If you were concerned about the credentials of choosing a lesser-known brand for business, then know that founder, Jaan Turon, is so committed to both quality, sustainability and e-waste that, in addition to the three-year, pick-up-and-return warranty, Venom offers a guaranteed $500 cashback up to SEVEN years after purchase.
Turon told us that in his many years of dealing with MSPs and businesses and working in large-brand, multinational competitors, he deemed the following was particularly important to look for in a business laptop:
1. Build quality – Workers aren’t renowned for looking after their equipment too well and so choosing a model that’s not robust is a false economy.
2. Matte screen – Fending-off eye fatigue is important and reflections on a glossy screen don’t help.
3. 14-inches – This is the optimal size for workers. Any smaller and the screen can limit productivity. Any larger and it becomes too bulky.
4. Less than 1.4KG – The lighter the better.
5. Minimum 12-hour battery life – It needs to last a full-day out of the office.
6. Minimum 32GB RAM – It’s normal for workers to have a gazillion browser tabs open in Google Chrome and to be running memory vampire apps like MS Teams.
7. A long-lasting battery – Fast-charge is nice, but it tends to severely impact upon the physical longevity of a battery. This degrades longevity both in terms of battery life and battery lifespan.
8. Proper processor – It’s not uncommon to see business ultraportables with low-powered processors that eschew basic performance for low power consumption. But, this can impact upon productivity for anyone performing more-than basic tasks.
9. Full HD webcam – Essential for meeting equity in a hybrid-work, post-Covid world.
10. Full complement of connectivity – Most workers will need to plug into an HDMI-based screen or projector at some point and so giving out laptops with minimalist, USB-C ports (and losable dongles) isn’t practical in the business world.
11. Windows Hello security – Few organisations make use of corporate fleet management features like vPro, but they need to have basic security features to lock-up valuable data, like Windows Hello.
Not surprisingly, the Venom BlackBook Zero 14 Phantom ticks every box.
Design and Ergonomics
The 14-inch Venom BlackBook Zero 14 Phantom walks the line between cool for consumers and contemporary for corporates. The matte black, CNC-milled, magnesium-alloy chassis, with its discrete lid moniker, looks good in any environment and feels as robust and yet lightweight. The hinges are high quality too and we expect it to last long enough to get the cash back.
Opening it up reveals the matte, 14-inch, high-resolution, 2,880 x 1,800, IPS display. It displays a comfortable and crisp Windows Desktop, has decent colour performance for multimedia and even a quicker-than-normal, 90Hz refresh rate.
The Scrabble-tile keyboard is very comfortable and accurarte for extended typing and the large trackpad performs well (you can also disable it by quickly double-tapping the top-left corner.
The twin, two-Watt speakers provide an impressive amount of punchy, well-rounded audio and this augments the high-quality microphone array (and impressive, Full HD webcam) to produce high-quality web conferencing. The webcam also provides Windows Hello-based, face recognition for security.
Connectivity
All the key ports are present. There’s:
1 x Thunderbolt 4
1 x USB-C 3.2 Gen 1
2 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1
1 x 3.5mm audio jack
1 x HDMI 2.0
1 x SD card reader
Inside there’s Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2.
It’s a great laptop to interact with and has few limitations.
Performance
Venom eschews having a low-performance processor in favour of the fully-fledged, 13th-Gen Core i7 CPU. The online configurator enables you to pick how much RAM you want (from 8GB to 64GB) and also the size of your quick, NVMe hard drive(s) (from 256GB to a massive 8TB!)
This results in a laptop that doesn’t throw performance out the Window for the sake of portability.
Portability
Speaking of which, the Venom BlackBook Zero 14 Phantom’s robust, road-warrior-worthy chassis might only weigh 1.22KG but it packs inside a maximum-sized, 99Wh battery to power the laptop for well over 12 hours. So, you can have your cake and eat it too, assuming that your cake is performance and eating it means long battery life.
Conclusion
You can configure your own Venom BlackBook Zero 14 Phantom at Venom’s international online store. MSPs can also join programs to help outfitting businesses with fleets too.
Far from being a cheap, start-up, Venom offers more quality than many mass-market laptop purveyors and it guarantees to supply the same spec for the next three years to ensure image stability.
We’ll be running a full review on iTWire very soon but it’s already won the Best Laptop Award (and a Highly Recommonded Portable Laptop Award) over at High Performance Laptops.
Get yours now at Venom’s online store.
