Laptop

CheckMag The Schenker Vision 14 is a very good laptop that fully deserves more spotlight. With no PWM, no coil whine and no significant throttling to speak of, the product is in several ways ahead of many Dells and HPs tested by us this year.

The first sightings of the Samsung Galaxy Book4 series have emerged online. Leaking roughly three months before their release, the Galaxy Book4 series appears to contain five devices, all with improved wireless connectivity.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III will be out for all buyers in early November 2023. NVIDIA has announced that it will be a DLSS 3 title from that first boot for performance enhanced by up to 1.8x on RTX 4000-series cards. The game will also be compatible with NVIDIA Reflex for potential reductions in system latency.

Released in mid-May 2023 and fully compatible with the Sony PlayStation 5 console, the 2 TB Samsung 990 PRO Heatsink edition PCIe 4.0 SSD is roughly 50% faster than the 980 PRO while being 50% more efficient. Although not highlighted as such, its current price of US$138.99 is the lowest recorded on Amazon so far.

After the Helios 16 scored a strong overall rating of 90%, Acer is attempting to raise the bar even higher. The Predator Helios 18 shines with a strong HX CPU, RTX 4080 and a great MiniLED display. However, the stronger graphics card reveals more weaknesses than the Helios 16 with its RTX 4060.

CheckMag In our review, we called the Lenovo Legion 9i Gen 8 16IRX8 the best Legion that money can buy, and that's not just because of its US$4,399 price and built-in water cooling. The Legion 9i Gen 8 earns its praise with an astonishingly-bright mini-LED display with DCI-P3 support, and, of course, killer gaming performance.

The ASUS ROG Flow X13 with a Ryzen 9 7940HS Zen 4 CPU, 16 GB of LPDRR5 memory, and 512 GB of Gen 4 storage is currently on sale for a considerable 28% discount at Best Buy. The machine comes with a 13.4-inch FHD+ touch display with a 360-degree hinge. Additionally, the panel comes with a 120 Hz refresh rate, 500 nits of advertised brightness, 100% coverage of the sRGB gamut, and AdaptiveSync.

It seems that several gaming laptop manufacturers are working towards introducing Intel Raptor Lake Refresh-based gaming laptops. Arriving as the Core i5-14650HX, Core i7-14700HX and Core i9-14900HX, the trio will end up in the likes of the ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 16 and multiple Lenovo Legion models.

X (formerly known as Twitter) has outlined plans for new alternatives to its paid Premium version. The new Basic subscription tier is intended to become the only way to access features such as post editing or removal from the social media app, whereas Premium Plus (or Premium+) would be the only way to view certain sections of its UI without ads.

Optimized for intense gaming sessions, the WD Black SN850 is a PCIe Gen4 M.2 SSD coming with a 5-year limited warranty. This SSD is fully compatible with PlayStation 5 consoles. The 2 TB version is now down to its lowest price in 30 days on Amazon, going for US$199.99 instead of US$259, but Western Digital offers it for just US$149.99.

Compatible with PCs and Macs, as well as PlayStation and Xbox consoles, the WD Black P10 Game Drive USB 3.2 external hard drive uses a portable form factor and features a resilient design. The 5 TB model is now down to an all-time low of US$87.11 on Amazon, and certainly a better deal when compared to its 2 TB and 4 TB siblings.

Yesterday, Nvidia released this month's third driver package. Labeled 545.92, it comes with GeForce Experience optimal settings presets for Alan Wake 2 (which also gets DLSS 3.5 support), Assasin's Creed Mirage, and Lords of the Fallen, as well as DLSS 3 enhancements for Ghostrunner 2.

The Intel core i7-14700HX laptop CPU has been spotted online. It will join the Core i5-14650HX and Core i9-14900HX as 14th-gen offerings for laptops.

Huawei is now selling an updated version of the MateBook D 14 SE. This year, the company has not only upgraded the laptop to the Intel Raptor Lake architecture, but it has also included a more modern 16:10 display and twice the amount of RAM found in its predecessor.

The 2023 Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 has recorded a massive 30% discount at Best Buy, sliding down to its lowest price to date as a result. Combined with the Core i7-13700HX, RTX 4060, and a 16-inch 165 Hz display on offer, the price cut has made the laptop a solid mid-range option.

Up until now, only Lenovo, Microsoft Surface and HP tried their hands at Windows on Arm laptops powered by Snapdragon processors. With the impressive performance claims of the upcoming Snapdragon X Elite, however, 6 more laptop OEMs are now more inclined to join the Windows on Arm side.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 with an Intel Core i7-1365U processor, 32 GB of RAM, and a 14-inch IPS display has been discounted by a considerable 29% at Lenovo’s store. The laptop represents the best that Lenovo has to offer in the business segment with less than 1.2 Kg of weight, a solid chassis, and impressive runtimes.

Eurocom has launched a highly customizable and user-upgradeable laptop, the Eurocom Nightsky RX415. It can be configured with an Intel Core i9-13900HX and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070. The base model, on the other hand, offers an Intel Core i9-13900HK and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060. Its starting price is US$1999.

