Reviews
Dell recently reached out and offered a review unit of their newest XPS 8950 desktop. We initially said, "but we've already reviewed that one," to which Dell replied "no, that was the 8940 Special Edition. We've since dropped the 'Special Edition', and updated the hardware. It's got a 12th-gen CPU now, and we made its chassis larger to accommodate...
Read more...
In person events are starting to return and attending PAX East 2022 over the weekend reminded us how much we've missed them. Maybe not in their entirety—the hustle and bustle can be a bit much—but as far as PAX East goes, it was great to see so many gaming PCs on display. This was most evident over at Intel's massive...
Read more...
Two years ago, we reviewed the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+ and gave it our recommendation without reservation. As we noted in that review, the premium Android tablet space is pretty sparse. There are a number of dirt cheap tablets running old versions of Android out there, but you’re unlikely to find high build...
Read more...
Origin PC has been building top-flight gaming rigs for over a decade now, and the attention to detail that the company demonstrates in its builds is right up there with the best of them. There was a time when Origin PC featured custom chassis designs, like the Genesis series of years past, which only Origin had in its...
Read more...
Way back at CES this year, AMD unveiled its Ryzen 6000 processors in mobile form. Using significant revisions to the Zen 3 core for power efficiency, AMD says its Ryzen 6000 mobile processors are its most efficient ever. In combination with an upgrade to the power-sipping RDNA 2 graphics architecture, these chips...
Read more...
Samsung made a splash recently as one of the first laptop manufacturers with a Spring refresh powered by Intel's new Alder Lake-P 12th Gen Core processors for mainstream thin and light laptops. Targeted at a class of machines Intel calls the "Performance Thin And Light" category, these 12th Gen Core chips drop into a 28 Watt power envelope,...
Read more...
AMD has been working on its 3D chiplet technology for quite some time now, but it was back at Computex last year that the company initially showed off its 3D V-Cache in a consumer processor, targeted squarely at gamers. Though the chip AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su held up on stage was somewhat different than the Ryzen 7 5800X3D we’ll be showing...
Read more...
The pixels output by your PC's graphics card are only as good as the monitor that displays them. Attach a shiny new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti to a bargain basement, slow 1080p panel with a refresh rate of 60Hz and you'll likely get what you had coming: blurring, color shift, dull images, and an unpleasant experience. We...
Read more...
By most accounts, Intel's 12th Gen Core processors based on the hybrid Alder Lake mobile architecture have been a smashing success for gaming laptops. From class-leading desktop performance to outstanding mobile prowess, the blue team's Alder Lake family has shown strong gains in workloads of all kinds. The first notebooks we looked at,...
Read more...
AMD has been riding high since the release of its first Ryzen 5000 Series desktop processors back in late in 2020. Although Intel recently shook things up in the enthusiast desktop processor space with its Alder Lake-based 12th Gen Core processors, the AMD Ryzen 5000 Series remains attractive up and down its stack...
Read more...
A lot has changed at OnePlus over the past year. The company has merged with Oppo, and OnePlus’ OxygenOS now shares a common codebase with Oppo’s ColorOS. Warp Charge is now called SuperVOOC, which is Oppo’s fast charging brand. OnePlus also set sales records in 2021, shipping 11 million phones...
Read more...
For the past several years, we’ve been hearing about Intel’s extensive plan to enter the discrete GPU space. It’s the main reason why Raja Koduri joined the chipmaker in late 2017, who came on board to spearhead not just a one-off product launch, but a new era of graphics at Intel with a robust roadmap extending years...
Read more...
The NVMe M.2 solid state storage market continues to expand with an ever-increasing number of drives, at a variety of price points and performance targets. There has been a steady influx of high-end drives targeting enthusiasts, along with an array of more-affordable DRAM-less offerings specifically tuned for consumer and gaming workloads....
Read more...
Back in the 1990s, NVIDIA got its start selling graphics adapters for desktop PCs. After a rocky start with the NV1, NVIDIA established itself as a performance leader soon thereafter with the release of the TwiN-Texel (TNT) chip, and with the original GeForce 256, as a technology leader, too.
That's all ancient...
Read more...
At the heart of every autonomous machine, modern industrial robot, and automated manufacturing apparatus is some form artificial intelligence. These things are amazingly complex, too—not only are there models to train, but there are sensors to interpret and reactions to formulate. NVIDIA has been at the forefront of...
Read more...
NVIDIA is expanding its CPU design efforts in with the introduction of its Grace CPU Superchip, its first discrete data center CPU for high performance computing (HPC) workloads. It's actually two processors linked together in the same package. The chips connect coherently over NVLink-C2C, a new high-speed...
Read more...
Acer's Swift 3 line is comprised of an array of thin and light notebooks that are designed to meet the tech and budget needs of most mainstream users. There are several models within the Acer Swift lineup, with a variety of features and processors to choose from, along with display sizes offered in 13.3-inch, 13.5-inch, 14-inch, 15.6-inch,...
Read more...
Last week, Oppo launched its latest Android flagship – the Find X5 Pro (€1,299 / ~$1400) – and we just spent a few days using the phone in Barcelona during Mobile World Congress 2022. Before we share our first impressions, let’s provide some context. Oppo’s Find X series has always...
Read more...
When Intel introduced its first NUC systems featuring its Compute Element, it said the modular design would decrease the time to market for newer, more powerful small form factor systems. That certainly appears to be the case. Hot on the heels of our NUC 11 Extreme review from a few months back, we have the latest NUC...
Read more...
The trend of OLED displays in laptops is typically reserved for flagship devices that cost a pretty penny. Logically, the extreme contrast ratio, total lack of ghosting, and colors that pop are the sort of thing that most PC shoppers lust after in a premium product. OLED TVs also flank the high end of that...
Read more...
Over the years, Chinese phone manufacturer RedMagic has managed to build a reputation for making affordable, feature-packed gaming phones and selling them in the US. The company typically releases new models in the spring using Qualcomm’s latest flagship processor, then launches similar, but updated versions in...
Read more...
Another year, another triplet of Samsung Galaxy S flagships. Last week, Samsung launched the Galaxy S22 ($799), S22+ ($999), and S22 Ultra ($1,199), three premium phones with high-end specs that are targeted at dominating the Android landscape in the US, and battling the Android competition abroad. Needless to say...
Read more...
