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Showing posts with the label John Loeffler

I’ve been reviewing Dell laptops for years, and I'm honestly still shocked at how much I like the Dell 14 Plus

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Dell 14 Plus: One-minute review The Dell 14 Plus is one of the first rebranded Dell laptops to go on sale this year, and despite some growing pains, it’s an auspicious start thanks to its solid performance, great portability and style, and an accessible price point. The new 14 Plus is available now in the US, UK, and Australia, starting at $799.99 / £999 / AU$1,298 and features both Intel Lunar Lake and AMD Ryzen AI 300 processors. This makes it one of the best laptops for budget-conscious Windows users on the market right now without having to make too much of a compromise on style, portability, and features. What you won’t get with the 14 Plus, however, is a professional workstation or the best gaming laptop , as the integrated graphics and processor options don’t have the kind of horsepower to churn through complex workloads like video editing or intense gaming at high settings. But for those in the market for a new laptop for general productivity or school work, everyday comp...

Asus ZenBook Pro Duo 15 UX582L

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Asus ZenBook Pro Duo 15 two minute review The Asus ZenBook Pro Duo 15 (UX582L) is a major step up from previous ZenBook Duo models and is aimed squarely at creative professionals who are willing to make a major investment in their craft. At this price point, you better be serious about your content creation, that's all we're saying. The good thing is if you are serious about your art, whatever that might be, the ZenBook Duo Pro 15 has more than enough power to harness, as well as a secondary display that proves to be something more than a novelty. Pair its performance with a stylish design and durable build and you're definitely going to turn some heads at a coffee shop or even the office. Ok, maybe not the coffee shop, since this thing is a hefty 5.16 lbs (2.34kg) and nearly an inch thick, so it's not exactly the most portable device out there.  A good bit of that bulk is its monster of a battery, but powering one gorgeous, Pantone-validated, 4K OLED display is g...

Razer Huntsman V2

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Razer Huntsman V2 Optical two-minute review The Razer Huntsman V2 optical gaming keyboard is an absolute joy to type on, and I should know: I type for a living.  We writers enjoy how a good, noisy keyboard can make any home office sound like an old-timey newsroom, but we also understand that your coworkers or family might not be so keen on the idea. If that's the case, the Huntsman V2 is the best of both worlds: It gives you the tactile satisfaction of the best mechanical keyboards while sparing the ears and sanity of those around you.  That said, if you are offended at the idea of a quiet mechanical keyboard, you do have the option of getting it with Clicky (Purple) key switches for $10 less (about £10 / AU$15) - so there's something for everyone here. The Huntsman V2 doesn't have as many features as the Razer Huntsman V2 Analog though. While the two models look very similar, the mechanical version lacks the funky, RGB LED strip around the wrist rest carried ...

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6

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Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6 two minute review The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6 is the latest refresh for Lenovo's flagship 2-in-1 business laptop and the addition of Intel's 11th-gen Tiger Lake processors with Iris Xe graphics, along with Intel Evo certification, make it one of the most powerful 2-in-1 laptops we've tested. Add in the outstanding 16:10 touchscreen display, garaged stylus, and excellent battery life, and there's very little that we can find fault with here. The number and variety of ports is also better than similarly sized laptops, and we are impressed that Lenovo managed to fit in two USB Type-A ports in addition to the two Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-Cs, as well as an HDMI 2.0. If there was any complaint we could lodge with the X1 Yoga Gen 6, it'd be the lack of an SD card slot, since there is room on one of the sides so it'd have been nice to see – especially on a 2-in-1 that could conceivably appeal to creatives and photographers on the go...

MSI Pulse GL66

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Two minute review The MSI Pulse GL66 is an excellent midrange gaming laptop so long as you don't take it anywhere and value doesn't mean anything to you. First, the positives. The Pulse GL66 puts out some fantastic gaming performance, even consistently getting 35 to 40 fps in Cyberpunk 2077 at max settings with ray tracing and DLSS on.  It also performed very well in some of our other performance benchmarks on top of generally being a great laptop to play games on, so there aren't many games that this laptop won't be able to chew through. Even the base configuration has at least a 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD, so you'll also have room to download more than one or two at a time. The display is also a 144Hz refresh display, and while it's only 1080p,  you don't need anything more than that on a gaming laptop this size. The bezels aren't going to win any awards for design, but it's a gaming laptop, so that likely isn't going to be a deal-breaker for ...