Beloved community,
Today we are excited to bring you something inside, tangible, and combined with loads of photos about your favorite Spectrum!
Shed more light on the progress
We are aware that you guys want to know more about how we evaluate our prototypes, or what we have done to advance the quality of Spectrum based on the samples we get. We are going to follow it up in this post! The primary goal of inspecting these samples is to check color, material, and finish (CMF) and industrial designs (ID), and we pay extra attention to details. We came up with a handful of suggestions based on which our manufacturer will improve Spectrum. It is important to note that each prototypeâs potential improvement area is different because it is built by hand. As mentioned in the FAQ, one sample is with us; therefore, most discoveries and feedback discussed in this post are based on the one we have.
Take a close look at the sample
CMF:
Spectrumâs stand is made of aluminum with high-grade plastic covering the mechanical part. As you can see from the picture, the standâs plastic color (pointed out by the yellow arrows) is slightly lighter than the monitorâs back (pointed out by the blue arrow). We want them to match. Our manufacturer confirmed that the usage of various paintings caused it.
The painting on the side of the âport boxâ feels different than that of the monitorâs back if we run our fingers across them. We want a universal finish across the entire back housing, no matter which angle the parts are facing. It was the âsoft toolingâ â assembling the sample by hand â introduced the feeling difference.
Ports
We found that plugging in a cable on the side will not fit â the gap between the inner port and the frame surface is too big to allow this cable to be fully inserted. We need a slight structural tweak to minimize this gap.
Tactile feedback
How do we know that we have rotated Spectrum into a perfect landscape or portrait position? Hold it when adjusted to the right spot, and feel a âclickâ reflected on our hands! The monitor is not forced into position, meaning we can still rotate the monitor to other angles, but it prefers to be at landscape or portrait. This tactile feedback is not present in our sample due to the absence of a nub. We would also like to hear a satisfactory âclickâ when we put the standâs quick-release into position.
Joystick
The joystick is the button we use to control the OSD menu. Because it needs to click to four directions easily and feel good to our fingertips, we designed it to be made of a rigid material with a rubbery, cozy touch surface. It also includes a slightly curved top for a better grip. However, on our sample, the entire joystick is a soft rubber; instead of facilitating navigation, it is good at âŚbeing folded on itself as shown in the picture above. The wrong joystick material caused this issue.
LED
The LED on our sample has a blueish tint to it, so does that of other samples, which you may have noticed from early photos of Spectrum prototypes we revealed. It also switches itself on bright and blue when the monitor is plugged in and maintains the same static color no matter the monitor is working, idle, or off. Because the current firmware is in its first functional version, the lack of OSD control makes the LED blast its full power. It should be RGB and the default being pure white, with its standby behavior being pulsing. The snapshot above is our LED instruction document to which our manufacturer will refer.
Tolerances
The top part of our sample is a bit shaky. Tolerance of the âsoft toolingâ caused it to not fit as precisely as using âhard tooling,â which will apply to mass production. We need to achieve a zero-wobbly Spectrum with more advanced samples.
You can see from the pictures that the gap between the standâs vertical part and base part is too big to achieve a clean line where the two pieces join. We want the tolerance to be reduced to create a less visible line.
As shown, after the stand is connected to our sample, the joint part is slightly higher than the monitor; we want them to be flush. âSoft toolingâ led to this issue during assembly.
There are gaps between our sampleâs frame edge and display components â we can see through the monitor at a few points if we put our eyes on the same level. Moreover, there are a few bumps on the outer surface, and the display surface does not line up on a corner. It is another issue caused by the assembly process.
Community concerns
We are aware that several community members are worried about whether Spectrum can operate normally under the current ventilation hole amount and size. A good time to obtain accurate thermal results is when more of Spectrumâs function is unlocked and controlled by new firmware so that all components can work as intended instead of continually running at full blast or underpowered.
As suggested by our community, we would like to paint the inner metal box to minimize contrast to the outer housing to approach a more premium appearance.
Other
When we put together the stand, we found that the standâs base can be incorrectly mounted backward, which will result in the monitor tipping over. We would like to tweak the connector where the stand parts join to eliminate the possibility of mounting backward physically.
The war of perfection begins
We have received and discussed multiple rounds of feedback from our manufacturers detailing their changes according to our feedback. Most of the issues we discovered will be addressed in the next production run of samples. For example, the painting will be monitored by professional quality engineers, and 3D is changed to push the side ports closer to the housing. Furthermore, a joystick made of rigid material and leather paint will replace the unusable soft rubber. A higher-quality stand will also be assembled, and our manufacturer will apply reduced tolerances.
Whatâs next
We will continue spotting and ironing out every single bug we catch on our first prototypes. We will share more content with our community as new prototypes or firmware become available. Talk soonTM!
But here is at the very least more information and real world examples of how Spectrum would look like.
), shows my biggest problem with this kinda coating. You just see screen being grayish even when off / low brightness, because coating spreads the light across it, so even when the light lighting on spectrum is different in different areas, there is no visible difference cause of coating, rather same gray color. I would prefer having it glossy, so although it would behave like mirror, it would behave like more things normally do, and if light does not shine on whole spectrum, there will be visible more black areas, and more light ones, which would imo look lot better. Also if the light was same in all areas, glossy finish would look darker, and as I am person who prefers good blacks, I would prefer glossy finish. Also, I was kinda surprised how bad was visibility of part of monitor after sun shined at it, as it is quite bright screen with coating.
. They would have to change the casing to fit them in as well as research suppliers which I assume they already have lined up now.