Laptop

With the advent of Apple silicon for Macs most people had given up on the idea of Apple supporting Windows installations on its computers. The door to the prospect, somewhat surprisingly, has been opened by Apple’s software chief Craig Federighi in recent interview with Ars Technica.

The $300 range is home to some awful laptops sporting with Celeron, Atom, or 768p displays. The Lenovo IdeaPad 3 15 is easily one of the better options in this price range based solely on its decent specifications.

Lenovo's first X1 ThinkPad with Intel Tiger Lake is slated for a release around December to January. We have asked Lenovo some open questions about the specifications of the lightest ThinkPad yet - and we have gotten two interesting answers.

1440p could soon become the standard resolution for gaming laptops and Eluktronics is already offering a few models integrating the new 1440p@165 Hz panels from BOE. These are only $50 more expensive to produce than the usual 1080p displays and offer 78% more screen real estate with low latency and good color gamut. As downsides, most notable are the requirement for powerful mobile GPUs like the Nvidia RTX 2070 and the sub-par scaling for lower resolutions.

HP's latest mid-range convertible laptop comes with one of the fastest U-series CPUs available for a fair price without needing to cut RAM or storage in the process.

Business laptops are known for their good keyboards, numerous connections, and high reliability - but unfortunately, also for their often below-average LCDs, a stereotype that HP regrettably reinforces with the AMD Ryzen 4000 EliteBook 835 G7.

We're getting mixed results from the initial batch of laptops sporting Intel's newest 11th gen Tiger Lake processors. Both CPU and GPU performance are ranging from disappointing to impressive depending on the laptop in question.

Dell, Lenovo, and even Razer are now offering 16:10 business laptops. Will HP follow suit? We think there's a good chance of seeing more high-end laptops from HP sporting aspect ratios other than 16:9 like 16:10 or 3:2.

The AMD models of Lenovo's current ThinkPad lineup are often the better choice, because in addition to a significant performance advantage they are usually less expensive. This is also true for the ThinkPad T14, one of the best 14-inch business laptops you can get.

Intel has unveiled a new laptop in two colours that packs a 28 W Tiger Lake chipset. The machine, called the NUC M15, also has an aluminium chassis that is just 15 mm thick. Intel claims that the NUC M15 will last up to 16 hours between charges, too. The Intel NUC M15 should arrive as at least Eluktronics, Schenker, Maingear and XPG-branded machines.

The RX 6800 GPU particularly efficient when it comes to undervolting, as its TGP can be reduced by 45 W down to 183 W. These figures are already laptop-friendly if we look at Nvidia's RTX 2080 Super mobility GPUs, so we can expect to see an RX 6800M GPU with 150-180W TGPs that matches the performance of a desktop-grade RTX 2080 Ti soon.

AMD's Ryzen 5 5500U has appeared on Geekbench, confirming several aspects of the upcoming mid-range APU. The Ryzen 5 5500U is effectively a Ryzen 5 4500U with SMT enabled, or a rebranded Ryzen 5 4600U. The Ryzen 5 5500U has six cores, 8 MB of L3 cache and 3 MB of L2 cache.

The Neo 17 brings all the current computer games smoothly to the responsive 17.3-inch screen (FHD, IPS, 240 Hz). The level of the hardware is right: a mechanical keyboard, 32 GB of working memory (dual-channel mode), an NVMe SSD (1 TB), and a Thunderbolt 3 connection are included.

It has been almost a year since Google unveiled the Pixelbook Go, and the Google Play Console suggests that a successor may be on the cards. The machine is powered by an AMD Ryzen 3 3250C, 4 GB of RAM and would appear to be the long-awaited Google Zork.

The Intel Core i7-11370H has made an appearance on Geekbench, confirming that Intel has quad-core SKUs planned for its Tiger Lake-H series. The Core i7-11370H can boost up to 4.79 GHz and enjoys a healthy lead over the Core i5-10300H. Single-core performance is also well up on Comet Lake-H processors, but comparisons with AMD APUs are not as rosy.

Intel has reportedly sold its Enpirion arm to MediaTek. This division is responsible for the chipsets that regulate the power delivered to CPUs or ICs. Therefore, the Taiwanese silicon firm may be looking to combine some or all of these in new future products.

Apple's latest operating system, macOS Big Sur, uses a new API to constantly send users' data (including how, when, and where a Mac is used) to Apple. This data is transmitted to Apple without encryption, meaning anyone with access to the same network as the Mac can see the information.

Looks like ditching Intel for in-hose ARM-based chips was quite the power play from Apple. The new M1 processors appear to trade blows with AMD's / Intel's 15 W processors. According to the latest Cinebench R23 tests, the M1 can be slightly faster than the AMD Renoir-U APUs in single-core tests, and they can also beat the Intel Tiger Lake-U processors in multi-core tests by a decent margin.

One of Dell's fastest gaming laptops is down to a respectable price point without needing to cut back on storage, display or graphics.

