Ryzen 6000 And ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 Laptop Review: Revisiting Performance

AMD had a wildly eventful keynote at CES 2022, jam-packed with announcements. During the festivities, CEO Dr. Lisa Su, Frank Azor, Jason Banta, and Laura Smith jointly revealed a wide array of products, including the Radeon RX 6500 XT, Ryzen 6000 series mobile processors, and refreshed Radeon RX 6000S series mobile GPUs, along with AMD Advantage program updates, and the Ryzen 7 5800X3D and next-gen Ryzen 7000 desktop processors. There was a mountain of information to unpack after the event, but as time passes things are coming into focus. We recently had the chance to check out the Radeon RX 6500...

ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED Laptop Review: Ryzen 6000U Rocks

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, May 19, 2022

AMD officially lifted the veil on its latest Ryzen 6000 series mobile processors back at CES early this year. In case you missed it, we detailed that initial announcement, talked about the high level features, and broke down the H and U-series SKU stack in our coverage at the time. More recently, we had the chance to evaluate the excellent ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14, which was freshly updated for 2022 with AMD’s finest. That little beastie of machine packs all of the punch of larger gaming notebook into a more portable 14” form factor, and has some additional eye-catching features to say...

Razer Blade 17 Review: A Slim RTX 3080 Ti Mobile Gaming Weapon

by Marco Chiappetta - Wed, May 18, 2022

When NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3080 Ti mobile GPU and Intel’s beefy 12th Gen Core H-Series processors first hit the scene, they tore through the lab here guns a-blazin’. We had the chance to take a look at a couple of killer systems from MSI and Alienware at the time, which maxed-out the platform with both NVIDIA’s best mobile GPU and Intel’s top-end Core i9-12900HK. The newly-updated Razer Blade 17 for 2022 we’ll be showing you here, however, takes a somewhat different, more measured approach. Instead of packing the laptop with nothing but hero SKUs, which compete...

Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 Laptop Review: Svelte Stunner

by Dave Altavilla - Fri, Apr 15, 2022

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, with 12 and 10-core options that sport up to 4 Performance cores and 8 Efficiency cores, and the promise of strong performance-per-watt for a top-shelf experience. In kind, Samsung's GalaxyBook Pro 360 impressed the heck out of us last year when it debuted,...

ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 Review: 12th Gen Power, RTX Punch

by Ben Funk - Wed, Apr 06, 2022

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, an updated MSI GE76 Raider and an Alienware x17 R2, were both suitably impressive, but their large footprints and hefty weights aren't for everybody. Enter an upgraded version of one of last year's slimmer and lighter gaming laptops, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus...

Intel Arc Alchemist Mobile GPUs Arrive With Powerful, Innovative New Features For Laptops

by Marco Chiappetta, Paul Lilly - Wed, Mar 30, 2022

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 into the future. What started off as an Odyssey has now reached its Arc, with Intel today launching its first discrete Arc GPUs for laptops. This was the plan laid out during Intel’s 2022 Investor Meeting last month. Intel would come out swinging with the first...

Acer Swift 3 16 Laptop Review: Affordable And Capable

by Tim Sweezy - Thu, Mar 10, 2022

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, and a new 16-inch option. It is that new 16-inch display option that Acer gave us the opportunity to take for a test drive. The Swift 3 (SF316-51) we received comes powered by an 11th Gen Core i7 (Tiger Lake) processor with Xe graphics, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB...

ASUS Vivobook 13 Slate OLED Review: Affordable 2-In-1 Beauty

by Ben Funk - Thu, Feb 24, 2022

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 market, so it makes sense that OLED laptops would too. We've enjoyed OLED displays in laptops previously, like the Zenbook 13 OLED, which is a beaut but starts with an entry level price of over $1,200.  ASUS performed a bit of thought experiment here, though. What if an OLED-equipped...

Alienware x14 Laptop Review: Potent, Petite Gaming Prowess

by Dave Altavilla - Fri, Feb 11, 2022

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 flagship, now powered by Intel's 12th Gen Core (Alder Lake) CPUs and the mighty GeForce RTX 3080 Ti mobile GPU. That machine put up some fantastic numbers and looked great doing it, but today we return to the X Series with an entirely new offering from Alienware,...

Intel Core i9-12900HK With RTX 3080 Ti Review: MSI's GE76 Raider Laptop Screams

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Jan 25, 2022

At its annual architecture day event late last year, Intel revealed a multitude of details regarding its 12th Gen Core desktop and mobile processors based on Alder Lake. For the uninitiated, 12th Gen Core processors feature Intel’s latest CPU microarchitectures (yes, plural), in a hybrid design that mixes high-performance and high-efficiency cores on a single chip. Well, most 12th Gen Core mobile processors leverage a hybrid design, anyway. When CES 2022 rolled around earlier this month, Intel also revealed its initial line-up of 12th Gen Core mobile processors, some of which featured...

Alienware x17 R2 Review: An Alder Lake-H And RTX 3080 Ti Gaming Battleship

by Dave Altavilla, Paul Lilly - Tue, Jan 25, 2022

For those of you who find joy in larger gaming laptop form factors, the recently unveiled Alienware x17 R2 is proof that your mobile battle station size preference has not been left behind. Better still, Dell has a found a way to maintain its larger display and keyboard form factor while making this the thinnest 17-inch Alienware laptop yet, and it doesn't come at the expense of CPU and GPU firepower or cutting-edge features. So, when the opportunity came to kick the tires on the new Alienware x17 R2, we pounced. Afterall, now also infused with Intel Alder Lake mobile CPU and beastly GeForce...

