Items tagged with Laptops
Thin and light gaming laptops are no longer a novelty, as practically every PC maker offers their own take on the category. Some of them don't always stand-out from the crowd, however, and can push the envelope on thermals in ever-tighter chassis designs. That is most definitely not the case with Dell's Alienware m15 R3 though, unless you want to compare it to last year's Alienware m15 R2. At a passing glance, this year's refresh looks just like last year's model. That is not a bad thing, as the new m15 R3 is a head-turning laptop with some notable improvements to this newest iteration, including a revamped cooling solution. Quite frankly, we are just fine with the overall physical design staying...
Read more...
Yesterday, we wrote about Amazon’s Labor Day deals. Of course, Best Buy has some Labor Day deals in the oven too, and they are pretty hot. This weekend at Best Buy, TV deals are at the top of the Labor Day list. If you have the coin to spare, you can get a 75” 4K TV from Samsung at $849.99, $150 off regular price. This smart TV has an HDR 10+ rating, so it should give you gorgeous colors when watching YouTube, Disney+, or Netflix. It comes with 2 HDMI ports and a built-in TV tuner should you not have a box from your cable provider. Samsung 7 Series 75" TV $849.99 @ Best Buy Stepping down in price but not much in size, we have the LG UN7070 70” 4K TV. This TV...
Read more...
It's been a little over three months since Microsoft began pushing out the May 2020 Update for Windows 10, and there are still some PCs that are being blocked from receiving it. Notably, if you own a laptop with integrated LTE connectivity, you might be out of luck for the time being, as Microsoft works to resolve a compatibility issue. The issue manifests itself when waking certain LTE-enabled laptops from sleep or hibernation. Microsoft outlined the problem in a support document, saying that when this happens, certain WWAN LET modems indicate a lack of Internet connectivity in the Network Connectivity Status Indicator (NCSI) in the notification area, and therefore might not be able to connect...
Read more...
Many students will be engaged in remote learning this coming school year. Remote learning naturally requires access to a device and a reliable Internet connection. Unfortunately, many American schools are currently facing a major shortage of laptops. Educators throughout the United States are deeply concerned about how this shortage will impact learning, especially the learning of vulnerable students. Lenovo, HP and Dell have all stated that they have a shortage of nearly 5 million laptops. There are several factors that are contributing to this shortage. First, there is simply a higher demand for devices now than there was prior to the outbreak of the pandemic. Second, many laptop producers...
Read more...
Wnen we reviewed the Alienware m15 R2 last year, we noted that Dell had "not yet circumvented the laws of physics" to allow a potent gaming laptop to keep temps totally in check, with so much high-end hardware underneath the hood. Simply put, it could get hot under load. It seems Dell has tackled the challenge with aplomb, however, as this year's Alienware m15 R3 apparently runs much cooler, and does it without a major redesign to the chassis. In our own testing of last year's model, the GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q inside our test system did actually keep potentially toasty temps at bay, by never jumping past 75C at load. But on the CPU side, the Core i7-9750H in our test configuration got pretty...
Read more...
There are a multitude of laptop options out there, and if you are willing to throw budget pricing and slim for factors right out the window, the desktop replacement category is where you will find the absolute best raw performance. Driving that point home, a German PC maker has introduced a meaty gaming laptop outfitted with up to an AMD Ryzen 9 3950X processor. Yes folks, that is a desktop CPU. Not only that, the Ryzen 9 3950X is AMD's highest end 'mainstream' desktop CPU. Despite the classification, there is nothing mainstream about the specs. It's a burly CPU with 16 cores and 32 threads of compute muscle, clocked at 3.5GHz to 4.7GHz, with a generous 64MB of L3 cache. You can read our review...
Read more...
Earlier today we wrote about how the Nintendo Switch has been in short supply in recent weeks due to the COVID-19/coronavirus crunch. With more people staying home instead of going into the office or school, there’s a lot more time for leisure activities – including gaming. However, for those that are now working solely from home instead of the office – some for the first time in their careers – they’re finding it hard to adapt. The difficulty with transitioning to working from home doesn’t just stem from the change of work atmosphere, but also from finding the proper hardware to complete their daily work duties. Many workers are looking for...
Read more...
