Alex Cranz
Heck yeah, a chart that goes nowhere!
Apple’s chip speed charts are improving every year, but they’re still not nearly as functional as they could be.
1/2Apple
Laptops
Alex Cranz
The M3 and M3 Pro and M3 Max are here.
They’re on 3nm technology, which should mean a whole heckuva lot faster than the current M2 family of chips.
The M1 and M2 were both launched many months ahead of their Pro and Max, but Apple’s dropping the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max together this time. Fascinating!
Alex Cranz
Apple’s got a brand-new family of chips.
And they’re coming to the MacBook Pro, according to Tim Cook. Fingers crossed we get an iMac announcement tonight as well.
Victoria Song
Monica Chin
It’s AMD all the way down.
Alienware’s new m18 gaming rig is the first laptop to offer AMD’s new RX 7900M graphics. This GPU features a brand-new chiplet design from AMD, and will be paired with the Ryzen 9 7945HX mobile CPU, which has proven to be impressively powerful in our testing.
The m18 will also include user-replaceable memory and storage, a QHD 165Hz or FHD 480Hz display, an FHD webcam, and an optional CherryMX mechanical keyboard. It looks so far to be one of the most powerful gaming laptops ever — but it certainly won’t come cheap, with a starting price of $2,799.
Monica Chin
Turn your Intel laptop into an AMD laptop with this one simple trick.
Framework has begun shipping out AMD mainboards for its 13-inch laptop, which was previously Intel-only. The component experts over at Tom’s Hardware have popped open their 13-inch model and swapped its Intel Core i7 out for an AMD Ryzen chip. The process took less than 30 minutes. Less than 30 minutes!
“All upgrades should be this easy,” editor Andrew E. Freedman writes.
Monica Chin
This is the most interesting part of the Surface Laptop Studio 2.
Microsoft has posted a new YouTube video showing off one of the most impressive new hardware features it announced at its Surface and AI event last week: Adaptive Touch.
This tool allows people with limited mobility in their hands to customize features like click zones, click sensitivity, double click speed, and palm rejection to make the Surface Laptop Studio’s touchpad easier to use. In this video, accessibility program manager Solomon Romney — who was born without fingers on his left hand — uses the Studio’s touchpad to copy and paste.
Monica Chin
A gaming laptop for $699.
Acer’s Nitro gaming laptops are widely considered to be the best-value gaming laptops that money can buy (and they’re some of Acer’s best-selling products). The flagship Nitro V 15 has been upgraded to include Intel 13th-Gen Core processors, Nvidia GeForce RTX 40-series GPUs, and up to 32GB of DDR5 RAM. You also get a 165Hz FHD panela and up to 2TB of storage. The whole thing starts at $699.99, which is the main attraction.
It’s V as in “five”, not as in the name of the BTS member. Just to clarify. Since I know that is a thought you all had.
Jon Porter
Monica Chin and Jay Peters
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
Sean Hollister
Framework’s barebones single-board computer now starts at just $199.
Framework sells its modular laptop motherboard a la carte to fulfill DIY desktop and cyberdeck dreams — and now, it’s selling off extra stock of these 11th Gen Intel Core models at deep discount.
You’ll also need storage, memory, and possibly ports (it’s only got four USB-C by itself). There’s also this neat transparent $39 Cooler Master case if you want to DIY an unofficial Intel NUC.
Monica Chin
Monica Chin
Monica Chin
Pavilion Plus, but make it bigger.
HP is bringing a much welcome refresh to its Pavilion Plus line. The Pavilion Plus is a totally random assortment of features (OLED display, ultra-thin chassis, incredibly fancy webcam, an H-series processor) that really have no business being on the same device, and it is my favorite thing ever. (It’s also on our Best Budget Laptop list.)
There will be a 14-inch 2.8K model with both AMD and Intel options as well as a 16-inch 2.5K option with an Intel Core i7 and Nvidia RTX 3050. The former’s hitting shelves in September starting at $849.99; we’ll see the latter in October for $999.99.
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
Monica Chin
The Mercedes laptop is now up for purchase.
If you’ve been trying to decide between buying a luxury car and a fancy gaming laptop, well, you can now get them both in one.
A few months ago, MSI announced the Stealth 16 Mercedes-AMG Motorsport, an RGB gaming laptop covered in both RGB and the AMG logo. This massive, very flashy computer is now up for order on MSI’s website. $2,899.99 gets you a Core i9, an OLED screen, 64GB of memory, and 2TB of storage. And a cool luxury car vibe, I assume.
Here are the best laptops for video editing of every shape, size, and price point.
Monica Chin
Umar Shakir
YouTuber Luke Miani is a fellow slabtop stan.
“You should be able to decapitate your MacBook and use it as a desktop,” the Mac hardware tinkerer said while taking the broken screen off of a laptop, leaving just the slab. One fantastic, e-waste-saving use case he added was pairing a broken iMac he had converted into a monitor with his headless MacBook.
If you are also slabtop curious, check out my experience decapitating my own M1 MacBook Air from last year.
Sean Hollister
Watch me swap the Framework Laptop 16’s GPU in under two minutes.
The Laptop 16 promises to finally fulfill the broken dream of upgradable gaming laptops. How easy can it be? See for yourself — I don’t cut away once during this video!
The bigger question: will Framework secure future GPUs to swap into this PC? It’s got a solid track record with CPUs...
From laptops and pens to consoles and streaming devices, here are the best supplies to help you or the student in your life prepare for the year ahead.
Sheena Vasani
Monica Chin
The Framework Laptop is coming to Italy, Spain, and Belgium.
It’s now been just over two years since I reviewed the original Framework Laptop. Back then, I wondered if its promise of a wide ecosystem and robust marketplace would really hold up, or whether the Framework, like so many modular PCs before it, would quickly fizzle out.
As of today, it’s available in 12 countries. So far, so good. Taiwan is also on the way “later this summer”.