Over those three-plus decades, we have embraced high-quality journalism and authentic, first-person storytelling, producing in-depth features and reviews of consumer laptops, phones, tablets, headphones, and smart glasses. We published special issues dedicated to AI’s growing influence, the best of CES, changes in the silicon industry, and more.

We never wavered in being an advocate for readers, whether it was reporters interviewing decision-makers in Taipei, Las Vegas, Berlin, Barcelona, or at our home base in New York City.

Unfortunately, a changing business landscape has made it increasingly difficult for Laptop Mag to thrive as it had in previous years.

Our staff and contributors maintained a near-devout commitment to updating buying guides for an audience of experts and enthusiasts who counted on Laptop to help them make informed choices in an increasingly expensive world.

Laptop was a launchpad for writers who are now prominent voices at nearly every major tech publication, including national news organizations and specialist publications. Aided by a cast of opinionated contributors worldwide, Laptop published news but also commentary where we told it like it is by being straightforward, honest, and unafraid to speak plainly.

For all the latest in laptop and consumer tech, read the work of our colleagues at Tom’s Guide. For now, this site and all its articles will remain online, but this will be the last one.

The final masthead of Laptop Mag is below:

Nick Lucchesi - Editor-in-Chief

Sean Riley - Managing Editor

Hilda Scott - Deals Editor

Rael Hornby - Special Projects Editor

Rami Tabari - Reviews Editor

Madeline Ricchiuto - Staff Writer

Contributors included Stevie Bonifield, Sarah Chaney, Mahnoor Faisal, Oscar Gonzalez, Luke James, Jowi Morales, Joanna Nelius, Ross Rubin, Ian Stokes, Chris Stobing, and Monica J. White.

Laptop Mag reviews more than a hundred different models every year, from paperweight ultralights to everyday workhorses to lumbering gaming notebooks that scorch the frame rates of even the hottest AAA games. The writers and editors scour the available information about the laptop and put it through its paces to determine which is best for you. But before they start, the testing team subjects each system to a rigorous regimen of synthetic and real-world tests to see how a system handles the type of work and games you’re most likely to throw at it.

Here’s an in-depth look at what we evaluate about each and every system you see reviewed on Laptop Mag.

What we test on all Windows laptops

Productivity Tests
BAPCo Crossmark: For more than 30 years, the Business Applications Performance Corporation (aka BAPCo) has worked with leading technology companies to develop rigorous and reliable benchmark tests. One of BAPCo’s newest creations is Crossmark, which runs an in-depth collection of workloads designed to gauge system responsiveness and prowess on productivity (document editing, spreadsheets, Web browsing) and creativity (photo editing and organization, and video editing) tasks; the four scores it generates (one for each category, plus an overall result) can be used to compare performance not just between Windows PCs, but also any devices that run Android, iOS, or macOS.

Geekbench: There’s a reason that Geekbench is a ubiquitous title on the system benchmarking scene: It distills a number of complex computing tasks into simple results that give an immediate impression of performance on PCs, Macs, Chromebooks, and even smartphones and tablets. We only use the CPU Benchmark, which examines how the processor handles activities like text and image compression; HTML5, PDF, and text rendering; HDR and ray tracing; machine learning; and more. Geekbench crunches these numbers into single- and multicore results; we typically only report the latter, as it’s most relevant today, but the former can inform our evaluation as well. The most current version of Geekbench is 5.4

File Copy: We’ve all been there: We’re cleaning up one of our storage drives and we move a folder that has more files in it than we expected—and it takes a long time. Because it’s nice to know how a laptop might handle this eventuality, we use a script to time how long it takes to copy a folder containing 25GB of Microsoft Word documents; Windows applications; and music, photo, and video files. Dividing the size of the folder by the amount of time required gives us the drive speed (in MBps), which we report.

HandBrake: Converting a video is something many people do on computers, so it’s useful to know how well our review systems can handle the task. For that, we fire up the Handbrake video encoder, load the 6.5GB open-source Tears of Steel 4K video, and convert it using the Fast 1080p30 preset. We tell you how long it takes to complete the process—usually from about 5 to 20 minutes.

HDXPRT 4: We supplement HandBrake with another test designed to probe a laptop’s multimedia capabilities even further. Principled Technologies’s HDXPRT 4 uses real-world applications (Adobe Photoshop Elements, Audacity, and CyberLink MediaEspresso) to determine how well a computer can edit photos and videos and convert music files. We report both the overall number and the average time it took the system to finish each individual task.

Graphics Tests
Futuremark’s industry-standard graphics benchmarking software 3DMark has only gotten better since the company was acquired by UL in 2014. The current version offers many tests for measuring video hardware performance. We run the base Fire Strike and Time Spy tests, respectively, reporting on DirectX 11 and DX12 gaming performance. We also run Night Raid, an entry-level 1920 x 1080 DX12 test for laptops with only integrated graphics.

Gaming Tests
No, we don’t expect that most people who buy a Dell XPS 13 will want to play Red Dead Redemption 2 on it for 12 hours. (Editor’s note: That is not a good idea.) But most people will want to play something at some point casually, so we want to provide at least a glimpse into how good a genuinely mainstream gaming experience may prove.

To that end, we use a popular, easy-to-run title of a slightly older vintage that doesn’t get too bogged down by graphics hardware. Our current choice is Sid Meier’s Civilization VI with the Gathering Storm expansion installed, the latest installment in the world-building strategy franchise that has enthralled gamers for nearly 30 years. We use the Medium presets for both Performance Impact and Memory Impact, turn on 4x anti-aliasing and vertical sync off. Upon completion, the benchmark gives us a frame time; we divide 1,000 by that number to attain an average frame rate, which is the number we use. (Civilization VI tends to return relatively low scores, even though it’s still highly playable, so don’t fret if any individual system doesn’t reach the coveted 30fps threshold.)

Heat Test
At some point or another, most of us put our laptops on, well, our laps—and those who don’t still need to deal with picking up the systems and moving them around. So it matters how hot they get during general use. We run a 4K or 8K YouTube video for 15 minutes, then use an infrared thermometer to measure the heat on the touchpad, between the G/H keys on the keyboard, and the center of the laptop’s underside. Finally, we do a “sweep” of the system to discover its hottest point.

Display Tests
How bright does a laptop’s screen get, and how accurately does it reproduce colors? On some level or another, these are probably things you care about even if you’re not in the graphic design business. We delve into this realm, too, with the help of a top-of-the-line Klein K10-A colorimeter. After setting the laptop to display a field of absolute white, we use Klein’s ChromaSurf software to measure the screen’s brightness in all four corners and the center, then average the results to get the number we report. If the laptop has an OLED display, where pixels generate black by turning completely off, we do an additional test in the center of the screen with a window as close to the size of the colorimeter’s aperture as we can make it; sometimes this reveals stark differences in the brightness.

We conduct our color tests with DisplayCal, using an automated calibration procedure that returns the screen’s Delta-E value (which measures the difference between a color at the source and as displayed on the screen), along with percentages representing how well it covers the older sRGB and newer DCI-P3 color gamuts.

Battery Test
How long a laptop lasts when it’s not plugged in is one of the things people care most about when choosing a laptop. You want to know it’s going to have the power to see you through your day, whether you’re working or playing (or a little bit of both). Getting a reliable, accurate measurement of the laptop’s battery life is critical—but it takes a little work to get there.

All the changes we make in preparation for testing the battery attempt to balance usability and practical concerns, while in pursuit of a “best-case scenario”—how your laptop is likely to work paired with reasonable feature tweaks and tech adjustments to ensure our test can safely run unattended. Our list of actions includes:

• Setting the screen to 150 nits of brightness (as determined using ChromaSurf), so we have an even basis for comparison regardless of laptop manufacturer and display panel technology
• Uninstalling antivirus software
• Shutting down any programs running in the background
• Deactivating Battery Saver mode, Bluetooth, and GPS/location services
• Turning off keyboard backlighting and any gaming-specific features
• Adjusting Windows power settings so the screen stays on for the full duration of the test and battery life is maximized as much as possible.

Once all that’s finished, we connect the laptop to our internal battery test network, fire up our homegrown Battery Informant software, and unplug the laptop.

The system is served up a series of pages (some static, some dynamic, some with video) from popular websites we’ve scraped and stored on a Raspberry Pi; this process continues until the laptop’s battery has run down completely.

All that’s needed to find out the exact runtime is to plug in and restart the laptop and look at a text file Battery Informant generates.

What we test on gaming laptops

Our testing scheme for gaming laptops is similar to the one for regular laptops, except we add many more gaming-focused tests.

Additional Graphics Tests
We ramp up our 3DMark testing for gaming laptops to include Fire Strike Ultra and Time Spy Extreme, which determine how well the laptop copes with DX11 and DX12 4K graphics workloads.

If the laptop has a graphics card that supports DirectX ray-tracing, we also use the 2560 x 1440 Port Royal test. (We don’t bother with Night Raid here — who cares about integrated graphics on a gaming laptop?)

For the best-equipped laptops on the market, we may also run Speed Way, which plies the deepest and most demanding features of DX12 Ultimate.

Games
For obvious reasons, when testing gaming laptops, we forego running Civilization VI in favor of a battery of more demanding titles drawing on various genres and graphics technologies. We run all of these in full-screen mode with vertical sync disabled, always at least at 1920 x 1080 (1080p) resolution, as well as 3120 x 2100 (4K) if the laptop’s built-in display supports it.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: A beautiful AMD-optimized, third-person fighting and exploration game set in Norway and Anglo-Saxon England in the late 800s. We use the Ultra High Graphic Quality preset with the Adaptive Quality setting off.

Borderlands 3: It is a highly stylized third-person shooter with integrated compatibility with AMD’s graphics technology. With the Frame Rate Limit setting turned off, we use the Ultra High graphics quality preset and change the Volumetric Fog and Screen Space Reflections setting to Ultra. (This mimics the old Badass preset, which was removed in the June 2020 update.)

DiRT 5: Another installment of the fun racing gaming series, DiRT 5 runs an extensive performance test around a track in a near-perfect recreation of what you’ll see in the actual game. We max all the (non-dynamic) settings for this one.

Far Cry 6: The most recent chapter in the long-running Far Cry series, set in a fictional Caribbean nation riven by revolution, is another good FPS choice for our tests. We ran it at the Ultra quality preset.

Grand Theft Auto V: Rockstar’s 2013 action-adventure is still popular, so we still run it for its unique aesthetic and gameplay value. Aside from using DirectX 11 as the rendering engine, we tweak far too many graphics options to list here, but we put most of them on their highest or next-to-highest setting.

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition: This post-apocalyptic FPS is designed for Nvidia’s video cards and has an easy-to-run benchmarking tool that is ideal for our purposes. We run it on the High, Ultra, and Extreme presets.

Red Dead Redemption 2: A Wild West open-world game with stunning graphics, Red Dead Redemption 2 proves a punishing test for any gaming laptop. Because it pushes current hardware to the limits, we have to adjust dozens of settings; we aim for midrange for most of them but ensure everything is activated somehow. Only extremely powerful systems can run this capably at 4K or with all the settings upped to Ultra, but we’ll rerun the test using those settings, too, if necessary.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider: What would a game lineup be without Lara Croft? She anchors this Nvidia-optimized title, which we run in DirectX 12 mode at the Highest graphics preset, with SMAA4x anti-aliasing enabled.

Gaming Heat Test
Video watching is all well and good, but YouTube will only get your gaming laptop so hot. To get a better idea of what you can expect under real-world conditions, we add a special gaming heat test: Five loops of the Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition benchmark on the system’s native resolution using the Extreme preset. We then take the system’s temperature as outlined during the sixth run.

Gaming Battery Test
Okay, okay: Even if you have the most powerful gaming laptop on the market, you’re probably not playing much on it if it’s not plugged into the wall. (Nor should you! The frame rates plummet that way.) But we want to see what happens if you try.

UL’s PCMark 10 benchmark contains a battery test that runs a 3DMark test in a window on a continuous loop until the system dies; we use this to give you an additional number to guide your purchasing decision.

What we test on professional and workstation laptops

Laptops designed for professional applications require different treatment from everyday or even gaming laptops. Even though they may be loaded with top-of-the-line processors and graphics cards, they’re not optimized (or intended) for games.

So although we still run our standard productivity regimen and battery test on them for comparative purposes, we otherwise diverge significantly.

We begin this with the help of Puget Systems. The workstation manufacturer based in Washington State has developed an excellent suite of tests for measuring how well a system handles itself with four major Adobe Creative Cloud (CC) applications. The tests in this suite include:

After Effects: One of the entertainment industry’s go-to titles for visual effects, motion graphics, animation, and other video-enhancing functions, After Effects is an ideal choice for inclusion in this suite. PugetBench uses its capabilities to process video clips and determine how well it works in Render, Preview, and Tracking tasks.

Lightroom Classic: Images captured using Canon EOS 5D Mark III, Sony a7r III, and Nikon D850 cameras are run through four active tasks (Library Module Loupe Scroll, Develop Module Loupe Scroll, Library to Develop Switch, and Develop Module Auto WB & Tone) and six passive tasks (Import, Build Smart Previews, Photo Merge Panorama, Photo Merge HDR, Export JPEG, and Convert to DNG 50x Images).

Photoshop: A series of high-resolution photographs are processed with a collection of filters and other adjustments such as resizing, mask refinement, adding gradients, and more.

Premiere Pro: A 4K video recorded at 29.97 fps and 59.94 fps is processed to apply a Lumetri Color effect and to add 12 clips across four tracks in a multicamera sequence.

We use a script to run these tests in succession (a process that usually takes several hours). Each application returns a slightly different result, and it’s the overall numbers in these areas that we report.

UL Procyon: UL, the publishers of 3DMark and PCMark, have developed two tests designed to test professional-level editing in its new-ish Procyon suite. Both the photo editing (which imports with Lightroom Classic and applies multiple edits and layer effects with Photoshop) and video editing (using Premiere Pro to export video projects to edit, adjust, add effects, and export) tests provide a nice complement to the PugetBench suite.

Although these tests are superb for helping us rate processor performance, they’re less robust when it comes to challenging workstation systems’ graphics. For this, we turn to the SPECworkstation 3.1 benchmark, which, like PugetBench, determines real-world readiness through real-world workloads. It utilizes engines from major applications, including Blender, Maya, 3ds Max, and many more.

What we test on Chromebooks

For Chromebooks, we take a slightly different testing approach. As these systems typically don’t run local software, but instead run specially designed ChromeOS apps, we treat them as what they are: a cross between a traditional PC and a smartphone.

Geekbench: We run Geekbench on Chromebooks for all the reasons previously stated.

JetStream 2: A cross-platform benchmark designed to measure performance in a wide variety of Web-based applications, JetStream 2 is an ideal test to measure a Chromebook’s prowess in these areas. Sixty-four subtests, divided among JavaScript and Web Assembly technologies, result in the single number we publish.

WebXPRT 4: This test, designed by Principled Technologies, is a synthetic collection of Web-based apps that makes as much sense for Chromebooks as it does for smartphones. Its workloads include Photo Enhancement, Organize Album using AI, Stock Option Pricing, Encrypt Notes and OCR Scan Using WASM, Sales Graphs, and Online Homework. We report the overall result.

CrXPRT 2: Principled Technologies also offers a dedicated Chromebook benchmark in CrXPRT 2, which we use as one solid method of directly comparing Chromebooks. The Performance Test we run and then repeat the score of contains six workloads: Photo effects, Offline notes, DNA Sequence analysis, Face detection JS, Stocks dashboard, and 3D shapes.

Heat Testing: This follows the same process outlined above for other laptops.

Brightness and Color Testing: These procedures are the same as those used for other types of laptops.

