Asus Zenbook A16: Two-minute review

The Asus Zenbook A16 is a large laptop that aims to shoehorn premium performance into a portable package. It certainly achieves the latter; I was impressed by just how light and thin the unit really is, especially when you consider its 16-inch diagonal. It’s much easier to carry around than many of its rivals.

What’s more, it looks good. The beige colorway of my review unit was a refreshing change to the dour shades of many laptops, while the mottled pattern on the lid adds further interest, making it one of the best laptop choices if you’re after a unique design.

The Ceraluminium material might have a ridiculous name, but its build is anything but. While it’s incredibly light, it’s also quite solid. Meanwhile, the lid offers plenty of stability while still being easy to open and close. The bezel around the display isn’t quite so premium, but thankfully it’s very minimal, which helps to maximize screen space as much as possible.

Another impressive aspect of the Zenbook A16’s design is the variety of physical connectivity options. Despite that slender chassis, you get three USB ports (two Type-C and one Type-A), an HDMI port, a combo audio jack, and a full-size SD card reader.

This generous selection puts other similarly thin laptops to shame, although I was mildly disappointed to see nearly every port loaded on one side. Not splitting the USB-C ports across both sides is an especially aggravating decision, considering both can be used for charging and connecting to external monitors.

The Zenbook A16 is a capable general-purpose machine. It makes light work of basic productivity and entertainment tasks, including 4K streaming. However, it falls down somewhat when gaming. It can’t handle AAA titles all that well, performing worse than other laptops with similar integrated graphics.

Some heat can be felt towards the back and left side of the base, but this is far from troubling. The fans also produce a noticeable sound, but mercifully this isn’t as disruptive as some other examples.

The display is the highlight of the Zenbook A16, though. The crystal-clear 3K resolution is ideal for screen size, while the OLED technology ensures a deep contrast and a vibrant color palette. It also has plenty of brightness, which helps to prevent pesky reflections from ruining the viewing experience.

Thanks to the light actuation and spacing of the keys, the keyboard is easy to use. There’s also a little more travel and dampening to presses than is typical for a laptop keyboard, which only adds to the tactility and feedback. It’s a shame, though, that there’s no number pad and few navigation keys.

On the other hand, the touchpad of the Zenbook A16 is more practical. Its large surface area makes navigation easier, while the useful side gestures are convenient and functional. There were only a few occasions when I accidentally triggered them (and cursor movement) when typing, which is a much better hit rate than I’ve experienced with other large touchpads.

Battery life is impressive, too. The Zenbook A16 lasted a full 24 hours in our movie playback test, which is considerably longer than comparable models. For perspective, the 16-inch Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro I tested only managed 14 hours in the same test.

However, it can’t match the Samsung for performance and sheer design quality, despite being about the same price. This means that unless you prize portability above all else, the Zenbook A16 mightn’t offer the best value compared to some stellar rivals.

Asus Zenbook A16 review: Specs

Asus Zenbook A16 review: Price & availability

• $1,699.99 / £2,099.99 for top model
• TBC in Australia
• Some rivals offer better value

The Asus Zenbook A16 is available from April 7th in two guises: both get Snapdragon CPUs, but one is the X1-26-100 with 8 cores and the other the X2E-94-100 with 18 cores. The models also have different RAM sizes (32GB and 48GB) and display resolutions (2880 x 1800 at 120Hz and 1920 x 1200 at 60Hz). Both come in two colorways: gray and beige.

The top model costs $1,699.99 (and £2,099.99 in the UK), while the pricing for the base model is yet to be confirmed. This is also the case for the pricing and availability of both models in Australia.

This is undeniably an expensive laptop. It’s similarly priced to the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro, which is about as premium as they come. Graphical performance is also superior to that of the Zenbook A16, handling AAA games much better. It’s nowhere near as light, though.

If you need even more graphical power but want to keep that 16-inch form factor, the Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 10 is a better alternative. Granted, its performance doesn’t match up to the very best gaming laptops, but the mere fact that it has a dedicated GPU — and a powerful one at that — means it can handle demanding titles, as well as video editing and other creative duties, far better than any machine without one.

Asus Zenbook A16 review: Design

• Very light and thin
• Interesting Ceraluminum construction
• Generous port selection

There are a few aspects of the Asus Zenbook A16’s design that made me sit up and take notice. The first was my review unit’s beige finish, which is a breath of fresh air in a world of monochromes (although it should be said that a gray model is also available).

The second is the Ceraluminum construction, which looks and feels softer and more inviting than the hard and sterile materials of other laptops. I also appreciated the mottled finish of the lid, which looks more like paper and adds an interesting aesthetic element.

However, the standout aspect of the Zenbook A16 is its incredible lightness. When coupled with its ultra-thin chassis, this must be one of the most portable 16-inch devices out there. The soft, rounded sides of the base make it more comfortable to pick up and hold, too.

Despite its featherweight construction, build quality is also good. The base feels reasonably solid, while the hinge for the lid provides smooth and easy adjustments, as well as sufficient stability once set in place. The screen bezel is a little disappointing: although it’s very thin, the material quality is a step down. It isn’t flush or integrated into the screen, either, as it is on the best MacBooks, but this is a minor quibble.

There’s an admirable number of ports on the Zenbook A16. There are two USB-C ports, both of which employ the USB 4 standard, supporting both charging and external monitor connections. It’s a shame that they’re both on the left; it would’ve been more practical if they were split across both sides, to improve amenability for varying setups.

Also on the left are the combo audio jack and an HDMI jack, which means this side is somewhat overcrowded; by contrast, the right only gets a single USB-A port and an SD card reader. Still, it’s hard to complain when there’s this much variety at all; similarly large and thin laptops can’t compete.

Asus Zenbook A16 review: Performance

• Great general performance
• Lacks graphical pedigree
• Sharp and bright display

The general performance of the Zenbook A16 is respectable. The Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme chip in my review unit handled typical everyday workloads well, such as light productivity and entertainment. It also streamed 4K content without issue, and the copious 48GB of RAM certainly helped with multitasking, too.

Graphical performance was disappointing, though. It failed to complete Puget Bench’s Adobe Premiere benchmark, due to an effect failing to render in time — an error I’ve experienced with other laptops lacking dedicated graphics, although some such models did complete the test successfully.

Also, it didn’t run Cyberpunk 2077 in a playable state with the Ray Tracing: Low preset selected. This isn’t too surprising given the aforementioned integrated graphics, but I have tested laptops with similar solutions that did manage to run the game at the same settings more smoothly.

Adjusting the allocation of the shared memory to favor graphics tasks helped somewhat, but not by much — and certainly not by enough to justify the considerable increase in heat and fan volume.

I found the sweet spot between performance and visual fidelity was achieved on the Zenbook A16 by switching to the Ultra preset (which disables Ray Tracing), lowering the resolution to 1080p, and enabling Frame Generation.

During such intensive workloads, some heat can be felt at the top of the keyboard and the left-hand side of the base. In fact, this can even occur when the Zenbook A16 is under moderate loads, but fortunately the temperatures are far from worrisome or uncomfortable. Fan noise can be heard in such cases as well, but this is muted to a greater extent than on some other laptops, and is therefore less distracting.

Perhaps the highest-performing aspect of the Zenbook A16 is its display. The 3K resolution is sufficiently sharp for a display this large, while the 120Hz refresh rate provides plenty of smoothness. And since it uses OLED technology, contrast is deep and colors are vibrant. The screen is shinier than many I’ve seen, which does mean reflections can make themselves known, but thankfully the high brightness levels stop them from dominating the image entirely.

I found the keyboard great for typing with. The generous spacing and lightness of the keys makes fast and accurate inputs a cinch, while their extra dampening and travel over those of other laptops imparts more satisfying feedback. I always feel it’s a shame, though, when a 16-inch laptop misses out on a number pad. There aren’t any navigation keys, either, save from a Delete / Insert key.

Thankfully, the touchpad on the Zenbook A16 is more practical. It stretches from almost the very bottom of the base to the bottom of the keyboard, providing a large area that makes for easy navigation. It also has an incredibly smooth surface, which only makes it more enjoyable to use.

And while it’s also wide, it’s narrow enough to prevent the palms of your thumbs from resting on it constantly. Even when mine did, there were only a few occasions when this contact triggered cursor movement or the side controls for volume and brightness — which, incidentally, function very well.

There are other slider controls on the touchpad besides these: gesturing along the top edge allows you to scrub back and forth on video and audio content, while swiping diagonally from the top-right corner launches ScreenXpert, Asus’ tool for managing app windows and multiple displays. Despite the usefulness of these Smart Gestures (as they’re called), it’s a shame that none of them can be customized.

Asus Zenbook A16 review: Battery life

• Outlasts rivals by a wide margin
• Still not the best of the best, though

The battery life of the Zenbook A16 is very impressive. When I ran a movie on a continuous loop, it managed to last just over 24 hours. This makes it much more enduring than other large laptops, such as the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro and MacBook Air 15-inch, both of which lasted half as long in the same test.

However, there are laptops that can do even better: the HP OmniBook 7 14-inch, for instance, managed 26 hours, again in the same test, while the MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ managed over 30 hours. So while the Zenbook A16’s endurance is certainly remarkable, it’s not the absolute best in the broader laptop market.

Should I buy the Asus Zenbook A16?

Buy it if…

Don't buy it if…

Asus Zenbook A16 review: Also consider

How I tested the Asus Zenbook A16

• Tested for several days
• Used for numerous tasks
• Plenty of laptop reviewing experience

I tested the Asus Zenbook A16 for several days, during which time I used it for general browsing, light productivity, streaming content, and gaming.

I also ran our series of benchmark tests, designed to assess all aspects of performance. I also ran a movie on a continuous loop to test the battery life.

I’ve reviewed a large number of laptops previously, across a broad range of price points, form factors, and use cases.

• First reviewed: April 2026
• Read more about how we test

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro: Two-minute review

The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro is a laptop in the ultrabook class, featuring a sublime design that keeps bulk to a minimum.

I was immediately struck by the svelteness of the unit. The clean lines and rounded corners only add to its minimalist chic, as does the steely grey colorway.

It looks and feels every bit as premium as any of our current best laptops. All materials are smooth to the touch, while the metal base is solid. The metal lid isn’t quite as stable as those on some other laptops I've tested, but it’s perfectly sufficient for normal use, and the hinge operates very well.

The price you pay for such solidity, though, is that the Galaxy Book6 Pro isn’t exactly light. I tested the 16-inch model, so I wasn’t expecting a featherweight unit, but it’s worth mentioning all the same. At least its thin profile makes it more portable than it otherwise would be.

The Book6 Pro's all-round performance is excellent. It can handle all kinds of tasks without missing a beat, and I was also amazed by its gaming performance, despite the lack of dedicated GPU. It was able to run AAA titles at respectable graphical settings in perfectly playable states.

Note that you can feel some heat on the keyboard, with fan noise apparent, even when the laptop is under moderate stress. Thankfully, the noise is relatively hushed, and not likely to cause much disruption.

However, it was the 16-inch 3K AMOLED display of my review unit that really caught the eye. It’s as bright, sharp, and rich as you could wish for, while touchscreen functionality is also great. Unlike the majority of laptops screens, the rounded corners of the frame here add to the display's appeal, while the super-thin bezel ensures that none of the copious real estate goes to waste.

The keys on the Galaxy Book6 Pro are a little heavier than you might expect, which can lead to presses failing to register, at least in my experience. The layout is also a little cramped — and it’s a shame that on a laptop of this size, Samsung has chosen to omit a number pad and most navigation keys.

I have fewer complaints about the touchpad, though. Its large size and incredibly smooth surface make navigation a cinch. Also, it mostly avoids encroaching on wrist space when typing; only on a few brief occasions did I accidentally trigger cursor movement.

Battery life is adequate, if not spectacular. It lasted 14 hours in our movie playback test, which is under an hour of that achieved by the Asus Zenbook S 16 and the Apple MacBook Air 15-inch (M4), but an hour more than the Dell 16 Plus.

The Galaxy Book6 Pro is certainly a costly proposition, but when you consider all that it offers, its value becomes more apparent. It’s similarly priced to the aforementioned Zenbook, a close rival in many ways, and more expensive than the Dell 16 Plus. Nevertheless, it's difficult for either of these alternatives to surpass the sheer quality and glorious display of Samsung's super-slender machine.

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro review: Specs

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro review: Price & availability

• Starts from $1,899.99 / £1,699
• Available now
• Expensive, but in line with some others

Pricing for the Galaxy Book6 Pro starts from $1,899.99 / £1,699 (about AU$2,740; pricing and availability for Australia is TBC at the time of writing), with the models available now. It can be configured with 16GB or 32GB of RAM, and 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB of storage. There are two Intel Core Ultra CPUs to choose from, the 7 356H and the X7 358H — the latter of which is reserved for the top-tier model. A variant with the Ultra 5 325 is coming soon.

The Galaxy Book6 Pro is an expensive laptop, then — although this isn’t too surprising, given its design and spec. The base model is similarly in price to the Asus Zenbook S 16, which also features a 3K OLED display, but 24GB instead of 16GB of RAM.

However, if you're in the market for a large laptop that still offers plenty of quality for less, there’s the Dell 16 Plus. The base model is significantly cheaper than the Galaxy Book6 Pro’s, but it still arrives with an Intel Core Ultra 7 chip, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. Its resolution is lower, but only slightly.

• Value: 3.5 / 5

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro review: Design

• Incredibly thin
• Solid metal enclosure
• Quite heavy

In line with many of Samsung’s mobile devices, the Galaxy Book6 Pro is a sleek, premium-looking machine. The dark grey colorway is also very fetching and somehow adds more interest than your typical monochromatic designs.

Every contour is completely flat, while the corners, which are more rounded than most, give the design a softer appearance. Even the underside of the laptop is free of the fuss , with just four discreet rubber feet in each corner.

What's more, the Galaxy Book6 Pro's build quality is exceptional. The all-metal chassis is supremely strong, and while the lid isn’t as stable as some other models when open, it stays put under normal usage. The hinge for it is satisfyingly smooth, too. The bezel around the display is incredibly thin, which is always great to see, but the lack of a physical privacy shutter for the webcam, not so much.

The keys are more solidly planted than those of other laptop keyboards, and they also feature backlighting — which, in my opinion, is pretty much an essential feature.

Best of all, though, is just how thin the Galaxy Book6 Pro is. It’s reminiscent of the MacBook Air M1, since it thins out towards the front end. Given my review unit was the 16-inch model, I wasn’t too surprised by its weighty feel, but this does somewhat negate the utility of that slender form when it comes to portability. Still, it certainly makes it easier to slide in and out of a bag.

• Design: 4.5 / 5

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro review: Performance

• Surprisingly capable graphical performance
• Superb display
• Keys are a little heavy

The general performance of the Galaxy Book6 Pro is very good. It handles basic browsing and productivity tasks, as well as 4K streaming, with ease.

What surprised was just how well it handled games. Despite lacking a dedicated GPU, it managed to run Cyberpunk 2077 with the Ray Tracing: Ultra preset selected, without succumbing to disruptive slowdowns or stuttering. Intel’s XeSS Super Resolution 2.0 (in Auto mode) and Frame Generation were both enabled during my sessions.

Of course, the Galaxy Book6 Pro isn’t going to dethrone the best gaming laptops, and the keyboard layout can feel a little cramped when in the typical WSAD position; but it’s impressive, nonetheless.

Some heat was noticeable all over the keyboard during such intensive tasks, no doubt a corollary of that ultra-thin design — but, thankfully, the temperatures remained well within comfortable bounds. Some fan noise did become apparent, even under moderate workloads, but I didn’t find this too disturbing.

The AMOLED display is every bit as sumptuous as you'd expect it to be. The 3K resolution is satisfyingly crisp, while colors are vibrant and the contrast expectedly deep. The touchscreen functions well, too, responding quickly and accurately to my finger inputs.

I was also fond of the bezel's rounded corners, which soften the frame and make on-screen content appear neater somehow. It’s a small touch that I wish more laptop displays featured; the best MacBooks have it, but only in the top corners, not the bottom as well.

The keys are nicely damped, but still display relatively shallow travel. However, they’re heavier than others, which resulted in some of my presses failing to register, requiring more force than I’m accustomed to producing. This may be an adjustment you’ll need to make as well, if you’re someone with a light touch.

While the layout is comfortably spaced for typing, it’s a shame there’s no number pad and only a few navigation keys (Insert/ Prt Sc and Delete) on the Galaxy Book6 Pro, given the 16-inch real estate of my unit.

The touchpad on the 16-inch model of the Book6 Pro is large, which is great for navigation. Despite this, there's also enough room on the sides for resting your wrists while you type. There were times when the cursor moved as a result of my palms coming into contact with the pad, but this wasn’t frequent or long-lasting enough to cause a problem.

• Performance: 4.5 / 5

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro review: Battery life

• Middling longevity
• Quick to charge

The Galaxy Book6 Pro offers an average battery life. When I ran a movie on a continuous loop, it lasted 14 hours. This is well below Samsung's claimed figure of up to 30 hours. However, it's only an hour less than what the Asus Zenbook S 16 and the Apple MacBook Air 15-inch (M4) managed.

However, it lasted over an hour more than the Dell 16 Plus. It's also quick to charge, taking about two hours to go from empty to full.

• Battery life: 3.5 / 5

Should I buy the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro?

Buy the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro if…

Don't buy it if…

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro review: Also consider

How I tested the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro

• Tested for several days
• Ran our series of benchmarks
• Plentiful laptop reviewing experience

I tested the Galaxy Book6 Pro for several days. I used it for all kinds of tasks, from general browsing and light productivity to 4K streaming and AAA gaming. I also ran our series of benchmark tests, designed to assess every aspect of a laptop’s performance.

I have plenty of experience reviewing computing devices of all kinds. I’ve tested numerous laptops, from budget offerings to top-tier gaming machines. I’ve also reviewed desktops, Chromebooks, and tablets.

• First reviewed: March 2026
• Read more about how we test

Unveiled at CES 2024, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (and its larger sibling, the G16) gaming laptop is finally available to preorder, and while it is obviously aimed at Windows gamers and creatives, it also serves as a very respectable alternative to Apple’s MacBook Pro according to our peers over at Tomsguide.

Jason England wrote that "The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is more about making nice refinements to the formula that makes our #1 best gaming laptop even better. So good, in fact, that it could take on Apple’s MacBook Pro as a solid all-rounder. Time will tell on this, though…"

Completely redesigned inside and out for 2024, Asus' new laptop features a CNC-machined aluminum chassis, customizable Slash Lighting array, AI-accelerated silicon from Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA, and a color-accurate OLED ROG Nebula Display.

The Zephyrus G14 is powered by an 8-core, 16-thread AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS processor, supporting AMD Ryzen AI and Windows Studio effects. This powerhouse is coupled with a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 GPU. The 16-inch model sports an RTX 4090, but it’s not an option for the smaller version, sadly.

Impressive visuals

The Zephyrus G14 comes with up to 32 GB LPDDR5X onboard memory and up to 1TB of M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 SSD storage. It also features a 1-Zone RGB keyboard, stereo speakers with smart amplifier, Dolby Atmos, Hi-Res Audio, and Two-Way AI Noise Cancellation. 

For connectivity, the laptop offers Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) and Bluetooth v5.3. For ports, there's the standard selection - 1x Type C USB 4 port, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, and 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, plus an HDMI 2.1 port, a microSD card reader (not a full size SD card slot, disappointingly), and an audio jack. The device is powered by a 73 Wh battery and weighs in at a lightweight 1.5 kg. 

While the Zephyrus G14 certainly packs a punch with its impressive specs, it remains to be seen whether it can truly rival the MacBook Pro. The latter is certainly not cheap and its unified memory paradigm (which combines system memory and video memory) is divisive. But Apple is uniquely positioned because it owns both the hardware and the software stack and can therefore finetune them to deliver optimal performance. That can't happen yet with x86 (or arm) and Windows, so it remains a case of apple-vs-orange.

There's also the fact that the laptop will sell at a premium compared to the last generation. That's fine but the only big difference will be the CPU - remember, the GPU doesn't change - and early benchmarks show that the 8945HS and the 7945HS do not have a big difference in performance. Ouch!

Should you be interested in buying it, it’s available to preorder from Overclockers UK for £2399.99. It’s not up for preorder on the Asus Store just yet, but when it is, it will be priced at $2199.99.

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Editor's Note

• Original review date: February 2024
• Launch price: Starts at $1,099 / AU$2,699.00 (about £870)
• Target price now (updated model): £1,299 / £1,299 / AU$4,199

Update – September 2024: You might be wondering why I've taken the time to drop in here with an update, given that we only reviewed this laptop earlier this year. Well, it's because there's a new model available - and it's a pretty significant change under the hood.

The updated version keeps the Nvidia RTX GPU to maintain strong graphical performance, but upgrades to Intel's new Core Ultra CPUs, which notably pack a shiny new Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for better handling local AI workloads. The laptop also now features a dedicated Copilot Key for launching Microsoft's built-in Windows AI assistant, marking it as an official 'Copilot+ PC' device.

That does mean a small price bump for this laptop, but it remains within reasonable levels for a premium device with AI functionality and a dedicated GPU. Unfortunately for Australian shoppers, it looks like only the higher-end Core Ultra 7 configuration is available in Australia, so the entry price is significantly higher there. It should be noted that the previous Swift X 14 (reviewed below) is still available to purchase in some regions, but I'd recommend springing for a newer, AI-ready model.

Original review follows.

Acer Swift X14: Two-minute review

Let’s get the easy part out of the way: I’m a fan of the Acer Swift X14. The short version of it is the fact that Acer managed to put a powerful CPU and GPU, not to mention a gorgeous OLED screen, in a slim Ultrabook package.

While it doesn’t feel as premium as a MacBook Pro 14, it truly belongs among the best Ultrabooks right now. There are certainly some trade-offs as the price is nowhere near close to the best cheap laptops and the battery life suffers a little since it has to power an Nvidia graphics card. I find the trackpad to be annoying to use as well. And, for a device legitimately vying for attention among the best laptops out there, it surprisingly skips out on a Windows Hello-capable webcam.

That said, the pros vastly outweigh the cons, especially if you don’t want to lug around a gaming computer and prefer the experience of using Ultrabooks, but still want the power of a gaming computer, whether that’s for booting up Cyberpunk 2077 or for some photo and video editing. When it comes to competing with the Dell XPSes of the world, the Acer Swift X14 may be one of the most surprising laptops I’ve used. 

Acer Swift X14: Price and availability

• How much does it cost? Starting at $1,099 (about £870 / AU$1,670) 
• When is it available? Available now 
• Where can you get it? Available in the US, UK, and Australia 

The Acer Swift X14 is not the most affordable laptop out there. While its most basic configuration is available for $1,099 / AU$2,699 (about £870), which is certainly affordable – this is a model that comes with an 13th-Gen Intel Core i5 and a last generation Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050, not to mention a 512GB SSD and a lower 1600p resolution – it seems to only still be available in the US and Australia.

For everyone else or those wanting a current gen 4000 series GPU, you’re looking at $1,499 / £1,429 (about AU$2,277). That gets you a faster 13th-Gen Intel Core i7, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050, 16GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, and a 2880 x 1800p screen. And, if you’re in the UK, there are some slight variations as you can pay £170 more for 32GB of RAM.

The Acer Swift X14 isn’t the only light and thin laptop to come with a powerful GPU. The Samsung Galaxy Book3 Ultra covers a lot of the same ground. In fact, our Galaxy Book3 Ultra review unit, which is the base model, has the same specs as the Acer Swift X14 including the screen (well, it’s AMOLED vs OLED), but goes for a much pricier $1799.99 / £2,649 / around AU$4,875. Of course, you can pay even more – $2399.99 / £3,049 / around AU$5,610 – for a configuration with a 13th-Gen Intel Core i9 and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070.

That said, many Ultrabooks come with that premium price tag without the kind of hardware to keep up with a gaming laptop. For instance, as great as its performance is, the Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 only has Intel Iris Xe graphics and goes for $1,399.99 / £1,440. At least, it has that same OLED screen with HDR.

Value: 4 / 5

Acer Swift X14: Specs

There are basically two configurations of the Acer Swift X14. The more affordable one isn’t available in the UK, and comes with a 13th-Gen Intel Core i5, a last-generation Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050, and 512GB SSD. 

The more expensive configuration that we've reviewed here upgrades the CPU to an i7, the GPU to a 4050, and the SSD to 1TB of storage. And, in the UK, you can spend a little more for 32GB of RAM instead of 16GB. 

Beyond the internal components, there aren’t any additional variations as there aren’t different colorways except for the screen. If you go with the cheaper model, you also have a slightly lower resolution (2560 x 1600p). 

Acer Swift X14: Design

• Gorgeous display with HDR and accurate colors 
• Trackpad has issues with dragging and dropping 
• Webcam doesn’t support Windows Hello, but fingerprint reader does 

The Acer Swift X14, like most Ultrabooks, comes in an elegant if discreet shade of gray called 'Steel Gray'. It doesn’t quite set itself apart from the pack visually, but it certainly looks good and is light and diminutive enough for easy on-the-go computing.

The display is probably the most impressive outward-facing feature on this laptop as the 14.5-inch OLED screen comes with a sharp 2.8K (2880 x 1800) resolution that runs natively at 120Hz for smoother results. Plus, it comes with Vesa Certified Display HDR True Black 500 to really make the colors pop.

The colors are definitely impressive. Not only is it incredibly accurate, measured at Delta E of 0.09, but it has fantastic color coverage, making this laptop more than good enough for video and photo editing. Specifically, it has 195% sRGB and 138.1% DCI-P3.

The keyboard is good enough, though I wouldn’t consider it to be the most comfortable I’ve ever used. The trackpad, however, gave me some issues. It’s nice to the touch and moving the cursor around is smooth, but the trackpad didn’t seem to want to cooperate when dragging and dropping unless I had my fingers positioned very accurately.

At least the port selection is robust enough for an Ultrabook with two USB-C ports (that are also Thunderbolt 4 / USB 4), two USB-A, an HDMI, and a microSD reader, along with the requisite headphone jack. Those worried about security will be happy to note that there’s a Kensington lock as well.

Beyond that, there’s a 1080p webcam that unfortunately doesn’t support Windows Hello Facial Recognition. However, there’s a fingerprint reader in the power button for that purpose.

There are some aspects of the Acer Swift X14 that are a bit hard to pin down but worth mentioning and that is in regards to its use in AI tech. The laptop supports Windows Copilot, enhancements for the webcam and mic, as well as using AI to accelerate the performance of a number of apps.

Design: 4 / 5

Acer Swift X14: Performance

• Fast render scores 
• Powerful gaming performance 
• Good thermal performance 

Whether that AI acceleration puts the Acer Swift X14 over the top or it’s just a matter of powerful components, the performance of this laptop is a dream. With its 13th-Gen Intel Core i7, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050, and 16GB of RAM, it’s no wonder that it can easily handle day-to-day work without breaking a sweat.

But, it can handle much more intensive workloads as well. Taking a quick look at the benchmarks, its 3DMark scores are much higher than the Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 mentioned before and its Handbrake score, which measures how quickly a computer can render video, is two minutes faster. This is surely due to that powerful GPU.

I was also able to capably game on this laptop as well, running titles like Starfield and Gotham Knights on fairly high settings, certainly on par with settings I’ve used on gaming laptops equipped with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050.

Since the screen is an OLED panel with HDR as well as that great color coverage and accuracy, images pop and look rich and vibrant.

Really, every aspect of the Acer Swift X14’s performance is to be lauded in my opinion. Even its thermal performance is good, with it only really heating up underneath a bit when pushed.

The webcam is clear and sharp with auto framing, and comes with a feature that can make it look like you’re making eye contact with whomever you’re on a video call with (rather than looking down at the screen).

The audio quality is, as it is with most laptops, passable. It lacks some low-end and can be just a little hollow sounding, but it’s not bad and about what I would expect from a laptop like this.

Performance: 5 / 5

Acer Swift X14: Battery life

• Good battery life considering hardware 
• Fast charging on hand 

Since the Acer Swift X14 has to power some robust components, it’s no wonder that it doesn’t have the battery life of a lot of other Ultrabooks. 

Make no mistake, a benchmark score of 7:26:37 for the Battery Informant test (though at 60Hz) is pretty good when compared to gaming laptops with similar internals, which are considered to have amazing battery lives when reaching the same scores, but don’t expect the 15 hours that you would get with a MacBook. And, if you run this laptop hard, expect that battery to go down pretty quickly.

It does seem to charge up pretty quickly when plugged in. However, it does seem to not quite hold onto its charge as well as it should when the lid is closed. But, this seems to be something that most Windows laptops don’t do as well as they should.

Battery life: 4 / 5

Should I buy the Acer Swift X14?

Buy it if… 

Don't buy it if... 

Also consider

If our Acer Swift X14 review has you considering other options, here are two laptops to consider...   

How I tested the Acer Swift X14

• Tested for a couple weeks 
• Used for regular work as well as gaming 
• Used regularly unplugged 

I used the Acer Swift X14 for a couple weeks as a work computer. I did a decent amount of writing here, including this review. I also used it to do some gaming to see if it really had what it takes (clearly, it does). I took a look at all the features, not to mention used it regularly to see how it does unplugged.

After spending time with the Acer Swift X14, I was impressed by the fact that its power is more on par with a gaming computer than with its Ultrabook competition.

I’ve spent the last few years reviewing tech gear for gaming and otherwise, where I’ve gotten a feel for what to look for and how to put a piece of kit through its paces to see whether it’s worth the recommendation.

First reviewed February 2024 

When it comes to buying a business laptop, most people have three main requirements – as fast as possible, as light as possible, and as affordable as possible. MSI’s Prestige 13 AI EVO 13.3" ultrabook laptop ticks all of those boxes. The new device, touted as the fastest ultrabook laptop ever, is just 0.67in thin and weighs less than 1kg (2.18lbs), making it one of the lightest in its class.

The MSI Prestige 13 AI EVO comes with Windows 11 Pro pre-installed, and is powered by an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H (Meteor Lake) processor, which outperforms AMD's Ryzen 9 5900HX – no mean feat – and Intel Arc Graphics. This means it can handle the most demanding tasks with ease, making it an ideal choice for business and creative professionals alike. 

The ultrabook boasts a 13.3-inch QHD+ OLED display (2880x1800), and is equipped with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and a 1TB NVMe SSD.

Advanced hardware tuning

In terms of ports, the Prestige 13 AI EVO offers one USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, two Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-C, and one HDMI 2.1. It also features a headphone jack, a Micro SD card reader, a full HD IR webcam, and a fingerprint reader. 

For wireless connectivity, it uses the now certified Wi-Fi 7 standard, which is 2.4x faster than the 2.4 Gbps speeds of Wi-Fi 6/6E, and Bluetooth 5.4.

The Prestige 13 AI EVO design is not only lightweight but also sleek and stylish. It has a magnesium-aluminum alloy chassis available in Pure White or Stellar Gray, a backlit keyboard, and a large touchpad.

The "AI" in its name comes from the MSI AI Engine, an intelligent technology designed to offer advanced automatic tuning. This feature isn't available out of the box but will be delivered through an update in the coming months.

Despite the high-end specs, the MSI Prestige 13 AI EVO 13.3” is affordably priced and can be pre-ordered through Newegg now for just $1,299.

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MSI Prestige 13 Evo: Two-minute review

Make no mistake: the MSI Prestige 13 Evo is a premium laptop. This almost feels like the blueprint for the best ultrabooks, a supremely lightweight but still powerful laptop with a whole host of features and a sleek, minimalist aesthetic.

Coming in either white or gunmetal gray colorways, the Prestige 13 Evo is equipped with almost everything you could want from an ultrabook; a wide variety of physical ports, a large, responsive trackpad, and a selection of useful security features.

Weighing in at just 0.99kg (2.18lbs), this laptop sits in the same weight class as the popular LG Gram, and it's even lighter than the eminently portable M2 MacBook Air. With a 13.3-inch display and a thickness of just 1.7cm, it's phenomenally easy to pick the Prestige 13 Evo up and take it wherever you go - in fact, the AC adapter is also very lightweight, but you won't need to bring that everywhere since this ultrabook also offers some impressive battery life.

My immediate comparison point for any compact ultrabook like this is the Dell XPS 13, which has long sat among the best laptops out there. MSI's laptop is actually a bit closer in price to the XPS 13 Plus, which I recently reviewed - and I think it just about edges out Dell's competitor thanks to slightly better average performance and a more practical physical design.

The 13th-gen Intel Core CPU at the heart of this laptop more than pulls its weight, giving you the option of some light gaming and creative work alongside the usual productivity tasks we test for on ultrabooks. I was impressed by the smooth, responsive user experience and generally strong performance in our benchmarking suite - more on that later.

While the stripped-down appearance might not appeal to everyone (the XPS 13 Plus certainly has this one beat purely in terms of aesthetics), it's function over form here; and I personally like the straightforward design choices made by MSI.

If I had to level some criticisms at the MSI Prestige 13 Evo, they'd probably focus on the pricing. At $1,499 (£1,399.99, about AU$2,350) with apparently only one configuration available (though the baseline specs vary a bit between regions), it's undeniably expensive, matching the XPS 13 Plus model I reviewed. At this price point, the Prestige's relatively run-of-the-mill FHD+ display pales a bit in comparison to the 3.5K OLED screen of the Plus - and I mean pales in a literal sense, since it simply can't match the OLED's brightness and rich color density.

Other than the somewhat lackluster display, though, I have very little to dislike here; MSI has knocked it out of the park with this one, and I almost wish I could keep the Prestige 13 Evo forever - my own daily laptop is starting to look a little tired...

MSI Prestige 13 Evo: Price & availability

• How much does it cost? $1,499.99 / £1,399.99 / about AU$2,350
• When is it available? Available now
• Where can you get it? Available in the US and UK, no official Australian release yet

MSI's pricing can be somewhat arcane at the best of times, but I've done my best to work this one out for you. There appears to be only one standard model of the MSI Prestige 13 Evo available in western territories, but it's not quite identical across every region.

It looks like my review unit is a UK-only model, but the only significant difference here is that it uses 16GB of DDR5 memory instead of the 32GB found by default in the US-spec version. I've only listed the review model's specs below, but bear in mind that you'll be getting some extra RAM if you buy this laptop in the States.

Since MSI doesn't maintain its own storefronts in the US and UK, you'll need to purchase the Prestige 13 Evo from a reseller like Amazon - for any British readers, you should absolutely check out this deal at Scan.co.uk, which puts the laptop down to just £779.99, a frankly ridiculous deal. Over in the US, the 32GB version is mildly discounted to $1,299.99 at Amazon at the time of writing.

There doesn't appear to be any immediate availability in Australia, so my commiserations go out to our friends down under - your only option will be to import one.

• Price score: 4 / 5

MSI Prestige 13 Evo: Specs

As I noted above, our review unit appears to be UK-only; you can't buy the 32GB version here, and I couldn't find the 16GB model for sale anywhere in the US. I've listed the UK spec below, but other than the RAM, it's identical to the US model in every way.

The Intel Core i7-1360P processor has become a staple of many premium ultrabooks recently, and you get plenty of high-speed storage thanks to the 1TB M.2 SSD. Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 ensure you're getting the best in wireless connectivity too. Barring the middling display, this is a solid selection of specs.

• Specs score: 4.5 / 5

MSI Prestige 13 Evo: Design

• Minimalist exterior
• Lots of ports and security features
• Display really should be a bit better

As far as ultrabooks go, the MSI Prestige 13 Evo isn't particularly exciting - but that's not to say it's bad. The design is straightforward, with a robust screen hinge that gently angles the keyboard towards you when opened and a large touchpad at the bottom.

The exterior construction is plastic (to further serve the goal of reducing the overall weight) but thankfully it doesn't feel cheap, with sturdy rubber feet and minimal flex in the casing when you press firmly on the keyboards.

Speaking of the keyboard - it's a little cramped for my liking, with the bottom-right keys in particularly feeling a tad squished together, but I'm conscious that I have pretty large hands (I'm 6'3", if you were wondering) and most users probably won't have any trouble typing on the Prestige 13 Evo. My partner - who has regular-sized hands - tried it out, and reported no problems with the keyboard. The keys themselves have a good amount of travel and the touchpad feels firm and responsive.

I mentioned higher up that the display here is sub-par. For the avoidance of doubt, I don't mean it's a poor-quality display exactly, because the maximum brightness and color reproduction are more or less what I'd expect from an IPS panel at this resolution. The anti-glare coating works fine in well-lit environments and I definitely do like the 16:10 aspect ratio, which gives you more screen space for scrolling and the esoteric 1200p resolution.

My beef is more with the fact that if I spend this much on a laptop, I'd expect a slightly better display. Plenty of ultrabooks at this price point offer either higher-resolution screens or superior panel types like OLED or AMOLED; with its bog-standard 60Hz refresh rate and middling contrast, this one failed to impress me even if it was fine in practice for everyday work.

At least the screen bezels are pleasingly thin - with just enough room along the top for a 1080p webcam, something that I did lampoon the Dell XPS 13 Plus for lacking in that review. At this price point, 720p just doesn't cut it. The microphone array and dual speakers are also good, if not mind-blowing.

Mediocre screen aside, the Prestige 13 Evo excels in virtually every other area when it comes to design. MSI has pleasingly declined to worship at the altar of the MacBook and instead opted for a wide range of physical ports: no USB hub required here, as we've got two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, one conventional USB-A, HDMI video out, a microSD card reader (an increasingly rare inclusion on ultrabooks) and of course the humble 3.5mm audio jack.

The only thing missing here is an Ethernet port, but that shouldn't be necessary thanks to best-in-class WiFi 6E and the latest Bluetooth 5.3 for wireless connectivity. Wired internet is mostly reserved for gaming laptops these days, anyway.

Lastly, the Prestige 13 Evo rounds out its feature set with a selection of excellent privacy and security add-ons. We've got a fingerprint scanner built into the power button, an IR camera for facial recognition logins via Windows Hello, and dedicated buttons for shutting off your webcam and microphone - backed up by a physical shutter you can slide over the webcam itself for maximum digital privacy.

These features will best serve professional users who use their laptops to handle potentially sensitive data, but shouldn't be overlooked by less security-focused users; the speedy convenience of Windows Hello is always good.

• Design score: 4.5 / 5

MSI Prestige 13 Evo: Performance

• Intel Core i7-1360P is strong
• Slightly outperforms some rivals with similar specs
• Light gaming definitely an option here

I was thoroughly impressed with the performance of the MSI Prestige 13 Evo - even though I've seen the same Intel Core i7-1360P CPU powering other laptops I've reviewed.

Here, the processor seems to be operating at its maximum potential: I saw strong performance across the board in both synthetic benchmarks and practical tests, with the processor even managing to offer some entry-level gaming capabilities in Civilization VI and Valorant - both relatively undemanding titles in terms of hardware requirements, but still great games.

General use is speedy and lag-free; I could open a dozen tabs in Google Chrome with Steam and Spotify running in the background and didn't experience any slowdown whatsoever.

In synthetic benchmarks like GeekBench 6, the i7-1360P demonstrated excellent single-core performance and solid multi-core results, putting it head and shoulders above its 12th-generation Intel counterparts. The SSD is also relatively speedy at about 1.65GB/s - not the fastest laptop drive I've ever seen, but quick enough to make moving files around a breeze.

It's probably worth noting that the 32GB version available in the US might benefit from its larger memory in certain RAM-intensive workloads, so if you're aiming to do stuff like code compiling, that might be a good pick over ultrabooks with the standard 8GB or 16GB of memory.

Naturally, the lack of a dedicated graphics card means you won't be doing any high-end gaming or 4K video editing tasks on this laptop, but that's fine - it's a small sacrifice to make for the incredibly thin-and-light design.

Thermal performance is also excellent here; the Prestive 13 Evo has a large perforated section on the underside for venting excess heat, and the interior thermal solution clearly works well - it barely even got warm throughout our testing process.

• Performance score: 5 / 5

MSI Prestige 13 Evo: Battery

• Solid battery life, not quite best-in-class
• More than 10 hours of regular use
• Compact charger

Battery life is a make-or-break area for many ultrabooks, but thankfully the Prestige 13 Evo delivers. You can get more than 10 hours of everyday use on a single charge, and using features like Windows 11's built-in battery saver mode can let you stretch that time even further.

The battery does drain a little faster if you're doing anything more demanding - for example, playing videos at maximum brightness with the speakers turned up - but overall I was very pleased with the longevity of this ultrabook. It doesn't quite match up to Apple's MacBooks, but it's at least in the same ballpark as the M1 MacBook Air.

The bundled AC adapter is relatively compact too, connecting via USB-C. Strangely, the Prestige 13 Evo also has a proprietary power connector, which was compatible with a different MSI laptop charger I had lying around. With the EU aiming to make USB-C the standard for charging our devices, that sort of port will soon be a distant memory.

• Battery score: 4 / 5

Should you buy the MSI Prestige 13 Evo?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

MSI Prestige 13 Evo: Also consider

If the MSI Prestige 13 Evo has you considering other options, here are two more laptops to consider...

How I tested the MSI Prestige 13 Evo

• Replaced my everyday laptop
• Tested productivity work, web browsing, gaming
• Used for a full day on battery power

As usual, I swapped out my normal HP Spectre x360 for the MSI Prestige 13 Evo as my everyday work laptop, doing all my typical tasks on it - word processing, video meetings, and web browsing - for several days. I only ever charged it overnight, and didn't run into any battery-related difficulties whatsoever.

