Thunderbolt

As a conventional mobile workstation, the MSI WE76 primarily offers a lot of performance and numerous ports. Is that enough to stand up to the established competition from Dell, HP, and Lenovo?

Those who don't want to spend a lot of money for their work laptop can perhaps find the ideal laptop in the ThinkPad L15 G2 with Intel's Core i3 Tiger Lake CPU.

Sapphire has released the GearBox 500 eGFX solution, a GPU enclosure with a built-in Pulse RX 6600 XT graphics card. The enclosure comes equipped with a 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 3 USB-C port capable of 60 W Power Delivery (PD), two USB 3.0 Type-A ports, and a gigabit ethernet port. A 500 W PSU powers the eGFX solution.

The "smaller" Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7610 without a GeForce RTX attracts all those who don't want to make do without a powerful, high-resolution display but are willing to forgo a Geforce RTX graphics card to improve mobility. Does this bring a higher battery life and more headroom for the Core i7? Only to a limited extent.

Iris Xe performance is much faster on average than with the older UHD Graphics 620. Unfortunately, GPU clock rates cycle heavily over time for unsteady frame rates and performance.

The new MacBook Pro 14 was impressive in our comprehensive review and it is certainly one of the best compact multimedia laptops you can currently get. But is the additional price over the MacBook Pro 13 or the MacBook Air justified for everyday scenarios?

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.

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).

Will a 130 W TGP GPU actually draw 130 W when gaming? What about a 165 W TGP GPU? The GPUs in some gaming laptops can miss their specified TGP targets by moderate margins.

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.

Much has been made of Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max silicon and Apple’s switch from Intel’s processors. However, with the inclusion of Thunderbolt 4 connectivity, Apple’s new MacBook Pro models still feature Intel silicon inside.

Apple's proprietary USB-C to MagSafe 3 connector is required in order to fast charge the new 16-inch MacBook Pro that comes with a 140 W charger. The 16-inch MacBook Pro is the first device to adopt the recently finalized USB-C v2.1 spec that allows for up to 240 W Extended Power Range. Fast charging the MacBook Pro 16 via USB-C should be possible once USB-C to USB-C EPR cables become widely available.

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.

The L21 PRO models offer significant upgrades over the early 2021 variants, including the Intel Core i7-11800H processors, a Thunderbolt 4 port, a PCIe 4.0 X16 slot for the RTX 3070/3080 dGPUs and an M.2 PCIe 4.0 X4 slot for storage solutions, plus a MUX switch for external displays. XMG removed the microSD card reader, on the other hand.

New Linux graphics kernel patches with USB4 DisplayPort Tunneling are now available from AMD. The tunneling feature allows the USB, DisplayPort and PCIe transfer protocols to operate simultaneously by sharing the available bandwidth. For now, only the DisplayPort 1.4 specs are supported with AMD's tunneling drivers. Hopefully, DisplayPort 2.0 specs could be added by the time AMD introduces its next gen embedded and laptop solutions in early 2022.

There are many different laptop designs, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. While this also applies to large, heavy laptops, there is such a thing as too big. Unfortunately, the Lenovo ThinkPad P17 G2 is a prime example for this. For the next generation, Lenovo should update its design to something that looks more recent.