Items tagged with Notebook
The race to build the world's thinnest laptop hasn't always resulted in quality design innovation or utility over more full-figured machines. For example, comparatively, Apple's MacBook Air line looks a little plain-Jane versus some of the nicer thin and light laptops on the market these days, and certainly HP's Spectre line as well. HP recently saw fit to fully revamp its Spectre series across multiple sizes and formats, the latest of which is simply branded Spectre. The HP Spectre is actually a 13-inch machine, so you might refer to it as such (Spectre 13), if it helps you make the distinction. There's also the Spectre X360, HP's 15-inch convertible machine that we reviewed recently, and though...
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If you're in the market for a gaming laptop, you might be holding out for the first batch of notebooks to include a graphics chip based on NVIDIA's potent new Pascal architecture. The good news is you don't have long to wait—an ASUS ROG laptop has been spotted wielding a GeForce GTX 1070, along with several other high-end goodies. It's the ASUS ROG G752VS, a 17.3-inch beast that will be available in a few different configurations, all of them sporting the GeForce GTX 1070 GPU. Notice there's no "M" to designate that it's a mobile GPU, an interesting omission that has us wondering how close to the desktop variant the mobile version will be, if in fact they're different. Either way, early listings...
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Update: 6/25/16 - Check out our full review and deep dive of the Alienware 13 OLED right here. Dell's Alienware 13 gaming notebook has been a favorite among gamers on the go and power users that want a little more horsepower in a light, 13-inch machine. However, over the past couple of years, the Alienware team hasn't changed-up the design much, until today that is. The company is officially making the OLED display powered Alienware 13, that we saw back in January at CES, available today in conjunction with the E3 show out in LA. Our initial impressions in the short time we've had the system in-house are similar to our first impressions at CES; hell yes, that OLED display sure...
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ASUS ROG (Republic of Gamers) is working on a new laptop for gamers that's going to be big, both in size and performance. The company's R&D isn't quite ready to let the cat out of the bag, but it did share some tidbits that give you an idea of what to expect from what ASUS ROG considers "the future of ultimate gaming laptops." One of those tidbits sits inconspicuously in the tags section of ASUS ROG's blog post. We say it's inconspicuous because tags are generally intended for search engines like Google and Bing to index a website. But in this instance, one of the tags reveals that ASUS ROG is working on a massive 24-inch gaming laptop. That's not just big, it's gargantuan. A 17.3-inch laptop...
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At a time when laptop makers are shunning big and bulky notebooks in favor of thin and light designs, Lenovo went a different direction with its ThinkPad P70, a mobile workstation brimming with high-end hardware for tackling rough and tumble tasks in the field. It's all about finding the right tool for the job, and just as a lumberjack wouldn't trade his gas-powered chainsaw for a Swiss Army knife just because he could fit in his pocket, there are certain computing tasks that require desktop-class performance. That's what the ThinkPad P70 aims to deliver. The ThinkPad P70 is one of the first mobile workstations to employ a mobile Xeon processor option based on Intel's Skylake architecture. It's...
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With the release of Windows 8, Microsoft effectively encouraged its hardware partners to think beyond the confines of traditional PC design, giving them the nudge they needed to introduce bold new products. Lenovo embraced the challenge, and in 2012 it brought its first Yoga system to market, a multi-mode laptop that could fold back onto itself like a carnival contortionist. The design proved popular, so over the past few years Lenovo has added new laptops to its Yoga line. One of the newest is the Yoga 700, a 14-inch convertible that takes advantage of the latest technologies, pairing Intel's Skylake architecture with Microsoft's Windows 10 platform. It's a marriage of hardware and software...
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AMD had lots of great stuff to show off in its suite at this year's CES, but one thing that stood out was a simple box that sat next to a thin notebook: an external graphics card enclosure. Now, we've been seeing this kind of product for many years - including from AMD itself - and not one of them has ever stuck. AMD promises that this one is different, though, because its design is more standardized. If you like the idea of using a desktop GPU to power gaming on a notebook, you might not have to wait too long before you can get your hands on an enclosure. Robert Hallock, who's part of AMD's technical marketing team, posted a teaser on Facebook yesterday (seen below) which shows a Radeon R9 Nano...
