Laptop

The 2023 ASUS Vivobook Pro 16X can be had for a respectable 11% off the retail price. In addition to the Core i9-13980HX CPU and RTX 4060 GPU, the notebook rocks excellent inputs with a nifty ASUS Dial integrated into the touchpad and a healthy selection of ports.

The Asus ROG Flow X13 (2023) is a 13.4-inch gaming convertible, a segment that currently has very little competition. Despite the slim chassis, the Flow X13 manages to squeeze in a 65 W AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS and a 60 W Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU. Our comprehensive review looks into this and other aspects of this year's ROG Flow X13 iteration.

The Lenovo ThinkPad P14s is a portable workstation notebook that weighs less than 1.5 kg and packs a powerful Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U CPU, 64 GB of RAM, 1 TB of storage, and a stunning 2.8K OLED display. The laptop is currently enjoying a mouth-watering 55% discount on the list price, making the machine worth a serious consideration.

This year's HP Envy x360 15 is a strong convertible overall with a competitive price-performance ratio. In addition to IMAX Enhanced certification, the convertible's highlights include a true-colour OLED display, an exceptionally high-quality chassis and a wide range of ports.

A new leak says only Intel Core Ultra 5 and Ultra 7 Meteor Lake processors will be launched later this year. Laptops with the top-spec Core Ultra 9 chips are scheduled for a 2024 launch.

Sustainability has been one of the mega-trends of the economy in the last few years. In tech, one way to achieve this goal is by making devices repairable. Lenovo, currently the biggest PC manufacturer, has now predicted that the vast majority of its devices will be repairable by 2025.

The AMD Strix Point APUs are expected to launch sometime in 2024. Just like the Ryzen 7040HS Phoenix APUs, these Ryzen 8000 APUs could also integrate dedicated AI hardware in addition to Zen 5/5c cores and RDNA 3+ iGPU. According to the latest information from All_The_Watts, the Strix Point APUs could be based on TSMC’s N4P process with a die size of 225 mm² and pack a total of 12 cores.

Samsung is a little late to the party when it comes to foldable laptops at this stage. Nevertheless, the South Korean giant is said to join in, albeit possibly not until 2024 at the earliest. That event might see the launch of a markedly thin flexible-display device thanks to hinge technology already at work in the Galaxy Z Fold5 or Flip5 smartphones. Then again, there might be some drawbacks to its use in a full PC.

A fresh leak from WCCFtech posits that the RX Radeon 7900M would be based on a cut-down Navi 31 chip with 72 CUs and 4608 stream processors plus 16 GB VRAM. On paper, this model should be twice as fast as the existing RX 7600M.

The ZBook Firefly workstation also packs 1 TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD storage, a bright 14-inch IPS display with 2560 x 1600 resolution and 120 Hz refresh rate, 2x USB4 connectors, 5 MP webcam and fingerprint sensor, while the Targus DV4K docking station offers additional ports like GbE plus 5 more video outputs.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 (2022) model on sale comes with an AMD Ryzen 7 6800H processor, an Nvidia RTX 3060 Laptop GPU, 16 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB SSD.

The model on sale also features a 500 nit 16-inch IPS panel with 2560 x 1600 resolution and 165 Hz refresh rate, 1x USB4 connector, a microSD card reader, plus a 90 Wh battery.

Google's new Chromebook Plus naming scheme allows manufacturers to demark Chromebooks that have higher-end specs (relative to the ChromeOS world). Chromebook Plus laptops will have to meet specific minimum hardware requirements and will have some AI-enabled features baked into ChromeOS.

The Acer Predator Triton 14 is a 14-inch gaming laptop with a Core i7-13700H CPU and an RTX 4070 laptop GPU that, after a respectable 16% discount, has now dropped back to its lowest price to date at Best Buy. In addition to the processor and GPU listed above, the laptop features a Mini-LED panel that Acer claims can shoot up to 600 nits of brightness.

This budget-friendly configuration of the Legion 5 sports a dedicated RTX 4060 graphics card as well a quick 165Hz QHD display and an AMD Ryzen 7 octa-core CPU. Thanks to a 15 percent discount, the 15-inch Lenovo gaming laptop has now dropped to one of its lowest sale prices thus far.

Lenovo's upcoming handheld PC, the Legion Go, is now available for pre-order starting at US$699.99. The handheld has an AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme CPU, 16 GB of RAM, up to a 1 TB SSD, and a 2560x1600 144 Hz display.