Battery Test: To test Chromebook battery life, we use an app we designed specifically for use with Chrome OS, which produces results not directly comparable with those we get from our standard battery test. The main difference in operation is that the test is run via a live internet connection to better simulate how you use Chromebooks in your daily life. Otherwise, this test is run the same as our standard laptop battery test, with the display forced to remain on at 150 nits of brightness and Bluetooth disabled.

Testing considerations for Apple laptops

Ah, Apple — always delivering exciting new challenges. The latest products coming out of Cupertino do not always compare directly with even flagship PC laptops, but we do our best to get numbers that make sense.

Where precise macOS analogs of the appropriate software exist (such as Geekbench and Civilization VI), we use that; we sometimes need to tweak others (such as our file copy and battery tests) to come up with equivalent results.

For our Apple battery test, we measure the display in exactly the same way we do PCs, and in addition to turning off things like Bluetooth and location services, we also disable any Apple-specific settings that might interfere with a “clean” run, such as True Tone, Night Shift, and iCloud syncing. The Apple battery test is also run in, you guessed it, Safari.

Subjective evaluation

Once all the lab testing is complete, the laptop is turned over to the writer charged with reviewing it. That writer lives with the laptop for at least a few days, and sometimes longer, to see how it handles, well, life. Among the many questions the writer considers:

• What’s it like to type on? How well does the touchpad work?
• How do the speakers sound with a wide variety of content?
• Is it cumbersome to carry and set up, or is it as convenient to use as a smartphone?
• Is the design good, or is the system unpleasant to look at and use?
• What unique features does it have, and do they add to or detract from the computing experience?
• Who is the target audience for the laptop?
• Does the laptop accomplish what it was designed to?
• Is the system a good overall value for the money?

Ratings

After all of the above is completed and the review is written, the writer assigns the laptop a rating on a scale of 1 to 5 stars, with half-star ratings possible. The ratings should be interpreted as follows:

1 to 2.5 stars = Not recommended

3 to 3.5 stars = Recommended

4 to 5 stars = Highly recommended

In addition, Laptop’s Editor’s Choice award recognizes products that are the very best in their categories at the time they are reviewed. Only those products that have received a rating of 4 stars and above are eligible. Laptop Mag's editors carefully consider each product's individual merits and its value relative to the competitive landscape before deciding whether to bestow this award.

Laptop categories

Each score is recorded and compared with the average scores of all laptops in the same category. Those categories currently include:

• Chromebooks
• Budget Laptops (under $400)
• Mainstream Laptops ($400 to $800)
• Premium Laptops (Over $800)
• Workstations
• Entry-Level Gaming (gaming systems under $999)
• Mainstream Gaming (gaming systems under $1,999)
• Premium Gaming (gaming systems costing $2,000 and up)

Price ranges for the categories may change to meet current market conditions. Laptops will be categorized based on the regular price of the configuration tested.

Ratings

A notebook's results on each test are compared with results from other systems in its category. The category average for any given test and category (such as battery life for gaming laptops) is calculated by taking the mean score from the prior 12 months of test results.

Looking toward the future

We’re always busy re-evaluating the benchmark tests we run and the criteria we use to judge all types of systems to ensure we’re giving you the information that best meets your needs and represents the current state of the art in the industry. From the latest boundary-pushing games to major new technological innovations, we always want to be there, and make sure you have the information you need to come along for the ride.

To that end, please let us know what you want to see — what capabilities you want measured, what tests you want run, and what you want to do with your laptop. We’ll do everything we can to help you get there.

You've decided you want a MacBook, but the question of "MacBook Air vs. MacBook Pro?" remains. I'm not a certified Apple Genius, but I've spent hundreds of hours using and reviewing every current MacBook Air and MacBook Pro for Laptop Mag, so I'm ready to help you find the best MacBook for your needs.

Let's start with the basics: In 2025, the MacBook Air and Pro lineups consist of four options: 13.6-inch and 15.3-inch MacBook Airs and 14.2-inch and 16.2-inch MacBook Pros.

The MacBook Air models are limited to Apple's M4 chip, while the MacBook Pro features the M4, M4 Pro, or M4 Max. Only the Pro models offer the more powerful "Pro" or "Max" chipsets, one of the most apparent differences between the Air and Pro MacBooks. The base MacBook Pro 14-inch blurs these lines with its standard M4 chip.

People often ask me, "Is the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro better?" There is no universal answer to that question; there is only which is better for you. So, let's find out.

I will compare price, features, performance, battery life, and more to determine whether you should invest in the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro in 2025.

And once we've determined whether the MacBook Air or Pro is better for you, our best MacBook deals can help you secure the best price.

MacBook Air vs. MacBook Pro: Specs compared

The Quick List

MacBook Air (13-inch, M4): Best for most people

Pros: While the 13-inch MacBook Air M4 looks no different from its predecessor outwardly, multiple changes make it the best MacBook for most people right now. The $100 price cut helps, returning the base MacBook Air to a $999 starting price.

Combined with the bump to 16GB of RAM on the base model, formerly a $200 upgrade, our recommended configuration for the 13-inch MacBook Air is $300 cheaper than last year's, even without scouting for one of the best MacBook deals.

The MacBook Air's 13.6-inch display is one of the brightest laptops around, and True Tone also ensures excellent color accuracy, but the vibrancy falls short of some of the OLED competition. Rumors of Apple moving to OLED in the future abound, but not yet.

Like its predecessors, the MacBook Air M4 is one of the thinnest laptops at only 0.4 inches. However, unlike many ultraportable laptops, it can keep up with an impressive workload, thanks to the M4 chip. Whether it was our benchmarks or real-world usage, the Air M4 was up for any task.

Looking at the benchmarks, the MacBook Air M4 scored 14,489 on Geekbench 6, easily surpassing the competition. Our Handbrake video transcoding test took 5 minutes and 40 seconds to transcode a 4K video to 1080p. This blows past the mainstream average, but still can't hold up to the MacBook Pro models in similar tests. SSD speeds are among the best we've seen, with 3,456.2 MBps and 3,018.4 MBps in BlackMagic Write and Read tests, respectively.

All that performance prowess doesn't hurt its battery life, either. If finding an outlet can be a challenge during your day, never fear: The Air M4 powered through almost 16 hours of battery life testing in our lab.

Rounding out the additions and upgrades from this year, the new Apple Center webcam is one of the best I've ever tested, the 12MP camera makes you look your best in any lighting.

Cons: So what are the downsides? If you have a lot of peripherals, the pair of Thunderbolt/USB-C ports may be challenging, but at least you have MagSafe 3 to keep both ports free while charging.

While the base $999 price for the MacBook Air 13-inch M4 is reasonable given what you are getting, if you need to upgrade RAM or storage, each jump is another $200, but neither is user-upgradeable, so don't leave yourself short.

Need more screen real estate? Look no further than the 15-inch MacBook Air M4. It mirrors all of the strengths of its smaller sibling but with a larger 15.3-inch display.

See our full 13-inch MacBook Air M4 review.
See our full 15-inch MacBook Air M4 review.

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MacBook Air (15-inch, M4): Best affordable big screen

Pros: Getting that big 15.3-inch display on a MacBook for as low as $1,199 is hard to pass up, considering that for years, a large screen MacBook was at least $2,499. While it lacks the 120Hz refresh rate of the Pro models, Apple didn't skimp on the display, as it offers an excellent 476 nits of brightness in our testing.

At 3.3 pounds and just 0.45 inches thick, it's a strong contender for the best business laptops or best student laptops for anyone who values a larger laptop that won't weigh down their laptop bag. Thanks to 15 hours and 14 minutes of battery life in our testing, it also won't call it quits on you early.

It features the same M4 chip as the 13-inch Air M4. It delivers nearly identical performance results on many tasks, although sustained tasks like video editing tip in favor of the 15-inch model, presumably due to improved thermal performance.

Cons: Not many. I find the port situation slightly more frustrating on the 15-inch Air as it features the same pair of Thunderbolt 3/USB 4 ports, MagSafe charger, and headphone/mic jack as the much smaller MacBook Air 13-inch. However, most of us who need more ports have long ago added a USB-C hub or laptop docking station to our assortment of gear.

See our full MacBook Air 15-inch M4 review.

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MacBook Pro (14-inch): Best for creative pros on the go

Pros: The base MacBook Pro 14 with its M4 chip is an excellent value for those looking for more power than the Air can offer without spending upwards of $2,000. It's also important to note when comparing against the Air that you start at 512GB of storage, a $200 upgrade for Air buyers. For most users, the base M4 will get the job done, but if time is money for you, then the M4 Pro and M4 Max processors Apple are among the fastest, most power-efficient chips ever built for portable computing.

The base models at both the M4 and M4 Pro levels are better than ever, with the M4 Pro outperforming the M3 Max in many metrics, so consider that before snapping up a deal on the older models. While the base model will be more than enough for most users, you can configure the M4 Max up to 128GB of RAM and an 8TB SSD. Battery life was tested at 18 hours and 32 minutes for the standard M4 configuration, and we would expect fairly similar results from the M4 Pro and M4 Max.

That redesign from 2021 still feels fresh with the 14.2-inch, 3024 x 1964-pixel Liquid Retina XDR mini-LED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. At 556 nits, this panel is one of the brightest laptop screens ever and both color accurate and vivid enough for creative work.

At 12.3 inches x 8.7 x 0.6 inches and 3.4 pounds, the 14-inch MacBook Pro remains portable despite the power it packs underneath the hood.

The 12MP Center Stage camera is another notable upgrade for the M4 MacBook Pros, it's the best webcam we've ever seen on a laptop with outstanding color accuracy while holding up well in differing lighting conditions. Add in Touch ID, a six-speaker setup, and a comfortable keyboard and the 14-inch MacBook Pro has a lot going for it.

Cons: So, what's wrong with the laptop? I'll be honest, not much. It would be great to get Face ID support for facial recognition login since that's been available on Windows laptops for years. While your mileage may vary, I find the vent placement makes the MacBook Pro uncomfortable to hold in certain orientations, which isn't a major issue, but it's something I haven't encountered on a MacBook previously.

See our full MacBook Pro 14 M4 review.

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MacBook Pro 16-inch: Best for peak performance

Pros: This MacBook Pro has everything we love about the 14-inch MacBook Pro but with a large 16-inch display. It has the same M4 Pro and M4 Max chip options along with up to a ludicrous 128GB of memory and up to an 8TB SSD. Battery life is even better, at 20 hours and 46 minutes in our testing, our second-longest result ever and the longest ever for a MacBook. Given the sky-high performance benchmarks, that battery life is almost unbelievable, I've speculated before that Apple has a secret pocket dimension in the MacBook Pro chassis, and I'm still not counting that out as a possibility.

If you plan to keep your laptop for 5-7 years or more and particularly are doing creative work or other work that requires data transfers between your laptop and either an SSD or other hardware, then the 16-inch MacBook Pro offers another advantage over its smaller Pro sibling, Thunderbolt 5 ports. While there is little to take full advantage of the new standard at the moment, Thunderbolt 5 docks, external SSDs, and more are starting to arrive and will pick up over the next 12 months.

Cons: You can get most of what is available in the 16-inch MacBook Pro in the 14-inch model for $500 less. If you need the larger panel or Thunderbolt 5 support, then get the 16-inch MacBook Pro, but if that's not crucial, there is little reason to pay up for the larger laptop.

Also, at 14 x 9.8 x 0.66 inches and 4.7 pounds, the 16-inch MacBook Pro is considerably larger than the 14-inch model, so if you regularly tote your laptop around, that's worth considering as well.

Like the 14-inch model, I wish Face ID was available, and I'm not a fan of the vent configuration, but these are minor concerns overall.

See our full MacBook Pro 16-inch M4 Pro review.

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How We Test MacBooks

We put MacBooks through extensive benchmark testing—both synthetic and real-world—before they are handed to our reviewers. We evaluate everything from speed and battery life to display brightness, speaker volume, and system heat.

We use a Klein K10 colorimeter to detect a laptop display's brightness and sRGB color gamut. For performance benchmarking, we run the laptop through a gauntlet of benchmarks, including Geekbench 6, BlackMagic Disk Speed Test, and PugetBench for Adobe CC.

We task the laptop to convert a 4K video to 1080p resolution to determine real-world performance. Our real-world graphics tests on MacBooks include Borderlands 3, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm, and Total War: Warhammer III in 1080p and native resolution settings.

We also run heat tests by playing a 15-minute full-screen video, and our proprietary Laptop Mag Battery Test consists of continuous web surfing over wifi at 150 nits of brightness. Anything over 10 hours is considered strong battery life, a standard every current Macbook easily surpasses.

Following these tests, the laptop is given to our expert reviewers for extensive hands-on testing. Our reviewers will spend days using the laptop as part of their typical workflow to get a sense of the real-world performance and live with the laptop to come away with a thorough understanding of the hardware and software experience. This blended lab testing and hands-on approach allows us to offer you a clear and comprehensive view of every laptop that comes through Laptop Mag.

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Why Trust Laptop Mag

Laptop Mag reviews over a hundred laptops yearly, from paperweight ultralights to everyday workhorses to lumbering gaming notebooks that scorch the frame rates of even the hottest AAA games. We're not just experts in the laptop field, as we go one step further by meticulously testing smartphones, tablets, headphones, PC accessories, software, and even the latest in gaming.

We are 100 percent independent and have decades of experience to help you buy with confidence. In fact, Laptop Mag has been testing and reviewing products for three decades and continues to deliver trustworthy reviews you can rely on.

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When Apple released its M1 processor in 2020, I finally caved and bought my first MacBook. I used it for light work while traveling because it only had a 13-inch display and couldn’t run my three external monitors. That meant I spent 80% of my working time on my Windows PC.

I eventually upgraded to the 15-inch MacBook Air when it arrived, but I still put off using it as my daily driver until I finally found a way to use my triple-monitor workstation with it.

But now that I have a DisplayLink dock to work around that monitor problem, I knew I had to try using it as my main machine — and after a week, I don’t think I’m sold on the Apple ecosystem.

Amazing battery life and sleek form factor

The extended battery life and sleek form factor that Apple silicon delivers is a game changer for me, as it allows me to work between three to four hours without needing to charge my laptop. Aside from that, the laptop is thin and light enough that it’s actually convenient to bring anywhere I go, making me second-guess my iPad Air purchase.

This is impossible with my Windows laptop, which could barely last over an hour. Granted, that’s a gaming PC I bought in 2020, and many newer and better options have come out since then, but the best MacBooks are still among the laptops with the best battery life.

macOS has its own quirks and features

As a long-time Windows user, I know my way around the operating system and have memorized the apps and hotkeys that let me work much faster. But when I switched over to macOS, I had to relearn a lot of things, like how to take a screenshot and getting used to the placement of the Option and Command keys.

Finder is one of the Mac apps that I had a hard time getting used to. For example, I open apps, files, and programs by hitting Enter and delete them by pressing Delete on File Explorer in Windows; these intuitive hotkeys make navigating my drive much easier. But Apple requires you to press Command + Down Arrow and Command + Backspace to do the same actions, adding one more keypress to what should’ve been a simple single step. I solved this by downloading third-party apps that helped me get the Windows feel on my MacBook.

Despite that, macOS does a couple of things much better than Windows. I love Spotlight Search as it gives me nearly everything I need in an instant. This feature is often faster and more accurate than Windows Search straight from the Start Menu. Furthermore, I love how macOS lets you calculate and convert figures straight from the search bar. You can also do this with Windows, but it’s just not as fast.

Installing and managing apps is also less complicated, especially if you stick to the App Store. But even if you download apps from a website and not through Apple’s own marketplace, adding software to your Mac could be as simple as dragging and dropping its icon to the Applications folder.

