Well, the screen of today’s smartphones can often no longer be called small, but sometimes you simply want to be able to do more. A large screen to put different things next to each other, a physical keyboard for typing and a trackpad for operation can be nice. If smartphone makers had seen a huge gap in the market here, they would have come up with devices to make it happen. After all, with Samsung DeX and Huawei Easy Projection, two of the biggest smartphone makers in the world have ways to use their high-end phones as desktops, but what’s the point without hardware? And if you already have a monitor, keyboard and mouse, what are the chances that you don’t have a PC that you might as well turn on? Moreover, the use of a mobile device has advantages, especially on the road.
A new kind of device wants to provide this with the shape, but not the hardware of a laptop. The new category doesn’t have a name yet, but maybe “laptop shell” is a good term. The players in this market are small companies that mainly try to get the public excited through crowdfunding. That’s strange, because almost all major and well-known smartphone makers, Samsung, Apple, Huawei and Xiaomi, to name a few, have extensive experience in building laptops. Then a laptop for your smartphone shouldn’t be a problem, right?
For the time being you are dependent on smaller companies. For example, the French Miraxess has the Mirabook, Sentio has made the Superbook and Nex Computers is ready for the second version of its NexDock. The NexDock 2 is the first of these types of devices that we review. Nex was willing to send a review copy. In a separate, next story we will discuss the software support; what is it like to use various smartphones as a laptop? This review is only about the NexDock 2. It was available online for $ 260. There will be a new version this summer: the NexDock Touch, with a slightly larger touchscreen and smaller bezels.
| Compatible with NexDock | Desktop mode | Phones that support it | Phones that don’t support it |
| Samsung | DeX | S20, S10, S9, S8, Note 10, Note 9, Note 8, Fold, A90 | Including A80, A70, A50, A51, A40, A30, A20e, A10, M20 etc. |
| Huawei | Easy Projection | P30 Pro, P30, P20 Pro, P20, Mate 30 Pro, Mate 20, Mate 20 Pro, Mate 10, Mate 10 Pro, Mate XS | P40 Lite, P30 Lite, P20 Lite, Mate 30 Lite, P Smart, P Smart Z etc. |
| Desktop Mode | All phones with video-out over USB-C, such as OnePlus 7 |
Including Pixel phones | |
| LG | Desktop Mode | V60, G8, some other models after Android 10 upgrade | All phones that don’t get Android 10 |
Housing
The housing of the new NexDock 2 is very reminiscent of that of conventional laptops. It is a sturdy metal housing that does not bend easily. It can be opened with one hand. The hinge takes up a large portion of the width and is strong enough to restrain the screen at any desired angle. We did notice when typing vigorously that there is some movement in the screen. It then goes back and forth a bit and in combination with the glossy panel you see reflections shift. That is not very annoying, but if you work in bright lighting conditions, it can be noticeable.
Anyone who thought it would be much smaller or lighter than a regular laptop will be disappointed. Although no processor, cooling or other elements of a laptop are required, the size and weight mainly depend on the screen and battery, which are included. The laptop with a 13.3″ screen measures 31.7×21.5cm and is 15.9mm thick. It weighs 1420 grams, so you can simply take a laptop with you.
The housing can be opened with ten Phillips screws on the back. Could we resist the temptation? No of course not. The ten Phillips heads were not the only screws, because two are hidden under the front rubber feet. Fortunately, you can easily remove them with long nails or a pick.
The back is held in place with screws and a few clips, and getting it open is a breeze. In the housing it appears that most of the space is reserved for the battery. The PCBs mainly contain chips for the existing ports. The display controller is a Realtek RTD2556D. Furthermore, there is above all the necessary space left. Logical too, because laptop manufacturers, for example, cram in the processor, the GPU and other things that the NexDock 2 does not need. Of course, chips must be present to conjure up messages on the screen, such as ‘NexDock is ready to connect’ or the status of the battery.
Keyboard and trackpad
The keyboard has six rows, with a wide esc key on the top row and function keys with controls for volume and screen brightness, among other things. The keyboard also includes ctrl, alt, and fn keys, and has a NexDock key, which appears to do something different with each phone. That key may open the main menu, but sometimes it also calls a digital assistant.
The arrow keys have a nice inverted T-shape, while in addition to the backspace and enter keys, there are also home, end, page up and page down. At the top right is an on/off button. The keyboard has a backlight, which is nice in dark conditions. The travel of the keys is certainly not bad. There’s a little more click in the keys than some laptops and so it makes a little more noise when typing, but you can actually press the keys and the keys are also far enough apart for a trained typer to make few typos. to make. It doesn’t give the nuisance of a mechanical keyboard, but people around you will certainly hear you tapping.
