Ultrabook

When AMD's midrange Ryzen 5 can handily outperform Intel's fastest Core i7 U-series lineup in the most important multi-thread workloads, then it becomes that much easier to recommend AMD over Intel in the budget to midrange laptop tiers.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Gen 2 is the first ThinkPad laptop with AMD CPUs and a 16:10 monitor. This makes it one of the most interesting business ThinkPads of this year.

Samsung has confirmed that one of its latest factories is to be built in the US state of Texas. The OEM may invest a total of U$17 billion to complete this new facility, which should be capable of producing components for use in HPC, 5G and mobile devices once operational.

OPPO has confirmed that it will debut the potentially innovative Reno7 series of Android smartphones tomorrow (November 25, 2021). Now, it is rumored to have new TWS earbuds to launch alongside them. Judging by their alleged product name, they may be cheaper versions of existing products, although they may still offer in-demand specs and features.

Intel has begun shipping its 12th gen Alder Lake-P mobile chips to laptop makers. Gregory M Bryant, Executive Vice President and GM of Intel’s Client Computing Group, broke the news on Twitter. The Alder Lake-P chips are expected to come in two variants. The low-end Core i3 and Core i5 chips will have two Golden Cove performance cores, while the high-end Core i7 and i9 will rock up to six.

Samsung Display's new micro-site contains a raft of teasers that might make sense of earlier leaks and rumors concerning the OEM's plans for its OLED technology and the devices based on it. They hint at an upcoming product line replete with foldable laptops, rollable TVs and collapsible tablets.

Qualcomm is currently thought to have a successor to the Snapdragon 8cx Gen2 chipset for PCs in development. Now, more evidence of possible progress with this SoC has emerged on Geekbench, in the form of a mystery Lenovo machine that has appeared on this database. Its performance seems to build on that of the processor's alleged initial outing on the same benchmark.

Intel's own official slides present the upcoming Meteor Lake processors as its first true multi-tile consumer processors, which is clearly reflected in the CNET images where we can see a bigger compute tile with smaller SoC LP I/O and GPU tiles on each side. A closer look, however, reveals a fourth smaller tile placed above the GPU.

Apple may have answered a multitude of MacBook Pro-user prayers by restoring the SD card slot to the latest versions of these PCs. However, a growing number of owners claim that the "new" port is running unusually slow compared to adapters or dongles. This issue has reportedly led to replacements for some affected consumers.

The sale will last until November 29. Users would be getting an excellent 16:10 touchscreen that could easily pass on pricier models like the Yoga or ThinkPad series.

The new affordable 1080p OLED Samsung panel is looking to challenge the usual 1080p IPS panels found on nearly all inexpensive laptops over the past few years.

The manufacturer has quietly redesigned the entire motherboard while keeping the overall chassis nearly identical. The changes are mostly for the better.

Despite part of its name, the Yoga Pro 14s Carbon 2022 has launched today (November 2, 2021). Lenovo has designed this new laptop to be as thin and light as possible, with a mass of just over 1 kilogram (kg). Nevertheless, it packs a powerful Ryzen 5000-series processor, which drives a 90Hz OLED display and runs Windows 11 out of the box.

If you have trouble keeping up with model names, we don't blame you. Some manufacturers aren't making it any easier by giving two very different names to two models that otherwise look exactly the same.

Samsung has announced total revenues and operating profits that ran well into trillions of South Korean won (KRW, or billions of US dollars) for the third quarter of 2021 (3Q2021). The company attributes this success to its silicon production, as well as to the sale of devices such as the Galaxy Z Fold3 and Flip3.

The newest top-end mobile GPU unveiled by ARM is the Mali-G710, likely to form part of upcoming SoCs such as the Dimensity 2000. However, the chipset IP colossus has now hinted at its successor, rated to improve further on the potential gains of the G710. Then again, the company has yet to offer many metrics or indicators of its apparent relative superiority over current cutting-edge smartphone graphics.

Satechi has launched its latest USB-C dongle. But this one has a twist we haven’t seen before, featuring a built-in M.2 SSD enclosure.

Dell also offers the XPS 15 without a dedicated graphics card. The Core i5-11400H and the UHD Graphics Xe are not very impressive, particularly since Dell also reduces the power consumption unnecessarily. The performance is just too weak for 1600 Euros (~$1863).

A Lenovo representative has announced that the OEM will hold a major product event for later in 2021. A new tablet, the Xiaoxin Pad Pro 12.6, is confirmed as one of the stars of this show. However, there may be others, and they may be new PCs of the Yoga line.

If gray and black laptops aren't your thing, then Razer has got you covered once again with yet another pink color option for one of its many models. The Razer Book competes with the Dell XPS 13 9310 as both are 13.4-inch laptops designed for offices.

