Reviews

OPPO A71 Review: Speed over selfies?

Published

September 15, 2017

Daniel Morial

OPPO‘s newest smartphone is not about selfies. That’s not a typo; this new budget phone is not concerned about vanity, but rather, design and performance. It’s also one of the cheapest OPPO phones in the market, so will it make the cut?

In this review, we’ll be going through the OPPO A71. Before we dive into the phone, let’s take a look at its physique.

The A71 has a generic front with a 5.2-inch HD display

It has three capacitive buttons for navigation

The back is pretty sleek, though!

Unibody design with a nice matte finish

There’s a 3.5mm jack on top…

You gotta have this or else…

And a micro-USB port at the bottom

Even your old charger is still compatible

Most importantly… triple-card slot!

Two nano-SIM and a microSD card

Cheapest OPPO phone to come out recently, but there’s a catch…

For the past few months, OPPO phones have always been about selfies. The company claims each phone to be a “selfie expert,” which combines a high-resolution front sensor and software beautification; however, the A71 isn’t advertised as a selfie phone. The phone is focused on speed and power, according to OPPO. Don’t expect it to be the most powerful though, because it sits in the budget segment of devices.

To get the specs out of the way, it’s powered by the popular MediaTek 6750 processor (same processor found on the more expensive F3 model) paired with 3GB of memory and 16GB of storage. This combination is already more than enough to run most apps on the Play Store and give a hiccup-free user experience. The storage is on the low-side; good thing you get a dedicated microSD card slot.

When put to the test, the phone didn’t have a hard time. A quick stress test of opening and switching apps is nothing for the A71. When it comes to gaming, it’s a mixed bag. With an aging processor and graphics unit, the phone can smoothly handle quality titles like NBA 2K17 in low to medium settings only.

Android Nougat with an iOS-like interface

OPPO is known for pre-loading their phones with outdated Android versions, which is why having Nougat onboard out of the box is a relief. As to when it’ll have the major update to Oreo? We don’t know.

Although, you don’t necessarily need the latest Android version on an OPPO, because the interface is far from stock and more iOS-like, from the set of icons and gestures to overall design. If that’s a good or a bad thing will depend on your preference.

Lower-resolution selfies, but not as bad as others

There’s nothing special about the cameras of the OPPO A71. The rear has a standard 13-megapixel shooter accompanied by an LED flash, while the front only has a 5-megapixel selfie camera. It’s quite unusual to have a lower megapixel count on the front of an OPPO phone, but that’s part of the budget cut of the A71.

: HDR

: Front

: Front

The rear camera captures good images in bright environments. As always, the sun is the best light source for better mobile photography. Same thing goes for the front camera; even at just 5 megapixels, our selfies turned out better than we expected. We’re already spoiled with all the selfie phones, but this is not bad at all. The front has a somewhat wide lens, making group selfies possible.

Longevity is a nice feature

Complementing the speedy processor (for its price) is a 3000mAh battery. Considering the size of the phone, it’s a sizable capacity. Too bad it’s not removable. though.

As a daily driver, the A71 can last you the whole day. Despite not having a power-efficient chipset, we’re surprised it was able to give an average of about 8 hours of moderate usage.

Is this your GadgetMatch?

If you’re looking for a phone from OPPO and on a tight budget, the A71 might attract you; however, it’s not the “selfie expert” phone you may be expecting. To be fair, it’s promoted as a budget phone with great speed. Our fondness of the A71 is not about its performance, but with the design. We prefer its sleek matte back over the more expensive F3 and F3 Plus.

With a retail price of PhP 8,990 in the Philippines, it’s one of the cheapest OPPO phones currently in the market. As for the catch, it’s missing a high-resolution selfie camera and fingerprint scanner.

[irp posts=”20198″ name=”OPPO F3 FC Barcelona Edition Unboxing”]

Laptops

Apple M2 Max MacBook Pro 16-inch Review: Four months later

Insanely Powerful!

Published

June 5, 2023

GadgetMatch

Apple silently revealed the revamped M2 Pro and M2 Max-powered MacBook Pros just last January 2023.

While the design isn’t any different from its predecessors, it promises significant boosts in performance.