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The 2-in-1 and convertible PC space has changed significantly over the past couple of years. What was once a cluttered mess of kludges is now a well-defined market segment packed with refinement, power, and plenty of options. You could partially credit Microsoft's Surface line for making 2-in-1s an object of desire, but it's also products like the Dell XPS 12 that make today's line-up of convertible devices so much more interesting. Dell's XPS 12, which was first announced last fall, is just as capable as a laptop as it is a tablet. That's no small feat, and it's multifaceted abilities are largely due to Dell's top-shelf keyboard cases. Though it's engineered as a tablet first, the 12.5-inch...
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By now you're probably burned out on smartphone and VR buzz. We don't blame you, Mobile World Congress week has been a whirlwind akin to only that sort of frenzied pace we experience at CES. Of course we agree, mobile computing isn't just about smartphones and other pocketable devices, even if what's coming is finally breaking the mold with modularity and even possibly someday complete end user repairability and upgradability. Well, even though HP joined the MWC 2016 party with a smartphone of their own (Windows 10 Mobile no less and with impressive scalability), they also decided to drop in a photobomb of sorts, with their Spectre X360 15-inch bad boy (or girl) ultralight arriving to our test...
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Chinese manufacturer Huawei trotted out a 2-in-1 device at Mobile World Congress 2016, one that looks like a less expensive alternative to Microsoft's Surface Pro line. Called the MateBook, pricing starts at a comparatively affordable $699/€799 for a configuration that's similar to an entry-level Surface Pro 4. All MateBook configurations sport a 12-inch In-Plane Switching (IPS) multi-touch display with a 2160x1440 resolution. It has an ultra-narrow frame and an advertised screen-to-body ratio of 84 percent. According to Huawei, the display's color gamut reaches 85 percent—not top of the line, but also not too shabby for a lower cost 2-in-1 device. Huawei's pitch is that its MateBook combines...
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We had good things to say about Asus’ super-slim ZenBook UX305 when we evaluated it early last year. Attractive, sturdy, and downright tiny, the UX305 was a good value for the price, and it had good looks too. A year later, the ZenBook is back with the updated UX305CA, so we got one in to see if the newer version is as balanced a machine as last year’s model. The Zenbook UX305CA we will be showing you here has Windows 10 and an updated Core M processor, along with improved graphics, but many things haven’t changed: it’s still tiny, it has the same wedge design and the lid still props the keyboard up at angle when opened. If you liked the UX305, you’ll be happy to know that many of its best features...
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You could almost hear the collective groan from the enthusiast community when Dell announced it had purchased Alienware, in what now feels like 100 years ago. It has actually been just shy of a decade since Dell took ownership, and rather than let the Alienware brand wither into irrelevance like some other boutique vendors that were later absorbed by major OEMs (Voodoo who?), Dell's gaming gear division has continued to thrive and innovate with the help of the company's deeper resources. If we're being totally honest (as we always are), passionate consumers come out of the woodwork whenever the Alienware name is invoked. Some are rational and offer up observational criticism or praise, as well...
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New processor architectures inevitably lead to a flurry of refreshed product lines from PC makers. That's how things have been playing out with Skylake, a "tock" in Intel's tick-tock design cadence and its 6th generation Core processor family. As usual, ASUS is on the bleeding edge with new Skylake systems ready to go, one of which is the ROG G752VT. The specific model ASUS sent us is the ROG G752VT-DH72, a slightly toned down update to the ROG G751JY-DB72 we reviewed back in September. Like that laptop, the G752VT falls into the desktop replacement category and takes aim at gamers with high-end hardware and, the coup de grâce, a 17.3-inch IPS panel supporting NVIDIA's G-Sync technology. If this...
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When a company comes along with a new product and says, "Forget raised. The bar has been destroyed.", they're giving it an incredible build-up that's easy to fall short of. With Origin PC's EON17-SLX, though, the company knows it has a good thing going. If you want high-end desktop performance in a notebook, this is it. A single NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M graphics card is able to push today's hottest games at 1080p with high detail or 1440p with modest detail, but that's not enough power for Origin PC. Nope - this beaut of a notebook is able to accept either two of those fast 980M GPUs for SLI use, or a desktop GTX 980 for mobile which NVIDIA released a few months ago. It might generate a bit more...