Apple’s trackpad is also so good that I invested in a separate Magic Trackpad for use when I’m at home. The gestures are just plain intuitive, and gliding your finger on its glass surface is just heaven. It’s something many Windows laptops tried (and failed) to copy.

No, 8GB is not enough RAM

Apple VP for worldwide product marketing Bob Borchers once said in an interview on BiliBili that 8GB of RAM was good enough for macOS because of how efficient it is — but my experience says otherwise. I only chose the base specs of the 15-inch MacBook Air because I will mostly use it as a travel and backup device.

It had no problems then when I was running just a couple of apps. But now that I’m using it as my main work laptop with my usual workflow, my MacBook Air is stuttering. When I checked the Memory tab in Activity Monitor, it showed my device using more than 7GB out of the 8GB RAM that it had.

This is a problem, especially since I haven’t launched Trello yet, which could use up a lot of memory. When I edit images in Photoshop and Lightroom, the lag gets so severe that I must close some of the browser tabs I need or even restart the computer.

Upgrades not allowed

My Windows laptop’s old memory sticks, plus the packaging of the SSDs I recently installed on it.

This is the biggest drawback for me with MacBooks — you need to spec the hardware you’d need in the future at the time of purchase, as you can’t upgrade the storage and memory on these devices. Since I initially bought my MacBook as a backup device, it only has 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

This was more than enough for its original purpose, but now that I’m using it as my main computer, I’m struggling with the available hardware. I wish I could bump this up to 32GB of RAM and at least 1TB of storage, but it’s just impossible with Apple silicon Macs.

I can’t help but compare this with my Windows laptop. It had 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 1TB HDD when I bought it, but I’ve since upgraded it to 32GB of RAM and 2.5TB of SSD storage. This added more life to my already five-year-old laptop, and the upgrades cost me less than $200.

If I wanted to level up my current Mac, I’d have to sell it or trade it in. Apple currently values it at $540, but I still have to pay at least $1,200 if I’m getting the MacBook Air 15-inch M4. This will give me 16GB of unified memory and 256GB of storage, but if I want to upgrade it to 32GB of RAM and 2TB SSD, I need to pay $1,200 more. This essentially doubles the price of the laptop to $2,400.

Even with the discount, I’ll shell out over $1,900 just to get the memory and storage I need. Sure, I’ll get a new processor (that I don’t really need) — but at nearly 10 times more than what I paid to upgrade my Windows laptop. It’s not worth it.

I’m still sticking with Windows

MacBooks are great devices, and Apple offers an option at nearly every price range. They’re easy to lug around everywhere I go, and the efficiency of M-series chips changed my life.

But after 30 years of using Windows, macOS is actually slowing me down. I could get used to the operating system, but it will likely take a year or two of using it full-time before I can hit the same efficiency I have with Windows. Yes, Windows is imperfect and has its fair share of bugs, but at least I can operate it in my sleep.

More importantly, economics is holding me back from going all-in with macOS. I can buy a Windows laptop that delivers similar performance to a MacBook at a fraction of the price. In addition, I have the option to get an upgradeable Windows laptop, allowing me to use it for years to come.

Still, that doesn’t mean I’m ditching my MacBook Air. It’s a great travel laptop and also serves as my backup device for my main PC. Maybe I’ll be a full Apple convert when it can run GTA 6 natively. Maybe.

More from Laptop Mag

• I ditched Windows 11 for Linux — and you should, too
• I’m a longtime Windows fan, but this shocking discovery pushed me to MacBooks
• Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition vs. MacBook Pro 14 M3: Which is better?

For a limited time, save up to $400 on the new Dell Plus laptop series starting at $699, up to $600 on Dell XPS laptops from $1,099, and up to $250 off Dell Inspiron laptops from just $499.

Browse: Dell's entire Black Friday in July sale

Or save big on professional-grade productivity and performance with up to $330 off Dell Pro and Dell Pro Max business laptops. Prices start from $719.

If you're a gamer or creator looking for a price break on a gaming-specific laptop, brace yourself for this one. Right now, you can score huge savings of up to $900 on Dell and Alienware gaming laptops.

Complement your new laptop, existing workspace, or gaming setup with Dell and Alienware monitors from $145 and PC accessories from $19.

Whether your daily driver or peripherals are in dire need of a refresh or you want to beat the back-to-school shopping rush, don't miss Dell's Black Friday in July sale.

Dell's limited-time deals typically sell out fast, so if you see something that catches your eye, act now. Keep scrolling to see my recommended Dell Black Friday in July deals starting from $19.

Dell Black Friday in July sale deals — Quick links

• Browse: Dell Black Friday in July deals
• Dell USB Slim DVD +/- RW Drive: was $40 now $19 at Dell
• Alienware Wired Gaming Headset: was $79 now $69 at Dell
• Dell 27 Plus QHD Monitor: was $219 now $179 at Dell
• Alienware 32 4K QD-OLED Monitor: was $1,199 now $849 at Dell
• Alienware S5000 Gaming Chair: was $419 now $339 at Dell
• Dell 15 Laptop: was $549 now $399 at Dell
• Dell Inspiron 14 Laptop: was $749 now $499 at Dell
• Dell G15 RTX 3050 Laptop: was $899 now $599 at Dell
• Dell 14 Plus Laptop: was $1,099 now $699 at Dell
• Dell Pro 16 Laptop: was $839 now $719 at Dell
• Dell 16 Plus Laptop: was $1,299 now $899 at Dell
• Dell Pro 16 Plus: was $1,299 now $1,159 at Dell
• Dell XPS 14 Laptop: was $2,061 now $1,561 at Dell
• Alienware 16X Aurora RTX 5060 Laptop: was $1,649 now $1,499 at Dell
• Alienware 18 Area-51 RTX 5070 Ti Laptop: was $3,299 now $2,799 at Dell

Dell Black Friday in July sale deals

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We hear a lot about Nvidia's DLSS updates whenever a new generation is introduced, and while Nvidia's new multi-frame generation has taken up a lot of space in the Blackwell discussion, DLSS 4's biggest update may be its transformer upscaling model, rather than the AI-powered frame generation smoothing.

On June 5, the Nvidia transformer model left beta, so Nvidia RTX laptop and desktop GPU owners can take advantage of the latest tech without needing to opt in.

But what is the transformer model, and why should you use it?

What is Nvidia's new Transformer Model

Nvidia announced the new DLSS 4 transformer model at CES 2025 in January with the official unveiling of the RTX 50-series. The transformer model replaces the current DLSS convolutional neural network model for clearer graphics upscaling.

This not only provides faster framerates, but also improves image quality when using Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling, which should alleviate some issues with visual degradation associated with DLSS upscaling.

Nvidia has been working on the Transformer Model since 2022 and released the model in beta for early adopters in January 2025. The transformer model uses a "vision transformer" to evaluate the relative importance of each pixel across the entire frame, over multiple frames. This employs double the parameters of the old neural network to generate pixels with better stability, reduced ghosting, higher detail, and smoother edges.

Don't care about the technical details? What it boils down to is that upscaled frames and generated frames in DLSS 4 with the transformer model should be clearer and smoother than ever.

How much better is the Transformer Model?

As a former lab nerd and hardware enthusiast, I will take any excuse to do some hands-on testing.

So I broke out the Razer Blade 16 (2025) and kicked up a few of my favorite test games, Cyberpunk 2077, Monster Hunter Wilds, and Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail to see how the games handled the different DLSS models.

Both Cyberpunk and Monster Hunter are rather notorious for being difficult benchmarks. Cyberpunk 2077 is already DLSS 4 enabled, while Monster Hunter Wilds is only rocking DLSS 3.7 by default. Meanwhile, Final Fantasy XIV is notorious for performing worse with DLSS enabled.

To ensure the new transformer model doesn't slow down framerates during the upscaled image process, we reran the benchmarks to assess its impact on benchmark scores. In most cases, the transformer model performed comparably to the old convolutional neural network model, within 3-5 fps.

The DLSS transformer model isn't just RTX 50-series exclusive

I tested the transformer model on an RTX 5090 laptop in order to see how it handles with the new multi-frame generation software which is 50-series exclusive, however, the transformer model is available on all Nvidia RTX GPUs from the RTX 20-series up to the RTX 50-series.

To enable the transformer model, simply install the latest Nvidia drivers.

And if your game of choice doesn't offer DLSS 4 as an option, you can force the game to use DLSS 4 by using the Nvidia app. Just go to Graphics, select your game, and select the transformer model in "DLSS Override Model Presets."

The transformer model alone isn't going to drastically improve your GPU performance any more than the convolutional neural network in DLSS 3 did, but it will make games look far better, which is nothing to sneeze at. Particularly if you're trying to hold out for another GPU generation before upgrading your desktop or laptop.

If you have an RTX 50-series laptop or are planning to get one from among the best gaming laptops, you can get all the benefits of prettier frames and multiframe generation for even smoother gaming experiences.

Truly, there's no reason NOT to opt for the transformer model if you own an Nvidia RTX GPU.

More from Laptop Mag

• GeForce RTX 5050 brings next-gen gaming to the masses with Blackwell laptops starting at $999
• Steam users are flocking back to this once-hated game in huge numbers — and it's only $4
• AI is making your games better — a new Steam tool convinced me to stop hating GPU upscaling.

Potentially arriving by the end of the year, this new MacBook could be the most accessible of all, trading in the opportunity to sport Apple's upcoming M5 chip for a surprisingly more modest option, the A18 Pro Bionic — the very same chip used by the iPhone 16 Pro.

Sound a little far-fetched? Perhaps not. We've actually been tracking reports of low-cost MacBook across a string of rumors dating all the way back to September 2023.

What is the MacBook SE?

Tentatively labelled the MacBook SE, this modestly priced MacBook has reportedly been in the works, with Apple exploring ways to cut down on costs to deliver a product that doesn't aim to challenge its typical Windows counterparts, but this time, the Chromebook.

Early rumors suggested that Apple would cut costs by adopting less premium materials and components during construction. One option may include adopting a rigid plastic chassis, as it did with the Apple Watch SE 3.

According to an article posted by Kuo to X, Kuo shares that the new MacBook's chassis could come in four potential case colors, including silver, blue, pink, and yellow.

Kuo also shares that this long-rumored MacBook is expected to enter mass production late in the fourth quarter of 2025 or in the early first quarter of 2026, suggesting a release next year, potentially unveiling it sometime in March 2026 during its annual Spring event.

MacBook SE: What's the point?

Challenging Chromebooks seems like an odd decision at first, but having delivered serious competition in practically every market there is, Apple has one frontier it's yet to conquer: the classroom.

Ask any college goer what the best laptop for students is, and you're bound to be met by a slew of arguments that favor Apple's MacBooks, but when it comes to K-12 education, the Chromebook reigns supreme.

However, should Apple follow through on its low-cost MacBook plans, even the best Chromebooks would have reason to worry.

While Chromebooks win on price and simplicity, an Apple alternative, even one running an A-series chip, could bring a much broader toolkit with it, cutting out the reliance on web apps, granting access to Apple Intelligence, and delivering a host of macOS content through a thriving App Store.

That said, putting a powerful and less narrow computing experience in the hands of students for less wouldn't just benefit those in education, but Apple, too.

Apple's ecosystem: Get them while they're young

Another huge benefit for Apple would be having its OS in K-12 classrooms across the country, developing an instant familiarity with macOS among a younger generation, and, in turn, challenging Windows' dominance as the "standard" operating system for computing.

A move like this isn't just about expanding on a classroom's toolset; it's about quietly rewriting digital instincts among younger generations, something that Microsoft similarly managed to pull off in the 90s with Windows 95.

While Google's follow-up efforts haven't exactly turned ChromeOS into a major player among wider users, it has helped to proliferate use of Google's Workspace suite and get many to trade purchasing office software for using the company's free alternatives, regardless of which OS they eventually move on to.

A low-cost MacBook isn't just about increasing sales — though Kuo does project it accounting for 5-7 million units in 2026 — it's about Apple laying new groundwork for long-term loyalty, and redefining what is seen as the "default" for a whole new generation of tech-savvy youngsters.

More from Laptop Mag

• Dear Apple, it's 2025, where’s my MacBook SE?
• Apple doesn't want you to see its latest MacBook ad — or several others just like it
• Apple's Mac Minis are turning into fancy bricks – but there's a fix

This year's sale could arguably be considered the first sale where a gamer could buy a title that can be played on their home computer or laptop, a portable consoles such as a Steam Deck or ROG Ally, and thanks to cloud gaming services like GeForce Now, it can also be played on their phone, tablet, or directly on their TV with no cables or console needed.

Still, when it comes to PC gaming, a laptop is the best choice all-around as you can hook it up to a monitor to feel like you're at a desktop or take it with you on the go without losing graphics fidelity or needing good Wi-Fi.

Picking the right gaming laptop really comes down to what you're looking to play on the laptop. Do you want a machine that will play practically every game out there just fine, or do you want a monster of a computer to run any title at the highest settings without a single frame dropped? For me, I would pick these three laptops, but for different reasons.

For power and portability at a low price, there's the Asus TUF Gaming A14 

The Asus TUF Gaming A14 is the laptop to go with if I wanted to play a lot of games well, that's easy to carry and comes with great battery life.

It has solid gaming performance, a decently colorful display that can reach high nits of brightness, and a satisfying keyboard. With its portable 14-inch size, light weight at around 3 pounds, durable military grade toughness, and the best battery life we’ve seen on a gaming laptop in years.

Some of the games the Asus TUF Gaming A14 is able to play at the highest settings that are currently on sale in the Steam Summer Sale are Baldur's Gate 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, and all those games with deep discounts dropping them below $10.

If I didn't worry much about price but want portability then I would need to buy the Razer Blade 16

Razer continues to offer a lot of power in a small package. The Razer Blade 16 (2025) is an expensive laptop with various options, and the RTX 5090 gaming performance being very smooth. There is an option to go with an RTX 4090 or RTX 5080 to save on money while still being able to play games on the highest settings.

The Razer Blade 16 (2025) features a stunning OLED display, Razer’s superb build quality, over 7 hours of web surfing battery life, and almost 2.5 hours of gaming battery life. It’s incredibly portable at just 4.6 pounds and 0.59 inches thick.

Games like Cyberpunk 2077, Hogwarts Legacy, and Forza Horizon 5 at the highest graphics settings could bring most computers to their knees, but the Razer Blade 16 can handle them with ease.

The MSI Raider 18 HX AI is the gaming laptop to buy if price is not a concern

Saying the MSI Raider 18 HX AI is expensive is an understatement. This laptop's price is approximately the same as the two previous laptops combined at $4,000.

Still, the Raider has strong general performance, fluid gaming performance, a bright MiniLED display, a comfortable keyboard, powerful audio, and more ports than needed even with a multi-monitor setup. It has a powerful Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU with 16GB of VRAM, which offers the gaming performance one might expect from such a high-end spec. Its 18-inch MiniLED display is bright and vivid, and its 6-speaker sound system is powerful with high-quality audio. But this machine is staying home, as it weighs as much as the Asus TUF Gaming A14 and Razer Blade 16 combined.

The MSI Raider 18 HX AI is more than enough machine to take on the most graphically intense games, such as Monster Hunter Wilds and Alan Wake 2 at their highest settings.

Next week, Best Buy is set to rival Amazon's July Prime Day sale — the biggest shopping event of the year, next to Black Friday. Electronics expert retailer Best Buy will try to grab your attention during Prime Day 2025.

We expect last year's Best Buy Black Friday in July sale to return this summer to offer Prime Day alternative deals.

Although Amazon's four-day Prime Day sale is scheduled for July 8-11, Prime members can shop early deals. Currently, Best Buy's 4 of July Sale is on through July 6 and rewards My Best Buy Plus members with exclusive summer deals. Sound familiar?

