Reviews
We've got a fairly well defined set of expectations from today's ultrabooks. What you trade away in performance, you usually gain in convenience with these ultra-light, ultra-portable, and easy to carry laptops. We wouldn't make an ultrabook our primary gaming system or video-encoding cruncher, for example, but we...
Read more...
We have covered Intel’s Broadwell microarchitecture extensively over the last few months. The relatively high-performance and low-power characteristics of Broadwell make it a good fit for a wide range of devices and systems. And as such, Broadwell has found its way into everything from notebooks and tablets, to an...
Read more...
AMD has certainly kept our test benches busy lately, with the debut of two Fiji-based flagships, namely the liquid-cooled Radeon Fury X and its surprisingly capable air-cooled little brother, the Radeon Fury. Now it’s time to turn our attention to the Radeon R9 390X, specifically Asus' handsome STRIX offering. Don’t Call It Hawaii! “Rebadge”...
Read more...
The tablet world is shifting quickly. While arguments for and against the need for a "third device" have been raging since the early days of the iPad, we're seeing tablets emerge that are far more potent and capable than ever before. In fact, it's tough to lump products like Dell's Venue 10 7000 in with bargain-bin slates that are clearly...
Read more...
PC enthusiasts tend to spend a lot of time sitting in front of their systems. We spend hundreds of dollars on monitors, graphics cards, and processors without a second thought, to ensure the best experience we can afford. So, why do so many of us sit ourselves down in inexpensive and inadequate thrones for extended...
Read more...
This is a good year for creative professionals that are constantly on the go. After watching the corporate world trot around with thin and light notebooks that sport bleeding-edge hardware and touchscreens, the content creation and workstation set is finally getting to enjoy features in their notebooks that many others take for granted. Lenovo...
Read more...
When Xotic PC asked us to be judge and jury of its Executioner gaming system, we thought to ourselves, "this better be one helluva setup to warrant its killer moniker," and spoiler alert, it is. We'll get to the benchmarks and other particulars in due time, but there's more to this $6,500 PC than raw performance alone. Yes, we said $6,500,...
Read more...
When AMD launched the liquid-cooled Radeon Fury X, we witnessed a company willing to commit to new architecture and bleeding edge technologies (Fiji and High-Bandwidth Memory, respectively). Beyond that, Fury X showed a level of ambition and hardware design chops we hadn’t seen from AMD in years. There’s no denying that between its exceptional...
Read more...
OCZ is launching a brand new series of solid state drives today, dubbed the Trion 100. Early prototypes of the drives were shown off at CES a few months back, but the drives are now ready for primetime. We should note that the Trion 100 series breaks some new ground for OCZ. Not only are they the first drives from the...
Read more...
The wealth of ultraportable laptops continues to grow, and we're seeing a more varied array of options than ever before. Be it 2-in-1s like Asus' T300 Chi or a tablet-gone-laptop like Microsoft's Surface 3, those in the market for a mobile computer have plenty of options these days. As manufacturers seek out their own...
Read more...
For years, the notion of a tablet replacing one's laptop was a novel idea, but hardly feasible. Much has changed in recent times, with Microsoft going so far as to claim that its newest Surface units are indeed powerful enough to take the place of a bonafide laptop. It's that push that has gotten the attention of the entire industry, with...
Read more...
Last week, AMD lifted the veil in its Radeon R7 and R9 300 series of products and publicly demoed its latest flagship, the Radeon R9 Fury X, at a small venue adjacent to E3. While the Radeon R7 and R9 300 series leverages existing GPU designs that have previously been featured in Radeon 200 series products, albeit with different clocks and...
Read more...
Batman Arkham Knight is here and as we're sure most of you have heard, the game is currently no-longer for sale for the PC platform due to a flood of performance issues. WB Games has pulled the title from store shelves, both physical and digital copies. Can you say “Holy botched game launch, Batman?” We usually don’t start a piece with such...
Read more...
Dell's Alienware division has a knack for making a splash with PC system design, whether it's with their big, bad unapologetic notebooks, unique X51 small form-factor PCs, or their no-holds-barred Area-51 killer gaming rigs. In fact, for some folks, Alienware designs can be an either "you love it or hate it" affair. Full disclosure: personally,...
Read more...
Anyone who follows the NAS game will likely recognize the name Synology, but we’d wager most home users aren't quite as familiar with them. That’s simply because Synology storage devices have typically targeted a more advanced crowd, such as readers of this website. If you had ever met someone who was running a Synology NAS at home, you knew...
Read more...
Acer is hoping to attract users who want flexibility with the company’s latest Aspire R 13 convertible notebook. Featuring their semi-unique "Ezel Aero" hinge, the R 13 can convert between various notebook and tablet style modes, giving you six different usage positions in a thin and light design.The Aspire R 13 measures less than an inch...
Read more...
Microsoft's third iteration of the Surface Pro was a monumental improvement over the first two incarnations. For many, the third time really was the charm. It was powerful enough to replace most laptops, and versatile enough to serve as two device types without major compromises on either side. A year later now, and Microsoft presents us with...
Read more...
AMD officially took the wraps off of its Radeon R7 and R9 300 series of graphics cards, and disclosed some details regarding the R9 Fury—a.k.a Fiji—during a livestream held near the E3 convention earlier this week. We have much of the information revealed during the event posted for you right here if you’d like to take a look.Today though,...
Read more...
The engineering wizards at Apple have designed a laptop that's lighter than Air...the MacBook Air, that is. It's the new MacBook (early 2015 edition), a forward-thinking laptop that measures just 11.04 inches (W) by 7.74 inches (D) by 0.14-0.52 inches (H), and weighs a mere 2.03 pounds. The super thin and light...
Read more...
The rate at which the industry is pumping out smartphones these days is staggering. Even more impressive is the rate at which truly outstanding phones are shipping, even from names that weren't significant just a few years ago. BLU, Xiaomi, OnePlus, and ASUS (just to name a few) have all produced handsets in recent months that rival the best...
Read more...
When it launched its initial line-up of Haswell-E based processors and the companion X99 chipset, Intel’s motherboard partners hit the ground running with some fairly exciting products. At the time of the launch, we featured a few offerings in our review—you can check them out right here. But, as is sometimes the...
Read more...
Dell’s Alienware gaming team impressed us with its Area 51 desktop earlier this year and we’ve been impatiently awaiting the 2015 version of the Alienware 15 mobile gamer ever since. The laptop is finally here, and there’s a twist: Instead of sending a money-is-no-object configuration (like it did with the Area 51)...
Read more...