I also used it casually, taking it out into the backyard on a nice evening to watch some Netflix with my partner and on a different occasion using it to play some Into The Breach, a game I will probably always be quietly addicted to.

We pride ourselves on our independence and our rigorous review-testing process, offering long-term attention to the products we review and making sure our reviews are updated and maintained - regardless of when a device was released, if you can still buy it, it's on our radar.

Read more about how we test

First reviewed September 2023

Editor's Note

• Original review date: August 2023
• Launch price: Starting at $1,249.00 / £1,198.99 / AU$2,398
• Target price: $699 / £599 / AU$1,049 

Update – August 2024: So the Dell XPS 13 Plus has its fans and its detractors, but it was a very good laptop when it first debuted in 2022, and the 2023 follow-up was also solid. Unfortunately, you'll be hard-pressed to find either now as Dell has moved on to newer models and is no longer selling this model (Dell XPS 13 Plus 9320).

While you might be able to find some stock online at Amazon or Best Buy in the US (or Currys in the UK), these units are selling for a premium, sometimes several hundred dollars more than its launch price.

This is a rip-off honestly, especially when the phenomenal Dell XPS 13 (Snapdragon X, 2024) is available starting at $1,299 / £1,099 / AU$2,098.80, and offers best-in-class battery life that puts most of the best laptops on the market to shame.

Original review follows.

Dell XPS 13 Plus (2023): Two-minute review

Dell’s XPS line has had years to cement itself as perhaps one of the best consumer laptop series out there, delivering seriously high-quality devices that have frequently graced our rankings of the best ultrabooks and even just the best laptops in general.

Last year brought forth a new member of the XPS family: the XPS 13 Plus (2022), which sought to offer something a bit new - a more premium version of the Dell XPS 13, coming with more powerful internal components and more of a focus on design aesthetics.

This year’s new XPS 13 Plus is Dell’s second attempt to nail this more expensive compact laptop, and while it does manage to beat the original model in some areas, it’s still hamstrung by some of the same issues that caused us to knock a star and a half off our original review of the 2022 model.

In other words: this is still one of the nicest-looking laptops I’ve ever seen (and the standard XPS 13 is no slouch when it comes to looks!), but the sacrifices made for style aren’t always worth it. For starters, the ‘invisible’ touchpad is sure to prove annoying for some people and downright ruinous for vision-impaired users, and the lack of physical port variety will no doubt be a sticking point for certain would-be buyers.

Luckily, this new Plus gets a big leg up over its predecessor thanks to improved specs, most prominently the 13th-generation Intel Core processor inside. I’ll dig into the nitty-gritty details later in this review, but the short version is that we’ve got some pretty solid performance here - though don’t expect it to go up against the best gaming laptops, since this XPS lacks a dedicated graphics card.

There’s plenty else to like here, from the absolutely gorgeous 3.5K OLED touch display to the impressively low overall weight. There’s no denying that this is a premium laptop - though starting at $1,249.00 / £1,198.99 / AU$2,398, the base model actually isn’t ludicrously expensive, even if it feels like a much pricier laptop.

At worst, this is a slightly more powerful version of the XPS 13 Plus that underwhelmed us last year. At best, it’s an aesthetically delightful ultrabook that offers reliable performance in an impressively thin and light chassis - though certain features (or lack thereof) might end up being a turn-off for some potential users.

For what it’s worth, I love the XPS 13 Plus - but I’ve had to be judicious in my scorings, because as much as I personally like it, it feels strangely like an imperfect reflection of the wider XPS range. I’d call it the ugly duckling of the flock, but ironically it’s probably the best-looking XPS laptop you can buy right now, with the Platinum colorway really highlighting its good looks. How does it fall short of true greatness? Read on to find out.

Dell XPS 13 Plus (2023): Price & availability

• How much does it cost? $1,249.00 / £1,198.99 / AU$2,398
• When is it available? Available now
• Where can you get it? Available in the US, UK, and Australia

The 2023 Dell XPS 13 Plus costs more than its default-model sibling, though not egregiously so. As I mentioned above, pricing starts at $1,249.00 / £1,198.99 / AU$2,398 - that’s quite a bit more than the base model of the standard XPS 13, though that laptop comes with massively less powerful internal specs. The pricing on this model roughly mirrors the 2022 XPS 13 Plus, which is nice to see considering the bump in performance.

At the time of writing, the 2023 model of the Dell XPS 13 Plus is available in the US, UK, Europe, and Australia. It looks like Brits and Aussies have the short end of the stick when it comes to pricing on the higher-end versions, but I won’t mark Dell down for that as it’s typically the case with laptops right now. Still, the midrange base pricing for such a premium-feeling laptop is definitely to my liking. 

• Price score: 4 / 5

Dell XPS 13 Plus (2023): Specs

Our review model is a relatively high-end configuration costing $1,499.00 / £1,719.38 / AU$3,281.30, with the optional 3.5K OLED screen and an Intel Core i7-1360P processor, which is the only CPU available in most territories. Oddly, I did notice that in the UK the cheapest configuration instead sports an i5-1340P, which isn’t available in the US.

The XPS 13 Plus is fully configurable on Dell’s website, letting you pick how much RAM and storage you want (up to a hefty 32GB of DDR5 and a 2TB SSD) as well as a choice of three different displays: a standard FHD+ 60Hz touch panel, the 3.5K OLED screen in the model we’re reviewing, and finally an even better UHD+ OLED panel with slightly better brightness than the 3.5K version. The most expensive configuration will run you $1,749.00 / £2,119.38 / AU$3,880.80.

• Specs score: 4 / 5

Dell XPS 13 Plus (2023): Design

• Same incredible aesthetics as the 2023 model…
• …and the same dearth of ports
• Display is amazing, webcam is lackluster

Seriously, Dell? A 720p webcam on a thousand-dollar-plus ultrabook? Whatever you guys are smoking, I don’t want any; any modern laptop that sits within the same price range as the XPS 13 Plus absolutely should have a 1080p webcam.

Maybe I’m in the minority of ‘people who care about webcam resolutions’, but the difference is noticeable in video calls and frankly a 1080p camera isn’t exactly an ultra-premium feature; I’ve seen them on cheaper laptops than this. It does at least have IR functionality for supporting face logins with Windows Hello, which is a good inclusion.

Setting my webcam beef aside, this truly is one sleek-looking laptop. The keyboard is entirely flush with the internal deck of the chassis, with no rounding at the edges of the keys, which creates a futuristic effect and also makes typing quite comfortable. The keys are backlit by uniform white LEDs, and the function keys are - just as we saw in the 2022 original - replaced by a nifty touch bar with illuminated icons that change when you hold down the function key.

The overall design is near-identical to the 2022 model, in fact - and for the most part, that’s not a bad thing. It’s minimalist in the best possible way, with tiny bezels around the touchscreen and a clean brushed silver exterior. The power button (which doubles as a fingerprint scanner) nestles in the corner of the keyboard.

The touchpad is effectively invisible, occupying the center of the flat palm rest panel beneath the keyboard but with no indication of where it starts and ends. I understand the look that Dell was going for here, but even the slightest ridge in the plastic would have prevented this from becoming an immediate accessibility issue for certain users, like those with sight-related disabilities (a problem likely shared by the non-tactile function key touch bar). I personally found the touchpad very responsive, however, with a subtle but noticeable click to it.

One design decision that should’ve been left in 2022 is the port selection: literally just two USB-C ports. That’s all you get; and the XPS 13 Plus charges via USB-C too, so you’re down to just a single port when plugged in. While I primarily blame the MacBook Air for this irritating trend among premium notebooks in recent years, it’s depressing to see Dell following in Apple’s footsteps.

Mercifully, there is a pair of USB-C adapters (one for USB-A and one for a headphone jack) included in the box, and the two ports do support Thunderbolt 4 so you’ll get excellent transfer speeds, but I fail to see how it was impossible to include at least a native 3.5mm jack in the chassis here. Not everyone owns AirPods, Dell.

Lastly, I have to talk about the display. This 3.5K panel (which uses an esoteric resolution of 3456 x 2160) isn’t even the highest-spec screen you can get on the XPS 13 Plus, and yet it’s still a genuinely beautiful display. Colors pop, blacks are dark and deep, and the maximum brightness is sufficient for it to be used in brightly lit environments without any issues. It’s definitely the laptop’s standout feature.

• Design score: 4 / 5

Dell XPS 13 Plus (2023): Performance

• Core i7-1360P offers a decent boost on the previous model’s performance
• General speed and responsiveness is good
• Capable of some light gaming

Naturally, my frame of reference for this review’s performance testing process was the set of results recorded in our review of last year’s XPS 13 Plus - and while we’ve switched up our selection of benchmarks since then, the points of comparison I could make were… confusing.

In synthetic graphical tests, the integrated inside this review unit performed near-identically to the previous model. Meanwhile, our practical gaming test saw a fairly significant improvement - to the point where I also downloaded Valorant and found that it ran well enough to play, so a spot of casual gaming in less resource-intensive titles is definitely an option here.

Both synthetic and real-world CPU benchmarks, however, showed a more marked increase in performance of roughly 20-30% across both single-core and multi-core workloads. The i7-1360P is a solid mobile processor which I found delivered very consistent performance even when I put it to the test by opening two dozen Chrome tabs and trying to watch a YouTube video.

As I learned from that process, however, the speakers on this laptop are fairly underwhelming. They’re not exactly dreadful, and most compact notebooks like this share a similar weakness, but there’s a noticeable lack of bass and high notes sound a little scratchy at maximum volume.

Data transfers are relatively snappy thanks to the NVMe SSD, and overall system responsiveness is good. As per the Intel Evo branding, the boot and wake times are near-instantaneous, which is great. I also found that it didn’t get too warm (nor the fans too noisy) even after a good hour of benchmarking - a relief, given that we noted some thermal issues in our review of the 2022 model.

Though it’s far from a cheap laptop, I was very satisfied with the price-to-performance ratio of the XPS 13 Plus. The only area it’s really likely to struggle in is running 3D rendering or scientific modeling software, due to the lack of GPU. For virtually everything else, though - office work, web browsing, low-intensity gaming, and even a bit of Netflix in bed - this ultrabook performs much better than its originator.

• Performance score: 4 / 5

Dell XPS 13 Plus (2023): Battery

• Battery life is decidedly underwhelming
• Less than seven hours of medium intensity use
• Charges fast

This is the one area where the XPS 13 Plus falls short of its predecessor. In our standard internet use battery test with Wi-Fi on, the laptop lasted for 6 hours and 20 minutes on a full charge.

For reference, that’s less than virtually every other flagship laptop brand in this weight class right now. It’s less than half the latest 13-inch MacBook Air, and even less than the previous  M1 MacBook Air. In an actual day using the XPS 13 to do my everyday work for TechRadar, it did manage to last longer, going comfortably from 9AM to 6PM with a break for lunch - though I did dip below 20% and caused an alarmed Windows 11 to switch on Battery Saver.

It’s not quite good enough considering the competition, and I noted that the battery drained faster the more you tried to do. This just isn’t a laptop you can leave in your bag overnight without charging it and expect to take to work the next day. At least it charges pretty fast thanks to Thunderbolt 4 power delivery.

• Battery score: 2.5 / 5

Should you buy the Dell XPS 13 Plus (2023)?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Dell XPS 13 Plus (2023): Also consider

If the Dell XPS 13 Plus (2023) has you considering other options, here are two more laptops to consider...

How I tested the Dell XPS 13 Plus (2023)

• Used at home and at the office
• Tested productivity work, web browsing, gaming
• Charged overnight before using it all day on battery power

I had less time than I'd typically like to test out the Dell XPS 13 Plus (2023), so I aimed to be as efficient as possible. First, I tested its performance by running general productivity tasks and running our benchmarking software selection in the TechRadar office. Then I took it home, charged it overnight, and used it to replace my desktop PC as I worked from home.

Naturally, my job involves a lot of typing - perfect for getting acquainted with this laptop's lovely keyboard. But my everyday work doesn't involve doing much exciting with my device of choice, so I was sure to dedicate some time in the evening to playing some games on the XPS 13 Plus and finally watching an episode of The Witcher on it before bed.

We pride ourselves on our independence and our rigorous review-testing process, offering long-term attention to the products we review and making sure our reviews are updated and maintained - regardless of when a device was released, if you can still buy it, it's on our radar.

Read more about how we test

First reviewed August 2023

Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (2023): One-minute review

I could spend a lot of time talking about how eco-friendly the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED is. I could talk extensively about how for something that even looks and feels unique, its one-of-a-kind lid is surprisingly made using an “environmentally low-impact method” . Or, I could spend some time on how the recyclable packaging can be repurposed into a laptop stand.

But, the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (2023) is more than a gimmick aimed at those worried about climate change. It’s actually a fantastic computer worthy of your attention even if all you care about is getting something portable yet powerful. It may be among the best laptops of the year. It certainly belongs among the best Ultrabooks.

Just like most of the top Ultrabooks out there, the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED delivers in the portability department. It’s small enough that I didn’t believe it was a 13-inch computer when I first opened it up. It’s fairly lightweight as well, though it does have some heft to it compared to other Ultrabooks. And, within this small chassis, Asus has somehow managed to pack quite a powerful punch. No easy task considering there’s not a dedicated GPU here. 

As is typical with Ultrabooks, unfortunately, the speakers are thin and lacklustre. That trackpad can also be a little too sensitive – though that’s a bit of a nitpick. And, though Asus is known for its affordability, the Zenbook S 13 OLED (2023) is not cheap, equipped with a higher price tag than the base 13-inch MacBook Pro.

But, considering everything that this little demon can do, it’s worth it.

Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (2023): Price & availability

• How much does it cost? $1,399.99 /  £1,499.99 / AU$2,099.00
• When is it available? Available now
• Where can you get it? Available in the US and Australia

The current configuration of the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (2023) is pricey, coming in at $1,399.99 / £1,499.99 / AU$2,099.00. However, it’s worth the price, even if it’s higher than we might expect from a company like Asus that balances performance with value.

A base model of the 13-inch MacBook Pro with an M2 chip goes for $1,299 / £1,299 / AU$1,999. That configuration does come with 8GB to the Asus’ 32GB and updating the Macbook to its highest level of available RAM (24GB) adds an additional $400 / £400 to that price tag. With that in mind, the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED's premium price tag seems pretty fair.

That said, there are more affordable OLED laptops out there. Just consider the Acer Swift 3 OLED, which starts as low as $930 / around £808 / AU$1,382. Of course, that comes with a 12th-gen i5 and 8GB of RAM but you still get a gorgeous OLED display. Plus, as much power as the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED has, it’s still not really a gaming laptop so most people comparing these two laptops probably won’t care as much about the difference in performance.

At the time of writing, the review version of the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (2023), specifically the model # UX5304VA, with its Intel Core 13th-gen i7 and 32GB of RAM is not available in the UK. However, it should be available on the Asus eShop at the end of June and on Curry’s in early July.

Also of note, though the landing page for the configuration reviewed here lists different configurations, only the one reviewed here seems to be available. Hopefully, that will change soon.

• Value: 4 / 5

Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (2023): Specs

The Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (2023) comes in just one configuration at the moment, though that might change in time.

Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (2023): Design

• Unique laptop lid is tip of the eco-friendly iceberg
• 25% thinner than its predecessor
• Great keyboard and solid if sensitive trackpad

Though there are a lot of eco-friendly aspects to this laptop, I’ll just touch on a few. The laptop lid, which corresponds with one of two colorways: Basalt Gray and Ponder Blue, is probably the most visible aspect of the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (2023)’s more sustainable approach. Instead of a brushed aluminum lid that’s become de rigueur since Apple started the trend, the one protecting this computer is made of plasma ceramic aluminum, which uses a lower-impact production method and is recyclable at the end of the laptop’s lifetime.

The lid is unique beyond just its line-stricken appearance and lower carbon footprint. Not only does it come in a color I’m not used to seeing on a laptop – the model Asus sent for review was in Basalt Gray – but the texture is a bit rougher, almost like it’s made of rock.

A much less conspicuous element of the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (2023)’s sustainability is courtesy of its size. Not only is it 25% smaller than its predecessor but its internals are custom-made to take up less space and use fewer materials. Plus, when closed, it’s less than half an inch thick. You can probably attribute its light weight of 2.20lbs / 1kg to its thoughtful construction.

Beyond these sustainability-related design choices, there’s plenty else to get excited about. When you open the lid, the bottom actually raises the bottom chassis for more ergonomic access to the keyboard. And, though this isn’t a 2-in-1, the hinge has a 180-degree articulation so that you can lay it flat showing off that 13.3-inch OLED panel in a group setting. Just don’t do it outside as there is a bit of glare to that screen.

The port selection is another point in the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (2023)’s favor as it’s pretty robust for an Ultrabook, coming with two USB-C ports, an HDMI port, and a USB-A port, not to mention a headphone jack. That’s pretty impressive considering this laptop’s size. If there’s anything to complain about here, it’s the fact that both USB-C ports are on the same side.

With a 1.1mm travel, I found the keyboard to also be well thought out. If you’re coming from the world of mechanical and gaming keyboards, you’ll have to adjust as you won’t have the amount of travel you’re used to. However, the keyboard is fast and accurate with enough space between the keys that I don’t typically make many mistakes when using it.

The trackpad is a little less stellar, though still quite good. What I mean by that is that it’s plenty wide with accurate tracking, but it can be a little too sensitive. I’ve found myself accidentally highlighting some text because my left hand was a little too close to that trackpad while I was navigating it with my right. It’s far from a dealbreaker, but it’s worth being aware of.

• Design: 4.5 / 5

Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (2023): Performance

• Gorgeous OLED screen
• Lots of power for an Ultrabook
• Speakers are thin

Using the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (2023) is a pleasure. As it’s in the name, let’s start with that 13.3-inch gorgeous OLED screen. Not only is it a higher resolution (2880 x 1800) with a 16:10 aspect ratio for a little extra screen real estate, but it has 550 nits of brightness as well as Vesa Certified Display HDR True Black 500. 

Whether I’m watching Wednesday on Netflix, looking up travel photos, or trying to play a game, everything looks crisp and vibrant. Its 100% DCI-P3 color gamut is also to thank for that, which is wide enough for some light photo editing. A quick note on that HDR… it’s not quite that game-changing level of HDR but it looks good. And, unlike some basic versions, you won’t get that washed-out effect when turning it on.

With such a fantastic display, the internals better be able to keep up - and in this little powerhouse, they certainly can. A 13th-gen Intel Core i7 and 32GB of RAM with Intel Xe graphics is robust enough for anyone that doesn’t consider themselves a capital G Gamer. I was even able to run some games on the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED. CS:GO ran almost flawlessly with only a dropped frame here or there, while GTA IV was able to run on medium graphics. I did experience enough stuttering to find that this is the laptop’s upper limits. However, considering there’s no discrete graphics card, that’s pretty impressive. If you like to do some light gaming while traveling, this machine can definitely do that.

For a more real-world example, I was able to open 20 different tabs on Google Chrome, five of them streaming from Youtube or Netflix. I had no trouble going to any tab including the streaming ones to either click on a link or fast forward or rewind with immediate results.

As great as the performance of the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (2023) is, its speakers are not quite at the same level. That’s not that much of a surprise as most really, really thin laptops have crappy speakers. I have heard much worse and the speakers are serviceable – Harman Kardon did what they could do, but they’re relatively thin with no low-end. At least there’s some stereo separation for when you’re watching a movie.

The camera, which can do a lot digitally via the MyAsus app such as background blur and auto zoom, is a mostly quality inclusion. It has a 1080p resolution, IR and Hello Windows capability for sharp, clear images. However, it’s not the best at tracking as I do experience plenty of ghosting with any sudden or large movements. 

Speaking of the MyAsus app, there’s a lot of fine-tuning available here from fan and battery settings to audio modes and adjustments for both the camera and the mic. If you decide to go with this little computer, don’t ignore the app.

• Performance: 4.5 / 5

Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (2023): Battery life

• Gets 12 out of 14 hours of advertised battery life
• Boots right up when plugged in on 0%

Considering that the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (2023) is supposed to have a 14-hour battery life, the fact that the PCMark 10 Battery Life ran the battery down after 12 hours and 7 minutes means it doesn’t quite hit the advertised mark. That said, 12 hours is still very, very good and most computers outside of a MacBook Pro, which makes it to 15, struggle to get to that point. The aforementioned Acer Swift 3 OLED only makes it to six and half hours while another great contender among the Ultrabooks, the Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8, clocks in at just over ten hours.

Outside of using a Benchmark test, the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (2023), which I used regularly for a week, rarely needed a charge. It also didn’t seem to lose charge when sitting closed and idle as I’ve seen some laptops do. The only time the battery life was nearly empty was during that Benchmark test. Speaking of, once the battery was completely depleted, I plugged the laptop in and it booted up right away – no need for it to regain some battery.

• Battery life: 4.5 / 5

Should you buy the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (2023)?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED: Also consider

If our Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED review has you considering other options, here are two more laptops to consider...  

How I tested the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED

• I tested for a week
• I used it as my everyday computer as well as did some gaming
• I tested the various aspects and features

Having used the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED for a week as an everyday computer, I did plenty of work on it including writing up articles (including this one). I downloaded and played some games that I thought might be within its capabilities, namely CS:GO and GTA IV. I also played some streaming videos, including Netflix’s Wednesday, to get a better sense of the screen, in particular its colors and HDR.

After a week of using this laptop, it’s clear that it’s a contender in the Ultrabook category and that it’s for anyone who might gravitate towards something thin and light, namely laptops from Apple or Dell’s XPS line.

I’ve spent the last few years reviewing tech gear for gaming and otherwise, where I’ve gotten a feel for what to look for and how to put a piece of kit through its paces to see whether it’s worth the recommendation. And, I’ve spent even longer playing computer games so I have an understanding of what gamers look for to get the most out of their titles.

First reviewed May 2023

Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 14-inch: Two-minute review

I’ll be upfront about this: I’m not an entirely unbiased man when it comes to laptops. I reviewed the previous-generation Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro back in 2022, and I adored it - so I was pretty excited to get my hands on the new model. Don’t play favorites, I told myself when it arrived. Be impartial, I thought as I tore open the box.

Turns out, I didn’t need to worry. The Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 14-inch is a wonderful little laptop, make no mistake, but it doesn’t reach quite the same heights as its predecessor - and I didn’t find myself nearly as enthralled as I had been last time around. It’s still one of the best ultrabooks money can buy right now, though, and its $1,449 / £1,349 price tag is a lot more attractive than that of the 14-inch MacBook Pro.

This is still a premium product, however, and it makes that immediately clear when you fire it up. The 3K AMOLED display is absolutely stunning, with excellent maximum brightness, deep contrast, and crystal-clear colors. It’s one of the best laptop displays I’ve seen in a while, frankly.

The overall design of the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro shouts ‘premium’, in truth. The brushed alloy exterior is clean and minimalist, with only the Samsung logo engraved in reflective metal on the lid. Opening it up, we’ve got a softly backlit keyboard and a pleasingly large trackpad.

To put it simply, the Book3 Pro just feels good to use. The keyboard is comfortable to type on, and the video-call experience is shockingly good thanks to a Full HD webcam and an impressive set of speakers and mic for such a compact laptop. It’s a bit heavier than the Book2 Pro was, but it does feel more durable and is not so weighty that it would be cumbersome to carry around with you.

It wasn’t until I started to put the Galaxy Book3 Pro through its paces that the facade began to crack a little. My review unit packs a 13th-gen Intel Core i5 processor, which itself performs great, but it’s backed up by just 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. For comparison, the similarly-priced M2 MacBook Air has 16GB of unified memory. 8GB is fine but means that this Book3 Pro could struggle with certain workloads (or if you like to have a lot of programs open at once).

The battery life also wasn’t particularly impressive, but I’ll get into that later. Luckily, the Galaxy Book3 Pro is also available in higher-powered configurations, which I’ll break down properly when I discuss the specs further down. Despite these small drawbacks, I still feel confident saying that the Book3 Pro is a strong choice of productivity laptop for office-bound professionals, able to hang with the best laptops, and offer great bang for your buck.

Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 14-inch review: Price and availability

• Starts at $1,499 / £1,349 / around AU$2,225
• Variety of models configurable on the Samsung website
• Not available in Australia at time of writing

While the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro obviously isn’t going to make it onto our best cheap laptops list, it’s still reasonably good value for money - which was a bit surprising, given that it looks and feels like such a premium piece of hardware. Those cutting-edge 13th Gen Intel CPUs aren’t cheap.

The configurations vary a lot from region to region, and the Galaxy Book3 line isn’t currently available in Oceania (sorry Aussies), but the starting price is $1,499 / £1,349 / around AU$2,225 and goes up from there. It’s worth noting that there’s no Intel Core i5 version available in the US right now as far as I could see, hence the lower UK pricing; that $1,499 price tag is for the base i7 model.

Speaking of that base model, it’s on sale in the US at the time of writing for just $949.99 - an absolute steal for this laptop, if I do so say so myself. If you buy one new from Samsung, it comes bundled with a variety of software trials, including a year of Microsoft 365 and two months of Adobe Lightroom.

• Price score: 4 / 5

Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 14-inch review: Specs

As mentioned above, there are many configurations of the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro, which can be customized (to some degree) on Samsung's website. I've included spec lists for both my 14-inch i5 review model and the 16-inch i7 version below, for comparison, but bear in mind that other elements can be tweaked and screen size does not determine the processor.

The SSD is the main customizable element, which can be configured up to 1TB depending on your personal requirements. 5G LTE capabilities are also available on select models in select regions.

Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 14-inch review: Design

• Full metal chassis, but still thin
• Keyboard and touchpad are good
• Decent port selection for a compact ultrabook

I’ve never had many complaints about the rebooted Samsung Galaxy Book line’s physical designs, and that hasn’t changed here: the Galaxy Book3 Pro looks fantastic and proves itself as a carefully-crafted piece of hardware at almost every turn.

The exterior chassis is, like previous Book Pro models, entirely made of brushed metal. This means it’s a little weightier than some ultrabooks at 1.17kg (slightly heavier than the 15.6-inch Book2 Pro, actually), but it also feels very durable and is still light enough to easily carry around with you.

The AMOLED display is available in 14- and 16-inch variants (ours is the 14-inch model), a shift from previous Book Pro laptops’ 13.3- and 15.6-inch screens. It’s got that sought-after 16:10 aspect ratio that is quickly becoming a staple of productivity notebooks, allowing you to fit more onto your screen when scrolling through web pages or documents. The resolution has also been cranked up to 3K for this model, and it makes a world of difference when watching video content.

As I mentioned higher up, the AMOLED screen is just gorgeous, packing 400 nits of brightness and fantastic color density. OLED panels are becoming a more common sight in ultrabooks and no longer the domain of prohibitively expensive hardware - as previously evidenced by the excellent Acer Swift 3 OLED.

The LED-backlit keys are nice and wide with good spacing, making the keyboard very comfortable for extended typing sessions. The 16-inch version of the Galaxy Book3 Pro also packs a numpad, which is absent in this model, but that’s fine - trying to cram in more keys would’ve made things crowded. The touchpad is similarly generous; in fact, it’s huge for a 14-inch laptop, with a decently firm click. There’s little to no flex in the chassis when using the keyboard and touchpad.

Considering the compact nature of the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 14-inch, it manages to pack plenty of physical ports onto its left and right edges. We’ve got two Thunderbolt 4-enabled USB-C ports along with a single USB-A, so it already beats the MacBook Air in my eyes - I’m not ready to give up conventional USB just yet, thank you very much.

These are joined by a headphone jack, HDMI port for connecting a second monitor, and a MicroSD card reader - the latter of which is slowly disappearing from modern laptops, so it’s nice to see it here. The Galaxy Book3 Pro charges via either of the Thunderbolt 4 ports, so bear in mind that you’ll only have one USB-C available when plugged in.

In terms of security features, Samsung hasn’t adopted the increasingly popular IR camera for Windows Hello logins using facial recognition, but there is a fingerprint scanner built into the power button. The webcam used here is a solid 1080p offering, great for video calls, and the microphone and dual Dolby speakers are surprisingly good for such a small laptop.

Ultimately, I have very little to criticize when it comes to the design of the Book3 Pro. The screen hinge perhaps isn’t as sturdy as I’d like, with a bit of wobble when adjusting the angle, but this was a problem shared by its predecessor. The metal finish is also a bit of a fingerprint magnet, but it’s nothing a microfiber cloth wouldn’t fix. Everyone’s tastes are different, but it’s hard to deny that this is one of the best-looking ultrabooks around right now.

• Design score: 5 / 5

Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 14-inch review: Performance

• 13th-gen Intel CPU is powerful
• Weaker in gaming and content creation
• Galaxy Ecosystem is good for Samsung fans, bad for everyone else

After I finished benchmarking the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro, I did sit and wonder if it truly deserves the ‘Pro’ moniker. Professional ultrabooks can be different things to different people, sure. But in my experience, hardware bearing the ‘Pro’ title is generally well-suited for professional content creation, and that’s not the case here.

First things first: the Intel Core i5-1340P at the heart of this device is powerful. Intel’s 13th Gen laptop CPUs can pull their weight, with a split-core architecture that lets ‘performance’ cores handle primary processing while ‘efficiency’ cores take care of background tasks.

Raw CPU performance is strong across the board in office workloads, though not quite on the same level as the M2 Pro chip found in the (admittedly much more expensive) new MacBook Pro. Since this laptop bears the Intel ‘Evo’ badge, it wakes up from sleep near-instantaneously, letting you open the lid and get straight back to business.

Graphical performance doesn’t hold up to the same scrutiny, though. While Apple’s M2 silicon packs a very capable integrated GPU, the Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics found here simply aren’t as strong, hampering the Galaxy Book3 Pro in creative workloads such as 3D rendering or animation.

Gaming isn’t great, either. Playing Sid Meier's Civilization VI at the native 1800p resolution gave us a framerate of less than 30fps - and that’s a relatively undemanding game. Don’t expect to be doing anything more than the most casual gaming on this laptop. Valorant, a game specifically built to be played on low-end hardware, did secure more than 30fps but wasn’t exactly running ultra-smoothly.

Still, if ‘Pro’ means ‘office work’ to you, that’s not a problem: the i5-1340P can comfortably handle everyday computing tasks without breaking a sweat, with solid scores in the GeekBench and CrossMark tests. I imagine the i7-1360P found in the standard US configurations has a bit more grunt, however - and the aforementioned limiting of the i5 model to 8GB of RAM is a downer.

The Intel CPU can do a lot with a little, as it turns out, but opening 20+ Chrome tabs while running Spotify and Slack in the background (as I often do while working) did result in a little bit of latency when switching between programs. 16GB of RAM would’ve been nice to see here, although it’s consistent with previous models in the Galaxy Book Pro line. It’s far from ruinous but something to bear in mind if you plan on running lots of software simultaneously.

The fans also kick in noticeably quite often, but they’re thankfully not too noisy. My trusty old 2020 HP Spectre x360 probably spins up its fans less frequently than the Book3 Pro, though I do have to admit that it also tends to get quite a bit warmer than this laptop. Still, if you want something that will always run completely silent, consider the fanless MacBook Air instead.

Finally, there’s a bunch of pre-loaded software designed to be used within the ‘Galaxy Ecosystem’ - that’s a connected network of any other Samsung Galaxy hardware you have. So if you’ve got a pair of Galaxy Buds 2 or sprung for the new Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, know that you’ll have advanced interactivity between your devices close to the level offered by Apple’s own competing ecosystem. But if you don’t, those programs may as well be bloatware.

• Performance score: 3.5 / 5

Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 14-inch review: Battery life

• Can just about last a full work day
• Doesn’t come close to the MacBook Air or Pro
• Charges fast and charger is compact

The Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro’s battery life left me feeling thoroughly whelmed. It’s fine. It’s not great, and it really should be better in a third-generation AMOLED laptop, but it’s good enough. You’ll get between 6 and 8 hours of longevity for general use, more if you use Windows 11’s built-in eco features to stretch the battery life.

When compared to the likes of Apple’s latest MacBooks, it doesn’t even come close. Granted, those are heavier devices with bigger batteries and custom-tuned CPUs, but still: you can get better battery life for the same price elsewhere. While I don’t have the testing stats to properly comment on this, it’s possible that the bigger 16-inch model has a superior battery, although it also has a larger display to power.

The good news is that the Galaxy Book3 Pro does charge very fast via its Thunderbolt 4 ports, and the charger itself is a simple plug and cable - no chunky power brick to be found here, which means carrying the charger with you to top up your battery on the go is no trouble.

• Battery life: 3.5 / 5

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 14-inch?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 14-inch review: Also consider

If our Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 14-inch review has you considering other options, here are two more laptops to consider...  

How I tested the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 14-inch

• Used for a week's everyday work
• Watched Netflix in bed and on the couch
• Took with me on a short trip

As has become my go-to approach for reviewing an ultrabook, I simply replaced my usual desktop PC and laptop with the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 14-inch for a few days.

This included using it for my day-to-day work (which is mostly composed of internet research, emails, and writing in Google Docs) as well as using it for video meetings and watching Netflix in bed in the evenings. For anyone wondering, I'm currently watching the rather excellent Korean fantasy drama Alchemy of Souls, which looked fantastic on the Book3 Pro's AMOLED screen.

I also took the Galaxy Book3 Pro with me for a day out to a nearby town, where it remained in my backpack until I found a dog-friendly cafe to stop for lunch and do a bit of personal work. While it's a little heavier than its precursor, it's still comfortably light enough that I barely noticed it was in my bag while walking my rescue pooch Lucy around town.

Read more about how we test

First reviewed April 2023

Acer Swift Edge: Two-minute review

Oh boy, this one’s exciting. The Acer Swift Edge is a laptop we’ve been waiting to review for a while now. It’s not actually that often that a laptop manufacturer releases an entirely new product; we’re frequently found comparing new models to their predecessors, be it the latest Dell Inspiron laptop or one of Lenovo’s new IdeaPads.

But lo and behold the: Swift Edge, a new move for Acer’s long-running line of Swift laptops. What makes the Edge different? Well, it sets a new bar for Acer’s premium products, and whatever anyone says, it’s very clearly designed to be a competitor to the Apple MacBook line.

Sure, Acer hasn’t claimed this directly in any of its promotional material for the new laptop, but come on - the new chassis is ultra-thin, made of a reinforced aluminum alloy that allows the casing to be lighter than previous Swift laptops without sacrificing durability. From there, we’ve got a glorious 16-inch 4K OLED display and a powerful new AMD Ryzen CPU powering it. We know from some behind-closed-doors conversations with Acer that at one point during development, the team's placeholder name for the Edge was the ‘Swift Air’. Sound familiar?

Much like Apple’s now-omnipresent MacBooks, the Swift Edge isn’t aimed at one particular group of potential customers. On its website, Acer touts it as ‘designed for productivity, creativity, and security’, a deliberately broad statement that highlights the flexibility of the Edge; its super-sleek design makes it as portable as a laptop this size gets, and it’s got something to please just about every type of user.

Want to edit photos or create digital art? The stunning color reproduction and contrast of the OLED screen have got you covered. Need number-crunching power for multitasking? It’s got 16GB of RAM and a high-speed processor for you. Got video meetings you need to attend on the go? A 1080p webcam and AI-assisted background noise reduction for the microphone will sort you out.

Most ultrabooks are smaller than the Swift Edge; the 16-inch display mounted atop this slender laptop is immediately reminiscent of the 16-inch MacBook Pro. In fact, only one of the laptops featured in our best ultrabooks ranking has a bigger screen – most cap out at 15.6 inches.

In our time with the Acer Swift Edge, we really grew to love it despite a few minor foibles. Even considering the missteps Acer has made here (including a just-average battery life and an odd choice of keyboard layout), this is an exceptionally strong showing for a new breed of Swift laptop, and we can’t wait to see how Acer improves on it next time around.

Acer Swift Edge: Price and availability

• Version tested priced at $1,499 (£1,399, about AU$2,175)
• Currently only one version available
• Regional availability may be limited outside the US and UK

While the Acer Swift Edge’s asking price of $1,499 (£1,399, about AU$2,175) isn’t cheap, it’s not ridiculous compared to similar premium ultrabooks on the market right now. The 16-inch MacBook Pro starts far beyond it at $2,499 - even the 2020 M1 model of the MacBook Air still costs $999 to buy new from Apple. Our current favorite ultrabook, the Dell XPS 15, costs a very similar $1,449 for the basic model.

Now, we’re not going to give Acer a massive round of applause here, because while the Swift Edge is certainly decent value for money, it’s still a very expensive product that will be out of reach for a lot of consumers.

We can’t deny that you do get quite a bit for your money here, though, from the sleek chassis to the incredible screen and a good selection of physical ports. We also strongly approve of Acer only making one single model of the Swift Edge (at least, for the initial release). There aren’t dozens of barely-distinguishable variants to be found here: Acer has taken a leaf out of the Apple playbook and kept things as simple as possible. What you see is what you get. Checking out the latest Acer promo codes could help keep costs down too.

• Value: 4.5 / 5

Acer Swift Edge: Design

• Sleek but durable chassis
• Large, responsive trackpad
• Keyboard is too small

When we first saw this laptop at an Acer press briefing, we were instantly intrigued. A 16-inch laptop that weighs less than that 13.3-inch MacBook Air? Yes, the Swift Edge is almost absurdly lightweight, to the point where we found ourselves reflexively using too much force to pick it up at first. It’s almost unsettling quite how light it feels in the hand.

Despite the thin-and-light design, though, the metal chassis is impressively durable and doesn’t pick up fingerprints as badly as we’d feared it would. Our review unit came in a shiny black finish, but there’s also a very appealing pearlescent white version available - the only variation you’ll find among Swift Edge models. Both look great, with an unassuming Acer logo embossed in silver on the lid.

Crack open that lid, and the flawless facade starts to crack a little. For starters, the hinge doesn’t feel especially robust, with a bit too much wobble for our liking. But it’s the keyboard that really irked us; it’s too damn small! Considering the 16-inch screen, there’s plenty of prime real estate on the lower half of the Swift Edge, but Acer has crammed in a keyboard with no Numpad despite more than an inch of space going unused on either side.

Some laptops use this space for speaker grilles, but on the Edge the grille is situated above the keyboard instead. So why, Acer, are my left-Shift and Ctrl keys so darn tiny? It’s all the more baffling when you consider that the right-Shift and Enter keys are basically normal size. Using the laptop for work, it took us several hours of adjustment before we felt we could type normally. There’s also a little too much flex in the center of the keyboard, but this was only noticeable on very firm keypresses.

Fortunately, the trackpad doesn’t have the same issues as the keyboard. We’ve got a nice wide rectangle here that offers excellent responsiveness with a pleasingly tactile click. The glassy material lets your finger glide effortlessly across its surface and features the same antimicrobial coating featured in other premium Acer laptops.

• Design: 4 / 5

Acer Swift Edge: Features

• Gorgeous 4K OLED display
• Plenty of ports (but no Thunderbolt 4)
• Webcam and mic are great but speakers aren’t too impressive

Damn, that screen is just beautiful. Very few laptops have the visual chops to go toe-to-toe with the Acer Swift Edge in this particular department: this OLED panel packs a 4K resolution (technically just above 4K thanks to the 16:10 productivity-focused aspect ratio), 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, full HDR support, and a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, plus the TÜV Rheinland Eyesafe Display Certification - meaning it’s been carefully calibrated to minimize eye strain while still preserving its gorgeous color density.

If everything we just said went straight over your head, just know this: this display is one of the best we’ve seen in a laptop, and quite possibly the best we’ve ever seen in a laptop this lightweight. Colors pop with incredible vividness while blacks are deep and sharp, and the overall brightness is excellent for use in any environment.

Beyond the screen, we’ve got a solid selection of ports for such a thin laptop; two USB-Cs and two USB-As mean you can easily connect devices or external drives, while an HDMI video out lets you hook the Swift Edge up to a second display with ease. There’s no Thunderbolt 4 support here, which is a bit of a bummer, but most users won’t notice its absence.

In terms of non-physical connectivity, we’ve got speedy 6GHz WiFi 6E and the latest Bluetooth 5.2 - both staples of any premium ultrabook these days, so it’s good to see that Acer hasn’t skimped here. There's also a fingerprint sensor for better security when logging in.

For anyone looking to use this laptop for Zoom calls, there’s an FHD webcam that provides crisp video recording with an integrated IR scanner for facial recognition logins via Windows Hello. The microphone also employs Acer’s ‘PurifiedVoice’ technology to scrub background noise from your audio input with the help of AI deep learning. Unfortunately, the speakers don’t quite live up to the rest of the package here – they’re not terrible, but we felt the audio clarity at maximum volume wasn’t very impressive. They’re fine for watching TV or YouTube videos, just don’t expect a high-end musical treat.

• Features: 4 / 5

Acer Swift Edge: Performance

• Outclassed - but only marginally - by new Intel and Apple laptops
• General performance is very good
• Fans do get a bit loud at times

We’d love to say that the Acer Swift Edge blew us away with its performance, but the AMD Ryzen 6800U at the core of this laptop doesn’t quite measure up to the latest laptop offerings from Intel and Apple.

That’s not to say it’s bad, by any means: for day-to-day work, the Edge felt quick and responsive to use, whether we were watching videos or replying to emails. The 1TB drive is speedy as heck, so transferring large files was a cinch and I never felt held back by any one component here.

In both single- and multi-core synthetic workloads, the Swift Edge underperformed very slightly when compared to the likes of Apple’s M2 chip or Intel’s 12th-gen Core i7 processors. It’s not dreadful – at this price point, we’d actually consider the performance very reasonable – but bear that in mind if you’re gunning for high performance.

