So this right here is the Cube Thinker that I reviewed back in May last year
and I've hung on to it so often I don't get the chance to do these videos I'd
like to do a lot more a follow-up video of what tech is like how did it hold up
is there any problems did it start to fall to bits on me as the battery
completely dead after a year of use and financially I just can't do that I can't
hang on to everything but the really good stuff that I like personally of
course I'm gonna keep and this is one of them so the thinker is really now for
the price it's been selling for as well a fantastic laptop still and I still do
recommend it but a couple of things have arisen who come up at the time of using
it for one year and I'll go over that in this video so it's not going to be a
full review or anything like that this is basically just a recap after one year
how is the cube thinker i35 holding up so if you haven't seen my full review of
this model and the follow up videos that I did in the mod video as well then I'll
quickly go over the specs here so we've got 8 gigabytes of RAM we've got the
corium 3 seven-way 30 and that has Intel HD 615 graphics 256 gigabyte SSD and it
is a touchscreen and it's got on here very very nice screen so did I run into
any problems with Windows here well I actually updated it to the latest
updates and I did I ran into some problems so I ended up restoring an old
Windows 10 image now I don't know what the new updates if it's still gonna run
into problems but I don't recommend just getting it and running all the windows
updates non-stop I mean you can do that but you could run into problems I
haven't bothered with that so I've set my wireless connection what I've done as
I've now set it to will does basically meted mode and what it will do is then
stop it from just continue downing Windows Update so when I do that I found
that I haven't run now into any problems that's really the only thing that
happened it was going fine for a while but it was some updates that came
through that just affected a few things that bothered me so that's my reason for
doing that so the performance of the touch is still perfectly fine it's very
smooth the scrolling it is a really amazing screen on this and it says the
reason why I keep coming back to this particular notebook
just because of the price the value for money and this amazing screen it's got
so it is differently right up there as a top screen it is fully laminated the
brightness tops out of 510 Lux and images are just so crisp sharp and clear
now there's a side effect to this they obviously the touchscreen using it all
the time you can't see it on camera because actually use some alcohol wipes
and I cleaned up this tablet because a laptop sorry I keep calling it a tablet
to make it look a little bit better more percentage of home camera because I had
smart desire so you get fingerprints smudges and it looks a hell of a mess
really when you turn off the screen it's just covered in fingerprints so that's
just a minor column there and but really just amazing colors the touch responses
mentioned it's very accurate it's really good exactly the same as the surface
book and the surface book to the smaller version of course screened that they use
they're stuck with the same screen Microsoft because it truly is really
good and it's I feel probably one of the best touchscreen laptop screens that you
will find out there so an amazing screen and this is really the key feature to
this laptop now the build overall has held up really well and I have looked
after it I've been using a zero shot case these are these Japanese cases
they're quite old now and I've had this case for probably about eight years or
something and I put it in this sleeves whenever I transported around so that
stopped it from getting any real damage because I've noticed that the alloy
they've gone with is not a very hard alloy so it's very easy to scratch so if
you have for example like a ring on your finger and you're always constantly
touching around the keyboard and you're knocking on the alloy you will get these
really fine scratches that's one thing that has popped up there the other thing
that popped up literally was the screen just on the corner now I pushed it back
but you can push it right down and I think the problem was actually me
probably pushing the screen down I was pushing the screen down flat a lot when
I was using the surface pin on this I don't have the surface pin for it
anymore because I just don't use stylus as enough so I ended up selling that but
it popped up on the corner here just a little bit it raised up about a
millimeter I know there's I think a few other users on the forum that commented
about this I pushed it back and for the last three months or so I haven't seen
it pop back again so it seems to be fine I do get a lot of questions about the
keyboard the touchpad because some people they're
about I think only two users decide to sit there had problems with a keyboard
now it's not an amazing keyboard and the review I think I mentioned that I think
it's a good keyboard but I didn't go as far as to say it is excellent the best
keyboard I have used No so it does have now the typical little bit of wear that
you would see typing on these keyboards all the time it's hard to see on camera
but the keys around the spacebar here has some shininess to it the touchpad as
well has got a little bit of a shine now to the the paint job and a tiny little
like a little chip maybe on the fingerprint reader the sensor this is
still working perfectly fine the eland touch pad back on the original Windows
10 image that is I don't know on the latest updates as I don't know cuz I
just don't run that anymore on there but the keyboard is holding up well apart
