Linus Tech tips coverage of computex 2013 is powered by Western Digital our
trusted gaming gear partner is Corsair Vengeance and our trusted retail partner
is nc.com now we've showed a couple thin
bezel monitors over the last little while but invariably We've Ended up
disappointed because it turns out that the spec that the manufacturer is
usually talking about is the slimness of
the bezel but then often we're finding out that they have glass front panels
that have a dead zone around it that makes the effective bezel not really
that much different from any other monitor that's out there this is a
little bit different this is the vn279 qlb from ASUS and uh if you think that
that's a mouthful then you're probably going to think that the image in front
of you is an Eiffel they run at 1920 x 1080 and you can see that there's a game
running on them so these are IPS panels but they are gaming optimized and you
might ask why would they do that rather than go with a faster TN panel and the
answer is very simple these are 27in monitors which means that they're big
they're also designed for gaming particularly in surround gaming which
means that they're going to be really big TN does not have the optimal viewing
angles that would be required to properly get the color Fidelity that
you're going to need for an enjoyable immersive gaming experience once you
surround yourself with these because you won't be able to look directly at every
single panel that is why it has been changed now let's have a look at just
how slim it is I'll do my trademark cell phone thickness comparison here so you
can see it is slightly Slimmer on the top and the sides about the thickness of
an HTC1 uh and then on the bottom there is
a little bit of extra space for the buttons so there's uh Power input you
know brightness all those usual adjustments that you see but unlike some
of the other monitors we've seen in the past with slim bezels as well it's not a
dramatic difference I remember the last time I did a 5x1 portrait display setup
on NCI X Tech tips we were using a monitor that had a top bezel about like
this and a bottom bezel about like that because they had like a speaker on it or
something I was like well that's not very optimal so this is looking to
change that it's going to be available in a couple months and I think that
pretty much wraps it up time to move on to the next cool thing yet another
product here at the ASUS Booth so this is the wireless Duo you can get it in
either a 500 gig or 1 TB capacity and there's a couple different colors and
it's got some unique features compared to Wireless hard drivve so first of all
we've got a usb3 interface which okay that's not particularly unique next
we've got an these are dummy models so don't mind the fit and finish next we've
got an SD card reader so what's cool about this is you can actually hook up
your SD card you just plug in your SD card and there's a OneTouch backup you
can see on the interface right down here on the tablet all you have to do is
Click SD y there you go click okay and
you can do a OneTouch backup on that next up on the unit itself you see not a
whole lot except that it's actually
pretty much sealed so it is not quite something that you'd call waterproof to
the point where you throw it in a puddle but it is water resistant and splash
proof so you don't have to worry too much about okay you've got your your
wireless drive in your backpack you're riding around on your bike in the rain
and if a little bit of rain gets through you don't have to worry about okay the thing's just going to die out right so
they've got apps available for iOS 5 and above Android 2.3 and above as well as
Kindle Fire obviously it works with Windows and Mac as well and it's want to
show you guys uh here we go how Snappy
the interface is because if you've seen any of these wireless devices before
you'll know that they're not always the fastest thing in the world now it should
be noted we're in the middle of a crowded crowded show floor where there
are tons of wireless devices an extremely interference ridden
environment but in spite of that the performance of it is what I would
consider completely acceptable so you can see it is managing to oh oh
oh every time you try demo something it uh it burns you but there you go now
it's buffering ahead of the playback speed of the actual content itself not
only that but there's some other cool features in here as well so it supports
music playback while you are actually uh viewing uh V or uh photo
files for example and this is cool so it's got full support for flak media
files as well and I've lost track of where those files were so you'll have to
take my word for it but uh hold on music
whatever we'll just play something else so you can change your music playback to
either the condensed one or full screen if you want to check out your album art
and this should be coming when's this coming you
guys I put everyone on the spot apparently July but don't take my word
for it convergence truly is the name of the game and I'm about to go about that
two different ways so number one is the problem with convergence is everyone
wants smaller and smaller devices to the point where they do everything but they
don't necessarily do everything well so notebooks two of the things that do two
of the trends are that it's becoming more and more difficult to fit an
optical drive into a notebook form factor in a way that will be appealing
to a customer and number two is that notebooks have notoriously terrible
onboard Audio Solutions so this is where
convergence hurts us but where it helps us is when we get all-in-one devices
that can take some of the best engineering talents of a company like
someone like ASUS and turn it into one product so this is the Zonar Blu-ray
station which actually seeks to address
that problem so number one it is is it is a high quality hence the Zonar
branding that you're going to find on the right side of it here it is a high
quality external sound card so we're talking headphone amps up to 16 or it
has a headphone amp so it can handle headphones up to 600 ohms of impedance a
c media audio processor as well as a cirrus logic Dack around at the back
you're going to find a wide variety of different audio output options including
analog as as well as digital output so it is a usb3 interface to the computer
itself and it does require external power in order to deliver the power you
need for that amplitude as well as an optical drive so it can turn your
notebook pretty much into a higher quality sound solution as well as a
Blu-ray playback station that can support as you can see here in the demo
itself a Surround Sound audio system as
well so it takes that notebook that wasn't really good at those things and
isn't all one solution Blu-ray reading Blu-ray writing external audio and a
combination of all of it