I had originally dismissed DeX as an undercooked gimmick but to Samsung's credit,the company has made a number of improvements to the platform to coincide with the release of its latest flagship smartphone,theGalaxy Note10.
Though older handsets require a dock,newer ones can connect to any monitor with a simple USB-C to HDMI cable,and after using DeX this way almost exclusively for a week,I came away impressed. You can also connect Galaxy phones to a laptop or computer to use DeX in a window,but that somewhat defeats the purpose.
DeX boots up almost instantly once a phone's connected and the desktop user interface is clean and simple taking a few design cues from Windows 10 and Chrome OS. You don't need to learn new keyboard shortcuts either as the ones you have become accustomed to using on a PC,such as alt-tab for switching between applications,work in DeX as well.
Performance feels snappy on the Galaxy Note 10 and,after running a few benchmarks to confirm,there's next to no performance loss when running in DeX mode. You're ostensibly utilising all of the processing power that the smartphone has to offer.
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This means that demanding Android games such asAsphalt 9 look and run great on the big screen and are more satisfying to play when paired with an Xbox One controller over Bluetooth.
Video editing apps like Adobe Rush also performed well and benefited greatly from the extra screen real estate. In general I found DeX fairly stable with the phone never getting too hot to the touch. I say"fairly"as there were times when a random app would crash DeX forcing me to reboot the phone.