However, this isn’t meant for those who already owned the M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pros launched in 2021.

Spoiler alert: This is a huge upgrade from the 16-inch Intel Core i9 MacBook Pro from 2019.

But would you compromise the portability of the 14-inch version over a bigger screen and battery?

Watch our review of the new M2 Max 16-inch MacBook Pro, four months later.

Features

How well do PlayStation games run on the ROG Ally?

Spoiler: Pretty good

Published

May 29, 2023

Rodneil Quiteles

The ROG Ally has caused quite a buzz in the gaming community at large. Personally, I’m thrilled at the prospect of owning a handheld gaming PC/console to play games I otherwise would not have access to. I mainly play on my PlayStation 5 (PS5). Naturally, I was curious how some of my favorite games will run on the ROG Ally.

Things are promising on paper. The ROG Ally is built to be able to run AAA titles. Here’s a quick look at the specs of the unit we had for recap:

Model	RC71L
CPU	AMD Ryzen™ Z1 Extreme Processor 4nm Zen 4/ 8 core & 16 threads 24M cache CPU Clock: up to 5.10 Ghz TDP: 9 – 30 watts
GPU	With AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme Config: AMD Radeon™ Graphics RDNA3 & 4G RAM capacity / 8.6 TFlops 12 CU GPU Clock: 2.7GHz
Panel	Full HD (1920 x 1080), 120 Hz / 7 ms eDP1.4b, 500 nits, IPS-panel, 100% sRGB, FreeSync™ Premium, Gorilla® Glass Victus™ and Gorilla® Glass DXC, 10-point Touchscreen Gyro support
Memory	16GB (LPDDR5 6400Mhz) dual channel LPDDR5 8GBx2 on board memory
Audio	2 x 1W speakers with smart amp technology, Dolby Atmos®, Hi-Res Audio, AI Noise Cancellation
Wi-Fi / Bluetooth	WiFi 6E (802.11ax) / Bluetooth® v5.2
Storage	512GB (for Z1 Extreme config) +SD card slot UHS-2
I/O PORT	ROG XG Mobile interface (8PCI express lanes) and USB Type-C combo port (with USB 3.2 Gen2, DP 1.4 support) — (1x) 3.5mm Audio jack — (1x) Micro SD slot (UHS-II, Micro SD 4.0) — (1x)
Battery	40Wh
Adapter	65W PD adapter, supports pass through charging
Dimensions	280.44 * 111.18 * 21.22 mm 608g

PlayStation Studios on PC

PlayStation, in the past couple of years, has decided to spread the love and let PC players experience some of the best they have to offer. Currently, there are 12 PlayStation exclusive titles playable on PC. And they’re available on either Steam or the Epic Games Store.

In case you’re curious the available games are as follows:

Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
God of War (2018)
Uncharted: The Legacy of Thieves Collection
Destiny 2: Lightfall
Horizon: Zero Dawn
Returnal
Days Gone
HELLDIVERS
Predator Hunting Grounds
Sackboy: A big Adventure
The Last of Us Part 1

PlayStation Asia was kind enough to give us codes for three of the 12 titles now available on PC. Here’s how they ran on the ROG Ally.

Quick note: I played on Performance mode with brightness hovering at around 50-55% indoors in an air conditioned room.

Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered

Marvel’s Spider-Man, along with NBA 2K, is my comfort game. Whenever I feel frustrated or just having a bad day, I fire up either game. On Spider-Man, I just swing aimlessly around the digital Manhattan that Insomniac built.

It was such a delight to learn that I can do this on the go now too with Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered playing pretty darn well on the ROG Ally.

I had the framerate limiter turned on, maxing out at 60. Despite that, I only reached a max of 31 fps with dips to as low as 15. It looks bad on paper, but is much more tolerable during actual gameplay. The dips usually happened during cutscenes. Majority of the gameplay hovered around 25-30 fps.

I knew it was never gonna reach the level of detail and smoothness that I get on the PS5 and LG C2 combo that I usually play on. There was plenty of noticeable stuttering especially during the busier sections of the game. But I didn’t think any of it was game breaking.

