For more information on these three devices, read the accompanying article: Intel’s New Xeon Chips Are More Like Small Pastries.

Video transcript:

Today on Tech Check, Intel’s powerhouse new processors, a dock for three 4K displays, and how to capture lighting in a Boxx.

Intel has launched the latest in its top-of-the-line Xeon family of workstation processors. Codenamed Sapphire Rapids, the Xeon W-3400 and Xeon W-2400 series of chips include what Intel calls a breakthrough new compute architecture that will provide massive performance for users such as engineers and data scientists.

The kingpin of the new launch is the Xeon w9-3495X, which offers up to 56 cores in a single socket and up to 105 megabytes of L3 cache. Intel says that adds up to improvements of 28 percent for single-thread and 120 percent for multithread performance compared to the previous generation.

The new Xeon processors are currently available for pre-order ranging from $359 to nearly $6,000.

VisionTek has launched a new 14-port docking station that supports not one, not two, but three 4K monitors. The VT7400 is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Chrome laptops and connects to the host via a single USB-C cable.

In addition to DisplayPorts and HDMI Ports, the VT7400 includes several USB-A and USB-C ports with up to 100W of power delivery for the host system. There’s also an Ethernet port, 3.5mm audio jack, and Kensington lock slot.

The VT7400 comes with a power adapter and USB-C host cable, and it’s available from VisionTek for $349.

Texas-based workstation maker Boxx has announced the latest update to its entry-level Apexx E3 desktop workstation. It now offers the latest 13^th generation of Intel Core processors.

One of the best features of the new Core chips is their clock speed, which maxes out at a lighting-fast 5.8GHz. Faster chips mean better performance for lightly-threaded applications like CAD, and Boxx says the Apexx E3 is purpose-built for users of Solidworks, Revit and more.

The Boxx Apexx E3 offers a variety of configurations and is available now for $2,400 and up.

Check out more tech on engineering.com.

The post Check Out Intel’s Sapphire Rapids appeared first on Engineering.com.

For more information on these three devices, read the accompanying article: Tech Check: Lenovo’s New Twist on Notebooks.

Video transcript:

Today on Tech Check, MacBooks get a boost, notebooks get a twist, and your desk is now a bicycle.

At CES this year Lenovo unveiled a laptop with a special twist—literally. The ThinkBook Plus Twist has a dual-sided display that swivels above the keyboard, giving users a choice of which side to use.

While one side has a fairly typical 13.3-inch OLED display, the flipside has something rather more interesting: a 12-inch e-Ink display like that found in many e-readers. e-Ink is extremely power efficient and easier on the eyes than other displays, and Lenovo thinks users will love it for reading PDFs, writing text documents, and even taking digital notes.

With its unique choice of displays, the ThinkBook Plus Twist is a genuinely novel hybrid that could allow engineers to ditch their e-books, their paper notebooks, and their ultrabooks for one versatile device. The Twist will be available this summer for $1,650.

Apple has announced two new processors based on the architecture of its M2 chip, but bigger. The new M2 Pro and M2 Max will power the upcoming iteration of Apple’s MacBook Pro laptops and Mac Mini desktops.

The new chips come with 12 CPU cores and up to 38 GPU cores in the M2 Max, which can also be configured with up to 96GB of unified memory and 400GB/s of memory bandwidth. Apple claims the new chips provide 30 percent faster graphics speeds than the previous generation M1 Pro and M1 Max.

Both the M2 Pro and M2 Max will be available in new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros, which start at $2,000. The M2 and M2 Pro will also be offered in the new Mac Mini, which starts at $600 for the M2 version.

What’s better than a standing desk? A riding desk. Acer’s new eKinekt BD 3 bike desk shows that work and play don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

The bike desk is designed to let users stay active throughout the work day. It offers an adjustable bike resistance, seat height, and desk position so users can transition from a gentle pedal to a tour de France.

And all that kinetic energy won’t go to waste. The bike desk has two USB-A ports and one USB-C port that can be used to charge phones and other devices purely with pedaling power. Acer says that constant cycling at 60 RPM will generate 75 watts. The eKinekt BD 3 will be available in June for $1,000.

Check out more tech on engineering.com.

The post Lenovo’s Intriguing e-Ink Experiment! appeared first on Engineering.com.

A Rock Solid Tablet

Your office can be anywhere, says Juniper Systems, a Utah-based provider of rugged mobile devices. The company’s latest rugged tablet, the Mesa Pro, extends that credo to field engineers running CAD programs, viewing construction plans, mapping and more.

The Mesa Pro rugged tablet. (Source: Juniper Systems.)

The Mesa Pro rugged tablet features a 10.1-inch, 1920×1200 display that Juniper Systems says offers best-in-class sunlight viewability for those bright days in the wild. The tablet runs Windows 11 and can be configured with multiple processors up to an 11^th-Gen Intel Core i7. Users can also configure the memory (8GB or 16GB) and storage (128GB to 1TB) and even customize the rugged tablet with a company logo or colors.

The real selling point of the Mesa Pro is its durability. Juniper Systems says the rugged tablet is designed to meet MIL-STD-810H test procedures for altitude, temperature, humidity, vibration, shock and more. The touchscreen is made of chemically-strengthened Dragontrail High Ion-Exchange cover glass that Juniper Systems says provides excellent impact and scratch resistance. It works with a stylus and gloves and even works in wet conditions.

The Mesa Pro is available directly from Juniper Systems, though the company does not list prices on its website. Third-party retailers sell the rugged tablet at prices starting from $2,795.

ColorPro on the Go

ViewSonic’s latest portable display is both light and dark in all the right ways. The 15.6-inch ColorPro VP16-OLED weighs just 2.2 pounds and achieves a 100,000-to-1 contrast ratio thanks to its true-black OLED panel. Made for color-critical work, the VP16-OLED is Pantone Validated and provides 100% DCI-P3 coverage with a color accuracy below two Delta E, meaning any deviations are virtually indistinguishable to the human eye. The portable display has an HD resolution of 1920×1080 pixels.

The ViewSonic ColorPro VP16-OLED portable display. (Source: ViewSonic.)

The VP16-OLED includes two USB-C ports, one Micro HDMI port, and a 3.5mm audio out as well as integrated speakers. It’s built with a foldable stand that allows users to position it at five angles, according to ViewSonic. The stand also includes an integrated tripod mount. The display comes with a protective cover that doubles as a shading hood to block interference from other light sources.

The ColorPro VP16-OLED is available through ViewSonic’s website for $572.

Outdo Your Outlets

Engineers are hungry for power, and Huntkey is serving them a feast with its new SMD407C multi-plug outlet extender equipped with four AC power outlets, two USB-A ports and one USB-C port.

The Huntkey SMD407C multi-plug outlet extender. (Source: Huntkey.)

The highlight of Huntkey’s outlet extender is its high power delivery: the USB-C port provides up to 30 watts of charging power—among the highest in its class and enough to charge many electronic devices up to 60 percent in about 30 minutes, according to Huntkey.

The Huntkey outlet extender features a “cat ear” design that provides a convenient cradle for mobile devices as they charge—a detail sure to satisfy design engineers and feline fans alike. The SMD407C multi-plug outlet extender is available on Amazon for $20.

The post Expand Your Office With These Portable, Powerful Devices appeared first on Engineering.com.

(If you don’t feel like reading about them, we made a video for you. You’re welcome.)

The Ultimate Peripheral?

Wearable tech company Vuzix announced this month the availability of its lightweight M400C smart glasses. The augmented reality (AR) glasses present a heads-up display to users in manufacturing, construction and other industries that could, for example, show a checklist to a quality assurance inspector. The glasses can also stream audio and video for remote collaboration.

The Vuzix M400C smart glasses. (Source: Vuzix.)

The M400C smart glasses have the same form factor as Vuzix’s flagship M400 glasses, but unlike the standalone M400, the M400C glasses require a USB-C connection to a phone or computer. The upside is that without the need for an internal battery, the smart glasses manage an impressively light 68 grams.

“The M400C is the ultimate peripheral… the ideal replacement for external or hand-held monitors, cameras or other recording devices or 2-way audio devices,” said Vuzix CEO Paul Travers in a company news release. Ultimate peripheral may be a slight exaggeration, but the enthusiasm is warranted as AR wearables seem to be poised for a breakthrough.

