Laptop

An industry blog asserts that display panels capable of ultra-high 480Hz refresh rates are now in the works. They will allegedly come courtesy of AU Optronics (or AUO) and LG Display, and may go into production at these companies by 2022. Therefore, monitors that can blow the fastest 1080p models of today out of the water might be on the way.

The 15.6-inch budget gaming laptop doesn't have the greatest specs or hardware, but it's good enough for users satisfied with 1080p gaming at 30 to 60 FPS. We recommend upgrading the 8 GB of RAM as soon as possible.

Lenovo debuted world-first 16-inch WQXGA (or QHD) laptop displays in its latest Legion 7 gaming machine. Its Ryzen 7 5800H-equipped SKUs are now available on the US market, starting at US$1,800. Its Intel counterpart (the Legion 7i Gen 6) has also now been released to the same OEM website.

The slimmer adapter is over 250 g lighter without impacting the overall performance of the laptop. Users can also now recharge the laptop via USB-C whereas that was not possible on the older G532 series.

Epic Games has announced that its store's Summer Sale 2021 event is now on. It contains deals such as 33% off Assassin’s Creed Valhalla or 20% off Days Gone. The platform has also released its usual choice of free games for the week, which currently include Defense Grid: The Awakening and Verdun.

The United States' Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced a crackdown on practices that make it harder for citizens or even organizations to fix electronics themselves or seek alternatives to first-party services. The Commission asserts that these new measures will benefit businesses and consumers alike.

The new Loongson 3A5000 processor is 50% faster than its predecessor and 30% more efficient, which puts it on the same level with AMD's first gen Ryzen processors. It packs 4 cores with no hyperthreading clocked at 2.3 - 2.5 GHz and supports DDR4-3200 RAM.

Tired of having manufacturers decide for you what ports you want or don't want? The Framework Laptop lets you choose exactly what you want and how many you want at up to four individual ports.

The Predator offers a Core i7-10750H processor, a GeForce RTX 3070 laptop GPU, 16 GB of RAM (dual-channel mode), and space for three drives (2x NVMe SSD, 1x 2.5-inch). In addition, there's a responsive Full HD display (IPS, 240 Hz) and quite good battery life.

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, known for numerous Apple predictions over the years, wrote in a recent letter to investors that Apple will introduce a new MacBook Air with a 13.3-inch Mini-LED display sometime in mid-2022. These rumors jive with other speculation that the Apple laptop will receive a significant design overhaul and the latest Apple silicon.

The MacBook Pro 16 will allegedly come with exclusive GPU and RAM spec options for those Apple laptop users who want more power and more cores from their MacBook Pro of choice. The source of this information has also doubled down on a claim that the 2021 MacBook Pro devices will feature a redesigned cooling solution.

The manufacturer is currently offering $50 off for pre-orders until August 20. Additionally, an XPG headset, backpack, and mousepad will all be bundled with every pre-order to sweeten the deal even further.

Sometimes it pays to be patient with new technology. The latest XPS 17 9710 is the faster and more refined version of the last generation XPS 17 9700 with none of the battery draining irregularities.

Lenovo equips the new ThinkPad E14 G3 with AMD's powerful Ryzen 5000 CPUs and brighter IPS panels. The excellent keyboard did not change and the AMD model also manages long battery runtimes thanks to improved efficiency as well as a larger battery.

With the TUF Gaming A15, Asus offers a powerful and comparatively inexpensive gaming laptop with the AMD Ryzen 7 5800H. It offers decent gaming performance and a fast display.

In the Zephyrus S17, the hinges simultaneously push the keyboard unit upwards and lift it when the laptop is opened. This allows the case to open a gap in this area, which is supposed to draw in more fresh air. Is this useful and what are the drawbacks?

TSMC had projected that its sales would grow by about 20% year-on-year (YoY) in 2021, despite the ongoing chip-supply crisis. With its latest revenue and profit reports, the company still believes it will comfortably hit that target by the end of the year. It also now forecasts that the crisis will start to abate in 2022.

The new Dell Inspiron 13 5301 in the 0D0XN configuration scores points with a stylish appearance, a Tiger Lake CPU, and a fair price. However, we found a few points of criticism in our test.

MSI's latest line of 15- and 17-inch professional-grade PCs have up to 4K displays, 11th-gen core i9 processors and RTX A5000 graphics. Some variants even have the largest-capacity batteries available to laptops. They now also have sales listings that start at US$1,500.

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.