On 25 March, Apple will be holding a special event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino. Out of surprise, Apple silently dropped two new iPads on their website, including the long-waited update of the iPad Mini.
There is now a 3rd Generation iPad Air, which replaces the original 10.5-inch iPad Pro. Apple is bringing back the “iPad Air” name, because of its 6.1 mm thickness and 456 grams weight. It features a 10.5-inch Retina display with support for DCI-P3 wide color gamut and True Tone. However, the 120 Hz ProMotion support appears to remain a Pro lineup’s exclusive.
For the new iPad Mini (5th Generation), it still sports a 7.9-inch Retina display, supporting the DCI-P3 color gamut and True Tone. The chassis is 6.1 mm thick and weighs in at 300.5 grams.
Photo from Apple
Both iPads are equipped with the A12 Bionic SoC from Apple, which is the same processor for the iPhone XR and XS. It has a built-in Neural Engine, that enables real-time on-device machine learning for compatible applications. Apple Pencil can also be used on the new iPads, but only limited to the 1st generation Pencil. Instead of switching to USB Type-C, the iPads stay on using Apple’s propitiatory Lightning connector.
The new iPad Air and iPad Mini are available now on Apple Online Store, and next week in physical stores. The iPad Air with Wi-Fi and 64 GB of internal Storage starts at $499 USD (MSRP), while the iPad Mini starts at $399 USD (MSRP).
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Western Digital mostly focuses on developing either high-speed PCIe x4 SSD or high-capacity SATA SSD in recent years. Although SSDs’ prices are continuing dropping, it is still considered expensive to build a system solely on solid-state storage. Therefore, Western Digital releases the more budget-friendly WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD to bridge the gap.
The new WD Blue SN500 is more of a entry-level SSD (similar to the Kingston A1000 SSD we reviewed), even though it is utilizing the PCIe interface and NVMe protocol. Unlike the WD Black SN750, it only transfer its data through PCIe 3.0 x2 lanes, instead of x4. This reduces the sequential read/write speeds to 1700 MB/s and 1450 MB/s (or 1300 MB/s) respectively, which is still about three times faster than SATA-based SSDs.
You only have two capacities to choose from, 250 GB or 500 GB. The SN500 SSDs are rated at 150 TBW or 300 TBW, and come with a 5-year warranty. The 250 GB model is priced at $54.99 USD (MSRP), while the 500 GB at $77.99 USD (MSRP).
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Google releases the Chrome version 73 to the public on 12 March, which is the latest edition of this popular browser. One of the most noticeable update is the added support for dark mode on macOS users, later on Windows. It will now adjust the default theme, according to the operating systems’ color options. Enabling the feature is rather simple, and here is how to do it.
Enable Google Chrome Dark Mode on macOS
The process is really simple, as the browser will adjust its theme automatically based on your macOS’s appearance setting.
First, visit your System Preferences by either typing in Spotlight search or pressing the “Apple” logo on top. After that, click “General.
You should be able to see the “Appearance” settings on the top. Choose “Dark” to switch the system-wide user interface to a darker theme. This will also make compatible applications, such as Google Chrome version 73, to switch to the appropriate dark mode.
As long as you have installed the latest update for Google Chrome, the default theme should be able to switch to dark grey/black. This feature is currently available only on macOS, but should come to Windows very soon.
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It has been rumored that Google will be adding a dark mode to its Chrome browser earlier this year, which is an ongoing trend for most applications’ user interfaces. Now, with the release of Chrome version 73, dark mode is officially supported on macOS and later on Windows.
In Chrome 73, the browser will be automatically changes its default theme, depending on the operating systems’ color options. If you have enable dark mode on your computer, Chrome will now switch to a dark mode as well. The new dark theme is almost identical to the existing Incognito Mode, except for the extra Incognito icon. The address bar, tabs and menus are also applied with the darker color.
At the moment, the dark mode feature is only rolling out to macOS users, but it is expected to come very soon on Windows. In addition, Chrome 73 supports hardware media keys and Auto Picture-in-Picture on compatible services/apps. The update for desktop is available for download worldwide now.
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In December 2018, Google announced that their future plans with the in-house messaging apps, including Allo, Duo and Hangouts. With the increased investment in the built-in Android Messages and RCS support, Google would discontinue Allo sometime in March 2019.
On 12 March, Allo was officially shutting down. Some of the Allo’s useful features, such as Smart Reply, GIF and desktop support, have already been integrated into Android Messages. Google will now shift its focus in developing the RCS messaging service.
Allo’s chat is not available anymore, but you should still be able to back up your chat records and media. Inside the Allo app, there are options to export data from chats to a CSV file or zip file in the settings.
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NVIDIA debuted the 3D Vision with a series of compatible products, including wireless 3D glasses and some 120 Hz capable LCD displays. However, the concept of 3D gaming did not live up to people’s expectations. After 11 years, NVIDIA announces that they will soon stop providing driver support for 3D Vision.