Vuzix is currently taking orders for the M400C smart glasses from customers in the U.S., Canada, UK, EU and Japan. The company has put an ultimate price on its ultimate peripheral: $1,299.99.

Looking Hot

Sometimes feeling the heat isn’t enough—you need to see it, too. Now you can view heat on the go with what infrared imaging company FLIR calls the “first truly wireless mobile infrared camera,” the FLIR ONE Edge Pro. The new thermal camera is a small, phone-powered device that connects over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to transmit infrared images from up to 30 meters away.

The FLIR ONE Edge Pro wireless infrared camera. (Source: FLIR.)

The FLIR ONE Edge Pro has a spring-loaded clip so users can attach it to most phones and tablets. The infrared camera provides a thermal resolution of 160×120 pixels and measures temperatures ranging from -20°C to 400°C (–4°F to 752°F). An image processing feature called MSX combines the thermal images with detail from a visible camera to provide enhanced clarity and detail, according to FLIR. The wireless camera has a 90-minute battery life but can be charged to roughly half capacity in 15 minutes.

Available for order on FLIR’s website, the FLIR ONE Edge Pro costs $549.99.

RDNA Gets an Upgrade

Processor maker AMD announced two new graphics cards earlier this month: the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX and Radeon RX 7900 XT. Built on AMD’s next-generation RDNA 3 graphics architecture, the two new cards achieve 54 percent more performance per watt than the previous generation, and even bigger boosts to AI acceleration and raytracing performance, according to AMD.

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 Series graphics cards. (Source: AMD.)

What’s the secret of RDNA 3’s success? Chiplets. Just as AMD did for its most recent CPU architecture, the company redesigned its graphics architecture around discrete, specialized chiplets which divvy up the duty of graphics computation and memory control. The chiplets are connected through AMD’s Infinity Link interface, which the company says provides up to 5.3TB/s of interconnect bandwidth. The 58-billion transistor GPU die combines a mix of 5nm and 6nm process nodes.

The chiplet-based RDNA 3 GPU. (Source: AMD.)

The new Radeon RX 7900 Series graphics cards will be available from AMD starting December 13th. The 7900 XTX (24GB of graphics memory) will cost $999 and the 7900 XT (20GB) will cost $899.

The post Tech Check: Smart Glasses are Looking Hot appeared first on Engineering.com.

MSI has sponsored this hardware review, but engineering.com conducted all testing independently.

Engineering.com typically reviews laptops made for engineers. Workstations, they are often called, because they are made for serious work. But after hours, these computers could just as easily be used for serious play, and their consumer counterparts are made for just that. Gaming laptops, they are usually called, because PlayStation was taken.

The MSI Raider GE76 is a line of 17-inch gaming laptops released in January that’s packed with 12^th-gen Intel processors and NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics cards. These specs aren’t far off from workstation grade, and MSI believes the Raider GE76 goes beyond gaming to support the workflows of creators as well—including engineers.

Video Review of the MSI Raider GE76

Check out our video review of the MSI Raider GE76 below. For full details of our experience with the laptop, read the article that follows.

Overview of the MSI Raider GE76

On the inside, the MSI Raider GE76 laptops have a lot in common with mobile workstations, packing high-end processors with a focus on graphics performance. The laptops include the latest generation of Intel processors, notable for a new hybrid architecture consisting of two core types: performance-cores (P-cores) and efficiency-cores (E-cores). Graphics in the Raider GE76 are handled by GeForce RTX cards, NVIDIA’s mainstream graphics cards (see this article for differences between NVIDIA’s mainstream and pro graphics cards).

We tested the MSI Raider GE76 12UGS-268CA, which includes an Intel Core i7-12700H processor with 6 P-cores and 8 E-cores, as well as an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics card with 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM. It has a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD and 32GB of the latest 4800MHz DDR5 memory. This configuration is available from Best Buy Canada for $2,899.99 CAD.

On the outside, the MSI Raider GE76 looks like a gaming laptop. The titanium blue casing is characterized by sharp angles and bold lines, and MSI’s fierce dragon logo is emblazoned on the back. The aesthetic is completed by a colorful backlit keyboard and a prominent lighting strip along the entire bottom edge of the chassis.

The 17.3-inch display of our MSI Raider GE76 is another giveaway of its gaming focus. The 1920×1080 screen has a blazing refresh rate of 360Hz, far above anything in the mobile workstation market which almost exclusively employs 60Hz displays. (Only recently have some mobile workstations begun offering 120Hz variants.) While all Canadian configurations of the Raider GE76 are 1920×1080 and 360Hz, the U.S. models have four resolution and refresh rate options (1920×1080 at 360Hz or 144Hz, 2560×1440 at 240Hz and 3840×2160 at 120Hz). No displays offer touch capability.

The MSI Raider GE76 includes a wide variety of I/O ports—more than some professional mobile workstations. It has two USB-A 3.2 Gen1 ports, one USB-A 3.2 Gen2 and one USB-C 3.2 Gen2 along with one Thunderbolt 4, one HDMI 2.1 and one Mini DisplayPort 1.4, one RJ-45 port and one SD7.0 card reader, and one 3.5mm audio jack. These are located along the left, right and back edges of the keyboard alongside several fan vents.

(Source: MSI.)

The MSI Raider GE76 has a 99.9Wh battery, which is just shy of the flight limit (you can’t board an airplane with a battery bigger than 100Wh). Our unit came with a 280W power adapter, but other configurations ship with a 330W or 240W adapter. The system weighs 6.39 lbs, which is fairly light for a 17-inch laptop.

Below are the specs of our review unit, the MSI Raider GE76 12UGS-268CA.

The MSI Raider GE76 User Experience

With its cutting-edge specs, the MSI Raider GE76 feels impressively fast and responsive when navigating from task to task in Windows 11. It boots up in no time. There were, however, a few times when I noticed a minor input delay from the keyboard and mouse, typically after waking from sleep. And on battery power, especially when running low, the system slows down noticeably. The review unit also crashed on me twice, about a week apart: once while installing a benchmark application and once again while running it. We reported this issue to MSI, who said they were unable to replicate the problem on other test units, suggesting it may have been a software issue rather than a hardware one.

The SteelSeries-branded keyboard (it’s a gaming accessory company) is comfortable to type on and includes a number pad and shared function/system key row. Each key has dedicated RGB lighting which can be individually customized by the user in the pre-installed SteelSeries GG application. Colors and effects can also be customized for the lighted strip along the bottom edge. While the strip worked as promised, the keyboard lighting turned off intermittently and I could not find a reliable fix.

(Source: MSI.)

The Raider GE76’s 280W power adapter is massive, and it will add about two pounds to your backpack. The Raider GE76 plugs in on the back, but I found that the cable to the adapter was a bit too short for my liking.

As with most laptops that incorporate power-hungry graphics cards, the MSI Raider GE76 includes fans that can get noisy under a heavy processing load. The fans typically hum at a tolerable level, but at their loudest you will definitely hear (and feel) them at work. If that doesn’t bother you, you can force the fans to run at full speed with a dedicated key on the function/system row.

The included MSI Center application allows users of the Raider GE76 to monitor and control system performance and adjust system settings. MSI Center also includes downloadable features such as Sound Tune, which MSI says provides AI-powered noise cancellation for better voice calls. I found it odd that users must scroll through and accept a lengthy privacy policy to use MSI Center.

In MSI Center, users can toggle on or off the Raider GE76’s webcam, which has a respectable 1920×1080 resolution. Although there is no physical privacy shutter on the camera, a (somewhat distracting) flashing white LED indicates when the camera is in use.

The 360Hz display of the MSI Raider GE76 aims squarely at gamers, who often seek high refresh rate displays as a means to boost their reaction times. However, its advantages to engineers are unclear. Design work rarely demands split second responses. At best, some users might notice smoother motion when scrolling through web pages or rotating 3D models. I didn’t notice the difference myself, so I would opt for a higher resolution and a lower refresh rate.