"Affordable" is of course relative. You can already find gaming laptops with an RTX 4060 for less than 1,000 Euros (~$1,060). Our LOQ 16 costs around 1,500 Euros (~$1,591), with the price of the Legion series not far from that. So how important are the differences between the two model series?

The latest Lenovo Yoga 7i has dropped to the lowest price in 120 days at Lenovo’s official online outlet. The 14-inch laptop rocks a 10-core Core i5-1335U CPU, 16 GB of non-expandable LPDDR5 RAM, and 512 GB of storage alongside a healthy port selection, Wi-Fi 6E, and a 71 Wh battery.

This budget-friendly configuration of the Dell G16 7620 might not feature the most potent dedicated graphics card, but thanks to a good-looking QHD display with full sRGB coverage, the 16-inch gaming laptop might be worth a look for gamers who can sacrifice some GPU performance in favor of a decent screen.

Best Buy is selling an Asus Chromebook with a 14-inch FHD screen, 8 GB of RAM, 128 GB of storage, and an AMD Ryzen 3 7320C APU for US$279. This is a savings of $220, or roughly 44% off the Chromebook's retail price.

Zen5 is a considerable microarchitectural leap over Zen4, yet its design is not that different, so IPC gains could reach 15% with the same core counts. Zen6, on the other hand, is bringing architecture and package design changes, possibly launching with stacked CCDs on top of the IOD and up to 16 performance cores per CCD.

The new HP Victus 16 switches things up by using an Intel Raptor Lake-HX chip, the Core i5-13500 HX. It is paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050. While it is technically an entry-level SKU, both components perform well but are held back by the last-gen chassis and cooling systems.

The newly-announced Intel Meteor Lake processors bring a brand new architecture with the promise of impressive efficiency gains, boosted iGPU performance, and power-efficient ML performance. That said, per a new leak from Tom of Moore’s Law Is Dead, the Meteor Lake CPUs might not bring a substantial performance jump as the Core Ultra 7 155H only appears to offer multi-core performance on par with the current gen Raptor Lake mobile chips.

Other specs include 16 GB DDR5-5600 RAM, 1 TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, 16-inch QHD+ IPS display with 165 Hz refresh rate and 100% sRGB color gamut, and an SD card reader.

The Ryzen 7 7840S limited to 30 W TDP is only 5% slower than a Ryzen 9 7940HS that can boost to 54 W. This variant is exclusive to Lenovo, and the Yoga Air 14s ultrabooks with 1 TB storage and 32 GB LPDDR5-6400 RAM are available for ~US$1,140 only in China for now.

Gaming laptops and PCs manufactured by the German company Captiva are slowly making their way onto certain online stores. We have finally tested one - and it impressed us with its graphics performance. Unfortunately, the manufacturer keeps its barebone a secret. Why is this?

Driven by the Intel Core i5-12500H alongside Intel Iris Xe graphics, the Asus ROG Flow Z13 (model GZ301ZA-PS53) with 16 GB memory and 512 GB PCIe SSD storage is now 34% off on Amazon. Thanks to this generous discount, this 13.4-inch gaming hybrid can be acquired for US$859.99 instead of US$1,299.99.

The fastest components are not always the best, as proven by the EliteBook 845 G10. With the smaller Zen4 Ryzen 7 7840U processor, the business notebook is even better because the fan almost always remains inactive in everyday use.

LPDDR modules thus becomes as versatile as regular DDR SO-DIMMs, but also get 50% performance improvements, 70% efficiency gains and 60% mounting area reduction, with commercialization slated for 2024.

The 2023 Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 4, also called the ThinkBook Plus Twist, has now been discounted by an incredible 44%. The laptop features a main OLED display with a secondary color E-ink panel on the back. Powering these panels is a Core i7-1355U processor alongside 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage.

LG has entered the niche market of laptops with foldable displays. Joining the ranks of ASUS, HP and Lenovo, the LG Gram Fold is a 17-inch tablet by default that can be folded to use as a 12.3-inch laptop. Billed as catering to five use cases, the LG Gram Fold has a modern Intel Raptor Lake processor and Thunderbolt 4 connectivity.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon G11 with the Intel Core i7-1365U, 16 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB SSD is 54% off on eBay. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon is a highly portable 14-inch laptop with dependable performance and the typical ThinkPad touches you'd expect.

We have tested the compact Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Gen 4 with an OLED screen. This made us realize again: When using an OLED screen, dark mode is a must.

Lenovo's ThinkPad P15v Gen 3 packs a high-resolution 4K display with up to 600 nits, the powerful AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 6850H and Nvidia T1200 graphics card into an old-school 15-inch package that may be a suitable desktop replacement for some laptop buyers.