In the past, thin and light and high performance seem to be not related, after all, thin and light books have long been generally equipped with some 15W low-voltage processors, and lower power consumption limits the actual performance of the processor to a certain extent. However, in recent years, high-performance thin and light books have gradually come into our sight, especially after the launch of the 35W TDP Core H35 series processor, there are many high-performance thin and light products on the market. After the launch of the thin and thin high-performance Creator 15 series, the game brand mechanics recently launched another new product of the family, that is, the mechanic creator 16 that we want to experience in this issue, what upgrades does it have?
Product parameters
Operating system: Windows 10 Home (64-bit)
Display: 16-inch LTPS screen (2560×1600, 120Hz)
Processor: Intel Core i7-11390H (4 cores, 8 threads, 3.4GHz~5.0GHz)
Memory: Kintec 16GB DDR4 3200(8GB×2)
Hard disk: Jianxing 512GB NVMe SSD
Graphics: Intel Iris Xe (96 EU)
Battery: 70Wh
Size: 358mm×238mm×17.88mm
Weight: 1.7kg (without power supply)
Reference price: 5999 yuan
All-metal body on three sides is outstanding in texture
Mechanic Creator series is different from mechanic's F117, T58 and other game products, the series of products mainly "take" is the creative design route, mechanics want to create a high-performance productivity tool for creativity, this keen market insight and ROG's magic series have the same magic. Since the product positioning is not a traditional game book, the Creator series products should be distinguished from products such as F117 and T58 in appearance, and in fact, mechanics also do this.
Take the Creator 16 in our hand as an example, this machine adopts a very simple design in appearance, the overall shape is flat, and the A-side does not have the bump shape or tough lines commonly found in the mechanic game book, but replaces it with rounded corners and a simple and refreshing side. In order to create a fashion sense loved by creative design people, we can also see that the A side of this machine uses a new Creator Logo instead of the Mechanic Logo, and the new Creator Logo incorporates the elements of creator English MACHCREATOR, supplemented by a glittering coating, which seems to add a lot to the machine.
As a thin and light machine, Creator 16 also maintains a better "figure", the length and width of this machine is 358mm×238mm, the thickest part of the fuselage is 17.88mm, and the weight is controlled at 1.7kg. Compared with large-screen notebook products, such a fuselage size and weight are considered to have a certain portability, which is more friendly to commuters and business travelers. Behind the making the fuselage more light and thin is the mechanic's thinking on the material of the notebook shell. The A, C and D sides of Creator 16 are all integrated metal fuselages, of which the C side has also been upgraded to magnesium alloy material, which is often used in sports cars and aerospace fields with high strength and lighter mass than pure aluminum materials, which is conducive to creating notebook products that are both lightweight and strong. More importantly, the metal material with the solid color simple body design style, so that the creator 16 has both excellent texture and high appearance.
2.5K, 120Hz high color gamut large screen
In the traditional thin and light market, we can be roughly divided into 13.3 inches, 14 inches, 15.6 inches and 16 inches according to the screen size, 16 inches is also a market segment that has emerged in recent years, it has a larger display area than 15.6-inch notebooks, and is more suitable for productivity scenarios such as office and design. Creator 16 Compared with the previous Creator 15, the biggest change is here - the larger screen is more suitable for office and design.
Specifically, Creator 16 uses a 16-inch screen, and the screen resolution is upgraded to 2560×1600, which is more delicate than the 1080p resolution. In order to enhance the battery life of this machine, the mechanic also equipped Creator 16 with LTPS low-temperature polysilicon screen, in general, the LCD display using polycrystalline silicon liquid crystal material has many advantages, such as thin film circuits can be made thinner and smaller, lower power consumption and so on.
For the light and thin products used in the office, many users have high requirements for the color of the screen. From the results of our actual test with spyder Spyder5 Pro, the sRGB color gamut coverage area of the Creator 16 screen is 99%, the AdobeRGB color gamut coverage area is 76%, and its △E color accuracy average is 0.59 (the smaller the value, the more accurate the color displayed). This means that Creator 16 has excellent screen color reproduction capabilities, which can meet the stringent requirements of similar designer groups for notebook screen color.
For the screen of the laptop, there are many users who attach great importance to the refresh rate, after all, the high refresh rate screen can not only quickly and accurately output dynamic picture quality in the game, but also solve the problems of game screen residuals and tearing, and the daily office drag folder and other operations will also be smoother. In view of this, we see that creator 16's screen refresh rate reaches 120Hz, although it does not reach the specifications of the game's 144Hz, but this has brought obvious improvements in screen fluency for ordinary 60Hz.
Equipped with Thunderbolt 4 interface
Although Creator 16 is positioned as a thin and light machine, it does not compromise on the interface configuration because of its thin and light body. In terms of the type and number of interfaces, Creator 16 can meet the external expansion needs of most users. The machine is equipped with an HDMI interface, a 3.5mm audio interface, and a DC power interface. In addition, there are two USB-C ports on the left side of the fuselage, and two USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A ports on the right. Whether it's an external monitor or an external keyboard and mouse, it meets the requirements and doesn't need to be expanded through a "little tail" adapter.
It is worth mentioning that one of the two USB-C interfaces on the left side of the Creator 16 fuselage is still the Thunderbolt 4 specification. Compared with the ordinary USB-A or HDMI interface, Thunderbolt 4 has more advantages, such as its physical form is USB-C, the front and back of the cable can be connected, and the Thunderbolt 4 interface has a maximum of 40Gbps bidirectional bandwidth rate. It also has many improvements over the Thunderbolt 3 interface, such as increasing the PCIe data requirement from 16Gbps to 32Gbps, which means that the transmission speed and performance will be enhanced when connecting to the unique display.
