Laptop

Yamaha claims to have drawn on decades of experience with enhancing 2-channel audio at the home-theater level to develop 3D Sound Field for its new YH-L700A headphones. It focuses on adapting to the wearer's head movements to keep sound immersion constant. The OEM also claims the new wired/wireless cans' has uniquely acute active noise cancellation (ANC) thanks to advanced mic placements.

Since Nvidia allows for a wide variety of TGPs on all of its mobile GPUs, the RTX 3050 Ti does not really make any sense. OEMs can easily replace this model with a lower TGP RTX 3060 and still keep the 6 GB of VRAM. Slapping only 4 GB on the RTX 3050 Ti is not even the bare minimum for some current AAA games, let alone whatever games will be released in the coming years.

Using clothing fabric instead of plastic or metal for a laptop is a pretty neat concept at least until you have to clean the thing. It may be best to avoid spilling any coffee or other liquids on the Yoga 6 13 or you'd be left with some potential stains.

It’s possible a new ARM-based 12-inch MacBook laptop sporting Apple Silicon could be in the pipeline according to a tipster. The so-called Retina MacBook was discontinued in 2019 with some criticism aimed at its usage of middling Intel processors. A 12-inch MacBook successor could utilize an M1 or even M2 SoC.

Many users on Lenovo's forums are reporting missing encoding codecs on their Legion laptops after a recent BIOS update. This issue appears to exclusively affect Legion units sold in Germany, potentially due to now-settled litigation with Nokia.

The under-the-hood changes should are expected to boost GPU performance by about 10 to 20 percent from last year's 10th gen Intel Blade Pro options. Prices start at $2399 USD for the RTX 3060 up to $3699 for the RTX 3080.

Razer has upgraded the Blade 15 Base with current-generation hardware such as the Intel Core i7-11800H and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070. Key Razer Blade 15 Base Model specs include a 15.4-inch QHD screen clocked at 165Hz, 16GB of 3,200MT/s RAM, a 512GB NVMe SSD, Wi-Fi 6, and a 65Wh battery. Pre-orders are open on Razer's website, with prices starting at US$1,799/€1,899.

Chuwi has started selling a new version of the LarkBook, a 13.3-inch and lightweight laptop that it launched last year. Chuwi has made one notable change, but the issues we had with the original model will probably remain.

New rumors from Apple-centric YouTuber Luke Miani claim that the upcoming MacBook Pro will sport a UHS-II SD card reader that offers read speeds up to three times faster than the UHS-I card readers used on previous MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models. However, Miani also cites insider information stating that the newest MacBook Pros will be limited to 32 GB of RAM.

The manufacturer is promising "toughness and performance like no other cheap laptops" through its quad-core Celeron N4120 processor, 4 GB RAM, and aluminum alloy chassis.

The latest market research indicates that Lenovo was the top dog among PC OEMs in terms of shipments during the second quarter of 2021. HP and Dell came in second and third, whereas Apple and Acer were found to have a joint fourth place for the quarter. The market continued to grow as a whole, although some slowdowns compared to early 2021 and 2020 may now be starting to emerge.

Some new Realme Book renders confirm the notebook's MacBook-like aesthetic and shed light on key design elements such as the chassis, number of ports, and overall dimensions. Realme is expected to unveil the laptop in India sometime in August 2021. Its price will allegedly start at INR 40,000 (US$536/€452).

The second generation of the compact ThinkPad X13 G2 gets new processors, 16:10 displays, and 5G as an optional extra. The business laptop convinces with good connectivity, but long-term ThinkPad users will have to make compromises when it comes to the keyboard.

Information about Intel's upcoming Alder Lake hybrid CPUs has leaked once again, and this time we are getting to see the segmentation in the Alder Lake mobile lineup. Alder Lake mobile will introduce two new TDP segments, U28 and H55, and will top-out at 8 Golden Cove cores and 8 Gracemont cores for the H55 "Muscle" variants targeted at high-end gaming laptops.

Acer claimed to have had its best May for seven years in its financial report for that month. Now, it notes it has done the same in June 2021. The OEM made 30.02 billion new Taiwanese dollars (NTD, or US$1.07 billion) in that month. It attributed this success to the sales of its Chromebooks and gaming hardware.

Lenovo US has declared today (July 9, 2021) a "second Black Friday", with generous discounts on a range of PCs and peripherals. They include the Core i7-1185G7-powered version of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, which started at US$3,369, but can be had for $1,685 instead during this event. A ThinkPad P17 is also involved in this sale, although it is not the latest model.

MSI is adding a new Delta series with slim and light design that can be equipped with a Ryzen 9 5900HX processor and a Radeon 6700M GPU, while also introducing a redesigned Alpha series with improved cooling and processor options up to a Ryzen 7 5800H complemented by a Radeon RX 6600M GPU.