The integrated Radeon graphics found on the Ryzen 6800U do their job well enough but don’t expect to be doing any heavy-duty video editing work here - if you need powerful graphical performance, you’ll need to opt for something with a dedicated video card (or a MacBook, with the M1 and M2 chips’ impressive integrated graphics cores.

Still, we were relatively impressed with how the Radeon graphics performed in games, with most modern titles playable at 30+fps provided you dropped the resolution down to FHD (well, technically 1200p due to that display aspect ratio) and lowered the graphical settings. It’s not going to give any bonafide gaming laptops a run for their money, but for a bit of casual gaming, the Swift Edge can manage just fine - a testament to AMD’s continued insistence that it’s the brand of choice for gamers.

Our only major criticism here is that the Edge’s fans are a tad noisy. They don’t run constantly, but the super-slim chassis means that there’s limited space for thermal solutions inside the casing, so the fans do kick in during more demanding tasks and have a distinctly perceptible whine - something you can avoid entirely with the fanless MacBook Air.

• Performance: 4 / 5

Acer Swift Edge: Battery life

• Can’t quite crack the 10-hour mark
• Bright screen is a drain on the battery
• Included charger is pleasingly compact

The battery life of the Acer Swift Edge is… well, it’s fine. It’s not amazing – plenty of lightweight notebooks like this have managed to make it past 10 hours of continuous use in our tests, after all – but it’s not exactly terrible either. It’ll last long enough for you to get a day’s work done, provided you don’t have that OLED display cranked up to maximum brightness.

We’d like to take a moment here to focus on something related to the battery: the charger. As per new EU legislation, devices in Europe will be required to adopt USB-C as a universal connection standard starting in 2024, with some other countries (like India) following suit. Naturally, international tech manufacturers won’t be making unique non-USB-C models of their products for regions outside the EU, so Acer has made a head start on the new regulations by making USB-C the charging standard for the Swift Edge.

That means no weird proprietary charging port, and a nice compact USB-C charger with no clunky adapter brick, which will also be able to charge other devices – like a phone, a Nintendo Switch, or basically anything that uses a USB-C port for charging. We’re sure to see more of this in the future, but it doesn’t make it any less great to see right now!

• Battery Life: 4 / 5

Should you buy an Acer Swift Edge?

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Acer Swift Edge: Report card

• First reviewed January 2023

How We Test

We pride ourselves on our independence and our rigorous review-testing process, offering up long-term attention to the products we review and making sure our reviews are updated and maintained - regardless of when a device was released, if you can still buy it, it's on our radar.

Read more about how we test

Asus Zenbook Pro 15 Flip OLED: Two minute review

The Asus Zenbook Pro 15 Flip OLED is part of the Zenbook line of Ultrabooks from Asus. And unlike many other Ultrabooks and 2-in-1 laptops, this particular series is known for its balance between quality and surprising affordability. This model in particular is, simply put, one of the best laptops we’ve ever laid our hands on.

It’s near-perfect in almost every category, from the ergonomic design of the keyboard and mouse that makes typing incredibly comfortable and typo-free, to the gorgeous OLED screen that displays any game or movie with beautiful clarity, to the slim form that still manages to have a well-developed ventilation system. Its port selection is great and it has a solid sound system too. 

Not to mention that its performance is top-notch, outstripping most of its other Ultrabook competitors including the Asus ZenBook 13X OLED Space Ed. on the benchmarks. This is a laptop that not only can handle any sort of productivity task without issue — even multiple YouTube tabs playing videos simultaneously — but can also play most low-end and mid-range video games.

This is an Ultrabook that excels at what it does and looks sexy while doing it too. The dark blue color it comes in is gorgeous, the white backlight on the keyboards is not only practical for late-night typing but makes the dark color pop, and its slender form factor gives it a lightweight and portability that doesn’t sacrifice ventilation, port selection, and screen size. At first glance, it's perhaps one of the best laptops we've reviewed in ages.

In fact, the only real criticism we have is the webcam which, despite being HD, isn’t particularly impressive. Visual quality largely depends on the lighting of whatever room you’re in and a slightly subpar lighting setup dramatically alters the quality of your image during a conference call. It’s not the worst webcam out there but it falls in line with the common trend of laptops sacrificing picture quality for thinner bezels. It’s a shame, as this is an issue that would affect more people due to remote work being so ubiquitous in our current work life.

Currently, its price is quite affordable, with it being between $1,400-$1,5000 in most US retailers. A truly impressive price point for an Ultrabook of this caliber. However, its availability is nonexistent in the UK and Australia, which sadly poses a significant price jump for those who want it badly enough to go through the hassle of importing it.

Asus Zenbook Pro 15 Flip OLED: Price and availability

• How much does it cost? About $1,450 but for different specs
• When is it out? It's out now
• Where can you get it? In the US with extremely limited availability

The pricing is difficult to track for the Asus Zenbook Pro 15 Flip OLED, as it’s only in a few US retailers currently. Amazon has it listed for a low price of $1,450 (around £1,240 / AU$2,200), which is excellent for an Ultrabook, though it’s for the Ryzen 9 5900X CPU variant with the RTX 3050 Ti graphics card and not the newer Core i7-12700H CPU and mobile Iris Xe Graphics GPU that our version is outfitted with.

As you may already have guessed, this means that at the time of this writing outside the US the availability of the Asus Zenbook Pro 15 Flip OLED is pretty much nonexistent - so regions like the UK and Australia are out of luck if they’re looking to buy. There is always the option of paying extra to import it, but shipping fees can be brutal and you'll obviously be saddled with a US-specific keyboard layout too.

• Value: 3.5 / 5

Asus Zenbook Pro 15 Flip OLED: Design

• Excellent OLED touchscreen
• Form factor is superb
• Great port selection

The Asus Zenbook Pro 15 Flip OLED is an incredibly designed Ultrabook. As much as we hate the overuse of this term when it comes to tech hardware, it’s genuinely hard to describe its svelte, sleek form factor and gorgeous Azurite Blue paint job as anything other than sexy. Its super-thin body sacrifices very little for its slender design, with a robust port selection and a ventilation system so efficient it rivals some gaming laptops.

The physical ports include one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one HDMI 2.1 TMDS port, one 3.5mm combo audio jack, one DC-in, and one Micro SD card reader. In other words, whatever needs you have for this laptop it can cover. If only it had one more Type-A port - then the port selection would be flawless.

And if you’re looking for an Ultrabook that also behaves like a 2-in-1, it folds completely in half and has one of the most responsive touchscreens on the market. This laptop works as an excellent creativity machine due to that and its 4,096 pressure levels, 5-350 g pressure tip force, 266 Hz sampling rate, 500 nit brightness, 100% DCI-P3, and a customizable color gamut. It’s too bad it doesn’t come with a stylus out of the box because the one provided by Asus for our review works exceptionally well.

The keyboard is custom-built to be a perfect writing machine. The keycaps are oh-so-slightly curved inwards, not enough to actually see but enough that it guides your fingertips to the center of each key while typing. Coupled with the larger keys and wider keyboard that even fits in a numpad and you have an Ultrabook that makes typing for hours as comfortable as possible. The touchpad is also silky-smooth, ultra-responsive, and resists fingerprints to boot.

The crown jewel of this laptop is the OLED screen which is, according to Asus, the 'world’s first 2.8K 120Hz OLED' laptop display. Despite it not being a gaming laptop, its refresh rate beats out some high-end monitors, which couples well with its phenomenal performance during our suite of benchmark tests. Not to mention the absolutely ridiculous 0.2ms response time, which once again is better than some gaming monitors out there.

Overall, the Zenbook Pro 15 Flip OLED looks and feels like a truly premium product - a great choice of business laptop for professionals who need both power and flexibility from their hardware.

• Design:  5 / 5

Asus Zenbook Pro 15 Flip OLED: Performance

• Performs exceptionally well
• Great sound quality
• Average webcam

What surprised us the most during testing was just how well and consistently it performed during our suite of benchmarks, which includes Cinebench, Geekbench, and 3DMark 10’s Timespy, Night Raid, and Fire Strike tests. The Asus Zenbook Pro 15 Flip OLED scored higher overall than most other Ultrabooks in its class - including the Microsoft Surface Laptop 5, the Acer Swift 3 OLED, and the Dell XPS 13 Plus. 

The Dell XPS 15 and Asus ZenBook 13X OLED Space Edition won in some cases, like the Geekbench single core and the 3DMark 10 Fire Strike for the ZenBook 13X, and the entire 3DMark 10 suite for the XPS 15. However, even those two laptops were tied or lost to this laptop for the rest of the tests.

In real-life applications, the Asus Zenbook Pro 15 Flip OLED performed superbly, handling a multitude of productivity tasks while conference calling and playing YouTube videos without breaking a sweat. And thanks to the ultra-wide keyboard, it was easy to type at maximum speed without errors or succumbing to the fatigue that would normally occur when squeezing our hands into a more narrow keyboard.

The sound quality is quite good as well. For one, this laptop is loud, yet each instrument and any singing voices present come through distinctly. For most people, this Ultrabook has great sound — period. However, there’s an odd and slight tinniness to its speakers that only becomes audible when you compare it to an even more superior sound system, like the one found in the Surface Laptop 5.

If we had to point out one glaring weakness, however, it would be the webcam. Despite it being 1080p, featuring automatic lighting correction, and coming through on an OLED screen, the camera quality is average thanks to small bezels hampering it. The image is quite clear in very bright lighting but anything lower than that and the quality tanks. So unless you have an excellent lighting setup, expect your visage to look pretty mediocre.

• Performance: 4.5 / 5

Asus Zenbook Pro 15 Flip OLED: Battery life

• Charges quickly
• Lasts very long for an OLED laptop
• Compatible with Thunderbolt 4 power delivery

For an OLED laptop with high screen brightness, the battery life is excellent. It lasts on average almost nine hours continuously streaming a movie, and a bit longer than that while performing daily work-related tasks. Considering that its battery is a 96WHr unit compared to other competitors having nearly half of that amount, and you can see why that number is so impressive.

And while its main charger is a standard port, it gets about 80% of its total battery charged in a little over an hour. The ZenBook Pro 15 Flip OLED also supports power delivery via a Thunderbolt 4 port, so if you purchase a compatible Thunderbolt 4 charger, it’ll be even faster.

• Battery Life:  5 / 5

Should you buy an Asus Zenbook Pro 15 Flip OLED?

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Asus Zenbook Pro 15 Flip OLED Report card

• First reviewed November 2022

How We Test

We pride ourselves on our independence and our rigorous review-testing process, offering up long-term attention to the products we review and making sure our reviews are updated and maintained - regardless of when a device was released, if you can still buy it, it's on our radar.

Read more about how we test

It hasn’t even been that long since the last Huawei MateBook X Pro, and here we are again. The Shenzen-based manufacturer only released the most recent model in early 2022, but that was still running on 11th-gen Intel chips; this version packs an upgrade to a 12th-gen Intel Core processor, as well as a new display. At just 1.6cm thick and weighing 1.26kg, it’s a portable powerhouse.

We were lucky enough to test one of these out at IFA 2022, and will update this review once we’ve received one for full testing. Our initial impressions are good, though. The MateBook X Pro (that’s the Roman numeral 10, not the letter X) is Huawei’s premium productivity laptop, and the hardware update makes it even better.

Let's not beat around the bush: some users will still harbor concerns about Huawei as a brand. The Chinese company had a reputation for cheaper but lower-quality hardware for a time, and if our press briefing was anything to go by, it’s been working hard to allay those fears. The X Pro is the perfect example of this; it doesn’t feel cheap at all, but rather a premium price of kit that anyone would be proud to use at work.

Price and availability

We don’t have full pricing details on this new version of the Huawei MateBook X Pro yet (and Huawei was quite elusive about pricing when we asked at IFA), but we can reasonably expect it to sit within the same range as the previous model, which cost €1,899 in Europe.

While Huawei laptops usually make their way to the UK and EU nations after release in the Asian market, we still don’t know if this new model will be available in the US since the 2019 trade ban on the brand enacted by former President Donald Trump. Huawei products can still be imported by American buyers, however.

In any case, the pricing puts it above the M2 MacBook Air in Europe, which is arguably its biggest competitor (though being a Windows laptop means it also goes toe to toe with a wide range of the best ultrabooks).

Design

One immediately clear point of comparison with previous models of the Huawei MateBook X Pro is the new and improved display. With its maximum brightness upgraded to 500 nits (up from 450 in the previous model), this screen is bright and almost bezel-less, with a 3:2 aspect ratio that provides more vertical space for productivity and scrolling on the web.

The aspect ratio means this 14.2-inch screen uses a somewhat esoteric 3.1K resolution, but it looks sharp whether you’re playing videos or just doing work. Huawei says it’s the best display ever used in one of its laptops, and that looks accurate to us. Of course, it’s also a touchscreen, allowing you to quickly click, scroll, and zoom with your fingertips.

You might not want to use that touchscreen too much, though, because the touchpad on this ultrabook is genuinely excellent. We’ve seen it likened to an infinity pool, which is an apt comparison; the edge closest to the user reaches all the way to the edge of the chassis with no bottom border, which makes downwards swipes feel much smoother.

The touchpad is a decent size and has a good, firm click, but more interesting are the expanded gesture controls. The edges of the pad can be swiped up and down to adjust the volume and brightness, while the top edge can be used to control video and music playback. Gentle haptic feedback makes this feel more responsive and intuitive, and there are even gestures that don’t use your fingertips; for example, double-tapping with a knuckle takes an instant screenshot.

The keyboard isn’t much different from the previous model, with subtle but even backlighting and a decent amount of travel. It feels comfortable to use, though not revolutionary. In fact, we wish there was something a bit more unique about the MateBook X Pro.

It’s good - really good, even - but it feels like Huawei is playing it safe. While other laptop big dogs are pushing the envelope with weird, cool stuff like folding displays and touchpad-integrated screens, Huawei seems content to make products that perform well but don’t really innovate. The touchpad gesture controls are nice, but don’t exactly scream ‘cutting edge tech’.

Performance

Although we won’t have full benchmark results until we can properly test the Huawei MateBook X Pro ourselves, the upgrade to a 12th-gen Alder Lake Intel processor can only be a wise move in performance terms. This model will be available with either an i5 or i7 processor, depending on your performance needs.

Intel’s new big.LITTLE core architecture means better performance in both single- and multi-core workloads, with (hopefully) reduced power draw that should help the new MateBook X Pro stretch its battery life a little further - though this model actually includes a slightly more powerful battery too, which should be good.

In our short time with it, we quickly opened a tonne of tabs to see if we could force the ultrabook to lag - no luck there, though, which was a relief. The MateBook X Pro wakes from sleep super-fast and loads programs quickly too.

This is one of Huawei’s ‘Super Devices’, which is essentially just a way of saying that it sits within Huawei’s new hardware and software ecosystem. For example if you already have a Huawei phone or tablet, you can place it atop the palm rest for instant connectivity thanks to an NFC chip within the laptop. Smart device ecosystems are quickly becoming the norm (with Apple and Samsung at the forefront) so it makes sense for Huawei to push this right now.

Early verdict

We really enjoyed our time with the new Huawei MateBook X Pro. Assuming it doesn’t somehow fall apart during our testing process - which we would be surprised to see - we’ll feel very comfortable recommending it to anyone looking for a lightweight new laptop.

At this point, our main criticism is the relative lack of physical port options. There’s four ports in total (not including the headphone jack), all four of which are USB-C; No USB-A, no SD card reader, and no video output in sight. This is likely due to the ultra-thin form factor, but it’s still annoying that it necessitates the purchase of a USB hub when it’s already going to be quite pricey.

IFA 2022 is Europe's biggest tech show, and TechRadar is in Berlin to bring you all the breaking news and announcements, plus our hands-on first impressions of the new TVs, wearables, audio devices and other gadgets on show. 

There aren’t many laptop manufacturers you could call ‘independent’ operations, and of those a huge proportion are going to be localised rebranding operations of overseas cleanskin laptop manufacturers like Clevo. So what Venom computers do – i.e build laptops from the ground up to compete with global giants like Apple or Microsoft – is rather unique. 

Building a laptop is no small task, it requires an in-depth understanding of current PC components and a considerable budget and funding allocation to get things off the ground, but no matter how hard it is for small businesses to get a foot in this market, consumers are mainly interested in getting the best product for their money. 

• The best laptops: our picks of the top notebooks on sale now

Venom BlackBook Zero 14 Phantom price and availability

With a starting price of $1,199 (£899, AU$1,999) for an 11th-gen Intel i5, 8GB of RAM and a 250GB SSD configuration, the 2022 BlackBook Zero 14 Phantom is, at least, reasonably priced… especially if you’re an existing customer with an old Venom BlackBook that you can trade-in for a $400 (AU$500) credit. 

This entry unit is still some way off the value offered by the more-powerful $999 (£999, AU$1,499) starting configuration of the Apple MacBook Air, but seeing as no other Windows based system came close to competing with the 2020 M1 Air, that’s not exactly a criticism of Venom. 

The BlackBook Zero 14 Phantom comes in a handful of configurations so you can upgrade the CPU to an 11th Gen i7, double the RAM allocation to 16GB and swap to a 1TB SSD for $1,699 (£1,249, AU$2,699). If you have a unique need set you can increase the SSD or the RAM allocations further from here, but for most a 1TB SSD will be more than enough for a work laptop. 

This is a reasonable RRP for an i7 with 16GB of RAM, roughly lining up with the cost of a Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 13.5-inch when you factor in the bigger SSD, but there are a couple of caveats that are worth pointing out. 

The first is that devices like Dell’s virtually identical late 2020 XPS 13 were out for more than a year before the BlackBook Zero 14 Phantom launched and there’s some decent discounts to be had on these devices now that Intel’s 12th Generation mobile processors are just round the corner. 

The other difference is that virtually all of the competition has a slightly higher resolution and more colour accurate screen, which makes the BlackBook Zero 14 Phantom a hard sell for anyone intending to use their laptop for visually creative work. 

Design

The BlackBook Zero 14 Phantom might buck the trend by not going after creative professionals, but it does have a clear and sensible design ethos. The spec sheet suggests that it weighs up to 1.4kg, but the BlackBook Zero 14 Phantom we tested was actually only a touch over 1kg. This means it’s still up there with the best lightweight professional Ultrabooks we’ve tested, but it’s not quite leading the way. 

The other standout features include two power supplies so you can leave one plugged in behind the desk at home or the office and leave the other in a travel bag or briefcase to get you out the door quicker. Then, for anyone who needs to reset the device from time to time, the unit comes with a handy USB recovery drive that makes it way easier to start again. 

From here the spec sheet starts to look a little more predictable with a very stock 14-inch FullHD IPS display with an sRGB colour gamut. 16:9 is still a really common form factor in all sizes, but Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Lenovo and MSI have all swapped to 4:3, 3:2 or 16:10 aspect ratios on at least their smaller form factor devices. 

This is because 16:9 is a cinematic format and while it works for media playback, your average web page or document is roughly A4 sized and takes up about three quarters of the width of a screen like the one on the BlackBook Zero 14 Phantom. While it’s not a deal breaker, today's best laptops convert that awkward width to vertical space that allows you to see more of the web page or document you’re working on. 

The BlackBook Zero 14 Phantom does sometimes range with slightly more SSD storage than other similar units, which makes it a point of difference if you particularly like storage, but you’ll still pay for it. The device we tested came with two Gen 4 PCIe SSDs that could read and write at 3500MB’s on the main drive and up to 6900/5000MB/s on the second SSD according to internal tests. It’s as fast as single drives get on 2021 laptops and you don’t see many secondary PCIe SSDs on ultraportable laptops, so it’s a valid point of difference for anyone needing to store and move large files regularly.  

The keyboard and trackpad were nice enough this time around, ditching some of the idiosyncratic layout decisions of the last iteration. Both felt comfortable over long sessions and offered everything you’d need for a work device. While the BlackBook Zero 14 Phantom didn’t offer a fingerprint sensor, it does come with Windows Hello Facial Recognition, but we suspect some business customers will be disappointed. 

The interface options were extensive against today’s USB-C only alternatives including a HDMI port, a microSD card reader, and a couple of USB Type-A ports, alongside the more common USB-C and 3.5mm audio jack ports. While the HDMI port isn’t as essential as it was a few years ago, it’s still a nice safety net to be able to plug into pretty much any display and get basic plug and play compatibility. 

The active cooling system is quiet, even when running full tilt and the heat that does radiate through the magnesium alloy chassis is confined to the  space above the keyboard, well away from your palms.

Performance

It’s been about 5 years since we looked at the last Venom BlackBook Zero 14, so the device we tested was over 4 times faster than the previous model. The BlackBook Zero 14 Phantom we were sent to test, performed within about 5 percent of our recorded average on a number of general work tasks for similar devices with Intel i7-1165G7 CPUs. 

It also showed a performance bump of up to 12 percent when in the Venom calibrated Performance power mode. It did however underperform in a number of GPU specific tests, lagging between 9 and 25 percent behind what we’d usually expect on an Intel Iris Xe Graphics processor, even when in Performance mode. 

While the GPU performance was underwhelming, the BlackBook Zero 14 Phantom’s battery life is actually excellent. In general work benchmarks the 14-inch Ultrabook gets 12 hours and 36 minutes on average, while movie playback was around 14.5 hours. The only PC we’ve seen to outlast it is the LG Gram 17. While it’s still some way off the M1 MacBook Air from Apple, it’s one of the best Windows based Ultrabooks for battery life.

Verdict

If you have no use for photo or video editing and simply want a lightweight work PC that is convenient and long lasting, then the Venom BlackBook Zero 14 is a solid choice. You will have to take a hit on screen resolution compared to other devices on the market and the model we tested did show some performance issues in particular tasks. It’s also very late to be launching an Intel 11th generation laptop, so you’ll be able to find better value if you shop around for Ultrabooks on sale. 

That said, if you know you’re likely to want another Venom laptop in a few years, the $400 (AU$500) trade in discount is a decent perk that makes the BlackBook Zero 14 Phantom reasonably good value.

Should I buy the Venom BlackBook Zero 14 Phantom?

Buy it if...

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• Not for you? Check out the best ultrabooks we've reviewed for an alternative

Dell XPS 13 Plus: Two Minute Review

The Dell XPS 13 Plus is an interesting and new take on the XPS 13 legacy, and we're not against seeing companies shake things up or take bold risks with time-honored designs. 

As the best Ultrabook ever made, if not the best Windows laptop ever produced, the Dell XPS 13 is going to have its devotees, and the Dell XPS 13 Plus is born into controversy simply because it’s a nearly complete redesigned from the model we saw in our Dell XPS 13 (late 2020) review.

The Dell XPS 13 Plus shows why its important to take those risks though, since the result is one of the most visually stunning laptops we’ve laid our eyes on. From the absolutely gorgeous chassis and finish to the beautifully economical keyboard, to the nearly invisible glass touchpad, to the ultra-thin bezels that offer the most efficient screen real estate you're going to find anywhere. It creates an image of refinement and beauty that few other laptops offer, and if things were simply a matter of style, it would be a shoe-in for our best laptop list, without question.

The starting price for this laptop is $1,299 (£1,298 / AU$2,339) and is readily available in the US, Australia, and the UK, which is good considering the supply chain is still trying to walk off the past couple of years of pandemic-induced shotdowns, delays, and uncertainties. 

The base model comes with an Intel Core i5 CPU, 8GB RAM, 512 SSD storage, and a non-touch HD screen. However, you can upgrade pretty much every spec, including adding an OLED touchscreen to it, and the OLED screen is stunning indeed with a gloriously high resolution that makes anything onscreen shine. The touchscreen is smooth and responsive as well, and it’s quite resistant to fingerprint smudging to boot.

However, striking visuals don’t always translate to other factors like build quality, performance, port selection, and more, which in the case of the XPS 13 Plus is very inconsistent. For instance, the same visually stunning touchpad is very awkward to use at times even with its haptic feedback. And the touch bar at the top of the keyboard has the same issue, only worse, because it lacks any feedback at all.

Its performance is excellent though, handling multiple work-related tasks like a champ. The Dell XPS 13 Plus does noticeably trail behind other similar Ultrabooks in benchmark scores. It also plays many games well due to the strong CPU, so as long as you’re not trying to run Hitman 3 or Cyberpunk 2077, then otherwise you have a machine that can handle low and mid-range titles well.

The webcam, not surprisingly is 720p. Infinity bezels come at a cost, and a cheap webcom is one of them, but the quality is at least pretty good for what it is. The battery life is average but nothing you'd expect from an Intel Evo-certified Ultrabook, hitting a bit over the six-hour mark on average.

All together, the Dell XPS 13 Plus is a stunning laptop, but you're likely to encounter some frustrations that will likely turn off more people than it appeals to, which is a shame.

Dell XPS 13 Plus: Price and availability

• Available in many regions
• Price is comparable to other Ultrabooks

For an Ultrabook, the Dell XPS 13 Plus’s starting price is surprisingly affordable at $1,299 (£1,298 / AU$2,339). The model that TechRadar was sent is a bit pricier, at $1,949.00 (£1,799 / AU$2,789) but still not ridiculously expensive compared to other comparable laptops on the market. Then there’s the most expensive model with the highest specs that will run you $2,459 (£2,148 / AU$3,999).

The UK and US upgrade parts mirror each other for the most part, but the Australian version takes a slight hit as you can only upgrade up to an i7-1260P and not the i7-1280P the other two regions have access to. And the UK and Australia are both missing one of the display options and only the UK offers the Linux operating system.

• Value: 4 / 5

Dell XPS 13 Plus: Design

• Very lightweight and sleek
• The keyboard is great, the touch bar and touchpad? Not so much
• Port selection is terrible

One of the Dell XPS 13 Plus’s most distinctive qualities is its drop-dead gorgeous design. From the moment we laid eyes on this machine upon its arrival at the TechRadar office, we knew Dell had truly upped its build game. The graphite paint job, which would be boring on nearly any other laptop, manages to exude class and sophistication at a mere glance. And it doesn’t hurt that the chassis is made from low-carbon aluminum, which lowers the carbon footprint.

The model we tested featured an OLED display that produced stunning visuals, especially when it came to movies and games. There’s also an HDR mode that can be toggled off and on, and the difference in resolution is staggering.

The keyboard, which features an edge-to-edge design by removing the lattice, is tailor-made for writers. The keys are large and have satisfying mechanical feedback despite not being mechanical. And despite the lack of space between keys due to their size, there’s rarely an issue with typos. Simply put, this is probably the best laptop for writers that we’ve tested in a long time. 

And none of this does justice to just how visually aatractive it truly is.

But there are two very polarizing features of the Dell XPS 13 Plus: the trackpad and all new touch bar. The entire wrist rest is made of Gorilla Glass, including the trackpad itself, which means that the pad uses haptic feedback rather than mechanical feedback in order to simulate the same responsive feel.

It’s extremely well designed and you can even turn up the intensity of the tactile signals to make it even more responsive. While the amount of craftsmanship that went into this design is admirable, you can’t help but wonder about the point of not having well-defined borders indicating the location of the admittedly generous size of the trackpads.

The same is true of the touch bar but even worse. The touch bar serves as both the shortcut and F-keys at the top of the keyboard. Unlike the trackpad, the touch bar has no haptic feedback, which is incredibly jarring if you’re not sure whether a button press worked.

You also need to press the ‘Fn’ key to switch between the shortcut buttons and F-keys, which can be a bit cumbersome at times. The lack of traditional mechanical design for both the trackpad and touch bar is not only gimmicky but is a serious accessibility issue for those with vision loss or serious visual impairment. For all its glamour, the Dell XPS 13 Plus lacks a key functionality that a sizable chunk of people who might otherwise buy this laptop genuinely need.

The Dell XPS 13 Plus features ultra-thin bezels, adding to the sleek design while significantly increasing the screen real estate. Its sound system is incredible as well, featuring a four-speaker setup with loud and clear sound that conveys complex and layered tones beautifully. 

The webcam is a little above average in quality, slightly better than plenty of other 720p cameras but its still disappointing to see in general. The ventilation system is slightly below average, lending itself to overheating very quickly unless the ‘Cool’ mode is activated.

The port selection is, simply put, absolutely abysmal, especially for an Ultrabook. There are only two Type-C USB slots, which include the charging port. There are two adapters included with the laptop, one for Type-A USB and the other for an audio jack. And while this does provide more options, it also means that both of them plugged in prevents you from charging your laptop.

• Design: 3 / 5

Dell XPS 13: Performance

• Ventilation often hampers performance
• Can juggle multiple work tasks and some gaming

In terms of performance, ventilation is becoming a major barrier for many CPU-intensive tasks like movie streaming, juggling multiple tabs and work documents, and even gaming that otherwise shouldn’t be taxing. 

The Dell XPS 13 Plus overheats within a matter of minutes, which froze or shut down games or even benchmarks during our testing. This is especially worsened when the laptop is plugged in and is only abated once the ‘Cool’ mode in the My Dell app is activated. 

Once the issue is resolved, the laptop can run most low-end and mid-range games just fine.

In fact, games like Civilization VI or Octopath Traveler will run at a stable 45 FPS on higher settings. For the former, its highest count reached up to 180 FPS on the highest setting, which is excellent. 

However, once it comes to the more taxing titles like Warhammer III, it barely runs and can even freeze up when the machine is too overworked. For this laptop, stick with lower-end titles at most.

As for other benchmarks, this machine performs decently well but scores lower in every test compared to many of its competitors. Especially in terms of the PCMark10 Home test, which shows that even with more mundane work tasks, it performed worse than its peers. 

And considering that the price range is around the same, this could be a significant point of comparison when comparing the XPS 13 Plus to, say, the new Apple MacBook Air (M2, 2022).

Despite the comparative results, it still handles most tasks quite well and we didn’t see much sign of slowdown during an average day of working with it, so you can feel free to put it through its paces and it will keep up quite well.

• Performance: 3 / 5

Dell XPS 13 Plus: Battery Life

• Average at best
• Charges quickly

After running our suite of battery tests, we found that the Dell XPS 13 Plus has a decent battery life of about six and a half hours. It’ll get you through most of the day without a charge but compared to other Ultrabooks around the same price range, six hours is a bit disappointing. This is especially egregious compared to what the manufacturer states to be long-lasting battery life.

However, the charge time for the laptop is excellent, taking less than an hour to nearly charge the battery to full. So though you might have to track down an outlet during the day, you won’t be stuck there for long.

• Battery Life: 3.5 / 5

Should you buy a Dell XPS 13 Plus?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also Consider

Dell XPS 13 Plus: Report Card

• First reviewed June 2022

Two-minute review

The Huawei MateBook 13 is another excellent release from Huawei, providing performance on par or better than many laptops in its class and at a lower price. In addition, it looks and feels at least as good as a 2018 MacBook Air.

If that sounds familiar, that’s because we said a similar thing in the MateBook X Pro review. Even though the Huawei MateBook X Pro was an almost perfect device, Huawei managed to improve upon it with this portable. And it managed to do it at a cheaper price.

That price, unfortunately, means some corners have been cut. Most noticeably, there’s no Thunderbolt 3 here. And, that’s one of the most crucial ports for professional users on the road, especially those who need fast data transfer speeds. It would be nice to have more RAM capacity as well.

The Huawei MateBook 13 is still a worthy successor to the MateBook X Pro and carries that torch as one of the best value flagship laptops available. Additionally, it comes with some seriously impressive battery life, letting you get a full day’s worth of work done without needing a charge.

Simply put, you’re getting more power and versatility from inside a laptop that’s just as attractive as – if not more so than – the competition. 

Huawei has clearly watched the laptop space from the sidelines for years, swooping in with exactly the kind of sensibility we’ve been looking for from a luxury laptop. The Huawei MateBook 13 does what every other flagship laptop can do – and more – often for less money than most.

Price and availability

• Launched early January 2019 after a CES 2019 debut
• Intel Core i5/256GB SSD: $999 (about £785, AU$1,403)
• Intel Core i7/Nvidia MX150/512GB SSD: $1,299 (about £1,020, AU$1,825)

Huawei is selling two configurations of the MateBook 13 laptop, an entry-grade version and a high-end version, but both contain the same 13-inch, 2,560 x 1,440 (220 pixels per inch) touchscreen in a 3:2 aspect ratio and 8GB of LPDDR3 memory as well as a fingerprint reader embedded into the power button.

Otherwise, the more approachable model includes an 8th-generation Intel Core i5 processor with integrated graphics and 256GB of solid-state storage (SSD) for $999 (about £785, AU$1,403) to start. Meanwhile, a $1,299 (about £1,020, AU$1,825) model with an Intel Core i7 processor and Nvidia MX150 discrete graphics chip inside as well as a 512GB SSD is available.

Both models also include a helpful USB-C dock in the box as well as one free year of Microsoft Office 365 Personal. This pricing smartly undercuts Apple’s latest MacBook Air by 100 bucks, and remains quite competitive with other competing Ultrabooks, namely the Dell XPS 13.

It all comes down to how the MateBook 13 part configurations compare, largely offering the same or more power than either option for less. Namely, neither the XPS 13 nor the MacBook Air offer discrete graphics. As low-power as the Nvidia MX 150 might be, it gives this laptop a clear competitive advantage in video rendering and gaming.

Both models are available on Amazon and Newegg in the US at the time of writing, with wider retail availability come February. Huawei has not yet disclosed exact UK and Australian pricing or international availability.

Design and display

• Gorgeous Space Gray or Mystic Silver aluminum frame
• Just 2.87 pounds and 0.59 inches thin
• Vibrant 1440p touchscreen with 100% sRGB coverage

You wouldn’t be wrong to think of the MateBook 13 as a further refinement of Huawei’s best-in-class MateBook X Pro of 2018, but the company intends to sell both separately. You see, the MateBook 13 looks nearly identical to the X Pro, only slightly smaller.

This laptop is fitted into the same aluminum body as before in your choice of a Space Gray or Mystic Silver color option. Open the laptop, however, and you’ll notice one key difference: the webcam has moved – again.

While the webcam was cleverly hidden beneath the keyboard in the X Pro, Huawei has done this MateBook right with a webcam resting above the display. However, it’s rated for a mere 0.9-megapixels at 720p resolution, so it’s not going to make you look amazing online.

Measuring just 0.59 inches (14.9mm) thin and weighing a mere 2.87 pounds (1.3kg), the MateBook 13 is narrowly heavier and actually – just by a hair – thinner than the latest MacBook Air. That’s mighty impressive for a laptop that contains a full-fat Intel mobile processor as well as a dedicated graphics chip.

Equally as impressive is the keyboard and touchpad on offer here, with plenty of key travel at 1.2mm and the punchy, forceful feedback that we need to type fast. Likewise, the Microsoft Precision touchpad is also a delight to use as well as wide and spacious, though it’s notably missing a smooth glass coating.

Now, if you enjoyed the touchscreen display on the X Pro, you’ll love it all over again on the MateBook 13. While a touch smaller now at a straight 13 inches on the diagonal, the screen still puts out a 1440p picture at 100% of the sRGB color gamut – and its touch digitizer is as snappy as ever.

Couple that with a 1,000:1 contrast ratio and up to 300 nits of brightness, and you have the makings of a once-again excellent display. However, the 3:2 aspect ratio allows for more content to fit on the screen vertically, but that means thicker bars above and below your full-screen videos.

While this is essentially the same design as last year’s flagship Huawei laptop, we can’t help but appreciate the refinements that the company has made to that design at almost every level.

Performance

• Impressive multi-core numbers reveal a beast at general computing tasks
• Higher power Nvidia MX150 graphics than most
• Stronger thermal designs edge out similarly-equipped competitors

The Huawei MateBook 13 looks like the usual iterative update to its predecessor both on paper and in practice. However, Huawei managed to eke even more graphical power out of the same processor this year with improved thermals and 25% faster fans inside, allowing the graphics chip to use 25 watts of the laptop’s overall power draw – most laptops equipped with the Nvidia MX150 run a 15W, lower-spec version of the chip. These fans also help keep the laptop surprisingly cool under load compared to similarly thin and light models.

So, not only is this laptop much better at graphics and moderately better than its predecessor at general computing, it is that much better than key competitors that have not made similar moves. All the while, this is a laptop that will tear through general use and will be ready to bat on more difficult tasks, too.

So as not to belabor the point with too many numbers, let’s look at one simple benchmarks to demonstrate the MateBook 13’s lead over key competitors: Geekbench 4. This processor simulation benchmark tests for almost every use case.

The MateBook 13 scored more than 17,000 points in the multi-core test, which is just 500 points more than the previous model and 400 points more than the Dell XPS 13. Meanwhile, the 2018 MacBook Air didn’t come within 10,000 points of the MateBook 13’s score. Why is this?

It’s more than likely Huawei’s thermal work that’s to thank for its advantages over the previous Huawei and Dell models, considering the Dell and Huawei MateBook 13 were tested on the very same processor. A processor with more headroom will perform better to a point, after all.

However, the massive discrepancy between Huawei and Apple’s laptops is because the latter uses a fanless, Y-series Intel processor with a lower frequency and two fewer processing cores. After all of Apple’s compromises, the MateBook 13 ends up thinner anyway – go figure.

Now, while the Huawei MateBook 13 includes discrete graphics – that are, again, more powerful compared to last year’s flagship model – don’t expect to do much more than casual to light mainstream gaming on this machine (this isn't a full-power gaming laptop). Shadow of the Tomb Raider wouldn’t even run on the laptop, and Total War: Warhammer 2 couldn’t get past 30 frames per second on average at the lowest settings.

That said, for the odd Hearthstone session between the presentation slide decks you’re working on, this laptop will do just fine.

Battery life

• Outlasts Dell XPS 13 with 4K display at video playback
• Still bested by the 2018 MacBook Air in all tests
• Fast-charging USB-C power helps shore up any battery deficiencies

As for longevity, Huawei promises up to 9.6 hours of local 1080p video playback from the MateBook 13, and that’s the only figure it provides. Luckily for Huawei, our 1080p video playback test reported an impressively close 8 hours and 18 minutes, narrowly outlasting a Dell XPS 13 with a 4K display.

Of course, the MacBook Air remains battery king at a whopping 10 hours and 30 minutes of playback time, but this is nevertheless impressive for a 2019 flagship laptop. The MateBook 13 has enough juice to last on most trips without having to charge, and that’s what matters.

That said, we’ve recorded a PCMark 8 battery test number that’s well below Huawei’s promise and well below the average for a laptop of this class. This could be due to a number of factors, namely a sizable reduction in battery capacity compared to the MateBook X Pro up against graphics running at a higher frequency than that model and competitors.

Ultimately, we’re confident in the MateBook 13’s ability to last for several hours on a charge in either scenario. Throw in USB-C fast charging that can give you 2.5 hours of use in 15 minutes, and you’re looking at an excellent laptop for people constantly traveling.

Software and other features

• Generally bloatware free with only one pre-installed app
• Huawei PC Manager catches drivers Windows 10 Update might miss
• Fingerprint reader in power button means super-fast, one-press login

Huawei is generally minimalistic about the amount of bloatware on its machines, and the MateBook 13 isn’t any different. This laptop contains a single additional app: Huawei PC Manager. This app scans your computer’s hardware for any issues or possible driver updates that Windows 10 has missed. You can then install those updates with one button press.

Beyond software, the only true hardware feature to speak of is the fingerprint reader. Integrated into the laptop’s power button, this is an incredibly speedy and convenient method of biometric login via Windows Hello. You won’t wait for longer than a second after powering on your laptop before you’re looking at your Windows 10 desktop – that’s fast.

Who's it For?

Who's it Not For

• Check out our Huawei promo codes for our latest Huawei deals and discounts.

The Competition

The latest in Microsoft's popular Surface range of powerful and portable machines is now available to pre-order in Australia and New Zealand – the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4.

The fourth iteration of the Surface Laptop has been launched after much of the world has spent the past year working remotely due to the pandemic, so it's more important than ever that it's up to the task.

This means that there's been a focus on improving the battery life for on-the-go use, studio-quality microphones and HD video calling, as well as all new processors to power up the performance, including a collaboration between Microsoft and AMD.

Pre-order from Microsoft direct

• Australia – Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 – from AU$1,599
  
• New Zealand – Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 – from NZ$1,749
  

Configurations

The Surface Laptop 4 is available in a staggering nine different configurations in both Australia and New Zealand, with both regions getting 13.5-inch and 15-inch models with either Intel or AMD processors.

The 13.5-inch models are available in Ice Blue or Platinum with an Alcantara finish, as well as Sandstone or Matte Black with a metal finish. The 15-inch models are only available in Platinum or Matte Black (both metal). 

Below, we've listed each configuration and its associated price in Australia and New Zealand:

Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 13.5-inch

• Ryzen 5 4680U / 8GB / 256GB | AU$1,599 / NZ$1,749
  
• Ryzen 5 4680U / 16GB / 256GB | AU$1,899 / NZ$2,149
  
• i5 / 8GB / 512GB | AU$1,999 / NZ$2,299
  
• i5 / 16GB / 512GB | AU$2,299 / NZ$2,649
  
• i7 / 16GB / 512GB | AU$2,749 / NZ$3,049
  
• i7 / 32GB / 1TB | AU$3,849 / NZ$4,399
  

Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 15-inch

• Ryzen 7 4980U / 8GB / 256GB | AU$2,199 / NZ$2,499
  
• Ryzen 7 4980U / 8GB / 512GB | AU$2,499 / NZ$2,799
  
• Ryzen 7 4980U / 16GB / 512GB | AU$2,699 / NZ$3,199
  
• i7 / 16GB / 512GB | AU$2,849 / NZ$3,399
  
• i7 / 32GB / 1TB | AU$3,999 / NZ$4,599
  

2-minute review

Did you know the 2018 MacBook Air isn’t the newest Air on the block? Check out our review of the more recent MacBook Air (2019).

