I take my laptop into work every day. I don't use it for much...just reading emails, browsing the internet, posting on forums, watching some YouTube videos and occasionally VNCing into some servers. After receiving my Display Dock for my 950XL yesterday, I decided to test out replacing my laptop with my phone by connecting it to a spare 24" IIyama monitor and a wired mouse and keyboard and I'm currently sat here typing out this post, listening to a podcast in GrooveMusic being streamed off Onedrive. Here's some of my thoughts:
1) Edge browser needs an ad blocker...STAT! Almost every page is cumbersome for the phone to render due to the ridiculous amount of ads. Windows Central for instance takes an age for it to actually become usable.
2) Using a mouse is, at times, frustratingly slow as there's no way of adjusting your pointer speed. Scrolling down pages it sluggish too.
3) Even though it's running in 'desktop' mode, it still acts like a phone would. You can't have too many apps open at once without them being 'paused' in the background. Even having a few tabs open in the browser causes them to reload when you switch between them.
4) It handles YouTube videos really well. I watched a few trailers running full screen in 1080p with very minimal stuttering here and there.
5) The Outlook client is quite nice and perfect for what I need it for.
So, will it replace my laptop? Unfortunately not. It's incredibly impressive for what it does but for me, it's not up to scratch for even the basic stuff I do day to day. Hopefully that may change in the future with some updates, more universal apps and a bit of polishing.
1) Edge browser needs an ad blocker...STAT! Almost every page is cumbersome for the phone to render due to the ridiculous amount of ads. Windows Central for instance takes an age for it to actually become usable.
2) Using a mouse is, at times, frustratingly slow as there's no way of adjusting your pointer speed. Scrolling down pages it sluggish too.
3) Even though it's running in 'desktop' mode, it still acts like a phone would. You can't have too many apps open at once without them being 'paused' in the background. Even having a few tabs open in the browser causes them to reload when you switch between them.
4) It handles YouTube videos really well. I watched a few trailers running full screen in 1080p with very minimal stuttering here and there.
5) The Outlook client is quite nice and perfect for what I need it for.
So, will it replace my laptop? Unfortunately not. It's incredibly impressive for what it does but for me, it's not up to scratch for even the basic stuff I do day to day. Hopefully that may change in the future with some updates, more universal apps and a bit of polishing.