Items tagged with laptop
Laptops as a whole have never had a great track record for repairability or upgradeability, but the situation has gotten worse in recent years. Modern ultra-portable machines often come with soldered-down memory, integrated graphics, and even non-serviceable storage. On some systems, you can't even open the casing without permanently damaging it. It doesn't have to be this way, though. Framework is a new company that is already selling its first laptop, simply known as the Framework Laptop. The machine looks about as sleek and compact as any other—even in comparison Apple's hardware—and it comes with the latest Intel CPU and your choice of a variety of other modern components....
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Acer announced its first sustainability-focused notebook, the Aspire Vero, and its popular Swift 5 will be available in North America today with Windows 11 pre-loaded. The company also announced that its Nitro 5 gaming notebook will be available with Windows 11 later this month. The Aspire Vero is made from recycled materials which delivers on Acer’s Earthion mission to offer products that support a sustainable future. The notebook is made from 30% post-consumer resin (PCR) plastic in the chassis, which saves approximately 21% in C02 emissions. Also, no paint is used on the surface of the chassis. The Aspire Vero earned a 2021 Red Dot Award for Brand and Communication Design with its...
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Amazon is currently running a big sale on popular Razer laptops, and the discounts ring in at as little as $350 to over $800. Not surprisingly, the most significant discounts are reserved for high-end gaming models, which already feature sky-high MSRPs due to their powerful internals. Starting things off is the Razer Blade 15 Advanced (2020 Model), which comes with an 8-core Intel Core i7-10875H processor, 16GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super Max-Q discrete GPU. The potent GPU fuels a 15.6-inch Full HD display with a blazing fast 300Hz refresh rate, which is a boon for FPS gamers (among other genres). A 512GB SSD is included in the mix, and you'll find a keyboard with per-key Razer...
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We're very familiar with Intel's NUC family of small-form-factor (SFF) desktop PCs, but the company is also expanding the NUC brand into the laptop realm (i.e., the NUC M15). That is readily apparent with the debut of two new mobile platforms this week, with the most powerful being the NUC X15. The NUC X15 is Intel's reference 15.6-inch reference gaming laptop platform with 11th generation Tiger Lake-H processors and discrete NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs. The base configuration comes with a Core i5-11400H processor and a GeForce RTX 3060, while higher-end configurations ups the ante with a Core i7-11800H and GeForce RTX 3070. NUC X15 The base Core i5-11400H systems are only available with...
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The perfect laptop may not exist, in large part because determining what qualifies as a flawless notebook is partially subjective. Some models come delightfully close, however, and Samsung's Galaxy Book Pro 360 is one of them. It's a splendidly thin and lightweight system, and powerful enough to handle a variety of tasks, even some gaming (though it's not a gaming laptop). Samsung could have stopped there and it would have had a winning combination on its hands, but one of the best features of the Galaxy Pro 360 is its exceptional all-day (and then some) battery life. This is not an Arm-based system, either, but a premium designed laptop built around an 11th Gen Core i7-1165G7 processor,...
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Labor Day weekend has arrived, and with it comes the usual crop of sales. Where do you begin? As always, Amazon is a great starting place, with its steady stream of bargains. This holiday weekend is no exception. We sifted through some of the deals and picked out some of the more interesting discounts on various electronics, like the super-affordable Windows laptop shown above. If it is an inexpensive Windows laptop you are after, then definitely check out this Teclast notebook, which on sale for $265.49 at Amazon (save $84.50). The low price comes by way of an initial discount, plus an additional $30 savings by checking the coupon box on the product page. What about the Teclast brand, though?...
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17-inch laptops are becoming somewhat of a rarity these days. Every manufacturer has a couple of models in their line-up, but they don't get a ton of attention because they're typically quite bulky and harder to tote around than sleeker, smaller machines. However, the system we'll be showing you today isn't just any run-of-the-mill 17" notebook. Dell's XPS 17 series has been cramming as much display real estate into as small of a frame as possible for a while now, and this year's model doesn't make any concessions in that regard. The newest XPS 17's footprint is just barely big enough to hold that panel. That's not to say that the XPS 17 is all pizzazz and no performance, or places form...