Audio wasn’t as loud as I hoped it would be despite me playing in a pretty quiet room. I opted to pair it with Bluetooth earbuds (OnePlus Buds Pro 2) to get the most of the audio. There were no audio delays whatsoever which was a very welcome development.

My average play time was about one hour and 20 minutes. That’s with the battery going from 100% to 20% each time.

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

Coming from the same Studio and pretty much being essentially the same game, Spider-Man: Miles Morales didn’t run too differently from Spider-Man Remastered.

I played in the exact same conditions: Indoor room, AC on, started at 100%, performance mode, and medium brightness settings. Curiously, the frame dips happened more during open-world swinging and not as much during cutscenes. This could be because of the busier version of New York due to the events of the game being set during the Christmas season.

But the numbers weren’t too different. I still maxed at 31 fps, with most of the gameplay hovering around 25-30 fps, and the lowest dip coming in at 16fps.

Again, nothing game breaking and it is much more tolerable during gameplay. Naturally, you have to have your expectations set properly. The ROG Ally is, after all, a handheld gaming PC.

Average play time is around one hour and 25 minutes with about 75% to 80% of the battery life being consumed.

Returnal

Returnal is one of the titles I was most excited to try. I was curious about how the audio and controller rumble would translate to the ROG Ally. On the PS5, Audio and DualSense implementation are two of the game’s many strengths.

Due to audio cues on enemies’ locations, this game is best played with earbuds/headphones on. The experience on the ROG Ally isn’t quite 3D Audio on PS5 levels, but it’s as close as it gets.

The same can be said for the controller rumble. It’s not as precise nor finely implemented as the DualSense – that’s a unique feature after all. However, I was still thoroughly impressed with how the ROG Ally implemented rumble in certain sections of the game. The rumble effect is also a testament to how well-built the Ally is. Despite the internals shaking, the Ally never felt brittle nor that it would suddenly come apart.

Knowing this is a shooter game, I turned the framerate limiter off and reached highs of 115 fps. The framerate did dip to as low as 15 fps which is about the widest variance I got from any game I played using the Ally. This did affect gameplay especially during sections where I had to deal with multiple enemies.

I did experience plenty of crashes which isn’t ideal for a game like Returnal whose progress relies on you surviving as long as you can on a single run through. But this only happened during the first few minutes. After a while, it seemed like the ROG Ally had adjusted to the performance-demands of the game.

It took about an hour and 10 minutes before I had to plug-in the Ally to not lose a playthrough.

Remote Play?

Since the ROG Ally is essentially a handheld gaming PC, you can certainly install the Remote Play app on it. However, you can’t just immediately use the gamepad. To play Horizon: Forbidden West, and generally just run the app, I had to pair the Ally with my DualSense controller.

You can map the gamepad so that it works but mapping isn’t an activity I enjoy nor did I have the time (I had to return the review unit) to do it. Other reviewers pointed to using a third-party app called Chiaki. But again, I didn’t have time to test it. I did see gameplay of it though so it seems to be working just fine.

Knowing that you can do all these on the Ally actually makes you question the upcoming PlayStation Q handheld. Sure, the integration will likely be seamless. But its core function can already be replicated on other handhelds and handheld-like devices. I digress.

It’s worth noting that the relatively smooth experience I had with the ROG Ally was also aided by an internet connection that constantly hovers in the 250+ mbps range along with a Wi-Fi 6 router.

The ROG Ally is PlayStation friendly

If you want to know what it’s like playing PlayStation 5 games on a handheld device, the ROG Ally is easily one of the best devices to play with. The gameplay isn’t quite as smooth but you shouldn’t expect it to be. And yes, you’ll find yourself reaching for the power adapter after a little over an hour of playthrough. But being able to play AAA titles on a handheld device still feels crazy to me.

Having started gaming on a family computer and covering tech for a living, it’s still mind-blowing to me how far technology has come. The stuff I only dreamed of as a little fat gamer is coming true thanks to the ROG Ally and its contemporaries.

The ROG Ally Z1 Extreme retails for US$ 699. The ROG Ally Z1 variant retails for US$ 599. Pre-orders begin on May 11. It will be available for sale worldwide on June 13, 2023.