Antonio G. Di Benedetto | The VergeThe Verge is about technology and how it makes us feel. Founded in 2011, we offer our audience everything from breaking news to reviews to award-winning features and investigations, on our site, in video, and in podcasts.2026-09-03T17:28:18+00:00https://www.theverge.com/authors/antonio-dibenedetto-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2/rsshttps://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/verge-rss-large_80b47e.png?w=150&h=150&crop=1Antonio G. Di Benedetto<![CDATA[Lenovo’s new MacBook Neo competitor comes in two sizes and seven colors]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9887652026-09-03T10:00:12-04:002026-09-03T12:00:00-04:00
Tag yourself. I’m spicy gold. | Photo: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
Lenovo is announcing the IdeaPad Vibe, a productivity laptop aimed at taking on the MacBook Neo with a similar starting price and a wider range of colors. The Vibe comes in 14- and 15-inch sizes, with AMD and Qualcomm chip options due out in October and November, respectively. Intel versions (likely Wildcat Lake) are set to be “available at a later date.”
While the MacBook Neo comes in four different colors, the IdeaPad Vibe ups the hue selection to seven. Lenovo gave them all over-the-top names: dreamy violet, spicy gold, zen green, chill blue, radiant coral, moody blue, and lowkey gray. You’ll even be able to custom order one from Lenovo with keycaps in any of the seven colors, as well as buy separate keycap sets to mix-and-match your own unique look. And unlike the Neo, the keyboard is backlit.
The IdeaPad Vibe is an evolution of the IdeaPad Slim, and some of its upgrades include an all-metal chassis (though some colors will be part plastic) and a switch from a barrel plug charger to USB-C. The Vibe has many more ports than the MacBook Neo, but none of them particularly fast. There’s two USB-C and two USB-A (all 5Gbps), HDMI 1.4, 3.5mm audio jack, and a microSD card reader. IPS LCD panels will come standard on both the 14- and 15-inch Vibes, but some colors (sadly, only the boring gray and blue) can be upgraded to a touchscreen OLED
While Lenovo isn’t yet disclosing how much RAM the Vibe’s base model will have, the fact that it isn’t disclosing seems like a clue that it’ll start with 8GB. The Qualcomm Snapdragon X model will come with up to 24GB of RAM, and the AMD Ryzen AI 400-series model will go up to 32GB of user-upgradeable dual-channel RAM. Nice. But regardless of chips, the Vibe will have up to 1TB of storage and comes with user-accessible dual-slot SSDs.
Even if it does start with 8GB of RAM, all the colors, ports, and chip and size options sure sound fun and unique. I can’t wait to see how this thing stacks up against the Neo, including in the color and the keycap customization departments.
Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
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Antonio G. Di Benedetto<![CDATA[This ultra-thin Lenovo laptop concept uses solid-state cooling]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9888822026-09-03T12:29:12-04:002026-09-03T12:00:00-04:00
A laptop we’ll hopefully see but never hear.
Lenovo is announcing a new concept laptop for IFA 2026 that uses solid-state cooling instead of traditional fans, making it incredibly thin and super light. The 14-inch Project AeroBlade concept laptop is less than 10mm thick and weighs under 1.8 pounds / 830g. For reference, recent ThinkPad X1 Carbons are around 14mm at their thickest and weigh about 1kg / 2.2 pounds.
The 14-inch Project AeroBlade concept laptop uses solid-state cooling instead of traditional fans, making it incredibly thin and super light. Check out our hands-on in the link in bio.
The AeroBlade is essentially a ThinkBook built around Frore’s AirJet technology, which uses piezo electric membranes to force air through the chassis without any fans or other moving parts. The solid-state cooling means the AeroBlade Concept is as nearly as quiet as a MacBook Air, but with active cooling.
That hasn’t changed yet with the AeroBlade concept, of course, but partnering with Lenovo on a business laptop could mean that solid-state cooling is a little closer to widespread adoption. In addition to enabling Lenovo to build such a thin and light business laptop, the incorporated Frore tech means the AeroBlade has no vents on the bottom. And dust coming into the system should be minimized, which should be beneficial for long-term use.
