Laptops

Originally announced last June, the open source RISC-V mainboard that Framework developed with DeepComputing is now available for $199. It’s compatible with Frameworks’s 13-inch modular laptop, as well as the $39 Cooler Master case that can turn it into a desktop PC.

As proof it’s on track with its next low-power laptop chip — the chip that will itself prove out Intel’s 18A process, which could in turn prove whether the company can regain silicon manufacturing leadership — Intel showed journalists these working samples.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.