News: A laptop evolved with the era of Intel Evo

A laptop evolved with the era of Intel Evo

Hot off the heels of Project Athena, Intel Evo was first introduced in 2020 as a kind of Athena 2.0, and offered users evolved laptops with everything they needed to keep up with a busy lifestyle – laptops that did what users needed them to do.

What has been made clear through Intel Evo’s design is that sacrificing one Key Experience Indicator (KEI) for another should never be an option. Earning the Intel Evo badge of honour does not come easy as Intel has put together strict KEIs and specification requirements that laptops need to hit to be certified with that original badge. Intel Evo’s second-generation requirements as a minimum included laptops being equipped with an 11th Gen Intel Core i5 or Core i7 CPU with Intel Xe integrated graphics – followed by hitting their four basic KEIs.

• Wake time in under 1 second.
• 9 hours or more of real-world battery life for a laptop with a Full-HD display.
• Fast-charging that provides 4 hours or more of battery life in a 30-minute charge on laptops with Full HD display.
• Consistent system responsiveness on battery power.

If you thought that is where it ended, think again. Intel Evo-certified laptops also required Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, Thunderbolt 4 ports, USB-C charging, a minimum of 8GB dual-channel RAM, 256GB PCIe NVMe SSD, biometric login abilities such as IR camera, fingerprint reader, Bluetooth proximity sensor, far-field voice recognition, and optional Gigabit LTE connectivity.

As we entered 2022, Intel launched their third-generation Intel Evo badge which brought a few new requirements with the release of their 12^th Gen Intel Core mobile CPUs. Intel kept all the original KEIs from second-gen and added a few specification requirements should laptops want to earn that third-edition Evo badge.

• Laptops now need to be equipped with Intel CPUs from the 12th Gen.
• Wi-Fi 6 has been advanced to Wi-Fi 6E (Gig+) wireless connectivity that is capable of operating on 6 GHz, depending on market availability.
• Intel Connectivity Performance Suite (Windows only).
• Dynamic background noise suppression
• Intel Visual Sensing technology.
• Optional FHD camera, which is strongly advised but not enforced, or Intel IPU6/MIPI camera.

Intel
Arno Vorster

Brand Executive

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Concept Luna

Joining Pinnacle at their Techscape 2022 event in the Drakensberg this past February, Chris Buchanan (Director for Client Solutions in Russia and Africa at Dell Technologies), provided guests with an overview on their innovative project which forms part of Dell Technologies 2030 Moonshot Goals to advance sustainability and drive the circular economy – Concept Luna.

“Concept Luna is a challenge our engineering team embraced by asking “what if” questions to assess our product design in different ways. It has allowed us to test new ways of reducing, reusing, recreating, and ultimately push the boundaries of sustainable PC design. Some of the innovations introduced include using Hydro based Aluminium, introducing recycled plastic polymers and bioplastics into our casings, as well as using 100% recycled pulp in our packaging. We have already exceeded our 2030 goal eight years ahead of plan with the launch of the new Latitude notebook which has 100% recyclable packaging.”

In addition to the above new system requirements brought in by AI acceleration, Intel also added a new KEI called “Intelligent Collaboration”. Intelligent Collaboration aims to deliver high-end video conferencing on an Evo laptop while running multiple collaboration apps in the background without impacting responsiveness and battery life.

For more information on Pinnacle’s Intel offering, click here.