Xiaomi has officially announced the India launch date for their 2021 Mi Laptops models. According to the promo page on Amazon.in, these laptops will launch in India on Aug 26 during the Mi Smarter Living 2022 event. You will be able to pre-order it in the coming weeks from Amazon and other online shopping websites.
Xiaomi is yet to announce the launch prices for these new 2021 MI Notebooks. Check out the promo page here for more info.
According to the “The Future is Smart Productivity” promo page online, these 2021 Notebook models are powered by 11th Gen Intel processors. The high-end models will be available to purchase with 11th Gen Core i7 processor while the cheaper models will have 11th Gen Core i3 and i5 processors. We can also expect some Mi Notebook 2021 variants with AMD Ryzen processors to land in India in the future.
Top-end models in the 2021 Mi Laptops series feature a 2K display with 100% sRGB color gamut. Instead of the regular 16:9 aspect ratio, these will have 16:10 aspect ratio. We can also expect a cheaper Full HD 1080P screen model. The promo page also hints of these having higher refresh rates than the regular 60hz.
Older Models: Mi Notebook 14 Horizon Edition ( Price: ₹54,999 ), Mi NoteBook 14 ( Price: ₹41,999 ).
Xiaomi is also expected to launch Mi Band 6 in India during the Mi Smarter Living 2022 event.
Raghu Reddy, the Chief Business Officer of Xiaomi India has posted some sneak peek photos of these upcoming laptops via his Twitter handle. Check them out below.
Expected Specs and Features
Unibody metallit design, precision cut from Aircraft grade aluminium
11th Gen Intel Core i3 / i5 / i7 processors
Integrated Iris Xe GPU / Nvidia Graphics
up to 2K resolution display with 16:10 aspect ratio and higher refresh rate
Lenovo has launched Think Centre M70t 11EVS04L00 Desktop Tower PC model in India online. It has an MRP price of ₹70,408 and a launch selling price of ₹48,774in India. The desktop is now in stock and available to purchase online from Amazon.in currently sold by Appario Retail Private Ltd and Fulfilled by Amazon. Check here for the current lowest price and offers.
Lenovo Think Centre M70t 11EVS04L00 is a lower mid-range Enterprise level desktop tower PC powered by the 10th Gen Intel Core i5-10400 Hexa-core processor. It has a base clock speed of 2.9Ghz and has a turbo boost clock of 4.3GHz. For graphics, it uses integrated Intel UHD Graphics 630. This model ships with Windows 10 Professional operating system.
It comes with 8GB of ram and has 1TB HDD storage. There are 4x DDR4 DIMM slots available with a maximum 128GB ram supported. In the storage department, this model supports up to 3 drives – 1x 2.5″/3.5″ HDD + 1x 2.5″ HDD + 1x M.2 2242/2280 SSD. It has a Discrete TPM 2.0 chip and is TCG certified. Check out the full specs and features below.
Benq has launched MOBIUZ EX2710S 27 inch Gaming Monitor in India online. It has an MRP List Price of ₹34,990and will be available for a lower price online. This computer monitor is now listed online on Amazon.in currently Sold by Appario Retail Private Ltd and Fulfilled by Amazon. It will be in stock on August 17, 2021. Check here for the current lowest price and offers. In the US, the price for this model is $269.99.
MOBIUZ EX2710S Launch price in India: ₹24,990 ( Sep 2021 ) Oct 2021 Lowest Price: ₹23,489.
BenQ MOBIUZ EX2710S is a Gaming Monitor featuring a 1920 x 1080 Full HD 27-inch display with a refresh rate of 165hz supported. It has a fast 1ms response time ( MPRT ) and comes with AMD FreeSync Premium for smooth gameplay. This monitor has features like BenQ HDRi technology, Light Tuner, Black eQualizer, etc to get a better visual quality while gaming or during multimedia consumption.
In the audio department, Benq has equipped this model with 2.5W built-in speakers fine-tuned by treVolo, plus a DSP chip with three custom sound modes to choose from. The panel on this supports 99% sRGB offering good color reproduction. To connect your PC or Laptop to BenQ MOBIUZ EX2710S you can use HDMI 2.0 port or Display Port 1.2. Check out the full specs below.