In short, Thunderbolt 4 is a very versatile interface, we can expand the connection of external displays, external storage (mobile SSD, USB stick), keyboard and mouse, networking and graphics card docking station, etc., and it also supports PD 100W fast charging, we can use gaN gallium nitride charger (officially recommended to use more than 90W charger) for creator 16 charging, making it more convenient to use when going out.
In terms of keyboard, Creator 16 uses a full-size keycap monochrome backlit keyboard, the actual feel is relatively gentle, the rebound force is small, and the key range is moderate. However, it is a little regrettable that this machine does not retain the numeric keypad, which may be slightly inconvenient for daily office.
Upgrade to Core H35 processor
Intel introduced the Core H35 series processor with the 35W TDP early last year, but there were only three processors in the series at the time. In the second half of last year, Intel updated the Core H35 processor, bringing two new products - Core i7-11390H and Core i5-11320H. The Creator 16 is equipped with the updated Core H35 processor.
The prototype we got this time is equipped with a Core i7-11390H processor, which is developed under the code name TGL-H35 Refresh, using the Intel 10nm SuperFin production process, with 4 cores and 8 threads, and built-in Rui torch Xe graphics (96 EU). Compared with the Core i7-11370H, the predecessor of the Core H35 family, the reference frequency of the Core i7-11390H is 100MHz higher, reaching 3.4GHz, and the maximum turbo frequency is also 5.0GHz, which is 200MHz higher than the Core i7-11370H. Therefore, in theory, the overall performance of the Core i7-11390H should be slightly better than that of the Core i7-11370H.
Judging from the results of the rendering performance test of the CINEBENCH R20 processor, the single-thread score of Creator 16 is 626pts, and the multi-thread score is 2437pts, while the model equipped with Core i7-11370H processor has a single-threaded 576cb and multi-threaded 2304cb. In contrast, Creator 16 leads nearly 9% in the processor single-threaded performance, nearly 6% in the processor multi-threaded performance, and such excellent test results far exceed the ordinary thin and light cost with 15W low-voltage processors. This actually shows that after upgrading the processor, Creator 16 has more powerful processor performance, which is incomparable to the ordinary thin and light cost of low-voltage processors.
In addition, the machine we tested also uses 16GB of DDR4 3200 dual-channel memory, with the Core i7-11390H processor, can it cope with simple design tasks? Measured in the BMW27 test scene of Blender 2.93.0, the machine took only 413 seconds to complete the rendering test, while the model equipped with core i7-11370H often took 499 seconds, which shows the high efficiency of this machine. In the PCMark 10 benchmark test for modern office testing, this machine gets a total score of 5274 points, while the average ordinary thin and light book (15W processor) is often only about 4800 ~ 4900 points, which also shows that Creator 16 has a more powerful overall performance.
Graphically, the machine features the processor's built-in Rick Xe core, which is equipped with a 96 EU execution unit and a Boost frequency of 1400MHz. In the 3DMark Fire Strike, Creator 16 gets a graphics card score of 5017, which is slightly more than some thin and light products equipped with 15W low-voltage processor + MX 450 unique display (the unique display score is generally around 4800), which is good.
In addition, this machine also uses Jianxing 512GB NVMe SSD, this SSD in the AS SSD Benchmark (1GB test data) test sequential read and write speeds are 1853.33MB/s, 1018.12MB/s, the total score of 2477 points, decent performance, it should be noted that this machine has only one M.2 SSD expansion slot inside, and users who want to upgrade SSD can only think of ways in capacity.
Thermal test
The mechanic creator 16 fuselage is designed with dual fans and dual heat dissipation copper tubes, so how does it perform in heat dissipation under high load? We tested at 20.7°C with the AIDA64 software single-baked CPU and then observed the machine's apparent temperature with a FLIR thermal imaging camera. In the case of the limit of the CPU full load, after 30 minutes of the grill, we observed that the maximum temperature of the front of the machine was 42.7 ° C, located in the air outlet position on the left side of the C-side hinge, the thermal area of the keyboard surface was small, the temperature of most areas was maintained within 32 ° C, and there was only a slight sense of warmth on the touch, and it was not hot. In addition, the temperature of the palmrest position is well controlled, only about 23 ° C.
In addition, this machine is also equipped with a 70Wh large-capacity battery, can it meet the 8-hour work life needs of most office workers? We tested the system's default battery mode, 50% screen brightness, and airplane mode through the "modern office" scene of PCMark 10, and the final creator 16 test score was 9 hours and 43 minutes, which means that its endurance can meet the user's requirements of at least 8 hours of work, and don't forget that it also supports PD 100W fast charging, even if the battery is exhausted, it can quickly "return blood".
Performance test scores (game mode, game averaging frame rate, vsync off)
CINEBENCH R20 processor rendering performance (multithreaded/single-threaded) 2437pts/626pts
Blender 2.93.0 processor rendering performance test (bmw27) 413 seconds
3DMark Fire Strike (1080p) total score/graphics card score 4572/5017
3DMark Time Spy (DirectX 12) total score/graphics card score 1825/1639
PCMark 10 benchmark score 5343 overall
PCMark 10 Modern Office Battery Life Test 9h43min
summary
Mechanic Creator 16 is a very prominent large-screen light and thin book, this machine in the 16-inch large screen on the basis of the relatively portable and thin design, while the new design also brings a unique style. Of course, these are not the focus, the point is that although the mechanic Creator 16 is positioned as a thin and light book, but it is equipped with a Core H35 series processor, which brings far more than the overall performance of the ordinary low-voltage U thin and light book for the Creator 16, which is very attractive to the light and thin users who pursue performance and large screens. In addition, the characteristics of Thunderbolt 4 interface, PD fast charging, long battery life, Wi-Fi 6 wireless network card and so on also add a lot of color to this machine.