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Shopping for back-to-school tech? The XPRTs can help!

For many students, the first day of school is just around the corner, and it’s now time to shop for new tech devices that can help set them up for success in the coming year. The tech marketplace can be confusing, however, with so many brands, options, and competing claims to sort through.

Fortunately, the XPRTs are here to help!

Whether you’re shopping for a new phone, tablet, Chromebook, laptop, or desktop, the XPRTs can provide industry-trusted performance scores that can give you confidence that you’re making a smart purchasing decision.

The WebXPRT 4 results viewer is a good place to start looking for device scores. The viewer displays WebXPRT 4 scores from over 700 devices—including many of the latest releases—and we’re adding new scores all the time. To learn more about the viewer’s capabilities and how you can use it to compare devices, check out this blog post.

Another resource we offer is the XPRT results browser. The browser is the most efficient way to access the XPRT results database, which currently holds more than 3,700 test results from over 150 sources, including major tech review publications around the world, manufacturers, and independent testers. It offers a wealth of current and historical performance data across all the XPRT benchmarks and hundreds of devices. You can read more about how to use the results browser here.

Also, if you’re considering a popular device, there’s a good chance that a recent tech review includes an XPRT score for that device. There are two quick ways to find these reviews: You can either (1) search for “XPRT” on your preferred tech review site or (2) use a search engine and input the device name and XPRT name, such as “Dell XPS” and “WebXPRT.”

Here are a few recent tech reviews that use one of the XPRTs to evaluate a popular device:

Lastly, here at Principled Technologies, we frequently publish reports that evaluate the performance of hot new consumer devices, and many of those reports include WebXPRT scores. For example, check out our extensive testing of HP ZBook G10 mobile workstations or our detailed comparison of Lenovo ThinkPad, ThinkBook, and ThinkCentre devices to their Apple Mac counterparts.

The XPRTs can help anyone stuck in the back-to-school shopping blues make better-informed and more confident tech purchases. As this new school year begins, we hope you’ll find the data you need on our site or in an XPRT-related tech review. If you have any questions about the XPRTs, XPRT scores, or the results database please feel free to ask!

Justin

XPRT mentions in the tech press

One of the ways we monitor the effectiveness of the XPRT family of benchmarks is to regularly track XPRT usage and reach in the global tech press. Many tech journalists invest a lot of time and effort into producing thorough device reviews, and relevant and reliable benchmarks such as the XPRTs often serve as indispensable parts of a reviewer’s toolkit. Trust is hard-earned and easily lost in the benchmarking community, so we’re happy when our benchmarks consistently achieve “go-to” status for a growing number of tech assessment professionals around the world.

Because some of our newer readers may be unaware of the wide variety of outlets that regularly use the XPRTs, we occasionally like to share an overview of recent XPRT-related tech press activity. For today’s blog, we want to give readers a sampling of the press mentions we’ve seen over the past few months.

Recent mentions include:

Each month, we send out a BenchmarkXPRT Development Community newsletter that contains the latest updates from the XPRT world and provides a summary of the previous month’s XPRT-related activity, including new mentions of the XPRTs in the tech press. If you don’t currently receive the monthly BenchmarkXPRT newsletter but would like to join the mailing list, please let us know! There is no cost to join, and we will not publish or sell any of the contact information you provide. We will send only the monthly newsletter and occasional benchmark-related announcements, such as news about patches or new releases.

Justin

WebXPRT in PT reports

We don’t just make WebXPRT—we use it, too. If you normally come straight to BenchmarkXPRT.com or WebXPRT.com, you may not even realize that Principled Technologies (PT) does a lot more than just managing and administering the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community. We’re also the tech world’s leading provider of hands-on testing and related fact-based marketing services. As part of that work, we’re frequent WebXPRT users.

We use the benchmark when we test devices such as Chromebooks, desktops, mobile workstations, and consumer laptops for our clients. (You can see a lot of that work and many of our clients on our public marketing portfolio page.) We run the benchmark for the same reasons that others do—it’s a reliable and easy-to-use tool for measuring how well devices handle web browsing and other web work.

We also sometimes use WebXPRT simply because our clients request it. They request it for the same reason the rest of us like and use it: it’s a great tool. Regardless of job titles and descriptions, most laptop and tablet users surf the web and access web-based applications every day. Because WebXPRT is a browser benchmark, higher scores on it could indicate that a device may provide a superior online experience.

Here are just a few of the recent PT reports that used WebXPRT:

  • In a project for Dell, we compared the performance of a Dell Latitude 7340 Ultralight to that of a 13-inch Apple MacBook Air (2022).
  • In this study for HP, we compared the performance of an HP ZBook Firefly G10, an HP ZBook Power G10, and an HP ZBook Fury G10.
  • Finally, in a set of comparisons for Lenovo, we evaluated the system performance and end-user experience of eight Lenovo ThinkBook, ThinkCentre, and ThinkPad systems along with their Apple counterparts.

All these projects, and many more, show how a variety of companies rely on PT—and on WebXPRT—to help buyers make informed decisions. P.S. If we publish scores from a client-commissioned study in the WebXPRT 4 results viewer, we will list the source as “PT”, because we did the testing.