The Apple MacBook Air (2018) might just be the perfect machine for you if you’re looking for a MacBook with a Retina display and a much-more affordable price of entry. There’s a reason why the MacBook Air line has kept a comfortable spot in both our best Macs and best laptops list, and this 2018 entry only reinforces that.

Bringing in some refinements such a Retina display, over 10 hours of battery life, Touch ID, and an updated keyboard, the Apple MacBook Air (2018) not only lives up to that ‘Air’ brand, it actually improves on it. It raises the bar in a number of key areas – that new screen is more stunning than ever, the battery is longer lasting, and the whole thing is lighter and smaller than ever before.

While the laptop’s specs aren’t going to be top-of-the-line and some of its rivals are equipped with faster processors, it still comes at a price more affordable than the Pro line. Just expect to spend for upgrading the storage or to invest in an external hard drive, especially since you won’t be able to use a microSD for extra storage – the 2018 comes sans microSD slot.

If you’re looking for a significantly more powerful device compared to previous models or a Windows user looking to switch to the macOS environment for cheaper, then this refresh might feel like a disappointment. However, you’re a fan of Apple’s lightweight laptop or if you have a much older MacBook Air, the Apple MacBook Air (2018) is a worthy contender. 

price and availability

• Debuted October 2018 and released October 30
• Intel Core i5/128GB SSD/8GB RAM: $1,199 (£1,119, AU$1,849)
• Intel Core i5/256GB SSD/8GB RAM: $1,399 (£1,399, AU$2,149)

The MacBook Air 2018 is pricier than any previous model. However, while this 2018 follow up doesn’t match the $999 price of its predecessor, it’s still the cheapest laptop in Apple’s 2019 lineup.

For anyone dismayed by Apple’s high (and rising) prices for its devices, that might not be much comfort. At the time of this review, the MacBook Air (2018) started at $1,199 (£1,199, AU$1,849).

Note that the 2017 MacBook Air is still available at a lower price on third-party. If you are on a limited budget, third-party sellers are still hawking the 2017 MacBook Air at the same $999 (£949, AU$1,499) price. You’ll have to give up new features like the fingerprint sensor and the higher resolution display, but it’s $200 off, so decide for yourself if it’s a worthy trade-off.

However, if you want the latest rendition, you’ll be happy to know that it’s now $100 cheaper at $1,099 (£1,099, AU$1,699). Currently, at that price, you get an 8th-generation Intel Core i5, Intel UHD Graphics 617, 8GB of memory and a 128GB SSD. You can configure it with more memory and storage, but the MacBook Air will obviously get pricier from there. You can get up to 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD.

Additionally, the highest pre-configured MacBook Air goes for $1,299 (£1,299, AU$1,999), which comes with 256GB SSD storage, but otherwise is mostly the same. That’s a price increase of $200 (£200, AU$300) for a bigger SSD. To up the storage to 512GB SSD from the base model will cost you an extra $400 (£400, AU$600), while upgrading to 1TB is a whopping extra $1,200 (£1,200, AU$1,800).

Even by Apple’s standards that’s a rather absurd price increase – considering that at that price, you can get a 1TB to 2TB external SSD. You’re better off sticking with the 128GB SSD and purchasing an external storage drive separately. If you want to configure your MacBook Air, it’s best to double the RAM to 16GB at 2,133MHz for an extra $200 (£180, AU$320).

No other components are configurable on 2018's Apple MacBook Air, which means you’re stuck with the same processor and integrated graphics. The above costs also highlight Apple’s crazy-expensive prices for storage. We haven't tried to dismantle the MacBook Air apart, but we’d wager it’s extremely difficult to open it up and install a larger – and cheaper – SSD yourself.

If you don’t need that much storage space, and rely on cloud services for storage, this won’t be too much of an issue. However, for people who need their disk space, it means the MacBook Air can quickly become quite an expensive proposition – unless, as we suggested earlier, you get an external hard drive. You just have to decide whether it’s worth carrying around an extra moving part just to save a couple of hundred dollars, or if it’s better to pay that for convenience.

Still, the market for premium $1,000/£1,000 laptops is more packed than ever before, with some incredible machines dominating the price point, mainly spurred by the success of the original MacBook Air. With a price of $1,099 (£1,099, AU$1,699), the MacBook Air 2018 is going toe to toe with impressive Windows alternatives, like the Huawei MateBook X Pro and Dell XPS 13. Both offer more powerful internals and beautiful displays for comparable prices.

Where the MacBook Air used to be the undisputed best laptop at this price point, it’s now facing an uphill battle to reclaim that title.

Of course, the XPS 13 and MateBook X Pro are only viable alternatives if you’re not married to the macOS. If you’re wedded to macOS and Apple’s ecosystem, then the Apple MacBook Air (2018) offers the most affordable way to get a new MacBook – and its latest refresh, as well as drop in price, definitely gives it better value.

Design

• The thinnest (0.61 inches) and lightest (2.75 pounds) MacBook Air yet
• Apple's third-generation "Butterfly switch" keyboard returns
• Thunderbolt 3 replaces all previous ports

One could realistically argue that the MacBook Air spurred Intel and rival laptop makers to create the Ultrabook category of laptops, which were premium devices that put power, style and a thin, lightweight form factor above all else.

The original MacBook Air changed the laptop scene back when it was originally unveiled – there’s no getting around that – so, you’d be forgiven for expecting Apple to revolutionize their design just as they did before. If that were the case, prepare to be disappointed.

Apple played it safe with the MacBook Air 2018. This laptop is definitely not the market-defining laptop that its predecessor was. However, it does inherit that iconic thin and light design, while still benefiting from some important improvements where it counts.

In fact, the new MacBook Air is smaller than the original with dimensions of 11.97 x 8.36 x 0.61 inches, making an already portable laptop even lighter and thinner. And, the MacBook Air case retains the same wedge-shaped design, so it tapers off to 0.16 inches at its thinnest point.

As we noted in our initial hands-on review of the new MacBook Air, the new laptop has the same width and depth as the 13-inch MacBook Pro, while being a bit thinner and lighter.

Thankfully, the reduced size and weight of the MacBook Air doesn’t mean there’s a deficit in features. You still get a 13.3-inch display (more on that in a sec), and we’ve already mentioned that it’s equipped with faster hardware, including an 8th-generation fanless dual-core processor as well as 8GB of RAM, which can be upped to 16GB.

Port-wise, you get two USB-C (Thunderbolt 3) ports along the left-hand side of the MacBook Air. You can use either one for charging, and we’re glad that Apple continues to use the USB-C format as a charging port, rather than its proprietary MagSafe port, which makes the Air a far more user-friendly and flexible device.

One drawback we were initially concerned with was the fact that both USB-C ports are all located on one side, and quite close together too, since this means that, when the MacBook Air is charging, the second USB-C port might be a bit too close to plug things in unless you have an adapter or dongle.

Having a USB-C port on either side, like the Dell XPS 13, would have avoided this situation, while giving you a bit more charging flexibility.

The good news is, for most people this won’t be too much of an issue, and we’re glad to see Apple moving over to USB-C for the latest MacBook Air. It helps keep the body of the MacBook Air slim, while also future-proof by making it compatible with new and upcoming USB-C peripherals.

Although, if you rely on legacy USB peripherals, then you’re going to need a dongle or dock for them to function with the Apple MacBook Air 2018. Admittedly, that’s a pain. However, you’ll likely find that this trend extends to most modern laptops, especially premium thin-and-light Ultrabooks. So investing in a hub or dock now might be wise.

One thing’s for sure: the two USB-C ports are certainly a step up from the single USB-A port of previous MacBook Airs. The only other port is a 3.5mm headphone jack – an increasingly rare sight on Apple products – on the right-hand side.

The Apple MacBook Air now utilizes the improved keyboard that the MacBook Pro 2019 has, and Apple claims that this iteration has four times more key stability than standard laptop keyboards, while offering greater comfort and responsiveness.

During our tests, we realized that the keyboard does take a little adjusting, especially if you’re coming from an older MacBook Air. The keys are very shallow, travel-wise, so you don’t quite get the responsive feedback you get from other laptop keyboards, but that’s the price you pay for such a slimline design. There’s also a satisfying ‘click’ to the keys when pressed, although this does make it a bit noisier to type on than previous versions. However, once your fingers adjust, it ends up being quite a pleasant typing experience.

The MacBook Air (2018) also has Touch ID built in, letting you to log into the laptop securely with your fingerprint. It’s a nifty, time-saving feature, and genuinely makes logging into the MacBook Air quick and effortless. As with other Mac devices that have Touch ID, the feature works beautifully, detecting fingerprints and logging us in without any issues.

While Touch ID is here, the Touch Bar – the MacBook Pro’s slim additional display that replaced the function keys’ locations, offering contextual shortcuts for the apps you’re currently using – isn’t. This feature likely won’t be sorely missed, however, as the function keys along the top are more than enough for offering quick access to different tools.

The chassis surrounding it has shrunk, but the Force Touch trackpad is actually bigger, now 20% larger than the standard trackpad on previous MacBook Airs. It gives users more room for gestures and to move the cursor around – you won't want to go back to a smaller trackpad once you try this one out. Also, unlike on older MacBook Airs, the trackpad is now flush with the body, and requires only gentle presses to register as clicks. It’s a much more comfortable – not to mention, quieter – experience.

The use of recycled aluminum makes this the greenest MacBook ever, according to Apple, and while its unibody design has been made from the metal shavings from previously machined devices (which means Apple doesn't need to mine and smelt further materials), there are no blemishes or marks. 

This is the same premium-looking – and feeling – MacBook Air we’re used to, only friendlier to the environment. Apple told us that it has achieved this design feat by employing full-time, in-house metallurgists in order to ensure that the recycled aluminum body is up to Apple’s rigorous standards.

The MacBook Air (2018) unibody shell is cut from a solid block of aluminum, which gives it a sturdy feel despite its thin and light design. It’s an impressive machine to hold – light enough to easily carry around yet robust enough that you can toss it in a backpack and take it with you when you’re on the move without worry.

The speakers have also improved. Despite their small size, they have twice the bass of its predecessors, and are capable of 25% louder volume. The T2 security chip, which is built into the MacBook Air and offers a number of security features, also helps with stereo spacing of the speakers. The idea is that this gives the impression of the two speakers being further apart than they actually are. We tried it out by watching some films, and there is a clear distinction when sounds pan from left to right, even if it doesn’t rival a proper stereo setup with speakers placed at either side of the room.

The speakers however are clear, have a good range, and still sound really good at high volumes. This sort of sound quality is rare on slim and light laptops, and the improved audio, combined with the updated and improved high-resolution screen, makes the MacBook Air a terrific laptop for watching films and listening to music on.

A 720p FaceTime HD camera and three-microphone array help to make video conferencing and voice calls look, and sound good as well, although the resolution is increasingly looking outdated compared to rival laptops that have 1080p webcams.

Apple is offering a range of colors for the MacBook Air: Space Gray, Gold and traditional Silver. However, the illuminated Apple logo has been dropped for a chrome one, as the thinner lid design cannot accommodate that classic piece of design flair.

Overall, while the design isn’t as game-changing as that of the original MacBook Air, Apple has gone to impressive lengths to improve on the look and feel of the new model.

Display

• The first-ever MacBook Air with Retina display
• Still uses Apple's trademark 16:10 aspect ratio
• Displays 48% more colors than previous model

The display on the Apple MacBook Air (2018) is where Apple has arguably made the biggest, and most welcome, updates. Despite the shrinking overall size of the Air – in comparison to previous models, the screen size remains the same at 13.3 inches.

This was made possible by trimming the bezels around the screen. So, the new MacBook Air not only is smaller and more portable than its predecessors, but also boasts a screen that’s more prominent when in use.

The screen keeps the 16:10 aspect ratio, but that’s where the similarity to previous MacBook Air screens ends. The MacBook Air (2018) is the first Air with Retina display, with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels, resulting in a pixel density of 227 pixels per inch (ppi). It’s a little sharper than the MateBook X Pro, and easily outshines the entry-level XPS 13.

The Retina screen gives this MacBook Air four times the resolution of the previous models. The leap from the 900p resolution of older MacBook Airs to the Retina resolution really is stunning, and it’s likely the first thing you’ll notice when you power on the new Air. Anyone who felt the lower resolution of previous MacBook Air models were a bit cramped when working will no doubt enjoy the improvement.

In addition, Apple has also given this Retina display True Tone technology when it refreshed it in July 2019. This means that the MacBook Air screen will now automatically adjust the color temperature for a more natural and comfortable viewing experience. With it, the new MacBook Air display is now actually on a par with the more expensive MacBook Pro, the 13-inch model of which boasts the same screen size and resolution. 

Apple has also dramatically improved the viewing angles of the screen on this year’s MacBook Air. That was one of the biggest drawbacks with the old MacBook Airs, to the point where tilting the screen just a little bit away from our faces made it impossible for us to see anything on the screen. The 2018 MacBook Air fixes that. It was only at the most extreme angles that we saw a lot of reflection from the anti-glare glass protecting the LCD screen.

There’s also been a boost to color accuracy for the MacBook Air 2018, with a wider color gamut capable of displaying 48% more colors than the previous Air – it means that photos in particular look brighter and more vibrant on the new MacBook Air’s screen.

The new MacBook Air display is arguably the most impressive update, and the higher resolution gives this entry-level MacBook a premium feel, while also making media and photos look better than ever.

Performance

• Intel Core Y-Series processor less powerful than most Ultrabooks
• Too little RAM capacity at entry level configurations
• New security features offloaded to T2 chip, but still low on power

When the original MacBook Air was released back in 2008, it got plenty of praise for its slim and light design. However, many reviewers voiced their reservations over the lackluster performance of the device compared to other (larger, if pricier) laptops. Many suggested that the slim design of the MacBook Air forced less powerful components, which Apple did address in later revisions.

We would love to say that, 10 years later, things have changed, but alas. While the MacBook Air comes with 8GB of two 2,133MHz LPDDR3 RAM, which can be configured to 16GB, and a speedy SSD, processing power still feels slightly restrained by its dual-core Intel Core i5-8210Y processor.

This 1.6GHz, dual-core Intel Core i5 can Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz, with 4MB L3 cache, which is fine for most day-to-day tasks, but is not as speedy as some quad-core processors you see in rival laptops around this price point, like the Dell XPS 13. For strenuous tasks, or for multi-tasking, the Apple MacBook Air 2018 isn’t as strong a contender as other laptops at this price range.

The new MacBook Air just isn’t as snappy as we’re used to on more powerful Macs. The MacBook Air occasionally felt like it was lagging, taking a few more seconds to load apps and respond to instructions while we were using it, especially when we opened multiple apps.

So, it’s worth repeating that the 13-inch MacBook Pro really doesn’t cost that much more than the MacBook Air, and it’s much more powerful. If you want a MacBook that has some power, we’d have to recommend going for the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

While the move to use a low-powered dual core Intel Core i5 processor is a bit disappointing, the MacBook Air does have an ace up its sleeve to help mitigate this – by including the Apple T2 security chip, which works alongside the main processor to offload certain tasks.

This is mainly to do (as the name suggests) with security features, so it manages your fingerprints when using Touch ID, as well as an SSD controller with on-the-fly data encryption for "industry-leading security." It also helps with the stereo spacing effects of the speakers, which we mentioned earlier, as well as having an omnipresent ‘Hey Siri’ feature – a first for a MacBook Air that allows you to use your voice to control the laptop.

The new MacBook Air comes with macOS Mojave pre-installed though, so the lower spec of the Air is handled pretty well (thanks to Apple’s operating system being tailor made for the hardware – as opposed to Windows 10’s ‘one size fits all’ approach, which makes it more demanding).

The T2 chip does specialize in HEVC video transcoding, which offers transcoding times up to 30 times faster than devices without it. While the MacBook Air isn’t a laptop we (or Apple) would recommend for running the best video editing software and transcoding, it’s a nice feature to have for hobbyists who may want to dabble in editing home videos or do some light video editing while on the go. By taking some of these tasks from the Intel processor, it gives that CPU more breathing room to keep other tasks running as smoothly as possible.

In our day-to-day tests, we found the MacBook Air (2018)’s performance to be a bit of a mixed bag, with the device doing a fine – if not seriously impressive – job of handling most tasks we asked of it, but struggling a bit when asked to do lots of tasks at once.

Our benchmark results also show that the hardware of the MacBook Air offers less power than the competition. When this MacBook Air was set against the older 12-inch MacBook, the Cinebench benchmarks show roughly the same results, at 264 points compared to the MacBook Air’s 279. The Geekbench 4 scores show a similar result, with the 12-inch MacBook scoring 3,879 in single-core and 7,072 for multi-core, compared to the new MacBook Air’s scores of 4,247 and 7,832 respectively. Again, these aren’t huge leaps for the newer MacBook Air.

Comparing these to the MacBook Pro (2018) 13-inch with Touch Bar, with a 2.7GHz Intel Core i7-8559U quad-core processor and 16GB of RAM, the results are starker, with 669 points for Cinebench, and Geekbench 4 scores of 5,320 for single-core and 18,135 for multi-core.

This is a clear advantage to the MacBook Pro, though it’s worth mentioning that these results are for a model that costs $1,799 (£1,749, AU$2,699), far pricier than the MacBook Air (2018).

The benchmark results only tell part of the story, but at least they give us an idea of where the MacBook Air (2018) sits in the MacBook hierarchy: more powerful than the 2017 12-inch MacBook by a hair, but a bit less powerful than the MacBook Pro (2018).

When we initially set up the MacBook Air, it did become unresponsive whilst connecting to a Wi-Fi network, though once we rebooted the device it didn’t crash again. We’ve installed the update, and so far we haven’t had any further issues.

Also worth mentioning is that during our review, Apple released a supplemental update for its macOS 10.14.1 operating system specifically for the MacBook Air (2018), designed to improve the stability and reliability of the new laptop. We re-ran our benchmarks with the update installed and saw small improvements for every score. The new scores with the update installed are the ones you see in this review.

Battery life

• Apple's number one performance metric remains that way
• Longer battery life than most competing Windows laptops
• However, not quite at Apple's promise of 12 hours

Apple reports that the Apple MacBook Air (2018) as capable of 12 hours’ worth of local video playback or 12 hours of wireless web use, which is a more than decent amount that should get you through a whole work day without requiring a charge.

The high-resolution Retina display does cause the battery life to drain slightly faster than its predecessors. However, Apple’s decision to go with a lower-power, dual-core processor means the Apple MacBook Air (2018) has one of the longest lasting batteries found in a MacBook.

Every other Retina MacBook is rated for 10 hours of battery life, based on Apple's own estimates, so if you’re an Apple fan that places long lasting battery above all else, then the Apple MacBook Air (2018) might just be the ideal laptop for you.

In our own battery life tests, where we ran a looped 1080p video with the screen set to 50% brightness, the MacBook Air lasted 10 hours and 30 minutes. It’s 1.5 hours short of the 12-hour battery life that Apple promised, but it’s still a respectable amount, and much longer than the 12-inch MacBook’s 8 hours and 4 minutes.

During our tests, we found that the MacBook Air did a good job of holding its charge while we browsed the web, watched movies and used various apps. The only downside is that, it does seem to charge quite slowly, taking a few hours to fully charge from completely empty.

Images Credit: TechRadar

First reviewed November 2018

Who's it For?

Who's it Not For

• You could save on your purchase  with our Apple promo codes.

The Competition

Acer has unveiled its latest range of laptops, monitors, and more at their October 2020 Next@Acer event, with new devices in the Swift, Aspire, Predator, Travelmate and ConceptD range.

Whilst the conference itself certainly won’t be winning any awards for presentation, the awkward transitions and comical infomercial acting can be forgiven when looking at the announced products and partnerships. 

• These are the best Acer laptops to date
• Does the Acer Swift 3 still hold up? 
• Check this out if you're looking for a Chromebook

Porsche Design Acer Book RS

In a somewhat surprising move, Porsche Design has teamed up with Acer to create a minimalist laptop. In a less surprising announcement (for those familiar with the cost of previous Porsche Design collaborations at least), this slim designer laptop will set you back $1,400 (around £1070, AU$1970) for the base model and a hefty $2,000 (around £1530, AU$2820) for the “premium package”. 

Powered by the latest 11th Gen Intel Core i7 CPU, and an optional Nvidia MX350 GPU, the overall expected performance is nothing to sniff at – but it’s certainly the branded metal and carbon fiber body you’re paying for. The Porsche Design Acer Travelpack adds some extra style and functionality thanks to a water-repellent carrying case made from Ecco Palermo leather and a wireless Bluetooth mouse (with additional carbon fiber, because why not).

Planet9 rolls out SigridWave 

Planet9, Acer’s gaming social community platform has announced something rather incredible. SigridWave, Acers AI translation tool claims to be able to translate voice communications across languages in real-time. 

What makes SigridWave unique is that it has been trained specifically for the purpose of gaming, able to even translate jargon and acronyms associated with gaming such as “camping” and “ADS”. SigridWave has so far been trained with over 1,000 hours of game-centric speech (voice + transcript) and 10 million bilingual sentence pairs, enabling it to efficiently relay detected messages into a language that the user can understand.

SigridWave will have a closed beta in late 2020, during which time it will be available for two-way translation between English and Mandarin in a number of major FPS titles such as Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege.

ConceptD updates 

Acer’s ConceptD machines are aimed at graphics and video professionals who often require high power and beefy graphics. At the Acer event, the company added a mid-sized tower to its range of desktop PCs and updated its flagship laptops, the ConceptD 7 and 7 Pro. These new machines are expected to drop in late 2020.

The ConceptD 7 Pro promises raw power, with a design that rivals the Apple's 16-inch MacBook Pro in portability, offering a professional-grade workstation with up to an 8-core processor and commercial-level Nvidia Quadro graphics. It may also be worth noting that these laptops were the only machines still using a 10th generation core i7, with other announced products utilizing the latest 11th gen intel CPU’s

Acer Swift 3x 

One of the more exciting announcements was the reveal of the Acer Swift 3x, running on 11th Gen Intel Tiger Lake CPUs. This beast contains Intel’s Iris Xe Max, Intel’s new discrete GPU. and comes with a promise of a whopping 17.5 hours of battery life on a single charge. It was also noted that this laptop uses fast-charging, giving you 4 hours of usage from a 30-minute charge.

If the battery life promise lives up to its claims, it's a sure contender for our best laptops list, and a good workstation rival to the rumored Apple Silicon Macbook. 

Acer Chromebook Spin 513 

The vast majority of Chrome OS devices today use Intel chipsets. Acer is breaking that mold with the Chromebook Spin 513, powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c platform. The new models pair an ultraportable design, at just 2.64lbs, with fast and efficient performance, and Gorilla Glass on the 13.3-inch full HD IPS display with a 78% screen-to-body ratio.

There is also the promise of 14 hours of battery life, 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 128 GB of storage – making this a nifty little work machine, and perfect for commuting.

New gaming monitors

Acer has announced a fleet of new gaming monitors in its Predator and Nitro lineups. As with the company’s laptops, the Predator line offers more high-end, feature-packed options whereas the Nitro line is more budget friendly.

Three new Predator XB3 Series monitors deliver topline performance with Nvidia G-Sync compatible technology, VESA DisplayHDR images and fast refresh rates.The Predator X34 GS features a large 34-inch curved IPS panel that extends the peripheral view for deeply immersive gameplay. Two models even sport reactive RGB strip lighting on the back, to frame the screen with light that changes to the music beat and game color scheme. 

Two new Nitro Series monitors provide all of the essentials needed to enjoy modern games and introduce TÜV Rheinland Eyesafe certified technology, to reduce eye fatigue.

Halo Smart Speaker

The Acer Halo Smart Speaker comes packed with Google Assistant and another feature almost no other smart home audio device currently has — DTS sound, to provide rich, high-quality audio that is projected in 360 degrees to fill any room. RGB base-lighting is customizable via Acer's associated app, and it also syncs up with music to give the room it's placed in a bit more ambience. The speaker even has LEDs to visualise the weather outside and other images.

Overall, this year's conference has given us some exciting new products and some lofty promises of battery life and performance. With the varied release dates scattered between late 202 and early 2021, it may be some time until we know for sure what lives up to expectations.

• Check out these smart home speakers

In the shadows of the big laptop manufacturers lurks a small group of notebook vendors that rebadge and sell products from one of the most well kept secrets in the portable computer industry: Clevo. What has kept them alive and thriving is the fact that they can tweak and customize their products in ways that would be financially not viable for big vendors. 

We’ve been lucky to get hold of one of its most promising products to date, the Clevo L141CU which is also known as the PC Specialist Lafité Pro.  

Design

This is probably one of the best designed Clevo laptops we’ve handled to date. By design, modularity is baked in the chassis, which de facto removes the sort of very tight integration you see on the Apple MacBook Air or HP Spectre Folio 13. 

Thus, previous Clevo laptops lacked the finesse and the finish of the Lafité Pro; gone - at least for this Clevo sub-brand - the chunkiness and utilitarian looks. Say hello to a laptop that weighs 1.12Kg with a thickness of 16.5mm and a footprint that’s slightly bigger than an A4 sheet of paper. 

What’s even more impressive is that it has a MIL-STD-810G certification, something that’s not fully explained to us beyond the sticker on the case. Needless to say that this, unlike rugged smartphones that do carry the certification, is not a license to start using this laptop in the rain. 

Other than the PC Specialist logo on top plus a handful of stickers, there’s barely anything that interferes with the minimalist approach of that laptop. PC Specialist didn’t even bother hiding the fact that this is a Clevo product, all the details are clearly printed on a sticker found on the bottom of the laptop. Two speaker grills are located there as well.

Even though this is technically an Ultrabook, it didn’t skimp on connectors: there’s two USB Type-A ports (one on each side), a microSD card reader, an audio connector, a Type-C port (with DisplayPort Alt mode) and a full-size HDMI connector. The proprietary power connector is fed by a tiny 65W (19v, 3.42A) charger that’s barely bigger than a pack of cigarettes. 

Note that unlike most laptops, the power button on the Lafité Pro is on the right hand side of the laptop. We like the protruding “lip” on the display lid; one that houses a pair of microphones as well as a 1-megapixel camera. The extra bit of bezel makes it far easier to open the lid with one hand. 

Hardware

The PC Specialist Lafité Pro costs as little as £673 ($840) including VAT (£568.83 excl. VAT) with an Intel Core i5-10210U, 8GB RAM, a 128GB PCIe NVMe SSD, no operating system, default delivery and after sales services. Our review sample model came with Windows 10 Pro, 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD (Samsung 970 EVO Plus), pushing the price to £1,048 ($1,308).

A Core i7 option is available but will provide only marginal performance improvements. There’s 8GB DDR4 memory soldered with the ability to add another 16GB of memory to boost it to 24GB. You should be able to add a 32GB memory module as we have seen other European resellers of the L141CU offer this option.

The laptop can accommodate two M2.2280 solid state drives; one slot is SATA/PCIe while the other is SATA only. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are handled by an Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 wireless module. Although the device comes with Windows 10 Home, you can choose to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro or remove the OS altogether.

Performance and in use

The battery life of the Lafité Pro is the best we’ve seen on a business laptop at more than 10 hours thanks to a 73Whr battery, the biggest we’ve seen on a laptop of this weight, more than the 72Whr found in the LG Gram 14 (2020). We reached that all-time high despite the fact that our battery forces the laptop to run at maximum speed with the screen set of 100% brightness and without any power saving settings on.

The keyboard experience was quite enjoyable as well; this backlit model has a very short travel and was quite noisy during our test; it takes a bit of adjusting but in the end, it was just as pleasurable despite providing sharper/harder feedback. Note that the keys are slightly, very slightly, concave as opposed to the more widely available convex keys.

The touchpad is a run of the mill model; it doesn’t have a fingerprint reader or dedicated hardware buttons. It could have been a bit bigger but given the dimensions of the beast, that’s understandable. It lacked firmness on the lower two corners (more pronounced on the right hand side), a common weakness amongst laptops that don’t have physical buttons.

The 60Hz screen is matte and the barrel hinge allows it to be laid flat to share the screen content effortlessly. Just bear in mind that there is a bit of flex (both in the lid and the keyboard) due to the use of magnesium alloy. The panel delivers some punchy colours with good brightness and decent contrast. The coverage of the sRGB color gamut reaches about 72% of the NTSC range.

As for performance, well, it outperformed most laptops that we tested in this category except for the (far more expensive) Dynabook Portégé X30L-G and the Dell Vostro 14 5490, both sporting a more powerful Core i7-10510u. Its storage subsystem produced the best numbers we ever came across in our standard CrystalDiskMark test. Altogether, it is a very, very capable device that will munch through any office task, big or small.

The competition

At the time of writing, we couldn’t source the Clevo L141CU in the US which is a real shame given the potential of this laptop.

The Dell XPS 13 is one of the best laptop money can buy; if you want to get it as a 1TB model with 16GB memory, there’s only one way to go; one that lands you a Core i7 with a 4K touch display with a 16:10 aspect ratio, one year ProSupport and next business day onsite service, a smaller 52Whr battery, two Thunderbolt ports and a weight of 1.2Kg. Oh and it costs £1,449 plus VAT compared to £877.33 for the PC Specialist model, nearly two-thirds more expensive.

Much closer to the Lafité Pro is the LG Gram 14 which features a Core i7, half the storage and a 72Whr battery. Also lacking is Windows 10 Pro but it does weigh a staggering 999g and comes with a two-year warranty via Costco’s Concierge Services. It does have a fingerprint scanner, a LAN port, a Thunderbolt 3 connector and like the PC Specialist laptop is MIL-STD-810G rated. A very, very close one; price? £1289.89 (including VAT) at Costco UK

The HP Envy 13-ba0010na is a touchscreen model, the only one in this list of competitors. It offers a discrete GPU, the Nvidia Geforce MX350, a camera shutter, a fingerprint reader, HP’s 3-year care pack with pickup and return and a 51Whr battery. While it is the one with the best aftersales and the cheapest at £1,249 direct, it is also the heaviest. 

Final verdict

We have been pleasantly surprised by the Lafité Pro; never have we seen a Clevo laptop more balanced than this one. Despite its diminutive size and featherweight, it sports a battery capacity that almost defies the laws of physics. What it lacks in terms of brand cachet, it makes up in terms of features like the ability to pack two SSDs, MIL-STD-810G rating and Wi-Fi 6 wireless connectivity.

It’s not to say that it is without flaws, we don’t like the button on the side, the lack of Thunderbolt 3 capabilities, the absence of a fingerprint reader but above all, the fact that you have to pay a fiver to get what is considered to be standard warranty elsewhere (1-year collect and return, 1-year on parts). But then again, you probably need to check the price.

• We've also highlighted the best business laptops

Two-minute review

If you’re taking price into consideration, the 2019 Acer Swift 3 might just be one of the best Ultrabooks you’ll find out there.

While the 2019 model of this budget laptop has its own fair share of flaws, its portability and performance are more than enough for the price you’re paying. With its MacBook-esque aesthetic, 13-inch chassis and lightweight design, coupled with an 8th-generation Intel Core U-series processor, you’re not only getting a lot of value for your money – you’re also getting more for a lot less.

In fact, our review configuration with an 8th-generation Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB of memory and 512GB SSD is only $899 (about £690, A$1,899). If that’s still out of your price range, the cheapest configuration of the Acer Swift 3 (2019) is $629 (about £485, A$999), making it appealing to budget buyers out there who don’t require as much power. This base configuration, available in US and Australia, touts an 8th-generation Intel Core i3 processor, 8GB of memory and 128GB of storage.

In comparison, the Dell XPS 13 (2019), which has consistently secured a high spot on our list of the best 13-inch laptops, would have set you back $978 (about £755, A$1,450) for a similar processor as well as the same graphics card and storage, but with a measly 4GB of RAM.

On the other hand, a 13-inch MacBook Pro 13-inch with an Intel Core i5 processor, and the same amount of memory and storage will cost you a whopping $1,299 (£1,299, A$1,999). For the same processor, Acer is only asking $749 (about £575, A$1,599) for its budget 13-inch laptop.

Of course, these two contenders boast more premium features and are slightly thinner than the Acer Swift 3 (2019). However, if things like a Touch Bar, incredibly thin bezels, stunning display and a woven glass fiber interior aren’t as important to you, then you can’t go wrong with the Swift 3.

That’s not to say there aren’t a few compromises, though – otherwise it wouldn’t be a budget laptop. The keyboard, for one, feels cramped and the keys are smaller than usual. In addition, the tiny page up/down keys are positioned directly above the equally tiny left/right keys in a way where accidental presses are next to impossible to avoid.

The speakers are also a bit weak: they aren’t very loud and have a boxy sound with almost no low end. And, then there’s the battery, which only manages to get about 7 hours of battery life during our movie test. It scores even less with 4 hours in the more demanding PCMark 8 battery test, which simulates regular productivity usage.

If you’re planning on using the 2019 Acer Swift 3 on-the-go, make sure to carry that charger with you wherever you go, and pack a nice set of cans too. As for that keyboard… well, it’s just something you’ll have to get used to.

To be fair, the Acer Swift 3 (2019) does have a few aces up its sleeves. The keyboard provides some necessary hotkeys, including volume and brightness controls, on/off for wifi and a keyboard backlighting toggle. 

The screen has thin bezels around it except at the bottom, which isn’t a big deal. They may not be quite as thin as the Dell XPS, but they are slightly thinner than the MacBook Pro’s. And, the laptop itself is very light at 2.87lb (1.3kg) – lighter than the MacBook Pro 13-inch and only about 0.10lb heavier than the Dell XPS 13-inch.

Thermal performance is also worth mentioning. During our tests, when the Acer Swift 3 (2019) was trying to do some heavy lifting, the laptop stayed relatively cool except at the bottom. You won’t feel the heat emanating from the keyboard, only at the bottom near the back. This means that when trying to push this laptop, you'll only really notice the heat when you’ve got it on your lap. That’s impressive thermal performance considering its size.

Which leads us to actual performance. Productivity-wise, the Acer Swift 3 (2019) performed beautifully for a laptop at its price point. We had up to 15 tabs open at one time during our tests, with three of them streaming video, and there weren’t any issues. We only noticed some loading delay while opening the last tab, but that was minimal and hardly worth mentioning.

In addition, we were also able to load, edit and convert 23 photos in Photoshop easily, as well as Auto Sync edits and batch process the same images in Lightroom Classic without a hitch. This laptop won’t be able to handle video editing properly, but when it comes to photo editing, it should be able to manage – though we do expect it to slow down a little the more photos you edit.

While it isn’t a gaming laptop, we were curious to see how the Acer Swift 3 (2019) handled demanding games so we tested how it fared with a few AAA games.

You should be able to play your favorite PC games on this laptop, as long as you’re not playing at the high settings. Civilization 6, for example, worked very well with graphics set to high, although the game did lock us at 768p. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, a AAA game that's a little less graphics-hungry, also ran ok on low settings at 1080p. Unfortunately, as noted in the benchmarks, the Acer wasn't able to run Shadow of the Tomb Raider on the highest settings.

If you’ve been wanting an Ultrabook, but just cannot afford the expensive options out there, then you can’t go wrong with the Acer Swift 3 (2019). This budget laptop may compromise on one or two things, but not where it counts most. 

In short, the Acer Swift 3 (2019) delivers great performance for productivity and some creative tasks, as well as casual gaming. As an added bonus, it’s also got a few features that you’ll appreciate. All without burning a hole in your pocket.

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Two-minute review

To put it simply, the LG Gram 17 will surprise you.

While other 17-inch laptops feel like big, bulky loads that are more burdensome to lug around than they’re worth, this one has thin and light written all over it. So much so that it’s easy to underestimate, as it carries more like a budget Chromebook at first blush than a productivity machine. The fact that it has a very simple, minimalist look also doesn’t help.

Though you shouldn’t knock it. On top of being the lightest 17-inch laptop on the market when it came out, which is not at all an easy feat, the LG Gram 17 has a few merits under its belt – including being a CES Innovation Awards 2019 Honoree.

In fact, it has all the makings of one of the best Ultrabooks. It boasts optional USB-C charging, decent battery life (up to 19.5 hours, according to LG), a good selection of ports, an impressively bright display with a 16:10 aspect ratio and, of course, all the power you’d need for productivity. It also has a fingerprint sensor for easier login, a Kensington lock for extra security, and a rugged metal alloy build that is shockproof, dust-proof and can withstand extreme temperatures.

Essentially, you’re getting a surprisingly impressive laptop with all the tools for productivity you need, the portability you could ever want and all that extra real estate for a much lesser price point than the competition. And, as a reward, you’re also getting an incredible 1600p display with 359 nits of brightness.

If you’re looking for that ideal 17-inch laptop that won’t feel like a massive burden to take with you on business trips and personal travels, you’ve truly found a winner in the LG Gram 17. There’s no doubt this is one of the best 17-inch laptops you’ll find in 2020.

Price and availability

The LG Gram 17 is hardly a budget laptop. Its one and only configuration, which is fitted with an 8th-generation Intel Core i7 processor, Intel UHD Graphics 620 integrated graphics, 16GB of RAM and 512GB solid state drive, costs $1,699 (£1,199, A$2,699).

All things considered, that’s more than a fair price. Not only are you getting a beautiful 17-inch 2560 x 1600 IPS LCD display and a reliable fingerprint sensor, but also a rugged body as well as its extremely portable, thin and light design on a 17-inch laptop.

Again, to put that into perspective, the productivity machine HP ZBook 17 G6 with the same amount of storage and RAM will cost you $2,099 (about £1,618, A$3,110). This configuration has a 9th-generation Intel Core i7 chip and slightly better graphics, which give it a bit of an advantage, but it also only has a 1080p IPS screen with 300 nits of brightness.

On the other hand, a Razer Blade Pro 17 with the same processor as the HP ZBook 17 G6 and powerful graphics made for gaming, but also the same amount of storage and memory, will set you back a whopping $2,499.99 (£2,399.99, AU$4,299).

Closer to the LG Gram 17’s price point is the HP Elite Dragonfly, which currently tops our best laptops list. Primarily aimed at traveling professionals, an HP Elite Dragonfly with the same processor, integrated graphics and memory currently sits at $1,629 (£1,618, AU$2,770). And, it only has a 13.3-inch Full HD touch display.

The same LG Gram 17 configuration is available in the UK for £1,199. While it doesn’t seem to be available on the LG AU website, the same configuration is also on hand in Australia from third-party sellers at A$2,699.

Design

It might be easy to underestimate the LG Gram 17 if you were to judge a book by its cover. After all, this laptop doesn’t seem to have any exceptional features at first glance, only a simple dark gray design with the word “gram” etched on top. Some might even go as far as calling it unattractive.

However, you only need to lift this laptop to appreciate its appeal. The LG Gram 17 is the lightest 17-inch laptop out there, touting a weight of just 2.95 lb – making it 0.07 pounds lighter than the considerably smaller MacBook Pro 13-inch. At 15.0 x 10.5 x 0.7 inches, it’s also only slightly bigger than the MacBook Pro 16-inch. 

This is a laptop you’ll want to throw in your backpack or in your leather tote bag, if you’d like to squeeze in a bit of work while traveling or if you want to work on the go. 

It’s a good thing that it’s made of carbon nanotube-reinforced magnesium alloy, as this laptop might also be as rugged as the MacBook Pro, too. We weren’t able to test just how strong, but it’s supposedly shockproof, dust-proof, resistant to low pressure and able to withstand extreme temperatures.

Of course, this being a productivity machine, the amount and diversity of ports is very important. Thankfully, LG hasn’t tried to economize here. There’s a decent assortment of ports on this laptop, from the necessary USB 3.1 (there are three), Thunderbolt 3 (charging capable) and headphone jack to HDMI and micro-SD. It also comes with a USB 3.1 adapter for RJ45 Ethernet.

There’s not a lot to complain about the LG Gram 17’s general design, either. The keyboard has a nice tactile feel, good bounce and decent travel, making it great and comfortable to use for productivity. The trackpad works well and has a bit more give than expected. The speakers get pretty loud and boasts a decent soundstage. And, the fingerprint reader on the power button is extremely reliable.

However, if we were to nitpick, there are a couple of things worth mentioning. The laptop does generate a bit of heat near the back portion of the keyboard when performing more intensive tasks. In addition, the speakers do get a little distorted when on full volume. These issues are hardly unique to the LG Gram 17, though. 

Bear in mind, too, that thin, light and rugged are not the LG Gram 17’s only defining features, design-wise. One of the best things about this laptop is its 17-inch QHD (2560x1600) IPS LCD display. On top of the fact that it’s a 17-inch on a 15.6-inch form factor, it boasts a 16:10 aspect ratio, which essentially gives you an even bigger canvas. 

Most importantly, this screen delivers incredibly beautiful picture quality with 359 nits of brightness, 1600p resolution and over 96% color gamut. So whatever it is you’re doing on this laptop – whether that’s streaming movies and shows or doing work – you’ll be doing it on a display that’s a complete stunner.

Performance

The LG Gram 17 is a laptop built for productivity. It’s Intel Core i7-8565U processor may seem outdated at this point on paper, especially with Ice Lake out now and Tiger Lake coming in 2020. However, it’s more than powerful enough for productivity.

We tested this ourselves by having 20 tabs open at the same time on the browser, with four of them streaming video and one downloading a massive file. Granted, loading new tabs near the end took a second longer to load. But, on the upside, we also didn’t notice any stuttering or interruption of anything that’s already open including the videos. The 16GB of memory certainly helped.

