SAMSUNG DEX 7 DAY TEST- I Replaced My Laptop for A Week (Biggest Problems and Best Features) By Mike O'Brien

So Samsung DEX has been creating a lot of excitement lately and more and more people are starting to talk about this new hidden feature that Samsung's flagship phones have that essentially allows you to replace your desktop or laptop with your phone now, as phones are getting more expensive, they're, also getting more powerful, and they're starting to look a little more like laptops on the inside, so Samsung DEX is becoming more feasible now, and people claim that you can use it to entirely replace your desktop or laptop. So I did just that and for the past seven days, I locked my laptop away in a closet and I used only my Galaxy S 10, as my daily computer, to really get a full deep dive experience of what it was like to use. Samsung decks on a daily basis in this video I'll, be sharing with you. My experience from this past week and I'll be showing you the features that worked, what didn't work and everything in between hey guys. Welcome back to the channel I'm Michael Bryan and, like I, said this. Video is all about my experience with Samsung decks for the past week, starting off with which phones can do Samsung decks.

So I used my Galaxy S ten. You can use the note 10, and you can use basically the note or the S series as far back as about the eighth generation, although some older ones will need a deck stand and cannot use just the simple things that I used in this video, so I'll link that down in the description I'll show you guys what you need if you have like a s8, for example, or a note 9, or anything like that. So talking about what you need for Samsung decks very easy. I only need a few things, and they were all very cheap. I actually already had them already for my laptop.

So it's really easy to set up. The first thing is a dongle that goes from USB Con one end to HDMI. On the other end, it's also helpful. If you have USA on there, and I'll link that down below what I use, it's only like 25 dollars very cheap, then I got a wireless keyboard for about eight to ten dollars and a wireless mouse for about twelve dollars. You don't need those.

You can use your phone as a touchpad, but I highly recommend if you're going to be productive on this, getting the extra mouse and the keyboard they're, not that expensive, and they make a huge difference, then the last thing you probably want to get, although again not necessary, is a wireless charging pad. These are maybe about ten dollars in most situations, and this will actually make it last a lot longer, because DEX can drain your battery fairly quickly, depending on which phone you're using and what you're actually using your phone for. So when I use my laptop I consider myself something of a power user. I have a lot of windows open the same time, I'm always doing split screen. I have spreadsheets with massive budgets.

Furthermore, I, have you know, videos playing I'm, editing, photos I'm doing a lot at the same time, on my laptop and so translating that over to decks, I thought was a perfect test of the speed and the capabilities of Samsung decks and of my phone and I have to say after using it for an entire week. It definitely kept up with most of what I was doing, except actually editing videos, and that's really just a software thing where they don't have Adobe Premiere Pro, but I could use on Samsung decks right now, so editing, videos I need to use my laptop, but most people are not editing videos every day, not uploading on YouTube, so for everything else, Samsung decks kept up really, really well. I was able to make very large. You know budget spreadsheets and do some advanced math on there and it just it didn't slow down it. Didn't heat up, and I really didn't face.

Any prob I should also note that I never turned it off I had it running pretty continuously, maybe at night Oh turn it off. Just you know when I was going to bed just because I wanted to have my phone with me, but during the day I would have it plugged in non-stop, and sometimes we'd, be on standby for four or five hours at a time, and it never warmed up and never slowed down other than maybe slightly warm just from the charging pad. That's pretty standard, even if DEX is not even running so next I want to give you guys a quick tour of Samsung decks so right here, you'll see that on the home screen, it's very straightforward. It looks a lot like Chrome or Windows, or even Mac for that matter. So you have your home screen right.

There I do recommend one of the really cool things you can do with this is you can right-click on a lot of things, and you get these little secret menus, so you get a little shortcuts that are kind of like if you tap and hold the app on your phone, how pops up and says you know, maybe you want to go to like a quick. You know, create a message or something like that. Just some quick settings, you can do I really like having that, so I got a quick little tip here. I recommend that if you use DEX make sure when you open up chrome, you go over to the top three dots on the right corner, and you go down and select desktop mode. That way, you actually use this like a desktop and not just in mobile mode and all of your websites will show up.

Accordingly, that's definitely a huge tip right. There also guys, if you're new here and have not yet subscribed, but you're interested in the latest tech videos like this one make sure you go down and click the subscribe button and the bell icon. Otherwise, YouTube will not tell you when I released the videos so on the bottom left. Then you have your DEX menu. You'll also have basically what's at the bottom of your phone, so home back your app drawer.

Things like that are all right there, as you go over across to the right. Of course, you have all the open. Apps are on that taskbar right there and then on the right. You have your notifications, your quick settings and just some basic information. The notifications.

Another really cool thing is that they are interactive just like they would be on your phone, so you can just click on one and reply to a text very easily using Samsung decks so getting into some pros and the cons and kind of splitting the two and a half I want to start off with what I really liked about decks. The first thing was how well the keys map over from Windows or even from Mac for that matter, so the hot keys mapped over really well, there can the copy the paste, even like the alt tab to change. You know which window is open, all mapped over really, really well, and he made it so easy to use so, like I said, before, I'm kind of a speed user with computers and I really like to use hotkeys a lot to make my work go quicker so having these map over similarly to they do to how they are on. My laptop is a huge, huge benefit. Another thing is: if you use the windows, keen you hit right or left, you can split screen, and you can put the app that's open on the left or the right.

That's a really nice feature because, like I said, I really do like having split screens. One drawback, though, is that you can't, as far as I can tell so far, you cannot connect more than one monitor at a time. That's a slight drawback. If you are somebody that likes split screens or two monitors with split screens, you want like four windows open. You can't do that right now, but what you can do is you can have up to five apps open at the same time, and you can resize the windows and have them oriented wherever you want.

Some other pros here. I do like how you can have a keyboard and a mouse and they both work very easily Bluetooth. You know this is something that Samsung smartphones are perfect at, especially the flagship phones. You can connect on the s10, I believe four or more devices at once by Bluetooth. I had four devices on there.

So my watch my keyboard, my mouse, and then I also had my watch on there, and it didn't slow down, never cut out on audio I, never had any problems, I also like how fast it is to start this up and how everything's in one location, so I, just plug in my phone, and it just opens up decks right away, and I'm ready to go. If I restart my phone, it's maybe 15 or 20 seconds, it's really fast, especially obviously, because it doesn't have a disk drive in there. So it's a little quicker than some laptops out there when you're starting out and having everything in one location. There is something to be said about that. One for convenience.

If you're trying to manage all your photos or all your files, I like having them all in one place, but also for a security reason of not having to email, important documents back and forth or otherwise having you know anything between two different locations, so convenience and safety is really nice and another thing I like to use VPNs, guys and kind of like I said in my previous video. If you use decks or if you honestly just use a phone and all ever in public I, really recommend getting a VPN guy, so Word VPN is the one that I use. I have a link down in the description for 75% off. If you want that, that's just what I recommend to keep safe if you're, in a hotel in an airport in like a coffee shop or wherever you are just on your phone, also notice that the temperature of this never really heats up. Some people were worried about that, at least with the S tenant.

Never heated up, I didn't really push it too. Much with the note 10 other cool things, the apps that work really well is there are apps that are optimized and most of them are Google. Apps, Samsung, Apps and Microsoft apps make sense. Those are the three most productive ones, in my opinion, usually so having those optimized for DEX was really, really nice and also, if you're, presenting a PowerPoint from your phone, really, really nice that you can have it on your phone just go and plug it in to a projector wherever you want, and you can actually control your PowerPoint with. Maybe the s-pen, for example, or with the galaxy watch, just get the app for that, and it's really nice that you have a remote without having one of those little clickers that you need to go and find so getting over to some negatives.

There are some drawbacks here: some limitations to DEX and if you know I think they will improve over time. But for now it's very important to know this before you decide whether you want to switch to only using Samsung DEX. So the first one I noticed was that there is a lack of optimized apps for DEX. It's just the way. It is that you know the aspect.

Ratio is so different having a big screen like that compared to a phone screen and a lot of the apps are not meant for that. They're not really ready for that, so you can force them to stretch out, but sometimes they kind of just are wasted space here and there, and it's not really totally optimized. The second thing is I noticed there was a weird cortical this one. It seems like a very easy update actually, but if you hit the Windows key or whatever the command key, whatever you want to call it, and it opens up your app drawer right there, and you can search right away. That's typically how I open my apps I click that I type right away.

On my laptop, that's, what I do, and I try doing it on the phone, but one thing: I noticed what was for some reason when you press the Windows key, and you start typing. The first letter is always rejected. It never recognizes no matter how long you wait doesn't recognize the first letter I'm, not sure why that is, though so I tried plugging a lot into this I plugged in a flash drive and that, unfortunately, did not work I plugged in a webcam and that didn't work either I also plugged in a printer and again that did not work. So three things that were you know, I wish they worked on here. That would be really useful and could be a big game changer for people deciding whether they want to use decks.

Also, I tried plugging in an external hard drive, and admittedly this one was actually kind of stupid. I realized. After the fact it's obviously a disk drive, so it pulls power from the phone, and it forced my phone just to kind of reboot it shut down. It really crashed, so I recommend not doing that. Don't try plugging in a disk drive to this.

You know it was obviously an accident, but don't do that so another limitation with Samsung decks. You can only have five apps open on the screen at the same time and I think that's a little of a limitation for me, I, like switching between a lot of different windows, and while you can have other ones technically open, you can only have five on the screen at the same time. I'm sure that's manageable. It really didn't hold me back. It was just something: I noticed that you should definitely understand.

That's a limitation okay, another one. This is again a little quirk and I think this is really the infrastructure of how DEX was. You know coded that it's sort of separated from your phone itself, so the phone interface and DEX operate independently. So, if you have, you know, Spotify open on your phone, and then you're on DEX right now, and you want to change the song you have to either you know, go on your phone and do it, or you have to shut the app down on your phone and open it up on DEX. You can't have it.

You know you can't click and drag between them. Furthermore, you can't have it open on both, and you have to decide which one it's going to be on just a weird quirk that one kind of bothered me with Spotify. But again, that's not really a big deal. You just close the apps and open them on DEX. It's not really that big of a deal! Lastly, is your battery so, like I, said, I keep this on a wireless charger the whole time, but if you have it just on battery, it does drain your battery relatively quickly, so I recommend, if you're traveling around- and you want to use this for a long time- definitely make sure you have a charger so guys.

That's everything I found from Samsung DEX from an entire week of using it honestly I think most people can definitely get away with using Samsung. DEX I was really impressed that, on a day-to-day basis, I was able to get everything done. That I needed to I really didn't have any limitations that stopped me from doing stuff. You know maybe a few inconveniences with apps not being optimized, but most of what I do I just do on the internet anyway. So Google Chrome is most of my usage and other than that it's usually Microsoft apps.

So if you are somebody that uses a Chromebook or a laptop that is up to $500 in value, I would say that you might be able to justify using only Samsung DEX. Instead, now there are limitations if you're somebody that is a know, a real power user, and you need like i7 on a laptop. Obviously, this can't replace that also, if you're somebody that likes having the convenience of a small laptop that you just open up and take anywhere you want to go. You know, that's obviously nice too, if you have a monitor set up somewhere or if you're going to a hotel, and you have a TV there. DEX is a perfect alternative and I think that's something I'll be continuing to use whenever I travel to hotels, bringing my phone is way easier than bringing a laptop and my phone so guys.

That's why it to say about this comment down below what your opinion is on Samsung DEX. Do you think it's possible to only use DEX and not have a laptop or a desktop thanks for watching guys, I'll see you next time?.

Source : Mike O'Brien