Everyone saw the GPU dump coming, as the Ethereum Proof of Stake plan was set into motion two years ago, but Chinese cryptominers are forced to dump their GPUs earlier, since the local government is cracking down hard on any cryptomining activities. The RTX 3060 cards make for a particularly good deal now at around $270, but anyone interested in bulk deals for all Nvidia as well as AMD GPU models can easily find bargains on sites like Taobao, Bangood, Alibaba or AliExpress.

Now's the time to jump in on gaming laptop deals equipped with last year's 10th gen Intel CPUs. If you have no real use for PCIe 4 or Thunderbolt 4 connectivity, then models like the Gigabyte Aorus 15G YC can shave off hundreds of dollars without really impacting gaming performance.

Units of the Lenovo Legion 5 gaming laptop with the AMD Ryzen 7 5800H processor are out there already. They tend to have RTX 3000-series graphics; however, a reliable leaker has turned up a variant with the Radeon RX 6600M card instead. Therefore, these options might turn up on the market soon.

Looks like Nvidia is not going to release any other RTX 3000 versions besides the Ti ones this year. Rumor has it that Team Green should release 7 nm RTX 3000 Super variants for laptops with more CUDA cores but same VRAM configurations in early 2022, while the desktop variants could arrive a few months after.

HiSilicon is a group within Huawei responsible for the development of this OEM's in-house chipsets, the flagship Kirin mobile SoCs included. It has just signed a five-year deal with Shenzhen JT Automation Equipment, characterized as a collaboration on independent semiconductor processing. Therefore, the move could help Huawei circumvent the sanctions that prevent it working with US suppliers to help make its components.

The FICIHP Multifunctional Keyboard is unusual and more unique than many keyboards, in our opinion. Not only does the keyboard come with different key types and RGB lighting, but it also has the 12.6-inch display from an ASUS ZenBook Duo.

Nexperia, a maker of numerous component types (FETS and diodes) included, has reportedly bought Newport Wafer Fab, which pitches its silicon products at a range of industrial clients, for an estimated US$87 million. The rumored talks might result in an increased foothold in the semiconductor industry for Nexperia's China-based owner.

ASUS is planning to release a new ZenBook Pro 15 with an OLED display. The ZenBook Pro 15 will also feature AMD Ryzen 5000H series processors and a current NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series GPU. The machine, which has been spotted in China, Germany and Sweden, should start shipping in August or September.

A tipster has asserted that the next-generation M2 Apple Silicon will make an appearance alongside the 2022 MacBook Air. The same source offered up some details about both the Apple M2 chip and the refreshed MacBook Air laptop. Apparently, the M2 will be based on the same foundation as the A15 that is headed for 2021’s iPhone.

MSI has upgraded the Bravo 15, a popular 15-inch gaming laptop that it released last year. The new Bravo 15 features Ryzen 5000H processors and is bulkier, thanks to a refined cooling solution. Unfortunately, MSI has stuck with last-generation Radeon RX GPUs.

16:10 screens offer more screenspace without significantly increasing the footprints of laptops.

The 16:10 gaming laptop from Asus offers a larger screen size than the 15.6-inch MSI GS66 while being slightly smaller in overall volume. The new model should be a good middle-ground solution for users who want something larger than a Zephyrus M15 but smaller than the ROG Chimera.

Apple and Intel will be among the first to utilize TSMC’s new 3 nm fabrication node, according to Nikkei Asia. The new technology will bring inherent performance improvements over the 5 nn process of 10 to 15 percent and improved efficiency of between 25 to 30 percent.

It's easily one of the cheapest 14-inch laptops you can find with full sRGB coverage and a 3:2 2160 x 1440 resolution display. For each thing it does right, however, there are at least three other aspects that bring it all down.

The budget Dell laptop is now even more affordable with CPU and GPU performance levels that rival most pricier Intel Ultrabooks. The performance-per-dollar here is very high without needing to pay more for discrete Nvidia graphics.

Microsoft has provided more background on the rationale behind its decisions regarding chip support for Windows 11. In an interview with TechRepublic, Microsoft’s Director of OS Security, David Weston, has pointed to compromises between security, performance and battery life as the drivers of the choices it has made.

The MSI Katana GF76 11UE gaming laptop is able to score points on paper with its GeForce RTX 3060 laptop GPU and Intel Core i7-11800H CPU. However, our review revealed a few weaknesses...

The recent Nuvia acquisition is enabling Qualcomm to produce its own chip designs without the need to license IPs directly from ARM. Just like Apple with its M chips, Qualcomm is looking to launch energy-efficient laptop processors and eventually dominate the entire laptop market. At the same time, problems like suboptimal brand awareness and losing Apple as a 5G modem customer need to be addressed.