If you don't shop on Amazon or like to place orders online for in-store pickup, Best Buy is one of the top go-to retailers. During Amazon's Prime Day summer takeover, we'll be curating the Best Buy Prime Day alternative deals right here.

Until then, shop and save with today's Best Buy Prime Day-rivaling deals. See my recommended discounts below.

Early Best Buy Prime Day deals — Quick links

• Shop: Best Buy's entire sale
• College Football 25 Xbox Series X: was $30 now $5 at Best Buy
• Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller: was $85 now $75 at Best Buy w/ Plus
• Beats Solo 4: was $199 now $129 at Best Buy
• Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 Plus: was $219 now $169
• Microsoft Elite Series 2 Controller: was $199 now $149 at Best Buy w/ Plus
• Sony ULT Wear: was $199 now $179 at Best Buy
• Sony WH-1000XM4: was $349 now $299 at Best Buy
• Apple iPad 11: was $349 now $299 at Best Buy
• Apple AirPods Max: was $549 now $479 at Best Buy
• Asus Vivobook 14: was $599 now $499 at Best Buy or $329 w/ Plus
• Lenovo Legion Go S Gaming Handheld: was $829 now $779 at Best Buy
• Samsung The Frame 43-inch QLED TV: was $999 now $799 at Best Buy
• LG Class C4 65-inch OLED TV: was $1,599 now $1,299 at Best Buy
• Laptops & Tablets: save up to 55% with My Best Buy Plus
• Gaming: save up to 43% with My Best Buy Plus
• Phones: save up to $400 on unlocked Motorola Phones
• Audio: save up to $320 with My Best Buy Plus
• Wearables: save up to $30 with My Best Buy Plus
• TVs & Sounbars: save up to 50% with My Best Buy Plus

Early Best Buy Prime Day deals 

Last Monday, we reported on an odd issue in Windows 11’s latest Beta and Dev channel builds, where the iconic Windows Vista startup chime resurfaced out of nowhere. Microsoft acknowledged the bug and even leaned into the nostalgia a bit when the issue was first spotted, and promised a fix.

Credit where credit is due, Microsoft did indeed stick to its word and tried to patch things up in the latest Windows 11 Preview Builds released earlier this week. Unfortunately, the Redmond-based giant only partially succeeded.

The Vista sound is still lingering in the Dev Insider build

Microsoft rolled out the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.4452 and Build 26200.5661 for the Beta and Dev channels, respectively, earlier this week on Monday. Initially, the “Fixes for everyone in the Beta/Dev channel” section mentioned: Fixed the issue causing the Windows Vista boot sound to play instead of the Windows 11 boot sound.

Although this was great news, Microsoft updated the release notes of the Dev build the very next day on Tuesday, after realizing that the fix for the issue was “not working correctly in this build.” It further mentioned that the issue will be fixed in the next flight.

There’s been no update to the Beta release notes yet, suggesting that the fix is working as anticipated.

If you aren’t familiar with the bug we’re referring to here, a Windows Insider, @XenoPanther on X (formerly Twitter), spotted a bug that swapped the Windows 11 startup sound with Vista’s startup sound. This issue was found in the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.4441 and 26200.5651 for the Beta and Dev channels.

Like a true tech enthusiast, he went on a quest to trace down the cause of the bug and determined that the .WAV file located inside the imageres.dll.mun resource file was the culprit. It previously had the Windows 11 startup sound and had been replaced with Vista’s.

Vista nostalgia or an indirect dig at Apple?

Though most would've likely disregarded it and forgotten about it as yet another silly Microsoft bug (despite the years), what truly raised eyebrows was the timing of the bug. It was spotted around a week after WWDC 2025, where Apple announced its new operating systems alongside its "Liquid Glass" UI design.

Though the redesign was certainly refreshing for Apple users who've grown tired of staring at the same old design, it felt like a step back in time to many. This was because Microsoft first debuted similar translucent glass effects with its Windows Aero theme in Windows Vista.

Brandon LeBlanc, the Senior Product Manager for the Windows Insider Program Team, replied to @XenoPanther’s X post and mentioned that Microsoft had added the issue as a known issue.

In the replies, when asked how it happened, LeBlanc jokingly mentioned that he “went in and had some fun with the sound files in Windows and thought folks wanted a blast from the past.”

Though LeBlanc was clearly joking around, people were still unsure if it was a genuine bug or an actual blast from the past, so he clarified that it’s an actual bug.

Whether an intentional bug or not, the sudden return of Vista’s startup sound just days after Apple debuted a design that looks suspiciously similar to Aero feels a little too well-timed to be pure accident.

Given that this strangely seems to be one of those bugs Windows Insiders aren’t too mad about, it’s also one of those rare times when Microsoft not having a proper fix isn’t bothering people all that much. If you're one of those affected and waiting for a fix, the only thing you can really do for now is sit tight for the next build, and maybe enjoy the nostalgia in the meantime.

More from Laptop Mag

• Microsoft just threw Windows 10 users a free lifeline — but it could test your loyalty
• This secret version of Windows 10 still gets updates until 2032
• A second Windows 11 bug takes suspicious aim at Google Chrome — and the same Microsoft app is to blame

It's easy to spend more than you need to on gaming gear, especially when you have the budget for a high-end laptop. If you're spending thousands on a great gaming laptop, though, you should make sure you're spending it on the right one, and that might not be an RTX 5090 laptop.

The Asus ROG Strix G18 G815 shows just how competitive the RTX 5080 is with the RTX 5090, and it's just one of a few incredible RTX 5080 laptops that offer great bang for your buck.

See also: Best gaming laptop deals in June 2025

Do you really need to spend more for an RTX 5090 laptop? Probably not.

I get it — if you want a top-tier gaming laptop, you probably have your eye on an RTX 5090. On paper, that makes sense. An RTX 5090 could be the right choice for some people, but the RTX 5080 offers much more competitive performance than you might think.

In fact, the Asus ROG Strix G18 even outperformed an RTX 5090 gaming laptop in our testing. Not just in one test, either, but across the board:

Looking at these test results without knowing which laptop had which GPU, you'd be forgiven for thinking the Strix G18 was the one with an RTX 5090. It outpaced the HP Omen Max 16 in every game we threw at it, which is shocking considering the Omen should be the more powerful laptop.

That doesn't mean the RTX 5090 isn't a good GPU. The Omen Max 16 got a glowing review from us. However, the RTX 5090 configuration we tested costs a whopping $4,299, over $1,000 more than our review configuration for the Asus ROG Strix G18.

So, if you were to go with the Omen for that flashy RTX 5090, you would be paying over $1,000 more to get lower performance than an RTX 5080 laptop like the Strix G18 can offer. The Strix G18 isn't even your only option. It's one of a few fantastic RTX 5080 gaming laptops that offer great value for your money.

Three Editor's Choice RTX 5080 laptops you don't want to miss

I had a great experience gaming on the Asus ROG Strix G18, and I can safely say it's a good buy if you're looking for a high-end gaming laptop that also offers great value for your money. It's not the only option on the table, though. There are a few stellar RTX 5080 gaming laptops that we've recently reviewed, all of which are highly competitive alternatives to pricier RTX 5090 models.

1. Asus ROG Strix G18 (G815)

First up, of course, is the Asus ROG Strix G18. With its massive 18-inch display, this laptop is an excellent choice for gamers who require ample screen real estate. It also boasts unusually long battery life, which is a nice bonus, even if it's a bit bulky for travel.

The Strix G18 crushed our gaming tests across the board, and while it got a bit hot in our thermal tests, the heat management is designed in a way that keeps the keyboard cool even under high temperatures. The keyboard itself is also fantastic, and the RGB light strip around the keyboard deck is a nice visual touch.

2. MSI Raider 18 HX AI

If the Asus ROG Strix G18 isn't the perfect fit for you, the MSI Raider 18 HX AI could be the perfect alternative, especially if you need more storage and RAM. While the Raider is pricier than the Strix G18, it offers twice as much storage and RAM along with a higher resolution 18-inch Mini LED display and a slightly stronger processor.

This RTX 5080 laptop handily crushed the HP Omen Max 16 and even bested the Strix G18 in some of our graphics tests. It even has top-firing speakers, a rare feature I'm a big fan of.

3. Alienware 16 Area-51

The Alienware 16 Area-51 pairs a stunning design with stellar performance at a price that's hard to beat. This RTX 5080 laptop is a great alternative to the Strix G18 if you want similar performance in a smaller chassis since the Area-51 features a 16-inch display. It's still a bulky laptop, weighing even more than the Strix G18 at 7.13 pounds, but you'll have an easier time fitting it in laptop bags.

Aside from the display, the Alienware 16 Area-51 is very similar to the Strix G18, powered by the same processor and sporting the same display resolution and refresh rate. It features some seriously impressive audio, too, with top and bottom-firing speakers, making for a highly immersive gaming experience.

More from Laptop Mag

• ROG Ally X vs. Xbox Ally X: Real differences or clever rebranding?
• I played 'Dune: Awakening' on an RTX 5090 gaming laptop — I got up to 257 fps, but there was one big problem
• I played ‘Elden Ring Nightreign’ on the RTX 5090, Intel Arc 140V, and AMD Radeon 8060S — here’s what happened

From today, the Dell 14 Premium and Dell 16 Premium laptops are available to purchase — and we have high hopes for them, especially after generally enjoying the XPS 14 and XPS 13 last year, despite the disappointment of the Dell 14 Plus and Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1.

While there's plenty new to mention about these new laptops, I'm actually glad to see the old XPS chassis return for another generation, even if it's a little divisive for some. Though the XPS name has been retired, it's good to see that Dell hasn't sunset the things that made it so special. Let's take a closer look at what's in store.

Dell Premium: Specs

Dell Premium: Features

Much like last year's Dell XPS models, the new Dell Premium lineup features a minimalist chassis with an ultra-slick keyboard deck, complete with an invisible touchpad and disappearing function row.

The Dell 14 Premium and Dell 16 Premium also feature top-firing speakers, optional OLED display panels rated to 100% DCI-P3 coverage, and Intel's powerful Core Ultra 200H series processors.

Unfortunately, due to the smaller NPU on Intel's Core Ultra 200H series, the Dell Premium laptops don't meet the minimum requirements for the Microsoft Copilot+ program. But if you ask me, you're not missing much.

The Dell 16 Premium also comes with the option for a discrete Nvidia GPU, from the RTX 5050 to the RTX 5070, so you can get the right amount of graphics power for your needs, whether you want to do some casual gaming or heavy video editing.

Dell also makes strong claims about the Dell Premium's battery life, with the Dell 14 Premium reportedly delivering up to 20 hours of video streaming, while the Dell 16 Premium gets up to 27 hours of streaming battery life.

Of course, that's with the LCD panel option, rather than the OLED.

What's next

The Dell 14 Premium is available now in the US and Canada, with a starting price of $1,649.

The Dell 16 Premium with an Nvidia RTX 5060 GPU is available now in the US and Canada, with a starting price of $2,699.

The Dell 16 Premium models with Intel Arc graphics, Nvidia RTX 5050, and Nvidia RTX 5070 will be available soon.

Pricing is not yet available for these models, but we would expect the Dell 16 Premium with integrated Intel Arc graphics to be closer in price to the Dell 14 Premium, while the RTX 5050 and RTX 5070 models will be closer to the 5060's $2,699 starting price.

While these new Dell Premium laptops are no longer called the Dell XPS, they maintain the XPS' level of high-end components with powerful Intel Core Ultra processors, OLED displays, and optional discrete graphics on the flagship Dell 16 Premium.

And hey, they've even got the XPS chassis, complete with an invisible touchpad and function row keys that are an accessibility nightmare.

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The workaround? Either disable the “Filter inappropriate websites” option under Family Safety or, oddly enough, rename the Chrome.exe file to Chrome1.exe.

Microsoft still hasn’t rolled out an official fix, but it has finally acknowledged the issue while confirming another bug impacting Chrome users, too.

Chrome’s still the main target in Microsoft’s latest bug

As reported by Neowin, Microsoft confirmed one more issue affecting Google Chrome users on Windows via a new Microsoft Learn entry. The entry was opened on Tuesday, June 24, and it hasn’t been updated since.

The new bug Microsoft has identified also has to do with the Family Safety feature that caused the issue we reported on earlier. However, instead of the feature causing Chrome to crash entirely, the feature just… doesn’t work.

The Redmond-based giant explains that the Web Content Filtering system relies on a block list to prevent browsers from accessing inappropriate search results and websites.

Unless a browser version is added to the block list, it won’t be, well, blocked — even if content filtering is turned on for the account. Something that, in the Microsoft Learn entry, the tech giant admitted to not having done with the latest version of Chrome and several other browsers.

Due to this mistake on Microsoft’s end, the browsers not added to the list might temporarily appear unblocked. Thankfully, Microsoft confirmed that it’s currently working on updating the block list.

The Redmond-based giant also touched on the issue we’ve already talked about in our previous article, which is causing Google Chrome and “some browsers” to shut down unexpectedly. PCs with Parental Controls enabled typically receive a parental approval message: “You’ll need to ask to use this app.”

Once a parent approves, the child gains access to the browser. However, this bug is causing the browser to shut down immediately without the prompt even appearing. Microsoft has pinpointed that this issue is only observed when the Activity reporting feature is disabled.

The suggested workaround is to enable Activity reporting under Windows settings in Family Safety. Once the feature is enabled, parents will begin to receive approval requests as usual.

The issues discussed above are affecting Windows 10 version 22H2 and Windows 11 versions 22H2, 23H2, and 24H2.

Is this another sneaky push toward Microsoft Edge?

Microsoft’s confirmed that it’s actively working on resolving both the above issues, and will update the support document when it has more information. What’s great is that the tech giant has finally acknowledged the issue and provided a workaround to the Google Chrome crashing problem.

Considering Microsoft has had quite the rocky history with Google Chrome, it’s frankly a bit odd that both issues seem to primarily be affecting Chrome.

Microsoft has a history of targeting Chrome (the world's most popular web browser) directly in various ways, including publishing a guide on “how to uninstall Google Chrome,” displaying pop-up ads promoting Edge in the Chrome app, and interrupting users who search for Google Chrome using its Edge browser, just to name a few.

Are both bugs genuine, or are they simply another attempt by Microsoft to push users toward Edge instead of Chrome? In this instance, I guess we’ll never know.

More from Laptop Mag

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The Asus ROG Strix G18 is exactly the kind of gaming laptop you don't want to overlook. It's hard to miss with its enormous 18-inch display, but that's not the only thing it has going for it. While it doesn't come cheap, it offers far better value for your money than you might expect and punches way above its weight class, giving RTX 5090 laptops a run for their money.

It left me asking – why pay a premium for an RTX 5090 laptop when you can get competitive performance from an RTX 5080 laptop like the Strix G18? This might even be one of the best gaming laptops you can buy, especially if you've got your eye on a large display.

Here's a look at everything the Asus ROG Strix G18 has to offer and a few things you should know before making it your next gaming rig.

Asus ROG Strix G18 (G815): Specs and benchmarks

Asus ROG Strix G18 (G815): Price and configurations

The Asus ROG Strix G815 is available in a few configurations starting at $2,499, which includes an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 (8GB) GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 2TB of storage.

Our review configuration costs $3,059 and includes an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 (16GB) GPU, 32GB of RAM, and 2TB of storage.

That's certainly not cheap, but for a gaming laptop with these specs, that price is fairly reasonable. For context, the smaller Asus ROG Strix G16 costs a bit less at $2,499 for a configuration with an RTX 5070 Ti and 1TB of storage. The MSI Raider 18 HX AI, an 18-inch behemoth like the Strix G815, costs significantly more at $4,499 for a configuration with an RTX 5080 and 4TB of storage.

