Can Framework fix budget laptops next? That’s the goal, and Framework CEO Nirav Patel says he’ll be dogfooding it himself, making this 12-inch laptop his daily driver for the foreseeable future. He wouldn’t tell me just how budget it’ll go yet.
I guess people are pretty interested in Framework’s new Strix Halo desktop, Strix Point 13-inch (it’s translucent!) and 12-inch convertible laptop, because I’ve never been put on hold to visit a dang website before.
My colleagues who are veterans of the PS5 restock wars tell me this is normal. Y’all are really out here waiting in line online?
CEO Nirav Patel tells The Verge:
“Because we manufacture Framework Laptops and Mainboards in Taiwan, we have limited impact from the additional recently introduced tariffs. Some of our modules are manufactured in China, so we are taking this into account for future module pricing for US customers in the Framework Marketplace as we also continue to diversify our supply base.”
Acer just announced 10 percent laptop price increases. Framework will announce new mystery products next week.
Asus’s new ROG Flow Z13 is available for preorder. I tested a preproduction model as a ridiculous gaming handheld, and I’m working on a review of the final hardware.
As a 13-inch gaming tablet starting at $2,099.99 ($100 more than announced), the Z13 is a pricey, niche machine that falls somewhere between the Steam Deck and a full-sized gaming laptop. But it’s charming, with impressive real-world performance.
Stay tuned for the review.
Lenovo is about to release a folding laptop called the ThinkBook Flip, according to leaker Evan Blass. And yes, we know every laptop folds, but this one does it twice: once at the regular hinge, and then again halfway down the display, which folds outwards when the laptop shuts.
It follows the $3,499 ThinkBook Plus Gen 6, a laptop with a rollable screen that goes on sale in June.
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A capable Lunar Lake chipset and great screen would have made this a killer laptop, if it weren’t for several unforced errors on Dell’s part.
Nvidia announced in a post on X that laptops running RTX 50-series GPUs will go up for preorder on February 25th. It’s likely that laptop manufacturers will announce shipping dates and further details beyond this small tease soon.
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.
It’s powered by a StarFive JH7110 SoC processor instead of chips from Intel or AMD, but it’s not recommended for most consumers. It’s targeted at developers and early adopters not focused on performance.
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.
These aren’t laptops you’ll actually buy — they’re demonstrators from Compal, Pegatron, and Wistron, which serve as ODMs to brand-name laptop companies.
Fluffy robots, portable TVs, and vacuums with arms and legs. This is what we come to CES for.
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.