Also included are 16 GB DDR5-4800 RAM, 1 TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD storage, a 16-inch IPS screen with 2560x1600 resolution and 240 Hz refresh rate, plus a Thunderbolt 4 connector.

The 14-inch OLED screen features 2.8K resolution, 100% DCI-P3 and 90 Hz refresh rate. Highlights also include 2x Thunderbolt 4 connectors plus a microSD card reader and the configuration also comes with 16 GB LPDDR5-6400 RAM as well as a 1 TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD.

According to Schenker, the XMG Pro 16 Studio is a "professional workstation for content creation". The specs fit: Core i9, an RTX 4070, Thunderbolt 4 and a 16:10 display (QHD+, 240 Hz). A vapor chamber supposedly ensures optimum heat dissipation and quiet cooling.

The ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED ultrabook has dropped down to only US$700 following a steep 30% price cut at Best Buy. With an average consumer rating of 4.6/5 after 377 reviews, the ASUS Zenbook 14X is highly rated, and for good reason. The laptop not only packs a powerful CPU in the Core i7-13700H but also brings a beautiful OLED panel and extended battery life.

Lenovo's new ThinkPad P1 G6 is a very good mobile workstation with efficient GPUs as well as a bright IPS display. It also replaces the former multimedia flagship ThinkPad X1 Extreme, which is a questionable marketing decision.

The Lenovo Legion Slim 5 with a 14.5-inch OLED panel, an RTX 4060, and a Ryzen 7 7840HS is currently on sale for more than US$300 off with free shipping. With the discount in place, the Legion Slim 5 becomes a pretty sweet deal, as it not only packs decent mid-range performance but it is also portable and features a 120 Hz OLED panel.

A Bilibili leaker says AMD plans to launch two new Dragon Range processors, the Ryzen 9 7940HX and Ryzen 9 7840HX. Both will keep the 16-core and 12-core configurations of their 7045HX counterparts but operate at lower clocks.

Dell's Latitude 7340 not only scores with its reduced dimensions and a weight of just over 2.4 lbs during testing, but can stand up to its slightly larger 14-inch sibling, the Latitude 7440, in terms of performance and endurance.

Released two years ago, the Asus ROG Gladius III wired gaming mouse, which also has a slightly different wireless version, is now down by 44% on Amazon. Thanks to this generous discount, it can be acquired for US$49.99 instead of the US$89.99 list price. Due to special tuning, its 19,000 dpi sensor goes up to 26,000 dpi.

PCIe 4.0 is finally coming to microSD Express cards, doubling the maximum speed to 1,969 MB/s. The latest SD 9.1 specs are also defining four SD Express classes with minimum read/write speeds between 150 and 600 MB/s, as well as offering improved power and heat management for all types of cards.

The Gen 8 Lenovo Legion Pro 5 gaming laptop with a 16-inch 1600p display, an 8-core Ryzen 7 7745HX CPU, and an RTX 4070 mobile GPU is enjoying an enormous 36% discount at Lenovo’s online store. With strong gaming performance, a fast 240 Hz panel, and solid construction, the Legion Pro 5 is among the cream of the crop of mid-range gaming machines.

This discounted configuration comes with the newly-introduced IMAX Enhanced HDR feature for OLED screens. It also integrates 16 GB LPDDR5x-6400 RAM, a 512 GB PCIe 4.0 SSD, plus a 5 MP webcam with wide angle lens and IR sensor.

Schenker's new Vision 14 offers a lot of the usual, but longer battery life is now possible thanks to optimizations. However, there are also drawbacks such as the lower maximum performance of the new Raptor-Lake processor and the slower card reader.

This model is only available in Japan for now and its lightness comes with a performance cost, as it supports up to a Ryzen 7 7730U processor coupled with up to 16 GB DDR4-4266 and 512 GB SSD storage. Nevertheless, the included 83 Wh battery can last up to 24 hours.

A replacement unit confirms that our original one was an outlier with graphics performance issues. Jumping from 60 W to 90 W with the mobile RTX 4060 will increase frame rates by as much as 15 to 30 percent.

The latest version of RTX VSR, NVIDIA's AI-powered pixel processing tool rated to crush artifacts in streamed content, has been released to Turing-based cards (the RTX 20-series included) as part of the OEM's latest crop of software upgrades. It also unleashes TensorRT-LLM for RTX, rated to boost performance on Windows-based large language models (LLMs) by up to 400%.

Team Blue CEO Pat Gelsinger is planning to steal the performance and efficiency crown from TSMC by 2025, but the Taiwanese foundries' CEO is not impressed with such undertakings. Only geopolitical factors like a war in Taiwan could turn the tables.

The NUC X15 LAPAC71H boasts a moderate price, however, it only features tech from 2022 (Alder Lake). Adding to this is a Thunderbolt 4 port, space for two SSDs and a FHD screen.