Lenovo is light on specs, because it’s a concept, but the AeroBlade in its current form is built on an Intel Lunar Lake chip with Thunderbolt 4 ports, Wi-Fi 7, and an OLED display. Lenovo communications director Jeff Witt, told me that if it comes to market the AeroBlade would likely get a newer chip.
The ThinkBook Project AeroBlade Concept I got to see up close in an early demo was as impressively thin and light as it sounds. I could lift the laptop from its corner with just my thumb and index finger. Having tested and reviewed several fanless laptops like Apple’s MacBook Airs, the MacBook Neo, and Microsoft’s 12-inch Surface Pro, the thought of using one that’s almost as quiet but with the added performance benefit of active cooling sounds, well, pretty cool.
Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
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Antonio G. Di Benedetto<![CDATA[Nvidia launches free tool that links idle computers into a personal AI data center]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9894352026-09-03T13:28:18-04:002026-09-03T12:00:00-04:00
Nvidia is announcing its new Personal AI Router (PAIR), a free tool that syncs up your home computers for tackling local AI inference tasks with tools like Ollama and LM Studio.
Let’s get the obvious thing out of the way, despite what its name might imply: PAIR is not a hardware router. It’s open-source software developed by Nvidia that discovers compatible PCs on a network, connects them, and prepares them for crunching numbers on agentic workflows. While the compatible devices are mostly Nvidia GeForce GPUs (PAIR works with RTX 20-series cards and newer, as well as RTX Pro GPUs and DGX Spark systems), Apple’s M4 chips or newer will also work.
The key thing here is that PAIR uses your in-home systems when they’re idle to avoid interfering with other tasks. And this disaggregated system of computers can work in parallel to chew through lots of processing requests — which should be helpful for an agentic workflow that breaks complex tasks into smaller jobs. This should prevent large bottlenecks on a single GPU, and Nvidia says PAIR can adapt as devices join or leave the network — including if a user does something like start playing a game on their desktop PC.
In a media briefing, Nvidia product manager Seth Schneider painted a picture of a household filled with powerful computers that could be doing much more with PAIR: a dad with both an Nvidia RTX Spark laptop and a DGX Spark desktop, a mom with an RTX 5090 laptop, a daughter with a gaming desktop, and a son with a MacBook Pro. In this incredibly extreme case, Schneider estimates this house has about 165 teraflops of underutilized compute. “It’s truly a treasure trove of free tokens just sitting in homes today,” he says, even when accounting for the electricity costs in the average American home.
Nvidia says PAIR is secured by pairing all devices through a six-digit code and then securing the channel via mTLS (Mutual Transport Layer Security), to create an encrypted communication line that’s trusted in both directions between computers. The Nvidia PAIR beta is available today, with support for Windows, Linux, and macOS.
PAIR does seem like a clever solution if you already have some beefy computers in your home and you want to run your own local AI. Upon my asking who PAIR is really for, and what kind of setups are actually realistic, Schneider said Nvidia envisions most PAIR users will have something like one MacBook or Windows laptop and one gaming PC.
In addition to PAIR, Nvidia is also announcing that three major AI agent apps — Perplexity Portable Computer, Hermes Agent, and OpenClaw — will offer simplified local setup with Nvidia GPUs on Windows. The new setup experiences are designed to allow users to get local agents up and running in just a few clicks, reducing the initial manual configuration necessary.
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Antonio G. Di Benedetto<![CDATA[This 14-inch laptop has a screen that unrolls to 17 inches]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9894772026-09-03T12:25:26-04:002026-09-03T12:00:00-04:00
ThinkBooks, roll out! | Photo: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
Lenovo’s latest rollable concept, announced at IFA 2026, is the ThinkBook Project Swan: a business laptop with a screen that expands horizontally from 14 to 17 inches.
Rollable screens are nothing new for Lenovo. The company has shown off several concepts and even launched a real one last year (and it was pretty great). But Project Swan seems a little more restrained than that wild vertically expanding ThinkBook Plus Gen 6.
