·Reverse textbook or epoch-making design?
In the current mobile PC market, it seems that we can hardly see many innovative two in one tablet products. Especially with Microsoft's own surface volume becoming smaller and smaller, and the update frequency also slowing down significantly, more attention in the market is gradually shifting to new forms such as ultra light thin notebook, dual screen notebook, folding screen notebook, etc.
However, each product form has many loyal users. Especially in the current market, there is a lack of high-performance Win tablets that can meet the needs of users. Many users also strongly call for major manufacturers to bring us a more cost-effective two in one Win platform tablet product. In this year's market, we did see some domestic high-performance Windows 2-in-1 tablet products with different positioning.
Today in the PChome evaluation room, it is one of the Mingfan V3 three in one Windows tablet computers built by Mingfan, a well-known mini host manufacturer in China in recent two years. While adopting the Ruilong 8000 series APU, it also creatively introduces the function that can be used as a portable expansion screen for this type of product for the first time. It can be said that this product has attracted a lot of attention once it is announced, Including Xiao Bian, he also has great expectations. However, after the launch, the not cheap price and the mixed comments also persuaded many users. So is Mingfan V3 a "reverse textbook that follows the needs of players" or a "epoch-making product that leads industry innovation"?
·The design is quite creative, and there are also many grooves
In terms of appearance design, Mingfan V3 adopts a 14 inch size design, which is a relatively large product in the two in one flat panel. The three dimensions are 318mm * 213.8mm * 9.8mm, and the weight of the bare machine is 946g. It is still a little thick when used in hand, but it is acceptable considering its 14 inch size.
On the front, the frame of Mingfan V3 is not narrow, and the two pairs of frames are symmetrical, so the visual impression is good. The front camera is placed on the long side, with a specification of 2 million pixels. It also supports Windows Hallo face recognition. There are also two front microphones on both sides. It is good to use the front camera for video conferencing.
Mingfan V3 adopts the magnesium alloy die-casting integrated body design on the shell material, which helps further reduce the weight of the body, but the problem of poor texture of magnesium alloy is also fully revealed, and the touch and texture are slightly "plastic". The back design is also relatively simple. There are two cooling air inlets hidden in the large area dot matrix design on the back, the printed logo of MINISFORUM is on the top, and the rear camera is on the upper left corner. It is not a big problem to scan the code with the specification of 5 million pixels.
The top of Mingfan V3 is not designed with any interface, but the heat dissipation air outlet is designed at this position. At the same time, if you have selected a stylus, the stylus can also be placed at this position with magnetic suction. However, this also leads to that after a period of high-performance operation of Mingfan V3, the heat generated by heat dissipation will heat your stylus to a warm temperature in winter and a hot temperature in summer, It's really not friendly for users.
The keys and interfaces of Mingfan V3 are quite abundant in thin and light books and two in one products. The right side of the fuselage is equipped with a power fingerprint integrated key and two full function USB4 interfaces. The left side of the fuselage is equipped with a volume key, a 3.5mm audio interface, a UHS-II SD card slot, and a USB-C interface for display input only. This interface configuration can basically meet the needs of device expansion and storage expansion. Of course, users with more expansion needs must use a docking station.
The bottom of V3 is the connection contact and magnetic slot for expansion with the external keyboard. The magnetic connection can be easily completed by approaching the junction between the panel and the keyboard. The connection strength is good. Unless you shake it with great force, it will not fall off.
The keyboard is completely powered by the body and has no built-in battery. The layout adopts a design without a numeric keypad. The lower right corner is also equipped with the Copilot key that Microsoft has just begun to promote. The keyboard feels good. The area of the matching touchpad is small, and the feeling of falling is obvious when pressing, but the workmanship is slightly poor, and the seesaw effect is easy to appear.
However, Mingfan V3 also has a design problem that many users complain about, that is, its back is not equipped with the original bracket like the Surface Pro and Go series, and only a magnetic leather sleeve bracket is included in the keyboard package that needs to be purchased separately, which is not convenient to use.
Although the tablet body is only 946g, which seems to be within an acceptable range of weight, if the keyboard, bracket and stylus are added, the weight will immediately exceed 1.6kg. Compared with the current 14 inch thin and light books, it has no advantage except the design of removable keyboard. On the whole, Mingfan V3 has made great compromises in design for performance, endurance and other indicators, but its changeable form makes it still the only choice for users who want to choose the two in one product.
