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Sapphire EDGE VS8 Barebones Model Review (8GB/SSD)

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

  • Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
  • Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
  • Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
  • Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
  • Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
  • Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 3.3GB 720p MKV file (2h:12mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power. We are using the newest version which has been optimised for Sandybridge processors.

Hardware acceleration is enabled.

By simply adding 8GB of higher grade memory and a Solid State Drive, we have managed to reduce the encoding time by almost 2 and a half minutes!

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8 comments

  1. Yeah, very nice. tiny little thing. Quite a lot of cash, but you pay for the size.

  2. I didn’t like any of the others as the drive performance was rubbish and I wasn’t paying cash for a 5,400 rpm drive.

    This is tempting, but ill be interested to see how much OCUk land it for. They have been quite expensive lately thats why im buying from SCAN now.

  3. How did I miss all the edge reviews before! I read this site all the time.

    This looks great, personally id need to put the money into a new gaming system, but great idea from sapphire. very cool.

  4. I think this would be a great little office machine, my only concern is the asking price for the VS8 generally. £300 for a barebones unit isn’t a bargain.

    I appreciate paying extra for the size, but I think the price tradeoff might prove hard for Sapphire. good review though

  5. Zardon does a good job of selling this, however im sadly not sold. Not because I dont like it, or value the size and power saving. I just think the pricing is way out of whack.

    Id want a 240GB SSD as I need a lot of applications installed. The HDD version they include is too slow so thats out. Then 8GB of ram and id need another Windows 7 license.

    The OS license is my big sticking point. I dont want WIndows 8 so id need to fork out another £100 for Windows 7.

    This would end up well over £500 (even £600). id rather build something in the Bitfenix Ghost chassis for the same cost with a core i3

  6. @Alex,

    Isnt the A8 4555m better than a core i3 for graphics though?

  7. People are missing the point, the AMD A8 mobile chips are very low power demanding designs. Building a system into this is very difficult due to the size. its even smaller than a netbook.

    The cost is a little higher, but if Apple made one of these and put an aluminum cover on it, they would sell it for £800-£900 with a basic SSD and 4GB of memory. People would accept it as a great deal.

  8. @ James M. but apple would set it all up and put the OS on it, with all the ‘drivers’ and even some useful software.

    Sapphire will only drop the price of the barebones by £70-£80 (depending on exchange in UK and OCUK). So people need to get something of their own choice in regards to HDD and memory, then an OS< install it all, make sure it all works, then install the drivers.

    Its quite a cost really ,even though i like it myself. If they had brought out a version with a 120GB SSD, WIndows 7, 8GB of ram for £499.95 and had it ready to rock out out of the package without any user intervention it would make more sense.

    They are caught between targeting the educated enthusiast user who could do all the install stuff, but who won't want to pay the price, as other, faster options are available at less or similar money.

    the size is the main thing people will love, but im not too fond of the appearance, would have looked better out of aluminum or shiny materials.