From the manufacturer MOBIUZ monitors empower transformative gaming. Leave the ordinary behind and enter new worlds with fully immersive, all-encompassing audiovisual excellence. Get behind the wheel of EX2710S and take control of your victory.
Lenovo has launched a few IdeaPad Slim 3 2021 ( IdeaPad 3 14ITL6 ) India Models online. The current price range from ₹43,999 – ₹59,999 ( Aug 2021 Price ) on Amazon.in.
Entry-level models in this series are powered by 11th Gen Intel Core i3 ( Core i3-1115G4 ) processor and more expensive models have 11th Gen Core i5 ( Core i5-1135G7 ). There are also a few more expensive models with Core i7-1165G7 listed on Lenovo Global website, however, as of this writing, there is no Core i7-1165G7 IdeaPad Slim 3 2021 India Model listed online.
For graphics, most models use integrated Intel graphics GPUs ( Intel UHD Graphics on Core i3 and Iris Xe GPU on Core i5 ) while some ship with NVIDIA GeForce MX350 / MX450 GPUs.
These laptops come with 8GB of ram ( 4GB soldered + 4GB SO-DIMM slot ) and have NVMe SSD up to 512GB. IdeaPad Slim 3 2021 Series features a 14 inch Full HD IPS screen with a peak brightness of 300nits and has a regular 60hz refresh rate.
Most models in this series come with a 45Whr battery, while some cheaper ones have a smaller 38Whr battery. 45Whr models have 1x storage slow while the 38WHr has 2x slots ( 1x HDD + 1x SSD ). Check out the full specs and features below.
Victus by HP laptops are now available in India. There are currently 4 models listed online on Amazon.in. All these models are powered by 5th Gen AMD Ryzen processors. HP Victus models are also available with 11th Gen Intel processors, however, these models are yet to launch in India.
If you are planning to buy any of these models, it would be a good idea to check for some genuine certified buyer reviews online. What better place to look for than the Amazon.in product pages itself for these. The Verified Purchase badge next to the reviewer ensures the review is written by someone who bought the laptop and has used it before writing the review.. Check them out below.
The high-end model in this series – HP Victus 16-e0360AX is powered by AMD Ryzen 7 5800H octa-core processor and comes with Nvidia RTX 3060 GPU. It comes with 16GB of ram and has 512GB SSD storage. This model has a launch price of ₹1,04,990. The price has increased now a bit to ₹1,09,990 ( Aug 2021 ). As of this writing, it has 4.5 stars out of 11 reviews.
Check out the Pros and Cons listed by many Verified purchase reviews on Amazon.in below.
May 2022 Update: Newer model – HP Victus 16-e0361ax ( AMD Ryzen 7 5800H / Nvidia RTX 3060 / 16GB / 512GB SSD ) listed on Amazon India.
Pros / Advantages – Reasons to buy HP Victus 16-e0360AX
144hz refresh rate screen
Good heat management
2x ram slots – Dual channel support with max 32GB supported
Empty slot to add more SSD storage.
6GB Nvidia RTX 3060 GPU ( 95W TDP )
AMD Ryzen 7 5800H octa-core processor
Fast booting thanks to SSD drive
200W adapter
Cons / Disadvantages – Reasons not to buy HP Victus 16-e0360AX
Not so good Battery backup – expect around 3.5 hours of mixed use
2 hrs to fully charge the battery
Average plastic body – probably HP cut some corners in order to make this cheaper than the HP Omen laptops with similar specs
No multi-colored RGB keyboard
Loud fan noise when running high end games – this is to be expected.
Average Display
Average webcam
Screen wobbling – a few users are complaining about this.
Amazon India had two sales in the last couple of weeks. The annual Prime Day 2021 sale had offers on a wide range of products including a lot of laptops and saw a lot of new exclusive launches in Electronics, Mobiles, Laptops, etc. It was followed by the Freedom Festival 2021 sale aka Independence day sale with a lot of the same products on offer. Check out the new and upcoming launches online on Amazon.in below.
