Laptop

The Legion 7 16ACHg6 brings all the latest computer games smoothly onto the matte 16-inch screen (2560x1600 pixels, 165 Hz, IPS) in the 16:10 format. Furthermore, its equipment is good: The Ryzen 9 5900HX APU, the GeForce RTX 3080 laptop GPU, 32 GB of RAM, and 2x 1 TB NVMe SSDs.

The Radeon RX 6600M is actually faster than the RTX 3060 in raster-heavy tests, but overall, it is as fast as the Nvidia card in 3DMark. It also falls behind by up to 13% in 1440p games and is significantly slower in ray tracing games. This SKU will no doubt be ignored by crypto miners as it is slower than the previous gen RX 5600M model.

After 6 years in hibernation, the 3.92 lbs Razer Blade 14 is returning with brand new tricks up its sleeves. Unsurprisingly, Razer has already crowned it the fastest 14-inch gaming laptop in the market.

Dell has acted quickly in rectifying the issue of missing CUDA cores on the Alienware m15 R5. The machine should now have all its full complement of CUDA cores on its NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 GPU. But, erroneously, Windows and Microsoft Edge warn that Dell's vBIOS update could be harmful to your computer.

Lenovo US now offers the new Legion 5 with AMD silicon via its webstore. The 165Hz 15-inch PC is available with the Ryzen 7 5800H processor and either RTX 3060 or 3070 graphics. The OEM touts it as "battle ready" for the thin and light gaming laptop arena.

The trend for laptop displays is currently moving towards a longer 16:10 aspect ratio. The result is smaller bezels below and above the screen, more space for documents - and much better usability in tablet mode. This is shown by the Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Yoga Gen 2, for example.

Razer has launched the new Opus X headphones via its own website. These new wireless accessories have emerged as a new mid-range variant of their series, compared to the original Opus cans. They support active noise cancellation (ANC) and a low-latency connection, yet lack the THX certification of their predecessors, not to mention a 3.5mm port for a wired mode.

The manufacturer is likely clearing room for the eventual ThinkBook 15 G3 model with AMD Ryzen 5000U series options later this year. If you want a prosumer laptop for a budget price, then this deal will check a lot of boxes.

Realme has set the international launch of its flagship smartphone, the GT, for June 15, 2021. Now, its latest teasers hint that it has an additional new product by the same name to debut alongside it. This prospect is presented alongside images that might show the profiles of not only its rumored first laptop, but a tablet as well.

Games could see up to 28% fps improvements with faster RAM kits, but the average is around 10% at 1080p max settings or 15% for 1080p low settings. The absence of a MUX switch raises the performance gap to 33% in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, so we might want to wait for the more expensive versions that allow us to disable the iGPU.

Tom from Moore's Law Is Dead reveals the hybrid core configurations for the upcoming Alder Lake S1, S2, P1, P2, M and N lineups and also shares a few more details about the 2022 Raptor Lake generation, plus other successive generations. No pricing info, though.

Opinion The Alienware m15 R4 we just reviewed offers gamers a strong performance, an RTX 3080, and a mechanical keyboard. But its battery life is downright abysmal. Is this an acceptable inconvenience for gaming laptops? Do gaming laptops even need good battery life? Yes!

Realme is all set to enter the highly competitive laptop market. Some renders of the Realme Book has shown up online, and it draws heavy inspiration from MacBooks. While its launch date is unknown, we can expect Realme to sell it for an affordable price.

Dell may be up to its CUDA core cannibalizing shenanigans again. A cursory glance at the Dell G15 listing tells us that its CUDA core count is set at 3,584 instead of 3,840. One could have dismissed it as an error had it not been for Dell's recent Alienware m15 R5 debacle. Update: The GeForce 3060 on the Dell G15 has the correct number of CUDA cores

Acer has announced that its latest round of consolidated revenue (for May 2021) was its best for 7 seven years. These earnings, which totaled about US$895 million, grew by nearly 23% year-on-year (YoY). The OEM's gaming arm grew by 15.3% YoY, whereas its Chromebooks brought in 30.1% more revenue compared to May 2020.

The 7th gen V-NAND memory chips with 176 layers from Samsung are offering the smallest cell size in the industry right now, with 16% increased energy efficiency over previous gen and 2 Gbps I/O speeds that are designed to take advantage of the PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0 standards. 990-series NVMe SSDs are expected to be released towards the end of the year.

Realme CEO Madhav Sheth's latest tweet hints strongly at the imminent launch of this company's inaugural laptop. Judging from a possible product teaser included with this post, the machine is intended to be a MacBook clone, along the same lines as the Xiaomi Mi Notebook line. Realme's new take on this category is slated to launch by the end of June 2021.

The Schenker Vision 14 is a new entrant into the ~14-inch, 16:10 display thin-and-light laptop market. This fresh option has magnesium alloy in its construction, as well as Tiger Lake CPUs and 3K/90Hz panels in some configurations. It can support up to 64GB of RAM, Thunderbolt 4, and has 2 slots for M.2 2280 SSDs.

The Intel Core i7-1195G7 has been spotted on Geekbench recording incredible results for a laptop chip. The Tiger Lake-U part nipped at 5 GHz during testing and pulled out a single-core performance score that would leave it in the realm of Rocket Lake and Ryzen 5000 desktop processors in the chart if it was an average result.

The AMD Ryzen 5 processor rivals many flagship Intel-powered Ultrabooks retailing for twice the price. When compared to other sub $500 laptops, this Lenovo is easily one of the fastest.

