The Best Multimedia Notebooks

Dell’s XPS 15 9500 (see review here) managed to score first place in our top 10 list. Its verh good overall rating is a result of Intel’s Core i9-9980HK paired with a GeForce GTX 1650 Ti. Its well-made high-quality 4K panel offers a high brightness and a 16:10 contrast ratio. Furthermore, the device features very good speakers, a fast SD card reader, and a very large click pad. On the other hand connectivity is a mixed bag as the laptop lacks any form of USB-A connectivity in favor of USB-C. Thus, if you want to continue using your legacy peripherals you might have to start living the dongle life.

The greatest benefit of Dell’s XPS 9500 and most certainly essential in deciding whether or not one should get the 2020 model is the 16:10 display.

If you intend to use the device for gaming, you should keep in mind that the panel’s response times were only average. Additional issues might be caused by its high DPC latencies, although those might get addressed over time through driver updates.

Apple’s fastest MacBook Pro 2019 (see review here) features an Intel Core i9-9980HK, 32 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB SSD. It is paired with an AMD Radeon Pro Vega 20 with 4 GB of HBM2 VRAM. All this is packed into Apple’s well-known 15-inch case.

Dell’s XPS 17 9700 (see review here) features Intel’s Comet Lake CPUs paired with a GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q. Furthermore, the 17-inch laptop comes with a 16:10 display, which should be beneficial to many users. Despite a complex vapor-chamber cooler the 8-core CPU got hot under load. The 130 W power supply is connected via USB-C, and the battery discharged slowly under extreme loads even with the power supply connected.

The XPS 17 9700 is a very powerful 17-inch multimedia notebook without any real competitors. However, some aspects could have been improved.

We definitely liked the high-quality IPS display with its high AdobeRGB color space coverage as well as the easily and readily accessible SO-DIMM and M.2-2280 slots. All things considered the XPS 17 9700 is a powerhouse with a display large enough to make for a decent desktop replacement.

Dell’s 2019 XPS [see review here] is a well-made improvement over last year’s XPS notebook. In addition to a CPU upgrade Dell also upgraded the graphics card to a new Nvidia Turing GPU. In addition, this year’s XPS is also going to be available with an OLED display. We already had this device in review and the poor response time are no more.

Acer’s brand-new ConceptD series is aimed primarily at power users such as designers, video, music, and photo editors. The Acer ConceptD 7 CN715 (see review here) managed a score of 86 % and thus earned its place in our top 10. At around $2,000 you get a good-looking modern device with hardware powerful enough for a gaming laptop.

The ConceptD is a sleek and well-designed notebook. It is very efficient and remained fairly cool during our tests, and it offers a decent 4K display to boot. Unfortunately, it suffered from thermal throttling and was outperformed by its competitors.

If all you are looking for when purchasing a device are specs you should definitely keep in mind that similarly equipped laptops perform better. The ConceptD’s CPU throttled under load, and performance dropped even further on battery. On the plus side it features a great 4K display with high color space coverage levels. The display is certainly the device’s major selling point.

The ThinkPad X1 Extreme (see review here) is a well-equipped notebook suitable for various use cases. However, it is not quite up to the task of competing at eye level with its own predecessor.

Dell’s XPS 15 9500 (see review here) starts at just over $1,300, equipped with a Core i5, 8 GB of RAM, and Intel’s integrated UHD Graphics 630. Regardless, the XPS 15 9500 managed to make our top 10 list.

Lenovo’s Yoga C940 (see review here) is a direct competitor for Dell and HP. Thanks to its dedicated GeForce GTX 1650 Max-Q CPU and its 6-core/12-thread Intel Core i7-9750H the multimedia notebook can easily moonshine as a budget gaming notebook. Despite its convertible display we sould consider it a multimedia notebook instead due to its high weight of 2 kg (4.4 lbs).

Lenovo’s Yoga C940 offers decent performance. However, it is too heavy for a convertible.

We noticed almost no thermal throttling of CPU and GPU under load. Downsides are the soldered RAM and the single M.2 slot. In addition, the included SSD did not perform very well in our benchmarks.

The powerful Acer ConceptD 5 (see review here) is aimed at power users such as designers, video, music, and photo editors. In our review, the 17-inch notebook scored a decent 88 %. At roughly $2,500 you get a sleek, modern, and very slim devices with great a level of performance that can usually only be found in gaming notebooks.

The ConceptD 5 is a great notebook satisfying a huge variety of use cases.

If you are interested in this device, you should note its drawbacks as well. For one, its cooler is very loud. The keyboard caps are fairly narrow, and the display’s contrast ratio was too low. On the plus side it offered a consistent turbo boost as well as high graphics performance. It remained unobtrusively quiet when idle, and the 4K panel completely covers the sRGB color space.

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 14 (see review here) is a decent 14-inch all-rounder, and thus managed to secure a spot on our top 10 multimedia list. At 1,100 Euros the Slim 7 14 comes in a modern case and offers a fast SSD as well as a bright high-contrast display. CPU performance, on the other hand, is not particularly great considering that Intel’s Core i7-1065G7 has to throttle under load. When compared directly to the AMD SKU, the Intel SKU falls behind. However, when looking at 3D performance the combination of Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU comes out ahead.