New Launches in Laptops ( July – Aug 2021 )
HP has launched their Victus 2021 Series laptops powered by 5th Gen AMD Ryzen 5 5600H hexa-core and Ryzen 7 5800H octa-core processors. These models have Nvidia GTX 1650, RTX 3050, and RTX 3060 Graphics cards and are now available to purchase from Amazon.in. The price range from ₹68,990 – ₹1,09,990.
LG Gram Laptop Series which are known for their lightweight design and long battery life are now available to purchase in India from Amazon.in. These 2021 models are powered by 11th Gen Intel Core i5 and i7 processors. There are currently 5 different models in stock with prices ranging from ₹74,490 – ₹99,990.
Fujitsu UH-X and UH-X Convertible models are now in stock as well. These are one of the lightest laptops you can buy today in India. It weighs just 878gms which is 100g less than the LG Gram base model. The price range from ₹82,990 – ₹92,990
Latest Launches in Laptops on Amazon.in ( Aug 2021 update )
HP 15s-gr0012AU is currently the Best Selling Laptop online in India on Amazon.in during the Great Freedom Festival Sale 2021. The current lowest price for this model is ₹42,499( Aug 2021 ). The listed MRP Price is ₹44,466. This laptop is currently Sold by Appario Retail Private Ltd and Fulfilled by Amazon. Check here for current offers and certified buyer reviews.
HP 15s-gr0012AU is a budget, entry-level laptop powered by AMD Ryzen 3 3250U dual-core processor. It has a base clock speed of 2.6Ghz and supports a boost clock of 3.5Ghz. For graphics, it uses integrated AMD Radeon Graphics GPU. Performance-wise, AMD Ryzen 3 3250U is similar to the 10th Gen Intel Core i3 dual-core processor.
It comes with 8GB of ram and has 256GB SSD storage for faster booting and performance. You also get a regular 1TB HDD drive for storage. The display on this model is a 15.6 inch Full HD screen with an anti-glare panel supporting a peak brightness of 250nits. Check out the full specs and features below.
Current Review Rating on Amazon.in: 4.1 out of 5 Start ( 999 reviews – 54% 5 Star Reviews, 11% 1 Star Reviews ).
Reasons to buy HP 15s-gr0012AU – Pros
SSD Drive – Speeds up booting and app loading performance
8GB ram – less out of memory issues especially if you use Google Chrome a lot
1TB HDD drive – plenty of space to save your documents and photos.
Anti-glare Full HD screen – less glare and better viewing angles
MS Office Home & Student 2019 pre-installed.
Reasons not to buy HP 15s-gr0012AU – Cons
Hanging issue reported when using Microsoft Teams and Zoom Meetings in a few verified purchase buyer reviews – so stay away if you are going to be using this for MS Teams Meetings and Online classes
Not so good Webcam
Average Battery Life – expect around 3-4 hours of battery usage on a full charge
Not suitable for Gaming
Check out other Best Selling Laptops on Amazon.in here.
Missed out on Prime Day 2021 sale? Don’t worry Amazon.in is back with another sale from Aug 5-9. This is the Great Freedom Festival Sale aka Independence Day 2021 Sale. Amazon has announced a wide range of upcoming deals and offers part of this sale. Even though this is Independence Day Freedom Sale, these special offers won’t be available on Aug 15, 2021.
If you have an SBI Credit Card, you can get an extra 10% Instant Discount when you purchase products during this Great Freedom Festival Sale. Terms and Conditions apply. Find more info on this bank offer here.
Check out the Blockbuster Deals Page here. ( Offers go live on Aug 4 midnight – you can click on the upcoming deals tab and hit on the Watch the Deal on the products you like to get alerts when the deals go live ).
Amazon.in 2021 Independence Day Offers ( Dates: Aug 5-9 )
Up to 40% OFF on Mobiles & Accessories – Offers on OnePlus CE 5G, Redmi Note 10S, Galaxy M32, OnePlus 9R, Apple iPhone 11 Pro, OnePlus Buds Z etc.
Up to 60% OFF on Electronics & Accessories – Best Deals on Laptops, Chromebook, Apple iPad Air, Amazfit Smartwatches etc.