By Mark L. Van Name and Justin Greene

The evolving PC market brings new opportunities for WebXPRT

Here at the XPRTs, we have to spend time examining what’s next in the tech industry, because the XPRTs have to keep up with the pace of innovation. In our recent discussions about 2024, a major recurring topic has been the potential impact of Qualcomm’s upcoming line of SOCs designed for Windows on Arm PCs.

Now, Windows on Arm PCs are certainly not new. Since Windows RT launched on the Arm-based Microsoft Surface RT in 2012, various Windows on Arm devices have come and gone, but none of them—except for some Microsoft SQ-based Surface devices—have made much of a name for themselves in the consumer market.

The reasons for these struggles are straightforward. While Arm-based PCs have the potential to offer consumers the benefits of excellent battery life and “always-on” mobile communications, the platform has historically lagged Intel- and AMD-based PCs in performance. Windows on Arm devices have also faced the challenge of a lack of large-scale buy-in from app developers. So, despite the past involvement of device makers like ASUS, HP, Lenovo, and Microsoft, the major theme of the Windows on Arm story has been one of very limited market acceptance.

Next year, though, the theme of that story may change. If it does, WebXPRT 4 is well-positioned to play an important part.

At the recent Qualcomm Technology Summit, the company unveiled the new 4nm Snapdragon X Elite SOC, which includes an all-new 12-core Oryon CPU, an integrated Adreno GPU, and an integrated Hexagon NPU (neural processing unit) designed for AI-powered applications. Company officials presented performance numbers that showed the X Elite surpassing the performance of late-gen AMD, Apple, and Intel competitor platforms, all while using less power.

Those are massive claims, and of course the proof will come—or not—only when systems are available for test. (In the past, companies have made similar claims about Windows on Arm advantages, only to see those claims evaporate by the time production devices show up on store shelves.)

Will Snapdragon X Elite systems demonstrate unprecedented performance and battery life when they hit the market? How will the performance of those devices stack up to Intel’s Meteor Lake systems and Apple’s M3 offerings? We don’t yet know how these new devices may shake up the PC market, but we do know that it looks like 2024 will present us with many golden opportunities for benchmarking. Amid all the marketing buzz, buyers everywhere will want to know about potential trade-offs between price, power, and battery life. Tech reviewers will want to dive into the details and provide useful data points, but many traditional PC benchmarks simply won’t work with Windows on ARM systems. As a go-to, cross-platform favorite of many OEMs—that runs on just about anything with a browser—WebXPRT 4 is in a perfect position to provide reviewers and consumers with relevant performance comparison data.

It’s quite possible that 2024 may be the biggest year for WebXPRT yet!

Justin

The versatility of XPRT benchmarks

We’ve designed each of the XPRT benchmarks to assess the performance of specific types of devices in scenarios that mirror the ways consumers typically use those devices. While most XPRT benchmark users are interested in producing official overall scores, some members of the tech press have been using the XPRTs in unconventional, creative ways.

One example is the use of WebXPRT by Tweakers, a popular tech review site based in The Netherlands. (The site is in Dutch, so the Google Translate extension in Chrome was helpful for me.) As Tweakers uses WebXPRT to evaluate all kinds of consumer hardware, they also measure the sound output of each device. Tweakers then publishes the LAeq metric for each device, giving readers a sense of how loud a system may be, on average, while it performs common browser tasks.

If you’re interested in seeing Tweakers’ use of WebXPRT for sound output testing firsthand, check out their Apple MacBook Pro M2, HP Envy 34 All-in-One, and Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro reviews.

Other labs and tech publications have also used the XPRTs in unusual ways such as automating the benchmarks to run during screen burn-in tests or custom battery-life rundowns. If you’ve used any of the XPRT benchmarks in creative ways, please let us know! We are interested in learning more about your tests, and your experiences may provide helpful information that we can share with other XPRT users.

Justin

The 2019 XPRT Spotlight Back-to-School Roundup

With the new school year approaching, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve just published our fourth annual XPRT Spotlight Back-to-School Roundup! The Roundup allows shoppers to view side-by-side comparisons of XPRT test scores and hardware specs from some of this year’s most popular Chromebooks, laptops, tablets, and convertibles. After testing the devices in our lab using XPRT benchmarks, we’ve provided performance scores as well as photo galleries, PT-verified device specs, and prices. Parents, teachers, students, and administrators who are considering buying devices to use in their education environments have many options. The Roundup helps make their decisions easier by gathering product and performance facts in one convenient place.

The Back-to-School Roundup is just one of the features we offer through the XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight. Every week, the Spotlight highlights a new device, making it easier for consumers to select a new laptop, phone, tablet, or PC. Recent devices in the Spotlight include the Dell G7 15 Gaming laptop, the HP Stream 14, the ASUS Chromebook Flip, the OnePlus 7 Pro phone, and the 2019 Apple iPad Mini. The Spotlight device comparison page lets you view side-by-side comparisons of all of the devices we’ve tested.

If you’re interested in having your devices featured in the XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight or in this year’s Black Friday and Holiday Showcases, which we publish in late November, visit the website for more details.

If you have any ideas for the Spotlight page or suggestions for devices you’d like to see, let us know!

Justin

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