The Lenovo Project Swan transforms from work to Netflix machine —— by literally rolling out a wider 17-inch 16:9 aspect ratio screen horizontally. It follows Lenovo’s previous rollable screen experiences and the actual rollable laptop it released last year, but now goes from 14 inches at 2258 x 1672 to 17 inches at 2850 x 1672. It’s a prototype for now, but reps hint it might actually come out!
The Swan starts out as a pretty conventional 14-inch laptop, albeit with a thick lid, until its flexible OLED unrolls to a 17-inch 16:9 screen. It’s a much more conventional — and more portable — take on a horizontal rollable than the gaming laptop concept Lenovo showed at CES, which went from an already large 16-inch to a massive 24-inch ultrawide. The Swan is 0.7 inches / 17.9mm thick, and weighs 3.5 pounds / 1.6kg — a little heavier and thicker than your average 14-inch, but small and light for 17 inches.
When I saw the ThinkBook Swan at my early in-person preview, it looked like more of a finished product than a rickety prototype. Like all rollables, you can easily spot the ripple in the screen where it rolls, but you don’t really notice it in use. My only concern with this form factor is that the lid is quite heavy because it has to accommodate all the extra screen and motor, rather than storing it in the body of the laptop like the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6. This limits how far back you can tilt the screen, and you have to hope the hinge (which is surprisingly small) will be strong enough to maintain firmness after years of use.
Like its counterpart Project AeroBlade Concept that Lenovo is also announcing at IFA, the ThinkBook Project Swan is outfitted with an Intel Lunar Lake chip. If it comes to market, we can expect newer Intel silicon. And I think we should expect this one, or something very much like it, to make it to customers.
Last year’s ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 cost h $3,500 before RAMageddon price hikes were even a thing. Since then, it seems further rollable and foldable concepts from Lenovo have been trying to thread the needle on balancing form factor, durability, and price. This is no doubt even more challenging now in our RAMageddon world, but the Swan’s simpler approach looks like it might make the cut.
Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
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Antonio G. Di Benedetto<![CDATA[Acer’s new MacBook Air rival is nearly a pound lighter than Apple’s laptop]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9878022026-09-01T18:17:53-04:002026-09-02T05:30:00-04:00
Acer calls the Swift Blade 14’s colors marshmallow blue and marshamallow white. Now I want sweets. | Image: Acer
Acer is announcing a new laptop poised to rival the MacBook Air’s thinness and lightness — and in the process, it cops another laptop’s name. The Acer Swift Blade 14 (not to be confused with the Razer Blade 14) is a productivity machine weighing just 1.76 pounds / 799g and measuring as little as 0.51 inches / 12.95mm thin. That’s around 1.7mm thicker than Apple’s svelte 13-inch MacBook Air, but Acer’s Blade is nearly a pound lighter. Its featherweight stature is partly due to Acer using carbon fiber in the laptop’s top lid and bottom plate.
Inside the Swift Blade will be a range of Intel Wildcat Lake processors, from the lowly five-core Core 3 304 that I tested in the Chuwi UniBook to the six-core Intel Core 7 350. And regardless of which exact chip is inside, the Acer will come with 12GB of RAM. So it’s not likely that the Acer will go toe-to-toe with the MacBook Air’s M5 chip in terms of raw performance, but it could make a compelling case for someone who prefers their laptop to be about as light as they come.
The Swift Blade will come with a basic 1920 x 1200 / 60Hz IPS LCD screen with just 300 nits of brightness, but there will be a couple of OLED options as well (up to 2880 x 1800 / 90Hz and 400 nits). The OLED versions make the chassis ever-so-slightly thicker. And the laptop will have three USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 ports (one of which will be data-only) and a 3.5mm audio jack. Acer isn’t sharing pricing for any configurations of the Swift Blade 14 until closer to its December launch.