·It's a pity that there is touch on the good screen
After talking about appearance and form design, let's take a look at the screen used by Mingfan V3. In terms of parameters alone, this screen is definitely the best in the current tablet products. Whether it is the high resolution of 2560x1600, or the high refresh rate of 165Hz that is unimaginable in the daily use scene, it also has 100% P3 wide color gamut and 500nit high brightness, and even supports touch control, which can be said to be quite "invincible in the world". But in fact, many users are "very critical" of this screen. We also use the actual measurement to see whether the performance of this screen matches the parameters?
In terms of brightness, the measured maximum brightness at the center of the screen of Mingfan V3 is 526.7 nits, and the contrast can reach 870:1. The brightness performance exceeds expectations, and the contrast performance is good. Such brightness and contrast can ensure that you can basically see the screen content in the outdoor environment, which is good for a Win tablet product.
In the screen uniformity test, the measured maximum brightness of this screen appears in the middle of the left side of the screen, which can reach 532.2nit, but the uniformity performance is general, and the brightness deviation of one area above and below each exceeds 10%.
In terms of color gamut coverage, Mingfan V3 has achieved 100% sRGB, 97% P3, 87% Adobe RGB and 85% NTSC gamut coverage, which is good for mainstream color gamut coverage.
In terms of color accuracy, the maximum deviation of the measured screen is 4.21, and the average color deviation Δ E is 1.37. The color accuracy performance is not as large as that tested by some users, but this situation may also mean that Mingfan's performance in quality control is not very stable, but it is not difficult for small factories to understand.
From the current benchmark test project, the Mingfan V3 screen in our hands performs well, and plays a stable role in brightness and color, basically meeting or exceeding the nominal specifications.
In addition, this screen also supports the 4096 level MPP 2.0 stylus. We also briefly experienced the stylus randomly launched by Mingfan, which is quite handy in the writing process, with good delay performance. At the same time, the pen tip has a good touch on the original fog screen. However, since this screen does not natively support a stylus, this screen uses the method of covering the surface with a touch layer, which also has a certain impact on the display effect, and it seems that the sharpness has declined.
·Powerful performance, playing 3A is really hot
Next, let's take a look at the performance of Mingfan V3. After all, its Sharp Dragon 7 8840U processor can be considered as the strongest mobile processor below 28W at present. Whether its 8-core 16 thread specification or the highest 5.1GHz high frequency makes it invincible in low-voltage processors, it is also the first choice for many current game consoles. How about the performance of this processor in the small body of the tablet? We still use the test software to see how this processor performs.
According to the test results of CPU-Z, the single core of the Sharp Dragon 78840U scored 673 points and the multi-core score was 5755 points. In the test of CineBench 2024, the Sharp Dragon 7 8840U also performed well, with a single core score of 102 points and a multi-core score of 753 points, which was enough to meet the demands of daily office work, games, entertainment and other loads.
In terms of graphics card, Mingfan V3 is equipped with the Radeon 780M core display built into the Sharp Dragon 7 8840U, which is stronger than the previous representation. We also used 3DMark to simply test the performance of this core display. In the Time Spy project, the graphics card score is 2776, and the comprehensive score is 3087, which is slightly worse than the standard pressure processor with the same type of core display, but it is still the first level in the current core display performance.
In terms of memory, our top configuration Mingfan V3 is equipped with 32GB LPDDR5 6400MHz memory, which is larger enough to meet the needs of games and productivity. In the AIDA64 Cache&Memory Benchmark test, the memory read, write, and copy speeds are 50167MB/s, 927296MB/s, and 66365MB/s, respectively, which are quite fast. The 117.4ns delay performance is also normal.
In terms of storage, we can see from CrystalDiskInfo that Mingfan V3 uses Kingston's OM8PGP41024Q-A0 PCIe 4.0 SSD for OEM customers. Mingfan has several mini hosts also equipped with this SSD. We also tested the reading and writing speed of this hard disk through CrystalDiskMark.
According to the test results, the continuous read/write speed of the hard disk is 4805.62MB/s, 3928.30MB/s, and the 4K random read/write speed is 58.69MB/s and 163.75MB/s, which is average. However, for a Win tablet, the performance is completely enough. In fact, it is noted that the V3 can also replace the solid state disk itself, but it needs to remove the screen to see the following M.2 2280 slot, It is obviously difficult for most users to complete this operation by themselves.
