Hot Holiday Gift Guide 2015: Tablets, Smartphones, Laptops, and Systems
Systems for Secret Santas
The new X51 R3's specs are ride with the latest PC technologies, from Windows 10 to Intel's Skylake Core i7-6700K processor and companion Z170 motherboard chipset, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 960, 16GB of DDR4-2133 memory and the excellent Samsung PM951 M.2 PCI Express NVMe SSD. I you're looking for a small form factor gaming-rig that integrates well in the living room, or anywhere elsewhere really, we're confident in recommending the Alienware X51 R3. Read our review here.
Alienware Area 51: from $1,699
The Alienware Area-51 is one of the most unique gaming PCs currently on the market. It's custom, angular chassis not only looks good, but has functional cooling benefits as well. And with a 6-core Haswell-E processor, tri-SLI, and a fast SSD on board, it'll to light up some benchmarks too.The Area-51's new Triad chassis design enables top-end performance with thermal and acoustic profiles that are best of class in high-end gaming systems. We'd go so far as to suggest that even for workstation professionals, not just gamers, the Area-51 has a lot of merit. Read our review here.
Lenovo B50 All-in-One: from $999
It’s easy to pinpoint the B50’s most appealing traits. It’s equipped with a large (but not overwhelmingly enormous) touchscreen display. It also has a fairly compact footprint so that it won’t eat a lot of space in your office or living room. Perhaps best of all, its middle-of-road price will be very tempting for anyone who wants ample processing power in an elegant all-on-one, but doesn’t have the need or means to spring for something like Lenovo's A Series. From a performance perspective, this is a good all-purpose machine. Like so many others in its class, it doesn’t quite have the GPU horsepower for the latest games, but for all general tasks and a bit of fun on the side, the B50 is a solid setup at a fair price. Read our review here.
Gigabyte Brix S BXi7H-5500 Broadwell Mini PC: from $500+
Although there are some newer mini-PCs on the market right now, the Brix S BXi7H5500's internals still hold its own among its tiny competitors. None of these tiny systems will ever blow anyone away with their performance; it's just the nature of the beast since they're packed with low-power components and have minimal space for cooling. But the Brix S BXi7H5500's Core i7 processor and Iris graphics still pack a punch, especially considering the machine will fit in the palm of your hand. Read our review here.
If you've got any product recommendations you'd like to share with fellow readers, please comment below. And be sure to stay tuned to HotHardware for full reviews of all of the latest tech gear this holiday season. If you’ve got your credit card queued up and ready to roll for the upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, be sure to check out our Amazon store, which is loaded up with HOT electronic deals.