It’s the same story for the other Swift laptop Acer is announcing today: the Swift Air 16. This is a larger version of the Swift Air 14 announced at Computex. Despite being named Air, the Swift Air 14 was aimed squarely at the MacBook Neo — especially with its price of $699. While we don’t know yet what the Swift Air 16 will cost, we know it’ll offer similar Intel Wildcat Lake chips, Thunderbolt 4 ports, options for OLED screens, up to 16GB of RAM, and up to 512GB of NVMe storage. It’s not as light as the Swift Blade 14, but at 0.53 inches / 13.5mm thick and 3.31 pounds / 1.5kg, the Swift Air 16 sounds pretty light and thin for a 16-inch. It’s due to arrive in North America in Q1 2027 and other regions this December.
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Antonio G. Di Benedetto<![CDATA[Dell’s newest laptop sounds a lot like a MacBook Neo]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9878392026-09-01T18:14:09-04:002026-09-02T03:00:00-04:00
That’s a bold color, especially for a Dell. | Image: Dell
Dell’s new Dell 14S laptop sounds a lot like a MacBook Neo: it comes in four colors, is aimed at students, and it starts with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Announced at IFA 2026, the 14S is meant to sit below the recently launched XPS 13 and offer another affordable laptop option as most other models continue to climb in price. The 14S will come in linen (beige), dusty rose (pink), washed denim (blue), and velvet green (yep, that’s green). That’s much more colorful than the XPS 13, and like its fancier brethren, the 14S can be configured with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB or 1TB SSD.
The Dell 14S isn’t as thin or as light as the XPS 13, but in addition to the same two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports with DisplayPort and Power Delivery, it also has HDMI 1.4 and a 3.5mm audio jack. (Why the XPS 13 lacks a headphone jack, I’ll never understand). But the 14S has much more basic, non-touch display options: a 300-nit 1920 x 1200 / 60Hz LCD or a 450-nit 2880 x 1800 / 120Hz one.
There are some other niceties for students on the 14S, including a 1080p webcam with Windows Hello face unlock support, and battery life that Dell claims can last for up to 23 hours of Netflix streaming. For chip offerings, it’ll be either the Intel Core 5 320 or Core 7 350 — the 14S won’t scale up to Intel Panther Lake options like the XPS 13 is soon expected to.
We don’t know how much any of this will cost just yet, as pricing is TBD for now, but in a virtual briefing Dell reps said the 14S will be close to the XPS 13’s $700 starting price yet slightly more accessible. We’ll know actual prices closer to its release later this fall. I’m currently testing and reviewing the XPS 13, and I’ve been very impressed with the hardware (except for the missing headphone jack). I’m all for seeing more good, affordable laptops out there — hopefully the 14S makes the right compromises to get the price down.
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Antonio G. Di Benedetto<![CDATA[Apple’s new Mac Mini has fresh M6 and M5 Pro chip offerings — and higher prices]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9841902026-08-25T11:44:03-04:002026-08-25T09:00:00-04:00
The M6 / M5 Pro Mac Mini. | Image: Apple
Apple is announcing a new generation of the Mac Mini, once again offering two models: one with a new M6 chip and a higher-end model with the M5 Pro found in this year’s MacBook Pro. The new Minis have the same tiny design and footprint as the 2024 M4 / M4 Pro models, but with upgraded internals, faster performance, and speedier ethernet ports.
The M6 Mac Mini starts at $899, while the M5 Pro model starts at $1,699. Both cost $100 more than the most recent starting prices of the M4 generation. And while preorders start today, the new Mac Minis won’t ship until September 22nd — hopefully enough time for Apple to stock up on inventory, as the last-gen models became scarce due to higher than expected demand for running AI agents.
Like last generation, the new entry-level Mac Mini with an M6 chip starts with 16GB of unified memory and 256GB of storage, and the M5 Pro Mac Mini starts with a 24GB / 512GB configuration. But the storage in all of these models is now twice as fast, just like the recent crop of MacBooks Air and Pro. In addition to the double-speed storage, both M6 and M5 Pro Mac Minis now sport 2.5 gigabit ethernet ports (with the same optional upgrade to 10 gigabit) and they use Apple’s N1 chip for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 support.