Unfortunately, with only the Intel UHD Graphics 620 for graphics, the LG Gram 17 definitely cannot play anything resembling current AAA games. 

It’s ok for casual gaming. However, it delivered really low framerates with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, as well as had a lot of stuttering and frame rate drops with Plague: An Innocence Tale and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. The Wolf Among Us played fine, but at the same time, it’s an older game with much lower requirements. Because this is not a gaming laptop however, this shouldn’t be too surprising. 

This shows in our benchmarks. In Cinebench R15, the LG Gram 17 garnered 513 points, which is just a hair under what the popular HP Spectre x360 got, and more or less half of the Razer Blade Pro 17 (2019) gaming machine.

In Geekbench, the LG Gram 17 holds its own, scoring more than the HP Elite Dragonfly and Razer Blade Pro 17 (2019) in the single-core test. It also scored above the HP Elite Dragonfly in the multi-core test - but that laptop is running an older 8th-generation processor.

We definitely wouldn’t count on doing intensive creative tasks with this laptop, let alone graphics-heavy gaming. However, if you want a portable for productivity that’s reasonably priced and on which you can do a bit of streaming as well as light gaming after work, know that you’re getting a lot of value with the feature-rich LG Gram 17.

Battery life

According to LG, the LG Gram 17 boasts up to 19.5 hours of battery life, which would have been incredible. Unfortunately, in the TechRadar battery test, where we loop 1080p video until the laptop dies, it only lasts 10 hours and 44 minutes. That’s about 9 hours short of what’s being promised.

However, it’s also 2 hours and 30 minutes longer than the Elite Dragonfly, which only lasted 8 hours and 11 minutes during the test, and only an hour less than the MacBook 16-inch’s 11 hours and 41 minutes.

That means that it’s about on par with the competition, battery-wise. Plus, 10 hours and 44 minutes is also more than a full day’s work, which means that the LG Gram 17 will see you through 8 to 9 hours of work on a full charge. It also means that you can work while traveling, whether that’s on a transcontinental flight or on a train ride from London to Edinburgh, without needing to whip out the charger.

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Two minute review

Most of the time, when a business laptop like the HP Elite Dragonfly crosses our desk, we kind of roll our eyes and get on with testing it. Laptops for professionals never tend to be too terribly exciting or much to look at, after all, as they're designed to get a job done rather than be shiny consumer products. But what if there was a laptop that could do both?

Well, there finally is. The HP Elite Dragonfly is packed not only with the security and IT features that businesses demand, but it also includes speedy hardware, plenty of ports, and most importantly: an aesthetic to die for. 

The HP Elite Dragonfly is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful 2-in-1 laptops we've tested in a long time, and it's so thin and light that we took an entire month to review it – just so we had an excuse to travel with it over the holidays and through CES 2020. 

Now, you should keep in mind that the HP Elite Dragonfly definitely isn't cheap. This thing will run you $1,629 (£1,618, AU$2,770) just to get you on the ground floor. The fact that this laptop is targeted almost exclusively to traveling professionals makes this price point make a little more sense, but this is definitely a laptop that has major crossover appeal.

What makes this laptop indispensible for the traveling professional, though, is the LTE integration. Some driver issues stopped us from having a totally seamless experience with having an "online anywhere" experience, but for the most part it's become a feature that we're having trouble imagining life without. 

Essentially, as traveling professionals ourselves, the HP Elite Dragonfly has been a dream come true. If you're constantly on the road, the lightweight design, always-connected LTE coverage and the speedy internals make the Elite Dragonfly one of the best laptops out there. 

Price and availability

Right now, you can pick up the HP Elite Dragonfly for $1,629 (£1,618, AU$2,770) to start. That'll net you an 8th-generation Intel Core i5 U-Series processor, 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD – though the SSD gets doubled in the UK entry configuration. 

For the hardware on offer, that's a pretty penny to be sure, but it starts to make sense once you take the LTE and the 2-in-1 design into consideration. 

If that doesn't sound like enough horsepower for the work you need to do, you can of course pack the HP Elite Dragonfly with more powerful hardware. At the top end, you'll get an 8th-generation Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD - which is a weird place to stop. 

But that's just for the pre-built configurations. You're able to create your own configuration in the US with much more storage and a better display. If you absolutely max it out with an Intel Core i7 processor, a 4K display and a 2TB SSD, the cost tops out at $3,258. 

If you're in the UK, you can still get up to a 1TB SSD and a 4K display, though that will run you £1,950. Australians max out with the same configuration as the UK, and that runs AU$4,210.

Design

If the HP Elite Dragonfly didn't have the word "Elitebook" printed below the keyboard, there's no way we'd know it's a laptop aimed at professionals. Simply put, this laptop is absolutely stunning. It comes in a gorgeous Iridescent Dragonfly Blue color option that simply stands out wherever you plop it down. 

Thanks to the magnesium chassis, it's extremely light, too. The Dragonfly comes in at just 2.2 lb (0.99kg) to start, though it will be a bit heavier if you go for the optional larger battery. The laptop has a small footprint, too, measuring just 11.98 inches wide and 0.63 inches thick. HP managed to do this by making a display with obnoxiously thin bezels, resulting in an 86% screen to body ratio. We've definitely seen thinner bezels out there, but this is a 2-in-1 laptop, so we're suitably impressed. 

As a bonus, an oleophobic coating keeps the laptop looking fresh no matter how many fingerprints or stains make their way onto the chassis. It's super easy to just wipe it clean without having to wrestle with a bunch of chemicals. Trust us, we put this laptop through its paces, traveling from New York to Colorado, back to New York, then to CES 2020 and on back to the big city again. Our review unit has definitely seen its fair share of dirt, and it still looks amazing – albeit with a couple of scratches on the chrome HP logo on the lid. 

Because this is a professional-oriented device, ports are super important. on the right side of the laptop, you get an HDMI, 3.5mm audio and two Thunderbolt 3 ports – either of which can be used for charging. Over on the left, you'll find a solitary USB 3.1 Type-A port, the power button and a Nano SIM slot. 

You can find the Dragonfly with a 1,000 nit 1080p display with Sure View or opt for a 550 nit 4K display, and we're sure both of those look absolutely phenomenal. The model HP sent us for review, however, was a 1080p display at 400 nits, and while it's not as good as we imagine the other display options are, it's definitely bright enough and colorful enough to keep up with our show floor Photoshop needs. 

The speakers are a winner here, too. HP continues to lead the pack when it comes to Windows laptops in the speaker department as far as we're concerned. Rather than tucking them them under the laptop to fire sound impotently into the table, they instead project sound upwards. We don't imagine a lot of people are going to use the Elite Dragonfly for jamming out to their music, but that's totally what we did with it, and will continue to do so until HP demands the laptop back from us. 

Think about it: no matter how hard you're working during the day, you're going to need some downtime watching Netflix or listening to music at the end of the day, and the Dragonfly definitely delivers. 

And the keyboard - oh, the HP Elite Dragonfly's keyboard is sublime. With how thin this laptop is, HP could have easily got away with putting a shallow clicky affair in here (think Apple Butterfly keyboard), but it didn't. Instead, this keyboard feels like you're literally typing on a cloud, and it's just about as loud as you'd imagine that simile going. Even when we're furiously typing up a last-minute CES 2020 opinion piece, we can barely hear the keyboard.

Performance

Because the HP Elite Dragonfly is only packed with 8th-Generation Whiskey Lake processors with vPro, it's not the fastest Ultrabook out there. But it's not exactly far behind, either. 

We could go on at length about the lack of serious improvement generation-on-generation with Intel's processors, but the fact is that this laptop is more than fast enough for everything you'd reasonably throw at it. 

Our benchmarks totally reflect this, too. In Cinebench R20, the Dragonfly was able to get a respectable 1,059 points, which is great for such a portable device. What's more impressive, is that in the Geekbench4 single-core test, the Dragonfly actually out-performs a lot of gaming laptops. It scored 5,266 points in this test, compared to the Alienware M15's 4,995. That's not a giant difference, of course, but we're still impressed that the HP Elite Dragonfly is able to keep up in this way. 

With 16GB of RAM, the HP Elite Dragonfly is more than fast enough to keep up with our manic Chrome tab habits, even during an event like CES. We swear at one point we had like 100 tabs open on this thing and it just kept chugging along. 

In fact, we can't get it to slow down with our normal workloads, no matter how many things we try to do at once. It's not until we try to load up a game (wouldn't recommend, by the way) that the laptop starts to meet its maker. 

Battery life

Where this laptop particularly impresses us is in its battery life. Now, we lived with this device longer than we typically do with a laptop, mostly thanks to the holidays and the hectic CES season, but we never really have to worry about this laptop not lasting through whatever project we're working on. 

Any laptop that we're able to take to the CES show floor with half battery and have it survive throughout the day deserves bragging rights. Taking it out of our backpack again and again, jotting down notes, banging out quick news articles in the press room and even taking notes using the touchscreen. This is all stuff that puts strain on the laptop's battery, and we're pleased as punch to report that the HP Elite Dragonfly holds up.

This isn't necessarily reflected in our battery benchmarks, however. In the TechRadar battery test, where we loop 1080p video until the laptop dies, the Elite Dragonfly lasts 8 hours and 11 minutes. But in the PCMark8 Home battery test, it only lasts 4 hours and 42 minutes. Anecdotally, however, we experienced the laptop lasting much longer than either of these tests let on.

Software and features

Because the HP Elite Dragonfly is a professional device meant to play nice with IT departments, this is a very secure laptop. The boot sector is protected by HP Sure Start, which means even if the computer gets compromised, you'll always be able to recover it - something that's definitely not a given these days. Even if an attacker deletes the BIOS, this feature will overwrite whatever the attack did.

But, that's just the tip of the security iceberg. HP is calling the camera the "HP Privacy Camera", which means there's a little physical shutter that covers the lens, so that even if someone gets access to your webcam, they can't actually see through it unless you physically move the shutter with your finger. 

If you get a model with HP Sure View, you'll also be able to protect your screen from anyone glancing over your shoulder and trying to read what you're working on. 

Security is critically important, especially if you're looking for a device to get a bunch of important work done on the go, so it's a relief that the HP Elite Dragonfly nails it so thoroughly.

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Ice Lake was notable because it was Intel's first 10nm manufacturing process that actually made its way into real products, but we may have just gotten a glimpse at what the next refinement of the process will be capable of. 

Some leaked benchmarks for an unspecified Tiger Lake-U processor with 4 cores and 8 threads were posted by user JZWSVIC on Chinese tech forum Zhihu. The leak itself doesn't post any specific information about the architecture or the name of the processor, all we can tell is that there are two versions of the chip, a 15W and a 28W, the latter of which is obviously much more powerful than the current-generation 15W offering. 

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The forum post compares these benchmark scores against the 15W Intel Core i7-1065G7, and while the 28W chip is obviously much faster, what's particularly interesting is the difference between the two chips with the same TDP (thermal design power). The 15W Tiger Lake-U processor is up to 32% faster in one of the tests, which is a huge bump in performance for a single generation. 

Now, it's important to note that these are leaked benchmarks and should be taken with a grain of salt. While we do know that Tiger Lake is coming, Intel hasn't shared much in the way of detailed information about its 10nm++ microarchitecture, so we don't really have much to compare these leaked benchmarks against. 

Either way, as the release of Tiger Lake draws closer, we're going to start seeing a ton of leaked benchmarks for the new chips, so we're only getting started with these early leaks. One thing is for sure, though: Ultrabooks keep getting thinner, lighter and faster thanks to Project Athena, so if these leaks are to be believed, we could be seeing some amazing laptops in 2020.

Via Wccftech

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HP’s Envy line of laptops is effectively the more affordable alternative to its premium Spectre line of Ultrabooks. 

But, over the years, more and more of the premium features have trickled down into Envy laptops, and the latest Envy 13t keeps that up with plenty to offer at a more affordable price.

Price and availability

The new HP Envy 13t starts at $999 (£849, AU$1,799) but has been frequently on sale in the US for $250 off all models (note: the US base configuration has a non-touch display, while UK and Australia have touchscreens). The unit we’re reviewing starts at $1,189 as configured before any discounts, and includes an 8th-Generation, Intel Core i7 quad-core CPU, 16GB of RAM and Nvidia GeForce MX250 graphics.

That puts it well below the $1,499 Spectre 13 with a slower Intel Core i7 and half the memory. Meanwhile, the $978 Dell XPS 13 may fit into the same price ballpark, but the base configuration starts with an Intel Core i3 processor paired with just 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.

The $999 (about £785, AU$1,403) Huawei MateBook 13 comes in with close parity between price and specs, while MSI’s newly announced Modern 14 offers 10th-Gen Intel Comet Lake processors, a thin-and-light design and a $749 (about £620, AU$1,110) starting price point.

Design and display

The HP Envy 13t readily fits into the thin-and-light category at just 2.59 pounds and 14.5mm thick. We’ve been tossing the Envy into a backpack that weighs more than it, and it feels light enough on our back that we have to double check it’s even in the backpack before heading out for the day.

The chassis is made from anodized aluminum that is soft to the touch. On the base of the laptop, it’s sturdy with minimal flex, but the screen portion of the laptop is more susceptible to bending and twisting (though less than we experienced with the Acer Swift 5).

One downside to the aluminum is its softness. We managed to get a small ding on the front edge of the laptop which we consistently feel with our thumb when using the clickable trackpad.

Speaking of the trackpad, it’s incredibly wide, offering plenty of space (and Precision drivers to boot) for use. However, it’s vertical dimension feels short when compared to how wide it is. A little way to the side of the trackpad there’s also a small, square fingerprint scanner that we find rarely works on the first try. 

The Envy 13t keyboard is standard for its size, and thankfully doesn’t do anything weird to fit certain keys. There are no shrunken Shift keys or oddly placed arrow keys. It even makes the most of its space to add Home, Pg Up, Pg Dn, and End keys at the far right side.

The keys themselves are a delight to use. They’re all wonderfully poppy with minimal wobble and even travel. Pressing on the very edge of a key works as effectively as pressing on the center, making for a highly accurate typing experience that took almost no time to adjust to coming from another laptop. They are also fully backlit, though the white backlight on silver keys can actually make it harder to see the characters in certain situations.

Each side of the laptop includes a USB Type-A port with an unusual mechanism that partly closes the port when not in use — it’s an interesting solution for making the laptop so thin while still including full-size USB ports, though it can be tricky to plug into. There’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack and USB-C port on the left side. 

The power port for the lightweight, 65W power adapter is on the right side. There's also a microSD card slot and a little switch that physically disables the webcam, which sits above the display. The webcam itself is a simple 720p number that can get the job done, but has hazy details even in excellent lighting conditions.

There are four speakers, with two down-firing speakers at the front sides of the laptop and more housed in a long, stylish speaker grille above the keyboard. The speakers are impressively loud and clear. We watched a couple episodes of The Boys out on a balcony with minor street traffic on the road below, and could still hear well enough.

The display uses a special hinge that raises the laptop up on an angle, allowing for better airflow through the bottom vents. HP has cleverly added two small, rubber strips on the back edge of the display so that the aluminum doesn’t get scraped if it’s resting on a metal table.

The downside of this hinge design is that the laptop is uncomfortable to actually use on a lap. We either have to sit it far forward on our knees, or have the back edge focus all the pressure along one line on our legs. It may not be a big issue for people who mostly use their laptop on desks and tables, but it could quickly become a dealbreaker for lap users.

The back of the display also has a discreet but somewhat unsightly strip of plastic near the bottom of it that runs almost the whole length. But, this hopefully improves the performance of the machine, as it’s a pass-through for radio signals like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. What’s strange is that we don’t see this in more designs (it is on the HP Spectre 13, though).

The 13.3-inch display itself is a contender, but shows where the Envy’s affordability results in shortcomings. It has thin bezels on the sides with a slightly thicker bezel up top and a much thicker one at the bottom. It’s not winning any awards for these bezels, especially with the likes of Asus’s ZenBook line.

The HP Envy 13t can come with an Ultra HD display, and we have the Full HD model. It’s plenty sharp for everything we need on a display this size, and doesn’t come with the big hit to battery life that 4K displays are known for. 

The screen can get fairly bright, but it’s somewhat hampered by being glossy. Even though it can get bright enough to use outdoors, the glare (and finger oils — it’s a touchscreen after all) can still make it slightly strenuous. And, HP doesn’t provide an anti-glare display option.

The HP Envy 13t, as we have it configured, is on the beefy side for an Ultrabook. The Intel Core i7-8565U offers strong performance matched with efficiency, and the GeForce MX250 graphics processor gives it a serious boost over similar machines with Intel’s integrated graphics, though itself definitely not enough power for AAA gaming.

In our day-to-day use, the Envy 13t easily keeps up with our demands. Four cores of computing power is plenty for most tasks, and with the headroom to boost clock speeds up to 4.6GHz, it can burst as needed. This keeps the laptop feeling snappy, with programs launching quickly and some simple tasks, like basic photo editing, working fast. 

With thin-and-light computers, thermal management is always something to watch out for. Two computers with the same processor can have fairly different performance because of their design, and we see that here. The Envy 13t earns strong marks for single-core performance, with a GeekBench score of 5,255 that gives it a slight lead over the Dell XPS 13. But, we see regularly see inconsistent multi-core performance in both Geekbench and Cinebench. Our first run through of the benchmarks saw the Envy 13t score significantly lower than the XPS 13 with the same processor.

Curiously, we repeated some of the same tests later just incidentally in front of a fan, and got dramatically improved results. In one GeekBench test, the Envy achieved a multi-core score of 16,103, well above its own score and above the average of the XPS 13, and it also managed to double its CPU score in Cinebench. (We also tried some of the tests over with HP Command Center set to maximize fan speeds for performance and saw no difference). We repeated the benchmarks again later to get a new average for Geekbench multi-core results and Cinebench CPU results, and we’ve noted those scores as “re-tested” in our benchmark notes.

That raises some concerns for thermal management, as the Envy 13t may not manage to keep cool enough to offer sustained boost speeds. But, since the laptop has never felt more than a little warm, it may be a trade-off HP has made for comfort. 

For its lack in consistent multi-core performance, it excels in graphics for an Ultrabook. In our 3DMark and Cinebench graphics tests, the Envy 13t trounces the XPS 13 with integrated graphics. It handily beats the XPS 13’s Sky Diver score, and more than doubles its Fire Strike and Time Spy scores. These outpace Ultrabooks with the same CPU and integrated graphics, but don’t compare to laptops with higher-end dedicated graphics (Vega Graphics on AMD APUs are also a different story).

Battery life

For its performance advantages, the Envy 13t also manages to offer efficiency with a long-lasting battery. It features a four-cell, 53Wh battery and supports fast charging that can go from drained to 50% charge in 45 minutes.

In our experience, the battery holds up well. We’ve sat down to do a bit of work with 30% charge without feeling anxious about how soon it would die.

After two hours of work (Chrome running with over 20 tabs, Slack open, music streaming, and one quick benchmark) with the screen at 50% brightness and modest battery-saver settings, we only lost 23% charge. After 3 hours and 15 minutes, we were down to 66% charge. We then took an hour lunch (3% lost during lunch). After, we moved outdoors and increased the screen brightness to its maximum, where the battery only dropped to 57% after another hour running. After 3 hours of running at max brightness, we’d gone down to 21% charge (a 42% drop). We kept going, and eventually battery-saver mode kicked in and dimmed the screen, but we made it to well over 7 hours of active time with the screen at max brightness for most of it.

Our tests also showed strong results. With a PCMark 8 battery life test result of 5 hours and 39 minutes, the Envy 13t exceeds the XPS 13, HP Spectre x360 and HP Spectre 13 all by more than an hour. 

It’s longevity is even better for video playback. In our test playing a looped 1080p video with the screen at 50% brightness, the Envy 13t managed to chug along for a full 11 hours and 32 minutes before running out of juice. That’s enough time for even some of the longest intercontinental flights, and it could go even longer with the brightness lowered to a level that would likely be reasonable in the dim cabin of an airplane.

Final verdict

The HP Envy 13t puts a lot into one package, going premium in many ways while keeping the price well below some of its competitors. The laptop’s design earns it plenty of credit, and its overall performance leaves little to be desired outside of serious multi-core workloads.

Among its contemporaries, the HP Envy 13t is an excellent-value Ultrabook. But, with Intel Ice Lake and Intel Comet Lake CPUs showing up, the Ultrabook market is likely to get a lot more competitive soon.

Back at Computex 2019, Intel gave us our first real look at Ice Lake. A platform designed for the next generation of mobile computing, it would use AI to boost productivity. And, finally Intel has detailed exactly what to expect from Ice Lake. 

Now, these processors are mobile chips, so you won't be able to buy them and slot them into your desktop – Ice Lake isn't Intel's answer to AMD Ryzen 3000, that will likely come with Comet Lake. Instead, these processors serve as the first step in Intel's future-looking Project Athena. 

• These processors will be in the best Ultrabooks
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• Will Intel Gen11 graphics compete with the best graphics cards?

Now, these 10th-generation mobile processors will come in U- and Y-series flavors, which for the uninitiated are for Ultrabooks and fanless laptops, respectively, and will, of course, feature the latest connectivity options. That means Wi-Fi 6 (formerly known as 802.11ax) and Thunderbolt 3 will be supported natively – the latter with up to four USB-C ports.

What may be more important, however, is the inclusion of Intel Gen11 graphics. These still won't likely make for the best gaming laptops by themselves, but should feature more than enough power to get through a round of Fortnite on your lunch break – something we definitely aim to test when laptops bearing Ice Lake processors make it to market. 

Ice Lake processors are also smart, which might be the most interesting thing here. These processors will leverage the power of artificial intelligence to boost performance when you need it, or slow things down when idling in order to reserve battery power. These processors will use Deep Learning to adapt to your workloads to make sure they're delivering the most performance and the most efficiency when needed. 

All the processors

There are plenty of new processors that will be heading to a laptop near you over the next few months. There are a ton of high-performance U-series chips that will be featured in upcoming Ultrabooks, alongside some Y-Series chips that will be behind the thinnest and lightest products. 

We went ahead and listed all of the new processors down below, along with the specs you can expect from each of them. One thing to note is that many of these processors come with Intel Iris Plus graphics, which was previously reserved for more premium SKUs. 

One thing we have to note is that Intel is measuring its graphics cores as "EUs", or Execution Cores. In the Intel Core i7-1068G7 – the most powerful Ice Lake processor  – you'll be getting 64 Execution Units. These are functionally similar to Nvidia's CUDA cores, or AMD's Stream Processors, in that the more you have the faster the GPU will be able to handle complex graphics workloads.

Obviously, graphics cards have thousands of these streaming processors these days, but those also cost a significant amount of cash, and you can't exactly slot one into an Ultrabook. 

We don't have a full list of laptops packing Ice Lake processors yet, but we're sure we can expect some impressive graphics performance out of this generation – at least compared to other integrated graphics solutions. Perhaps we can expect Intel's Xe graphics cards to follow in Gen11's footsteps. 

Ice Lake U-Series processors: 

• Intel Core i7-1068G7 – 4-cores, 8-threads | Intel Iris Plus | 64 EUs| 4.1GHz boost
• Intel Core i7-1065G7 – 4-cores, 8-threads | Intel Iris Plus | 64 EUs|3.9GHz boost
• Intel Core i5-1035G7 – 4-cores, 8-threads | Intel Iris Plus | 64 EUs|3.7GHz boost
• Intel Core i5-1035G4 – 4-cores, 8-threads | Intel Iris Plus | 48 EUs|3.7GHz boost
• Intel Core i5-1035G1 – 4-cores, 8-threads | Intel UHD | 32 EUs | 3.6GHz boost
• Intel Core i3-1005G1 – 2-cores, 4-threads | Intel UHD | 32EUs | 3.4GHz boost

Ice Lake Y-Series processors: 

• Intel Core i7-1060G7 – 4-cores, 8-threads |Intel Iris Plus |64 EUs | 3.8GHz boost
• Intel Core i5-1030G7 – 4-cores, 8-threads |Intel Iris Plus |64 EUs | 3.5GHz boost
• Intel Core i5-1030G4 – 4-cores, 8-threads |Intel Iris Plus |48 EUs | 3.5GHz boost
• Intel Core i3-1000G4 – 2-cores, 4-threads |Intel Iris Plus | 48 EUs | 3.2GHz boost
• Intel Core i3-1000G1 – 2-cores, 4-threads | Intel UHD | 32 EUs | 3.2GHz boost

You'll notice in the above spec lists that this is the first time Intel's Y Series of fanless processors has gone quad-core. Sure, it's on i5 processors and above, but don't you wish the 2019 MacBook Air came out just a little later now?

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The best Ultrabooks keep slimming down, and no Asus laptop exemplifies this trend quite like the Asus ZenBook 3. After all, who wouldn’t want a laptop that’s quick enough to tackle most everyday tasks, while also being thin and light enough to carry with you wherever you go? It’s a compelling sales pitch made by the likes of the Dell XPS 13 and the MacBook Air – not to mention Asus’ very own ZenBook S13.

These thin and light beauties are on the pricier side. However, to be fair, it’s totally worth it to not have your back cursing you for lugging around a gargantuan 15-incher wherever you go.

The Asus ZenBook 3 does compromise to keep its slim form factor, much like most other similar Ultrabooks. With the ZenBook 3, you’re losing some ports, and the battery life isn’t the best in the business. But, the stunning design and display more than make up for any shortcomings. We still find ourselves staring at the Asus ZenBook 3 after frantically searching our bags to make sure we didn’t forget it on a desk somewhere.

Price and availability 

At the time of the review, the ZenBook 3 started at $1,599 (about £1,499, AU$1,598) in the US with the specs loaded in our review model. In Australia, the specifications are similar, save for the memory. Instead of the same 16GB that ships elsewhere, the Australian model ships with the smaller 8GB, and you can find it for AU$1,995.

Even before any discounts, the ZenBook 3 goes for less than the Apple MacBook while also being more powerful – though it’s almost twice the starting price of the Dell XPS 2017.

Unfortunately, by 2019, this ultimate Ultrabook is no longer for sale – though a small number of third-party vendors still offer it – leaving room for the ASUS ZenBook 3 Deluxe, which at the same starting price point, is equipped with a 14-inch display on a 13-inch chassis, two USB-C ports, an 8th-generation Intel Core i7, and the same memory and storage space.

Design

In the process of reviewing the Asus ZenBook 3, we took it on a trip to New York from Colorado, in lieu of our trusty MacBook Pro with Touch Bar.

At just 11.7mm thin, the ZenBook 3 is incredibly light. So light, in fact, that there was more than one occasion when we had to open our backpack in a panic, triple-checking to make sure the Ultrabook didn’t get stolen. Looking at its size, and considering its metal housing, it’s natural to expect that it would have a reassuring weight to it. But, then you pick it up, and realize that – at only 2 pounds – it’s one of the lightest laptops out there.

The Asus ZenBook 3 resembles the Apple MacBook in this way. It’s ridiculously thin, has a full metal chassis and only sports a single USB-C port on the right side of the laptop. This port is used for charging, connecting external accessories and everything else you may want to connect, so you can imagine how that might be a bit frustrating. On the upside, on the left-hand side is a combo 3.5mm audio jack, so you can listen to music, watch movies and even take a work call without disturbing the peace.

On the top-right corner of the touchpad is a fingerprint sensor used for signing into the ZenBook 3 using Windows Hello. The placement is odd, and can get in the way when dragging your finger across the pad. It won’t directly impact the touchpad’s usability, but it does break up the otherwise smooth surface and just feels out of place.

Dongle life

However elegant the Asus ZenBook 3 is, it’s only equipped with a single USB-C port, so doing something as simple as syncing and charging your laptop at the same time is impossible without a dongle or a hub. Asus does sell plenty of peripherals to offset the lack of additional ports so that you can connect to multiple devices while charging, but it’s just another thing you have to buy and remember to pack in your bag.

As USB-C continues to creep into numerous products we use on a daily basis, not being able to connect more than one item to a laptop at a time is still a limitation.

At least, the ASUS ZenBook 3 Deluxe tries harder with an extra USB-C port.

Mushy keyboard

We’ve been using Apple’s Butterfly keyboards for a while now, and we’ve become accustomed to lightly pressing a key and having it rebound with minimal effort. Asus tries to mimic this effect with the Asus ZenBook 3, though the end result is just a bit mushy.

The keys don’t quickly spring back into place, nor do they have a consistent level of resistance. In other words, the keys will feel soft and lead to inaccurate typing before mastering the learning curve.

First reviewed September 2017

Images Credit: TechRadar

The Asus ZenBook 3’s Intel Kaby Lake processor blasted through everything we put in front of it throughout our testing. Multitasking is a non-issue, going from one tab or apps to another with no noticeable slowdown.

Fans, if they were needed, are quiet and not a distraction by any means.

Four Harmon Kardon speakers come equipped on the ZenBook 3. Two are on the top of the device, just above the keyboard, with the other two speakers situated on the bottom of the housing. While they’re lacking a bit in volume, they’re more than enough to listen to music or watch Netflix.

Our test results would put the Asus ZenBook 3 in the same league as the Dell XPS 13 2017, and, in some areas, ahead of it. For instance, the Asus ZenBook 3 shined in both single and multi-core GeekBench tests, but lagged behind the Dell laptop when running 3DMark.

Battery life

One of the compromises typically associated with a laptop of this size is battery life. Asus put enough of a charge in the ZenBook 3’s battery to get for supposedly 9 hours of use, enough to get you through a full work day without charging.

However, our tests found that to not quite be the case. Looping Guardians of the Galaxy at 50% brightness with all unnecessary features (Bluetooth, location, backlit keyboard, etc.) disabled, we ran our movie battery life test twice to confirm the ZenBook 3’s score and ended up with almost 6 hours and 30 minutes – two and a half hours less than promised.

What’s more, the PCMark battery life test ended up running for just over three hours of heavy use. That’s not good, by any measurement.

Reliable fingerprint sensor

Using Windows Hello to log into a Windows 10 laptop is convenient and downright cool. Scanning your eyes or a fingerprint to sign in (or buy something) are popular implementations, with the ZenBook 3 implementing the fingerprint sensor.

Despite our complaints of the sensor’s position on the Zenbook 3, we have to commend the manufacturer on just how precise, reliable and fast this fingerprint scanner is. After teaching the laptop to recognize our fingerprint, it was rare that we would ever receive a prompt saying that our finger wasn’t recognized.

Typically, after opening the lid and placing a finger on the sensor, it took only seconds until the device unlocked, ready for use.

Final verdict

Sitting somewhere in between the MacBook and the XPS 13 in price, the Asus ZenBook 3 is a solid option for anyone wanting an Ultrabook that can easily tackle even some of the more processor-intensive tasks you throw at it.

The Asus ZenBook 3’s display is bright and vivid enough on its own, without tweaking. The lightweight and portable approach Asus took must also be appreciated, and anyone that frequently travels will find this laptop a great device to get some work done while on the road.

Don’t expect all day battery, and don’t be surprised if you find yourself wanting to use an external keyboard. But all things considered, if you can look lives with its flaws, the ZenBook 3 is a slick and powerful laptop that’s ideal to the mass consumer.

Images Credit: TechRadar 

Intel has finally announced that 10nm Ice Lake processors for laptops are shipping now, and should arrive in the best laptops and Ultrabooks later this year. 

This comes after years of pushing back 10nm chips – Intel first announced its Cannon Lake lineup back in 2016. But now Ice Lake is on the way, as part of Intel's Project Athena, announced at Computex 2019, which Team Blue claims will push computing to the next level. 

• Check out the best 2-in-1 laptops
• Make sure you pair that Core i9-9900KS with the best graphics card
• We're excited for the follow up to Whiskey Lake

Project Athena is a multi-year initiative that will see Intel pushing to advance computing in several key areas, including performance, battery life, connectivity and form factor. The idea seems to be to make computing as accessible as using a mobile phone, with the 'instant action' element designed to enable computers wake up from sleep in under a second. 

Intel Ice Lake 10th-generation processors are just the first part of Project Athena, and will work towards achieving these long-term computing goals. These new chips will be based on the Sunny Cove architecture announced back at CES 2019, and will include features like WiFi 6 and much more powerful Intel Gen11 graphics. 

These chips are also unique in that they will integrate WiFi 6 and Thunderbolt 3 into the SoC, which will boost compatibility and should lead to even thinner and ligher laptops. 

As for specs, Intel Ice Lake processors will range from Core i3 to Core i7 and feature up to 4-cores and 8-threads, with turbo boost speeds up to 4.1GHz. And, notably, we'll see GPU clock speeds up to 1.1GHz, which should double previous generations' integrated graphics performance. These integrated GPUs will be capable of 4K HDR video and might even be capable of playing some AAA PC games like Destiny 2.

More than just laptops

Intel didn't forget about desktop products, though. Team Blue is refreshing the Intel Core i9-9900K with the Core i9-9900KS, which will get a turbo speed boost to 5GHz on all cores, which should give the newly announced AMD Ryzen 9 3900X some competition. If you want to get your hands on this beefy processor, you'll be able to get your hands on it towards the end of this year.

To complement this new processor is a new suite of overclocking tools for enthusiasts, called the Intel Performance Maximizer, or IPM. This is an automated overclocking tool, which will let brave enthusiasts push their unlocked K-series processors to the limit. And, don't worry, you can still manually fine-tune your overclocks through this tool. 

For enthusiasts who really want extreme performance we're getting new Intel Core-X processors, through a new generation of HEDT processors. We don't have exact specs for these HEDT processors, but Intel is claiming that we'll see improved clock speeds and Intel Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0, which will apparently let more than two cores boost up to the max clocks.

Finally, Intel released 9th-gen Intel Core VPro processors for mobile and desktop, aimed at business professionals, which feature baked-in security features that business demand. For instance, if something goes wrong, IT professionals can gain remote access at the hardware level. These high performance processors for businesses will feature up to eight cores and 16 threads.

Image credits: TechRadar

• Check out the best Intel processors

Check out all of TechRadar's Computex 2019 coverage. We're live in Taipei to bring you all the breaking computing news and launches, plus hands-on reviews of everything from fresh laptops and desktops to powerful new components and wild overclocking demonstrations.

Razer’s leading Ultrabook, the Razer Blade Stealth, can now double as a gaming laptop – almost. The laptop has been officially upgraded with not only a new Intel processor but with a new graphics option: the Nvidia MX150.

The new graphics option comes available to the mid-level Razer Blade Stealth for 2019, complementing an Intel Core i7-8565U CPU, 256GB-to-512GB of SSD storage and 8GB-to-16GB of DDR3 memory at 2,133MHz. These powerful parts all sit behind your choice of between a 13.3-inch FHD (1,920 x 1,080) no-touch or 4K (3,840 x 2,160) touch display.

Topping it all off with a single-zone keyboard with Razer’s Chroma lighting system, a Microsoft Precision touchpad that’s larger than ever and a 720p webcam with infrared scanning for Windows Hello, Razer wants a cool $1,399 (about £1,100, AU$1,940) to start for the 2019 Blade Stealth.

While that price does include two USB-C ports (one being Thunderbolt 3) and two USB 3.1 ports, Dolby Atmos audio and up to 13 hours of battery life, it does not include the Nvidia MX150 graphics.

More graphics grunt for the mobile nut

To get access to those game-ready graphics from Nvidia, you’ll have to cough up a little extra cash, though exactly how much isn’t known at the time of writing. The Nvidia MX150 isn’t going to set your favorite games ablaze or anything – it’s just enough to get through many games at middling settings.

However, Razer has tuned its application of this graphics chip a little higher than most, with it being a 25-watt processor rather with 4GB of GDDR5 video memory than the 10W/2MB applications found within laptops like the Huawei MateBook X Pro. This means you should see playable frame rates from many popular esports games, like Fortnite and Dota 2, we’re told.

For the esports pro that needs as little weight as possible as they travel to and from tournaments, this could be an ideal option – if rather expensive.

This redesign finally sees every one of Razer’s laptops adopt the company’s new design ID of more starkly-drawn corners and edges, with more flat angles throughout. Most importantly, the illuminated green logo is no more, swapped for a tone-on-tone logo in silver.

The Razer Blade Stealth for 2019 is available in the US and Canada at the time of writing, with launches in the UK, Australia, France, Germany, Nordics, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan happening later.

• These are the best gaming laptops we've tested this year

LG is looking to vastly expand its lineup of thin-and-light laptops in the US and abroad, with both a 17-inch LG Gram model and a 14-inch 2-in-1 Gram model appearing on Best Buy. The two laptops once appeared in “out of stock” listings, but have now been pulled from the website.

Liliputing found both of the laptops ahead of their newfound – and likely mistaken – retailer listings, and they actually have quite a few similarities. Particularly, both laptops will house the same Intel Core i7-8565U processor with Intel UHD Graphics 620, 16GB of DDR4 memory and a 512GB SSD. Likewise, they’ll both have built-in fingerprint readers for secure login for Windows Hello.

Of course, that’s about where the similarities end. The LG Gram 17 will likely mark a first for the industry as the only 17-inch laptop weighing less just 2.95 pounds, calling for $1,699 (about £1,330, AU$2,350) in the US. That 17-inch display will be a 2,560 x 1,600 WQXGA with in-plane switching (IPS) technology for wider viewing angles.

The 17-inch laptop will also measure just 0.7 inches thin, while featuring both HDMI out and a microSD card reader. That’s not to mention three USB 3.1 ports and a built-in fingerprint reader within the power button.

LG gets in touch with 2-in-1 laptops

Not content with the thinnest and lightest 17-inch laptop around, it looks like LG hopes to plunk down some other firsts in the laptop world. How about one of the thinnest and lightest 2-in-1 laptops to date?

LG’s Gram 14 2-in-1 laptop will call for $1,499 (about £1,175, AU$2,075) in the US, weighing just 2.53 pounds and measuring a lithe 0.7 inches thin. That’s definitely among the thinnest and lightest 2-in-1 laptops we’ve seen.

The touchscreen that this laptop houses will be of a 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, and it will include a Wacom AES 2.0 stylus in the box. Inside, the laptop will have room for HDMI out as well as a microSD card slot, two USB 3.1 ports and a built-in fingerprint reader.

LG is promising 19.5 hours of battery life from the Gram 17 and 21 hours from the Gram 14 2-in-1. Of course, the firm’s testing methods aren’t listed on Best Buy, but these figures sound to be in line with claims behind previous versions of LG’s laptops.

It’s unknown when exactly these laptops will go on sale, but it’s likely to be sooner rather than later with full product listings up on Best Buy. If you remember, LG last year announced its laptops in late 2017 with an early 2018 launch and physical debut at CES.

• These are the best laptops the world over

Two weeks ago, it was officially announced that Huawei's MateBook X Pro would be landing on Australian shores on November 22, 2018, although pricing and availability details were yet to be locked down at the time. 

We now know that Huawei's ultrabook, which earned the title of "best laptop of 2018" in our five-star review, will start at $1,899 for the i5 version with 8GB of RAM, while the i7 model with 16GB of RAM will cost $2,599.

Available in either Space Grey or Mystic Silver, the MateBook will be sold at the flagship Microsoft Store in Sydney, as well as on Microsoft's online store. 

And, as a special Black Friday bonus, customers who purchase a MateBook X Pro between Friday November 16 and Monday November 26 will receive a saving of up to $300 – but only while stocks last.

Both models feature a 3000 × 2000 (3K) resolution display with touch functionality, a Dolby Atmos sound system, an ultra-slim (14.6mm) and lightweight (1.33kg) design and a 57.4Wh battery that offers up to 15 hours of usage. 

• The best Ultrabooks in Australia for 2018: top thin and light laptops reviewed

Announced back in February, Huawei's excellent MateBook X Pro made waves by offering productivity-focused individuals a sleek Windows 10-powered alternative to Apple's MacBook Pro, as well as a worthy competitor to Dell’s impressive XPS 13 ultrabook.

Described as the "best laptop of 2018" in our five-star review, Huawei's MateBook X Pro is finally coming to Australia, with the ultrabook announced for release at the Australian launch of Huawei's Mate 20 phone range in Sydney last night. 

Available in Australia from November 22, the Huawei MateBook X Pro boasts a stunning 13.9-inch 3K (3,000 x 2,000) LED touch display with a tiny 4.4mm bezel surrounding it, giving it a 91% screen-to-body ratio.

That display is housed within a lightweight (1.33kg) and super-slim (14.6mm) metallic body with diamond cut edges. It also sports a One Touch power button with fingerprint scanning functionality and a pop-up camera that's hidden in the F6 key. 

Prospective MateBook X Pro buyers will be able to choose from 8th-gen Intel Core i5-8250U and i7-8550U processor options, with 8GB or 16GB of LPDDR3 RAM, and either 256GB or 512GB of SSD storage.

While local pricing has yet to be announced for Huawei's MateBook X Pro, Microsoft representatives at the event told us that the ultrabook would be coming soon to its Australian retail and online stores.

• The best Ultrabooks in Australia for 2018: top thin and light laptops reviewed

When looking to buy a new laptop, you may have noticed that some premium thin, light and powerful laptops are referred to as Ultrabooks. But what is an Ultrabook?

The term Ultrabook became popular towards the end of 2011, when Intel wanted a term to differentiate modern thin and fast laptops from the laptops that came before. 

Over the years laptops had become smaller and more portable, but Ultrabooks were designed to go even further, combining the very latest technology in impressively thin and lightweight bodies.