So, Asus's asking price is reasonable, especially if a large 18-inch display is a top priority for you.

Asus ROG Strix G18 (G815): Design

The Asus ROG Strix G18 is eye-catching, but more so because of its size than its design.

The plastic chassis isn't too over-the-top, sporting a dark steel-gray finish with a glossy ROG logo on the lid and a hidden RGB light strip along the bottom of the keyboard deck (which you can easily turn off if you want). The keyboard also features RGB backlighting, and a handful of keys have transparent keycaps, which not only look cool but help your WASD keys stand out.

I also appreciate that Asus separated the power button from the main keyboard and gave it a unique shape, making it unlikely you'll press the power button by accident. There are also a handful of additional media keys above the function row for quickly adjusting volume, muting your mic, swapping performance modes, and opening the Armoury Crate app.

The first thing I noticed about the Asus ROG Strix G18 was its weight. It's easily the largest laptop I've ever reviewed, an honor previously held by the enormous Acer Nitro 17. That's no surprise considering the huge 18-inch display, but you should keep the G18's bulky size in mind if you want to travel with it often, since it's too big to fit in most laptop bags.

The Strix G18 measures 15.71 x 11.73 x 1.26 inches and weighs 7.05 pounds. For context, here's how a few similar gaming laptops compare:

• Asus ROG Strix G16 (G624FR) (16-inch): 13.94 x 10.39 x 1.2 inches, 5.51 pounds
• HP Omen Max 16 (16-inch): 14.04 x 10.59 x 0.98 inches, 5.92 pounds
• MSI Raider 18 HX AI (18-inch): 15.91 x 12.11 x 1.26 inches, 7.8 pounds

Asus ROG Strix G18 (G815): Ports

The Asus ROG Strix G18 includes a pretty standard set of ports for a gaming laptop:

• 3x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A (supports up to 10Gbps)
• 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C (supports DisplayPort/power delivery/G-Sync)
• 1x USB Type-C Thunderbolt 4 (supports DisplayPort/power delivery)
• 1x HDMI 2.1
• 1x RJ45 Ethernet/LAN
• 1x 3.5mm audio jack

That was more than enough ports for my needs, but if you find yourself needing even more variety, you can always connect the G815 to one of the best laptop docking stations or a USB Type-C hub.

Asus ROG Strix G18 (G815): Battery life

Gaming laptops are rarely high performers when it comes to battery life, and the Asus ROG Strix G815 is no threat to the laptops with the best battery life, but it's notably better than most of the competition.

It lasted 7 hours and 45 minutes in our non-gaming battery life test, significantly longer than its rivals. Of course, the irony of good battery life on an 18-inch laptop like this is that it's so bulky you probably won't want to travel with it often. Even so, it's nice that you can get almost a full day of basic tasks done on the G815 on a single charge.

Conversely, the gaming battery life for the G815 is average at 1 hour and 34 minutes, but you'll get better game performance with it plugged in anyway.

Asus ROG Strix G18 (G815): Display

The huge 18-inch display on the Asus ROG Strix G18 is arguably its star feature. It's a roomy 2.5K (2560 x 1600) IPS panel with a 3ms response time and a maximum refresh rate of 240Hz.

This display is about as big as you can get without using an external desktop display. If your top priority is more screen real estate for gaming and watching movies, the Strix G18 could be the perfect fit.

While the Strix G18 isn't exactly portable, the giant display is nice for creating an immersive viewing experience. It made episodes of Andor even more of a visual feast than usual, drawing me into the moody shots of Ferrix back alleys and capturing sweeping shots of Chandrila in crisp detail and vivid color.

The Strix G18 didn't break any records in our display tests, but it didn't perform poorly either. It covered 78% of the DCI-P3 color gamut and reached an impressive average brightness of 511.8 nits. While I would have preferred a higher color gamut score, the brightness is notably higher than most of the competition, with the exception of the MSI Raider 18 HX AI.

Asus ROG Strix G18 (G815): Keyboard and touchpad

Considering it's an 18-inch laptop, it's no surprise the Strix G18 features a full-size keyboard. It's not as satisfying as my desktop mechanical keyboard (the Lofree Block), but it feels more like a mechanical keyboard than most other laptop keyboards. The Strix G18 also features per-key RGB backlighting, which can be customized in the pre-installed Armoury Crate app.

On the Monkeytype typing test, I scored 101 words per minute with 98% accuracy on the Strix G18, which isn't record-breaking for me, but it’s not bad at all, either.

The touchpad on the Strix G18 is huge, even larger than the display on my 6.6-inch phone. It's so big that I found myself moving my mouse accidentally with my palms from time to time while typing. The touchpad surface is smooth, and clicking has a decent amount of travel and feedback. You'll probably want to use one of the best gaming mice most of the time, but for moments when you need the touchpad, this one's not bad.

Asus ROG Strix G18 (G815): Audio

The Asus ROG Strix G18 features dual speakers located at the bottom front corners of the keyboard deck. Considering the size of the keyboard deck (and the amount of empty space on it), I would have really liked to see top-firing speakers on this laptop. Even so, the side-firing speakers sound really good with music, games, and video content alike.

"Welcome to the DCC" by Nothing But Thieves sounded punchy and detailed with impressive depth and a good balance of bass, mids, and highs. The bass could be a tad stronger, but it's not bad, either. The speakers get seriously loud, too (I could hear them from the next room at just 45).

The audio in games is also solid. I had a great experience with Avowed, where the Strix G18 delivered crisp dialogue and rich background ambiance while I wandered Dawnshore. I turned the volume up a bit for games, a little over half usually, but nothing sounded muddy or drowned out, even in combat.

Asus ROG Strix G18 (G815): Performance and heat

The Asus ROG Strix G18 is powered by an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU (24 cores, 24 threads, max frequency of 5.4GHz). This chip won't have any trouble managing a couple of dozen browser tabs at once, multitasking, or running resource-intensive tasks like photo or video editing. I didn't experience any lag during basic tasks, even while running a few apps at once and downloading games on Steam.

The Strix G18 crushed our overall performance tests, although it couldn't quite top a couple of competitors. It scored 19,899 on the Geekbench 6 multi-core benchmark, just a bit behind the AMD-powered Asus ROG Strix G16. The MSI Raider 18 HX AI, powered by an Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX, easily outpaced both.

While gaming laptops offer top-tier performance, it can often come with the notable drawback of high temperatures. The Strix G18 ran warm even in our non-gaming heat test, where it peaked at 94.8 degrees, just a hair below our 95-degree comfort threshold. It soared to 114.4 degrees in our gaming heat test, which isn't as hot as the smaller Strix G16 got, but still noticeably warm.

A lot of that heat is getting pushed out through the vents along the back of the hinge, so the keys stay cool most of the time. I didn't notice the heat while gaming on a desk, but you can definitely feel it if you have the Strix G18 on your lap while a game is running.

Asus ROG Strix G18 (G815): Gaming and graphics

The Asus ROG Strix G18 runs on an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU with 16GB of VRAM. It offered fantastic performance in all of my hands-on testing, with seamless gameplay, quick loading times, stunning visuals, and no noticeable issues.

I played a round of Elden Ring Nightreign on the Strix G18 and had one display hiccup at first, although it wasn't due to the GPU itself. The game initially failed to recognize the G18's display resolution correctly, but everything ran perfectly after I fixed it in the settings.

After that, the moody, shadowy visuals of Limveld looked stunning, with good contrast, crisp detail, and flawless movement thanks to the high 240Hz refresh rate on the G18. I averaged 60 frames per second throughout with no lag or stuttering. I didn't win my run, but that's not the RTX 5080's fault.

Avowed ran great on the Strix G18, as well. The vibrant tropical forests outside Paradis looked flawless, and new zones loaded quickly. Combat was smooth throughout, even with many enemies and special effects on screen at once. I averaged just under 80 fps.

Considering the smooth performance I experienced in my hands-on testing, I wasn't surprised that the Strix G18 crushed our gaming tests. Interestingly, it outscored the HP Omen Max 16 across the board, despite the Omen having a more powerful RTX 5090 GPU.

The Strix G18 scored 13,074 on the 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra graphics benchmark, second only to the MSI Raider 18 HX AI (which also has an RTX 5080). The G18 bested the Raider in several games, though, including Assassin's Creed Mirage, Far Cry 6, Monster Hunter Wilds, Red Dead Redemption II, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

The MSI Raider 18 HX AI and the HP Omen Max 16 each cost nearly $1,500 more, yet the Strix G18 outperforms both (especially the Omen). If you've got the budget for a high-end gaming laptop like this, the Strix G18 could be some of the best bang for your buck out there.

Asus ROG Strix G18 (G815): AI features

While AI might not be a top concern when choosing a gaming laptop, it's worth noting that the Asus ROG Strix G18 comes with the Microsoft Copilot AI assistant pre-installed and has a dedicated Copilot key on the keyboard.

The Copilot app includes basic generative AI features like text and image generation. Copilot also powers Windows Studio Effects, which uses AI to enhance your webcam video quality.

While those AI features might be nice from time to time, many gamers will probably be frustrated that the Copilot key replaces the right control key. Luckily, there are workarounds to remap the Copilot key so it functions like a normal right control key instead, but it may still be an unwelcome change for some.

Asus ROG Strix G18 (G815): Webcam

Laptop webcams usually disappoint me, and unfortunately, that includes the Asus ROG Strix G18. The built-in 1080p FHD webcam isn't as sharp as its resolution suggests, with visibly grainy, blurry video quality that lacks detail and struggles to properly balance shadows and highlights. It's fine for casual tasks like Zoom meetings or Discord calls, but if you want to use the camera for anything more, you'll be better off with one of the best webcams.

With that said, the built-in mic is pretty good. It captured my voice well and did a good job of blocking out the background noise from my air conditioner. The quality is more than enough for in-game voice chat and other casual uses.

Asus ROG Strix G18 (G815): Software and warranty

The Strix G18 comes with Windows 11 Home and includes the standard suite of basic Microsoft apps like Microsoft Edge, the Microsoft Store, and the Xbox app. It also includes Armoury Crate, where you can see live system usage data, adjust your performance profiles and macros, and customize your RGB backlighting. The MyAsus app includes some similar features, but mainly serves as a hub for running system diagnostics and updates and viewing your settings.

The Strix G18 comes with Asus's standard limited 1-year warranty.

Bottom line

The Asus ROG Strix G18 delivers stellar performance across the board, even outpacing top-tier RTX 5090 laptops. The roomy 18-inch display and crisp audio quality make for a truly immersive gaming experience that's tough to beat at this price. Why pay $1,000 more for an RTX 5090 laptop when the Strix G18 offers competitive performance for less?

While I had a great time gaming on the Strix G18, it may not be for everyone. If you need something portable, this is not the best option. The 18-inch display is suitable for gaming and watching movies, but the G18 is too large to fit in most laptop bags and is relatively heavy, weighing over 7 pounds. A smaller 16, 15, or even 14-inch gaming laptop would be a much better fit if portability is a concern for you.

However, if you want a laptop that can effectively replace your desktop PC, the Strix G18 could be the perfect fit. You can also visit our guide to the best gaming laptops to compare it to even more alternatives.

Now, you probably haven't heard of Phison unless you're really into your Solid State Drives (SSD), but for those that don't know: Phison is a Taiwanese electronics company specializing in the design and manufacture of NAND flash controllers and storage solutions — and its storage controller designs are used in popular SSDs from mega brands like Seagate, Corsair, MSI, and Kingston.

As an M.2 SSD, it'll slot into your desktop, laptop, and even a game console. Yes, you can even put this PCIe Gen 5 SSD into a PlayStation 5. But the real question is: is it worth looking for an SSD with a Phison E28 controller to get a few more years out of your old hardware? Let's find out.

Phison E28 SSD: Specs and features

Here's the thing: Phison doesn't sell SSDs directly to consumers.

In fact, Phison's E28 is just a reference design. But you will find the E28 SSD controller used in various storage devices by major SSD manufacturers such as Seagate, Corsair, MSI, and Kingston in the coming days.

Because you won't be purchasing the E28 directly from Phison, pricing will vary by OEM, but should remain relatively comparable to the highly-rated WD Black SN8100 (which typically retails at around $179 for the 1TB capacity, and climbs to $479 for 4TB).

As a note, Phison's E28 ranges in storage capacity from 1TB to 8TB, though our E28 reference design was a 2TB solid-state drive.

In addition to featuring the PCIe Gen 5 interface, the E28 storage controller is NVMe 2.0 and PCI Express Base 5.0 compliant. The SSD features a flash interface with transfer rates up to 2400MT/s with up to 2pcs of BGA308 flash.

Phison E28 SSD: Performance

We typically measure SSD performance in read/write speeds, but for the Phison E28, we dove a little deeper into the SSD performance testing for a clearer image of just how good the E28 controller really is.

While the Phison E28 is not the top-performing SSD on every benchmark, it offers solid all-around performance across various benchmarks from the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test to CrystalDiskMark. The E28 was more mid-range on the 3DMark Storage Benchmark, but certainly within range of the best SSDs.

As our colleagues over at Tom's Hardware point out in their preview coverage of the Phison E28, the drive is also rather power-efficient, making it a solid choice for desktops with lower power ceilings or for consoles and laptops.

The one caveat, of course, would be that the reference design Phison E28 doesn't feature a heat sink, which can make it less than optimal for use inside a PS5 console.

Pro Tip: Don't replace your laptop, just get a new SSD

You probably think your old laptop is getting slow due to wear and tear, or the increasing demands of modern workloads, and you're probably right. To a degree.

While you should probably upgrade your 8-year-old GTX 1060 gaming laptop to a more modern, ray-tracing-capable model, your RTX 30-series gaming laptop may just need a bit more SSD speed to keep it going for a few more years.

The same is true for ultra-light laptops like the Acer Swift 3 (2020). While not a bad laptop, we did take points off for a slow SSD in our initial review, so it's a prime candidate for an SSD upgrade.

Now, swapping the SSD on your laptop isn't for everyone. While some laptops like the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 and 18, or the HP ZBook Fury 18 and 16 G1i, come with extra SSD and RAM upgrade slots and a quick-release latch on the bottom panel, most don't.

But with the right screwdriver set and some courage, you can usually swap out your SSD for a new one.

And it just might save your old laptop or desktop from the recycling bin. At least for another couple of years.

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The latest predictions by the Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC), recently broken down by YouTuber TechTechPotato, presents the current timeline for TSMC's 2nm chipsets, as well as Intel Foundry's 18A and 14A process technologies, with A14 (1.4nm) chips expected in 2027 and A10 (1nm) process nodes expected in 2029. IMEC's predictions even highlight the possibility of producing 0.2mm silicon as early as 2039.

In reality, those numbers differ wildly from the physical, measurable transistors on a chip, and we may need to wait until the late 2030s before we even manage to break the 10nm barrier. Here's why.

Silicon wafers aren't as small as the 2nm size would make you think

The current 2-nanometer and 1.8nm silicon technologies in development by TSMC and Intel aren't made on wafers that are 2nm in thickness.

2nm is also not the distance between two transistors on the wafer.

Chip manufacturers tend to refer to silicon wafers based on the minimum feature size achievable on the wafer surface during fabrication. Right now, that size usually refers to the name of the process node rather than any physical feature of the chip.

In fact, since about 1997, silicon process node names have been inaccurate. Intel's 250nm process node actually had a gate length of 200nm. Intel continued this process understatement until 2011, when silicon process nodes dropped to 22nm, with an actual gate length of 26nm.

TSMC and Samsung also adopted the "perception marketing" for silicon in 2018 with the 7nm process nodes, which were similar in gate length to Intel's 10nm silicon.

And the confusion has only continued to spiral from there.