The M6 Mac Mini now has a 12-core CPU and 12-core GPU along with 170GBps of memory bandwidth compared to the M4’s 10-core / 10-core setup and memory bandwidth of 120GBps. Its CPU consists of two super cores (a naming convention that began with the M5 Pro / Max chips), four performance cores, and six efficiency cores — and it’s Apple’s first chip on a 2nm process. Apple claims the M6’s more, faster cores lead to a 40 percent uplift in CPU performance over the M4 generation, and the new 12-core GPU with neural accelerators is up to twice as fast at graphics rendering with ray tracing than the M4 in some games.
The M5 Pro of the new Mac Mini is configurable, much like it is on the MacBook Pro: it can be had with up to 18 CPU cores and 20 GPU cores, and it has the same 307GBps of memory bandwidth. Apple claims the Mac Mini with an M5 Pro has significant gains in AI compute and graphics over the outgoing M4 Pro model, thanks in part to the neural accelerator in each GPU core. This should permit heavier AI workloads, including photo and video upscaling, and running larger diffusion models.
Some key things haven’t changed on the new Mac Minis — most notably, all the ports besides the upgraded ethernet. Both Minis maintain two front-facing 10Gbps USB-C ports and the three on the rear of the M6 are faster Thunderbolt 4, while the rear three of the M5 Pro are even speedier Thunderbolt 5 ports. But both the M6 and M5 Pro Mac Minis will ship with macOS 27 Golden Gate preloaded out of the box, offering full compatibility with Apple’s new Siri AI and new Apple Intelligence features.
There’s no official launch date for the final public release of macOS 27, but with today’s Mac announcements, it should arrive no later than their September 22nd ship date.
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Antonio G. Di Benedetto<![CDATA[Apple launches new Mac Studios with its ‘most powerful chip ever’ — the M5 Ultra]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9842072026-08-25T14:49:48-04:002026-08-25T09:00:00-04:00
Those precious, precious ports! | Image: Apple
Apple is announcing new models of the Mac Studio, now using the existing M5 Max and a new M5 Ultra. This reunification under one chip generation comes over a year after Apple awkwardly split the Studio between M4 Max and M3 Ultra offerings. (The older-sounding M3 Ultra was actually the more powerful one, and there was never an M4 Ultra chip.) The new Studios look identical to previous generations, utilizing the same small-form-factor chassis since its introduction in 2022 (right down to the USB-A ports on the rear), but inside are Apple’s most powerful SoCs.
The new Mac Studio with the existing M5 Max chip comes with 36GB of unified memory and 512GB of storage, starting at $2,499. That matches the current starting price of the M4 Max model after its $500 price hike in June. The new $5,499 M5 Ultra model starts with 96GB of memory and 1TB of storage. That’s only $200 more than the starting price of the outgoing M3 Ultra model, but keep in mind the M3 Ultra launched at a much lower $3,999 last year.
These new Studios are set to arrive running macOS 27 Golden Gate on September 22nd, alongside the new Mac Minis. But its highest-end M5 Ultra configuration with a whopping 512GB of memory is coming in late October with pricing TBD for now — though it’s best we start bracing ourselves for the eventual sticker shock.
These are chip bumps through and through, but what bumps they are. While the RAM and storage amounts for the new Mac Studios match their predecessors, like recentMacBooks, they have storage that’s twice as fast. In its press release, Apple describes the new Studios as “A monumental step for AI” with a claim of up 4.3x faster AI compute in the M5 Ultra. But even when it comes to raw CPU and GPU performance, the M5 Ultra and its up to 36-core CPU and 80-core GPU are said to have up to 1.8x faster graphics and 1.3x faster CPU speed than the M3 Ultra. The memory bandwidth of the M5 Ultra is now up to 1.2TB per second — as if the M3 Ultra’s 819GB per second didn’t sound fast enough.
Apple achieved all this in the M5 Ultra by using its next-gen UltraFusion connection to merge two dual-die M5 Max chips together into a quad-die architecture. And it’s why Apple isn’t mincing words by advertising the M5 Ultra as “the most powerful chip ever.” But the Mac Studios also pack another, more pedestrian upgrade for a slight quality-of-life improvement: Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 support.