For the longest time, replicating a desktop-class gaming experience on a laptop meant spending a hefty premium on a comparable mobile configuration, and to some extent, that still holds true today. The situation is much improved, however, as the cost of entry into PC gaming territory in general has continuously fallen on the hardware side, for both desktops and laptops. Simply put, the bang-for-buck proposition on a gaming PC has never been higher than it is right now. HP's newest model Omen 17 gaming laptop highlights this. It also accentuates the shrinking divide between desktops and laptops, in terms of how far you can stretch your dollar. Not to be overlooked, this is especially intriguing...
Read more...
So you slept through the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, and now wish you could travel back in time? Forget the DeLorean—the price of plutonium is off the charts these days—because there are still bargains out there. Over at Dell, you can score discounts on several different gaming PCs, including Alienware-brand desktops and laptops. One of the deals I find especially intriguing is for a decked out Alienware Aurora gaming desktop for $1,564.99 (save $765 over list price). At the heart of this system is a 9th generation Intel Core i7-9700K processor (8-core/8-thread, 3.6GHz to 4.9GHz, 12MB L3 cache) paired with a brawny NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super graphics card. Those components...
Read more...
Earlier this week at CES, Intel announced its OEM partners would soon be shipping laptop systems powered by 10th generation Comet Lake-H processors, including Core i7 models with speeds hitting (and surpassing) 5GHz. We do not know precisely when they will arrive, though Gregory Bryant, executive vice president and general manager of Intel's client computing group, offered up a general time frame on Twitter "Hearing lots of interest and questions about the launch timing of our 10th gen Intel Core H-series here at CES 2020. I'm happy to announce we will ship later this quarter," Bryant stated on Twitter. In other words, these laptops will arrive sometime within the next 11 weeks. Incidentally,...
Read more...
MSI is looking to make waves at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas next month with its Creator 17, the world's first laptop with a mini LED display. According to MSI, it provides "top-notch, true-to-life color accuracy" with 100 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space. It also boasts high dynamic range (HDR) support with a peak brightness of more than 1,000 nits. "Mini LED is a game-changing technology that has the potential to be used on all electronic displays. It has a simpler structure with better performance, combining all the strengths of other display technologies. Until now, Mini LED has only been used in some TVs, but with leading global display manufacturers shifting...
Read more...
This is one of the best times of the year to build or buy a new PC, whether it's a desktop configuration or a banging laptop. That's because Black Friday is in full swing. It's a particularly strategic time to buy a premium system, as Black Friday discounts can take the sting out of their premium price tags. As such, you can hop over to Dell today and save $750 on an Alienware m15 gaming laptop. The listed "estimated value" on this configuration is $2,149.99. That's a bit optimistic on Dell's part—the list price is not always the actual price—but you're still getting a strong setup for the money. When the discount goes live at 12:00 pm ET (9:00 am PT) today, the Alienware m15 highlighted...
Read more...
Alienware may just be the most well-known gaming desktop and notebook brand on the planet. The company's gray alien logo graces everything from proper, upgradeable desktops like the Aurora R9 to the huge desktop-replacement Area-51m notebook complete with actual desktop hardware. What we have on hand today isn't quite so big and bulky, however: the new 2019 edition of the company's workhorse m15 gaming notebook, the m15 R2. We had a chance to spend some one-on-one time with this sweet portable machine back at Computex, but now it's come through our labs from the alien mothership for an extended visit. When we first pulled the m15 R2 from its box, we were a little surprised how small it is. Sure,...
Read more...
It's no secret that Intel has a lot riding on its "Ice Lake" 10th generation Core CPUs manufactured on its 10-nanometer fabrication process. The chipmaker got by on squeezing more power and efficiency out of its 14-nm node for what seemed like an eternity, but we're talking about a mobile sector that relentlessly demands more performance and longer battery life. This oft-delayed Intel process node promises to reduce power consumption and increase performance by a wide margin over the Kaby Lake Refresh processors that previously served as the brains for thin and light PCs. Dell's XPS 13 2-In-1 Gets Ice Lake Engine Under The Hood One of the first Ice Lake systems available at retail is Dell's XPS...
Read more...
Intel promised we would soon see a bunch of laptops touting its recently launched 10th generation "Ice Lake" processor family, and true to its word, they are starting to show up. The latest crop comes from Lenovo. The company is refreshing its premium Yoga laptops and convertibles with Intel's newest processors. The Yoga family falls under the Project Athena banner, which is an effort by Intel to foster advanced laptop designs that meet certain criteria. "Today, Lenovo is unveiling what’s possible through collaboration in a new class of industry-leading laptops, engineered with Intel as part of its innovation program codenamed Project Athena , to be amongst the thinnest, lightest, and most...