Performance Benchmarks

As of this review, we have updated to the latest versions of our standard suite of performance benchmarks. As such, most of the results we obtained for the MSI Raider GE76 are not comparable with results from previous reviews. When available, we provide comparisons with public results available at time of writing.

Each of these benchmarks was run three times, and the best score achieved by each subtest is reported below.  

SPECviewperf 2020 v3.0

This benchmark is a test of graphical performance across a variety of common engineering applications.

SPECviewperf 2020 v3.0 (2K)

Compared with the published results for 10 different workstations on SPEC.org, the results for the MSI Raider GE76 are within range for all but one viewset: snx-04 (Siemens NX), where the Raider GE76 falls well below the minimum published score.

SPECworkstation 3.1

This benchmark is a comprehensive test of workstation performance across several industry categories.

SPECworkstation 3.1

Compared with the published results for nine different workstations on SPEC.org, the results for the MSI Raider GE76 are within range for all industries—and near the top of the pack in General Operations and GPU Compute.

Cinebench R23.2

This benchmark is a test of CPU rendering performance.

Cinebench R23.2

Here are the in-benchmark comparisons with other systems:

PassMark PerformanceTest 10.2

This is a general benchmark of system performance.

PassMark PeformanceTest 10.2

Comparisons with other systems are given in-benchmark as a percentile:

PCMark 10 Extended

This benchmark is a test of system performance across common office use cases.

PCMark 10 Extended

Compared with the laptop results reported on 3DMark.com, the MSI Raider is above average in every subtest, with an aggregate score not far below the highest reported.

3DMark

This benchmark is a test of graphics performance targeting gaming applications.

3DMark

Compared with the laptop results reported on 3DMark.com, the MSI Raider is above average in each of these tests.

Battery Test

We tested the longevity of the MSI Raider GE76’s battery with PCMark 10’s battery benchmarks for gaming, modern office applications and idle use.

The gaming battery benchmark provides a lower limit on battery performance by measuring the lifetime under a constant heavy load. We ran this test with the battery profile set to Best Performance, no Battery Saver mode and 100 percent screen brightness. The battery lasted for 1.25 hours.

The modern office battery benchmark provides a view of battery performance for common office tasks: word processing, video conferencing and web browsing. We ran this test with the battery profile set to Balanced, Battery Saver mode at 20 percent, and 75 percent screen brightness. The battery lasted for 5.3 hours.

The idle battery benchmark provides an upper limit of battery performance, testing how long the battery lasts with no other applications running and the screen kept on. We ran this test with the battery profile set to Best Power Efficiency, constant Battery Saver mode, 0 percent screen brightness, and Wi-Fi off. The battery lasted for 7.87 hours.

Given the size of the Raider GE76’s battery, I hoped the upper limit would be higher than 7 hours and 52 minutes. But with its large 360Hz display, this is not an entirely surprising result. While 5 hours and 18 minutes of typical office use is not quite a full workday, it’s long enough to get a good bit of work done without worrying where your charger is.

Display Test

We tested the display of the MSI Raider GE76 with a Spyder5ELITE colorimeter. It covers 92 percent of the sRGB color space, 71 percent of Adobe RGB, and 70 percent of P3. Its peak brightness is 268.2 nits with a contrast ratio of 960:1. It has an average color accuracy of 2.13 Delta E. These values are on the low end compared to other laptops we’ve reviewed recently.

Summary

We set out to determine whether the MSI Raider GE76, a laptop crafted with gamers in mind, could serve the needs of engineers. The answer is yes, but with caveats. While its performance in professional applications is rarely top tier, the Raider GE76 achieves acceptable benchmark scores in several of the most popular 3D software packages (except for Siemens NX, a benchmark which the Raider GE76 bombs). In general benchmarks, the 12^th-gen Intel CPU, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics card, DDR5 memory and PCIe Gen 4 SSD provide exceptional system performance.

With its price tag of $2,899.99 CAD, the MSI Raider GE76 is not exactly cheap—but compared to the leading mobile workstation brands, which can cost much more for similar (but last-gen) specs, it’s a good deal. That difference in price is accounted for by the Raider GE76’s mainstream GeForce GPUs (which are cheaper than the pro cards), as well as a lack of enterprise features typically available in professional workstations. If that’s not a dealbreaker for you, you can get decent performance for a lot less money with the Raider GE76.

To learn more about the MSI Raider GE76, visit MSI Canada’s website.

The post A Gaming Laptop Fit for Work? MSI Raider GE76 Review appeared first on Engineering.com.

The Artec Leo is the latest handheld 3D scanner from Luxembourg-based Artec 3D. The company describes the Leo as “a quantum leap” above its best-selling Eva handheld scanner, in terms of both functionality and scanning speed.

The biggest upgrade is that the Artec Leo includes an on-board NVIDIA GPU for real-time processing—an industry first, according to Artec. This processor powers Leo’s built-in scanning software, so there’s no need to connect the Leo to a computer in order to scan. Users can view their scans in real-time on the Leo’s adjustable touchscreen display. For post-processing, the Leo’s 3D scan data can be transferred over Wi-Fi. The Leo is powered by swappable lithium ion batteries, making it a fully wireless handheld 3D scanner.

We couldn’t help but ask for a hands-on look. Artec 3D sent us a review unit of the Artec Leo so we could see it scan first-hand.

Watch our video review of the Artec Leo to see the handheld 3D scanner in action. For full details, read the article below.

The Artec Leo is a serious piece of equipment. We’ve looked at entry-level 3D scanners before (like the Matter and Form V2) but the Artec Leo is the first industrial-grade scanner we’ve reviewed, and it shows right off the bat. The Leo comes in a heavy-duty hard case with slots for the scanner, cables, and spare batteries that practically begs you to take the Leo into the field. The cherry on top is the hardcore wooden crate Artec uses for shipping.

Industrial-grade equipment doesn’t always look pretty, but the Artec Leo has a sleek and modern design (though it does remind me a bit of a cartoon robot). The top half of the Leo includes dual lenses on the business end and a 5” touchscreen on the other. The touchscreen is on a hinge so users can adjust the angle when pointing the Leo downwards. There’s also a microSD slot on the underside of the head to augment the 256GB of on-board storage.

The grip of the Leo includes a red trigger for starting and stopping scans and making you feel like you’re wielding a powerful laser weapon (but you’re not; the Leo is a Class 1 Laser product and thus completely safe for humans). The base of the Artec Leo includes a power port, Ethernet port, and the battery compartment.

(Image courtesy of Artec3D.)

The Artec Leo is designed for medium-to-large objects, from a gearbox up to an automobile. You can use the Leo for objects as small as a coffee cup and as large as a small boat, but at these edges Artec 3D offers other scanners to do the job better.

The Artec Leo targets medium-large objects. (Image courtesy of Artec 3D.)

The Leo offers a 3D resolution up to 0.2mm and accuracy up to 0.1mm. It’s got a speedy 3D reconstruction rate of 80 frames per second (for comparison, the Artec Eva scans at 16 FPS). This means that users can scan as quickly as they can run (literally—as long as you point the scanner properly and feel like a workout). Like all of Artec’s scanners, the Leo is target-free, which means users don’t have to place special targets around their objects to orient the scanner.

The Artec Leo includes an NVIDIA Jetson TX1 processor, which allows for real-time 3D reconstruction using built-in software. Consequently, you won’t need to connect the Leo to a computer while scanning. Nor will you need to connect it to power, since it’s powered by a swappable battery. In Artec’s words, the Leo is tetherless, which in my words, is good.

The Artec Leo is an industrial-grade scanner and comes with an industrial-grade price tag of $29,800 (recommended retail price; may vary by region). For post-processing, you’ll need to license Artec Studio 15 editing software for $1200 per year.

How to 3D Scan With the Artec Leo

Despite the fact that the Artec Leo is a handheld scanner with no wires and a trigger that begs to be squeezed, there’s much more to a successful 3D scan than simply pointing-and-shooting. I learned that lesson from Artec 3D’s Vadim Zaremba, a Technical Support Engineer who graciously (and patiently) led me through the entire scanning process.

“You have to plan ahead a little bit,” Zaremba explained.

As it turns out, 3D scanning is a bit of an art, and like all art, the first thing to consider is your subject. In our case, our subject is our object and our objective is to scan our subject (before you object, I won’t subject you to any more frivolous wordplay).