The current silicon crisis is often perceived as bad news for CPU and GPU supplies worldwide. However, a new report highlights the point that its ramifications might be more widespread than that. It indicates that disrupted sales of a controller chip necessary for working USB 4/Thunderbolt 4 might lead to a lack of PCs with 11th-gen Intel processors next, or to OEMs resorting to releasing the same machines without this spec.

Dell has confirmed that it intentionally disabled CUDA cores on the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 in the Alienware m15 R5. The company has pledged to return all missing CUDA cores to the gaming laptop by the middle of this month, which should give it a noticeable performance boost compared to what it currently offers.
Update: Dell has enabled all the RTX 3070's CUDA cores with a vBIOS update.

The revamped W-series now includes the WS76/66 and WE76 high-end models with up to an i9-11980HK CPU, up to 64 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM and a choice between the RTX A5000 or A3000 professional GPUs plus screens up to 4K. These models also include PCIe 4.0 support and a Thunderbolt 4 connector, while the WF76/66 models do not, and also support only up to an i7-11800H CPU with RTX A2000 or T1200 and 1080p screens.

Lenovo will be offering new Legion 5 models with Ryzen 5 5600H and Radeon RX 6600M in Germany at prices starting from €1,299. However, this pricing is significantly higher than a Ryzen 7 5800H and RTX 3060 Laptop GPU configuration at €1,249 indicating that Legion 5 models with NVIDIA GPUs could offer a better price-to-performance ratio.

The featherweight LG Gram 16 scores points with a Tiger Lake processor, Thunderbolt 4/USB 4, room for two NVMe SSDs, and a 16-inch display in the 16:10 format. This is complemented by excellent battery life.

Microsoft has patented a new and particularly futuristic take on its logo: one that integrates camera sensors. This concept, which might come as part of the OEM's hardware one day, uses emerging under-display technology to put a tiny lens behind each square of the iconic Windows-evoking symbol. The new leak hints that it might appear on either the front or rear of next-gen devices.

AMD's Zen 4-based future processors are currently thought to have the code-name Raphael. It is also rumored to move on to a new LGA-based socket called AM5. Now, a new leak purports to show what one of them will look like from the other side, strange indented integrated heat spreader and all.

Popular YouTube tech commenter Dave2D has offered up some astounding estimates for the potential of the Apple M1X processor that could turn up inside the upcoming MacBook Pro 14 and MacBook Pro 16. It is suggested that an M1X Apple Silicon with a 32-core GPU could keep up with a GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU while consuming less than half the power.

The slower RAM gimps the gaming performance by up to 20% on the Asus model, while the missing MUX switch is further limiting the potential that should match models equipped with RTX 3080 mobile dGPUs. Similar RAM problems can also be encountered on the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro. However, the Lenovo Legion 7 AMD features faster RAM, so this is not really just another conspiracy against AMD.

Some of the reorganized specs include a Domains layer of partitioning for massive NVMe over Fabrics appliances, new system for handling multiple command sets, additional groundwork for the upcoming Computational storage command set, Protection Information support for 32-bit and 64-bit CRCs, new security feature called Command Group Control and explicit support for hard drives.

Several Alienware m15 R5 laptops are apparently reporting just 4,608 CUDA cores for the RTX 3070 Laptop GPU instead of 5,120. Apart from the CUDA cores, even the clocks, TMUs, and pixel fillrates are being reported to be lower than normal leading to performance loss. Currently, a possible workaround is to flash the VBIOS from an m15 R4 that seems to restore the correct values and performance.

Though this price range is typical for a GeForce RTX 3060 laptop, the CPU and display offered here are definitely faster and better than pretty much any other 15.6-inch gaming laptop retailing for around $1000 USD.

This move might not surprise too many, but it does show that Nvidia can still be caught off guard by AMD, even when Team Red announced the arrival of the mobile RDNA 2 dGPUs half a year ago. On top of this, AMD might not even come up with a decent supply of RX 6000M dGPUs due to the ongoing chip shortages.

Samsung has officially launched the previously leaked Galaxy Book Go. The new laptop is in many ways the successor to the Galaxy Book S launched last year and is similarly powered by Arm-based processors from Qualcomm.

The second generation of the ThinkPad P14s is equipped with Tiger Lake CPUs and an Nvidia Quadro T500. In this case, the latter is also what will persuade users to opt for the new model.

Leaked ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 specifications indicate quite a massive internal upgrade for Lenovo's multimedia flagship laptop. The specs indicate Intel Tiger Lake-H CPU and, for the first time, NVIDIA Ampere RTX 30 Super Laptop GPU options. The ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 is also slated to offer a slimmer chassis, 16:10 2.5K and 4K display options, 90 Whr battery, FHD webcam, backlit keyboard with 1.5 mm key travel, and more.

OLED is often seen as superior to IPS and for good reason—its colors and especially black levels remain unmatched against even the best IPS options available. Nonetheless, it falls short in a few areas worth mentioning.

The powerful hardware of the Schenker XMG Core 17 brings all the current computer games smoothly to the responsive display (WQHD, IPS, 165 Hz, 17.3 inch). The preinstalled Control Center allows you to adjust the performance development of the CPU and GPU.

Apple's Podcasts app will soon spawn a new wave of titles, to be published by new partner brands such as the Washington Post and Sony Music and also by independent creators. These new streams will require monthly or yearly fees, for which bonus or early-access content, as well as an ad-free experience, are thrown in. The new subscriptions are to be available in 170 countries from May 2021.

A fresh report points to Apple introducing OLED displays in its iPad line from 2022. However, another analyst points to 2023 as the time frame for Apple to bring the display tech to its iPads.

"Ultrathin gaming" probably isn't the first thing that comes to mind when you think "Alienware". Dell is looking to change all that this year by launching the thinnest gaming laptop the company has ever made.