from I have noticed that lately probably in the last three months it's super
minor that the spacebar will not register every single timeline I get the
occasional miss keystroke which is a little bit annoying and it seems to
always be either this space if I don't hit it right in the middle or the C key
and this is only happening about once every 20 key presses or something like
that so it's minor and it is there and it will cause the occasional typo so
after one year of use I rate the keyboard as being average it's good
especially for the price it's now selling it's still perfectly fine so
what is a great keyboard now to me a great keyboard turns out to be the
Xiaomi this is the me notebook pro that I have also had for now I think about
ten months if not more I probably will have to do a follow-up video of this one
this keyboard has quality keys and it just typing on it whenever I go back to
this keyboard and use this one it feels so much better and I almost get no typos
in there they're just quality keys they have a slight inwards curve to them so
they feel much nicer of course this keyboard as well on the
Meno but bro here is backlit this keyboard is not and what about the USB
ports I know after I've used laptops for a couple of years they'd loosen up and
it's definitely the case here so putting it in for example just my Logitech
receiver is very easy to do it's loosened up a little bit but it's not
getting to the point where I'm gonna lose connection or contact I feel that
that's going to easily last two or three more it's perfectly fine the USB ports
on here it's just your typical the port does loosen up a little you can probably
see this chamfered edge here that they have there's a little bit of scuff enos
to it little scratches along there my now very minor complaint there because
it's like just polished alloy and that's why it's really happening it's gonna
happen on any device so the type C port I have been using this a lot because I
use this at home dr. up to a monitor and I use a hub with
it and I've got no issues to report there I always charge it with type C and
it's holding up fine but most of the time I do actually run it off power as
it goes for battery life I'm still getting around about four hours and it
really depends on the brightness I am using so when I set the brightness to
something like 75% at the moment and it's only gonna be about four hours but
I can squeeze it out to possibly at zero percent which is very dim but I can
still see it fine that's when you can probably get over five hours of
five-and-a-half hours a better life is not amazing I've never had a core m3 a
laptop or tablet that's had really good battery life so nothing really to report
here it's still holding up well the cell and it has been recharged and cycled
quite a few times but most the time I have actually been using it on power
I will admit but when I do travel within things of course was when I do use it so
it says battery where there's nothing here but at one point it did say 5% I
think it was and I did a full recharge discharge and recharge and then has
disappeared here again so the battery I feel is holding up well after one year
now one thing I must point out that I have the copper heatsink mod on this
particular model so this one thing I really do highly recommend is that you
do this mod I've got a video it's a link in the description for this and what it
does is lowered temperatures about 20 degrees so one area that cube really did
fail with thermals if you don't do the mod it will reach what was it and I
think it was 93 degrees in my review so it does get very very hot and I've been
permanently running this under volt as well so you can see that it is a zero
point zero 6 5 volts that I run on both the CPU and the GPU in fact I've got it
in the bias set like this so don't even actually have to use intel's extreme
tuning utility to undervolt it now doing the under volt what also low
temperatures and increase the performance so that's why I recommend
you do this so with this mind you can just make this laptop so much better now
to point out their performance very briefly that it's running perfectly fine
I haven't noticed any problems apart from what I mentioned with the Windows
Update that I can't remember what it was I think it was the the touch or the
wireless or or something screwed up on it and I was not heavy at all so that's
why I ended up going back to the original Windows 10 image so I did take
a backup of that so when it comes to Geekbench for scores it gets normally
gets over there so it's no about 3,100 is what you can get for single core
score performance and this is a big bump up even over the latest 2018 Gemini Lake
which is the Apollo 8 success so now you see a lot of those laptops that I often
review they're around 300 us and if you are lucky enough to get one of these for
380 US dollars this particular model it's fantastic value considering you
getting a much better screen you're getting a better build quality you have
double the performance and in some cases double the RAM because the jumper easy
book for example the x4 that has 4 gigabytes of double data rate for RAM
but here you've got 8 and 8 is plenty I feel for Windows 10 it's good ok it
depends on what you're doing you know I don't do strenuous tasks on this model I
don't edit 4k video because it's just a little too slow with the export times it
can be done but I don't really recommend it if you want something that you need
to do demanding things on you'll be better off with a fan called Core i5
laptop for that so streaming 4k video this is fine it does handle of course a
vp9 HEV C codec files so your your 4k clips out there will run fine even
though the screen is not a 4k screen it's still a high resolution screen so
when you look at any 4k content it just looks so much better than looking at for
