HotHardware's Ten Best Of CES 2016
Best Of CES 2016: Notebooks And Convertibles
With Intel's Skylake 6th Gen Core series processors recently released, you can bet CES 2016 was jammed-packed with more mobile computing solutions and small form factor PC technologies than you could shake a tired, overworked press editor at. From notebooks, to NUCs, sticks and Brix, horsepower and efficiency has been kicked up notch and OEMs took the opportunity to deck out these new platform technologies with some significant upgrades in other areas as well.
Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Yoga - Now OLED Empowered
Oh ThinkPads, how we do so love to bang away on that perfectly engineered notebook typing deck. The iconic business class machine from Lenovo has always done well across its many form factors over years, but none perhaps so popular as the ThinkPad X1 series that takes Lenovo's conservative business stylings and gives them a bit of an edgy carbon fiber infused look and svelte, trim lines. In a mash-up of the company's Yoga line, with its 360 degree hinge technology, Lenovo introduced the ThinkPad X1 Yoga, also with a bit of carbon on board, like the X1 Carbon, in addition to a 14-inch OLED display that's to-die for. We like the machine so much we gave it a Best of CES 2016 award later that night at the CES Unvield show. It was simply just that good. For the team, the ThinkPad X1 series and its 14-inch display that's squeezed into a frame that's more a kin to a 13-inch machine, is perhaps the ideal size and weight for mobile computing on the go as we're so often tasked with. Our only gripes with the previous gen ThinkPad X1 Carbon was its lack of an SD card slot and sometimes not quite bright enough IPS display. The new ThinkPad X1 Yoga with its OLED display option solves both of those issues as Lenovo has returned a microSD card slot to the mix and yes they brought the OLED, with all the brightness, punchy contrast and saturation you'd expect. OLED is BEST! (kind of like gold but sans the cheeseball).
Dell's Alienware 13, Skylake, Maxwell And OLED = Game Goodness
Good news for gamers on the OLED front too, as Dell saw clear to let their Alienware gaming team go nuts with the OLED panels as well. But beyond just a flat black finish, Alienware stepped up their styling game with a delicious arrest me red color too, just like that Corvette we're getting dangerously close to needing a midlife crisis over.
Along with that sweet 13.3-inch OLED display at 3200x1800 res and what could arguably be the coolest color at the coffee shop, Alienware dials up to a Core i7-6500U processor, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M (Maxwell) mobile graphics, 16GB of DDR3 RAM and a 256GB NVMe PCIe SSD. It's one badass little machine at just a smidge over 4.5 pounds and an easy best-of in our book as well.
HP Spectre X360 With OLED Display
We really liked the HP Spectre X360 when the machines first launched last year. So what happens when you take an already excellent convertible notebook, upgrade all of its internal components with the latest Intel mobile processors and super-fast storage, and also equip it with a gorgeous OLED screen? You end up with one of the hottest PCs at CES.
The HP Spectre X360 OLED check all of the right boxes. The systems feature 6th Gen Skylake based Intel processors with Iris graphics options, up to 1TB of NVMe SSD storage, multi-touch displays, Band & Olufsen tuned audio, excellent oversized Synaptics touchpads, and premium materials are used throughout. The Ash Grey model with copper accents looks awesome in our opinion too.
The HP Spectre X360 OLED check all of the right boxes. The systems feature 6th Gen Skylake based Intel processors with Iris graphics options, up to 1TB of NVMe SSD storage, multi-touch displays, Band & Olufsen tuned audio, excellent oversized Synaptics touchpads, and premium materials are used throughout. The Ash Grey model with copper accents looks awesome in our opinion too.