The first Intel Tiger Lake-H processor has been spotted online. Seen on UserBenchmark, the processor has eight cores and is expected to feature a 96 EU Iris Xe GPU. The CPU may offer up to a 65 W TDP, too.

Canalys is reporting a second quarter of growth in the international personal computing category during the third quarter of 2020. This growth was likely driven by an increase in people working or schooling from home with overall growth up 23% compared to the same period last year.

Microsoft has issued a document outlining the dates on which its own-brand convertibles or laptops run out of software updates. It shows that the Surface Pro 3, despite launching in 2014, will get them until November 2021. Oddly, the Pro 4 will also see the end of its service on the same day.

The processors that power our phones have become so powerful that they are now designed with the kind of cooling historically only expected from high-end PCs. This involves heatsinks, thermal paste and even vapor-chambers on a mobile scale these days - to such an extent there are now signs that insulation might also start to play a role in next-gen phones.

Apple fans are rightly excited about the transition to Apple’s new in-house silicon for Macs. However, in transitioning from Intel to chips like its new M1, the popular Windows on Boot Camp feature has been lost. Parallels, however, says it’s on track to bring support for OS virtualization back to the Mac in a future release.

The Lenovo ThinkPad L15 is an affordable office laptop based on AMD's new Renoir architecture that impresses with its good workmanship and keyboard in particular.

Another example of the AMD Ryzen 7 5700U mobile APU has been spotted, this time being tested in an HP Pavilion laptop on Geekbench. The Lucienne Zen 2-based part showed good improvements over the Renoir Ryzen 7 4700U and includes SMT. However, the difference fades considerably when the Ryzen 7 5700U is compared with the Ryzen 7 4800U.

TSMC's 5 nm production is mostly focused on Apple's A14 Bionic SoCs and apparently cannot meet the projected order volume for the M1 chips. Since Samsung is the only other foundry to have operational 5 nm nodes, the South Korean foundries could once again become an Apple supplier. Nevertheless, the low yields on Samsung's 5 nm nodes might lead to sub-par performance on some M1 chips.

Apple's new M1 SoC combines different components such as an 8-core CPU, an 8-core GPU, a 16-core NPU, and memory and storage controllers onto a single chip fabbed on the 5 nm process. Leaked Geekbench scores of the M1 SoC in the newly announced 13-inch MacBook Pro and Mac Mini indicate that Apple's tall claims about the M1 may be true to a large extent.

A new listing on Geekbench 5 for the M1 MacBook Air posts impressive numbers. The machine handily beat the Core i9-9880H 16-inch MacBook Pro in both single- and multi-core tests by a wide margin. More impressively, the M1 MacBook Air uses a 10 Watt CPU that is passively cooled and still beat the most powerful laptop in Apple's repertoire.

System76 recently updated its popular Galago Pro and Lemur Pro thin-and-light laptops with Intel Tiger Lake CPUs. However, the upgrade comes at a slightly higher cost. Still, System76 continues to sell compelling Linux laptops by integrating the latest hardware.

Without any formal announcement, Lenovo releases two new ThinkPad laptops onto the market: The ThinkPad L13 Gen 2 and the convertible brother ThinkPad L13 Yoga Gen 2 are the first business models with Intel Tiger Lake. At the same time, they also are the first L series ThinkPad with Thunderbolt 4.

The Dell Latitude 7410 Chromebook Enterprise 2-in-1 is one of, if not the, best Chromebooks we have ever tested. However, for ~$1580 and up, it is far too expensive for a Chromebook.

At just 989 grams, the Tiger Lake-powered Dynabook X30W-J is over 300 grams lighter than the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 or 200 grams lighter than the LG Gram 14 convertible.

Don't want to wait a few more months for the Zen 3 mobile APUs? How about some custom laptops with desktop-grade Ryzen 5000 CPUs like the NS-15 AMD workstations from Origin PC? They sure are pricier, but you are essentially replacing your desktop PC. You can choose among all four new Ryzen 5000 CPUs, including the Ryzen 9 5950X flagship.

A well-known Weibo leaker now claims that OPPO - an OEM mostly known for its smartphones and wearables - is planning to also move into the tablet space. Similarly, it is also now said to start making its own laptops, much as Xiaomi and Huawei do now. Examples of these new product categories for the company might emerge as soon as 2021.

With a suggested price of just 30 Euros, the new Sharkoon RUSH ER30 USB gaming headset comes with a rich and attractive set of features and technical specs that includes RGB illumination, 50 mm drivers, a generous cable with gold-plated connectors that measures no less than 2,2 meters, as well as two sets of ear pads.

Recently, reports of a fire breaking out at MSI's plant in Bao'an, Shenzhen arose on social media and on news sites. Now, the OEM has officially stated that these reports were true, although the incident in question was immediately met with appropriate action. No harm to workers at the factory was reported.

The sale is expected to last for only a week. Unlike most other cheap configurations, this particular offer doesn't skimp on RAM, storage, or display quality even though it comes with the fast GeForce RTX 2070 GPU.