Eve, the maker of the 2017 crowd-sourced 2-in-1, the Eve V, has revealed images of the newest version of the device, which will have the same name.
The 2-in-1 will have a larger, 13.4-inch display with a 16:10 aspect ratio, with FHD+ (1900 x 1200) resolution for the entry-level model and an option for a 4K UHD+ (3840 x 2400). The company is promising HDR support, with better brightness and contrast, thanks to displays made by Sharp.
This year’s model also changes the port selection. While the Eve team expected to use similar ports to the original Eve V, including USB Type-A, a community vote revealed that people were willing to trade that for USB Type-C if it meant smaller bezels. So the new design has two Thunderbolt 4 ports on one side of the device and a standard USB Type-C port on the other side of the tablet. The microSD card slot will be combined into a tray with the SIM card and, thankfully, it’s keeping the headphone jack.
An initial concept showed four USB Type-C ports, so clearly some changes have been made along the way.
Eve’s new design also makes changes to the speakers, which now face the front, rather than the back. It’s also adding two subwoofers to the bottom of the 2-in-1’s tablet. Eve says it’s still working on using drivers and firmware to update the sound, but is also “working with our speaker supplier to ensure we dedicate enough space to acoustic chambers, and are looking into third-party specialists to help us tune the sound, so that we get it right straight out of the box.”
As Eve has previously said, the new Eve V will use Intel’s 11th Gen Core Tiger Lake processors. Unlike the original, which used a Y-series chip, this tablet will use active cooling, as it’s using UP3 chips (formerly U-series) with the option to turn the fan off for silence.
The company didn’t specify final specs, however. We don’t know which Tiger Lake CPUs will be in the device, nor how much RAM or storage it will include. Eve CEO Konstantinos Karatsevidis told me that those questions will go before its community in the next few weeks. For CPUs, there’s also a question of offering the Core i3, i5 and i7 or just two of those three. It also plans to announce pricing and pre-order details next month. That cuts it close on a planned Q4 release, but Karatseveidis said they hope to launch by the end of November or beginning of December.
The new tablet doesn’t sport a dramatically different look, as it’s still a black tablet with a kickstand and Surface Pro-style keyboard. But the thinner bezels do bring it into modern times.
Once pricing and pre-orders are revealed, we’ll have to see how distribution goes, as that was a sore spot with a third party vendor last time around. Now, Eve is handling that closer to its own vest.
