Asus made a laptop that transfers its heat to an air diffuser on the back lid. You won’t be stuffing run-of-the-mill Glade gel packs in these; instead, the Asus Adol 14 Air Fragrance Edition has its own replaceable inserts with conceptual descriptions... like “Be a new her.”
This is the Asus Zenbook A14, it weighs just 2.18 pounds, and while that doesn’t make it the lightest laptop ever, this 14-inch machine is lighter than the old 11-inch MacBook Air! More in Antonio’s full story. Both of us agree three fingers is the right quantity.
A real expanding screen straight out of science fiction! Antonio, Andrew and I couldn’t stop grinning, particularly as Lenovo encouraged us to just use the $3500 ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 instead of treating it like some fragile prototype.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a tad awkward because Windows doesn’t officially support expanding screens, but an invisible multimonitor hack seems to work. Get on it, Microsoft!
Asus didn’t announce any huge changes for these beloved laptops at CES, with the new Zenbook Duo just being bumped to a series 2 Intel Core Ultra 9 processor.
Meanwhile, the ROG Zephyrus G14 and Zephyrus G16 gaming laptops are being refreshed with AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and Intel Core Ultra 9 285H CPUs, respectively, alongside Nvidia 50-series graphics.
The new 16-inch Legion Pro 7i, announced at CES, features Nvidia 50-series GPUs and up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX. It will start at $2,399 when it launches in March.
There’s a lot of intriguing new gaming laptops in this range, but not all of them offer a 2560 x 1600 240Hz OLED in all configurations.
Technically, the laptop needs the “Hyperboost” update, too — but after it’s applied to both, Razer says its Blade 16 can run its mobile RTX 4090 graphics chip at 20 watts higher TDP — from 150W TGP to 170W TGP, yielding a 30–40fps improvement in Shadow of the Tomb Raider (here, from 142fps to 184fps average).
MSI has buttoned-up Venture and Venture Pro business notebooks for CES to go with its gaming laptops. They come in 14- to 17-inch sizes, with older Intel Meteor Lake chips or AMD’s Ryzen AI 7 350. The Venture Pros get discrete 40-series GPUs.
MSI usually means business when it comes to specs, but I guess it makes exceptions for business.
Dell just killed off XPS, but its new “Pro” laptops pull a neat trick: most USB-C ports and batteries are now officially user-replaceable.
“This is the first time that we’ve had a screwed-on, non-soldered modular USB-C port,” Dell PM Katie Green tells us. She says Dell also plans to bring this to consumers “when it makes sense.” No word on Framework-like modularity yet.
With rumors of Nvidia entering the CPU market, 2025 might be an even bigger year for Microsoft’s Arm efforts.
My retro writing machine collection just got a fun new entry: the Smith-Corona PWP 7000LT, which The New York Times has called “a reasonable alternative to portable computers for people who are not comfortable with more powerful machines.” Somewhat incredibly, it actually works.
If there were any doubt we’d see a new generation of Nvidia graphics hardware at its CES 2025 LAN party, that’s evaporated.
The latest hint comes from @MysteryLupin on X, who’s had early leaks before, with these pictures showing a 16-inch HP Omen Max and specs including an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU.
A touch more speed and just a tiny bit more convenience.
The folks over at MacRumors have stumbled onto leaked mentions of M4 MacBook Airs in the macOS Sequoia 15.2 update.
This may point to new MacBook Airs coming soon, which aligns with earlier rumors that new 13- and 15-inch models with M4 processors are expected in early 2025.
I’m still working on my GPD Win Max 2 review, and there’s now a more powerful model on sale. It’s pricier at $1,500 — but the 8840U version I’m using is now discounted to $1,000, so that’s great!
This is the best tiny Windows machine I’ve used, though I find I want a mouse. It’s also an OK handheld.