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Intel's 6th Generation Skylake family of Core processors has been available for some time now. We previously gave you a look at the desktop variant that Intel initially rolled out. However, the mobile variant of Skylake is perhaps Intel's most potent incarnation of the new architecture that's power-optimized on 14nm technology and with a beefier graphics engine, for more capable thin and light notebooks. In late Q3, Intel started rolling out Skylake-U versions of the chip in a 15 Watt TDP flavor. This is the power envelope that most "ultrabooks" are built with and it's likely to be Intel's highest volume SKU of the processor series, which will ship in many OEM configurations this holiday shopping...
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Steve Ballmer may no longer be Microsoft's head honcho, but his love for the company hasn't faded. In a new interview with Bloomberg, Ballmer had some great things to say about the company while at the same time giving some of its competition - namely, Amazon - a quick jab. In a recent New York Times piece, Amazon's Jeff Bezos was quoted as saying, "If Amazon became like Microsoft, we'd die", and it's a sentiment Ballmer couldn't disagree more with. He's confident that Microsoft is the more interesting company, and the better one to work for. He notes that there have been many who've left for Amazon (in Washington, where both companies are based) that wound right back up at Microsoft a year later....
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We talked just yesterday about the various configurations that exist for Microsoft's Surface Book, including the mammoth $3,199 model that boasts 1TB of solid-state storage. Despite all we know about these offerings, though, there are some details both Microsoft and its component vendors are keeping mum on. Such as the GPU model included. Well, thanks to a reddit user who spotted a Surface Book in store, and was able to get online and download some diagnostic tools, we now have that answered. Right off the bat, we can tell that this is not a very high-end GPU, and that's something I doubt anyone will be surprised by. However, I was personally hoping to see something a bit better, given the minimum...
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When Microsoft revealed its Surface Book a couple of weeks ago, we knew it was going to be a HOT product. What I'm not sure many of us realized, though, is that the available models would sell out so fast. For a product that starts out at $1,499 and doesn't have the Apple name attached to it, that's quite impressive. As it appears, though, all of the configurations can still be pre-ordered, but it's wise to jump in realizing that the product might not be delivered as quickly as you'd hope. There is one configuration that's been added that is likely to ship the fastest, though, simply due to the lack of people willing to spend $3,199 on a new notebook. This grand configuration features a Core...
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Laptops are mostly static devices. What we mean by that is, for the vast majority of laptops, what you get at the time of purchase is what you get, and that's that. Unlike a desktop system, in which each individual component is upgradeable without too much fuss, only certain parts of a laptop are user replaceable, at least without some serious deconstruction and maybe even a bit of modding . Typically, laptop makers provide easy access to the RAM and storage, though everything else is either soldered in place or otherwise proprietary for various reasons (whitebooks not withstanding, of course). Since laptop purchases are largely one-and-done transactions, it's important to buy the highest end...
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We've got a fairly well defined set of expectations with today's current crop of 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 would definitely carry one around with us for everyday computing tasks like Web browsing, managing spreadsheets, some Netflix, and maybe a bit of light gaming (sorry, Witcher 3 fans). We were pleasantly surprised to see Acer's Aspire S7-393 perform so well on most of the benchmarks we tossed its way, however, as you'll see on the pages ahead. This ultrabook is not...
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Nothing beats the portability of a notebook when it comes to getting work done while on-the-go, but with that portability comes a number of caveats. A smaller, more cramped keyboard is one of them, and so too is being forced to use a touchpad if you don't want to lug around a portable mouse. And, of course, there's also the limitation of a single screen. Well, enter the Sliden'Joy, a Kickstarter project that's set to launch on July 6. There's not a lot of technical detail given about it so far, but the basics are easy to understand. Sliden'Joy effectively hooks onto your notebook to allow you to extend one or two screens out of either side, giving you an effective dual or triple monitor setup....
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For years, the notion of a tablet replacing one's laptop was a novel idea, but hardly feasible. Much has changed in recent times, however, 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 everyone from Lenovo to Asus and now Dell pushing out potent 2-in-1 units that manage to straddle the line between slate and laptop with very little compromise.The Inspiron 13 7000 is Dell's latest two-faced unit, and the one we're testing is a top-spec Special Edition model that's faster and more beautiful that the other models in the line-up....
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