Read more...
Dell often rides the bleeding edge, as it wastes little time arming its laptops and desktops with the latest hardware platforms available. At minimum, this means yearly refreshes of its popular product categories. So, right on cue, Dell has begun rolling out updated variants of its XPS 15 laptop with some nifty upgrades compared to the version we reviewed last September. One of the biggest changes is the addition of an OLED display option. Just as we have been enamored by Samsung's display panels on its mobile phones, we hold Dell's InfinityEdge displays in similar regard, as being among the best around in the laptop space. An InfinityEdge panel is again on tap for the 2019 refresh, but...
Read more...
ASUS just announced its ZenBook 13 Edition 30, which is a new, rather stylish limited edition model that was developed to celebrate the company's 30th anniversary. The ZenBook 13 Edition 30 features an Intel Core i7-8565U processor, 16GB of memory, and 1TB of storage. The laptop includes an NVIDIA GeForce MX250 discrete GPU with 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM. It has a 50 Wh battery with up to 13.2 hours of battery life, an ASUS SonicMaster stereo audio system, along with Bluetooth 5.0 and Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) connectivity. It also includes a 3D IR HD camera which allows users to unlock their device with Windows Hello facial recognition. In addition, the notebook is compatible with both Cortana and Alexa digital...
Read more...
It has always been a matter of when, not if, real-time ray tracing would see widespread support. Looking to scoot things along, NVIDIA debuted its RTX hardware last year, which leverages Microsoft's DirectX Raytracing (DXR) API. It has still been a relatively slow process, in terms of developer support, but things are progressing. As it relates to that, NVIDIA today announced that its OEM partners have implemented ray tracing support into 10 new RTX Studio laptops and mobile workstations. "RTX Studio laptops and mobile workstations are moving rapidly to the center of the creative industries," said Jason Paul, general manager of GeForce software and technology at NVIDIA. "They put real-time ray...
Read more...
The neat thing about being a tech head is there always seems to be some kind of sales event going on, or right around the corner. So it goes right now—Amazon will kick off its annual Prime Day extravaganza on Monday, and ahead of the big event, Dell has marked a whole bunch of products for sale for its Black Friday in July promotion that is going on right now. The deals stretch far and wide, covering everything from general purpose laptops and 2-in-1 devices, to enthusiast-grade XPS and Alienware systems. Deals also include things like gaming monitors, big screen TVs, and accessories such as keyboards and mice. If you're looking for a big and bad gaming laptop, the Aliewnare m17 is on sale...
Read more...
Huawei is still having a no good, horrible, very bad day in the wake of a US ban over spying concerns. The fallout from the ban has been growing, and the latest casualty to Huawei's business operations is the cancellation of a new Matebook laptop launch. There was just no other plausible outcome possible, with American companies being cut off from supplying parts to Huawei. US intelligence agencies have long warned that Huawei is likely spying on behalf of the Chinese government. Huawei has repeatedly denied the accusations, and instead says its advancements in 5G technology is at the root of the US government's aggression towards the Chinese telecom and electronics manufacturer. "This ban not...
Read more...
Maybe in an alternate timeline, Android 3.0 was called Honeycomb Glacier instead of just Honeycomb, when it released in 2011. In this timeline, however, Honeycomb Glacier is the codename of a new dual-screen laptop form factor concept that Intel is showcasing at Computex 2019 this week, in hopes of encouraging its OEM partners to run with the idea. Intel is not actually releasing a funky laptop that has learned to stand upright, as shown in the image above. Instead, the Santa Clara chipmaker is looking to drive form factor innovation into high-performance systems "to enable new experiences for gamers and creators." A key part of seeing that vision through is working with its hardware partners....
Read more...
An auction for a netbook model from 2008 that is running Windows XP SP3 has fetched more than $1.3 million from its final bid, with the buyer owning quite possibly the most expensive laptop in the world. Why did it sell for so much? It contains half a dozen malware samples that have collectively caused over $95 billion in financial damages. The laptop is appropriately called "The Persistence of Chaos" and, according to the seller, it is an art piece. Guo O Dong, a "contemporary Internet artist whose work critiques modern day extremely-online culture," collaborated with Deep Instinct, a cybersecurity company, which provided the malware. Normally, a Samsung NC10 netbook would be an innocuous piece...
Read more...
