The Eve V Review — Microsoft should be worried, very worried
Impressive specs and build, even more impressive pricing
Eve-Tech have a been around now for a couple of years producing Windows products and you will even have seen them on ITB before, previously with the Eve T1 tablet. Their latest endeavour however is the Eve V, a 2-in-1 hybrid laptop and tablet, running a range of specifications that puts Microsoft’s Surface Pro to shame when it comes to pricing.
Have they succeed, yeah I think so, the V is a fantastically made piece of hardware that is solid, has some great I/O and performs brilliantly. Let’s get some of the important stuff out of the way first, pricing. The base model is an m3 with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage and this will cost €799. There will then be two Core i5 models running 8 and 16GB and 256 and 512GB of RAM and storage respectively, and these cost €1199 and €1549. Finally there will then be two Core i7 models both with 16GB of RAM and one with 512GB and the other with 1TB of storage and these will cost €1649 and €1999 respectively. It is these two Core i7 models that you gamers will want. All versions come with the Windows Ink Certified stylus with 1024 pressure levels.
When V launched for preorders on Indiegogo on the 21st November 2016, the available units sold out in less than 3 hours. They also broke the world-record for the quickest ever $200,000 raised by anyone online.
Eve-Tech say that because they crowd-sourced the ideas behind the V that they were able to pack in everything that a tech community could want and cut out all the bloat that often comes with computing devices. Our review device which is the Core i5 model with 8GB of RAM has the below specifications:
- Intel Core i5
- 8GB LPDDR3 RAM
- 256GB PCIe SSD
- 2 USB-A 3.0
- 1 USB-C 3.0
- 1 Thunderbolt 3 USB-C
- 3.5mm headphone jack with built in amp
- 12.3" IGZO LCD
- 2880x1920 resolution
- 48 Wh battery
These are just some of the specifications which are impressive enough, but then you through in a biometric finger print sensor built into the power button for Windows Hello, two noise cancelling and ‘far-field’ microphones, the Stylus, Quad speakers and a detachable Bluetooth keyboard with 7 colour RGB lighting and it becomes even more impressive.
eGPU support for great gain in performance with Thunderbolt 3 port
One neat trick up the V’s sleeve is the ability to hook up an eGPU via the Thunderbolt 3 port to help with gaming.
According to Eve-Tech devices of their category (ultrabooks/2-in-1s) GPU is a main bottleneck when it comes to heavy load performance. They are not designed for gaming.
An Eve-Tech spokesperson said:
The V comes with a Thunderbolt 3 port which allows you to connect an eGPU and dramatically increase the V’s performance. Even lower end graphics cards like AMD RX550 will have substantially higher performance than Iris graphics by intel. Our CEO Konstantinos personally uses his V with Nvidia 1060 graphics card when he is at his desk needing extra GPU performance
I can honestly say that I have been very impressed by the V, while their original Eve T1 tablet was nice and performed okay the V is something entirely different. You can tell that they are now maturing as a company and clearly have a very good setup to produce not only nice looking hardware but hardware that is quality.
Given the choice between a Surface Pro and the Eve V, I can say that I would pick the V any day, specs and pricing just blow the Surface Pro away, both machines will of course have pros and cons but overall the V is the better, smarter package.
Check out my hand-on review of the Eve V in the video above and drop me some comments below or in the video with any questions you might have.
To learn more about the Eve V visit the Eve-Tech website below:
