Venom BlackBook Zero 14 Review - The Best Laptop Keyboard
So, sometimes, lesser-know laptop companies send me devices to take a look at and usually they're not great, to say the least. But once in a while, you get something special. And this is one of them:
This is the Blackbook 14 from a company called Venom. They're a company based out of Australia, and they ship around the world. This particular model starts at $1000. The build quality is surprisingly good,: aluminum panels, aluminum chassis, all anodized black very little screen flex, it's on par for build quality with something like the Razer Blade. And, it's one hand openable, but like every other matte black device, it shows fingerprints pretty readily.
For a 14 inch device, this has a pretty good selection of ports: There are 3 USB-As, an audio jack, Micro HDMI, microSD, and a USB-C; this port doesn't support Thunderbolt 3 so you can't connect an external GPU, but considering the CPU that's inside here I don't think it's a big deal. If you flip it around and remove some screws, you can access the internals. The RAM is soldered on, you're stuck with 8GB. The M.2 SSD is removable. The 256GB stick in here is SATA, so speeds are OK. The processor is a Kaby Lake Core Y, and these look disappointing on paper because the base clock is relatively slow, but it turbos up nicely, and performance for light tasks is quite good, but extended heavy CPU usage will cause it to throttle down.
So, depending on what you do: if you don't use heavy applications like photo and video editing and you don't play video games, this CPU is a good fit. It's fanless, it's very energy efficient and it can handle 4k playback easily. But if you want to play games, don't get this computer. The thermals are fine; nothing gets uncomfortable to use, even under load. The speakers are located on the sides here. They fire downwards, which I don't like very much. The bass is weak, but the overall volume is good. It's a pretty standard pair of speakers for an ultrabook. The battery is a 40Wh slab, and I'm getting a comfortable 8 hours with it.
This is with the screen at 250 nits doing regular work, but if you're doing a lot of 4K video playback, you could get significantly longer battery life because of the Kaby Lake processor. They've actually included 2 chargers, so you can leave one at home and one charger at work and then you only have to carry your laptop back and forth. It's a small detail, and I'm sure these things don't cost very much to produce, but it's a nice touch, and I think more manufacturers should do that. Having a second adapter is really convenient. They also include a USB key for system recovery. The screen is an IPS panel. 1080p, matte finish, not a touchscreen. Contrast is good and the blacks look pretty black, but it could be brighter. It's also not particularly color accurate, so it's not going to be the best screen for content creation. Now, this is a 14 inch panel, and there's a noticeable size difference between this and the more common 13 inch ultrabook. This feels significantly roomier, and any type of text-heavy workflow is going to be more comfortable on this bigger screen. The webcam up top is 720p; looks OK.
So the keyboard on this laptop is in my opinion one of the best features on this laptop and it's actually one of the main reasons why I even made this video. The layout is excellent, I think it's potentially one of the best layouts I've seen on an ultrabook. The arrow keys are well placed, and it has dedicated Home, End, and Page Up / Page Down keys. The backlighting has three stages, but what makes this keyboard is the feel. Good key travel, quick response and the whole typing experience is excellent. And as someone who has spent a long time coding on a laptop before, I recognize the value of a good keyboard on an ultrabook, and this has one of them.
The trackpad is OK, it uses Elan drivers but it's accurate enough. It doesn't skip around, and the gesture controls are accurate, button mechanism is good. It has a plastic surface. Good texture, but I still wish it was glass.
So, the Blackbook Zero 14: it's certainly not cheap, and it's not a device that's made for gaming or even heavy content creation but, if you're looking for something with great build quality, an excellent keyboard and a larger than average screen for just more visual real estate, take a look at this one, I think Venom made something pretty good. See you guys next time.
This is the Blackbook 14 from a company called Venom. They're a company based out of Australia, and they ship around the world. This particular model starts at $1000. The build quality is surprisingly good,: aluminum panels, aluminum chassis, all anodized black very little screen flex, it's on par for build quality with something like the Razer Blade. And, it's one hand openable, but like every other matte black device, it shows fingerprints pretty readily.
For a 14 inch device, this has a pretty good selection of ports: There are 3 USB-As, an audio jack, Micro HDMI, microSD, and a USB-C; this port doesn't support Thunderbolt 3 so you can't connect an external GPU, but considering the CPU that's inside here I don't think it's a big deal. If you flip it around and remove some screws, you can access the internals. The RAM is soldered on, you're stuck with 8GB. The M.2 SSD is removable. The 256GB stick in here is SATA, so speeds are OK. The processor is a Kaby Lake Core Y, and these look disappointing on paper because the base clock is relatively slow, but it turbos up nicely, and performance for light tasks is quite good, but extended heavy CPU usage will cause it to throttle down.
So, depending on what you do: if you don't use heavy applications like photo and video editing and you don't play video games, this CPU is a good fit. It's fanless, it's very energy efficient and it can handle 4k playback easily. But if you want to play games, don't get this computer. The thermals are fine; nothing gets uncomfortable to use, even under load. The speakers are located on the sides here. They fire downwards, which I don't like very much. The bass is weak, but the overall volume is good. It's a pretty standard pair of speakers for an ultrabook. The battery is a 40Wh slab, and I'm getting a comfortable 8 hours with it.
This is with the screen at 250 nits doing regular work, but if you're doing a lot of 4K video playback, you could get significantly longer battery life because of the Kaby Lake processor. They've actually included 2 chargers, so you can leave one at home and one charger at work and then you only have to carry your laptop back and forth. It's a small detail, and I'm sure these things don't cost very much to produce, but it's a nice touch, and I think more manufacturers should do that. Having a second adapter is really convenient. They also include a USB key for system recovery. The screen is an IPS panel. 1080p, matte finish, not a touchscreen. Contrast is good and the blacks look pretty black, but it could be brighter. It's also not particularly color accurate, so it's not going to be the best screen for content creation. Now, this is a 14 inch panel, and there's a noticeable size difference between this and the more common 13 inch ultrabook. This feels significantly roomier, and any type of text-heavy workflow is going to be more comfortable on this bigger screen. The webcam up top is 720p; looks OK.
So the keyboard on this laptop is in my opinion one of the best features on this laptop and it's actually one of the main reasons why I even made this video. The layout is excellent, I think it's potentially one of the best layouts I've seen on an ultrabook. The arrow keys are well placed, and it has dedicated Home, End, and Page Up / Page Down keys. The backlighting has three stages, but what makes this keyboard is the feel. Good key travel, quick response and the whole typing experience is excellent. And as someone who has spent a long time coding on a laptop before, I recognize the value of a good keyboard on an ultrabook, and this has one of them.
The trackpad is OK, it uses Elan drivers but it's accurate enough. It doesn't skip around, and the gesture controls are accurate, button mechanism is good. It has a plastic surface. Good texture, but I still wish it was glass.
So, the Blackbook Zero 14: it's certainly not cheap, and it's not a device that's made for gaming or even heavy content creation but, if you're looking for something with great build quality, an excellent keyboard and a larger than average screen for just more visual real estate, take a look at this one, I think Venom made something pretty good. See you guys next time.
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