According to the NVIDIA’s support page, the release 418 of the Game Ready Driver in April 2019 will be the last driver supporting 3D Vision. Critical driver issues will still be fixed by the team until April 2020. 3DTV Play, which allows to game in 3D on your televisions, will be included in the release 418 driver for free, and will not be available to separately afterwards. 3D Vision Video Player, on the other hand, will remain a standalone download through 2019.
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As NAND flash technologies becoming more mature and advance in recent years, solid-state drives are now much more affordable and capable. Comparing with traditional HDDs, SSDs offers significantly better performance, especially on random read/write operations. There are SSDs with different interfaces on the market, such as PCIe, SATA and USB, but which of them is the best choice?
Differences and Theoretical Bandwidth
Serial ATA (SATA)
SATA is the most widespread storage interface in the world, which can be seen in both SSDs and HDDs. It was originally designed for slower mechanical hard drives. There are several revisions over the years, but the latest iteration is the SATA 3. Its maximum bandwidth varies from 1.5 Gbps (~150 MB/s) up to 6 Gbps (~600 MB/s). The SATA cable only handles data transfer, and power requires a separate cable.
Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe)
PCIe is the successor to the older PCI bus standard, specifically designed for expansion cards and graphics cards. It uses multiple parallel data links to achieve higher throughput. Depending on your device and usage, you will have link width from one to 32 lanes. In the past few years, manufacturers start making SSDs in M.2 and Add-in card (AIC) form factors, that uses PCIe and newer NVMe protocol to transfer data. Unlike SATA, the connector also delivers power.
Currently, PCIe 3.0 standard is the most dominant version, while PCIe 4.0 is coming soon. For 3.0, a single lane has a maximum bandwidth at 8 GT/s or 7.88 Gbps (~985 MB/s). A SSD usually uses either two (x2) or four (x4) lanes, which equals to about 1.97 GB/s and 3.94 GB/s respectively.
Universal Serial Bus (USB)
Everyone should be familiar to the USB interface, as it is used for all kinds of devices, such as mice, keyboards and flash drives. USB-IF has recently announced the upcoming USB 3.2 standard. It can have bandwidth from 5 Gbps (~625 MB/s, USB 3.1 Gen 1) up to 20 Gbps (~2.5 GB/s, USB 3.2). A single USB cable will be able to manage both data and power.
From the benchmarks, we could see the SATA-based FURY RGB SSD maxed out the theoretical bandwidth of the SATA 3 interface, with sequential read/write speeds at over 500 MB/s. Random 4K operations were reasonable at around 300 MB/s. The USB-based KE31B SSD did slightly worse with sequential speeds at 400 MB/s and random speeds at 150 MB/s.
Because of the superior throughput of the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, the PX3480 SSD outperformed the other two SSDs by a respectable margin. It reached sequential read speeds upward of 2.5 GB/s and random 4K speeds of about 900 MB/s. Copying large-sized files, like videos and games, should complete in a matter of seconds (100 GB in about 40 seconds).
All SSDs, no matter which interfaces they are utilizing, have much better performance than a mechanical HDD, which would only get sequential speeds up to 200 MB/s and unbearable random 4K speeds less than 1 MB/s.
Ease of Use
Both SATA and PCIe-based SSDs are meant to install them inside a PC or laptop’s chassis, while USB SSDs are designed with portability in mind.
For 2.5-inch SSDs, you will have to prepare a free SATA port, data cable and power cable. If you have a PCIe SSD, you either need an unoccupied M.2 or PCIe slot on a compatible motherboard. No cable is required. Lastly, you typically only need the included USB Type-A or Type-C cable for data and power.
If you are going to install the SSD into a PC case, PCIe SSDs are more convenience because it will not create any cable clutter with the single connector. However, USB Portable SSDs have now becoming more popular, thanks to their compact sizes, durability and plug-and-play ability. It does not require users to reboot the computer before using the SSD. It is perfect for devices, that are hard to replace/swap their internal storage, such as gaming consoles and laptops/Ultrabooks.
Prices
Due to the ubiquitous availability of the SATA SSDs, they are generally the most affordable form of solid-state storage. At the time of this article, you could get a 1 TB SATA SSD from a reputable brand at around $130 USD to $160 USD (~$0.16 USD for each GB).
Depending on which USB standard and external enclosure you choose, a USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) external SSD costs around $180 USD to $200 USD for 1 TB (~$0.2 USD for each GB). If you want to have a reversible USB Type-C connector, you may need to pay a little bit more.
PCIe SSDs are considered as the fastest and more expensive storage at the moment. For a PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD, it is usually priced at about $230 USD to $250 USD for 1 TB (~$0.25 USD for each GB). There are some budget PCIe 3.0 x2 SSDs with slightly worse performance at around $150 USD to $170 USD for 1 TB (~$0.17 USD for each GB).
If you want to know more about the performance of different drives, please check out our reviews here.
You can purchase the SSDs from your local/online resellers or the links below from Amazon US.
Thanks KINGMAX for providing the PX3480 PCIe NVMe SSD and KE31B External SSD. (Review Sample)
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