Laptop

Black Friday 2022 might be over, but the deals are still going on at Lenovo's US store online. They include discounts of 60% or more on certain ThinkPads, even a SKU of the X1 Carbon Gen 10. The AMD-based Yoga 6 is also nearly 40% off, whereas the Tab P11 Pro Gen 2 is about to drop to under US$300 imminently.

Many manufacturers continue to implement fewer connectivity and maintenance options on slim devices, but the new Schenker Vision 16 Pro shows that there are other solutions. The multimedia device offers plenty of ports, comprehensive maintenance options, and powerful hardware that can maintain its performance.

The very affordable and therefore extremely popular Lenovo IdeaPad 3 configuration with the fairly capable RTX 3050 dGPU has now reached its lowest price in recent memory after getting a noteworthy US$350 rebate on Amazon, which brings the price of this budget-friendly gaming laptop down to just US$549.

Introduced in 2019 as the successor of the T20 and T40 series, the Creative T100 desktop speakers come with a peak power of 80 W and multiple connectivity options, including Bluetooth 5.0, 3.5 mm AUX, and optical. The ongoing 55% discount offered by Amazon pushes the list price of US$177.85 down to a very attractive US$79.99.

The 250 GB, 500 GB, and 1 TB Samsung 980 PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSDs receive the Black Friday treatment on Amazon. The best discount is a generous 43% for the 1 TB variant, while the 500 GB model is available for 24% off. The lowest capacity flavor of the Samsung 980 SSD is just 15% down (US$46.99 from a list price of US$54.99).

To improve the 3 nm yields that are barely reaching 20%, Samsung started working with US-based company Silicon Frontline Technology that specializes in electrostatic discharge prevention methods. Samsung is also developing a second generation 3 nm node, but it is unclear which stepping will be utilized by Nvidia, IBM and Qualcomm.

MSI has just announced its Black Friday/Cyber Monday 2022 deals on a selection of its laptops for gamers or creators. They include the well-received Intel Tiger Lake-based Stealth 15M, normally priced at US$1,399 on Amazon, as well as the newer Katana GF76 and G66 and the Pulse GL66. 16- and 17-inch Creator-series variants are also included in the sale.

The sought-after RTX 3070 configuration of the popular Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 16 has drawn much closer to the magical US$1,000 price mark in Walmart's ongoing Black Friday sales event, which includes a notable discount for this well-equipped 16-inch gaming laptop.

Bestware’s Black Friday campaign kicks off on November 23 at 10 AM CET and lasts until November 30 10 AM CET. There are many great deals for XMG gaming laptops with optional liquid cooling unit and the Schenker slim and light notebooks, plus Bestware also offers discounts for select desktop PCs and VR headsets.

Aside from the dedicated RTX 3050 Ti GPU, the good-looking Asus ZenBook 15 sports a beautiful 15-inch OLED display that arguably makes it the perfect companion for prospective buyers who are in the market for an affordable multimedia laptop.

The 15-inch and 13.5-inch variants of the Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro have been heavily discounted on Amazon. One can purchase the former starting at US$900 and the latter at US$850.

The MSI Creator 15 is a notebook focused on productivity workloads. Due to a powerful GPU, the machine can also comfortably drive most modern games at relatively high settings. Amazon has now slashed US$700 off the retail price for the RTX 3080 SKU of the laptop.

In addition to the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 graphics adapter, the discounted Razer Blade 14 configuration available on Amazon also features 16 GB of memory and a 1 TB SSD. After a 29% discount, the US$2,799.99 list price of this compact gaming laptop drops to US$1,999.99.

Expect performance to be almost identical to the Core i5-1235U and the integrated Iris Xe 80 EUs even though the Core i7-1260U and its Iris Xe 96 EUs may sound faster on paper.

The large, 17-inch Predator Helios 300 doesn't sneak up quietly but aims to conquer the gaming community with brute force performance. We tested the high-performance gaming laptop.

The powerful all-AMD configuration of the fancy 14-inch gaming laptop usually costs a whopping US$1,899, but thanks to a steep US$500 rebate at Best Buy, the top-notch Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 can now be ordered for its lowest sale price to date.

We are now getting to see Time Spy scores for Nvidia's upcoming Ada RTX 4000 mobile GPUs, and the purported RTX 4080 Ti mobile leads the pack with scores that are 30% higher than the RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU. It is not clear whether the RTX 4080 Ti mobile or the RTX 4090 mobile would be flagship mobile Ada GPU. Interestingly, we see the RTX 4070 mobile scoring a good 15% lead over the RTX 3080 Ti.

Another noteworthy gaming laptop deal offers a significant discount for the usually pretty expensive Alienware m15 R7, whose RTX 3060 configuration may be a good choice for mid-range gamers who have roughly US$1,200 to spare on a new 15-inch machine.