The trackpad is relatively large and sits right below the keyboard. It can clearly be felt by touch, but it does have a relatively rough surface, which makes it not as easy to operate as many other trackpads. Your finger slides less easily over it when scrolling, for example.
Screen and connections
The screen is a 13.3″ LCD with an aspect ratio of 16:9 and a full HD resolution. It is not a touchscreen, but a glossy panel. Due to the coronavirus outbreak, we have not been able to measure the screen in our test lab, but with the sunny spring weather it was possible to try it outside.It was immediately noticeable that the brightness for outdoor use in sunny weather is somewhat insufficient.The screen cannot be bright enough to keep it legible in all circumstances. On the other hand, the display is fine in many other circumstances: for watching video, the screen is ideal thanks to its proportion.
Because the NexDock 2 is also a dock in addition to a laptop shell, the connections are extra important and Nex has not cut back on that. It has a USB-C port with USB 3.2 Gen 2 for connecting to the phone. Only the rightmost USB-C port on the left has it; other USB ports cannot be used to connect phones. There is also an HDMI port with HDMI 1.4 on board. In addition, there are a USB-C port with USB 3.2 Gen 1, a USB-C port that is only for charging, a USB-A port with USB 3.2 Gen 1, a micro SD card reader and a 3.5mm -jack. That is quite a lot for a laptop, but for a telephone it is even more luxurious to have so many connections.
Those connections all work fine, but there is a caveat to the 3.5mm jack. It must of course first get the audio from the phone via USB-C and then output it. This leads to sound being much quieter on some phones than directly from the phone. The NexDock also has four 1W speakers for audio reproduction.
Nex has also not saved on cables. There are of course a charger and a cable to connect the phone, but we also found a cable in the box with USB-C on one side and USB-A and micro-USB on the other. There were also an HDMI cable, an HDMI to micro HDMI cable and a micro USB to USB-C adapter. Neat from the manufacturer to deliver so much.
Battery and software
The NexDock 2 has a 51.68Wh battery: a 6800mAh battery at 7.6V. When a telephone is connected, it also starts charging that device and must also control the screen. That seems to consume a lot of power. Nevertheless, it is possible to work on the NexDock for about five to seven hours in normal use before it needs to be charged.
Of course, the battery life depends on the brightness used. At maximum brightness, we came to a power consumption of about 18W and that includes charging the phone. Without charging the phone, this decreases somewhat and you can therefore do with a lower power consumption. Charging is done with a supplied charger in the designated port, which only supports charging. This is done via USB-PD. The charger can handle up to 60W.
Doing battery tests is not useful. Firstly, it is not clear to us with what to compare it: with a laptop or with a smartphone? Second, there are more variables than a normal battery test. The phone connected to it plays a role, but also how empty or full that phone is and how much it still needs to be charged, for example. In addition, it depends on whether that phone turns off its screen or not; not all phones do.
Nevertheless, I tried to do a battery test. It turned out that if you leave the keys off, the phone automatically jumps to screen lock. You can get around that by forcing the phone’s screen to stay on, but then the NexDock is also powering the phone’s screen. In that successful test, the NexDock came on full brightness for about five hours.
The battery life therefore partly depends on the phone you use, but the software depends entirely on it. The NexDock can display its status and battery status on the screen and has some LEDs to indicate a number of things, such as whether it’s on, but it doesn’t have an interface as standard. For this you are therefore entirely dependent on the telephone you connect. We’ll come back to that in a future story with an in-depth discussion of the pros and cons of the various desktop modes of phones.
Conclusion
The NexDock 2 is a niche product for a niche audience. I fall into that niche and so I think it’s great that there are finally devices that can turn a phone into a laptop. This seems like the ideal setup to use services like Samsung DeX, Huawei Easy Projection or the Desktop Mode in Android 10. The NexDock is also well executed. The screen is sufficient, typing works fine, the housing is sturdy and the number of connections is more than adequate.
Then of course everything depends on the software support that your phone has for it. In another story we will therefore discuss how that works, what you can do with it and what it looks like, but it cannot be the hardware. The NexDock shows that there is music in the hardware to turn a phone into a laptop. This is a concept with a lot of potential. The dream of a telephone that can serve as a laptop suddenly comes very close.