With the recent sunsetting of its Mac Pro line of desktops, these Mac Studios are as powerful as Apple computers get. And they’re small enough to fit under your monitor (or up to four of Apple’s 5K / 120Hz Studio Display XDR monitors running at full resolution). But thanks to RAMageddon, Apple’s most powerful chip and its fastest Macs ever are also much pricier than their predecessors were just a short while ago.
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Antonio G. Di Benedetto<![CDATA[An okay laptop with 16GB of RAM is better than a nice laptop with 8GB, and this $520 HP OmniBook proves it]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9835542026-08-21T22:46:31-04:002026-08-22T09:00:00-04:00
The OmniBook 3 isn’t a sweet treat, but it gets things done on the cheap. | Photo: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
Laptop prices are out of whack. $500 used to get you a tolerable laptop, and $900 got you a really good one. They often had similar CPU, RAM, and storage options because that stuff was comparatively cheap; the difference was often in build quality and screen rather than power. But RAMageddon has thrown everything off. Even laptops like the $950 Surface Laptop now start with 8GB of RAM, which isn’t enough. And on the lower end, where manufacturers are struggling to compete with the $700 MacBook Neo, they’re cutting corners on storage, CPU, and build quality too.
However, one low-cost laptop has bucked this and genuinely surprised me. HP’s 16-inch OmniBook 3 is a basic productivity laptop that regularly goes for around $520 at Walmart and Amazon. It has Qualcomm’s base Snapdragon X chip, meaning passable everyday performance and excellent battery life. But it also has a humdrum screen, mediocre speakers, a run-of-the-mill trackpad, and a plastic build. Pre-RAMageddon, it would be nothing to write home about.
But 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD in an okay laptop for around $500? That counts as good news in 2026.
2026 HP OmniBook 3 16 (Snapdragon X)
Score: 6
Pros
Cons
Very affordable for a 16-inch with 16GB of RAM in 2026
Great battery life
Ample-sized number pad for you number pad folks
Mostly decent all around — and for around $500 that makes it pretty good
The entry-level OmniBook 3 I tested has an 8-core Snapdragon X processor, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, and a 16-inch 1920 x 1200 anti-glare IPS LCD. And the OmniBook 3 is fairly portable for a larger laptop with lots of ports. It’s barely heavier than a 14-inch MacBook Pro, and at a maximum thickness of 0.63 inches / 16mm it’s decently thin. This big laptop doesn’t feel big. And despite a plastic chassis and low price it doesn’t feel too cheap either.
Component report card
Screen: D
Webcam: C
Keyboard: C
Trackpad: C
Port selection: B
Speakers: D
Number of ugly stickers to remove: 2
As much as I would like to see more cheap Windows laptops with the sleek looks and sturdy all-metal build of the MacBook Neo, I wouldn’t mind if more of them were like the OmniBook 3. Its screen, keyboard, trackpad, and webcam are all at least passable to decent. There isn’t anything special here, but unlike the Chuwi UniBook there’s also nothing that feels like a punishment.
The 1920 x 1200 / 60Hz screen isn’t high-quality or bright enough to combat the sun when taken outside (it maxes out at 300 nits of brightness and covers a paltry 62.5 percent of the sRGB color space), but it isn’t washed out or bleeding light at its edges. The mechanical trackpad has a basic diving board-style hinge, but a confident and decent-feeling kachunk-y click. The 1080p webcam is actually fairly sharp, and it does a good job handling backlight from a bright window — with only a hint of green color cast. But hey, at least it has Windows Hello face unlocking. And at least this not-too-large large laptop has lots of ports and charges via USB-C with a very compact 65W GaN charger.
My biggest gripe is the dual speakers (unsurprisingly), which lack bass and sound too treble-y, but they’re just tolerable enough to live with. My next biggest is the keyboard (surprisingly). I usually like HP keyboards, but this one feels too stiff. If you’re the type to hammer your fingers down and you love a generously sized number pad you might be fine, but I get more typos than I’m used to from keys not registering. I could learn to live with it, but I’d still prefer not to have to.