However, if you're looking for a hard physical measurement size for the current 3-nanometer chips, they have a gate length of 16-18nm and a metal pitch of about 23nm.

So, regardless of the current 2nm and 3nm talk, we likely won't see "true" 10-nanometer silicon until IMEC's predicted sub-A2 chipset generation in 2039.

Wafer size and Moore's Law go hand-in-hand

As a quick refresher, Moore's Law is an observation in microchip design, positing that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years. As silicon wafers get smaller, so do transistors, but eventually all things must bow to the laws of physics.

Contrary to its name, Moore's Law isn't an actual Law, but rather an observation in microchip design. Eventually, semiconductors can only get so small before circuit heat becomes a real design issue.

Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, has been against the idea of continuing the Moore's Law trend largely due to the higher thermal constraints of discrete graphics cards, while CPUs like Intel's Lunar Lake chipset have more room to grow (or shrink, in this case).

But with this reminder from IMEC about the true size of silicon wafers, and the expected improvement in chip interconnect architecture and transistor technology, Moore's Law seems far from unrealistic. Whether the trend will continue past the next decade, we can't say for sure, but it looks achievable based on current projections.

That said, the potential number of transistors on those sub-A2 (10nm Lg) chipsets is staggering. The current Intel Core Ultra 9 285K has about 18 billion transistors, meaning the sub-A2 chipsets could have around 300 billion transistors in 2039.

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This week, Apple posted and abruptly deleted a 7-minute ad on YouTube titled "Convince Your Parents to Get You a Mac," which showed comedian Martin Herlihy giving a room full of teenagers a presentation teaching them how to persuade their parents to cough up the cash for a MacBook.

The ad has since been seemingly wiped from the internet and is no longer available on Apple's YouTube channel.

This isn't the first time Apple has quickly backpedaled on an advertising fumble recently, and arguably isn't anywhere close to its biggest slip-up. Here's a look at what you missed in the ad and a few highs (and lows) from Apple's advertising rollercoaster.

Apple mysteriously removes controversial MacBook ad

This weekend, Apple hastily removed a 7-minute ad from its YouTube channel less than 24 hours after the video went live. Titled "Convince Your Parents to Get You a Mac," it was an uncanny cross between an awkward skit and an unironic instruction manual for teenagers to persuade their parents to buy them a MacBook.

Apple even posted the "Parent Presentation" slides for teens to duplicate and use. The actual video has been removed from nearly every corner of the internet, but the slides are still accessible at the time of writing. Be warned, the presentation is 81 slides long.

The whole thing seems like it was probably meant as a meme, but it comes across as a little too manipulative. You can catch it in full in the X post above, one of the last few places the ad has managed to stay online.

Ironically, MacBooks are already considered among the best laptops for students, and considering iPhones are overwhelmingly the most popular phones for teenagers, this wasn't really a demographic Apple needed to do much to appeal to.

This somehow isn't Apple's biggest marketing fumble in recent years, either. That honor goes to the infamous "Crush" ad.

The "Crush" controversy: Apple's best (and worst) ads over the years

When Apple launched its thinnest iPad ever last year, all anyone could talk about was the (literally) soul-crushing ad that followed.

The "Crush" ad was quickly removed shortly after Apple posted it, but it showed a giant industrial press machine physically crushing a multitude of objects used for creating art and music. When everything was destroyed, the press opened again to reveal an iPad Pro.

The ad lives on in a response ad Samsung made with the tagline "Creativity cannot be crushed."

That ad is arguably Apple's most tone-deaf ad to date in light of artists' widespread fears of AI threatening their jobs. While the "Crush" ad didn't mention AI specifically, it seemed to imply that one device (or technology broadly) can replace a wealth of creative tools used for self-expression, from guitars to paint to cameras, and by extension, maybe even artists themselves.

Ironically, people do use iPads for creating art. Like the "Convince Your Parents to Buy a Mac" situation, Apple somehow managed to drop the ball while communicating with an audience it had already widely won over.

Both fumbles are perplexing considering Apple's marketing history. This is the same brand that produced some of the most iconic ads ever, like the long-running "I'm a Mac" series starring Justin Long.

Going back even further, one of the most famous ads ever was Apple's 1983 Super Bowl ad for the Macintosh 128K. Released in 1984, Apple introduced it in a surprisingly cinematic ad based on George Orwell's book 1984. This ad was meant as a subtle jab at Apple's then-rival IBM, but there's a lot of symbolism to unpack in it. The actual Macintosh 128K isn't even shown.

Of course, an advertising stumble doesn't mean MacBooks aren't good laptops for students. They're just not the only good laptops for students. If you're looking for the right laptop for college, you should probably be basing your decision on reviews and lab testing rather than a 7-minute Apple ad anyway.

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Walmart's July 4th sale starts now, and it's a hot deals summer. If a new laptop is number one on your tech refresh checklist, here's a deal worth a look.

For a limited time, you can get the Editor's Choice Asus Zenbook 14 OLED for $979 at Walmart. Previously priced at $1,100, that's $121 in savings. This is the lowest price I could find for this AMD Ryzen AI-charged Zenbook 14 refresh which launched in 2025.

It's also one of the best laptop deals you can get ahead of Walmart's big summer sale.

Browse: Walmart's entire sale

If I were in the market for a Copilot+ PC, this Asus Zenbook 14 OLED would be on my radar, and here's why. It's sophisticated, portable, long-lasting, and packs 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage.

What's more, in our Zenbook 14 OLED review, our expert said it's a nearly perfect laptop and rated it 4.5 out of 5 stars. During real-world and benchmark tests, it delivered snappy performance, impressive audio, and a tremendous 16-hour battery life.

Connectivity-wise, for a 14-inch laptop, the Zenbook 14 OLED has plenty of ports. It supplies you with a USB 4.0 Gen 3 Type-C port, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port, an HDMI 2.1 port, and a 3.5mm combo audio jack.

This is impressive, as many of today's portable laptop ports are scant.

At $979, the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED is a solid buy if you're looking for an AI-ready laptop with long battery life.

Today's best Asus Zenbook 14 OLED deal

I've grown inseparable from my AI-enhanced frames, and own several pairs from different brands. And, while my Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses get the most love and use, there's another brand that I have a soft spot for: Solos.

With their ChatGPT integration being a particular stand-out feature, Solos' AirGo smart glasses might not have the designer clout of EssilorLuxottica behind them, but its latest AirGo V2 and AirGo A5 models make for some of the best alternatives to Meta's luxury line there is.

New AirGo smart glasses: Solos' new high

On Wednesday, Solos announced two new smart glasses models, the AirGo A5 and AirGo V2, at the Hong Kong Smartglasses summit.

These models follow previous impressive outings from the ChatGPT-enabled Solos AirGo 3 and camera-equipped Solos AirGo Vision.

The company's latest smart glasses feature the same modular SmartHinge system, making them backward compatible with previous frames, as most of the tech that makes each model so impressive is housed within its detachable temples.

The AirGo A5s are more of an ultra-light follow-up to the AirGo 3, focusing on the same audio experience prompted by voice commands in a pair of glasses that are practically indistinguishable from regular frames.

Meanwhile, the AirGo V2 stands as a direct competitor to the impressively popular Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, featuring a 16MP stabilized camera for capturing hands-free, HD pictures and video, and even offering real-time streaming alongside the usual AI copilot.

Both devices require a connection to your smartphone to use, linking with the all-new SolosChat 3.0 app, where you can monitor health metrics and continue to interact with multiple AI models, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and now even DeepSeek.

What's next

We're entering something of a Renaissance period for smart glasses at the moment, with particular emphasis on the AI.

Whether or not you've been convinced about Copilot's presence on your laptop, having hands-free access to some of the world's most powerful AI models at the drop of a wake word ("Hey Solos," in this instance) can come in shockingly handy.

I'm not one of those people who's going to use "AI wrote me a poem on the spot" as an example either. I'm not a bard in search of inspiration, after all.

However, from being able to snap a picture to learn more about something without needing to slow down your day, or just being able to field a 3 a.m. thought to ChatGPT and hear a satisfying answer, feels like more than a simple novelty.

While there are many smart glasses options to choose from right now, if the sound of Solos' Ray-Ban Meta alternatives has tweaked your ear, then you'll be happy to know that it's not just a feature set that is competitive with Meta's glasses, but the price is too.

The Solos AirGo A5 will be available starting Q3, 2025, becoming available to preorder from August for only $249.

The 16MP camera-touting Solos AirGo V2 glasses are expected to land in Q4, 2025 for $299.

Both will be available first from the solosglasses.com homepage.

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• The best smart glasses you can buy just got a lot creepier
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Thanks to images published by the European Union Intellectual Property Office, we finally got a good look at what appears to be the long-awaited Logitech MX Master 4. Now, to be clear, the product name doesn't appear anywhere in the listing, but if you've ever seen an MX Master mouse, this is unmistakable.

What's new in the MX Master 4?

The images (shown below) provide a close-up view of the mouse from multiple angles, revealing a similar profile but a few key differences from its predecessor.

The most notable upgrade is a new button, positioned slightly ahead of the familiar two side buttons below the scroll wheel, on the edge of the mouse. This will be a welcome addition to the productivity enthusiasts who tend to gravitate to the MX Master line.

The large side button, where your thumb rests on the MX Master, is also much more pronounced in this new design. It formerly was blended into the mouse seamlessly, but now it clearly stands out as another button with a dotted circular design toward the front.

Looking at the top of the mouse, the right and left buttons now run uniformly across the top. On the MX Master 3 and 3S, there was a division between them running up to the main scroll wheel. The button below them shifts slightly down to account for that change, and the charging/battery LED moves from the side of the mouse to just below that button.

Unfortunately, we don't get any connectivity, battery, or DPI specs to go off of. The MX Master 3S offered an 8000 DPI sensor, so it's safe to assume the MX Master 4 will at least match that.

For now, we have to settle for some fairly subtle design changes and, of course, one more remappable button.

As a longtime user of the MX Master 3 and 3S, I'm pleased to see that the overall design remains similar, as the ergonomics are great for me. However, I hope Logitech has implemented a few more internal upgrades and that the material quality has improved. My white MX Master 3S still performs well, but the finish on it has worn away quickly.

When will the MX Master 4 launch?

The listing didn't provide any specific clues regarding a launch date, but the existence of the listing indicates that it is likely only months away.

The MX Master 3 was released in September of 2019, and the MX Master 3S was released in June of 2022, so we are in the expected window if Logitech sticks to its 3-year schedule.

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Whether unwilling or unable, a large portion of Windows 10 users feel caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to Microsoft's looming deadline to upgrade to Windows 11. Not only do the increased hardware requirements for Windows 11 render a large number of functioning computers unfit for purpose, but Microsoft's flagship operating system has something of a soured reputation, leaving even those with viable machines hesitant to adopt it.

For those users, time is the enemy. Time, and Microsoft. However, the latter is at least offering them a hand in compromise. One more year of additional year of support through its Extended Security Updates (ESU) program (previously costing $30 for individuals), at no monetary cost. Please note: I didn't use the word "free" for a reason.

Three ways to stay on Windows 10 until 2026: Bucks, backups, and Bing

Microsoft's ESU is nothing new, and we've known about its availability for individual Windows users since November 2024. For businesses, even earlier. And we know that signing up for this program will cost the average Windows 10 user $30 for a single year of additional support.

However, in a recent post to the Windows Experience Blog, Microsoft has provided a few additional ways for Windows 10 users to gain this additional support, without needing to pay Microsoft a single dime.

In the blog, Microsoft shares the following alternative ways to gain ESU for Windows 10:

• Gain ESU for Windows 10 by using Windows Backup to sync your settings to the cloud

Windows Backup is a new free tool from Microsoft that aims to make switching from your older Windows 10 machine to an upgraded Windows 11 machine a whole lot easier. It's not the only purpose though, users can also backup files and folders to external drives similarly to any other backup tool.

So, great. Download Windows Backup, transfer a few files to a USB storage device, and claim an extra year of support. Right? Well, no.

To become eligible for free ESU, you'll need to upload a copy of your Windows Settings to the cloud. Specifically OneDrive. Meaning you'll also need a free Microsoft Account. Which is, once again, another hurdle some Windows 10 users refuse to clear.

• Redeem ESU for Windows 10 with 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points

Microsoft Reward points are Microsoft's own Monopoly money you can earn through shopping at its store; completing challenges on Xbox Game Pass; referring friends to sign up for a Microsoft Account and also earn Reward points (not a pyramid scheme); willingly trading your information through polls, quizzes, and trivia; or helping Microsoft to artificially inflate engagement by watching certain videos online.

Of course. There is one other way of earning Microsoft Reward points, but it'll test your loyalty in ways you never thought. You'll need to start using Bing Search.

Yes, simply searching on Bing can score you some of that lucrative Microsoft Monopoly moolah, though earning 1000 points may take you some time. If you start now, I'm sure you'll make it in time for October 14.

Frustratingly, for those who want to avoid signing up for a Microsoft Account, this is yet another method of attaining ESU for free that leaves you no choice.

What's next

So, are you ready to backup your settings or switch to Bing to save a few bucks and gain an additional year of support for Windows 10? The ball's in your court.

Some would say that this method is simply delaying the inevitable. And I'm sure that anyone hoping for a savior in a potential release of Windows 12 will be sorely disappointed.

However, if you need a little longer to secure your next device, or a few more months to pluck up the courage to give Linux a shot, Microsoft's newest incentive might be ideal. Well, almost ideal. You might have to use Bing, after all.

More from Laptop Mag

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Walmart said to Amazon, "I see your four-day sale, and I raise you with a six-day sale".

As Walmart announced Monday, Walmart Deals start online at midnight ET on Tuesday, July 8, and in stores at local opening times. Walmart Plus members get exclusive early access to deals beginning Monday, July 7 at 7 p.m. ET.

That's one of the many perks of being a Walmart Plus member — first dibs on everything. Given that the sale runs through Sunday, July 13, you're getting six days of access to the best Walmart deals of the year.

Besides early access to the retailer's best deals during big sales events, Walmart Plus members also get first dibs on high-demand restocks. For example, on June 25 at 9 pm ET, Walmart Plus members get early access to this chance to buy the Nintendo Switch 2.

Walmart Plus costs $12.95 per month or $98 a year. Members get access to exclusive deals as discussed above, free express delivery, a Paramount Plus subscription, travel discounts, gas station discounts, and more.

As a reminder, Walmart Deals start online at midnight on July 8 with early access starting at 7 p.m. ET on July 7 for Walmart Plus members.

In the meantime, scroll on to browse Walmart featured deals at seven discounts I recommend.

Featured Walmart deals — Quick links

• Shop: Today's Walmart deals
• Razer Basilisk V3 Gaming Mouse: was $69 now $39 at Walmart
• Apple 11-inch iPad A16: was $349 now $299 at Walmart
• Samsung Galaxy Tab Active 5: was $552 was $393 at Walmart
• 65-inch Vizio Quantum QLED TV: was $498 now $378 at Walmart
• MSI Claw 7 Gaming Handheld: was $699 now $609 at Walmart
• 49-inch Samsung G95SC Odyssey OLED Gaming Monitor: was $1,799 now $1,099 at Walmart
• Asus ROG Strix G16 RTX 5060 Gaming Laptop: was $1,599 now $1,399 at Walmart
• 32-inch Samsung Smart Monitor: was $299 now $199 at Walmart (July 8-13)
• 50-inch Vizio QLED Smart TV: was $298 now $238 at Walmart (July 8-13)

My recommended Walmart deals

Walmart Plus membership benefits

Having a Walmart Plus membership reaps you a host of benefits, one of which is early access to the retailer's hottest deals during big sales events like Walmart Plus Week and Black Friday.

