Ultrabook

After skipping vPro on the 10 nm Ice Lake series, the Tiger Lake series brings it back on track for business users not satisfied with last year's 14 nm Comet Lake-U options.

Asus has launched two new AMD-powered gaming laptops in the Asus ROG Strix G15 and Strix G17. Both notebooks can be configured with up to an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, up to 32GB of RAM and 2TB of solid-state storage. The ROG Strix G15 will be available in Q1 2021 from €999 (US$1,215) and the G17 from €1,599 (US$1,945).

Acer's newest Predator Triton 300 SE gaming laptop comes with a 14-inch FHD screen clocked at 144Hz, 11th Generation Intel Tiger Lake CPUs, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Max-Q graphics card, a dedicated 'Turbo' button, and 10 hours of battery life. The notebook will be available for sale in March 2021 starting at €1,399 (US$1,700).

Gigabyte has updated its flagship Gigabyte Aorus 17G gaming laptop with next-generation hardware such as 11th-generation Intel Tiger Lake CPUs and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card. Everything else is mostly the same, including the fully-mechanical keyboard with Omron switches. The company will tell us more about its price and availability on January 26.

Lenovo has launched the ThinkBook 13x today at CES 2021, a lightweight ultraportable business machine that shares the new display aspect that Lenovo is transitioning products to this year. It is also compatible with Lenovo's new wireless laptop Charging Mat.

The new ThinkBook Plus Gen 2 i hybrids are essentially compliant with the Intel EVO specs, as they are powered by Tiger Lake CPUs, come with 2x Thunderbolt 4 connectors and total weight is kept at 1.3 Kg / 3 lbs. Lenovo also offers larger e-Ink and main IPS touchscreens with 16:10 aspect ratio and 2560 x 1600 resolution.

Update | Lenovo does not just updates their high-end ThinkPads of the X1 series: The new ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 is the biggest redesigns of the series since 2017. Together with the convertible sister ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6, the new X1 Carbon uses screens in the 16:10 aspect-ratio for the first time. And that is not the only change.

In the year 2021, Lenovo expands its high-end series ThinkPad X1 with another model. The new Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga is thinner than all other ThinkPads and at the same time the first 3:2 ThinkPad. It also is one of the few laptops to utilize Titanium metal as a chassis material.

At CES 2021, Intel has unveiled the Tiger Lake-H 35 W processors for ultraportable gaming laptops. With the introduction of these processors, Intel is not only offering further market segmentation among gaming laptops but also is looking to take on AMD's Renoir Ryzen 7 4800HS and the Ryzen 9 4900H in single-core performance. The new Tiger Lake-H35 processors led by the Core i7-11375H Special Edition can boost up to 5 GHz and also offer resizable BAR support with NVIDIA's upcoming Ampere mobile GPUs.

While you can certainly use it for games, that isn't really what the Xe Max was designed for. Its performance-per-dollar will be highest for workloads like HandBrake or Adobe Lightroom rather than pure gaming.

Lenovo has announced an OLED variant of the Yoga Slim 7i Pro that was originally introduced last year. The Yoga Slim 7i Pro's OLED display comes in a 16:10 aspect ratio and offers a 90 Hz refresh rate with 100% DCI-P3 coverage and Dolby Vision HDR support. Powering the Evo-certified Yoga Slim 7i Pro is an Intel Tiger Lake processor and NVIDIA GeForce MX450 graphics.

LG has seen revenues and operating profits in the last quarter of 2020 (4Q2020) higher than for any preceding final quarter in the OEM's history. Similarly, it has broken its operating-profit record for the whole of 2020. It made a total of ~US$57.9 billion in 2020, which kept its revenues above the $55 billion mark for four years running.

The new 15.6-inch XPG Xenia Xe ultrabooks can be powered by either an i7-1165G7 coupled with 16 GB of LPDDR4x-4266 RAM or an i5-1135G7 coupled with 8 GB of RAM. There is no dGPU option and the prices seem a bit spicy, but at least ADATA is including a touchscreen and 2x Thunderbolt 4 connectors.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) has announced a raft of Honorees and Best Of winners for its CES 2021 Innovation awards. The first category includes 8 smartphones, of which the LG Wing is a slightly obvious choice. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 5000 series has picked up one of the main prizes.

Lenovo and NEC have teamed up to introduce new Tiger Lake devices in the Lavie range. The Lavie Mini is an 8-inch handheld gaming PC that comes with optional gaming controller and gaming dock accessories. The Lavie Pro Mobile is a 13.3-inch ultrabook that combines form and functionality without much compromise on the connectivity front.

Lenovo has brought 5G connectivity to the IdeaPad series with the IdeaPad 5G. The IdeaPad 5G, which is also available in a 4G variant, is based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Compute Platform promising always-on connectivity and up to 20 hours battery life. The Lenovo IdeaPad 5G also comes with Alexa Show Mode for hands-free, full screen interaction via voice commands.

If a laptop is giving you the option between a Core i7-1165G7 or Core i7-1185G7, then you may as well save some money and go with the Core i7-1165G7. Spending more on the Core i7-1185G7 will give only marginal performance benefits and sometimes even none at all depending on the system.

