Samsung DeX Review - Review 2022

Nosotros've been dreaming about turning phones into PCs for years. It makes sense: We're carrying effectually little computers in our pockets, then why non utilise them when we demand to exercise actual calculating? Samsung's $149 DeX dock transforms your Milky way S8 or Milky way S8+ phone into a desktop figurer when y'all attach a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. It gets closer than other solutions we've seen to nailing the experience, but it notwithstanding falls into the uncanny valley of not being quite as capable equally a real PC.

How Information technology Works

DeX ($65.99 at Amazon) just works with the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. The central hardware is the DeX Station itself, which looks similar a black ashtray. You lot slide dorsum the height to reveal a USB-C port that yous plonk your telephone onto. On the dorsum, there are two USB-A ports for keyboards, mice, and storage, also as an Ethernet port, a power jack, and an HDMI port for monitor output at 1080p. The DeX experience requires a monitor; without a monitor plugged in, the dock doesn't kicking into DeX fashion.

Unlike with Microsoft's Continuum, your telephone doesn't work as a second screen with DeX. Instead, the screen stays off when it's in the dock. For audio you'll want Bluetooth headphones, every bit the dock blocks the telephone's headphone jack.

Popular your phone into the dock and it enters DeX mode, a desktop interface consummate with awarding icons on your home screen, a task bar, and a status bar. Yous tin put your favorite apps on the home screen and command settings through the status bar. You can also open and proliferate windows—I switched between 8 at a fourth dimension with no trouble, although apps in the background volition deadening or finish running until they're brought back to the foreground.

Can DeX Do the Job?

I spent two days trying to work on DeX, periodically turning back to my Surface Volume when I encountered something the Galaxy S8 couldn't practise.

Microsoft Office apps are the organization's glory. They've become quite functional on Android in the past few years, and they're optimized for resizable windows on DeX. I'k writing this in OneNote correct now, and earlier I built a perfectly functional Excel spreadsheet with a bunch of string concatenation and time math functions in it.

Only when you get actually serious near either piece of work or play, you're going to have to ditch the DeX. My electric current project involves MySQL, and MySQL clients on Android are forced into tiny, cramped windows here. After building my spreadsheet, I wanted to export it every bit a tab-delimited text file—only Excel on Android doesn't do that. There's no great, desktop-form image editing solution, either.

Samsung says it's working with virtualization companies like VMWare and Citrix to enable virtual desktops for full Windows 10 through DeX, but I'd warn that when I've used those in the by (on HP'due south Elite X3), it's been a recipe for serious frustration because of input lag.

My daughter's schoolwork, meanwhile, requires Flash, which isn't bachelor on DeX. Both the Chrome browser and Samsung's custom browser download and show desktop-format sites, which is neat until you need desktop browser plug-ins. For amusement, Hulu and Netflix are stuck in small windows. And gaming is pretty sluggish.

So DeX isn't a truthful desktop experience—not considering of the hardware, but because Android still doesn't measure out upwardly to Windows ten in a desktop context. I'd be more likely to desire to employ a DeX-like solution on the road, taking notes in daylong, off-site meetings with an always cloud-connected phone, for case.

Merely DeX isn't appropriate for mobile workers, considering of all the pieces you take to tote effectually. You're not going to ready up all of these disconnected bits (your phone, the dock, a monitor, and a keyboard and/or mouse) in a meeting. Hooking it up to a hotel TV will likely present neck-craning ergonomic problems, because hotel TVs normally aren't in the right place for you lot to sit in front of them and do your work.

There are also some small, but noticeable bugs. For example, y'all can't copy text out of Gmail messages, which is just crazy. The keyboard driver likewise kept dropping spaces, irritatingly.

Conclusions

DeX works; it's a great technology demo. But I'k stymied trying to effigy out exactly who it's for. The best I tin guess is Information technology departments in larger enterprises that don't want to take to manage more devices. Only even there, it feels like a stretch.

The system'southward problem is that it'south competing confronting a rich, cheap, and very functional marketplace of desktops and laptops. DeX needs not just a $149 dock, but a keyboard and mouse (let's say $50) and a monitor (another $100). Now you're up to $299, plus your phone.

Y'all tin can get an HP twenty-c010 all-in-one desktop for $349, which does far more than than DeX does. If y'all accept an existing monitor, keyboard, and mouse, the Shuttle XPC Nano is only $259. Students, meanwhile, may be better served by a Chromebook, that they can carry to classes and tote from room to room.

I congratulate Samsung for making DeX piece of work, but I can't actually recommend this solution to anyone. DeX's main competitor in this mobile-to-desktop infinite is Microsoft's Continuum, which is on life support, with a steadily shrinking assortment of apps. Information technology's been practically abandoned and isn't worth considering.

Samsung proved information technology can do DeX. What information technology really needs now is LeX—a laptop dock with a built-in screen and keyboard, that leverages the fact that when you're away from habitation, you're much more likely to do primary computing on your phone than when you're at home or in the office. If it was the cost of a Chromebook just significantly more than powerful thank you to the Galaxy S8's considerable juice, information technology could be a corking solution for both mobile workers and students.

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Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/android-accessories/14803/samsung-dex-review

Posted by: watsonseensess.blogspot.com

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