HP OmniBook 3 16 / Qualcomm Snapdragon X X1-26-100 / 16GB / 512GB
What I can totally live with is the performance. The OmniBook’s 8-core Snapdragon X processor is a little slower than the one in the $950 Surface Laptop I tested, but the OmniBook’s day-to-day performance is better because it’s not starved for RAM and its larger SSD is a little faster. Like other lower-end Snapdragon laptop chips it’s not going to wow you with graphics performance or tackle heavy content creation in Adobe apps, but it’s perfectly adequate for everyday multitasking work. Even when running several apps with a couple dozen Chrome tabs left open, including a video podcast playing, I didn’t feel it slow down the way the Surface Laptop or Chuwi UniBook, each with only 8GB of RAM, did.
And while a Snapdragon chip means this Windows laptop isn’t ideal for gaming, it does make it great on battery. You can pretty easily get around 12 hours of mixed web usage with a bit of music or video streaming.
It feels like the money went into the core specs of the OmniBook 3, and HP just barely stuck the landing on the right compromises elsewhere. As much as I adore the build quality of Microsoft’s Surface Laptops, if I were spending my own money I’d choose the OmniBook 3, never worry about how much RAM is in use, and save over $400.
If we reviewed the OmniBook 3 a year ago I might feel different, but it’s been a tiny breath of fresh air to use something this cheap and mostly think, “Not too bad!” Especially coming right after I tested the $450 Chuwi UniBook. An employee being issued this laptop for work shouldn’t feel like their IT department totally hates them. And while I think a MacBook Neo would still be a better all-around experience for a school-age kid, I’d totally understand saving nearly $200 to get the OmniBook 3 if a budget can’t be stretched.
My only worry is that the OmniBook 3’s price will go up like everything else. While there are more sub-$800 laptops coming, and I’ll be testing more very soon, the OmniBook 3’s price — and that of the OmniBook 5 I reviewed back in December — feel anomalous right now. The RAMageddon storm could eventually ruin them like it did many other laptops and devices. But, for now, there’s some safe harbor with this lowly OmniBook.
Ports: 2x USB-C (10Gbps, DisplayPort 1.4, Power Delivery 3.0), 2x USB-A (5Gbps), HDMI 2.1, 3.5mm audio jack
Biometrics: Windows Hello face unlock
Weight: 3.65 pounds / 1.66kg
Dimensions: 14.12 x 9.91 x 0.58 to 0.63 inches / 358.65 x 251.71 x 14.73 to 16mm
Battery: 68Wh (65W USB-C charger included)
Price: about $520
Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
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Antonio G. Di Benedetto<![CDATA[Framework says it’s addressing a BIOS update that bricked some of its older laptops]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9828002026-08-20T13:16:02-04:002026-08-20T13:16:02-04:00
The 2023 Framework Laptop 13 with AMD Ryzen 7040-series chips. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
While some users on Framework’s community forums reported that the company was sending them replacement mainboards under the one-year warranty, several without-of-warranty boards said they were told they’d have to buy new ones. A few were able to take matters into their own hands with external BIOS programming equipment.
When The Verge reached out to Framework for comment, founder Nirav Patel shared this statement:
We’ve received reports of a small percentage of Framework Laptop 13 7040 Series BIOS updates resulting in non-bootable boards and are investigating the root cause of the issue. In the meantime, in addition to replacing in-warranty Mainboards, we are making exceptions for out-of-warranty replacements where we can confirm a stable-release BIOS update caused the board to become non-bootable.
In parallel to this, we’re introducing “Crisis Recovery Mode” BIOS functionality to enable a path for failed updates to be directly recoverable. Our latest Framework Desktop BIOS release includes this functionality, and we are actively bringing it to Framework Laptop 12, 13, and 16 in our upcoming BIOS release cycles for each.
The Verge asked Framework what percentage of Laptop 13s were affected, and if there’s a timeline for the Crisis Recovery Mode coming to future BIOS updates. Framework’s external PR rep Jim Redner reiterated it is a “small percentage” and added, “They are targeting releasing that functionality before the end of year for each product line.”