You can 3D scan many objects with the Artec Leo, but there are some limits. We’ve already discussed the optimal object size for the Leo (ranging from gearbox to automobile) but size isn’t everything. We must also account for the geometry and texture of our object.

Let’s pause for a moment to understand how the Artec Leo works. The Leo is a structured-light scanner, which sends out a known pattern of light and observes how it’s deformed to calculate the geometry of an object. Depending on the object you’re trying to scan, this doesn’t always work well. Transparent and reflective materials can be difficult, and may require a coat of scanning spray to make them scan-able (in a pinch, deodorant powder spray does the trick).

Applying scanning spray to a transparent object. (Image courtesy of Artec 3D.)

Each time the Artec Leo sends out a structured light pattern and calculates geometry, it creates what’s called a frame. The Leo scans at 80 frames per second. However, the Leo needs a way to stitch all these frames together. To accomplish this, many structured-light 3D scanners use special targets as a common reference point between frames. These must be placed around the object prior to scanning. The Artec Leo, however, is a target-less scanner, and uses a combination of geometry and texture information for combining different frames. While this is a convenient feature, it means the Artec Leo has trouble scanning symmetric geometry with an invariant or repetitive texture. For example, a flat white wall or a smooth metal cylinder would not provide enough geometry or texture details to serve as reference points between frames.

Fortunately, there are workarounds for such objects. You could add texture information, such as taking a sharpie and scribbling all over the wall (if anyone gets mad at you for this, scan them until they go away). You could also add extraneous geometry, such as surrounding your smooth metal cylinder with figurines from your desk. A textured background works well too, like putting your object on a patterned tablecloth as you scan. Note that while the Leo scans in color, it can’t use colors as a reference, so try to picture all your references in black and white to predict if they’ll work (e.g., red and green stickers would not be differentiable to the Leo). In general, the more geometry and texture information you can add to your scene, the better your scan will work. 

Adding masking tape for extra texture to an object with repetitive features. (Image courtesy of Artec 3D.)

Surely now we’re ready to point-and-shoot, right? Not quite. There’s a few different settings on the Artec Leo to understand first. The most important one is the ON setting, which you can activate by pressing the power button to the left of the touchscreen. Make sure you’ve inserted the battery first (you can also power the Leo directly through the 90W adaptor if you’re willing to tether yourself to an outlet). First time users of the Artec Leo will need to sign in with an Artec 3D account.

One of the Leo’s marquee features is its support of Artec HD Mode, which is driven by a proprietary neural engine to deliver much more detailed 3D data than the standard SD Mode. Leo is one of only two Artec 3D scanners that offers HD mode (the other is the Artec Eva).

SD Mode (left) versus HD Mode (right). (Image courtesy of Artec 3D.)

HD Mode is off by default on the Artec Leo, so users who want the highest possible scan quality will want to turn it on in the settings. You can choose what portion of frames you want captured in HD, from 1/8 to all. The more HD frames captured, the higher the scan quality, but the bigger the file size and the more post-processing required. For most use cases, 1/8 HD is sufficient. A similar setting, “Optimize project size,” will search for and discard repetitive frames while scanning. Unless you’re scanning highly reflective surfaces and need extra texture info, you’ll probably want this setting enabled (both HD Mode and “Optimize project size” are off by default).

Scanning settings on the Artec Leo.

Finally, we’re ready to pull the trigger and start scanning. But it’s still not just point-and-shoot—we need to do it properly. There are two important things we must keep track of: distance from the object and angle of the scanner.

You want to make sure you keep an even distance between the scanner and the object, roughly a meter. There’s a range setting that can be turned as high as 1.8m to capture background information, though the object itself should always be about a meter from the scanner. Helpfully, the Artec Leo includes a distance overlay that reveals in real-time if you’re keeping the right distance—green is good, red is too close, and blue is too far.

Distance overlay on the Artec Leo. Green is a good distance (~1m), red is too close, and blue is too far.

As for angle, you want the scanner to be normal to the surface of your object. The closer you are to 90 degrees, the better the geometry data you capture. On some surfaces, this can result in a glare from the Leo’s LEDs. In these cases, it’s good to capture a few alternative angles which the Artec Studio post-processing software can use to automatically reduce glare.

Pressing the Leo’s trigger once opens a scan preview. Pressing it again starts scanning (no need to hold it down). Now you can simply go around the object and build up your 3D scan. The distance overlay will help you keep the right distance. Make sure to keep your object in the center of the touchscreen display—if you lose track of your object, the scan will automatically stop and you must re-center and pull the trigger to resume.

In addition to the distance overlay, there’s a quality overlay that turns green on areas of the object that have been sufficiently scanned and turns red on areas that need more attention. By toggling between the distance and quality overlays, you can clearly see how your scan is going and when you’ve scanned enough. The Artec Leo is 5.4lbs with the battery, but don’t worry if your arm gets tired. As long as you don’t change the geometry of your scene, you can take a break and come back to scanning whenever you’re ready.

Quality overlay on the Artec Leo. The greener the area, the better the scan data.

Scanning with the Artec Leo takes a bit of practice, but eventually you get the hang of keeping the distances and angles consistent. The touchscreen is great for keeping track of the scan, and it can angle downward by about 70 degrees for when you’re scanning the top of an object. However, other angles can be tricky to see properly. Thankfully, you can cast the Leo screen to a browser on your computer simply by entering its IP address, giving you a bigger screen that doesn’t move along with the Leo. The cast can lag a bit depending on your Wi-Fi, but generally it’s a useful tool.

Casting the Leo screen to a browser with quality overlay on.

I was quite impressed with the battery life of the Artec Leo. Each full scan, including transferring the data for post processing, only drains about 10 percent of the battery. Artec claims the Leo battery is good for up to 6 hours of scanning, though I suspect you’ll never quite hit that amount. Regardless, with a spare battery or two, you could spend the whole day scanning (though spare batteries aren’t cheap; Artec sells them for $850 a pop).

Using Artec Studio 15 for Post-Processing 3D Scans

Once your scan is complete, the next step is post-processing with Artec Studio 15. There are three ways to transfer 3D scan data from the Artec Leo to Artec Studio 15: over Wi-Fi (direct connection or through your network), using an Ethernet cable (direct or through your network), or using a MicroSD card (this method does not currently support HD Mode data). Since my computer didn’t have an Ethernet port and I had HD scan data, I used the direct Wi-Fi connection.

It’s important that your post-processing computer is powerful enough to run Artec Studio 15. You’ll need a GPU, and a fairly good one, along with at least 32GB of ram. My regular laptop was not up to snuff, but luckily I had at hand the Asus ProArt StudioBook One with an NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 and 64GB of RAM. Here’s a list of several laptops and their tested performance in Artec Studio 15. You’ll also want to make sure Windows and all graphics drivers are up-to-date.

Artec Studio 15 is a sophisticated application, and we can’t cover everything (“It’s like trying to learn Photoshop in an hour,” Zaremba commented during our training session). But your scan won’t be anywhere close to finished without some post-processing, so we’ll go over the basics.

Start by importing your 3D scan data. I didn’t have a gearbox or a small boat lying around, so I scanned my guitar. After import, Artec Studio 15 looks something like this:

Artec Studio 15 with imported 3D scan data of an acoustic guitar.

It looks like an overlapping mess because I did two different scans of the guitar, one for the top half and one for the bottom. The top half scan—the first subfolder in the object panel on the right—is itself subdivided into two scans, as I stopped and started once while scanning. We can combine both halves of the guitar together as long as there is some shared geometry—in this case, the sides of the guitar. Note that the guitar was placed on a colorful carpet to serve as an additional texture reference.

Two separate scan groups containing three 3D scans are displayed simultaneously. Users can toggle visibility with the checkmarks in the object panel.

One of the most important things we must do is a process called global registration, which takes the frames and precisely aligns them to a single coordinate system. We do this for both of our scans (top and bottom of the guitar). There’s a number of parameters we can adjust here, depending on the specific scan and how long we’re willing to wait for the algorithm, but I’ll leave it to the Artec Studio manual to elaborate. If you see a problem after registration (as in the picture below), you hit undo, adjust the parameters, and try again until it works (failing that, you’ll have to re-scan).