example 1080p but of course you're going to get the borders because this is three
by two aspect ratio and not your typical 16 by 9
now the speaker's is definitely one area where this laptop fails like most
Chinese laptops although I will give you a sample it is better than most of the
cheaper Chinese laptops I've reviewed but when you hit a sample it's not
amazing and I'll compare it to of course my me notebook pro here which has got
some AKG tunes speakers and these speakers are really
impressive on the me notebook
so I'm sure you could hear from that that they mean night book probe course
absolutely just blows away the cube thinker in terms of audio quality that
one has impressive sound for a thin and relatively light 15 point inch laptop at
least the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack on the cube sinker that produces good
quality there's no annoying static or anything
over it as well another minor annoyance with the thinker after the year of using
it is the fact that it does not have a micro SD card slot so I always have to
carry around this here my micro SD card or SD card adapter to get my videos off
and on to here on e to upload something so that's just a minor complained there
are you gonna need that adapt I really wish that cube if they're gonna make a
second model of this they need to make that hinge 360 degrees you can flip it
right around and use it as a tablet but they definitely need at least a micro SD
card slot on it alright so after the year I think that they think is holding
up very fine remember that I have taken really good care of this is where I've
been putting it in a case all the time I like to look after my tech so if you're
someone it's a bit rough with it then your result to probably go on over there
you'll manage will vary with the unit now I didn't mention the hinge but the
hinge is actually perfectly fine it still feels quite stiff it's loosened up
I feel a tiny little bit but hardly anything like ten percent from what it
originally was so that's not actually too bad now the glasses I mentioned that
pop out a little bit at the bottom it came up about a millimeter or two and
I've pushed it back and it seems to be fine I don't see that as being a problem
probably the biggest thing for me is the keyboard so the keyboard has now and
then it has a missed keystroke and it happened you're writing a paragraph and
maybe the space won't register for me and sometimes the C key but if I type a
little bit harder with the keys then I probably won't even have that problem at
all it's a very minor but it shouldn't really be happening I mean after one
year yeah so that's probably where the quality is showing a little bit as the
keyboard now battery life is still holding up even though it's still
disappointing it's still very close to the original figures perhaps down maybe
only by about 10% or something so I can still squeeze about four and a half to
five five-and-a-half hours out of this which I feel is decent because no other
quarry m3 for me has been able to get good battery life even the Microsoft
Surface pro 4 when I had that the coin 3 model well they are six
why Tynan it at 6 by 30 sorry I couldn't get more than about five and a half
hours anyway so no chorim's had good better life for me and this to my
experience so the sound nothing's changed there of course the sound is
still very average it does the job it's going to be good but not like the kind
of sound that you can get out of a proper bigger laptop now I didn't really
mention the portability do I it's a lot smaller you can see obviously 15.6
inches this is 13.5 makes this machine a little bit more portable the weight
difference as well that's 2 kilos in this way
sorry off the top of my head here I think it's 1.4 1.5 kilos so it's not bad
for what it is and it is really well put together it's solid I've got a bit of
shine enos now on the trackpad the touchpad is still working exactly the
same the fingerprint reader as well and the keys have some shine to them is
really their only signs that this has a year and of course I did clean it so
when you don't clean it and the screen is just covered with fingerprints and
grease and everything it looks an absolute mess like any tick out there so
overall especially now for the price that I have seen itself for which is
crazy 380 aus on some certain clearance sales on certain websites if you hunt
around and find this before completely runs out of stock everywhere because the
cube will do cube they don't make this anymore so if you want one you have to
really act pretty quick to find one or get a relatively new one or a used one
that hasn't got any issues with the keyboard anything like that but I've got
an absolute fantastic laptop and I don't see myself selling at any time soon even
if the specs is gonna be outdated it's still got the eight gigabytes around 256
kilobytes of storage and the performance is reasonable good for light to medium
tasks and that screen that screen I feel is going to hold up in another three
years time it's still going to look like an amazing screen thanks a lot for
watching this follow-up after one year with the audio cube thinker I 35 I may
do the same kind of video after a year with this one right here which of course
is that me notebook pro the 15.6 inch model which is also highly recommended
and one last thing if you do own one of these or you're thinking about getting
one make sure if you haven't done the thermal
for this you have to really do it I feel to getting the most out of this is add a
copper shim open it up and put a thermal pad on the back and it really opens up
the performance as well for this particular model thank you so much for
watching hope to catch you in my next upcoming video bye for now