The retail giant is shaving off just $50 from the original launch prices which feel like almost nothing when said launch prices are upwards of two grand. Even so, users will at least have the peace of mind of Costco warranty should anything go wrong down the line.

The latest Vision 14 SKUs include Intel's Tiger Lake-H35 i5-11300H and i7-11370H CPUs plus an optional RTX 3050 Ti dGPU, yet still retain the same slim and light chassis from the i7-1165G7 versions. XMG-Schenker tweaked the CPUs to achieve a sustained TDP of 40 W on PL1 and the dGPU is rated for 35 +15 W TGP.

There are now mere hours before Apple's Unleashed event, and the Cupertino giant's virtual store has gone offline. Its main page notes it is down for "updates". This may be as good a sign as any that long-awaited upgrades to product lines capable of flying off the shelves are on the way.

The refreshed SX models are powered by the i7-1195G7 processors with PCIe 4.0 and Thunderbolt 4 support. VAIO managed to retain the same thickness and weight from the previous generation, despite the addition of larger batteries, and other premium features from the Z series like the prop-up mechanism, an FHD camera with IR sensor, and fingerprint sensor integrated in the power. This is possible thanks to the forged carbon fiber plating on the upper lid.

Acer's latest Chrome OS devices have arrived with 14- or 15-inch FHD displays, each with up-to-date processors and features. The higher-tier 515s come with Spin and Enterprise variants, whereas the new 514 and Spin 314 set themselves apart with a new MediaTek Kompanio platform and an "environmentally friendly" OceanGlass touchpad respectively.

Huawei's new MateBook 14s is a very good subnotebook that offers a great 3:2 touchscreen as well as a good keyboard. The Intel Core i7-11370H with a TDP of 45 Watts is not really convincing, but that is not Huawei's fault.

Asus has announced that the VivoBook 15 OLED (or K513 OLED) is now available to Indian customers. It comes with a choice of 2 11th-gen Intel processors and either SSD or dual HDD/SSD storage. Its premium selling-point of a display is the FHD Pantone-validated panel with which it originally launched.

Huawei introduced the MateBook 16 as its first-ever 16-inch 3:2 display laptop in May 2021. However, it has only been available on the Chinese market since then. Now, however, the up-to-Ryzen 7 5800H device is now officially coming to Europe soon.

Users will get a 60 to 90 percent boost in graphics performance between the two models, but there's a huge catch. If you don't need the GPU power, then the physically identical and steadier older model will be more than enough.

Honor has made good on some earlier teasers with a launch for the new MagicBook 16 series, with an up-to-date Ryzen 7 platform and 144Hz displays. They have been joined with a less expected variant: the V 14. It will now join the first wave of laptops to ship with Windows 11, and will do so with a 2K display and Tiger Lake-H35 processors.

A leaker has posted a set of allegedly official renders for a second-gen Pixelbook. This rumored new Chromebook is now portrayed as coming in 5 bright colorways that definitely suggests Google is trying to keep pace with Apple in this regard. On that note, the device is now again touted to come with an in-house chipset.

Brydge is a well-known name in third-party keyboard docks for high-end tablets. As such, one of its latest products is for the freshly-launched Surface Pro 8. Alternatively, the new Stone Pro TB4 is compatible with it and any other device with at least 1 Thunderbolt 4 port.

Laptops have traditionally shipped with heinous 1 MP or 2 MP webcams that may as well be Polaroid cameras. The upcoming Spectre x360 16 will finally take a step forward to improving integrated laptop webcams with much higher native resolutions and useful features for teleconferencing.

The budget 14-inch laptop launches this October with just 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB eMMC for a presumably affordable starting price. It's going to have a lot to prove as Windows laptops running on ARM have never worked out very well in the past.

Gigabyte has announced the U4 ultrabook featuring the latest Core i7-1195G7 processor. The Gigabyte U4 weighs just 990 g and is only 16.4 mm thick. Gigabyte offers decent upgradability options including two M.2 NVMe slots along with a good port selection, but the battery capacity seems to have suffered a compromise.

Now that the iPad Mini has moved on to USB type-C in its latest form, OWC strongly hints that one of its latest accessories is an ideal companion for the tablet, considering its new prospects. They include a hub that can expand a connected device's port count by 3 Thunderbolt 4 ports.

Lenovo has launched the Yoga Slim 7 Carbon, an AMD Ryzen 5000 version of the Yoga Slim 7i Carbon that was based on Intel Tiger Lake. The Yoga Slim 7 Carbon features a dedicated Nvidia MX450 GPU (optional), 14-inch QHD+ OLED display, and Lenovo's AI Core capabilities.

Dell's 13-inch laptop comes as a powerhouse in a mini format: The laptop runs with a 35-Watt Tiger Lake-H SoC in addition to a 25-Watt GeForce MX450. Is this a 1.3-kilogram (3 lb) workstation?