Global registration in Artec Studio 15. Note the alignment error (bottom left of guitar) after the first attempt. Increasing the key frame ratio solved this error but increased processing time.

Now we’re ready to remove the extraneous detail from our scans—namely, the carpet. Artec Studio provides a set of handy editing tools, including an eraser, which we’ll use to isolate the guitar in both of our scans.

The Eraser tool in Artec Studio 15.

Now it’s time to align the top and bottom of our guitar. The process is easy—we simply pick pairs of points representing geometry shared by our two scans, such as the tip of the headstock. With three such pairs, Artec Studio has enough info to line up the scans.

Aligning two related scans in Artec Studio 15.

With our scans aligned, we must do another round of global registration to ensure that the frames between our scans are in their proper spot. Once that’s done, if there’s any little bits of geometry floating around that we didn’t erase, we can run the data through an outlier removal filter to clean it up.

Before (left) and after (right) outlier removal. Note the differences around the edges of the guitar.

The next step is what Artec refers to as the most interesting part of processing: the creation of a polygonal 3D model (aka mesh) from the scan data. In Artec Studio 15, this process is called fusion. Again, there are a few different parameters to play with here, and we can’t cover them all. The most important parameter is the 3D resolution of our mesh, which corresponds to the mean distance between points (in millimeters). The lower this value, the sharper the mesh.

Note that the 3D resolution is limited by our 3D scan error rate, an internal parameter which is shown in the object panel on the right of Artec Studio. The higher the scan error rate, the coarser we must set our mesh resolution (Artec provides a table matching error rate to mesh resolution, though as of writing it does not include the Leo nor HD Mode). For the guitar, the max error rate was 0.4, so I selected a mesh resolution of 0.5mm.

Performing sharp fusion in Artec Studio 15 with a 3D resolution of 0.5mm. Note the scan error rates of 0.4, 0.3, and 0.3 in the panel on the right.

After fusion, the guitar looks much sharper.

The result of sharp fusion is the mesh of the guitar.

In the properties panel for the fusion mesh (bottom right), we can see it has a polygon count of just over 5 million. We probably don’t need quite that many polygons, so we can use another tool called fast mesh simplification to reduce our count by about two thirds (a rough heuristic, dependent on object size and level of detail). This helps us keep our file size down and doesn’t impact the geometry much.

Simplifying from 5,050,719 polygons to 1,500,002.

We’re almost done now. The final step is to add the texture information back to our mesh in the form of a standard UV map. We can generate this map with the texture data from the original scans, or use another source of texture data if we have one.

N.B.: A couple times I prematurely started the texture algorithm, but when I tried to cancel it, Artec Studio would hang indefinitely. I had to force quit the program and ended up losing much of my progress. I say this both to humble myself (this somehow happened to me twice) and to remind you to save your work often.

Texture mapping in Artec Studio 15.

One option in texture mapping is to reduce glare, which the algorithm can only do if it has sufficient scan data without glare (for shiny surfaces, this is why you want to scan at a few different angles besides the standard 90 degrees).

Texture mapping without glare reduction (left) and with glare reduction (right).

Once the texture mapping is finished, we can make basic adjustments like brightness, saturation, and contrast.

And with that, we’re past post-processing. All that’s left to do is to export our mesh, which we can do in a number of file formats including .ply, .stl, .wrl, .obj, .asc, .aop, .ptx, .x, .xyzrgb, or .e57. I went with .obj for the guitar. The result is not perfect—you can see some geometry that didn’t quite align properly on the bottom left of the guitar—but for a 3D scanning novice, I’m pleased with the result. That’s my guitar alright; I can practically hear the flat chords and out-of-time strumming.

Conclusion

In an international market saturated with handheld 3D scanners, the Artec Leo differentiates itself through its convenience. With its NVIDIA processor, local scanning software, touchscreen display, Wi-Fi connectivity, and swappable battery, the Artec Leo is a true wireless scanner. However, these features also make the Leo heavier than most handheld scanners, which can be tiring for the user.

The Leo also delivers on scan quality, with high accuracy (0.1mm) and fine resolution (0.2mm) thanks to Artec 3D’s AI-powered HD Mode. Users requiring even greater accuracy must turn to other scanners or combine the Leo with a third-party photogrammetry kit.

With a $30,000 price tag, the Artec Leo is in the mid-to-high end of handheld 3D scanners, which range from a few thousand dollars to fifty thousand or more. You’ll also need to factor into the price Artec Studio 15 licensing costs ($1200/year) and accessories like spare batteries ($850).

It’s also important to consider the time it takes to learn how to operate the Leo and use Artec Studio 15. If you’re new to 3D scanning, it’s going to take at least a few scans before you feel comfortable with the process and can start getting the best possible results. There’s an art to it, and all artists need practice.

Whether or not the Artec Leo is the best 3D scanner for you depends entirely on your needs. What kind of objects do you need to scan, and for what purpose? What level of accuracy and resolution do you require? Do you need portability or do you plan to scan all objects in one environment? What’s your budget?

If the Artec Leo suits your scanning needs, it’s an easy recommendation. It’s well-built and easy to use given minor training and a bit of practice. The same is true of the Leo’s post-processing software, Artec Studio 15. HD Mode provides high resolution scans with excellent texture and geometry detail, and users have fine control over the balance between scan quality and processing requirements. The Leo’s completely wireless convenience is something I would certainly miss in other handheld 3D scanners.

For more information on the Artec Leo, visit Artec3D.com.

The post The Art of 3D Scanning: Review of the Artec Leo Handheld 3D Scanner appeared first on Engineering.com.

In a world of remote work, remote workstations make a world of difference. To prove it, workstation manufacturer BOXX Technologies sent us their latest product: FLEXX. The BOXX FLEXX is a modular rack system that can accommodate up to ten modules, each providing the performance of a standard BOXX workstation, and each of which is remotely accessible to a team of users with the right software enablement.

In this review, sponsored by BOXX, we take a hands-on look at the FLEXX system to see how it works.

Video Overview

For a visual introduction to the BOXX FLEXX, check out our video review. For all the details of our experience with the FLEXX, continue reading the article below.

What is BOXX FLEXX?

The BOXX FLEXX. (Image courtesy of BOXX.)

You may know BOXX best for their high performance desktop and mobile workstations, such as the BOXX APEXX Enigma S3 or GoBOXX SLM 15. With FLEXX, BOXX puts that high performance into a blade form factor.

The rack-mountable FLEXX enclosure has space for up to 10 compute nodes, a.k.a. modules, measured in what BOXX calls a vertical unit, a.k.a. VU. Whereas a typical rack unit (denoted RU or simply U) measures height up a rack, a VU measures width across a rack. This is one of those times when a picture is worth well over a thousand words:

(Image courtesy of BOXX).

FLEXX nodes are either 1 VU or 2 VU in size, and nodes can be mixed and matched across the FLEXX enclosure. With 10 VU of total space, up to 10 nodes can be inserted side by side for ten separate workstations. Nodes are hot-swappable, so they can be added or removed without disrupting neighboring nodes. There are four series of FLEXX nodes currently available:

Overview of FLEXX nodes. (Image courtesy of BOXX).

For our review, BOXX shipped us both a FLEXX S1G (Intel-based workstation node) and FLEXX A1G (AMD-based workstation node) with the following specs:

Other than the processors, the A1G and S1G each have slightly different shapes and port options due to their different motherboards. The A1G is flush against the back of the FLEXX enclosure, while the S1G is partially recessed (see graphic above). The A1G has three RJ-45 ports, two USB Type-A and a VGA connector, and supports IPMI for server management. The S1G has three DisplayPorts, one Thunderbolt 3, two USB-A and one RJ-45. Both nodes can be powered with a single thick 1625W cable, though a fully-loaded FLEXX requires four. The power adaptors are built in to the FLEXX enclosure to provide a common power backplane.

For the purposes of this review, we conducted all benchmark tests with the A1G node.