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Lenovo's venerable ThinkPad X1 Carbon has been one of the longest-running of the company's trusted business-class laptop series. Now in its 9th generation, Lenovo sought to re-energize the X1 Carbon not only with Intel 11th Gen Core Series processors (Tiger Lake), but with Intel Evo certification that brings with it a number of key refinements. The machine that we have on tap for review here today also includes an impressive new 16:10 format UHD+ (3840X2400) display. Though the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 retains its unmistakably classic and understated hybrid carbon fiber weave and magnesium alloy body, weighing in at a feather-light 2.49 pounds, we're now also treated to a single, unified hinge...
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Today is all about the latest Intel Tiger Lake-H platform, and several companies have made announcements showing off the newest creations. Now, HP is joining the fray with the HP ZBook lineup that packs quite the punch. HP ZBook Fury G8 15.6” & 17.3” First up to bat, we have the HP ZBook Fury lineup, which appears to be one of the most powerful out of the bunch from HP. It comes in a 15” or 17” format that can bring “desktop-caliber performance packed in an incredibly sleek, slim design.” Under the hood of this beastly laptop is the latest Intel 11th Gen Core i9 and Xeon processors paired with up to an NVIDIA RTX A5000 graphics meaning you should be able...
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At CES 2020, ASUS unveiled the ROG Zephyrus G14, which as its name implies is a 14" gaming notebook. It was our first experience with Zen 2-based APUs from AMD, particularly the 35-Watt Ryzen 9 4900HS. That processor had eight cores with AMD's best CPU architecture at the time, and despite the thin design and tight thermal budget of the G14, the performance of both the Ryzen APU and the included GeForce RTX 2060 with Max-Q really knocked our socks off. The system was relatively light, possessed performance that far exceeded its weight class, and was quite eye-catching with its unique, perforated lid design. Fast-forward a year, and we're looking at the updated ROG Zephyrus G15, launched at this...
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Lenovo's flagship ThinkPad X1 lineup has historically been one of our favorite business-class laptop product lines. Lenovo made a quick transition recently, and upgraded this popular laptop series with Intel's 11th Gen Tiger Lake processors that roared onto the scene with a nice performance lift and useful platform updates late last year. Besides the platform upgrade though, Lenovo also pulled a proverbial rabbit out of its hat when it dropped Tiger Lake into the thin and light 1.99lb ThinkPad X1 Nano. The performance-per-pound ratio of this machine should prove impressive and make for a solid, highly portable combination for business professionals or casual mainstream laptop users alike. Though...
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When on the go with a laptop, one of the biggest complaints tends to be a lack of screen real estate, especially for people who are used to multiple displays. In response to these user requirements, companies have created concept products such as Razer’s triple-display Project Valerie gaming notebook concept we saw at CES 2017. Ultimately, none of these concept devices seemed all that feasible, that is perhaps until now, with a new wireless multi-display laptop design from Taiwan-based Compal that seems fairly polished and dare we say even sleek. As the IF World Design website explains, “Multiple displays increases work productivity, but same cannot be said for them on mobility.”...
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Alienware's m15 series of notebooks has typically impressed us, thanks to the family's performance and unique good looks in a relatively svelte mobile package. Performance always hinges upon having the latest platform hardware, so perhaps it's no surprise that the laptop we're looking at today has one of NVIDIA's latest mobile Ampere GPUs on board from its new GeForce RTX 30 family. When NVIDIA pulled the lid off mobile Ampere, it made some pretty big promises. Performance across the Ampere lineup that spans from RTX 3060 to 3080 should be faster than NVIDIA's previous mobile powerhouse, the GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER. That bodes well for the middle child in NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 30 Mobile...
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Intel's Tiger Lake mobile platform came out of the gate swinging, with excellent performance and improved power efficiency. The early Core i7-1185G7 development platform we evaluated set several mobile processor records in our benchmarks, and retail notebooks were just as strong when they arrived. So far we've reviewed two such notebooks from ASUS and Dell, but both of those targeted the 2-in-1 segment and commanded a bit of premium as a result, due to their smaller sizes and expanded feature sets. For folks who don't mind (or rather, prefer) the traditional clamshell form factor, and would like to save a couple hundred bucks, MSI has a solution in its new Prestige 14 EVO laptop. MSI's...