Ultrabook features

When Intel first defined Ultrabooks, it set a number of criteria that laptops needed to meet to be labelled as an Ultrabook.

First of all, to be an Ultrabook, a laptop needs to be incredibly thin: under 1-inch thick. Before 2011, there were thin laptops, but these often made sacrifices in other areas to get their size down. 

Intel envisioned Ultrabooks that boasted all the features found in regular laptops, but in a thin and light body. Advances in technology have helped Ultrabooks become even thinner in recent years, while getting more powerful as well.

Intel also wanted Ultrabooks to be a showcase for its latest technology, so they had to include features such as Intel Rapid Start, which means Ultrabooks could wake up and load up Windows in five seconds or less.

This involved putting the Ultrabook into a low-powered hibernation state, and Intel intended for these devices to be able to stay in that state for up to 30 days before needing to be recharged. This meant that Ultrabooks usually come with solid state drives (SSDs).

Having an SSD also meant Ultrabooks could make use of Intel Smart Response, which is a feature that stores frequently used files and apps on fast SSD storage, so that the Ultrabook performs faster than a regular laptop.

Battery life

Intel also wanted Ultrabooks to have longer battery lives than powerful laptops, with Ultrabooks lasting five hours or more on a single charge. This is achieved by using components that have been specially chosen for their power saving features.

As we mentioned earlier, modern technology has meant that laptop technology has become both more powerful and more power efficient, which means Ultrabooks do not need to make compromises when it comes to prolonging battery life.

Most modern Ultrabooks will run on mobile versions of Intel’s 8th generation Core processor family. These are Intel’s most powerful consumer processors to date, offering up to 40% better performance than 7th generation chips, according to Intel.

We’ve tested a number of laptops (Ultrabook and otherwise) with 8th generation processors, and we can confirm that there is a significant performance increase with laptops rocking the latest Intel processors – especially if you go from a dual-core laptop to a quad-core one. The more cores a processor has, the better it is at multitasking.

Not only are these chips more powerful, they require less power, which helps your battery life last longer.

Ultrabooks: the alternatives to MacBooks

When Ultrabooks were first conceived, they were envisioned as Intel-toting Windows-running alternatives to Apple’s thin and light MacBooks. MacBooks gained a reputation for offering powerful devices in gorgeous designs, and Ultrabooks do the same.

MacBooks also gained a reputation for being very expensive, and while Ultrabooks are pitched as premium devices, they should still cost less than a MacBook, with most around the $1,000/£1,000/AU$1,800 price tag. That’s not cheap, but it’s a more affordable prospect than a MacBook or MacBook Pro.

Since their inception, Ultrabooks are now far more than “just” Windows-based alternatives to MacBooks. They’ve shown how you can have a brilliantly powerful Windows machine that has a thin and light design and solid build quality, with all the latest features built in.

If your budget can stretch to one, by buying an Ultrabook, you can be sure that you will be getting an elegant and fast laptop that’s thin, light and durable, with a battery that should see you through the workday. 

• If you’re interested in buying one, check out our best Ultrabooks list, for the very best models money can buy

The current Acer Swift 7 laptop, released just months ago, is already the world’s thinnest, but at its IFA 2018 keynote address in Berlin Germany Acer has teased a follow-up that will be both thinner and smaller.

Showed off on the keynote stage, this upcoming Acer Swift 7 will measure less than a centimeter (0.39 inches) thin and weigh less than one kilogram (2.2 pounds), according to Laptop.

The recently released 2018 model comes in at 0.89cm (0.35 inches) thin and weighs 1.18kg (2.6 pounds). The reduction in weight to under 1kg will likely come from even thinner screen bezels, which will be shrunk down to 4.27 millimeters, resulting in a 15% smaller laptop while maintaining the 14-inch screen size for a new, massive screen-to-body ratio of 92%.

However, considering that Acer had to remove the touchpad’s clicking function to make this year’s Swift 7 as thin as it is, we almost don’t want to know what else the firm is willing to shave off to maintain its claim to the ultra-thin throne.

Acer hasn’t yet given any information regarding the laptop’s price or availability, and considering how recently the 2018 Swift 7 has released, we likely won’t see this follow-up until 2019.

• IFA 2018 is Europe's biggest tech show. The TechRadar team is in Berlin to bring you all the breaking news and hands-on first impressions of new phones, watches and other tech as they're announced.

• These are the 15 best laptops you can buy in 2018

Lead image credit: Laptop

Ultrabooks provided a much needed breath of fresh air to the tired laptop scene when they first made an appearance just over six years ago. Asus has been a major proponent of ultrabooks since their inception, and while there is still a perception that Ultrabooks are a pricey way of getting on the thin and light bandwagon, the likes of the ZenBook 3 and other Asus laptops like it continue to prove that there is a lot of great technology and performance to be had in a small form factor if you’re prepared to spend that little bit more.

The latest rendition of the ZenBook 3 employs one of Intel’s newest, 8th generation quad-core processors, codenamed Kaby Lake R. Asus has combined that with a healthy amount of RAM and the latest NVMe PCIe SSD to ensure that you have performance where you need it, in a stylishly-slim laptop that you can take anywhere.

Such high-end components do come at a very real cost, and the price sticker attached to this machine certainly means that it’s not a mainstream option. However, if you’re looking for a high-end Ultrabook, then this kind of ticket price isn’t too outrageous, and it genuinely does feel like you’re getting a lot of kit for you money.

Price and availability

Ultrabooks do demand a premium on lesser, thicker machines, and weighing in at $1,799 (£1,399; AU$2,499), this certainly costs more than your average 14-inch laptop. Indeed, with the likes of the Microsoft Surface Book and Apple’s Iconic MacBook Pro coming in at roughly the same prices, this needs to do something special to set itself apart in a crowded landscape.

It’s worth looking back at that specification though, and the model reviewed does play home to some truly cutting-edge hardware. That 512GB of PCIe NVMe storage, that we’ll come back to shortly, packs an incredible punch when it comes to data throughput, and the fact that it’s also home to an 8th-generation Core i7-8550U shouldn’t be understated either.

One thing to bear in mind when looking to buy this laptop, or indeed any modern laptop, is that there are a great many specifications from which to pick from, so it’s worth drilling down into the details to make sure you’re getting the exact model you think you are. Variations on the CPU used, the amount and type of storage employed, as well as how much memory is used.

In this instance, a range of CPUs can be found powering the ZenBook 3 from the latest quad-core chips as we have here, to last-generation dual-core parts. While we can see a case for using a Core i5 instead of the Core i7 we have here, we’d still recommend going for the newer generation of chips over the 7th-generation if at all possible.

The model as reviewed here is readily available in the US and UK, although you need to make sure you double check the specifications to make sure.

The good news for our Australian readers is that this laptop is available directly from Asus, although it doesn’t carry the exact specification that we have here, as the SSD is a slower SATA3 model as opposed to the lightning-fast NVMe drive we have in the test unit.

Design

Asus has a good reputation for its ZenBook brand, and it’s only going to win over more fans here, with its brushed aluminium finish making for a particularly fine machine to hold and use.

With the lid closed, the latest ZenBook is home to a minimalist design that errs on subtle rather than boastful, with only the gold edging suggesting that this is more than it may first appear.

The underside is similarly understated, with its four low-profile rubber feet providing some texture to break up the smoothness. The pair of speak grills can be found here towards the front of the machine, while a pair of thin air intakes on the edges finish off the sober aesthetic.

Pop open the lid and the full-size keyboard lights up glows into action nicely in a darkened room, although in normal daytime lighting the backlight on the keys can be hard to pick out, and the lighting is a little patchy. Not a major criticism by any means, but at this level, we expect perfection, and the keyboard lighting is a little off.

We found typing on this keyboard a pleasant enough experience, and for once we’re shocked to report that the trackpad isn’t a waste of time either. In fact, we didn’t feel the need to reach for a mouse when using it. There’s a fingerprint scanner in the top right-hand corner as well, for added flexibility and security.

The full HD screen is a delight to use, both for serious work and for watching movies, with good vibrant colour reproduction, and great viewing angles. Those looking for a bezel-less screen are going to be disappointed, but the finish is nice and overall works well.

The final point of note about the design of the ZenBook 3 is its weight. It’s light. Seriously so, but doesn’t feel weak or fragile because of it. This is an easy device to slide into its included pouch and toss into your bag, or carry around under your arm for a day. It’s slim enough to carry around as you would a file, but big enough and bright enough to present on to a small team if needed.

If there’s one criticism we could level at it, the standard VGA webcam isn’t going to do anyone any favors, and in 2018 we simply expect something better. Especially when Asus are asking for such a high price for the machine.

It’s time to talk about the performance of the ZenBook 3, and it’s not exactly a straightforward picture. This is because the processor that can be found inside this svelte exterior is an incredible powerhouse, but it’s limited by the thermal envelope it's working inside. 

For short bursts it’ll wow with its raw power, but on longer workloads it throttles back so much, while producing so much noise and heat, that we question the decision to use that chip here at all.

The Intel Core i7-8550U used has a stock frequency of 1.8GHz, although as with any new processor it very rarely runs at that speed, instead turboing up to anything as high as 4GHz (even if Asus states that it should only go as 3.8GHz in the official documentation). In testing we did indeed see 4GHz hit on occasion, although for the most part it sits at around its stock frequency because the cooling simply can’t keep up.

This is compounded further by how hot it runs. During testing we run temperature monitors to make sure that everything is working as intended, only to see here that internal temperatures topped out at a staggering 100 C. That’s hot for a laptop processor, and while the exterior didn’t get near to that water-boiling temperature, it certainly got hot enough to be uncomfortable if used directly on your lap.

It’s a much clearer picture when it comes to drive throughput, and that NVMe drive makes a real difference to copying files around, and loading (and indeed installing) applications. If you have to handle a lot of large data sets, or large media files, then the speed increase offered by a PCIe drive is well worth the investment over a standard SATA drive.

Battery life

We were surprised that the ZenBook 3 didn’t put in better figures when it came to battery life. Given that Intel is constantly banging on about improved efficiency with each new iteration of its chips, we simply expected more out of it. 

Asus has used a 46Wh 4-cell lithium-polymer battery, and claims a 12 hour battery life, although we can’t see how you’ll achieve that without simply letting it sleep for a good chunk of that time.

At over six hours playing back full HD movies, it’ll certainly keep you entertained when you’re away from a power socket, but at just over three hours for serious punishing work, you’re going to want to track down that socket when working. Admittedly the PCMark 8 test is the worst scenario in terms of power drain, but even so, we’ve seen better recently.

We liked

The thinness and design make this one of the most attractive machines around, and it’s super light too, making it an ideal companion if you need a machine with you all the time. 

The screen is vivid and bright, and the Harmon Kardon speakers produce a decent enough sound to make films and music enjoyable.

We disliked

The main problem for the ZenBook 3 is that it gets hot under heavy loads, and throttles back so you’re not getting the full benefit of that 8th generation Core i7.

Battery life is nothing to get excited about either, which is a shame for such a portable machine. The fact Asus hasn’t upgraded the VGA webcam grates too.

Final verdict

There’s a lot to love about the latest spin of the ZenBook 3, with the lightness of the device and it’s high-end design being obvious highlights. It’s as good at playing back movies as it is handling more serious office work. The performance on offer is also impressive, thanks in no small part to the superfast NVMe SSD.

We do have a problem with the cooling on offer though, as it can’t really keep up with the demands of the Intel Core i7 you’ll find inside it. Not only does it reach incredibly high temperatures internally, but it gets uncomfortably hot on the bottom as well.

Battery life could do with being extended to really make the most from its inherent size and weight, and we can’t fathom why the webcam hasn’t been brought up to date, but these are small niggles for what is mostly an impressive machine. Just aim for a lower-spec processor and you’re good to go.

• Check out our list of the best laptops

When it comes to the best gaming laptops, Razer sits in a pretty comfortable place. While its Razer Blade laptops are a bit more expensive than its competitors, Razer absolutely excels in key areas: longevity and build quality.

Editor's Note: The 2018 Razer blade is finally here, and we’ve given it our full review right here.

The last several 14-inch Razer Blade notebooks have constantly improved on battery life, and the 2017 Razer Blade is no different. When you then consider the gorgeous chassis design that none of Razer’s competitors have been able to touch, the admittedly high price of entry seems less egregious.

While it may not be as powerful as the new Razer Blade 2018, the 2017 version is still a Windows 10 powered gaming laptop, equipped with a 7th-generation Kaby Lake CPU and a 4K touch screen. It might not be the top of the line anymore, but it’s still definitely worth considering.  

Price, availability and value

The 2017 Razer Blade still starts at $1,699 (£1,659, AU$2,549) for a non-touch Full-HD screen and a 256GB SSD. However, this configuration doesn’t seem to be available on the Razer store anymore, doubtless to make room for the 2018 Blade. Don’t worry though, it’s still available for that price on Amazon.

To have Razer’s latest primary gaming laptop in glorious Ultra HD (UHD), you’ll have to pay up at least $2,099 (£2,089, about AU$3,099). That buys you 512GB of solid-state storage, one of the latest, highest-end mobile CPUs from Intel, 16GB of memory and the same Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics chip as before behind a super-sharp, 14-inch touch display.

The only available upgrades to this 4K model is a 1TB solid-state drive (SSD) for a cool $2,499 (£2,489, AU$3,699) total. Once this beast is ready to ship, it shall decimate many a savings account.

Fortunately, the new 4K Blade is now available worldwide, along with some nice price drops.

By comparison, an Alienware 13 with an OLED touchscreen, though only QHD (2,560 x 1,440), and with double the RAM and SSD storage, meets the priciest Blade in all other regards for $2,449 (about £2,209, AU$3,917) as of this writing. 

If you’re looking for a deal, we have you covered. Right now you can pick up a refurbished Razer Blade on eBay in the US for $1,389 (about £1,048, AU$1,872). That will get you the Full-HD version with a 512GB SSD. 

Design

Frankly, absolutely nothing about the Razer Blade design has changed now that it’s packing an optional Ultra HD display and newer processor. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it would be cool to see Razer go a little Apple with features unique to only its laptops – especially if they’re going to continue to consistently cost more than similarly-specced competitors.

We’re already seeing this in the Razer Blade Pro’s side-car oriented trackpad and original mechanical laptop key switches. Now, let’s get those fun niceties into the more mainstream models.

At any rate, the all-black, brushed aluminum frame feels as cool to the touch as ever; its matted sheen looks fetching under any light. The keyboard and trackpad remain unchanged, which has its ups and downs. The typing remains excellent – punchy and deep – as per usual, but we’d still like to see rid of those trackpad buttons. (Customer feedback in the other direction must be massive … somehow.)

All in all, this is the same thin and light, lithe-feeling gaming notebook that, by all appearances, shouldn’t be able to play all the games it can. That said, the 4K touchscreen version does come in noticeably heavier at 4.3 pounds (1.95kg) compared to the 4.16-pound (1.88kg) FHD version, thanks in large part to heavier touch display components.

Speaking of which, we find the display quality to be unchanged, which is a good thing. It represents colors accurately and is plenty bright even at low levels. Plus, a matte finish on the FHD version helps tremendously with glare – you don't get that from the 4K touch model.

Regardless, you’re paying for the sweetest-looking gaming laptop around here, and in that department the Blade continues to deliver, easily outclassing the Alienware 13 and Gigabyte in terms of design and aesthetics.

 First reviewed April 2017 

When it comes to performance, we shouldn’t expect a ton more out of the Razer Blade in terms of graphical prowess than the previous model, as nothing about the dedicated graphics hardware has changed. 

That said, we should at least see a boost to battery life, this model being a 1080p device like what we’ve tested previously, only with a supposedly more efficient processor.

Performance

With the results in, the new Razer Blade offers exactly what we’d expect from it over the previous model: a modest uptick in performance to a machine that can already run most PC games quite well at high detail settings. You can see these modest boosts across the spectrum of the laptop’s benchmark results.

You have 800 more points in the Fire Strike test than last time, five more frames per second (fps) out of The Division at its Ultra detail preset and five more fps in Grand Theft Auto V, too, at the highest settings. If you’re looking to upgrade your Razer Blade from the previous model, you’re only going to see a mildly noticeable improvement in gaming performance.

And, no, the incredibly loud fan noise when the laptop is running a game has not gone away, so prepare to play with headphones. Granted, the speakers are admirably placed and powerful, but little can compete with those whirring fans.

While this won’t be a giant upgrade for Blade fanatics, folks that are coming from a Blade or other gaming laptop released two years ago should see a dramatic improvement. When compared against similarly-specced rivals, much of the same is true. 

The differences between the new Blade’s numbers and those of the Alienware 13 and Aero 14 are so small that we could chalk them up to anomalies. You will generally get the same level of gaming performance from all three of these machines pushing to 1080p displays.

At the very least, this makes your purchase decision that much easier. So, perhaps the topic of longevity can make this decision even clearer.

Battery life

The Razer Blade has grown to become one of the more respected gaming laptops in the battery life department. The previous model boasted impressive longevity for what’s inside, and this update doubles down on that.

This model’s PCMark 8 Battery Life result saw an increase by more than 30 minutes, lasting for a total of 4 hours and 8 minutes at 50% screen brightness simulating basic tasks. On our own battery test that loops 1080p video at 50% volume and screen brightness, the laptop ran  for a whopping 7 hours and 29 minutes, more than two hours longer than the previous model. 

To put that into perspective, this is 5 minutes longer than the new 13-inch MacBook Pro lasted on the same test (!!!), and far outclasses both the Dell and Gigabyte laptops. Considering Dell and Gigabyte’s products house larger batteries than Razer’s, we chalk this up to poor optimization. As for the MacBook Pro, well, it does feature a sharper screen by default.

Few, if any, gaming laptops can boast battery life this long, so this is not a detail to be overlooked.

Chroma continues to woo

This is definitely not the first Razer Blade to contain the company’s popular Chroma keyboard, but it’s by no means any less impressive. Loaded with the same software that owners of Chroma desktop keyboards use, the keyboard sports all individually-lit keys that can display any of 16.8 million colors.

You can assign a unique color to each key on the board through this software, allowing you to highlight your most-used keys (i.e. WASD) or color code them for specific gameplay layouts (e.g. in different MOBA and strategy games). You can save these key color assignments across profiles, naturally. Chroma directly plays into some of the more mainstream PC games, like Overwatch, to activate lights in response to specific in-game events.

But, most importantly, this by far remains the most mechanically improved version of Razer's notebook keyboard to date. The key travel doesn’t feel much deeper than rivaling devices, but the feedback was far improved in 2016, and in all it remains one of the best-feeling laptop keyboards around.

We liked

While there isn’t much about this Razer Blade that’s brand new for 2017, we appreciate the consistency in design and build quality while offering a performance boost in every category. Much longer battery life and slightly stronger game performance in an otherwise unchanged shell? When it looks like the Razer Blade, we’ll take it.

We disliked

That said, the Blade is getting to the point in its design refinement that these incremental updates are bound to get boring. We’d love to see Razer implement more interesting ideas into its Blade line without interrupting its primary functions, like the mechanical keyboard found inside the Blade Pro or – not that we’re at all asking for a direct corollary – the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar. 

Oh, and the Blade could stand to quiet down considerably while gaming. Just one more thing: please drop the trackpad buttons for a single button solution or a clickpad?

Final verdict

This year’s Razer Blade improves upon the performance put forth by the previous model in nearly every category. From general productivity to gaming and massive battery life gains in between, the new Blade does them all better than the 2016 model.

For that, Razer should be commended for continuing to perfect and refine its formula for the ultra-luxury gaming laptop. However, we’re also left wondering what’s next, as this update hasn’t drastically improved much about the device in the way that the 2016 update introduced tangible new features, like Thunderbolt 3.

At any rate, the new Razer Blade is a marked improvement upon the previous, and is arguably the best luxury gaming laptop there is. As such, it easily gets outpriced by cheaper rivals for similar performance, but you’ll be hard pressed to find a better looking and feeling – or thinner – gaming laptop than this.

There's new Gigabyte Aero 15 models with 20 series Nvidia GPUs available now, but the Aero 15 2018 is still available for anyone not convinced by the benefits of RTX graphics. 

Gigabyte’s Aero range has always attempted to bring premium gaming components to the Ultrabook form factor, and this 2018 Aero 15 is no different. Bringing together a 15.6-inch Pantone color certified screen, full-sized keyboard with number pad, dedicated Nvidia GPU and a generous 94Wh Li-Ion battery and squeezing it all into a tiny 14 x 9.8 x 0.7-inch (35.6 x 25 x 1.9 cm) form factor is an impressive feat of engineering. Combine this with one of Intel’s new high-end 8th-generation mobile CPUs, 16GB o f DDR4 RAM and a 512GB SSD and you have a cutting edge gaming PC that slyly takes the shape of a professional Ultrabook – and when it comes to performance, this machine is far more than just hot Aero. 

Pushing the envelope this far has invariably lead to some design choices that will be divisive – like dropping the web camera to the bottom of the screen, and giving the keyboard a fractionally off-center and crowded feel. On the whole though, these compromises seem to have been carefully considered and ultimately end up as minor grievances rather than major caveats.

Price and Availability

While it might look like a lightweight Ultrabook that’s intended for lighter workloads, the Aero 15 actually packs a number of powerful components into its small chassis that mean it can tackle more than most 14-inchers. Squeezing these expensive parts into such a small form factor adds additional spatial and thermal engineering costs to an already expensive spec sheet. 

While this combination can often lead to a lofty price point at retail, fortunately the Aero manages to keep it’s price reasonable, with options starting at $1,999 (£1,999, AU$2,899). That price will get you the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GPU configuration, but you can optionally step up to a significantly more efficient GTX 1070 Max-Q GPU for only a few hundred dollars extra at $2,299 (£2,199, AU$3299). Then, you’ve also got the option to give the screen a 4K facelift and reinstate the NVMe SSD for a total of $2,399 (£2,199 AU$3699). 

These new 8th-gen devices will be available from stores and online retailers on the 16th of April. Some retailers will reportedly be offering pre-orders before then.

Design

The design aesthetic of the Aero 15 is largely governed by the fact that its 15.6-inch screen has been packed into a 14-inch laptop body. While that’ll make it appealing to anyone for a small and portable laptop, it does create some hurdles that you’ll have to be willing to overlook. Take the display for example: on the one hand, it’s amazing that you can have a screen almost without borders, but those 5mm bezels force the rest of the computer to have comparatively sharper and squarer corners than the friendlier, rounder corners that are generally in vogue these days. 

The reduced bezel size also means there's no space for the webcam at the top of the screen, forcing it to drop to bottom near the the hinge, something that isn’t ideal in terms of function (we’ll discuss this more later), but also makes the bottom bezel bulkier than it arguably needs to be, and which throws off the balance of the screen design overall. It’s good to see a gaming laptop range experimenting with screen layout and there will be plenty willing to sacrifice an unused webcam for thinner bezels and a smaller overall footprint, but it’s an element that will undoubtedly turn some users away as well.

While we’re pleased that the Aero 15’s keyboard includes a number pad – it’s a feature that’s critical for certain professionals – it does suffer from some of the same space constraints as the screen, with the keys filling the frame and sitting just a hairline away from the body edge. Obviously, with that limited space there’s no gap between the keyboard proper and the number pad and the two have been melded together in a way that abbreviates the right Shift key, and gives you little room for error on the Backspace and Enter keys. It’s not a big enough grievance to be a deal breaker, you’ll adapt to the altered layout soon enough, but is is something that’ll likely irk initially.  

It’s worth looking at the Aero 15 design from a broader perspective, however, as there aren’t any other laptop vendors that’ll give you a gaming-grade machine with a 15-inch screen and a full number pad in a 0.7 inch (1.8cm) thick chassis – something that allows it to fit into many 13-inch laptop backpacks or shoulder bags. 

And while the unit is on the heavy side at a little over 4.4 pounds (2kg), for something with this much power and battery life, it’s actually exceptionally lightweight. It doesn’t skimp on materials either, reintroducing the carbon fibre envelope-shaped embellishment to the top of the Aero 15’s premium metallic shell. That appeal flows into the silky smooth trackpad that’s one of the most responsive we’ve tested in recent memory.  Moreover, although the keyboard is a little constrained on the right hand side, it is otherwise comprised of pleasant feeling keys with powdery matte keycaps and deep travel distances for a painless typing experience. 

Turning to the internal design, the Aero 15 uses an integrated dual fan cooling system with two heat pipes thermally servicing both the CPU and GPU to distribute heat effectively when one is hotter than the other. The inlet fan grills have been placed on the undercarriage, allowing the unit to save precious edge space for additional ports. The output vents are hidden under the hinge and throw heat up onto and behind the screen of the device, which seems to keep the underside cool enough to use on your lap if you wanted to – something that’s not always the case in gaming-capable laptops. This thermal design is effective at keeping both the CPU and GPU under 91ºC and 83ºC (196ºF and 182ºF) respectively, even when pushed hard in gaming and CPU heavy benchmarks. 

Screen and ports

Taking prime position at the top of the Aero 15, the screen looks good in it’s near bezel-less frame. While the entry-level configuration we tested for this review was only an IPS LCD at 1920 x 1080-pixel resolution, it’s upped the refresh rate from 60Hz to 144Hz and it still has that unique Pantone color calibration. That 144Hz refresh rate means this is a super speedy screen that’ll appeal to anyone playing first person shooters (especially online) and delivers smooth motion and better responsiveness, and for the more professional-minded the color calibration means it’ll work well as a design tool.

You could argue that a 4K screen would be more useful to the latter group than having the faster refresh rate, but you can upgrade this screen to 4K if you’re willing to spend a bit extra and if you’re equally interested in gaming, 1080p is a good middle-ground option. In other words, 4K seems like a sensible optional extra. From a gamer’s perspective, the only other thing you’re really missing on both the FHD and the 4K displays is G-Sync compatibility. Gigabyte told us that’s a conscious design decision in favour of better battery life – the Aero’s ability to completely switch off the Nvidia GPU when its not in use means that the latter’s video signal must always be passed through the integrated Intel HD 620 GPU and that, sadly, means no G-Sync capabilities. This is as much a laptop for designers as gamers though, so that’s a trade-off we feel is worth the cost – especially when you see how good this one’s real-world battery life actually is.

Adding to that the long list of positives is one of the most comprehensive sets of input and output ports we’ve seen on an ultraportable in a long time, meaning you can basically knock 50 - $150 off the price for the dongle or dock you now need to build with many Ultrabooks. Not only do you get full-sized HDMI 2.0, two Type-A USB 3.1 Gen 1, a Type-A USB 3.1 Gen 2, Ethernet and 3.5mm Audio Combo connection, but you also get a high speed UHS-II 500MB/s SD Card slot (great for transferring or working on 4K video), a Thunderbolt 3 USB Type-C port and an additional mini-DisplayPort 1.4. 

Performance

Packing the first six-core mobile CPU from Intel – one of the company’s new high-end 8th-gen Core i chips – the Gigabyte Aero 15 cut a swathe through our CPU-intensive benchmarks. Take the raw CPU scores from Cinebench’s R15 benchmark and you’ll see that, on single-core tests, this laptop’s new Core i7-8750H CPU scores only a little better than its i7-7700HQ predecessor on the ASUS ROG Zephyrus, with Gigabyte getting 156 to the ASUS’s score of 149. This 5% per-core boost translates into a 17.4% overall boost in multi-threaded CPU benchmarks when using Windows’ ‘Balanced’ power mode. 

What’s more interesting is that this can be pushed considerably further by putting the Aero 15 into Performance mode, which pushes that multi-threaded score from 861 all the way up to 1125 – a considerable boost that puts it 53.5% ahead of the ASUS and fairly close to desktop performance levels. Backing this up is a GeekBench multi-core score of 17,171 which puts it 12.6% ahead of TechRadar’s leading Ultrabook, the Dell XPS 13. 

In general work and home tasks, the Aero achieves similarly impressive results in getting 4460 and 5635 in the respective Home (accelerated) and Work (accelerated) PCMark 8 benchmarks, which means it powers through tasks better than any previous laptop we’ve tested with 16GB of RAM to date. 

While the Aero 15 has generous GPU power for a professional ultra-portable, the mid-level Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 model is middle of the road when it comes to performance against today’s gaming laptops. It’ll get close to, if not more than 60fps, on most early-2017 games using Ultra settings at 1080p resolution. There are exceptions: it manages to only get an average of 35 fps on Ghost Recon Wildlands at 1080p/Ultra, for example. Turn down those graphical settings a little however, or play slightly older titles, and you’ll be able to really put that 144Hz screen to use, with less-demanding titles often pumping out 100-plus frames per second. The Aero’s GTX 1060 more than holds its own as a genuine gaming GPU that’ll handle anything you throw at it, as long as you don’t need to have every graphical bell and whistle turned up to the max.  If you’re looking to really push the gaming side of things, then upgrading to the GTX 1070 model is an appealing proposition. Moving up to a 4K display will require a sacrifice in graphical settings (or slower frame rates) if you want to run games at the screen’s native resolution. We didn’t get a chance to test the higher-end model this time around, but for a bit of context, last year’s Max-Q GTX 1070 Aero 15X did score 33% higher than this GTX 1060 model on 3DMark’s Firestrike Extreme benchmark. 3DMark tests don’t always translate perfectly into real world game boosts – the difference can at times be much bigger or much smaller depending on the game – but it’s not a bad indication of the general performance boost you’ll get when you average them all out.

Conclusion 

Gigabyte’s initial Aero 15 broke a lot of new ground in its pursuit of squeezing a full-featured 15-inch professional laptop into a 14-inch thin-and-light form factor, and this year’s upgrade has managed to improve on the original design in a few key areas. Packing one of Intel’s new 8th-gen high-end mobile CPUs means the Areo 15  is able to harness considerable performance boosts, making this a beast of a machine for anyone who’s encoding video, working with big images or otherwise doing intensive multimedia work. Add to this a jump from a 60Hz screen to the faster 144Hz spec and incorporating a speedier UHS-II SD Card reader – features which’ll appeal to the gaming and creative professional camps respectively – and you have a very-respectable annual upgrade. But Gigabyte has also done some work optimising the battery life, allowing it to get over 7 hours of movie playback when in Performance mode, a result that should translate to nearly a full working day of general usage, even when you mix in some time with the aforementioned multimedia tasks. 

Gigabyte has toned down the chassis design on this year’s Areo 15 by culling the zesty orange and green color offerings, and while we’re a little sorry to see those louder variations go, it’s a decision that makes sense for the professional market tier. However, there’s one omission from the new entry-level unit that is a genuine trade-off from the previous models, and that’s the switch from an NVMe SSD capable of speedy 3000 and 1500MB/s read/write speeds (respectively) to a SATA 3 SSD in the current model, which only gets around 500MB/s for read and writes. While this doesn’t affect the more expensive models (which still have those NVMe SSDs) and perhaps isn’t a deal breaker on it’s own, if you are doing particularly disk-intensive activities you may want to consider passing on the cheapest Aero 15 model.  

All up then, there’s a lot to like about this updated Gigabyte Aero 15 and if you don’t mind the unusual webcam placement and square design then there’s really nothing that should bother you about this laptop in the long term. The six-core mobile Core i7 CPU, 16GB RAM allocation and dedicated GeForce GTX 1060 GPU all make the Aero 15 a powerful professional offering in an exceptionally compact package. With generous battery life and a more-than-adequate capacity for gaming, this is a solid laptop choice for the performance focused professional, or anyone looking for a slim and light that also packs a decent punch.

It’s been a few months now since we tested a Teclast product. Over the past two years, the brand has become one of the regulars in our test labs, and generally speaking has delivered some solid performances.

We’ve had the Tbook 10S, the X98 Plus II, the Tbook 16, the X3 Plus and the X5 Pro. All of these were consistently well received, so credit is due to the team of engineers who design Teclast products.

The latest Teclast offering to come through our door is a bit different. This is the first laptop from the company we’ve reviewed, and also the first product that sheds its budget label, focusing on the more lucrative mainstream market. So, without further ado, meet the Teclast F6 Pro, a 2-in-1 convertible Ultrabook.

Design

The Teclast F6 Pro is a seriously attractive piece of hardware that wouldn’t be out of place in the flagship range of Dell or Lenovo. It sports an all-metal chassis, likely to be aluminum rather than a magnesium alloy, with the sort of design you’d expect on a mainstream Ultrabook.

That means a brushed metal finish, along with a tapered profile with chamfered edges running along the sides. There are two hinges supporting a touch display that rotates 360 degrees, plus there’s a solid chassis that doesn’t wobble or flex.

The power button, for once, is not located on the keyboard, but on the side of the device, half an inch away from a microSD card slot, which itself is next to a USB 3.0 port, an audio socket and the power connector.

On the other side, you’ll find a USB Type-C connector, another USB 3.0 port and a micro-HDMI port, a rarity on laptops. If there’s one negative point to raise, it’s the sharp edges around the USB ports that could potentially draw blood.

Teclast engineers have built this laptop without any active fans – there are air vents between the hinges to help with cooling, and the base of the laptop is raised thanks to four rubber feet.

There’s even a spare M.2 slot with an easy-to-remove cover located on the underside of the device. The entire base can be exposed by undoing a few screws – but don’t expect a fully serviceable laptop.

At 208 x 315 x 16mm with a weight of 1.38kg, the F6 Pro is a little heavier than we’d expect.

Specifications

Very few corners have been cut on the spec front. Teclast means business here with a fingerprint reader embedded in the touchpad, a 7th-generation Intel CPU (Core m3-7Y30), an IPS display (13.3-inch Full HD touchscreen) and dual-channel system memory (two banks of 4GB DDR3 RAM).

Note that Teclast uses its own SSD, the NS550-2242, which is a 128GB model. Teclast has also incorporated a pair of dual microphones with noise reduction capabilities to deliver better performance when working with Cortana.

The rest of the configuration includes a 48.37Whr battery, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2 (courtesy of the Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3165 adaptor) plus a monoblock power supply unit similar to the Xiaomi Mi Air (or the MacBook Air). Nice!

Usage and performance

The display is a non-laminated screen, which is not a deal breaker, especially at this price. It’s still sufficiently bright and boasts vibrant, well-defined colors even when viewed outdoors in the sunshine. As this is an IPS panel, you get excellent viewing angles, and we found the touchscreen to be really responsive.

The keyboard was one of the best we’ve tested so far on laptops in this price range. It has surprisingly good travel with excellent feedback and generously proportioned keys, but alas, it is not backlit. Touch typing was a joy.

All that said, we have our reservations regarding the touchpad which is smaller than we’d ideally want on a laptop of this size/price, especially as part of its surface area is occupied by a fingerprint reader.

Note that there’s an optional active stylus pen available for about £20 (around $25) for those who want to make the most out of the laptop’s tablet mode. As for the battery life, the F6 Pro comfortably hit 5 hours 20 minutes, one of the best times we’ve clocked – and that’s almost certainly down to the Core M CPU.

Competition

The F6 Pro is easily in the top 5% of the most expensive laptops from non-top-tier vendors, and that’s a big risk Teclast has taken, given that not many of us are ready to spend nearly £600 (after VAT is included) on a little-known vendor.

The Voyo Vbook V3 comes with a more powerful Core i5 CPU with 8GB of system RAM and a 256GB SSD for just under £600 ($840), while the Xiaomi Air 12 has half the RAM and no touch display, but is an elegant alternative at less than £420 ($590).

Its biggest Chinese-sourced rival, though, remains the Alldocube Thinker notebook which has a display with a much higher resolution, a lower price tag, and twice the amount of storage. Not everyone will like the display ratio or the fact that it is a non-touch display, though.

For those looking for the peace of mind that comes from buying in the UK, then both the HP Pavilion x360 14 and the Dell Inspiron 13 5000 deliver an 8th-generation Core i5 CPU with twice the storage (256GB SSD) and a rock bottom price (less than £650 – that’s around $910), all without the inherent risks associated with buying abroad.

Final verdict

Businesses will love the integrated fingerprint reader and the overall design of the Teclast F6 Pro. Unfortunately, other than that there’s little that will sway the average buyer away from the top laptop manufacturers, especially given the near price parity once local taxes are accounted for.

Even so, the F6 Pro isn’t lacking in ambition, and it has the hardware clout to make its performance levels shine. The keyboard and the display were both on par with rivals in the same price range, and the battery life was nothing short of exceptional. The smart overall design doesn’t hurt, either.

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The Acer Aspire S3 is an Ultrabook-style laptop with a difference. It's quite light, portable and good-looking, but also incorporates a dedicated graphics processor, making it one of the few laptops in its class that could be called a gaming device.

What's the price of this sort of versatility? The Acer Aspire S3 with the Nvidia GeForce 735M cost £799 (around US$1280, AU$1470) at launch, but that was a good few years ago now, so you can pick this up at some very competitive prices.

Read on to see if we still think the Acer Aspire S3 is worth buying in 2017.

New look

The Acer Aspire S3 has been around in various guises for a few years now, but the 2014 edition is quite a departure from the old models. Where the original Aspire S3 was quite rightly regarded as a bit of a MacBook Air rip-off in its looks, the new version looks a lot closer to the Acer Aspire S7, an Ultrabook with a snazzy glass lid.

In order to keep costs down, the Acer Aspire S3's lid isn't made of glass, but it still looks and feels as if it is. The aluminium frame is lacquered with several layers of glossy paint, providing a look quite unlike the metal underneath.

The rest of the Acer Aspire S3 design is sound, if not quite as pristine and perfect as the very priciest, prettiest Ultrabooks. The prevalence of obvious seams and the slightly uneven distribution of the chunky screen bezel mean it's not as pretty as a MacBook Air. But then few laptops are.

Practical notebook

In practical terms, the Acer Aspire S3 is very good. It weighs 1.55kg and is 17.8mm thick at its thickest point. The S3 doesn't match the thinnest or lightest of Ultrabooks, but a couple of deliberate design choices prohibit that from being remotely possible.

First, there's the use of dedicated graphics: the vast majority of slim laptops use graphics processors integrated into the central processor chipset. There's also the storage type inside.

The Acer Aspire S3 uses a hybrid drive, which provides 500GB of traditional hard drive storage and 16GB of solid state memory to grease the system's cogs for the kind of instant-on performance people expect from an Ultrabook. Hard drives are, generally speaking, chunkier than SSDs. But they are also far cheaper if you want a decent amount of storage.

Unless the other laptop in contention for your cash is a 13-inch MacBook Air, which is significantly lighter at 1.35kg, the little sacrifices in dimensions aren't worth worrying about too much. Even the dedicated GPU-free, SSD-equipped Samsung Ativ Book 9 Lite is still 1.44kg and 17mm thick. A clear difference? Yes, but not a grand one.

Ports

The connections you get on the body are sound for an Ultrabook. There are two USB 3.0 ports and another USB 2.0 one, plus an HDMI port for connection to a monitor or TV. There's also an SD card slot with a plastic bung to keep it free of grime when not in use. All the connections are on the sides, with the back reserved for a heat outlet.

There's no Ethernet port, though. Instead there's an Acer Converter port, which is a proprietary socket. With a separate (not included) cable, you can turn this into a VGA port, or a RJ45/VGA/USB 2.0 combo. What's missing? The obvious one is a Mini DisplayPort.

The Acer Aspire S3 bodywork is decent, if not quite deserving of any superlatives. It's the same story with the screen.

You get a 13.3-inch 1080p IPS screen offering a bright backlight, vibrant colours and the great viewing angles you normally get with IPS. It's a strong display, much better than the TN-type screen used in previous generations of Aspire S3. The tone of the screen is quite warm, giving whites a slightly yellow tone that skews the colours in general, but it's not too serious and the look of the display is perfectly pleasant. Viewing angles are good too.

The screen rotates around a full 180 degrees too, making it pretty easy to share the display – although obviously it's not quite as flexible as a removable screen tablet-laptop hybrid, or one that rotates around 360 degrees like the Lenovo Yoga. It's a 'normal' laptop screen in this respect.

Glossy screen

The Acer Aspire S3's display has a standard glossy finish, making it a bit tricky to use outdoors. It doesn't have the nova-like brightness required to make using a laptop on a sunny day easy either, but few laptops do.

As you'd expect of a modern Windows Ultrabook, the screen is touch-enabled and supports 10-point multitouch. There's a fair bit of bezel around the actual display, but the entire top of the display is a single pane of glass, giving it that higher-end look.

You can expect future generations of Aspire S3 (if they come to be) to have QHD displays, and possibly ones that fill more of the screen surround. But Acer has really got the basics right this time – in previous generations they were distinctly iffy.

Keyboard

The Acer Aspire S3 has a keyboard typical of a slim and light laptop. It uses chiclet keys that poke through the single-piece aluminium keyboard surround, and their action is a little on the shallow side.

While the usual letter keys are large enough to allow for typing that doesn't feel cramped, the keys at the laptop's edges have had to be crushed together a little in order to fit everything in. The Caps lock is tiny, as is the left shift, and there are no dedicated function buttons.

Instead, almost half of the laptop's keys take on secondary duties, often for keys that might have their own buttons even in a slim laptop. It's because the Acer Aspire S3 is effectively missing a whole extra row of buttons compared with a full-size keyboard. You'll have to use the Fn button even more than usual here.

Why the Aspire S3 is quite so key-frugal is a bit of a mystery. There's a great big expanse of aluminium between the top of the keyboard and the screen, where keys would presumably have been fitted.

Of course, this could also have something to do with the Aspire S3 having to fit a graphics card, which may theoretically mandate a smaller-form keyboard. Yes, we're clutching at straws a bit here. But at worst it means the keyboard just takes a bit more getting used to, as its actual typing experience is sound. We were happy enough using as our main computer for a few days.