Connecting to FLEXX

The FLEXX would just be a big metal box stuffed with transistors collecting dust in your datacenter if there wasn’t a way to connect to the workstations inside. Users can connect to their FLEXX nodes with the Teradici PC-over-IP (PCoIP) protocol, which streams pixels from the node to a client device. That client can be extremely lightweight. Users can tap into a powerful 12-core workstation from nothing more than an inexpensive Chromebook.

Connecting to the FLEXX on an internal network is extremely easy. There are two pieces of software involved: the Teradici Graphics Agent installed on the FLEXX node, and the Teradici PCoIP Client installed on the client. Connecting the two is as simple as entering the IP address of the node along with its Windows username and password. You will, however, need to license the Teradici software, which costs around $240 per year (for five users, the minimum amount).

The Teradici PCoIP client.

More useful, but also more involved, is connecting to the FLEXX on an external network. This process requires you to set up two dedicated servers: one for the Teradici PCoIP Connection Manager and Security Gateway, and one for the third-party Leostream Connection broker, which together work to authenticate users and establish PCoIP sessions without a VPN connection. These components must also be licensed. I configured each of these on a separate virtual machine running on a couple of old computers in our office, but to a networking novice this process was not just cumbersome, but cumberlots. My advice: leave the IT work to the IT pros.

IT guys and gals, keep up the good work. And have you tried turning it off and on again? (Image courtesy of Teradici.)

The FLEXX Experience

Once the PCoIP connection is configured, using a FLEXX workstation is as simple as opening the Teradici client and logging on. You can’t log on to more than one node at a time from the same client device, but you can quickly disconnect from one node and connect to another if needed. For instance, you could set up two rendering jobs on two nodes and halve your wait time.

One of the biggest concerns of a remote workstation is latency. It’s one thing to have a bit of lag if you’re editing text, but when you’re working in highly visual 3D applications, you need a certain level of responsiveness. The PCoIP protocol streams only pixels, and only the delta from one frame to the next, so there is no exchange of whole data packets. The pixel stream is also compressed and secured with AES 256 encryption. In theory, this adds up to “a high-performance user experience for knowledge workers and power users using even the most graphics-intensive applications,” according to Teradici.

In practice, of course, the network itself plays a large role in the PCoIP protocol. Case in point: if the network is down, the workstation is down. However, this is the same problem faced by every cloud service, and is something of the digital equivalent of electric vehicle range anxiety. How often are you really going to take that 500-mile road trip with no way to stop and charge? How often does your internet really go down long enough to meaningfully impact your productivity? Of the many users of cloud services who I’ve asked about this issue, none have found it a problem in practice.

My experience connecting to the FLEXX nodes revealed very little lag, as promised by Teradici, who suggested that round-trip network latency under 100ms should provide for a smooth experience. I could tell the difference from a local workstation, but only if I really tried. Even when running highly dynamic 3D benchmarks, I never found lag to be a problem.

With the PCoIP protocol, each FLEXX node is capable of supporting up to four 4K monitors on the client device. Although adding monitors theoretically increases the amount of pixels to stream, in practice—since PCoIP only transmits the changes from one frame to the next—adding extra monitors won’t necessarily cause any extra bandwidth problems. Speaking of which, you will want at least 10Mbps to ensure a smooth connection.

Using the Teradici PCoIP client to access the FLEXX A1G node.

You can also pass USB devices through your client to the FLEXX node. Common interface devices such as mice and keyboards are automatically passed through, but certain devices such as 3D mice and graphics tablets must be configured each time a PCoIP connection is established. If these devices are connected to the FLEXX node, they will be unavailable to the client device. USB flash drives can be added in the same way, though users will have to explicitly authorize each device.

Testing the FLEXX A1G

Like BOXX’s standard desktop workstations, the FLEXX nodes cater to design professionals. CAD users, for instance, need high single-core CPU performance, as most CAD applications are single-threaded. For those doing CPU rendering, a high core count is crucial.

The FLEXX A1G module we tested hits the mark, performing just as well as we’ve come to expect from BOXX in our standard benchmark tests. We present the results below. For reference, the results are compared to the BOXX APEXX Enigma S3, a BOXX workstation we reviewed in 2019 with the following specs:

Though this review is sponsored by BOXX, all benchmark results were obtained directly by engineering.com (unless otherwise noted).

SPECviewperf 13

SPECviewperf 13 is a benchmark of viewport performance in a number of popular 3D modeling applications including 3ds Max, CATIA, Creo, Maya, NX, SOLIDWORKS and more. It is primarily a GPU test, but even with less than half the raw GPU power of the APEXX, the FLEXX A1G achieves comparable scores. For users who want an extra graphics boost, the P2G FLEXX node accommodates dual graphics cards.

SPECworkstation 3

SPECworkstation 3 is a full-system benchmark which comprises the viewport tests of SPECviewperf 13 as well as dozens more tests of CPU, GPU and storage capability. The results are organized by industry segments including Product Development and Life Sciences. The FLEXX A1G emphatically proves its workstation mettle. Again, the area that is most ripe for improvement is GPU compute, which would see a definite boost from the dual-GPU FLEXX P2G node.

*Estimated value. See below for details.

*Estimated value. While six out of seven SPECworkstation Energy subtests were successful, one failure (Poisson) prevented the calculation of an aggregate industry score. A rough estimate of Poisson and aggregate scores was obtained by comparing successful subtests to those of the APEXX. SPEC does not disclose official aggregate formulas.

SOLIDWORKS Benchmark

The SOLIDWORKS benchmark measures the time required for several categories of SOLIDWORKS operations, lower time being the better outcome. The FLEXX A1G’s results demonstrate that SOLIDWORKS users should feel right at home with a workstation that is not right at home with them.

Cinebench R20

Cinebench R20 is a CPU rendering benchmark that, in general, awards higher scores to higher CPU core counts (though tests are run for both single core and multi core rendering). As such, it’s no surprise that the 12-core Ryzen performs exceptionally well in this benchmark.

*Scores from cpu-monkey.com and not independently verified by engineering.com.

Conclusion

Going from a local workstation to a remote workstation is a bit of an adjustment. For one thing, you will have to log on to two computers before starting your work, the client and then the FLEXX node. For another, you will have to configure certain peripherals (such as 3D mice, graphics tablets and flash drives) on a session-by-session basis. You may have to put up with a spurt of lag now and again depending on your network connection, and you won’t be able to work offline at all.

But there are many advantages to remote workstations such as the BOXX FLEXX. You are not tied to a single location to do your work, since you can tap into powerful hardware from anywhere and with whatever minimal device you have at hand. To anyone who was alive in 2020 up to the present day, this benefit needs no further elaboration. You can also easily swap between different workstations (i.e. nodes) to use whatever befits your current workload, giving users even more flexibility with FLEXX (I’m starting to think that may have inspired the name).

Another advantage of a remote solution like FLEXX is that it offers centralized IT administration, making upkeep a lot easier than for a distributed fleet of local workstations. But if you’re not interested in managing your own datacenter, BOXX also offers a service called BOXX Cloud that provides the exact same FLEXX nodes in the form of a managed service. Unlike many prominent cloud desktop services, each BOXX Cloud node is dedicated to a single customer, so there are no performance drawbacks from portioning and sharing compute resources.

Finally, as our benchmarks show, the FLEXX nodes are every bit as capable as their desktop counterparts. If you need true desktop-level performance that you can tap into from anywhere, a remote workstation solution like FLEXX is your best bet.

To learn more about the BOXX FLEXX, visit BOXX.com.

The post A BOXX Full of Workstations: The BOXX FLEXX Server System appeared first on Engineering.com.

The ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 is our first look at an Ultra Performance ThinkPad. Just how Ultra is it? Here’s what we found.

1. Video Overview

Prefer moving pictures? Watch our video overview of the ThinkPad P1 Gen 3. Desire more details? Read our full review below.

2. Specs

The Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 offers a lot of customizable options. Here’s the full spec list (note: not all combinations are possible).

This is the configuration of our review unit:

The 10^th-gen Intel processors are a step up from the ThinkPad P1 Gen 3’s predecessor, but the graphics cards are a small step down. While the P1 Gen 2 holds a Quadro T2000, the P1 Gen 3 opts for the Quadro T2000 with Max-Q Design. Max-Q is NVIDIA’s opaque nomenclature for a mobile graphics card optimized for thin, light, and quiet laptops—consequently meaning a dip in performance compared to the standard mobile card. I don’t know why Lenovo made the switch for the ThinkPad P1 Gen 3, considering it’s got the exact same form factor as the Gen 2.

