of apps to save some money
compared to expensive Windows or mac laptops and the kicker is that they get
to upgrade the performance of the unit over time as they get new phones
reducing waste as well and to balance some of the dongle inconvenience using
just one device is pretty cool it means all your files apps and login
information are with you all the time in their promo video they show a concept
cafe where there's a stack of available next docs in the shop customers grab a
dock plug in their phone write their TechLinked fan fiction then they put
the dock back when they leave with their phone juiced up for the rest of the day
in this future there's no logins no two-factor authentication everything is
just ready to go seamlessly or better yet
what if there was no need to even dock the device at all and all the data could
just be streamed via 60 gigahertz wi-fi that would be cool
but let's get back in the tardis and come back to the present for a second
here the phone desktop experience as we mentioned is just not there yet as a
true alternative to Windows mac Linux or even chrome os which doesn't mean though
that i'm not rooting for it i really hope samsung continues to invest in dex
and i also really hope google stops screwing around and adds a real usable
desktop mode to Android and enables display output over usbc on their pixel
lineup while they're at it why not so for now we've got a well-built super
versatile gadget that can not only combine with your phone as a laptop
substitute in a pinch but also be a portable monitor for everything from
consoles to tv sticks to even just acting as a secondary display for your
real laptop now i wouldn't necessarily recommend the nextdoc 2 to the average
user but for a certain kind of tinkerer for
about 250 bucks for this thing i do think it offers a compelling value the
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bye