As a product limited by volume, Mingfan V3 still adopts the cooling design of four copper tubes and two fans in terms of heat dissipation, which supports the maximum 28W performance release. What's the actual performance? In the 15 minute pressure test of AIDA64, the CPU core temperature of Mingfan V3 is 76.1 ° C. At this time, the power consumption of the CPU package is stable at 28W, and the full core frequency is maintained at about 3GHz. The performance looks good. However, this performance also comes at a cost. At this time, the whole tablet is extremely hot, especially the upper middle part where the motherboard is located. This means that if you want to use this tablet for work with certain performance requirements, it may be safer to put it on the table.
Since it is equipped with the APU commonly used in current game consoles, we also want to see how Mingfan V3 performs in the actual game. We use Extreme Racing: Horizon 5 to run the test mode under the setting of the original 1920 * 1200 resolution, extremely low image quality presets, and the FSR performance file, and the average frame number has reached an astonishing 96 frames, which is quite good, With the power on, it can meet the demand of low image quality for playing masterpieces.
Then we also tested the productivity performance of this tablet. In the performance test of PCMark10, the scores of common basic functions were 10695, the productivity was 10569, the digital content creation was 8687, and the comprehensive score was 7126. The performance was quite good. Good performance combined with large memory can be competent for mild productivity work.
In the cross platform CrossMark test, Mingfan V3 scored 1699 on the whole, and performed well in the test of productivity, creativity, and responsiveness. In particular, the creativity score reached 1833, which was quite good.
Finally, let's also take a look at the endurance performance of Mingfan V3. It is worth mentioning that Mingfan V3 is equipped with 65W GaN adapter supporting folding pins, which is smaller and easier to carry. It is friendly for a tablet product. It can be charged to 50% in about 35 minutes and 90% in 75 minutes. The charging speed is also quite good.
Mingfan V3 has inserted 50.82Wh battery into the light and thin body, which is comparable to some light and thin books. In the modern office battery life test of PCMark10 (screen brightness 60%, WiFi and Bluetooth enabled), Mingfan V3 finally achieved a test result of 6 hours and 39 minutes, which is quite good. It can be regarded as a long life product among Windows tablets.
·Can be used as an external display, but it is not easy to use
One of the highlights of Mingfan V3 when it was launched was that it supported DP in and could be used as an external display of other devices. We also briefly experienced this function. With the built-in Type-C data cable, Mingfan V3 can directly connect to any device that supports Type-C display output. It is naturally easy to connect to a computer. We also tried to connect the mobile phone, and we can also complete the screen projection.
But in the process of use, Mingfan V3's experience as an external display is definitely not good. Only 60Hz refresh rate is supported during use, and no setting options are provided at all. Only the volume key can be used as the brightness adjustment key. At the same time, although Type-C is used as the display input interface, it does not support 1-wire connection, which means that Mingfan V3 as the display and the display output device cannot supply power to each other, and the remaining power of Mingfan V3 as an external display cannot be seen.
But fortunately, the external keyboard and speakers can work normally, and the effect of speakers is also quite good. In general, Mingfan V3's use experience as an external display is not good. It does support display signal input, but it is basically limited to that. High brush touch is not supported, and the built-in display settings as an external display are completely missing, which can be said to be a "highlight" of a little regret.
·More original products with creativity but regret
As a product highly expected by Xiaobian, Mingfan V3 does have many highlights among the few Windows tablet products currently selected. Among similar products, it has leading performance, a high specification screen that exceeds demand, available touch and stylus experience The added display function seems to make it a very worthwhile choice of all-purpose Windows tablet.
But when you really use it for a period of time, you will find that the sacrifice of this product is also quite obvious under the surface of its seemingly omnipotent appearance. The high heat brought by the pursuit of performance, the decline of screen appearance caused by support for touch, the functional limitations when it is used as an external display, and the problems and disputes in the design also make Mingfan V3 a product with mixed reviews.
However, given the obvious lack of competitors in the current market, Mingfan V3 seems to be the minority choice for Windows tablet users who are currently pursuing high-performance, high-quality large screens, and complete accessories. If you don't care about the problems we mentioned, or think that Mingfan V3's long board can better meet your pain points, and the budget is not a problem, Mingfan V3 is obviously an option above the passing line.