3. Design

(Image courtesy of Lenovo.)

The ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 is outwardly identical to the ThinkPad P1 Gen 2. But that’s a good thing. The minimal matte black design of the P1 Gen 3 is accented by the ThinkPad’s trademark drop of red in the middle of the keyboard and a subtle carbon fiber finish on the lid. It’s not flashy, but it’s got a hint of style, and it fits perfectly in any business setting.

The ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 caters to business users in other ways: ports, and plenty of em. And only two of them are USB-C (Thunderbolt 3). Many modern laptops have committed solely to the One True Port, but the P1 Gen 3 hasn’t abandoned its old friends and also offers two USB-A ports, an HDMI port, an SD card reader, an audio jack, a Kensington lock slot, and an optional SIM tray (not included in our review unit).

(Image courtesy of Lenovo.)

One of the highlights of the P1 Gen 3’s design is its weight. At 3.75lbs, it’s the lightest mobile workstation we’ve reviewed. It’s noticeably nicer to handle than laptops that are just half a pound heavier, making it a great choice for field work. Speaking of, the P1 Gen 3 is also backed up by MIL-STD 810G testing for harsh environmental conditions.

4. Performance

The ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 is a capable mobile workstation, but it doesn’t quite have the oomph to justify the Ultra Performance marketing. In fact, it doesn’t quite have the Ultra Performance setting to justify the Ultra Performance marketing. Digging around the BIOS, there’s no “Ultra Performance mode” to be found. The default thermal setting of “Maximize Performance” seems to cover the intent, but that setting is also available on the P1 Gen 2, so it’s unclear what, if anything, has been added.

Maximize Performance thermal setting in the ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 BIOS. If there’s an Ultra Performance setting in there, this reviewer couldn’t find it.

Marketing/reality incongruence aside, I question whether the Quadro T2000 Max-Q is really the best beneficiary of  reduced performance limitations—the card is made for performance limitations, after all. Ultra Performance mode (or Maximize Performance, or whatever you want to call it) would probably make a bigger splash for the ThinkPad P15 or P17 models, both of which offer more powerful and power-hungry GPU options.

Nonetheless, the ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 does well to remain competitive with my favorite mobile workstation from last year, the Dell Precision 5550. Both laptops have the T2000 Max-Q graphics card, but our review unit of the Dell had a higher 8-core processor (the i7-10875H) compared to our review ThinkPad’s 6-core processor (the i7-10850H, though it can be configured with the i7-10875H). The difference is apparent in our benchmarks, but not wildly so, and it’s nice to see the P1 Gen 3 keeping pace. (Amusing, surely coincidental side note: the Precision 5550 also includes a BIOS setting called Ultra Performance which loosens thermal constraints. The difference is I’ve actually seen that one.)

Of course, when you look at a higher tier GPU like the Quadro RTX 5000 in the Acer ConceptD 7 Pro, you can see the graphical performance you’re giving up for the slim and light form factor. Below we document our benchmark results for the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 compared to the Dell Precision 5550, Microsoft Surface Book 3, and Acer ConceptD Pro 7.

i. SPECviewperf 13

SPECviewperf 13 shines a spotlight on a computer’s viewport performance in popular graphical applications like SOLIDWORKS, NX, Creo, 3ds Max, and more. It’s tied to GPU performance. The ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 edges out the Dell Precision 5550 on most viewsets, and even outperforms the RTX 3000 Max-Q in the Surface Book 3 a few times.

ii. SPECworkstation 3

SPECworkstation 3 includes SPECviewperf 13 tests along with dozens of others to evaluate the CPU, GPU, and Storage performance of a system across a range of industry use cases. To its credit, the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 is neck and neck with the Dell Precision 5550 despite its two-core handicap. Even more impressive is that in many industry segments, the P1 Gen 3 is on par with or better than the Acer ConceptD 7 Pro even with its massive GPU lead (the same is true of the Dell, though).

Here’s a full breakdown of results for the ThinkPad P1 Gen 3:

iii. PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0

PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0 is another full system benchmark including CPU, GPU, memory, and storage tests. It summarizes the results with a PassMark rating—the higher the rating, the better the computer. The ThinkPad is third-best in our lineup, and the Dell Precision 5550 manages to top the list (it gains a lot of ground because of its 8-core CPU).

iv. Cinebench R20

Cinebench R20 is a CPU rendering test, and thus measures only CPU performance. As with PassMark PerformanceTest, the Dell Precision 5550 outperforms the ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 with its two extra cores. However, the ThinkPad’s single core performance actually measured slightly higher than the Dell’s (though the results are close enough that this might just be a fluke of testing). Both beat the older-gen 6-core processor in the Acer and crush the 4-core chip in the Surface Book 3.

v. SOLIDWORKS Benchmark

SOLIDWORKS includes a built-in performance benchmark that times the speed of common operations. The ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 took 20 seconds longer than the Precision 5550 to complete the test, with nearly all of this difference coming from the Simulation subtest. Whereas most SOLIDWORKS processes are single threaded, SOLIDWORKS Simulation taps into multiple cores, thus giving the advantage to the higher core Dell. (Note: we don’t have SOLIDWORKS benchmark data for the Microsoft Surface Book 3 or Acer ConceptD 7 Pro).

vi. 3DMark

3DMark is a consumer gaming benchmark from UL. It includes a number of different tests, of which we typically run two: Time Spy, a DirectX 12 benchmark, and Port Royal, a DirectX 12 ray tracing benchmark. However, the ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 doesn’t have the 6GB of VRAM necessary for Port Royal, so only Time Spy results are presented below. This is a GPU test, and the P1 Gen 3 comes in last place, but it’s not far behind the Precision 5550.

vii. PCMark 10

PCMark 10, also from UL, is a system benchmark focused on typical office applications like web browsing, word processing, photo editing, and spread sheeting. We ran the fullest version of the test, PCMark Extended. The ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 comes in third overall, trailing behind the Dell Precision 5550 and Acer ConceptD 7 Pro, which was the winner by a wide margin because of its dominance in the gaming and content creation categories.

viii. Summary

Overall, the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 comes in a close second to the Dell Precision 5550 in terms of performance. In graphical benchmarks, both fall behind mobile workstations with more powerful GPUs, but in CPU performance they both stand strong. I’d have loved to test an 8-core ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 to see if it passed the Precision 5550 on even specs; regardless, I’m impressed with its performance.

Below is a summary of all the above tests. Some benchmarks (like PassMark PerformanceTest) offer a final score that summarizes the benchmark, which is given below. Other benchmarks (like SPECviewperf 13) report subtest results independently, and in these cases the geometric mean of all subtest results is given below.

5. Battery

Like its Gen 2 predecessor, I found myself underwhelmed with the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 3’s battery. It’s an 80Wh battery, and it doesn’t stretch far. Under the best possible conditions we saw the battery last just shy of five hours, and under maximum stress it runs its course in around seventy minutes. For me and my typical workload, the battery was good for three hours or so. Unfortunately, I couldn’t comfortably leave the charger at home when making even the briefest of forays into the outside world.

These numbers are disappointing, especially compared to the ThinkPad P1 Gen 3’s competitors. The Dell Precision 5550, for example, which performs better than the P1 Gen 3, manages to also offer more than double the battery life—over 13 hours at best. And that’s with only a slightly bigger 86Wh battery. I’m not sure why Dell is so far ahead of Lenovo here, but this is the biggest differentiating factor between two otherwise similar laptops.

6. Display

(Image courtesy of Lenovo.)

The Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 is the first mobile workstation I’ve used with an OLED display, and it doesn’t disappoint. Blacks are where OLED really shines, or rather, doesn’t shine. Look no further than the contrast ratio, the measure of a display’s white luminance level divided by its black luminance level. Most mobile workstation displays have a contrast ratio of about 1000, give or take a few hundred. The ThinkPad P1 Gen 3’s OLED display, in contrast (I must now call out this pun lest it slip you by), has a ratio of 367,900.