Gaming laptops often have a flashy design that separates them from laptops meant for other purposes (which are usually quite understated). However, Lenovo has decided to give the Legion Slim 7i 16IAH7 a very muted design. As a result, non-gamers may also find this Legion laptop interesting.

Acer is among the first OEMs to ready budget laptops powered by the Mendocino processor lineup from AMD. The new Aspire 3 models are fairly affordable and feature Ryzen 3 7320U or Ryzen 5 7520U APUs with integrated RDNA 2 Radeon 610M graphics, a 15.6-inch screen, 8 GB LPDDR5 and 128 GB NVMe SSD storage.

Fighting against established competitors like Intel and AMD as well as against more than 30 years of PC legacy was always going to be an uphill battle for Qualcomm. To find a way into the market for its Snapdragon processors, Qualcomm has to be creative - which they demonstrated at the Snapdragon Summit 2022.

The laptop version of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 has shown up on Puget Bench. Its GPU score maxed out at 57.4, over 30% faster than the GeForce RTX 3050's score of 43. The graphics card was running in a Samsung laptop with an Intel Core i7-13700H.

The well-equipped Lenovo Legion 5 Pro has particularly impressed us with its bright and colorful 165Hz QHD display, which certainly separates the 16-inch gaming laptop from more affordable RTX 3060-powered machines that often come with rather dim screens.

The energy efficient Kompanio SoCs designed for Chromebooks and tablets proved to be profitable and MediaTek is now looking to scale these for high-power Windows on Arm applications. From what company executives are suggesting, MediaTek might choose to design the processing and graphics cores in house, similarly to what Apple is doing with the M processors.

A top-notch configuration of Lenovo's ThinkPad P1 series of mobile workstations has now dropped below the US$1,500 mark thanks to a coupon code that results in a massive rebate in relation to the manufacturer's lofty MSRP of more than US$4,000.

Other than the previously leaked i9-13900HX and i7-13700HX, the upcoming Raptor Lake-HX mobile processor lineup would also include the i7-13650HX as well as the i5-13500HX and i5-13450HX. Apparently, only the i9 and i5 models bring meaningful upgrades compared to the existing Alder Lake-HX models, and DDR5-5600 support is reserved for the higher end models.

Compatible with the Sony PlayStation 5 console, the Samsung 980 PRO NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD with heatsink comes in 1 TB and 2 TB variants, both in black finish. Amazon has discounted both, the larger model receiving a generous 53 percent discount (down to US$189.99), while the 1 TB variant is only 7 percent off (US$119.99).

Budget-minded buyers in the gaming laptop segment can now take advantage of a noteworthy deal for the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3, which has a pretty enticing price-performance ratio thanks to its discounted sale price of just US$599 on Amazon.

The Core i7-13700HX has made its way to the Geekbench database in what appears to be a Lenovo IdeaPad 330 laptop. However, we only have the OpenCL results at the moment and not the single and multi-core figures of the CPU itself. From the processor specs, it looks like the Core i7-13700HX could very well be a rebadged Core i9-12900HX with larger L2 cache.

In addition to other discounts that Amazon might apply in the coming days to the brand's memory and storage products, SK hynix is now offering 15 percent off coupons for the Platinum P41 (1 TB version) and Gold P31 (500 GB and 1 TB models) PCIe NVMe SSDs. The deal started earlier today and will run until November 18.

The Aspire 5 has a Tiger Lake processor on board, hardly gets warm and produces only minimum noise. In addition, it offers a backlit keyboard, acceptable battery life as well as a two year guarantee. The whole package is available for under 500 euros ($518).

The Acer Swift 3 SF314 aces many categories in our review. With a beautiful, high-resolution OLED display and a powerful Alder Lake-H 12-core CPU, the compact laptop does not seem to leave much to be desired. However, there are a few minor weaknesses, which prospective buyers should be aware of...

Now priced at US$159.99 after a massive 68 percent discount, the 2 TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe PCIe 3.0 SSD is not the only one in the lineup to get a price cut. While the 1 TB version has no discount, the 250 GB got 21 percent, and the 500 GB one is down to US$59.99, which translates to a 54 percent discount.

Best Buy currently grants a noteworthy US$350 discount on a pretty rare all-AMD configuration of this stylish 14-inch gaming laptop, which brings the well-performing Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 down to a comparatively reasonable sale price of US$1,299.

With a list price of US$959, the 15.6-inch Lenovo IdeaPad 3 that was released earlier this year with an Intel Core i3-1115G4 processor, 8 GB DDR4 memory, a 256 GB PCIe NVMe SSD, as well as Windows 11 Home preloaded is now available on Amazon for just US$373.99. This price drop translates to a massive 61 percent discount.

The well-equipped Gigabyte Aorus 5 comes with a quick RTX 3070 and one of Intel's latest Alder Lake CPUs, which should make this mid-range 15-inch gaming laptop capable of playing most modern games at high settings and frame rates.