MacBook Pro 14 Review: Testing Apple M1 Pro Performance Claims

by Ben Funk - Tue, Nov 23, 2021

Around this time last year, there was much hoopla over Apple's first Macs with the company's home-grown Apple Silicon, dubbed the M1. Almost immediately, rumors swirled about what the follow-up, rumored to be called the M1X, would have in store. Never mind that at the time, Apple released a power-efficient champion with four high-performance cores that could tear through just about any workload, while simultaneously rewriting the book on integrated graphics performance. No, the 2020 Mac mini was old news; we just had to know what was next.  And then 2021 kicked off and it seemed nothing would...

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 Review: A Powerful Refresh

by Ben Funk - Thu, Nov 18, 2021

Ultraportable laptops with 13 or 14-inch displays and low-power processors are great for a certain kind of user. Those folks are usually found running from gate to gate in an airport or catching an Uber to a sales meeting. These machines have great single-threaded performance and good-enough graphics capabilities, but the thermal limits and the laws of physics get in the way of more demanding workloads. Lager format machines have the extra cooling capacity and thermal budget to add in discrete graphics and more processor cores, and the users that value this extra muscle are the target demographic...

Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 Review: Refined Mobile Workstation

by Chris Goetting - Fri, Nov 12, 2021

If there was a poster child for business-class laptops, it is indisputably the Lenovo ThinkPad. ThinkPad notebooks are well known for their matte-black, no-nonsense designs, but their utility in corporate and industrial settings is more than skin-deep. Lenovo has wisely developed an array of ThinkPad models to address a wide range of use cases, while still being able to keep that distinct ThinkPad feel. This familiarity yields a dependable experience which has cultivated a dedicated following. We have recently reviewed several svelte ThinkPad X Series variations, but today’s offering is more...

Intel Is Confident It Can Win Apple Back As A Customer After Being Exiled From Macs

by Keith May - Mon, Oct 18, 2021

Apple may be on the precipice of releasing its latest processors, the M1 Max and M1 Pro, but that doesn't stop Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger from counting Intel out. Apple is now moving to its second generation of M1 CPUs after transitioning away from Intel, following 15 years of partnership. In 2020 Apple announced its own silicon and marked the move away from Intel as its CPU of choice ushering in an entirely new operating system and way of thinking for developers. The Apple M1 is an 8-core ARM-based CPU built on the 5nm architecture and is an absolute unit when it comes to efficiency. This was a sizeable...

Alienware X15 Gaming Laptop Review: A Svelte Stunner With Caveats

by Dave Altavilla - Thu, Oct 14, 2021

Thin and light gaming laptops are a bit of an enigma. They essentially aim to defy the laws of physics, eschewing size and thermal dissipation area in an effort to strike a more portable, stylish design while still maintaining respectable gaming chops. Let's face it, no one really likes the bulk and chunky demeanor of most high-end gaming laptops that are designed for all-out performance. It's a difficult, fine line to walk, but a worthy, noble one to develop a compelling, quality thin and light gaming laptop, and that's exactly what Dell went all-out for with the new Alienware X15. The new...

Dell XPS 15 9510 Review: A Powerful RTX Laptop With OLED Pop

by Paul Lilly - Thu, Oct 07, 2021

The latest version of Dell's XPS 15 (9510) is not a drastic departure from last year's model (9500). In terms of the physical design it is actually no different at all, which is not a bad thing. Last year saw Dell tweak the XPS 15's composition with a handful of subtle refinements, like slimming down the bezels on the InfinityEdge display and endowing it with a much bigger touchpad. The culmination of those and other small changes was a polished laptop inside and out, and the same can be said for this year's revision -- except it's faster. That is to say, Dell retained everything we liked about...

Intel Core i7-1195G7 Performance: MSI’s Prestige 14 EVO Flies

by Marco Chiappetta - Fri, Oct 01, 2021

Earlier this year, we took a look at the MSI Prestige 14 EVO, a high-performance thin and light ultrabook, which was packing Intel’s latest Tiger Lake-based mobile processing platform at the time. In our deep-dive evaluation of the machine, we found it to offer strong CPU and integrated graphics performance, with speedy PCIe Gen 4 NVMe storage, and a host of handy features, all in a competitively priced, attractive package. When all was said and done, we gave the MSI Prestige 14 EVO a ‘Recommended’ award and thought users looking for a machine with a similar form factor would...

ASUS ZenBook 13 OLED Review: Ryzen 5000-Powered Excellence

by Marco Chiappetta - Fri, Sep 24, 2021

Much of the conversation surrounding AMD’s continued assault on Intel has revolved around the desktop and server markets, where the company’s Ryzen and EPYC processors have consistently increased in popularity and adoption, gen over gen. AMD has, however, also made significant inroads in the mobile space, with both high-end gaming notebooks – like the excellent ASUS ROG Strix G15 AMD Advantage Edition – and in the thin-and-lite space as well, with a variety of Ryzen 5000U series based machines. We’ve actually had the notebook we’ll be showing you today, the ASUS...

Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 Review: Sleek, Premium, Great Battery Life

by Paul Lilly - Mon, Sep 06, 2021

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...

MSI GE76 Raider Laptop Review: Tiger Lake With RTX Gladiator

by Ben Funk - Thu, Sep 02, 2021

More powerful, more capable and feature-rich -- the current crop of gaming laptops with the most recent CPU and GPU platforms can offer a major upgrade to the enthusiast laptop experience. That's especially true these days with discrete graphics cards being hard to come by and marked up by factors of two or three above their MSRP. Suddenly dropping $3,000+ on a whole-system upgrade via portable powerhouses like these starts to make more sense financially. New desktop builds are great (if you can find components and all), but then you also have to factor in a new display, keyboard, and just about...

Dell XPS 17 9710 Review: A Superb 17-Inch Premium Laptop

by Ben Funk - Wed, Jul 28, 2021

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...