Up to 30% OFFon Laptops from Lenovo, Acer, Apple, HP etc powered by AMD Ryzen and Intel 11th gen processors.
Up to 45% OFF on Amazon Echo, Fire TV and Kindle E-readers – Lowest Price offers on Echo Dot, Echo Show 5, Kindle E-reader etc.
Up to 70% OFF on Amazon Brands & More – Deals on Solimo, Amazon Basics products, Symbol clothing, Vedaka etc.
Up to 55% OFF on TVs & Appliances – Discounts on Samsung Washing Machine, Whirlpool Refrigerator, LG Air Conditioners etc
Up to 60% OFF on Daily Essential Prodcuts – Detergents, Pampers, Nutrition prodcuts, Chocolates etc
Up to 80% OFF on Fashion – up to 80% OFF on Men’s and Women’s Clothing, Footwear, Beauty products, up to 70% OFF on Travel Luggage from American Tourister etc.
Up to 70% OFF on Home & Kitchen – Deals of Prestige Svach, HUL Pureit Eco RO Water Purifier, Wipro Smart Bulb, Duroflex Livein Memory mattress etc.
Up to 80% OFF on Camera and Accessories – Lowest price offers on Canon 1500D, Panasonic Lumix G7, Realme 360 WiFi Camera, Sony ZV-1 Vlog camera etc
Amazin Independence Day 2021 Electronics Deals
Deal on New Apple Mac Mini with Apple M1 Chip (8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) – now Rs 59,999
Deal of the Day – Apple Macbook Air / Pro with M1 Chip on Offer – ₹85,990 now
I recently bought an Acer Swift 3X SF314-510G renewed laptop from Amazon.in as a backup laptop to test out Windows 11 Insider Edition. Since I use Ubuntu 21.04 (Hirsute Hippo) with GNOME 3.38.4 on my regular laptop, I was curious to see how it will work on this new hardware.
Acer Swift 3X SF314-510G is not just another Intel-powered laptop. This model is unique as it comes with Intel Iris Xe Max GPU ( Intel DG1 ). As of this writing, the Ubuntu official kernel doesn’t have support for this GPU. However, since the 11th Gen Intel Core i5-1135G7 also comes with integrated Iris Xe graphics, the latest Ubuntu bootable USB installation drive booted into it without any issues. Everything was working except the Intel Iris Xe Max GPU because of a lack of drivers.
Installing Ubuntu 21.04 Linux on Acer Swift 3X SF314-510G
Since I was able to boot the live USB without any issues, I thought i will install it after updating Windows 10 to Windows 11. I enrolled in the Windows Insider program and installed the new Windows 11 without any issues. The UI looks much better and polished than the older Windows versions. If you are a Windows user, I would highly recommend you give it a try. From my limited usage, I didn’t see the Blue Screen of Death, which is now black I heard.
After using Windows 11 for a while, I decided to Dual boot Ubuntu 21.04 on my new Acer Swift SF314-510G. Installation went without any issues. Since the new Ubuntu versions support Secure Boot, you don’t have to disable it in the Bios and use legacy mode. Everything got installed and the system rebooted. However, the GRUB bootloader, which was needed for Ubuntu to boot didn’t load at startup. Naturally, I googled for solutions and got a wide range of solutions to try out.
A few users suggested i try the following commands
For me, both of these commands didn’t work. So I moved on to other solutions.
Acer has a Bios feature that lets you choose a .EFI file as trusted. In order to do that, first, you have to set a Bios Supervisor password. You can do that easily from the Security tab. Then you have to choose the Select a UEFI file as trusted for executing option. This will let you browse through the EFI partition. From there, navigate to the ubuntu folder and find the shimx64.efi. If no such file exists, look for grubx64.efi. Select it by entering. It will prompt you to enter a name. After finishing this step successfully, reboot. You will now have a new entry in the bootable items listed in the F12 boot menu. This process will give you the Grub loader to boot from on many many Acer Laptops.
However, in my case, it didn’t. So I repeated the Ubuntu installation process after resetting everything in the BIOS to default. Also i tried with and without Secure boot enabled. I again ran into the same issue. but this time, I got empty EFI Ubuntu folders. When I mounted the EFI ubuntu folder using a live system, I found the needed files there but for some reason, BIOS didn’t show it.