Walmart Plus members also get a Paramount Plus Essential for free (valued at $4.99/month). Paramount Plus includes access to thousands of TV shows and movies, NFL on CBS live, top soccer games, limited ads, CBSN 24/7 live news, and more.

Is Walmart Plus worth it?

Walmart Plus offers enticing membership perks to help you save money and time in the long run. If you primarily shop online for essentials and groceries, you'll benefit from unlimited free same-day delivery options.

If you prefer contactless shopping at physical stores, Walmart Plus is a wise choice.

Officially unveiled Tuesday, June 24, following earlier leaks, the GeForce RTX 5050 drops into desktops and laptops in July, offering 8GB of memory, 4th-gen ray tracing cores, and DLSS 4, all built on Nvidia’s latest Blackwell architecture. That’s a big leap from the aging RTX 3050, and a not-so-subtle flex toward AMD and Intel’s efforts in the sub-$300 GPU war.

But here’s the twist: While the desktop card offers plenty of value, the laptop version might just steal the spotlight.

Blackwell without the price tag

Nvidia isn’t simply repackaging its old silicon and slapping a new sticker on it with the RTX 5050. Both the desktop and mobile versions are built on the same Blackwell family as the flagship RTX 5090. That means tighter memory compression, more efficient compute pipelines, and a massive boost to AI-accelerated gaming via DLSS 4.

For desktops, the 5050 ships with 8GB of GDDR6 memory and a 130W TDP, making it a drop-in option for most entry-to-midrange systems. But it’s in laptops where this card starts punching above its weight.

The RTX 5050 mobile SKU swaps GDDR6 for GDDR7 — a spec usually reserved for higher-tier cards. That change gives laptops faster memory bandwidth, helping offset some of the thermal and power limitations that typically kneecap mobile GPUs.

According to Nvidia’s benchmarks, RTX 5050 laptops running DLSS 4 can hit 150fps in Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing enabled, something the RTX 3050 mobile could only dream of, and an impressive flex considering the starting price is just $999, with some models available immediately.

Budget gaming laptops just leveled up

If you’ve ever shopped for a gaming laptop under $1,200, you know the compromises: throttled thermals, last-gen GPUs, and chassis designs that scream 2017. Nvidia seems to be targeting that exact pain point.

The RTX 5050 laptop variant not only gets access to full Blackwell features, but it does so in a power envelope ranging from 35 to 100 watts. That opens the door to slimmer, quieter machines that can still handle ray tracing, without setting your lap on fire or turning your fan into a jet engine.

In fact, Nvidia claims that RTX 5050 laptops will outperform RTX 4050 systems in ray tracing and DLSS performance, thanks to architectural improvements and smarter memory design. That’s a quiet but important milestone: Entry-level laptops are no longer locked out of the latest graphical features.

The specs that matter

Across both platforms, the RTX 5050 comes with 2,560 CUDA cores and 4th-gen ray tracing tech, alongside 5th-gen Tensor Cores that power DLSS 4 and Nvidia’s suite of AI upscalers. Support for full AV1 encode and decode means better streaming and media playback, even on lower-end hardware.

But the real kicker here is DLSS 4. By pairing motion reconstruction with frame generation, it allows the RTX 5050 to deliver surprisingly high framerates even in visually demanding titles, and it does so while using less power.

Nvidia’s goal here isn’t just to make games run faster. It’s about enabling new features like path tracing, RTX Remix mods, and real-time lighting, all on hardware that costs less than a flagship smartphone.

Of course, the RTX 5050 isn’t going to dethrone the 4060 or 4070. And for users pushing 1440p or dabbling in content creation, 8GB of VRAM may still be a bottleneck. But that’s not the point.

This card is about accessibility; getting more people onto the Blackwell platform and letting them experience high-end features without waiting for a hand-me-down refresh. And with laptops starting at $999, Nvidia is also firing shots at Copilot+ PC makers, who have largely focused on productivity and AI over gaming.

Whether you’re building your first rig or shopping for a back-to-school gaming laptop, the RTX 5050 marks a long-overdue upgrade to the mainstream GPU stack. And this time, mobile gamers aren’t stuck with second-best.

More from Laptop Mag

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For a limited time, you can get the Intel Ultra 7-powered Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 6 for just $699.99, shipped from Micro Center. Previously $900, that's $200 in savings, and the lowest price ever for this configuration.

Browse: Micro Center's entire sale

By comparison, it's $320 cheaper than Lenovo's current price for the touchscreen version with the same hardware specs.

This is one of the best laptop deals you can get before Prime Day.

Our laptop expert recommends the Lenovo ThinkPad E14 series for all the right reasons. In our 5th-generation ThinkPad E14 review, we rated it 4 out of 5 stars for its excellent build quality, sleek design, and solid performance.

While we wish we could've gotten more battery life out of it, the ThinkPad E14 ticks all the boxes if you're looking for a portable business laptop.

I expect the laptop in this deal to be on par, if not better, thanks to its upgraded Intel Core Ultra 7 processor.

As with all Lenovo ThinkPads, the ThinkPad E14 Gen 6 features military grade durability, fingerprint security added peace of mind.

Now $200 off, the ThinkPad E14 Gen 6 is a no-brainer if you're looking for a rugged and secure laptop for work or school.

Today's best Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 6 deal

Looking for one of the best laptops that's also affordable can be a real challenge, especially with laptop prices on the rise. That's just another reason to be extra cautious that you're getting the best possible value for your money before buying a new laptop.

While the HP Omnibook 5 Laptop AI isn't a bad laptop, it's not a good deal due to a few critical flaws. It's a perfect example of the red flags to watch out for in budget laptops. Luckily, there are a few alternatives among the best laptops under $1,000 that offer significantly better value for your money.

The HP Omnibook 5 Laptop AI is a bargain on the surface, until you look closer

The HP Omnibook 5 Laptop AI isn't a bad laptop, and I can see how it might seem like a bargain at first glance. For less than $1,000, you get a roomy 16-inch display, a full-size keyboard, a polished aluminum chassis, and decent battery life (11 hours, 30 minutes).

Unfortunately, that's not the full story. The Omnibook's minor strengths aren't enough to overshadow its flaws, which collectively diminish the value you're getting for the price tag.

For starters, the 16-inch display, one of the Omnibook's biggest selling points, is visibly dull and washed out. Although it may be a large display, it's not of high quality. It scored unusually low in our tests, covering just 44% of the DCI-P3 color gamut and averaging just 306 nits of brightness. If you're buying this laptop for its display, you're likely to be disappointed by the lack of vibrant colors.

Additionally, the budget-friendly base configuration falls short in terms of performance. It couldn't match the competition in our overall performance tests and graphics tests.

It will handle typical tasks without a problem, but you can get better performance at this price.

Three laptops under $1,000 that are great value for your money

If you're looking for an affordable laptop that's worth your hard-earned cash, the HP Omnibook 5 Laptop AI probably isn't the right choice unless you can find it at a steep discount (ideally around $600 or less). There are a few alternatives under $1,000 that I'd recommend taking a look at first.

It's worth noting that if you're looking for a gaming device under $1,000, the Omnibook definitely isn't the way to go. At this price point, your best bet would be one of the best handheld gaming PCs, most of which are available for less than $1,000 or bumping your budget a bit to reach the best gaming laptops under $1,500.

If you're searching for a budget-friendly laptop for school, work, or casual use, one of these three alternatives could be the best choice.

Asus Zenbook 14 OLED

The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED has a lot going for it, including fantastic battery life, a great display, high-quality audio, and solid overall performance. Depending on the configuration you want, you can find it for less than $100 more than the HP Omnibook 5 Laptop AI or potentially even less.

While the display could be a bit brighter, it was significantly more vibrant than the Omnibook's, with a score of 79.8% on the DCI-P3 color gamut test. It also scored significantly higher in overall performance, with a score of 12,707 on the Geekbench 6 test. Additionally, the ZenBook boasts an impressive 16 hours of battery life, more than enough to last a full day.

Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus

Chromebooks tend to be affordable laptops priced under $1,000, and the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus is no exception. It delivers some great bang for your buck at well under $800 and makes a great pick for students or casual users, especially if display quality is your top concern.

An AMOLED display is not a common feature on Chromebooks or budget laptops in general, meaning the Galaxy Chromebook Plus is a steal for budget-conscious users who want a great display. It scored 108.5% on the DCI-P3 color gamut test, which is fantastic, especially considering the price. It's also surprisingly lightweight for a 15.6-inch laptop at just 2.45 pounds.

MacBook Air M4 (13-inch)

A MacBook might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of "budget laptops," but they can be surprisingly affordable, especially if you keep your eye out for Prime Day MacBook deals and other big sales.

The MacBook Air M4 comes in barely under $1,000, but often goes on sale for hundreds $899 or less. It can be a fantastic value if you can find one on sale, even if you opt for a model with the base 256GB of storage, which is sufficient for most users. The M4 MacBook Air boasts phenomenal performance, top-tier battery life, a solid display, and a webcam that's drastically better than what most other laptops include.

It's even worth considering the M3 MacBook Air from last year, which can still be found for around $800 or less on sale.

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The Chromebook Plus 14 is also the only model in its class with two exclusive on-device Gemini AI features: Smart Grouping, which suggests how to organize tabs and files based on active tasks, and on-device image editing in the Gallery app, including background removal and sticker creation. These features run entirely on the laptop's dedicated MediaTek NPU 890, enabling full AI functionality without relying on cloud processing.

Built for speed and silence

The Chromebook Plus 14 debuts with a 14-inch 2K OLED display rated for 100% DCI-P3 coverage, flanked by quad speakers tuned with Dolby Atmos. The chassis weighs just 2.58 pounds and uses an all-aluminum design with a fanless architecture and an optional fingerprint reader for secure login. Battery life is rated at up to 17 hours, with support for 65W USB-C charging.

Under the hood, it runs on up to 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of internal storage, with support for dual 4K displays via USB-C. Wireless connectivity includes Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.

The processor, a MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910, includes a custom Immortalis-G925 GPU and a built-in MediaTek NPU 890, delivering 50 trillion operations per second of AI acceleration. That’s more than enough for the suite of Gemini features preloaded on ChromeOS.

AI without the cloud

The big story here isn’t hardware but rather the laptop’s AI capabilities. ChromeOS now supports Gemini AI tasks on-device, and Lenovo’s model is the first to unlock every feature. That includes new functions like Select to Search via Lens, which allows users to take a screenshot and search Google based on the on-screen images or text. Text captured in this way can also be imported into Google Calendar or Workspace apps, such as documents and spreadsheets.

Other new Gemini features include a smart grouping tool that can organize your current tabs and documents based on what you’re working on, and image editing that’s built into the Gallery app for tasks like image background removal.

These new Gemini AI functions are handled on-device thanks to local inference, with some, such as image editing, not requiring an Internet connection. They’re also exclusive to Lenovo’s new Chromebook Plus 14 laptop, which launches today, June 23rd, alongside a suite of new Google tools.

Built for the future of ChromeOS

Lenovo is also offering the Chromebook Plus 14 in Chrome Enterprise Upgrade and Chrome Education Upgrade configurations. These SKUs are managed through the Google Admin console, enabling mass deployment, data controls, remote access management, and app provisioning. The company says the new model is aimed at institutions looking to roll out smart, low-maintenance workstations at scale.

The launch aligns with Google’s wider push to redefine what a Chromebook can be, with Chromebook Plus guaranteeing a minimum hardware spec and AI feature support. Lenovo’s model simply goes further by being the first to ship with the local Gemini stack fully functional.

All this echoes similar moves from Microsoft with its Copilot+ PC initiative, though its machine enters the market at a much lower price point. Where Windows Copilot+ devices begin around $999 and require cloud fallback for certain tasks, Lenovo’s Chromebook aims to do the same work without the same price or dependency.

Closing the gap with Copilot+ PCs

The timing of this release is notable as it's only been a year since Microsoft Copilot+ PCs debuted with Snapdragon X Elite chips and 45+ TOPS NPUs, but most are still over $999, and still rely on the cloud for advanced tasks.

Lenovo’s machine delivers comparable AI workflows for hundreds less, inside a lighter chassis with longer battery life and fewer moving parts. While it can’t match the raw multicore CPU performance of Qualcomm or Intel chips, the addition of local AI support makes this the first ChromeOS device to go head-to-head with Windows on AI productivity.

The Chromebook Plus 14 is available now, with two configurations: $649 for the 12GB RAM model, and $749 for the 16GB RAM version. Both include one year of the Google One AI Pro plan, valued at $240.

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However, you don't necessarily have to wait for Prime Day — it's never too early to save. There are plenty of Prime Day-worthy discounts on Chromebooks made by Acer, Asus, HP, and Lenovo available now.

I'm seeing considerable discounts on Chromebooks for every budget at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart ahead of their upcoming Prime Day-rivaling sales.

Whether you want to beat the back-to-school rush and shop early or need a budget-friendly laptop for everyday use, I found seven Chromebook deals worth your while.

Browse today's best early Prime Day Chromebook deals at Amazon and its competitors below.

Looking for summer savings on something else? Visit our human-curated Amazon Prime Day 2025 early deals roundup for today's top deals on essential tech.

Early Prime Day Chromebook deals — Quick links

• HP Chromebook x360: was $429 now $279 at Walmart
• HP Chromebook 15: was $449 now $199 at Best Buy
• Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 5 Chromebook: was $499 now $299 at Best Buy
• Asus Chromebook Flip CX5: was $599 now $349 at Best Buy
• Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714: was $699 now $579 at Best Buy
• Amazon: Early Prime Day Chromebook deals from $189
• Best Buy: Early Prime Day Chromebook deals from $129
• Walmart: Early Chromebook deals from $159

Early Prime Day Chromebook deals 

So far, we know that Nova Lake will appear on Intel's S-series desktop chipsets, with rumors of laptop variants (for the H and U suffix variants) circulating as well.

But we now have confirmation that Intel's Nova Lake will also get an HX high-performance laptop variant, which is ideal for gaming laptops and mobile workstations.

And it's all thanks to shipping manifests.

On Sunday, a well-known tech leaker, x86 is dead&back, posted shipping manifests from May 23, 2025, that indicate Nova Lake's HX variant is in testing for high-performance laptops, utilizing the same motherboard socket as 2025's upcoming Panther Lake chipset.

Nova Lake -HX just makes sense

This shipping manifest leak is the first we've heard of a Nova Lake -HX series, but if anything, it's the most logical laptop variant for the architecture.

Intel frequently releases a variant of its desktop architecture for high-performance laptops.

It's not always the case, but more often than not, the desktop architecture will have a laptop version, at least for gaming laptops and mobile workstations that require the increased power of a desktop-class CPU.

While this is news, it's not exactly a surprise.

But it is welcome regardless. According to the latest rumors, Intel's Nova Lake architecture features up to 52 cores and will include a dual-architecture GPU tile, which may render discrete graphics obsolete.

Nova Lake -H is still rumored

Some years, Intel offers an -H suffix variant of its desktop architecture for high-performance, light, and thin laptops. And we also get a -U suffix version for more power-efficient laptop models.

Other years, the -H and -U suffix chips are running a laptop-specific architecture, like in the Meteor Lake and Panther Lake generations.

The 2024-2025 Intel generation was a bit unusual as we also threw in the Lunar Lake 200V series chips, but that appears to be a situation Intel won't be keeping up in the future.

There have been rumors of -H and -U versions of Intel Nova Lake, although those mobile variants may ultimately be served by a mobile architecture instead.

What this means for Intel's upcoming chip roadmap

Intel is still on track to release the Panther Lake and Arrow Lake Refresh generations starting this fall, with laptops likely to hit the shelves in early 2026. However, some early laptops may arrive in late fall.

