MacBook Pro 14 Review: Testing Apple M1 Pro Performance Claims

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...

HP ZBook Firefly 14 G8 Review: A Premium Mobile Workstation

by Ben Funk - Thu, Jul 22, 2021

Mobile workstations come in all shapes and sizes. Recently we took a look at the HP ZBook Fury 15 G7, a powerful mobile workstation with ISV-certified drivers that could replace many desktops, but in a more portable form factor. Many engineers need the type of power and reliability offered by a machine the size of the ZBook Fury 15 G7, to work with the latest 3D modeling apps, not to mention content creators that need all the video editing punch they can get, with some portability as well. However, many others in the same organization may need the same ISV-certified drivers with more portability...

Dell Latitude 7320 Detachable Revisited: Refined And Ready

by Ben Funk - Thu, Jul 15, 2021

A lot can happen as a system is under development, especially with a relatively new family of hardware. Maybe the drivers and BIOS aren't quite tuned for the best possible performance or power efficiency, and sometimes early reviews aren't completely indicative of what a user will experience when they first purchase a laptop, even a new one that's just hitting the market. That's the case with Dell's Latitude 7320 Detachable PC, a speedy tablet hybrid that makes the current lineup of Surface Pro 7s look seriously outdated. When we first published our review of the Latitude 7320 Detachable, Dell...

ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 Review: Powerful Tiger Lake-H Gaming

by Ben Funk - Fri, Jul 02, 2021

We were really impressed with Intel's latest high-performance notebook CPUs from the Tiger Lake-H family when we got to try them out in a test platform. Intel arguably produced the single fastest x86 notebook CPU on the planet, with blistering single-threaded speed and heavy multi-threaded prowess. However, we were itching to get our hands on a retail sample with these CPUs so we could verify that shipping products were just as fast. Enter ASUS and the powerful ROG Zephyrus M16, a brand-new model of sleek gaming notebook with NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics and one of Intel's latest Core i9 processors. ...

Alienware m17 R4 Review: The Fastest Gaming Laptop Yet

by Paul Lilly - Wed, Jun 16, 2021

Just a few months ago, we reviewed the Alienware m15 R4, a seriously powerful 15.6-inch form factor laptop that, at the time, posted the best gaming performance benchmark results we had ever seen from a notebook. Not that we were particularly surprised—armed with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 GPU based on Ampere and a 10th Generation Intel Core i7-10870H CPU (Comet Lake) CPU, it packs some serious artillery. Well, we've now tested an even faster gaming laptop, and it just so happens to be the 17-inch Alienware m17 R4. Call it sibling rivalry, if you wish, but the bigger 17.3-inch brother to...

Best Chromebooks Of 2021: Acer, ASUS And Lenovo Go Head To Head

by Brandon Hill - Fri, Jun 11, 2021

Check Out These Great Chromebook Options From Some Of The Most Trusted Names In Computing Unless you've been living under a rock, you already know that the Chromebook market is red hot at the moment. The COVID-19 pandemic and the sharp increase in demand for cheap computing devices from everyday consumers and school systems has led to a significant surge in Chromebook adoption. With this in mind, we decided to pull together a roundup of three current-generation Chromebooks that cover a broad pricing spectrum from Lenovo, ASUS, and Acer. Our Video Deep-Dive Of Chromebook Contenders Lenovo Duet Convertible...

AMD Radeon RX 6800M Rips Benchmarks In Powerful All-AMD ASUS Gaming Laptop

by Marco Chiappetta - Mon, May 31, 2021

During her Computex 2021 keynote this evening, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su, along with compatriots Frank Azor and Scott Herkleman, revealed a number of the company’s new products an initiatives, targeting the server, desktop and mobile markets. For gamers, perhaps the most enticing announcement was the revelation of AMD's Radeon RX 6000M series of mobile GPUs. Though Dr. Su had mentioned that mobile RDNA 2-based Radeons were inbound back at CES earlier this year, it wasn’t until today that the actual line-up with specs, speeds and feeds was announced. The flagship product in the Radeon RX 6000M...

Intel Expands Tiger Lake-U Laptop Line-Up, Teases Vicious Beast Canyon NUC

by Ben Funk - Sun, May 30, 2021

Computex might be a virtual online-only show this year, but you should expect some big announcements from many of the heavy hitters in tech. The virtual show kicks off May 31 at 7:30 AM local time in Taipei, which translates to 10:30 PM Eastern on Sunday the 30th in the U.S. While there will undoubtedly be a ton of announcements over the next few days coming out of the show, we do have some early news tonight from Intel, to get the show started. Intel hosted a press and analyst Performance Workshop, and has lifted the curtain on how it's expanding the Tiger Lake product lineup, with a few new point...

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 Review: Ultralight Greatness

by Dave Altavilla - Thu, May 27, 2021

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...

Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition R5 Review: Zen 3 Laptop Invasion

by Ben Funk - Thu, May 20, 2021

Over the last eight months or so, segment by segment, AMD's various Zen 3-based processors have taken the world by storm. High performance servers, desktops, and notebooks all feature AMD's flagship silicon, thanks in no small part to its excellent perf-per-watt and strong overall value proposition. That dynamic really started in 2020, but we could sense a bit of hesitancy on the part of manufacturers with last year's Ryzen 4000 series gaming notebooks, since those topped out with midrange graphics. This year, though, the kid gloves have come off and higher-end graphics options have been made available. ...

Intel Core i9-11980HK Preview: 8-Core Tiger Lake-H Unleashed

by Marco Chiappetta - Mon, May 17, 2021

Last week, Intel officially unveiled its Tiger Lake-H45 based H-Series 11th Gen Core processor line-up, for high-performance gaming laptops and mobile workstations. The flagship consumer processor in the family is the Core i9-11980HK. The Core i9-11980HK is an 8-core / 16-thread processor, with a base clock of 2.6GHz and maximum turbo clock of 5GHz on one or two cores, when Intel’s Turbo Boost technology kicks in. The Core i9-11980HK supports DDR4 memory at speeds up to 3,200MHz, but this particular “HK” processor is also fully unlocked and overclockable via Intel’s XTU...

Intel 11th Gen Core H45 Tiger Lake-H CPUs Launch To Push Laptop Performance Envelope

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, May 11, 2021

In early January, Intel officially announced its Tiger Lake-H mobile platform. For those that missed it, Tiger Lake-H is the foundation of the 11th Gen H-Series mobile processors. Like mainstream 11th Gen mobile processors, Tiger Lake-H is based on the 10nm Tiger Lake architecture, but Intel upped the ante with the H-series in terms of performance and features, and also pushed the form factor envelope. In addition to traditional gaming notebook form factors, Intel boasted that the new 11th Gen Core H-Series Tiger Lake-H processors would appear in high-performance gaming laptops as thin as 16.4mm,...