I tried using older Ubuntu versions – even installed older Ubuntu 18.04 LTS just to see if it will give me the GRUB. Now i ran into a new error – Executing ‘grub-install /dev/nvme0n1’failed – This is a fatal error. I switched back to the latest Ubuntu live CD, and to my surprise, i started to see this new grub-install error in that as well! Again, I google-searched for solutions, and nothing these great minds suggested worked in my case.
Since I am a full-time Ubuntu user, I actually didn’t need to have Dual Boot Windows 11 and Ubuntu on my Acer Swift 3X SF314-510G. I can easily live without it. However, I wanted to test out the new UI and Windows experience, hence the decision to Dual boot. Also, I was afraid Acer has done some bad EFI Secure Boot implementation that wouldn’t let Ubuntu or other Linux booting on their new laptops. So removing Windows, formatting the whole drive, and installing Ubuntu alone was a risk. However, I was forced to do exactly that thanks to a fix suggested by Gparted. I was using Gparted in the live session to look at the partitions, and it alerted me of some issue with a drive. I hit FIX without thinking much and.. managed to corrupt the Windows partition. ie I screwed up. The Windows bootloader recovery tried to fix it automatically and failed. I tried a few different things and all failed. So I went from trying to fix the Ubuntu GRUB loading issue to trying to fix Windows 11 loading issue.
Finally, I decided to wipe everything off and go Full Ubuntu. I did select Install third-party software for graphics and Wi-Fi hardware and additional media formats during the installation and during the first boot, I performed the “Perform MOK management” and used the “Enroll MOK” option. All went well. It worked. I was able to Boot into the new Ubuntu installation without any issues.
I don’t know the exact reason why the GRUB didn’t load properly. It could be a bug in the GRUB, it could be the Windows 11 bootloader blocking other OSes, or maybe it’s due to some bad Acer BIOS EFI issue.
What I am now trying to do is get a Kernel with support for Iris Xe Max GPU ( Intel DG1 ). According to the reports online, the Linux 5.14 kernel will land with the support for the DG1 GPU. Intel developers are pushing various patches to the kernel to support this new GPU. I tried signing and booting with a 5.14.0-051400rc2-generic but is yet to have drivers for the DG1 GPU.
Amazon India has officially announced Prime Day 2021 Sale. As the name says, this is an exclusive 2-day sale for Amazon Prime Members. 2021 sale is scheduled from July 26 and 27th. You can get discounts on a wide range of products, also get early access to many new launches in Laptops, Electronics, Smartwatches, Mobiles etc. Check out all upcoming offers here.
OnePlus has announced the launch date for their mid-range Nord 2 5G model. Instead of a Qualcomm chipset, OnePlus is using a Mediatek chipset this time for their Nord mobile. It will go on sale during the Amazon Prime Day 2021 sale. Check here for more info.
OnePlus again was in the news for throttling the performance of many popular apps to conserve battery life. Another news we hear from the popular Chinese mobile manufacturer is that they are merging with Oppo Mobiles. We don’t know what will happen to the popular stock Android like Oxygen OS in the future.
Another new mobile Amazon will have on sale during their Prime Day 2021 sale is the Xiaomi Redmi Note 10T 5G. Check out the promo page here.
LG is launching a few Monitors in the coming days online on Amazon.in. LG Ergo QHD 2K Monitor 27QN880, LG UltraWide QHD monitor 34WN750, LG TV Monitor 32SP510M, and LG IPS Monitor 27ML600S will be in stock during the Prime Day Sale. Check here for more info.
Amazon has launched All-new Echo Show 10- 10.1″ HD smart display with motion, premium sound, and Alexa (Black) in India at a price of Rs 24,999.
Huawei Band 6 will go on sale in India for the First time on July 12 on Amazon India. This sale is exclusively available for Prime members. As a launch offer, you can get a free Huawei Mini Speaker worth Rs 1,999. More info here.
New Launches in Laptops in India online ( June-July 2021 )