Trackpad

Another unfortunate effect of the keyboard's layout is that the trackpad is a little on the small side. There's plenty of room along the horizontal, but a little more room on the vertical scale would have been welcome for things like 3-finger gestures.

While clearly MacBook-inspired in its execution, the trackpad is not all that great in use either. There's a bit of pre-click give to the trackpad, and a light press actually functions as a click anyway, making the actual trackpad click a mere 'for show' extra. If this is deliberate, we'd much rather see Acer adopt a lighter trackpad action than have this odd two-stage approach.

However, the actual surface of the Aspire S3's trackpad is quite nice. It uses a similar sort of treated glass as the top Ultrabooks, offering a smooth surface that's less tacky feeling than plastic-derived trackpads.

Speakers

One thing we're quite glad to see is an absence of brand tie-ins in the Acer Aspire S3. There are no Beats by Dre speakers on this computer, sucking up even more cash as marketing spend.

However, the speakers are actually fairly good. They fire from each side of the laptop, giving at least the person using the thing a good sense of stereo.

While there isn't an extra subwoofer driver to provide actual bass (or an approximation of it), the speakers go fairly loud and offer some of the mid-range bulk that's so often missing from laptop speakers. They'll more than do the trick for the odd YouTube video. It's good to see fair speaker performance in a slim laptop that doesn't boast too much about its internal speakers.

Webcam

We have no such kind words for the webcam. You get a basic 720p webcam and its footage is very noisy with indoor lighting, where it's most likely to be used.

Stills capture is no better either – pictures are very noisy and low on detail.

Most of the Acer Aspire S3's specs are typical of a mid-range Ultrabook. You get an Intel Core i5 4200U, a pretty battery-conscious 1.6GHz dual-core CPU.

It's no cut-price solution, though – the lower-end version of the Acer Aspire S7 uses the same chipset. What's more likely to prove a bit of a performance bottleneck for some is the 4GB of RAM.

Most Ultrabooks at this price have 4GB of RAM, but if you're going to be doing any video editing or Photoshop editing of lots of high-resolution images at once, you may be better off with an 8GB laptop. There is no 8GB version of the Aspire S3, though, as it's intended largely as an entry-level model filling space between Acer's lower-frills laptops and the Aspire S7.

Benchmarks

• 3DMark: Ice Storm: 36838; Cloud Gate: 4853; Fire Strike: 1033
• Cinebench Graphics: 35.14 fps; CPU: 226 points
• PCMark 8 (Home Test): 2286 points
• PCMark 8 Battery Life: 3 hours 26 minutes

In the PCMark 8 benchmark, the Acer Aspire S3 scores 2286 points, which is just what we'd expect from such a setup. It's similar power to what's on offer in the mid-spec Surface Pro 3, which has an Intel Core i5 4300U processor.

In terms of productivity, the limits depend more on your patience than the Aspire S3's specs. It's capable of running just about anything, it's just not a powerhouse.

Of course, in a laptop like this we're just as interested in its gaming performance. The Acer Aspire S3 is one of just a few slim laptops to offer dedicated graphics hardware.

Tech specs

Here's the full spec sheet of the laptop:

• CPU: 1.6GHz Intel Core i5 4200U
• Graphics: GeForce 735M 1GB
• RAM: 4GB DDR3 SDRAM
• Screen: 13.3-inch, 1920 x 1080 IPS
• Storage: 500GB with 16GB SSD storage
• Ports: 2 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 2.0, HDMI-out, SD, Acer converter socket, headphone jack
• Connectivity: 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
• Camera: 720p webcam
• Weight: 1.55kg
• Size: 323.5 x 225 x 17.8mm

It has a GeForce 735M card with 1GB of RAM. This is a fair bit better than the integrated Intel HD 4400 graphics you'd get in a rival without a dedicated GPU. For example, its 1033 Fire Strike 3DMark score is about 70% better than what you'd get from an Intel HD 4400.

However, gamers looking for a true gaming Ultrabook need to manage their expectations. The GeForce 735M is a low-end card, and can only really handle fairly old games at anything but low-end settings. Don't buy the Aspire S3 thinking you'll be able to play some of the latest console ports at 1080p with AA and high detail settings.

Real-world testing

For a more real-life test, we tried out Two Worlds II, released in late 2010. At 1080p resolution without AA, but with high detail and full shadow/lighting effect there were pretty bad frame rate dips as soon as we came to any busy moments or physics-heavy sections.

We needed to drop down to 1600 x 900 resolution to make the game playable, or reduce things like shadows, bloom lighting effects and texture detail to mid or low levels. The game still looks good, but let's remember – this is with a four year-old game. It still seems likely that the 735M will surpass the next generation, Intel Broadwell, integrated GPU performance at this Core i5 level, but it probably won't be too far off.

General performance is fairly good thanks to the 16GB SSD, which is used to offer faster booting from both a quick sleep and from cold. Just close down the Aspire S3 briefly and you'll be back up and running within about two seconds, or it takes around 10-12 seconds to boot the laptop from an actual shutdown. That's not bad.

We didn't find that the Aspire S3 got at all hot with general productivity use, staying mostly silent. If you're going to work in a very quiet environment you may notice the little clicks and whirrs of the laptop's HDD, but it's nothing major.

Battery downsides

So you get the performance you expect from an Ultrabook, plus a smidge of extra gaming capability without adding a great deal to the Aspire S3's weight or thickness. What's not to like?

Whether it's down to the use of a dedicated GPU or relatively small 4-cell battery or, more likely, a combination of both, battery stamina is not very good for a device of this class. In our PCMark 8 battery benchmark, which measures general productivity/light gaming stamina with maximum screen brightness, the Acer Aspire S3 lasted for just three hours 26 minutes.

When using the laptop as normal work computer with brightness set around the 50% mark, we were able to increase this to around five hours. However, when you consider that the MacBook Air lasts for up to 13 hours, and the Acer Aspire S7 lasts for a good half hour more in the max brightness PCMark 8 test, it's an altogether disappointing result.

The Acer Aspire S3 is a mostly pleasant laptop with a light focus on gaming that may appeal to those looking for a work computer that can double up for some downtime fun. There are some minor quirks to the keyboard and trackpad, but the one thing that really holds it back is battery life. It's just not remotely close to the best out there, and stamina really matters in a portable laptop like this.

We liked

Adding dedicated graphics hasn't taken too much away from the slim and light body, which is good to see, and the 1080p IPS screen is just what we're after in a laptop like this, even if it has been superseded resolution-wise.

Performance is sound thanks to an Intel Core i5 processor and 16GB SSD cache.

We disliked

Battery life is not great for an Ultrabook, missing out on all-day use away from the power plug. And while the GeForce 735M is a welcome addition, it's simply not very powerful.

There are also some questionable elements to the keyboard/trackpad design.

Final verdict

The Acer Aspire S3 isn't a top performer in any category, but it's an interesting splicing of an Ultrabook and a less portable laptop with its hybrid hard drive and dedicated GPU. It's a combo that works too, but the disappointing battery life will certainly put off a few potential buyers.

Some pairings look weird on paper, but the result winds up something that makes total sense the moment you lay eyes on it. The Porsche Design Book One is one of those results.

Teamed up with Microsoft and Intel, Porsche Design – yes, the auto maker – unveiled its Book One at MWC 2017, and it boasts some distinguishing features, as you might expect it to.

First off, it’s a 2-in-1 laptop that can be flipped 360-degrees into tablet mode, but said tablet portion can also be detached for portable use. For reference, the Microsoft Surface Book can only rotate 180-degrees.

Speaking of Microsoft’s stunning laptop, the Book One more or less matches its Surface Book i7 pricing at $2,495 or £2,395 (about AU$3,250; release unconfirmed).

Now that it has been out for a few months, you can get some excellent deals on the Porsche Design Book One, so if you're thinking about buying this lovely designed notebook, now is an excellent time to buy.

• Porsche's Book One is available now for pre-order on NewEgg

We only had a few moments with an early production model of the Book One, Porsche Design’s first-ever soup-to-nuts computer. But even so, it gives off an air of confidence in both design and general performance that the company has done this before.

If the Surface Book was the reference model for Microsoft’s partners to follow, the Book One looks to be one of the few to actually challenge it. 

Design

If I had to describe the design language of the Book One as simply as possible, I’d say that it’s like the Surface Book, but with some elements borrowed from the latest MacBook Pro and Google’s Chromebook Pixel alike.

Coated in anodized aluminum, every bit of Porsche Design’s 13.3-inch machine feels and looks high-quality. It makes for a grand first impression, as does its 3,200 x 1,800 IPS touch display. Though the press event was dark and flashy, the Book One’s screen looked bright and bold.

Running around the machine revealed a duo of USB-C ports – one just 3.1, the other Thunderbolt 3 – as well as two standard USB 3.1 ports, the latter of which being especially awesome to see here. The tablet houses the Thunderbolt 3 port, while the backlit keyboard dock is where you’ll find the rest. This space is also shared by a microSD slot. So far, so good.

One feature that stood out in particular is that this laptop does away with perhaps my biggest gripe found in many 2-in-1s, the unsightly hinge that prevents the screen meeting parallel with the keyboard base. 

It all comes together in a form factor that’s just slightly more compact than most competitors. Though, it’s the extra mile that counts, right?

Performance

As the Book One on display was an early prototype, it’s possible that my time spent using it wasn’t representative of the final product. But, in all honesty, I hope it is.

Inside of the 13.3-inch tablet, Porsche Design stuffed in a 7th generation dual-core Intel i7-7500U processor that powers the visuals with its integrated Intel HD Graphics 620 graphics processing unit (GPU).

Compare that to the latest Surface Book i7 in this price range and you’ll find that the Book One is only outdone in terms of graphics hardware.

In addition, it also matches the Surface Book i7’s 16GB of RAM and 512GB solid state drive (SSD). We’d be remiss not to pit these two head-to-head in a full review.

Running Windows 10 Pro as a touch-sensitive device, Porsche Design’s 2-in-1 is afforded all of the latest tricks, like Windows Ink. The company even built its own pen with Wacom that magnetically attaches to either side of the computer.

Other signature features, like Windows Hello, are set to appear on this machine as well via a 5MP infrared webcam.

As you can see, the specs and design pair up to tell a pretty convincing story, especially from a company that has never attempted such a device before. The price is quite a lot to swallow, but we’ll determine if it’s a balanced value when we test it in-depth for the full review.  

Early verdict

Porsche Design’s Book One was one of the more surprising debuts at MWC 2017, as the conference is usually reserved for the mobile industry. But in a way, it was the perfect time to show off the fruits of the collaboration between computing giants.

The Book One, despite its impressive design, isn’t exactly the most novel product. Sure, it can fold more than just about every other convertible, but it’s hard to say if there’s an untapped market of people who have been holding out this long until it finally arrived.
 

Razer has cooked up a new recipe for its Blade Stealth, with the refreshed Ultrabook now having an Intel 8th-gen quad-core processor as a fresh ingredient.

The new spin on the Razer Blade Stealth revolves around the Intel Core i7-8550U processor to be precise, a quad-core (eight-thread) CPU with a base clock of 1.8GHz and Turbo speeds up to 4GHz. (Previously, the notebook had a dual-core Core i7-7500U chip).

Intel’s latest processors aren’t just about raw performance, and also bring improvements in power-efficiency. In fact, Razer claims battery life for the stealthy notebook goes up to 10 hours of longevity. That will naturally vary, of course, depending on what you’re doing with the machine.

Otherwise, it’s essentially the same as the original 13.3-inch Blade Stealth with 16GB of dual-channel system RAM on board, and a Quad HD+ (3200 x 1800 resolution) IGZO touch-enabled display.

The Ultrabook measures 13.7mm thick and weighs just a smidgen under 1.35kg, with a chassis fashioned from aircraft-grade aluminum. It also boasts a back-lit (Razer Chroma) keyboard.

• Buy the Blade Stealth laptop from Razer’s online store here

The Razer Blade Stealth is priced at $1,699 or £1,669 (about AU$2,170 ) with 16GB RAM, and a 512GB SSD. It’s available today in the US and UK at Razer’s online store.

Core complement

Should you want to juice up the notebook’s pixel-shifting prowess to attempt to tackle some gaming (outside of casual games), then you might be interested in the revamped external GPU that Razer revealed alongside the Blade Stealth.

The refreshed Razer Core V2 has been given an internal redesign which means that taller graphics cards now fit into the enclosure – it supports Nvidia’s latest GeForce 10 series GPUs and AMD Radeon 500 series cards.

The Core V2 also comes with a newly added second Thunderbolt 3 port, along with four USB 3.0 ports, and a Gigabit Ethernet connector in case you want to hook up other peripherals.

It’s priced at $499 or £499 (about AU$640) and will ship ‘soon’ in the US and UK. Of course, you’ll also have to pay for the graphics card to go inside it – which you might pick up at a bargain in the UK come Black Friday.

You could even find it on sale during Black Friday in the US or in Australia, too.

• Could this refreshed Ultrabook make our best laptops list?

It is difficult not to be amazed by the strides made by laptop manufacturers over the past few years when it comes to improving the general aesthetics and the size of notebooks. Indeed, this has happened to such an extent that Ultrabook-sized laptops have become the norm, making the term all but superfluous (interest in the term, according to Google searches, hasn’t been this low since it was first coined in 2011).

Toshiba’s Portégé series represents the company’s top of the range ultra-portable models. The X20W-D-10V (about £1,700 at BT Shop) is the 2-in-1 convertible candidate, which the Japanese manufacturer claims is the thinnest and lightest 12.5-inch business laptop with an Intel Core processor.

We’ll just stick to very light and very thin. The Z20t is its detachable alter ego with the Z30 series being the more traditional model with a fixed screen. 

The X20W is one of the smallest laptops we’ve come across recently, with dimensions of 299 x 219 x 15.4mm and a weight of just 1.1kg. It’s a tad bigger than an A4 sheet and can be used comfortably as a tablet – the Apple iPad Pro, the one with a 12.9-inch display, weighs 713g in comparison.

The model shipped to us (PRT12E-01800KEN) is the top of the range one which comes with an Intel Core i7-7500U processor, 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.

Toshiba opted for a brushed onyx blue finish throughout the laptop, perhaps the best choice to enhance the look of the magnesium alloy chassis.

We detected a tiny amount of flex on the screen but not on the chassis or the keyboard. Speaking of the latter, this gets little wrong despite its smaller size. The keys are smaller but still offer ample spacing, and while the feedback was sharp, there was enough travel (as usual, your mileage and personal tastes may vary).

The SecurePad touchpad has a fingerprint sensor located at the top-left of the active area and can be used with Windows Hello, a TPM 2.0 chip and an infrared camera with dual microphone to provide a more secure environment.

We found the touchpad comfortable and responsive to use, with an audible click when pressing on the lower corners to activate the left and right mouse buttons.

As expected, the display, which is held in place by two hinges, in the style of Lenovo’s Yoga devices, has a fairly large bezel – which is where you’d expect the user to position their hands – and uses a matte finish to minimise glare when outdoors. That also helps eliminate fingerprints as well, and surprisingly, Toshiba used Corning Gorilla Glass 4 technology here.

Toshiba also offers a number of accessories to maximise your productivity. These include a travel dock, a Thunderbolt 3 dock and a protective sleeve with an integrated pen holder. Yes, this laptop comes with an AES active stylus – from Wacom – but doesn’t include a slot for storage on the chassis itself.

Other than the sheer svelte dimensions of the X20W, the other thing that will wow is how small the power supply unit is. It is so small (60 x 60 x 27mm) that it could (and should) have been integrated with the plug. 

It is a multi-voltage PSU, capable of powering your laptop or your smartphone (5V@3A, 12V@3A and 20V@2.25A) via a USB Type-C connector. This power supply – and the aforementioned accessories – actually help mitigate one of the biggest issues associated with laptops of this size, namely the lack of connectivity.

The device only has one USB Type-C/Thunderbolt 3 connector and an audio port on one side, and a full-size USB port on the other. There are no card readers, for example, and you lose the USB Type-C connector when you plug in the laptop (via that port).

Wireless communication is provided courtesy of an Intel AC-8265 chipset (that offers 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2).

Audio is handled by Harman Kardon DTS technology but don’t expect any surprises here. The laws of physics mean that the sound – which comes from two tiny speakers located underneath the palm rest – is nothing in particular to write home about, but it’s decent enough for the most part.

In use, we found the laptop mostly cool to the touch, even under load, thanks partly to Toshiba’s new hybrid air cooling system. Running our usual benchmarks with the laptop, we found the results in line with what we’d expect from such a system bar one anomaly.

On a number of graphics benchmarks, we found the HD 620 graphics subsystem to be significantly underperforming compared to, say, the HD 615 found on the Teclast X5 Pro. For example, the latter managed twice the FPS count compared to the Portégé.

Unless you are a gamer, this shouldn’t matter much, but we find it troubling that there is such a massive gap in performance – and this was an issue that affected the graphics-related parts of all the benchmarks we used.

Note that a charge-through, Type-C to HDMI connector, is also included in the package.

Toshiba claims that the 3-cell battery should last for 14.5 hours (that’s 870 minutes) using MobileMark 2014. Running our standard test (50% brightness and playing a count-up video from YouTube), we stopped at 8 hours 16 minutes and still had 26% of the 45Whr battery left.

The Portégé X20W-D-10V runs Windows 10 Pro, comes with WinZip (yes, WinZip) and a one-year collect-and-return warranty in the UK (and carry-in warranty across EMEA).

Early verdict

There’s plenty of competition for the Portégé: Dell has the new XPS 13 2-in-1 which has a couple more ports (including a card reader) and an optional higher-resolution screen.

Sadly, it uses a Y-series Core CPU and doesn’t have a full-size USB port. HP’s EliteBook Folio G1 might not be as thin or light as Toshiba’s laptop, but it does have a three-year warranty as standard as well as a long battery life, a marginally lower price and far better connectivity.

However, Lenovo’s ThinkPad Yoga 260 remains this machine’s most potent rival – it also comes with a digital pen and a 12.5-inch form factor, plus the ability to add a 1TB SSD and a smart card reader.

So should the Portégé X20W-D-10V be on your shortlist (or in your buying basket)? The answer is yes if you are looking for the tiniest, most compact and portable convertible laptop. This Toshiba laptop comes at a premium (just under £1,600 in the UK – that’s around $2,050) but the price tag is justified given what nestles inside.

• These are the 10 best business laptops of 2017

[Editor's Note: what follows is a review of the 2016 version of the Razer Blade. This is our review of the latest Razer Blade.]

Over the past few years, gaming laptop makers have focused on looks around the screen just as much as they have on looks within the screen. 

Naturally, Razer spurred this trend with the Blade, and while the latest updates to the laptop that sparked the trend are minor, they solidify its position as one of Windows’s best answers to the MacBook Pro.

Nothing has changed visually about the new Blade since first review in 2016 in August, though some change has gone on inside, namely an upgrade to Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060 graphics chip. Is that worth an upgrade or making the plunge now?

Price and availability

Even from the price cut back in August, Razer managed to slash prices by the hundreds once again. With a 256GB solid-state drive (SSD) and FHD (1,920 x 1,080) screen option returning, the Blade goes for $1,799 or £1,749/AU$2,599 now, while the QHD+ (3,200 x 1,800) IGZO screen with the same amount of storage will cost you $2,099 or £2,049. (No super HD screen for the Aussies, sadly.) 

Many, even us, have compared the Blade to Apple’s MacBook Pro line in the past. With the latest changes to Apple’s leading laptop, that comparison rings true louder than ever.

So, the Blade’s appeal to you relies just as much on its design as it’s ever have, perhaps even more so now with the latest Nvidia graphics stacked against the AMD chip used in the MacBook Pro.

Latest news

Nearly two months after reviewing the Razer Blade, we’ve stared directly into the eyes of not only its (expensive) powerhouse of a sibling, the Razer Blade Pro, but a three-screened monster known as Project Valerie as well. Though it was swiped from right under our noses in January, Razer showcased a glimpse of the future with a GTX 1080-enhanced laptop designed for 4K gaming across a trio of displays.

What’s more, Razer has prototyped a projector concept that takes holograms to a whole new level, extending your gameplay beyond the screen of your PC to the walls of your living room. It’s only supported by one game, but overall, the thought of 100-inch 4K game projections is an idea that would have many gamers weak in the knees. However, if you want something more affordable from Razer, it has a new Razer Blade Stealth on offer as well.

At first glance, the Blade’s design has gone unchanged in the past year. Since we last reviewed the Blade in August, that’s largely true. But even in these short months, Razer has managed to improve the chassis even further with some subtle changes.

Design

For instance, the Razer Blade is lighter than ever all over again: from 4.25 pounds (1.92kg) since the last revision to just 4.16 pounds (1.88kg) now. It’s tough to say whether you can feel the difference, especially since the Blade laptops have been historically thin and light. 

Not much, if anything, has changed about the Blade’s shell. It’s still built from a sheet of aircraft grade aluminum put through a CNC mill that’s anodized and coated in a slick black paint.

All of the logos and buttons are in their respective places and look or feel exactly the same. Inside, however, Razer must have upgraded the logic board, as it made room for a USB-C port in addition to the existing three USB 3.0 ports.

The device maker is also touting an improved thermal design with this Blade, which now supports an Nvidia GTX 1060 graphics chip. That said, this thermal upgrade makes using the laptop on your, well, lap while under heavy load singe a little less.

Though, we find the fans to whir a little too loudly than we’d like when the system is under load. That said, it’s nothing the pair of gaming headphones you’re already using can’t alleviate. 

One of the ultimate keyboards

Razer has finally broke past Alienware and MSI’s laptops in introducing its Chroma lighting system for PC keyboards to the Blade, and maintains that lead with the latest Blade. Loaded with the same software that owners of Chroma desktop owners use, the keyboard sports all individually-lit keys that can display any of 16.8 million colors just like before.

You can assign a unique color to each key on the board through this software, allowing you to highlight your most-used keys (i.e. WASD) or color code them for specific scenarios (e.g. in strategy and MMO games). You can save these assignments across profiles, and soon they’ll be playing directly into your games, should game developers adopt Razer’s kit available to them.

And, to think this is all said before the fact that, mechanically, this is by far the most improved version of Razer's keyboard yet. While travel doesn't feel any deeper than before, feedback feels as if it's been improved for a punchier typing experience. (The glass-coated trackpad feels just fine, though we wish Razer would drop the separate mouse buttons already.)

Improving the keyboard was an indisputably smart move on Razer's part, considering how essential it is to the whole product. With little else to stop it, let's see how this Blade cuts the mustard. (So sorry.)

First reviewed December 2016

Likely responding to desire for more choice, Razer has widened its options a bit for Blade purchasers. When buying a Blade, you have three choices per screen option now: 256GB, 512GB or 1TB of SSD storage?

This being a gaming laptop, surely you know that this question has at least one wrong answer.

You’re going to want 512GB of storage at minimum, with the average PC game eating up 10 or more gigabytes on a hard drive these days. For that, you’re paying at least $1,999 or £1,949/AU$2,999. If it doesn’t look like much has changed since last year, that’s because it really hasn’t. The processor is still a 6th generation Intel Skylake part and the Thunderbolt USB-C port remains – and now the Nvidia GTX 1060 is featured throughout all models.

You’re going to want that 512GB sooner or later and, especially if you’re not willing to void any warranties by installing a larger SSD on your own, you won’t have many options. 

That the Alienware 15 offers a 128GB SSD-plus-1TB hard drive bundle (with largely the same components otherwise) for $300 less, as of December 2016, should put the Blade’s modus operandi into context.

Meanwhile the 15-inch MacBook Pro for late 2016 offers just 256GB of storage and the same amount of RAM with AMD’s Radeon Pro with 2GB of video memory starting at a whopping $2,399 or £2,349/AU$3,599.

So, the Blade’s value is easily bested by competing Windows laptop makers, whereas Apple can’t come close. Razer has made great lengths to make the Blade more affordable, but apparently so did everyone else but Apple. 

The result is a gorgeous laptop that might be an even stronger video editing and gaming machine than Apple’s for hundreds less. And, if portability and style aren’t your chief concerns for a productivity-and-play machine, you can easily get more power and space for less.

At any rate, how does the new Razer Blade perform with its new graphics chip? 

Performance

The Razer Blade is, unsurprisingly, among the strongest-performing gaming laptops you can buy today. The upgrade to the laptop’s graphics this time around is much more pronounced than a mere video RAM bump. The generational leap from 900 to 1000 series GPUs is apparent in the Blade’s latest benchmark scores.

 A number more than 2,000 points higher than the previous model in Fire Strike all but guarantees reliable frame rates in most games at 1080p resolution with the settings tweaked to your preference. However, not even the latest graphics chip can handle every game at the highest possible settings in that resolution, clearly. 

Each in-game benchmark sees increases by more than 10 frames per second, yet are still well below 60 fps at Ultra settings. With that in mind, consider what the 3,200 x 1,800 IGZO screen is getting you, as gorgeous as it is.

Of course, many of you are likely saying to yourselves (again) that the same performance in laptops can be found for way less. Trust us, we know. But (again), remember that few, if any, of those options are built anything like the Blade.

Gaming aside, the new Blade will be able to handle pretty much every task that the average user would think to throw at it with aplomb. With Thunderbolt 3 and a GPU with triple the video RAM, creative professionals might find this laptop to be an even better proposition than the latest MacBook Pro. However, there’s one area in which the MacBook Pro will win every time against the Blade.

Battery life

For an Ultrabook with a higher-than-HD resolution and dedicated graphics, the Blade actually offers decent longevity. A shocker, we know, though it’s testament to Intel and Nvidia’s hard work on the power management front and in part to Razer’s refined design in terms of thermals and space.

With this revision, battery life remains largely unchanged, but pales in comparison to the 15-inch MacBook Pro’s 7 hours and 45 minutes of juice that we tested. (Especially considering our test unit sports a 1080p screen.) 

While its PCMark 8 Battery Life score remains more than 3 and a half hours, the machine lasted for 5 hours and 21 minutes in our local video loop test at 50% brightness. That’s a mighty long time for something with all the parts to qualify as a “gaming laptop,” but a bit below the score we recorded in August 2016.

[Editor's Note: We suspect that our PCMark 8 result differs from Razer's promise of 5 hours because our testing parameters differ slightly, as noted via our link above the Benchmarks sidebar.]

Razer pegs the Blade at 5 hours based on its own runs of the PCMark 8 Battery Test, so our benchmarks aren’t far off.

Granted, you won’t get these numbers while playing games or editing several streams of HD video. Regardless, the Blade looks like a slick companion for getting some work or play in with on those nationwide flights.

While still out of reach from many, Razer’s vision for its leading laptop is all but refined. This year’s last edition is a revision on the existing design, but the brand new graphics could help Razer achieve status in a wider subgroup of the well-to-do: creative professionals – especially now that, in some areas, the Blade is a better deal on paper than Apple’s latest MacBook Pro.

The video editor that just so happens to be a PC gamer, it looks like Razer’s after you with this green machine. And, with stronger graphics than ever, it’s definitely worth your consideration.

We liked

Razer has crammed more into its Blade laptop than ever while somehow making it the lightest it has ever been all over again. More (and better) ports and stronger graphics with the same battery life – yet, there’s a (albeit barely) smaller device containing it all.

The updated and improved Chroma keyboard lighting brings fun and personalization to the experience of using a Blade, but also tactical advantage and an overall more premium look and feel. Who knew that the arms race between Alienware and Razer would really be about keyboard lights?

We disliked

While Razer has widened the available options when purchasing a Blade in bringing back the Full HD screen option and three storage options, it would be nice to tweak other parts of the system before checkout, like RAM and even the GPU. Understandably, that would require more engineering work on Razer’s part to ensure more parts work with its chassis designs.

And, new graphics are always a welcome addition, but this time around they’ve made the Blade a bit louder than we’d like. While headphones might save your ears from competing over the fans to get that cutscene dialog, those around you will undoubtedly hear the turbines.

Final verdict

We’ve always appreciated Razer’s Blade gaming laptops for their attention to build quality and design. It’s something that, at the time of their debut, was a bit lacking in the world of Windows notebooks. From the start, Razer has always been after a very specific type of gamer.

And, it’s with this latest revision that we finally see who that is. With the addition of Thunderbolt 3 and now the latest graphics tech: Razer has made its Blade a rather appealing option to people that both work (or study) in visual fields and happen to be PC gamers.

It’s a broadened niche nevertheless, but at least this one is easier to understand (or let pass without silent judgment from the DIY diehards) than simply “PC gamers.”

Being focused on value at TechRadar, Razer’s laptops have always been difficult to sum up. There’s no doubt about the Blade’s build quality and attention to detail, not to mention its graphical capabilities.

It will always be true that the same level of performance can be found within laptops that are generally bulkier and uglier (albeit lacking in modern features by comparison) for hundreds less. But now, with an even further reduced price when stacked up to the leader in laptops for creative types, Razer’s proposition puts the question of “what’s valuable to you?” front and center.

With stronger graphics than ever, the new Razer Blade is the veritable MacBook Pro of the PC scene, with all of the well-earned, esteemed accolades (and small derisions) that implies.

Some of the biggest breakthroughs in the ultraportable laptop category over the last year have taken the form of more compact cooling architecture – something that's allowed full-spec Intel Core i5 and i7 laptop CPUs to squeeze into sub 1.5cm (⅝ inch) laptop chassis'. As a result, many of our recommended slim-and-light laptops often feature powerful components that professional customers won’t mind paying a premium for. 

With Intel's power-saving Core M CPU family now into it’s third generation, however, the chip giant has been making steady gains in overall performance when compared to the 'real' Core i5 and i7 mobile CPUs. In fact, it’s now at the point where the latest Kaby Lake Core M chips can meet the minimum specs for demanding applications like Photoshop, and for many professional users that'll be all they really require. Intel's so confident that it's even rebranded Core M processors to use the same Core i3, i5 and i7 naming scheme – the giveaway is that the contain a Y in the model identifier number, such as Core i5-7Y75.

When you factor in that Core M also offers better power efficiency and removes the need for active fan-based cooling – and all the breakable and dust-gathering moving parts that come with it – then there's arguably never been a better time to make an Ultrabook with a Core M processor. Venom’s new BlackBook Zero 14 is hoping to appeal to the creatives or professionals who'd prefer to spend a little less on a system but still get a system that has enough power to do everything they want. 

Price and availability

The Venom BlackBook Zero 14 range is currently available through Venom’s online global store (or www.mln.com.au in Australia) with prices starting at $999 (£829.86 and AU$1,499) for the Intel Core i5, 128GB model. A unit with the same Core i5 processor and a larger 240GB SSD goes for $1,099 (£912.93 and AU$1,699), while the largest 500GB SSD variant comes in at $1,199 (£996  AU$1,899). The BlackBook Zero 14s with faster Intel Core i7 CPUs start with a 240GB SSD model for $1,249 (£1,037.54 and AU$1,949), with a larger capacity 500GB  Core i7 model landing at $1,349 (£1,120.61 and AU$2,149) and the largest capacity 1TB SSD Core i7 model costing $1,549 (£1,286.75 and AU$2,549).  

Design

With a body honed from a black sandblasted metal alloy composite, this 1.4kg (3 pound) clamshell is around 15% heavier than the lighter 2-in-1s and Ultrabooks that you’d generally pit it against. It might seem counter-intuitive for an ultraportable unit to intentionally pack on the pounds, but when you consider that its extra weight is mostly due to the sturdy metal chassis and its fractionally bigger 14.1-inch screen, it’s a trade-off we think many people will be willing to take.  

Balancing the two halves of this black metal laptop is a sturdy hinge that has a soft resistance, allowing the screen to be tilted without having to hold onto the base. We hope that the hinge, like the rest of the laptop, has been built for longevity, as the one on our test unit did sit on the looser end of the spectrum already.  

At a total folded thickness of 14mm (0.55in), the BlackBook Zero 14 slips nicely into carry cases, briefcases and backpacks and the accompanying diminutive charger and cable makes it an exceptionally portable package on the whole.  

Keyboard and trackpad

Continuing the matte-black theme is a black-coloured chiclet keyboard that has powdery soft-to-touch keys. The key travel distance feels generous for a device this thin and we were happy with the responsiveness and strong feedback for a membrane keyboard.  

The only grievance we had was that the Home, 'Page Up', 'Page Down' and End keys sit at the far right edge of the unit, making the Backspace, Enter and Shift keys slightly out of a regular alignment. This has been done in a way that makes sense for any power users who are willing to tweak their keyboard techniques and use their pinky for fast scrolling, but it will likely create problems for new users. That's mainly because the Home button sits just outside the Backspace key, so it was common for us to nudge it rather than delete a mistake, meaning the tail end of a sentence was regularly spliced into the beginning of a paragraph.  

The trackpads on Windows PCs have, on the whole, gotten significantly better in the past few years, and though we have no complaints with the temperament and performance of the BlackBook Zero 14’s powdery-finished trackpad, it’s still a little shy of a MacBook or even ASUS ZenBook experience. That said, it's notably better when it comes to responsiveness than many PC laptops and it was easy enough to become accustomed to in our testing.   

CPU  

Venom’s Managing Director and Chief Designer Jaan Turon said that the decision for an Intel Core M CPU in the BlackBook Zero 14 was driven by the long term thermal benefits and prolonged physical integrity of computers that don’t require fans. “We were getting a lot of feedback from customers saying that the heat of laptops on their laps was a big problem,” he told us, “and fans, when they are this small, have a tendency to make a lot of noise and collect dust over time, which will eventually cause issues in performance.

"Our engineers did a lot of work restructuring the internals of the BlackBook Zero 14 to accommodate a CPU that didn’t need fans, so we could pass on those longer term benefits to our customers.”  

We haven’t had the BlackBook 14 for quite long enough to verify whether the unit is more robust than Ultrabooks requiring fans, but the internal thermals are quite moderate (considering the performance) and the chassis definitely has less intense hotspots than many thin-and-light laptops we’ve tested. This reduction in heat stems from the Intel Core i5-7Y75 CPU’s lower base operating frequency of 1.2GHz, which generally sits at around 80ºC (176ºF) in intensive work or home usage conditions in ambient temperatures of 20 to 25ºC (68-77ºF), although when pushed to the extreme it can reach up to 86ºC (186ºF) at times. Under a similar load, the SOC draws 14.66W which is about 17.5% less than a Skylake Core i5-6200U. When running PCMark 8’s general home usage and work benchmarks, the BlackBook Zero 14 hits 3,088 and 4,210 respectively — scores that are almost identical to the ASUS ZenBook Flip UX360UA’s more powerful Core i5-6200U chip. For an Ultrabook aimed at professionals, this is exactly the level of performance you generally want, and it’s encouraging that Venom’s managed to get this result using a more-efficient but less powerful chip.   

The Core M chips don’t hold up so well in the multimedia-oriented tasks that are tested by Cinebench’s multi-threaded and single-core CPU rendering benchmarks, where the ASUS UX360UA’s older Core i5 came off better, with respective scores of 268 and and 112, against the BlackBook Zero 14’s  scores of 174 in multi-threaded and 71 in single-core CPU. That's a considerable difference and though this specific category of Ultrabook arguably isn’t aimed at users looking to do that kind of intense rendering work, this is likely to be the area where you will see the biggest difference in performance from Intel’s Core M chips. That said, in subjective testing we found that the BlackBook Zero 14 had more than enough grunt to complete the few simple image editing tasks we threw at it, without having to close web browsers or other background applications.

  Graphics

When it came to GPU heavy tasks, the ASUS ZenBook Flip UX360UA’s integrated GPU (an Intel HD Graphics 520) netted 38fps in Cinebench’s OpenGL graphics benchmark, notably more than the Zero 14’s Intel HD Graphics 615, which only managed 25fps. This result was further corroborated by 3DMark’s Cloud Gate benchmark, where the former managed a score of 4,690 while the Zero 14 only mustered 3,497. So, the BlackBook Zero 14 isn’t quite as well-rounded when it comes to performance, and you shouldn't expect it to do wonders when it comes to gaming – this is for light and casual titles only – but then, at least manages to keep up in the most important work-related areas.

Screen 

The Zero's 14.1-inch 1080p IPS LCD display is one of its standout features. Now, 14.1-inches isn’t a particularly common screen size, which means it’s likely to be more expensive (from a manufacturing perspective) than the far more common 13.3-inch displays. Not only this but it is going to draw a bit more power than these smaller screens and increase the footprint of the laptop. It's a bit of a wash then as to whether the 14.1-inch display is worth it; in exchange for a nice-looking but barely noticeable screen size boost, the BlackBook Zero has been put on the back foot in terms of being a little thicker and slightly heavier.

As with most IPS displays, this one features wide 178º viewing angles, and has a matte, non-glare screen finish. The Full HD resolution is a high enough at this display size for visuals to avoid any noticeable pixelation, but it’s worth pointing out that it isn’t a touchscreen – something that many similarly-specced units offer. There are also Ultrabook offerings out there with QHD (2560 x 1440) and even 4K screens, though you'll generally pay a lot more for those higher resolutions, which are often a waste at this physical screen size.  

Video and audio playback

Two speakers sit on the underside of the laptop's front edge – one on the left and one on the right. As with any downward-firing laptop speaker design, the drivers can be obscured if the laptop is sitting on a soft surface, although on harder surfaces like desks and countertops the audio radiates well. The two drivers provide enough volume at a quality that is reasonable, although by no means an exemplar. In ideal tabletop conditions, the wide-format screen combines with the well-positioned stereo audio to give you a pleasant movie or TV-watching experience.  

Battery

We’d expect Venom’s use of a more efficient chip to afford a generous follow-through in battery life, but it seems that extra inch or so in the BlackBook’s 14 display does cancel out some of the battery-boosting grace afforded by the lower-voltage CPU. In the demanding PCMark 8 Home (Accelerated) battery benchmark, the BlackBook Zero 14 stretched out to a decent 4 hours and 51 minutes – slightly less than the UX360UA’s 5 hours and 26 minutes, but a duration that should still translate around a full working day of moderate use. 

The solid state

While you can get two CPU variations of the BlackBook Zero 14, there are also four sizes of SSD available: 128GB, 240GB, 500GB and 1TB. All of these various SSDs use the SATA 3 (6 gigabit per second) interface, rather than the significantly faster PCIe interface, so you won't get the potential 1,500 to 2,500MB/s read speeds that you see on devices like the early 2017 Razer Blade Stealth here. The 240GB Western Digital SSD and Core i5 configuration clocked transfer speeds of 552.9MB/s for sequential reads and 513.4MB/s for sequential writes in the Crystal DiskMark Q32T1 storage speed benchmark. These read speeds are only fractionally better than what we were expecting, but the write speeds sit at the top end of what SATA 3 SSDs are capable of. Unfortunately, this performance dipped when it came to smaller files on the SSD-tailored multi-queue/single-thread benchmark (which uses tiny 4KB files), scoring only 100.4MB/s and 89.5MB/s in read and write tests respectively, scores that should ideally be around 50MB/s higher. Still, overall, we were happy with the speeds of the 240GB SSD in our test unit. 

Ports and connections

The BlackBook Zero 14 has opted to avoid following the trend started by Apple — in other words, it hasn't ditched everything but USB Type-C connections to save a few millimeters. With the earlier Core M Ultrabooks there was a valid line of argument that they weren’t really powerful enough to need the connectivity of display ports and SD card inputs, but as we said in this review earlier, the Kaby Lake Core M platform is powerful enough to make the most of as much connectivity as possible. Kicking that off here are two USB 2.0 Type-A sockets on the left edge that are useful for connecting mice, keyboards and devices just requiring USB power. On the right-hand side there is a power socket followed by the USB 3.1 Type-C connection, a USB 3.0 Type-A socket, a mini HDMI connection, 3.5mm audio jack and a microSD card reader. All up then, there's ample methods of connection and the hardware under the hood is powerful enough to make good use of them.

 A little extra bite

Sometimes it’s the little things that count and Venom does a lot to differentiate itself from other big name laptop vendors. The most significant, from the software side of things, is that there's no bloatware or annoying affiliated virus protection software preinstalled on the BlackBook Zero 14. So this laptop is one of the only PC Ultrabooks that won’t pester you to use unwanted software or have intrusive pop ups interfere with your workflow from the moment you first turn it on. You will, however, find a free 1-year subscription to Norton Internet Security included in the box – it's entirely up to you whether you want to install it, though.

Another less immediately relevant (but arguably equally useful) tool is the accompanying USB recovery drive — it's preconfigured to make it easy for you to clean-reinstall Windows if anything goes wrong or you just wish to factory reset the machine. Just plug it in, select to restore the system to factory settings and it'll give you a completely clean system in under 15 minutes.

Verdict

When comparing this unit against fuller-priced (and specced) competitors, the BlackBook Zero 14 does put up some compelling arguments for opting for a slightly less expensive Ultrabook – but, that said, if Venom had managed to include a 'full' Core i5 part in at this price this unit would likely have scored half a point higher. The problem for Venom is that Dell’s XPS 13 and ASUS’s ZenBook 3 have been out long enough to come down in price a little, which means you can get that full Core i5/i7 power for a similar price.

On the other hand, Venom's said that with its passively-cooled design, it's invested heavily in the long-term functionality of the BlackBook Zero 14 and if you only need to occasionally do multimedia work (like occasional photo editing), then the Core M chip could improve the unit's overall longevity. Other than that, our only significant gripe is that the BlackBook Zero 14 could have done with a PCIe connected SSD, for the considerable increase in read speeds and general OS responsiveness – but really, there's very little else to complain about. For anyone looking for an Ultraportable work computer, this is a really solid offering that should continue to perform well, long after the purchase date.