Just beneath the flagship segment, Dell places the Latitude 7000 series. This high-end lineup gains a new member this year: The Dell Latitude 7520 is the first 15.6 inch version of this class. Also, the pre-existing models are updated. The new Dell Latitude 7420 and Latitude 7320 are available as both laptop and convertible versions.

The budget Lenovo laptop is now even more affordable than before to make it a respectable deal for shallow pockets especially if you're willing to upgrade the RAM on your own.

With CES 2021 coming up, retailers are likely trying to clear stock ahead of all the inevitable announcements. Now would be the time to find a lot of deals on both last generation and current generation laptops.

If you plan on buying a new 11th gen Intel Tiger Lake laptop, then you might want to keep in mind that the cheaper Core i5-1135G7 can actually match or outperform a handful of Core i7-1165G7 laptops in raw CPU performance.

The Inspiron 5505 with Ryzen 5 4500U is currently retailing for $489 USD compared to $587 USD for the Inspiron 5502 with the Core i5-1135G7 even after applying the coupon code on both models. The AMD model performs similarly to the Core i5 model and comes with the same amount of RAM and storage despite the wide price difference.

We ran several synthetic GPU benchmarks in our Asus VivoBook Flip 14 TP470 review unit and found that Intel's new Xe Max dGPU offers perceivable gains over the similar Xe Graphics G7 with 96 EUs and the GeForce GTX 1050 while being significantly faster than a GeForce MX350. Xe Max also seems to offer large gains compared to the Radeon RX Vega 8 in Renoir APUs. However, Intel looks to be playing catch-up with the pre-sample MX450 numbers in our database.

The Intel version of the IdeaPad Slim 7 may not be as fast as the AMD version, but it makes up for this with Thunderbolt 3 support should users want to connect GPU docking stations. Users on the lookout for an upper mid-range Ultrabook will find a lot to like about this Lenovo.

The Spectre x360 14 can be considered an early look at what's to come for future Spectre and EliteBook models should HP decide to continue investing in 3:2 laptops.

The latest Intel Evo laptops from Dell and Razer have a lot in common and yet one of them offers significantly faster performance than the other. The Razer Book 13 costs a lot more than the Dell, but its benefits are tangible.

Fans of high-end Chromebooks will be pleased to learn Samsung is following up its first Galaxy Chromebook with a sequel. The Galaxy Chromebook2 has been leaked by Evan Blass and with Samsung giving the eye-catching design a subtle makeover but we don’t know anything specific about its internals yet.

The Apple MacBook Pro 13 is much more powerful and manages longer battery runtimes thanks to the new M1 processor. However, there are not many reasons why you should not just get the more affordable MacBook Air.

It may not be a super-sleek HP Spectre or have support for Thunderbolt devices, but it's pretty close for essentially half the price. The Ryzen 5 4500U is particularly fast for what is considered a mid-range laptop.

The affordable laptop comes with both a faster processor and more RAM than what you might expect from something in its price range.

The new Intel Visual Sensing Controller codenamed Clover Falls is coming to Evo-certified laptops and should help preserve battery life by performing some low-power semi-passive system monitoring tasks normally executed by the CPU. It is also supposed to enable PC systems to sense and adapt to their surroundings by connecting to webcam sensors.

We recommend upgrading to 16 GB of RAM down the line to improve the gaming performance and multi-tasking capabilities of the laptop. The GTX 1660 Ti continues to be a respectable GPU especially in the mobile space.

LG is slated to launch its next-gen Gram laptop series in South Korea on December 16, 2020. A leak allegedly originating from the same country purports to spill details on the 16-inch SKU from this series. It points to an 11th-gen core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, 65W charging and a price that might come as a surprise considering these specs.

This 1080p Ultrabook can run games faster than you might expect given its cheap asking price. Combine this with Thunderbolt 3 and you have a versatile 14-incher for school, office, or games. You'll have to live with just 8 GB of RAM, unfortunately.

Flipkart has officially revealed that the new Nokia ultrabook to debut soon is called the Purebook X14. It has an FHD IPS screen with Dolby Vision and a 10th-gen Core i5 processor. It has a single 8 GB RAM/512 GB SSD SKU, set to sell at a premium price on its eventual launch.

A new leak points to a new Samsung device called the "Book Go". This strongly suggests that it may be a new notebook or convertible from the OEM, to join other variants such as the S or the Flex. This possible PC might debut at CES 2021.

Not only has the series become more visually appealing than previous generations, but they're also starting to include a lot of desirable design features of more expensive laptops for better overall impressions.

Today (December 10, 2020) is a Thursday, which means GeForce NOW has new games to add to its library. NVIDIA has announced that Cyberpunk 2077 is one of them, which makes it a day-and-date release alongside other services such as the Epic Games Store. This streaming platform is also the official host of the Game Awards Festival.

We organize all our tested 11th gen Core i7-1165G7 laptops by raw performance to better help users decide which models to consider for the Holidays. The Razer Book 13 is looking like the best bet thus far.

South Korea was one of the first markets in which commercial 5G had become available, although the networks in question use the sub-6GHz form of the connectivity. Now, however, LG's division Uplus and Qualcomm have implemented the first mmWave alternative, intended to serve an academic campus in this country.

Launched just over a year ago for $840 USD, MSI's sleek affordable business laptop just got even more affordable for office users tired of the same HP, Dell, or Lenovo solutions.