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Lenovo was among the first partners to announce support for AMD’s Ryzen 4000 U-series mobile processors. When it initially unveiled the processors, AMD also revealed the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7, which was the first thin-and-light, ultrabook-class machine to pack an 8-core / 16-thread processor. To date, all other notebooks in this category featured dual or quad-core processors, with support for up to 8-threads. That kind of bump in core count could mean big things for the kind of multi-threaded workloads that are increasingly becoming more common among content creators and heavy multi-taskers. Thanks to Lenovo’s choice of platform, the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 also features integrated...
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Intel's 10-nanometer Tiger Lake processors have one of the fastest CPU architectures available in Windows notebooks today. That's not to say they've got the fastest overall CPUs, though. There are competing mobile processors available with more cores and support for additional threads that are better suited for complex, multi-threaded tasks. It does, however, mean that right now Intel's single-threaded performance in Windows notebooks is king. It only makes sense, then, that Dell would want to bring Tiger Lake to its XPS 13 2-in-1 family as quickly as possible, because fast single-thread performance translates into a snappy, response experience, which is something everyone wants. The world's...
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Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 series, the company's flagship notebook lineup, is no stranger to our offices. The various iterations of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon are some of our favorite ultra-light notebooks. In recent years, Lenovo has pushed the X1 family into 2-in-1 convertible devices as well, and we've very much liked these types of systems in the past as well. Today, the ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 5 has returned to us, with a 360-degree hinge and a punchy 14-inch 4K display. The updated ThinkPad X1 Yoga arrived with an Intel 10th-generation Core processor. However, Intel's product naming recently has been somewhat confusing, to say the least. 10th Gen Core i7 processors come in two flavors: the...
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The last few weeks has been full of exciting product launches, and it seems like it might not let up for the next couple of months. One mammoth release among them is the emergence of Tiger Lake, Intel's 11th-generation Core processor lineup for notebooks and 2-in-1 laptops. We've already looked at Intel's reference platform, and the performance was impressive. It wasn't just single-threaded processing power that set Tiger Lake apart from the competition, either. Its graphics performance, which comes from an integrated GPU based on Intel's Xe graphics architecture, was pretty stellar. We were eager to get our hands on a retail-ready Tiger Lake notebook to put the newest from Intel through...
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Lenovo is bringing out some laptop power with the updated ThinkBook line of laptops. Packing new features, specs, and tricks, these laptops are poised to be solid productivity and creation devices. The first device we have on the docket is the Lenovo ThinkBook 13s Gen 2, a little laptop that can pack quite a punch. Lenovo’s little laptop that could is the “slimmest ThinkBook yet,” topping out at 14.9mm. While also thin, it is lightweight too, weighing in at 2.77lbs. Though it is small, do not confuse its size for power. This thing can be powered by the latest Intel 11th Gen Core i7 processors (Tiger Lake) with Intel Iris Xe graphics for handling any workload. The processor will...
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Today, MSI hosted a virtual summit event in which it announced new business and productivity laptops with a new logo and design features while being powered by Intel 11th Gen Tiger Lake processors. At the open of the event, MSI interviewed business professionals who requested features for the world we are in today. With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, MSI is now targeting the work-from-home movement after getting the feedback it needed. First up, MSI is has a new premium business device, the “Summit”. They quote the device as being “the highest point or top” of the lineup, hence the “Summit” name. According to MSI, "Summit Series...
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It seems the year is starting to pick up steam and move quicker. We just received some hot news from Lenovo that they are planning out their holiday season roadmap with new devices, such as laptops and tablets. Let us dive into some of what’s in store. First up, Lenovo has some laptops planned for the holiday season. They are expanding their Yoga series of laptops with the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 and the Yoga Slim 9i. Let’s first look at the Yoga 9i 2-in-1. (Left- 14" Model Right- 15.6" Model) The Yoga 9i 2-in-1 comes in two size variants, a 14” and a 15.6” variant starting at $1499 and $1799, respectively. The 14” device doesn’t have all it’s specs fully confirmed...
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It's just about time for students around the country to go back to school, meaning that many are in need of a new notebook computer. Anyone looking for a notebook with a blend of portability and performance for school, work, or fun might want to take a look at the Dell XPS 13, which offers a solid mix of performance, style, and portability. Currently, Dell has some deals going on the XPS 13 Touch Laptop, offering substantial discounts making the entry-level version under $700. Dell offers the entry-level machine with a $209 discount off of its regular $908 price tag, bringing the purchase price to $699.99. For the money, buyers get a 10th generation Intel Core i5-10210U that operates at up to...
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