Toshiba has announced a new addition to its lineup of Portégé convertible laptops out of CES 2017 today – the X20W, which promises premium specs and a rather handsome battery life.

Like the Z-Series ultrabooks in the Portégé range, the new X20W aims to land between laptop and tablet, but this time the 2-in-1 seems to fall much more squarely in the middle. 

The new Portégé entry sports a lot of the features you’d expect from this category — dual-action 360 degree hinge, full HD multi-touch display and a slim, lightweight profile — but it’s always good to see the internal specs rising with the tide. The device is powered by a seventh generation Intel Core processor and running Windows 10 Pro, and comes fitted with a USB-C and USB 3.0 ports for charging and connectivity.

Professional performance

A 16-hour battery life is sure to impress the mobile professionals, educators and students that this device is targeted at, although, as is often the case with battery-life, it might be best to wait for reviews before trusting the advertised duration.

Some impressive moves have been made to make its tablet-style functionality shine, such as an incredibly sensitive TruPen stylus utilising Wacom Feel technology, and automatic changes to system settings when you change to tablet mode, such as smart-locking of the keyboard.

As for availability and pricing, we don’t yet know all that much, but the Portégé X20W will be available “soon” via the Microsoft and Toshiba stores. We can also expect a pair of advanced docks from Toshiba some time later this year that will be compatible with the X20W.

• New year, new tech – check out all our coverage of CES 2017 straight from Las Vegas, the greatest gadget show on Earth

Gigabyte has revealed a refreshed Aero 14, and the powerful gaming laptop which is as thin as an Ultrabook now comes with Nvidia’s latest Pascal graphics.

The notebook now has GeForce GTX 1060 graphics paired with a Skylake Core i7-6700HQ processor, along with up to 32GB of DDR4-2400 system memory, and up to a 1TB M.2 PCIe SSD (with the latter having a read speed of up to 2000MB/s).

That display is a 14-inch IPS affair with a resolution of 2560 x 1440, and it’s an impressive panel indeed. The portable has a Mini DisplayPort and HDMI 2.0 port, meaning that it can drive two external 4K monitors at 60Hz.

• Need a new processor? This is the best CPU of 2016

Powerful and sleek 

You also get a meaty 94.24Wh battery to drive this notebook when on the go, with a claimed battery life of up to 10 hours.

And as already mentioned, despite what’s packed in here, this is far from a chunky desktop replacement – in fact, it measures 19.9mm thick.

There are also some nice design touches, with the top aluminum cover finished in ‘nano-imprint lithography’ which apparently showcases fine details and gives that premium look (there’s a choice of three colors, as you can see from the pic above).

For more on this laptop, check out our full hands-on with the previous version (which ran with the Nvidia GTX 970M or GTX 965 on the graphics front).

• Here’s our list of the very best laptops of 2016

Acer’s Swift 7, which is the thinnest laptop in the world – managing to dip under the magic 1cm barrier – is now available to buy over in the US where it will set you back $1,100 (around £900, AU$1,440).

Acer’s 13.3-inch ultraportable is certainly swift enough thanks to a Kaby Lake Core i5-7Y54 processor (a dual-core effort clocked at 1.2GHz but with Turbo up to 3.2GHz for when the going gets tougher), teamed up with a 256GB SSD and 8GB of system memory.

And it’s most definitely slim – the most svelte notebook ever, as we mentioned – with a thickness of 9.98mm (at the back), weighing in at 1.1kg. And if you’re thinking that means a small and underwhelming battery, Acer reckons poor longevity isn’t on the cards, with a claimed battery life of up to nine hours.

This is a premium Ultrabook featuring a very smart gold and black color scheme with an aluminum chassis, and a spacious precision touchpad (these were just updated for Windows 10).

Screen smarts 

The 13.3-inch IPS screen is a beauty as well, or so we found in our hands-on with the laptop, in which we complimented the impressive viewing angles, along with bold and vibrant colors. It’s fashioned from Gorilla Glass, as well, to protect it from knocks and bashes which notebooks can inevitably suffer from time to time.

Ports include a pair of USB 3.1 Type-C connectors, which can be used for power (charging the laptop, or indeed using it to juice up other devices like your phone) and hooking up an external monitor. On the wireless front, you get Bluetooth 4.0 and 2x2 802.11ac Wi-Fi with MU-MIMO.

As mentioned, it will set you back $1,100 (around £900, AU$1,440), with the Swift 7 now on sale at the US Acer store, with the notebook soon to arrive at Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg, Adorama, Costco.com and Micro Center.

• Purchase the Swift 7 from the Acer store here

Other models in the ultraportable Swift range will be emerging over the next few weeks, and for more info on the Swift 1, 3, and 5, check out our coverage of the initial reveal. Acer also has an incoming hybrid which puts a new Spin on convertible laptops, with that range expected to be available very shortly.

• Here’s our roundup of the best Ultrabooks of 2016

The Dell Latitude 12 7000 Series E7250 ($1,079, £702, AU$1,452) is a compact business Ultrabook. If you can get over the understated appearance Dell has packed a bevy of ports, an array of wired and wireless connectivity options and enterprise-class security features into the compact frame of this 12.5-inch laptop.

Its closest rivals in the business market include the HP EliteBook Folio 1020 G1 ($1,249, £820, AU$1,640) and Lenovo ThinkPad X250 ($836, £544, AU$1,124), both equipped with 12.5-inch displays. Apple's 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display ($1,299, £846, AU$1,747) comes with a higher resolution display on a slightly larger screen, but sacrifices the touchscreen and enterprise-focused features.

Design

With largely unchanged aesthetics from last generation's E7240 model, this year's Latitude 12 7000 Series (E7250) design is inoffensive, and may even appear slightly unremarkable at first blush. Comprised of a carbon fiber lid, metal chassis and black aluminum trim, the Latitude has a solid heft to it, giving it a sturdy and balanced feel when you pick it up.

Measuring 12.2 x 0.79 x 8.3 inches (310.5 x 20 x 211mm) and weighing just under 3 pounds (1.36kg), the Latitude isn't the lightest nor slimmest 12-inch notebook. It weighs more than the 2.68-pound (1.22kg) HP EliteBook Folio 1020 G1 and 2.9-pound (1.32kg) Lenovo ThinkPad X250. The Latitude also has a slightly larger body than these 12-inch rivals. For comparison, the HP EliteBook Folio 1020 G1 has a 12.2 x 0.62 x 8.27-inch (31.04 x 1.57 x 21.01cm) footprint.

What may appear as boring is actually the result of blending pragmatic design with modern aesthetics. Unlike slimmer consumer Ultrabook rivals, Dell chose to keep the rear profile of the Latitude boxy to accommodate a wide array of ports, negating the need for costly adapters that could become lost when traveling, as in the case of the uni-port MacBook.

The front portion of the laptop, unlike the completely rectangular Lenovo ThinkPad X250, is tapered, making the Latitude feel more modern. Despite this tapering, the black finish makes the Latitude 12 appear less "airy" than the aluminum-clad XPS 13 and MacBook Air.

On top, the lid is covered in a woven black and gray carbon fiber design, giving the laptop a soft, inviting feel and an interesting texture compared to Lenovo's implementation. The woven pattern is broken by a 3/4-inch black strip at the front where you lift the lid open. This is where the radio antennas are located. Dell design engineers informed me that because carbon fiber, like metal, blocks radio waves, this strip allows the laptop to receive Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular and GPS signals.

The 12.5-inch full HD touchscreen is held securely to the body with two, upward-facing hinges. This design is similar to what is found on the Lenovo ThinkPad T450s, creating a sturdy hinge that allows the screen to articulate 180 degrees, far wider than the concealed hinge of the MacBook or EliteBook. On the lid near the right hinge, you'll find three LED indicator lights to quickly alert you to power, hard drive and battery states even if the laptop is closed. The LED lights are repeated again on the keyboard deck for quick access when the Latitude is open.

Designed to operate under harsh conditions, the Latitude 12 7000 is advertised as having passed MIL-STD-810G testing, allowing it to be used in a variety of environments, including low and high altitudes, extreme temperatures, drops and shocks, exposure to acid and saline, sand and dust, humidity and more. For users needing an even more rugged laptop, the Dell Latitude 12 Rugged Extreme ($3,649, £2,377, AU$4,909) should be able to survive most situations short of a nuclear explosion, but at the cost of price, size and weight compared to the non-rugged counterpart.

The Latitude 12 7000 (E7250) comes with a full-sized, backlit keyboard that's spill resistant. Accidentally spilled water will empty out through a small drainage hole on the bottom of the Latitude, helping to prevent damage to the laptop for butterfinger-proned business executives. There are two levels of brightness to the backlight, which helps to illuminate the keyboard for easy typing when working in dimmer environments.

The Latitude's boxy rear design is pragmatic considering the number of ports Dell managed to cram onto the 0.79-inch thick frame.

The notebook comes with HDMI, power connector, Ethernet and two USB 3.0 ports on the rear. On the right side of the Latitude, you'll find a third USB 3.0 port, Mini DisplayPort, audio and SD memory card reader. The side ports make it convenient to connect headphones and a wired mouse or flash drive, while the rear situated ports make cable management easy when you're using the laptop on a desk. A VGA port isn't included, but you can regain the port if you need to connect the Latitude to an older projector with an optional Mini DisplayPort to VGA dongle.

On the bottom, the matte black powder-coated paint is simply wonderful. It conceals the metal so that it doesn't feel cold to touch when the device is powered off, and the paint adds a nice grippy feel so that the laptop doesn't feel slippery when you're carrying it around the office. Compared to the soft-touch coating that rival Lenovo uses on the ThinkPad W550s, the powder-coating gives the laptop a nice matte finish but without attracting oils, dust or fingerprints.

The Latitude 12 7000 is a highly serviceable laptop with a removable battery and removable back plate. To get to the internals of the laptop, you'll need to remove the battery, unscrew two screws and slide out the metal backplate. Once I did that, I was able to upgrade a few key components of the laptop, including adding a Dell Wireless 4G LTE WWAN module, another 8GB of RAM to the second memory slot and the 256GB solid state drive to a 1TB mSATA SSD.

Pricing for the Latitude 12 7000 Series (E750) start at $1,079 (£703, AU$1,451). At that price, users will get an Intel Core i3 processor, 4GB RAM and a 128GB solid state drive. The price quickly rises when you're upgrading to a more powerful processor, adding RAM and boosting the storage during configuration.

The Latitude 12 7000 Series can also be configured with optional WiGig support. This enables support for the Dell Wireless Dock ($269, £175, AU$361). With the wireless dock, you can connect your peripherals – like a keyboard, mouse, display, hard drives and printers – without requiring a hard connection to the dock. You can also place the wireless dock off your desk and free up space.

Here's how the Dell Latitude 12 7000 Series (E7250) sent to TechRadar Pro was configured:

Specifications

• Processor: 2.3GHz Intel Core i5-5300U (dual-core, up to 2.9GHz with Turbo Boost)
• Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 5500
• Storage: 256GB SSD
• Memory: 8GB RAM
• Display: 12.5-inch, 1920 x 1080 10-point touchscreen, 360-nit anti-fingerprint (16:9) WLED
• Camera: 720p HD webcam for WiGig
• Connectivity: Intel tri-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, WiGig, Bluetooth 4.0; 4G LTE WWAN optional
• Operating system: Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit
• Ports: HDMI, Ethernet, three USB 3.0, Mini DisplayPort, headphone, TPM, Smart Card reader. Optional NFC Smart Card reader and fingerprint scanner.
• Weight: 2.99 pounds (1.36kg)
• Dimensions: 12.2 x 0.79 x 8.3 inches

The cost dramatically jumps to $2,573 (£1,676, AU$3,457) when the Dell Latitude 12 7000 Series is configured with the highest specifications – Intel Core i7 Broadwell processor, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. Neither this top-shelf configuration nor the one we received for review come with premium Dell software add-ons.

Performance

The dual-core Intel Core i5 Broadwell processor on the Latitude 12 7000 Series (E7250) performs as expected. Applications and files open quickly, and even multitasking with multiple Chrome tabs open didn't slow the system down.

Lacking a dedicated graphics processor, the integrated Intel HD 5500 graphics will feel anemic to creative professionals working with large video and photo files. Business users who want to play fast action games with high frame rates on their downtime may also want to steer clear of this compact Ultrabook, but the Latitude can handle most computing tasks with ease. For more graphics-heavy tasks, you'll want to look at heavier mobile workstations instead.

Benchmarks

3DMark: Fire Strike: 540, Sky Diver: 2234, Cloud Gate: 4154

Cinebench: CPU: 267; GPU: 20 fps

PCMark 8 Work: 3383; Battery life: 4:55:58

Even though benchmarked performance of the Latitude is within range of similarly equipped systems, Dell's 2015 XPS 13 performed better on a graphics-heavy test with similar GPU, CPU and RAM configurations. The XPS 13 posted higher GPU and 3DMark scores than the Latitude, but slightly lower 258 CPU score using Cinebench.

Although the Lenovo ThinkPad T450s that we reviewed comes with an Intel Core i7 Broadwell chip, processing performance on the Latitude is stronger. The Lenovo delivered a CPU score of 249, but beats the Latitude on GPU performance with 24 fps. ThinkPad also fared better on the 3DMark tests, posting results of 731, 5305 and 2648 for Fire Strike, Cloud Gate and Sky Diver, respectively.

While I didn't notice any slow downs during normal operations with the Latitude, I found that the system was slower to shut down than most other notebooks, including the HP EliteBook Folio 1020 G1 and the Lenovo ThinkPad T450s. Since the Latitude ships with a relatively clean build of Windows 8.1, save for a few Dell apps, it's unclear why the Latitude takes a few seconds longer to power down.

The Intel Core i5 processor on the Latitude generates a bit of heat. Most of that heat is felt on the top left corner of the laptop, but this doesn't affect its "lapability," as the bottom of the notebook still runs cool. The main issue with heat is that when the fan kicks in, fan noise is louder than the Lenovo ThinkPad T450s.

Battery life

The Latitude 12 lives up to Dell's claims of all-day computing. Despite packing in a more powerful Intel Core i5 processor compared to the MacBook's Intel Core M, the Latitude 12 7000 Series (E7250) is equipped with a 4-cell battery that lasted more than nine hours of daily use.

For users in the field and away from a power outlet, the Latitude comes with a removable battery, so you can swap a depleted battery for a fresh one if you need more power. Dell also offers an external battery pack in the form of the Dell Power Companion. These are similar to battery packs that charge cell phones on the go.

Even though you can swap out a dead battery for a new one, unlike the Lenovo ThinkPad X250, the Latitude doesn't come with an internal bridge battery. This means that when you swap out your battery, you'll have to save your work, power down, replace the battery, power up and re-open and reload all your application and data. This can be a nuisance if you're a heavy multitasker with multiple windows and tabs that need to be re-opened.

Enterprise security and features

Dell also offers optional contactless NFC smart card reader, Smart Card reader, fingerprint scanner, TPM, FIPS-certified hardware crypto accelerator, Dell Control Vault, Computrace and Dell Data Protection Encryption. The Latitude 12 7000 Series comes with a one-year subscription to Dell Data Protection Security Tools and Protected Workspace.

DDP Encryption protects data across all endpoints, including external media and public cloud storage, while DDP Protected Workspace works to stop malware while the DDP Security Tools provides advanced authentication.

Dell also provides advanced BIOS management capabilities. This gives IT administrators the ability to manage the BIOS remotely. This feature competes with the SureStart self-healing BIOS technology on HP's EliteBook Folio 1020 G1 notebook. The difference is that Dell allows remote BIOS management, whereas HP's technology allows the BIOS to autonomously repair itself with a stored copy in the event of a malware attack.

To ensure that your company's data doesn't fall into the wrong hands if the laptop is lost or stolen, IT managers can also remotely wipe the laptop's drive even if the Latitude is powered off.

The Latitude 12 comes with a three-year standard warranty. Dell also offers optional enhanced warranty services through ProSupport and ProSupport Plus packages. Both packages come with SupportAssist software that routinely scans your system for malfunction.

In the event of a system failure, a ProSupport agent will contact the customers proactively, a move that Dell claims will shorten your downtime as you don't have to wait in line for service or send your laptop to a depot for diagnostics. The Plus option adds next business day on-site repair service, meaning that Dell will send a technician to wherever you're located to diagnose and fix the problem. Additionally, ProSupport agents can handle technical questions, help you setup your home network and even assist in troubleshooting third-party hardware and software. For a small business owner, it's like having an IT staff on call.

Display

It's surprising to see that the maximum resolution available for the Latitude 12 7000 Series (E7250) is a full HD 1080p touchscreen. The notebook's base configuration comes with a paltry 1,366 x 768-pixel panel, but both options fall short of the QHD and Retina display resolutions found on competing notebooks.

The 12.5-inch HP EliteBook Folio 1020 G1, for example, comes with a similar 12.5-inch display, but with a higher 2,560 x 1,440 QWHD resolution screen. Even though the Latitude comes with just a 1080p display, the screen is still crisp. Both text and images appear fine, and colors are vibrant.

The upside is that the screen on the Latitude can tilt further than both these rivals. With a 180-degree tilt, allowing for better screen sharing and collaboration in one-on-one or small group meetings.

Also, even though Dell rates the brightness of the the 1080p display on our review unit at 350 nits, the screen seems a lot brighter. On competing notebooks, I found that I usually increase the brightness to between 50% and 70% indoors to get rid of glare and 80% to 100% outdoors when working under a bright sun. On the Latitude, I can keep the screen to about 30% to 40% indoors, and 50% to 70% outdoors.

The 12.5-inch screen sizes feels a lot less cramped than the smaller 10.8-inch Dell Venue 11 Pro 700 Series ($749, £488, AU$1,007) and the 11.6-inch Apple MacBook Air. I still wish Dell had gone with a taller screen, like that on the 3:2 aspect ratio on Microsoft Surface Pro 3 ($799, £520, AU$1,075) or the 16:10 of the MacBook rather than video-centric 16:9 ratio. Even though a taller screen would lead to letterboxing while watching videos, it would make working with large Excel spreadsheets easier with less vertical scrolling.

For multimedia, the Latitude has downward-firing speakers at the front. The speakers are loud with good audio fidelity, even at high volumes.

Keyboard and trackpad

Typing on the Latitude took a little bit of time to get used to coming from a larger 15-inch MacBook Pro. The keys on the Latitude's keyboard are 1/16 inches smaller than the chicklet-style keys on the MacBook Pro, and key spacing is also slightly reduced.

However, once I got used to the key size and spacing, typing is an absolute joy on the Latitude with springy, responsive keys. Key travel is satisfying with just the right of level of stiffness so that the keys don't feel mushy, and there is a reassuring level of "clickiness" to the keys when depressed.

The soft touch finish on the keyboard deck also helps with the typing experience as the material feels nice on my wrists. When you first power on the laptop, the area doesn't feel too cold compared to an aluminum deck, and after prolong use the area doesn't get hot, making for a very comfortable experience from the moment you power up the Latitude to the moment you shut down your notebook.

After a week with this notebook, I can say that Dell has created my favorite laptop keyboard.

On the other hand, the trackpad is good, but could be better. The trackpad supports gestures, such as scrolling and pinch-to-zoom, but the tracking area is smaller than on a MacBook. One reason for this is that Dell didn't go with a large, clickable trackpad. Instead, there are two hardware buttons below the trackpad for left and right clicks. Unlike the Lenovo ThinkPad T450s, the Latitude does not come with a trackpoint.

The Latitude 12 7000 Series (E7250) packs lots of features that are sure to please the most demanding business user. It balances security, performance and connectivity in a travel-friendly 12.5-inch form factor.

What we liked

With a bevy of ports, options for wireless connectivity and highly serviceable internal components that users can upgrade, the Latitude 12 7000 Series can be considered a pared down mobile workstation in its own right, but one without a dedicated GPU.

Even though the keyboard is slightly smaller than a traditional keyboard, the Latitude packs in one of the best typing experiences on a laptop.

Enterprise users will appreciate the robust selection of security protocols, superb battery life, rugged build quality and a highly mobile 12.5-inch form factor.

What we disliked

The Latitude 12 lacks the sheen of sleeker consumer Ultrabooks, and its port-friendly design may be considered uninspiring. At its highest priced configuration, the Latitude 12 instantly feels underpowered, compared to mobile workstations like the Lenovo ThinkPad W550s and the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, as it lacks a dedicated graphics processor. The Latitude 12 also lacks the higher resolution screen options found on some of its rivals.

Final verdict

The Latitude 12 7000 Series (E7250) is the ultimate business-class Ultrabook for power users. Even though the understated design may look boring compared to the sheen of consumer notebooks, the Latitude's subtle curves make it appear stylish while staying functional. A long three-year warranty, upgradability, removable battery, comfortable keyboard and assortment of wired and wireless connectivity options make the Latitude an excellent productivity companion for mobile road warriors who need a thin-and-light laptop without compromise.

Lenovo has unveiled the latest additions to its ThinkPad product suite. Among the new products is the third-generation Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, a 14-inch ultrabook that weighs only 2.9 pounds, the lightest ever for the business ultrabook category.

Other new products include the ThinkVision X24 monitor, the ThinkPad stack and seven ThinkPad ultrabooks that range in price from $1,149 (£672, AU$1223) to $599 (£399, AU$799).

Consumers have purchased more than 100 million ThinkPad units since the line was launched in 1992.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon

The third-generation ThinkPad X1 Carbon is a 14-inch, 2.9 pound ultrabook built with a rugged carbon-forged chassis that houses a 5th generation Intel core processor and a full HD 1920x1080p resolution monitor (for the standard version). Upgrades can be purchased to boost the monitor to Quad HD 2560x1440 touchscreen functionality.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon comes with two USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 port, a VGA connector, and a mini display port. Its battery operates at 50 watts per hour (the MacBook Pro runs at 95 watts per hour for reference). Storage options range from 128/180/256/360 SSD.

Users will appreciate the ThinkPad X1's gorgeous display (especially if you upgrade), and connectivity won't be an issue, but 50 watts per hour isn't going to win any competitions with regards to battery life. At $1249 (£1150, AU$1,433), you might want more bang for your buck.

Lenovo ThinkPad X250

The 12.5-inch, 2.88-pound X250 offers a full HD touchscreen display, also with a fifth generation Intel Core processor and 256GB of SSD Opal 2 storage. It comes with two USB 3.0 ports, a mini display port and a VGA connector.

The X250 features dual batteries than run at up to 95.5 watts per hour all-in for the most powerful model.

The X250 is super-thin at 0.79 inches so it's easily stashable. Unfortunately, the lack of connections won't offer much more of value, especially at $1,149 (about £672, AU$1223).

Lenovo ThinkPad T450 and T550

At 14 inches and 3.5 pounds, the T450S offers as much as 1 terabyte of storage, a full HD monitor, three USB 3.0 ports, a mini display port and a VGA connector. Like the X250, the T450S offers dual batteries than run at up to 95.5 watts per hour all-in for the most powerful model. It will cost $1,099 (£705, AU$1350).

The T450 and T550 are 14- and 15-inch ultrabooks that weigh 4 and 5 pounds, respectively. While the T450 only features a full HD display, the T550 cracks 3K at 2880x1620. An upgraded T550 model also includes touchscreen functionality. Both models run on Intel i5 processors and run at up to 95.5 watts per hour all-in for the most powerful models. They will cost $849 (£520, AU$905) and $999 (about £610, AU$1,065), respectively.

ThinkPad notebooks

For notebook lovers, Lenovo has also unveiled the L450 and E450 and E550 models. Unlike the other models in the ThinkPad series, the E450 and E550 notebooks only have one 48 watt per hour battery. The L450 has one removable battery that can vary in wattage from 23.5 to 72 watts per hour.

The L450, which costs $699 (£450, AU$850), weighs 4.25 pounds. The E450 and E550 weigh 4 pounds and 5.2 pounds, respectively and start at $599 (£399, AU$799).

ThinkVision X24

The 0.30-inch thin ThinkVision X24 monitor packs 1920x1080 resolution into a 23.8 inch panel. It features DisplayPort and HDMI digital connectivity.

It will be available for $249 (£156, AU$306) in May.

ThinkPad Stack

The ThinkPad Stack combines a Bluetooth Speaker $89.99 (£57.75, $AU111), Power Bank $49.99 (£57.75, AU$61), and Wireless Access Point & 1 TB Hard Drive Kit ($199.99, £128, $AU246) into one ultimate computing station.

You can mix and match each of these devices or purchase them all as one unit, depending on your needs. It will be available in April.

Techradar's coverage of the future of tech at CES 2015 LIVE is brought to you courtesy of Currys PC World. View Currys' range of Smart technology here and computing here

Toshiba's new Kira is a 2014 update to last year's model, which marked the company's first foray into premium Ultrabook territory. With a sleek chassis, still-impressive WQHD+ display and improved battery life, it joins a growing list of competing Windows Ultrabooks toting high-resolution, high-pixel-density displays. And there's a fair few of them.

For the Kira's entry price of £1,299 ($1,499, about AU$1,605), you could bag yourself a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, a Dell XPS 13 or a hybrid like the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 2 Pro or Asus UX301. In the business arena, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon and Fujitsu Lifebook U904 also pack sharp screens, slim designs and the latest Intel Core processors.

After years of putting out dependable if slightly uninspired mid-range laptops, Toshiba's original Kira was a statement of intent, a flash Bentley coming off a production line of three-door hatchbacks. A spec boost to an already attractive Ultrabook is welcome, but is it enough to launch the Kira into pole position?

Design and build quality

Apple hasn't yet launched its almost legendary MacBook Air with Retina, but if it did it'd probably look a bit like the Kira. Measuring 23mm at its thickest point, its body tapers toward the bottom making it appear thinner.

The black bezel surrounding the screen is eye-catching; not only is it thinner than what you would find on a MacBook Pro, it's part matte and part glossy which makes it a little more interesting to look at too.

The lid and base are coated in an attractive silver finish that's complimented by a shiny silver lining around the power button - which turns blue when activated, along with an orange Wi-Fi indicator - and trackpad.

Sure enough, the Kira is a very good (but not quite great)-looking machine that curiously loses appeal when the lid is closed. A silver Toshiba logo adorns its bottom left-hand corner, and its opposing square and rounded corners contrast effectively, but there's nothing here that screams premium.

Build quality is decent overall thanks to the Kira's magnesium alloy construction that uses a honeycomb structure. You'll only notice the flex on the underside of the base if you actively go prodding it, but the lid is worryingly bendable to the point that you'll want to avoid using it to pick the machine up.

Thankfully the hinge is sturdy enough to prevent the lid from wobbling, so you'll only have to touch the lid when opening and closing it - an act that takes two hands - one to prise it open and the other to hold the base steady. Four rubber feet on each corner of the base keep the machine sturdy when you're typing.

Display

Though it was more of a standout feature on last year's version, the Kira's 13.3-inch WQHD (Wide Quad High Definition) PixelPure display still makes for impressive viewing, with high contrast levels that show off its deep blacks and solid colours.

The high quality of the display is partly because it's an IGZO (indium gallium zinc oxide) variant, the same type that's used in the iPad Air, which allows for higher pixel densities by using smaller semiconductor components.

It's far from perfect though: despite its solid color reproduction, the panel's image quality is hampered by a dim backlight, which maxes out at what feels like around 85% brightness. It's made worse by the display's highly reflective nature, which makes viewing its contents awkward in places like our brightly lit office - or outdoors.

The display features 10-point multi-touch, which is responsive and accurate. It may be questionable whether you would need touch on a non-hybrid model (especially for the added cost), but it certainly allows you to perform some tasks faster than using a trackpad or mouse.

The panel is made of Corning Concore glass, a type of glass designed for touch-sensitive panels that should protect against drops and scrapes.

Keyboard, trackpad and speakers

Despite feeling quite compact for a 13-inch Ultrabook (mainly thanks to the thin bezel), the Kira doesn't provide a cramped typing experience. However, that's not helped by the fact that its chiclet-style keyboard keys aren't completely square; they're slightly wider than they are tall, which may take some adjusting.

A little more annoying is the small shift button on the left-hand side of the keyboard. If you're anything like me, you'll have to retrain your left pinky in order to hit it every time.

The Kira should never be chosen as your main sound system for house parties as its Harmon Kardon speakers are no substitute for a dedicated speaker and subwoofer system.

However, it bodes fine for personal listening and you can tweak the sound settings using its DTS Studio Surround app, which lets you alter the maximum volume output and bass boost, and there are settings to change between between 3D and surround sound. There's also an equaliser that allows you to play with a number of presets.

Like other Ultrabooks with high resolutions, the Kira struggles with Windows 8.1's poor scaling abilities, making text and UI elements difficult to read in certain apps. Some apps combat this with more success than others.


The desktop version of Evernote, for example, doesn't attempt to adjust to the high resolution. You'll need to squint to pick out the names of Notes and Notebooks, and it's likely that you'll have to increase the font size of your Notes to read them comfortably.

Internet Explorer, on the other hand, sets itself to a 200% zoom level by default, which makes web pages appear comically large in comparison with everything else (I found that 125% made for comfortable reading).

Aside from playing around with individual apps' settings, the only other option is to change to a lower resolution, such as 1920 x 1080, which defeats the object of having a high-PPI display.

On the other hand, if small and unpredictable text and UI elements don't bother you, or if you mainly use Windows 8.1 apps (which always look great and are perfectly readable as they can scale to high resolutions, unlike desktop apps), you'll find that the large amounts of screen real-estate afforded by Kira comes in as a benefit rather than a negative.

The Kira comes with a fair bit of pre-installed software including a number of Sage apps (also trial versions), McAfee LiveSafe, Skyscanner, eBay and Swiftpage E-Connect.

Performance


Benchmarks

• 
Cinebench 11.5: OpenGL: 20.14 fps; C
PU: 2.77pts
• 3DMark: Ice Storm: 15,086; C
loud Gate: 4,622; F
ire Strike: 625
• PC Mark 8 H
ome battery life: 11 hours and 15 minutes

Our test model came with Windows 8.1, an Intel Core i7-4500 CPU clocked at 1.80GHz, 8GB of RAM and a 220SSD. The Kira's graphics are powered by an integrated HD 4400 chip, which handled 3DMark 8's lesser-demanding benchmarks with ease but began to struggle with increasingly complex renders.

It's fine for playing games running Valve's Steam engine around the 40-50 fps mark (if you lower the resolution to 1920x1080). However, as is expected from an integrated GPU, you won't experience those frame rates in newer games such as Battlefield 4 or Titanfall even if you drastically lowering the resolution.

Any tasks we undertook in desktop mode were nippy and responsive - from opening desktop programs to snapping multiple Windows apps side-by-side. Because of its speedy SSD, the Kira only took around 10 seconds to boot from cold.

Battery life saw a boost from the old model thanks to the inclusion of a Haswell (versus the 2013 model's Ivy Bridge) CPU variant, which allowed the device to clock in at just over 11 hours using PCMark 8 Home's battery life test, which continually opens and closes programs and loops video until the battery is depleted.

The Kira's port selection is good for an Ultrabook, offering a full-size HDMI output and two USB 3.0 ports on the left-hand side. On the right-hand side is an SD card slot, a 3.5mm stereo headset jack and one more USB 3.0 port. Connectivity options include 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.

We liked

The Toshiba Kira's appearance remains unchanged from last year's model, which is certainly no bad thing. It has a slim bezel and feels decidedly more compact than competing models of the same size. It has a comfortable keyboard once you adjust to its rectangular keys, and despite being on the dim side, its display is incredibly sharp. While it only offers an integrated graphics setup, it's fine for playing lesser demanding games and the speedy SSD makes sure you're never waiting for applications to respond on the desktop, and boot times are fast too.

We disliked

It's a shame that Toshiba couldn't notch the Kira's display brightness up by 10-15%, something that would better positioned it for use in brightly-lit conditions. The flex in the Kira's lid is also cause for concern for a laptop in this price bracket. Set to its native resolution, the Kira's desktop provides a huge working area that can be used to lay out multiple documents or apps, but it's at the expense of unpredictable scaling in Windows 8.1 that can frustrate at the best of times.

Final Verdict

The Kira's longer battery life, compact stylings and attractive looks (with the lid open) are all plus points for Toshiba's second Ultrabook, but some of the flaws are real deal-breakers. The most glaring one is the display's lackluster backlight, which is an unfortunate one considering the highly reflective nature of the display and its average viewing angles.

However, it's still a highly portable machine that would suit professionals seeking an Ultrabook with good battery life, competent performance and perhaps a little more in the way of style than substance. If the Kira was a bit cheaper it would be easier to look over its misgivings, but when the competition is this strong, it makes it something of a hard sell in 2014.

The Asus Zenbook UX301LA is an Ultrabook with a 13.3-inch IPS screen that retains the 13-inch MacBook Air-like wedge shape of its original 2011 incarnation. It has been given a fresh look with new materials replacing that version's aluminium lid and chassis, a style that has become all too predictable from laptop designers.

The 2011 version was of the first laptops to adhere to Intel's Ultrabook specification, which places strict design guidelines on manufacturers. To earn that label, laptops must meet certain requirements regarding its dimensions, battery life, and so on.

Fast forward to now, and Intel's modern Haswell mobile platform, called Shark Bay, requires Ultrabooks to be no more than 20mm thick, with a battery that can cope with 6 hours of HD video playback. A touch-sensitive screen is now mandatory, along with support for features such as Intel's WiDi wireless display.

The Asus Zenbook UX301LA is now dark blue, which appears almost black under dim lighting conditions. The lid is covered in a layer of scratch-resistant Corning Gorilla Glass, and the area around the chassis is made from ceramic, for a smooth but solid feel. As with the majority of modern computers, the backlit keyboard uses the familiar isolated or chiclet style, which is great for typing on, but might not appeal to gamers wanting big and chunky WASD keys.

Asus has gone beyond the basic Ultrabook specification. The Asus Zenbook UX301LA comes with 802.11ac wireless networking, a choice of high-PPI touch-sensitive screen resolutions of either 1920 x 1080 or 2560 x 1400, 8GB of memory, a dual-core Core i5 or Core i7 Haswell processor, which naturally comes with Intel's Iris integrated graphics, and dual 128 GB Sandisk SSDs in RAID 0. The 802.11ac wireless card is a two-stream Intel 7260 adapter.

The variant I received came with an Intel Core i7 4500U processor, and retails for around £1,450 (about $2,429, AU$2,625), a price that hovers towards the very upper end of the Ultrabook market. It's 15.5mm (0.61 inches) thick and weighs 1.4 kg (3.08 pounds). The Core i7 4500U runs at 1.8 GHz, with a maximum turbo frequency of 3 GHz, and the graphics are handled by an integrated Intel HD 4400 graphics processor. There's the option of a faster Core i7 4558U processor as well.

Typical of Ultrabooks, there's only a small handful of ports. Mini DisplayPort, micro HDMI, Two USB 3.0, an SD card reader and an audio jack occupy the sides, along with the power connector.

When held, the Asus Zenbook UX301LA is bulkier than you might expect. The glass surface on the lid feels pleasant but shows up fingerprints wherever it's touched. For this reason, a micro-fibre cleaning cloth and non-alcoholic fluid would definitely make a great companion purchase and it seems Asus may have missed a trick by not including something similar in the stylish packaging that accompanies the Zenbook UX301LA.

The main section of the laptop feels strong – I pushed it quite hard and didn't notice even the tiniest amount of flexing, but the screen easily bends under comparatively little pressure.

The trackpad has a generous amount of space, but no physical buttons. Instead, left and right clicking can be done by pressing at the bottom, and there's custom software to allow for gestures, such as swiping to go back in a web page, and scrolling up and down with two fingers. These work excellently, and can all be customised in the software. However, one shortcut becomes highly irritating: swiping at the side of the trackpad to switch between desktop and Windows 8 Modern UI application. It's very easy to do this accidentally, and is best disabled.

Compounding the issue with fingerprints on the lid is the glossy display. Touch-sensitive laptops have a substrate layer that requires them to have a glossy screen, but it's seems especially noticeable in the Asus Zenbook UX301LA, perhaps because the dark casing highlights the reflections more than a lightly-coloured chassis might.

Performance

A critical issue currently facing PC laptop designers is the use of high-resolution screens in small displays, when text in Windows and third-party applications appears too small to see. With the Windows desktop DPI set to default, a full HD resolution on a 13.3in screen is really pushing the boundary of usability, so I'd really hate to see what the 2560 x 1440 variant looked like.

Windows 8.1 automatically adjusts the desktop DPI, which makes text legible and improves usability a lot. It has to be done manually with vanilla Windows 8 or Windows 7 though, so raising the DPI setting is the very first thing I'd do on any laptop with a high resolution screen, which includes the Asus Zenbook UX301LA, which arrived with Windows 8.

But as with other laptops I've tested, not all third-party applications adhere to the DPI settings, and remain at their standard size with tiny text, an issue for which there is no current solution.

Since there's no PC version of Apple's proprietary PCI-Express storage connector it now uses in its computers, designers have to be creative to boost SSD performance beyond the limits of the SATA interface. But using two SSDs in Raid 0 can offer mixed performance, especially since Sandisk SSDs, as found in the Asus Zenbook UX301LA, aren't the fastest around.

Benchmarks

• 3DMark: Ice Storm: 52,285; Cloud Gate: 5,151; Fire Strike: 693
• Cinebench 15: CPU: 240 points; GPU: 22.6 fps
• PCMark 8 Home: 2,421
• PCMark 8 Battery Life: 5 hours and 32 minutes

Having two of them provides some hefty burst transfer speeds: 981 MB/s when reading data and 586 MB/s writing. But overall SSD performance is affected by more than just burst data transfer. Other results, such as a random 4K write result of 233.7 MB/s are indicative of worse overall IOPS performance than some high-end single SSD.

CPU performance was as expected from a low-voltage processor. I measured 240cb in Cinebench 15, which is significantly less than you'll get from a high-end laptop, but more than enough for such tasks as document editing, media playback and web browsing.

That said, the Asus Zenbook UX301LA didn't feel particularly quick. Although boot times were fast, switching between Modern UI and the Windows desktop wasn't quite as instantaneous as I'm used to. A few times, resuming from sleep took longer than I'd like as well. I loaded up an 1080p encoded rip of Avatar, and had absolutely no problems with playback.

I tested the battery life by playing this file looped in Windows Media Player, with the screen brightness set to 120 cd/m2. On a full charge, it lasted well into the third play of the film, conking out after six hours 45 minutes, enough time to be really tortured by Avatar's dreadful script and plot. The PCMark 08 battery life test wasn't as good though, lasting five hours 32 minutes.

The Cinebench 15 OpenGL result of 22.6 points to limited gaming performance. I ran 3DMark and saw some slightly better results, but for high performance in modern demanding 3D titles such as Battlefield 4, it's clear that a more powerful discrete graphics card is needed.

Although light gaming and older software will work fine, if you want a gaming laptop, or a system for demanding tasks such as video encoding, Ultrabooks are not the best choice. On the plus side, Asus has ensured the fans are fairly inaudible when they inevitably speed up once the Zenbook UX301LA is under load. This is refreshing, given the number of portable systems that sound like the launch of Apollo 11 whenever they see the slightest hint of a CPU-intensive application.

We liked

The Zenbook UX301LA crams plenty of features into a small space. It's undoubtedly a great example of a modern Ultrabook, with slim dimensions, more than enough battery life, and some nice additions such as the glass lid and ceramic chassis. The trackpad's gesture control software works very well, and really helps navigate.

I'm in two minds about the touch-sensitive display. It's hardly a must-have feature, since it's really not much use on the desktop, but it's useful with the larger buttons in Modern UI applications. Some people do like having touch-sensitive displays on laptops, and the Asus UX301LA caters for them well.

Although it doesn't handle bass all that well, the mid and treble tones from the speakers are a lot better than many other laptops on the market. Along with the quiet system fans, Asus seems to be taking the audible aspects of its computers more seriously than certain other manufacturers, who consider it an afterthought.

We disliked

Although Asus has tried to hard to give the Zenbook UX301LA a premium feel, with very little use of plastic or other cheap materials, it just doesn't feel like a £1450 laptop. Granted, preference for aesthetics is a personal issue, but I just didn't like the design of the UX301LA. Perhaps it's the prevalence of glossy, reflective materials, or the fingerprints that cover the lid. It's a laptop that gets the job done, but no more than that.

It lacks a single stand-out feature that justifies its price, and for similar money you could get a more powerful laptop such as a MacBook Pro 13-inch with Retina Display, which has more storage, a beefier processor and what I consider a better overall design.

The SSD Raid array sounds like a must-have feature, but Raid doesn't mean simply twice the performance of a single disk. And at this price, I see no reason to not provide a storage capacity of 512GB or even 1TB. Likewise, the Gorilla Glass coating on the lid sounds awesome, but is less impressive in practice.

As with many other laptops, the high-resolution display can be really problematic at times. I'd undoubtedly choose the Asus Zenbook UX301LA with a 1920 x 1080 screen over the version with a 2560 x 1440 display.

Verdict

I'm slightly underwhelmed by the blandness of the Asus Zenbook UX301LA. There's nothing to really hate about it, but nothing to truly love either. Anyone who buys one wont find any real faults with it, but is unlikely to relish the opportunity to open and use it.

When sitting in a computer shop, along with row after row of other similar laptops, it's hard to imagine the Asus Zenbook UX301LA drawing crowds. In that situation, the immediate stand-out feature will certainly be the price tag, and it may take a creative salesperson to convince a customer that the UX301LA is significantly better than another Ultrabook that costs a third less.