The 15.6” display is not just an OLED, but a 4K touchscreen OLED, and it couldn’t get much better. The display looks incredible and has a competitive peak brightness of 438 nits. Colors are vivid and cover 100 percent of the sRGB color space and 97 percent of Adobe RGB. However, the color accuracy is a bit worse than other laptops we’ve tested, with an average Delta E of 2.4 (here, lower is better; most laptops we review are near or under 1). I wasn’t expecting that result, since the P1 Gen 3 boasts color calibration by X-Rite and Pantone, but it’s still well within the “normal people won’t notice” range. Display uniformity, both for luminance and color, is better than most other laptops, but this too falls in the NPWN range.

Like its predecessor, the ThinkPad P1 Gen 3’s display can fold back by 180 degrees to lie flat and flush with the keyboard. This could potentially save desk space if you lean the ThinkPad against a wall, and it’s nice to have a deep hinge range to accommodate more viewing angles, but I almost never make use of the full 180 degrees. Oh, and for the privacy conscious among us, there’s a shutter on the webcam. You never know which Facebook employee is watching.

(Image courtesy of Lenovo.)

7. Experience

The ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 provides a great user experience in most ways, with a beautiful display, light weight, loud speakers, and many input ports. The keyboard is great too—it’s well-spaced and comfortably tactile, as are most ThinkPad keyboards (though I hate the keyboard of the P1 Gen 2, which likes to take frequent breaks from rcognizing kystrokes). One personal nitpick is that the Fn key is to the left of the Ctrl key (most laptops have the reverse) but this is easily fixable in software. The trackpad is a little cramped and could be smoother, but it’s certainly useable. And the signature red pointing stick is, I assume, good for both of the people who will actually use it.

Our review unit also shipped with the Lenovo Pro Pen, which is an optional stylus for $55. As far as digital styli go, it’s not great—it feels slippery to write with and I encountered frequent input lag. The palm detection when writing isn’t as good as on other laptops (like the Surface Book 3), and the fact that the screen neither detaches nor folds around means that there’s no comfortable position to use for writing. I can’t blame Lenovo for including it—better to have the option than not—but the stylus is more of a gimmick than a feature.

The biggest frustration of the P1 Gen 3 is the short battery life, but perhaps that’s just Lenovo gently reminding us that battery life is what you make of it. Thanks, Lenovo. Namaste.

8. Price/Performance

Whoever said a mobile workstation had to break the bank? Probably nobody, but Lenovo is refuting it anyways with the ThinkPad P1 Gen 3. Our $3000 review unit is a steal as far as professional mobile workstations go. Though its performance is a touch lower than competing mobile workstations, its price is a lot lower. Just take a look at the price/performance chart for the four mobile workstations we looked at earlier—note the ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 is the cheapest option by a good margin:

Scores are based on the benchmark results above, normalized to a mean of those results.

9. Conclusion

(Image courtesy of Lenovo.)

The Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 is the best mobile workstation we’ve reviewed this year. Ok, it’s the only mobile workstation we’ve reviewed this year, but it is a great option for those who need a solid mid tier machine. If price were no object I would recommend the Dell Precision 5550 instead, simply for its vastly better battery life. But, being an object, price tilts the scales far in favor of the ThinkPad P1 Gen 3.

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Full Written Review:  Dell Precision 5550 Review: The Smallest and Thinnest 15” Mobile Workstation

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Full Written Review:  The Surface Book 3: A Great Laptop, But It’s No Workstation

Transcript: 

Are we in a library?  Cause today we’re gonna check out a book. The Surface Book 3.

This is the Microsoft Surface Book 3. It looks almost exactly like the Surface Book 2, which looked almost exactly like the Surface Book 1. So the Book 3 is the Book you already know and love.

And I do love the Surface Book. Let me start with the best part of this computer. If you’re not familiar with the Book, its defining feature is this.

Like a rocket shedding its engine, the Surface Book’s screen can shed its keyboard and fly solo. For about an hour. But more on battery later.

Now this detachable screen, which Microsoft calls the clipboard, it’s not just a gimmick. I find this genuinely useful. For one thing, you can use it as a tablet. I’ll often pop the clipboard to take some quick notes with the Surface Pen. Which is an excellent stylus by the way, and this is an old model from my original 2015 Surface Book. Back then, the Pen was included in the box. But not anymore. Now it’s about 100 bucks extra, which is why I don’t have the current version.

Anyways, the clipboard is not just a temporary tablet. It can also reattach to the base backwards, opening up some new configurations. The one I use most often is view mode. Hook up a keyboard and mouse, and the Book 3 is just this beautiful, high-res, touchscreen monitor sitting in front of you.

You can also fold the screen down all the way into studio mode, which is basically just a thicker, heavier tablet—but, it can use the extra battery and graphics in the base. And the ports, which include two USB-A, one USB-C, one SDXC card reader, and one proprietary charging port. The clipboard itself only has a headphone jack and second charging port.

Ok, so let’s talk about the base. It’s not just a keyboard and trackpad. Although the keyboard and trackpad are great, among the best I’ve used on any Windows laptop. The base also houses about 70 percent of the Book 3’s battery and, optionally, a discrete graphics card.

Our review unit has the best graphics available, which is the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 with Max-Q Design. That card is only available on what Microsoft calls the Surface Book 3 for Business, which is loaded with Windows 10 Pro instead of Windows 10 Home. You can also choose from a couple of GeForce GTX cards, but unfortunately there are no GeForce RTX cards available.

While we’re talking processing, the CPU options in the Book 3 aren’t particularly strong either. It’s got the latest 10^th gen Intel chips, but the best option is the 4 core i7-1065G7 with a base clock speed of 1.3GHz.  That’s what we had in our review unit and it’s a pretty lightweight processor. I do wish the Book 3 offered a few more powerful options.

Because performance-wise, the Surface Book 3 is adequate, but I wouldn’t want to use it regularly for processor-heavy applications. Even bona fide mobile workstations compromise performance for the mobile form factor.

And the Surface Book 3 is no mobile workstation. In its defense, Microsoft doesn’t claim it as a workstation, although their marketing team has no qualms with the phrase “powerhouse performance.” But it’s powerhut performance at best. You can use it for CAD or video editing or gaming, but it’s not your best bet. You can easily find more capable laptops for quite a bit less money.

So let’s talk money. The cheapest Surface Book 3 on offer—the 13.5” with no discrete graphics, costs fourteen hundred dollars. The specced out Book 3 for Business with 32 gigs of RAM and 1 terabyte of SSD storage, comes in at thirty seven hundred bucks. That’s what we have here, only ours has half that storage and costs $200 less.

Either way, the Surface Book 3 has a premium price tag and that money is not really going to the specs, it’s going to the brand name, it’s going to the polished industrial design, and it’s going to this unique hybrid form factor, which again, is second to none in my opinion. So the price might be worth it, but from a performance standpoint, it doesn’t quite jive.

By the way, if you want all the details of our performance benchmarks, take a look at our full written review. We’ll link to that below. It’s got way more information and way more numbers, if that’s your thing.

Oh, but here’s some numbers I promised earlier. Battery life. The Surface Book 3 has 82.7Wh of total battery capacity, split roughly 70/30 between the base and the clipboard. The relatively low capacity of the clipboard means that when you’re using it as a tablet, the battery won’t last much longer than an hour from full charge.

The good news is that when it’s together, the Book 3 primarily uses the base battery, and it does its best to save the clipboard battery for when you do want to detach it. We found typical use of the Book 3 got us about 4 hours of battery life, and our best battery saving efforts got us just a touch past six hours. So not exactly great battery life, but it’s acceptable.

Alright, here’s my blurb for the back of this Book. Are you a fan of digital notetaking and touchscreen displays, but you also want a clamshell laptop form factor with a great keyboard and trackpad that can also double as a tablet?  The Surface Book 3 is for you. Are you looking for high performance?  Keep moving.

But if you’re okay with mid-tier specs and competent performance for a premium price tag, I can genuinely recommend the Surface Book 3. It’s a great laptop. It just depends what you need it for.

Again, for our comprehensive written review of the Surface Book 3, click the link below. Thanks for watching, and stay tuned for more hardware reviews from engineering.com. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a Book to return.

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