Reviews
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,...
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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...
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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...
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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,...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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....
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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,...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Back in 2011, a little Polish game company released a game called Dead Island. It was a bit buggy and lacking in polish (no pun intended), but it was remarkably ambitious, and succeeded more than it failed. Dead Island was a big hit for the developer, Techland S.A., and so it went that "zombie game" sort of became...
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Alienware's X Series of thin and light gaming laptops was first introduced a little less than a year ago, and Dell's gaming products division has been refining the sleek, spacey looking machines at a fairly rapid clip ever since. A couple of weeks ago, we gave you a look at the new Alienware x17 R2, the second coming of Alienware X Series...
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Ahead of today's Galaxy Unpacked 2022 event, Samsung had teased the introduction of "the most noteworthy S series device we've ever created," and had even been accepting reservations, with a $50 credit serving as an incentive for doing so. Samsung was obviously referencing its Galaxy S22 series, and today's reveal...
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For a few years now, Sony’s been making premium, feature-rich, media-centric, flagship smartphones that incorporate technologies from its Alpha cameras, and target die-hard Sony customers. This niche strategy appears to be working for the company, as it continues to bring new handsets to market. In 2021, Sony...
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WD just launched a brand new series of PCIe Gen 4 solid state drives that target gamers on a budget, the WD Black SN770. As its names suggests, the new WD Black SN770 sits ahead of the previous-gen SN750 drives in WD’s line-up, but a tick behind the flagship, top-performing SN850. Like the WD Black SN850 though, the SN770 is a PCIe Gen...
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