Intel's 2026 generation is also still on track, with Nova Lake expected to release on desktop in fall 2026, with the rumored laptop variants likely launching in early 2027.

Intel's Panther Lake and Wildcat Lake chips are expected to be the first using its 18A fabrication process, with Nova Lake bringing the 18A process to desktops in 2026.

While we still don't have a concrete idea of Intel's 18A performance, new details indicate Intel's 18A is 25% faster than Intel 3. Unfortunately, the Intel 3 node is primarily used for Xeon data-center CPUs, so it isn't the best baseline for consumer performance.

However, it is a positive sign that Team Blue is continuing to make progress in power and performance.

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The Lenovo Legion Go 2 made its debut at CES 2025 earlier this year, but updates have been sparse since then. That might not be the case for much longer, though, since a potential release date leaked over the weekend.

Here's a look at when the Lenovo Legion Go 2 is expected to launch, along with everything we know about it so far.

See also: Best gaming laptop deals in June 2025

Did this leak just reveal the release date for the Lenovo Legion Go 2?

Last week, a screenshot allegedly from Lenovo Latin America customer support was posted on Reddit, seemingly revealing the release date for the Lenovo Legion Go 2. The post suggests that the handheld gaming PC will be launched in September in Mexico.

Although this may be coming from an official Lenovo account, that doesn't necessarily mean it's the official release date or the global release date. At the time of writing, there has been no word from Lenovo about when the Legion Go 2 will launch or its price. Even if this release window is legitimate, it might differ from the release date for other regions.

With that said, there are a couple of reasons why this September release window could be accurate. For starters, the original Legion Go was officially unveiled on September 1, 2023, and launched almost two months later on October 31, 2023. So, it would make sense for Lenovo to announce the full details about the Legion Go 2 exactly two years later in September 2025.

Additionally, a September release date (or even an announcement in September with a proper launch in October or November) would put the Legion Go 2 ahead of the recently announced ROG Xbox Ally X. This rival handheld will likely be the Legion Go 2's biggest competitor. It's set to launch sometime in the holiday season at the end of 2025, which is roughly November through January.

A September launch for the Legion Go 2 could help Lenovo get an early edge over the Xbox Ally X.

Everything we know about the Lenovo Legion Go 2 so far

Even if the rumored September release window for the Lenovo Legion Go 2 doesn't pan out, there are a few other key details we know about it already, and there's a lot to be excited about.

For starters, the Legion Go 2 is expected to feature the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme, the sequel to the Z1 Extreme that powered the original Legion Go. Even a couple of years after its launch, the original Legion Go has held up surprisingly well compared to the other top handheld gaming PCs, which gives us a hint about the performance and longevity we can expect from the Z2 Extreme.

While we won't be able to run our in-depth benchmark tests on the Z2 Extreme until we get the Legion Go 2 to our test lab, a prototype of the handheld impressed us at CES 2025 with smooth demo performance.

featuresThe Legion Go 2 also sports an updated design, while retaining the Switch-style detachable controllers from the original. This feature is somewhat uncommon on handheld gaming PCs, but it can be convenient for people who get tired of holding the entire console in handheld mode.

Perhaps the most important design update is the display. The Legion Go 2 will have the same display size as the original (8.8 inches), but now with an OLED panel, which is a huge step up. The original Legion Go is currently Laptop Mag's pick for best display on a handheld gaming PC, but the OLED display on the Legion Go 2 will make it a strong contender to take that spot.

Those details are an exciting start, but unfortunately, there are still some blanks Lenovo hasn't filled in yet, like the price and official release date. A September release window seems like a reasonable possibility, but it isn't confirmed yet. The price is also difficult to predict considering the ever-shifting state of Trump administration trade tariffs, but the Legion Go 2 could easily cost more than the original, which would put it somewhere above $699.

We're keeping a close eye out for more details on the Legion Go 2, so stay tuned for more updates.

More from Laptop Mag

• Lenovo's Legion Go 2 hands-on: This prototype already feels like a worthy successor to the original
• Xbox Ally X aims high, but there’s one thing holding it back
• The next-gen Xbox console may as well be a gaming PC, except for 1 key difference

This polished 16-inch laptop includes all the basic specs you need for casual use, studying, or light work tasks. If you're eyeing a budget-friendly 16-inch laptop, you might stop there, but we need to dig deeper to see if it's truly a good value.

As much as I wanted to like the HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI, it has one major drawback and a couple of disappointments that killed some of my enthusiasm. Compared to the best laptops, it's just not great bang for your buck at or near its full price. However, it is frequently available at a deep discount, which changes the equation if you have a hard cap on your laptop budget. So here's what you should know before buying.

HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI: Specs and benchmarks

HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI: Price and configurations

The HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI pricing is messier than it should be. If you look at HP's website, you'll find it in several configurations, starting at $1,079. You should never expect to pay that price for this laptop, though.

We reviewed the base configuration, which includes an AMD Ryzen AI 5 340 processor, AMD Radeon 840M integrated graphics, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 16-inch WUXGA (1920 x 1200) IPS display. As I write this review, shortly after the laptop's release, this model is under $700 at Best Buy and under $600 directly through HP. This makes it a very different value discussion than the full retail price listed by HP.

A handful of upgrades are available for an extra cost, including an AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 processor, 24 or 32GB of RAM, 1TB of storage, and a touch display. You can also upgrade from Windows 11 Home to Windows 11 Pro for an additional $70.

The maxed-out configuration is listed at a full price of $1,608 and includes an AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 Processor, AMD Radeon 860M integrated graphics, 32GB of RAM, 1TB of storage, a 16-inch WUXGA (1920 x 1200) IPS touchscreen display, and Windows 11 Pro. Once again, don't pay that price. It was available for $1,118 at HP at the time of writing.

When on sale for under $600, the base configuration is a reasonable value; however, you'll still want to consider the trade-offs that I'll address in the rest of my review. I would also recommend configurations with the upgraded AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 processor, which will offer significantly stronger performance. However, even then, you may want to take a look at some rival laptops that are just a bit more expensive, including a few I'll compare below.

HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI: Design

HP didn't break the mold with the OmniBook 5 Laptop AI, but that's not necessarily bad. It features a simple, straightforward design with a plain aluminum chassis and a basic silver HP logo on the lid. It's not flashy but will blend in at the office or school.

Inside, the OmniBook 5 has a full-size keyboard, which is perfect for productivity users. Unfortunately, it's not perfect. The power button is in possibly the worst place possible: seamlessly blended into the rest of the keyboard.

It's not even isolated in a corner of the keyboard; it's sandwiched between the print screen and delete keys. It's also the same size and texture, making it very easy to press the power button by accident. There's so much room on this keyboard deck that I would've preferred HP to isolate the power button away from the main keyboard.

Since this is a 16-inch laptop, it's on the larger side, measuring 14.08 x 10.03 x 0.73 inches and weighing 3.97 pounds. To put that into context, here's how a few similar laptops compare:

• Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1 16 (2025): 14.21 x 10.12 x 0.67 inches, 3.96 pounds
• Asus Vivobook 16 Flip (TP3607): 13.98 x 9.62 x 0.69 inches, 3.9 pounds
• MacBook Air M4 (15-inch): 13.4 x 9.35 x 0.45 inches, 3.3 pounds

HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI: Ports

The HP OmniBook 5 is surprisingly sparse on ports for a 16-inch laptop, but it includes the basics most people need:

• 3 x Thunderbolt 5 ports
• 1 x HDMI 2.1 port
• 1 x headphone/mic jack
• 1 x MagSafe 3 charging port
• 1 x SDXC card reader

One of the USB Type-C ports has to double as a charging port, so if you have many accessories to connect to your laptop, it may be a good idea to get one of the best laptop docking stations or a USB Type-C hub to connect to the HP OmniBook 5.

HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI: Battery life

The HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI isn't challenging the laptops with the best battery life, but it lasted 11 hours and 30 minutes in our battery life test, which is enough for a full workday. However, if battery life is a primary concern for you, this is a case where spending a little more might make sense.

For instance, the Asus Vivobook 16 Flip lasted over two hours longer, and the MacBook Air M4 (15-inch) lasted nearly four hours longer. Even the Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1 16, which underperformed in other areas, has a longer battery life than the OmniBook.

HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI: Display

If you're considering getting the HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI because of its roomy 16-inch display, think again. The 16-inch WUXGA (1920 x 1200) IPS display is spacious, but the quality leaves much to be desired.

I noticed this immediately when I opened the OmniBook. Webpages and even my wallpaper looked less colorful than on other laptops or my desktop monitor. Everything is dull and washed out. Watching an episode of Survivor on the OmniBook was less enjoyable since Fiji lacked its usual tropical vibrancy on this display.

Considering my hands-on experience with the OmniBook's display, I wasn't surprised when I saw its display test scores. They're shockingly low: the OmniBook covered 61.8% of the sRGB color gamut and a mere 44% of the DCI-P3 color gamut.

That's on par with the equally disappointing Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1 16-inch display. Both laptops are far behind the competition in terms of display quality. The Vivobook and the MacBook Air scored nearly twice as high on our color gamut tests, and the MacBook Air also has a dramatically brighter display.

If you're looking for top display quality, I'd advise you to steer clear of the OmniBook and look at the Asus Vivobook 16 Flip or the MacBook Air M4 instead.

HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI: Keyboard and touchpad

One of the best features of the HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI is its full-size keyboard. This isn't uncommon for a 16-inch laptop, but it's still worth mentioning since the inclusion of a number pad can be a huge plus for productivity users.

The keys on this keyboard have a nice, muted sound, but I felt like they had a slightly higher actuation force than most other laptop keyboards I've used. Depending on how you type, that might be preferable for some people, but I prefer a lower actuation force.

On the Monkeytype typing test, I scored 96 words per minute with 98% accuracy on the OmniBook, which is average for me. Still, a far cry from my personal record of 108 words per minute with 98% accuracy, scored on the HP EliteBook Ultra G1i AI.

The OmniBook's touchpad is just as roomy as the keyboard. The surface is smooth and responsive, and clicking offers just the right amount of travel and feedback. I was happy with it, but you can always connect one of the best wireless mice if it's not to your liking.

HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI: Audio

The HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI has dual bottom-firing speakers on the left and right edges of the keyboard deck. They get the job done and sound decent, but audiophiles will prefer headphones.

"Overcome" by Nothing But Thieves sounded fine with these speakers, with a surprising amount of depth and relatively good mids, but weak, muddy bass made for an underwhelming listening experience. Casual listeners won't mind these speakers, especially since they get pretty loud (I never needed to turn the volume up past 50), but the sound quality could be better.

HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI: Performance and heat

The AMD Ryzen AI 5 340 powers the HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI. It's fine for casual users and powerful enough for basic web browsing. The OmniBook's processor is more than enough if you're looking for a laptop for tasks like checking your email or doing homework.

However, if you're searching for a business or productivity laptop or want to use your laptop for more resource-intensive tasks like video editing, this isn't the laptop for you. It scored marginally on the Geekbench 6 overall performance benchmark at just 10,223, which is notably lower than similar laptops.

While the Asus Vivobook 16 Flip and Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1 16 didn't perform drastically better in this test, the MacBook Air M4 crushed the OmniBook. So, if performance is your top priority, the MacBook is a better choice.

It's also worth noting that the OmniBook had an unusually high peak temperature in our thermal tests, reaching a maximum of 103 degrees. That's nearly ten degrees above our 95-degree comfort threshold and noticeably higher than rival laptops peaked at. The overheating potential adds another reason for power users to think twice before going with the OmniBook.

HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI: Gaming and graphics

The HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI relies on AMD Radeon 840M integrated graphics for all of its graphics processing, meaning this is by no means a gaming laptop.

AMD's integrated graphics have impressed us in the past, but unfortunately, the AMD chip in this laptop's base configuration falls short of the graphics greatness its more powerful siblings have achieved. If you're set on getting this laptop, I'd recommend upgrading to the AMD Ryzen 7 350 processor, which offers a bit more graphics performance with its AMD Radeon 860M integrated graphics.

I mention that because our review configuration of the OmniBook 5 Laptop AI offered pretty lackluster graphics performance. It averaged just 32.5 frames per second in Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm and scored only 4,627 in the 3DMark Fire Strike graphics benchmark.

To put that into context, the Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1 16 scored double that in the 3DMark Fire Strike test, and the Asus Vivobook 16 Flip wasn't far behind. Both laptops, along with the MacBook Air M4, scored significantly higher than the OmniBook in Civilization VI.

The OmniBook's graphics scores effectively mean that it can only run the lightest casual games. The dull display doesn't help with the gaming experience on this laptop, either. Not only will you get low frame rates, but the graphics will look more washed out than they would on a better display. So, if you're mainly looking for a device for gaming at this price point, I strongly suggest you consider one of the best cheap gaming laptops instead, or even a handheld gaming PC.

HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI: AI features

As its name suggests, the HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI has some AI features. It's a Copilot+ PC, so it ships with Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant pre-installed and has a dedicated Copilot key on the keyboard. You can use that to launch the Copilot app quickly, which includes basic generative AI features like text and image generation.

If you're not a fan of Copilot, the HP AI Companion app includes similar features. It's also a bit more practical, offering tools that use AI to analyze your files or optimize your PC's performance. It can also perform basic generative AI tasks, like summarizing or generating text content.

The OmniBook also includes a preview version of Microsoft Recall, an AI feature that periodically takes screenshots to "remember" all of your laptop activity in case you want to find something later.

I'd caution against using this feature due to its myriad privacy concerns. You can easily disable it through your settings by going to "Privacy & security" then "Recall & snapshots." In this menu, simply turn off "Save snapshots." Recall will also be disabled by default if you opt not to set up facial recognition sign-in through Windows Hello.

HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI: Webcam

The built-in webcam on the HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI isn't the best I've ever tested, but it's not the worst. It's a 1080p FHD IR camera, which means you can use it for facial recognition sign-in. The video quality is acceptable for Zoom meetings, but looks dull and grainy. It's clear enough that everyone will be able to see you fine, though.

The built-in mic isn't bad, either. It captured my voice clearly and did a good job of cutting out background noise from my air conditioner. I didn't notice it cutting out or spiking, either. Overall, it does the job for the introductory daily video or audio calls most people need the built-in mic for.

HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI: Software and warranty

The HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI includes Windows 11 Home, although you can upgrade to Windows 11 Pro for an extra cost. It comes with the standard suite of Microsoft apps pre-installed, including the Microsoft Store, Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Copilot, and the Xbox app. It also has a few HP apps, including HP AI Companion, the OMEN Gaming Hub, and HP Support Assistant, where you can find troubleshooting tips and info on your device.

HP provides a 1-year limited hardware warranty for the OmniBook, which you can extend through HP Care Pack.

Bottom line

The HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI has a few strengths, such as its touchpad and keyboard, but these are not enough to outweigh its flaws, including underwhelming performance and a dismal display. The display is disappointing, even at its often discounted price, while the performance and battery life are easier to take for under $700.

The OmniBook is fine for basic tasks like web browsing, but if that's all you need a laptop for, you may consider going even cheaper with one of the best laptops under $500! On the other end of the spectrum, if you're looking for a high-performance laptop for work or creative tasks, you will be much better off with the MacBook Air M4 or one of the best 16-inch laptops.

As much as I want to like every laptop I review, there are simply too many drawbacks to recommend the HP OmniBook 5 Laptop AI for most users unless it is deeply discounted.

As always, you can expect to see some unprecedented Prime Day MacBook deals. And not just on Amazon. There will be Prime Day alternative deals on MacBooks at Apple, Best Buy, Walmart, and B&H. During Prime last year, I saw discounts of up to $700 on MacBooks.

Expect this year's Prime Day MacBook deals to be on par.

If you want to buy a macOS laptop at a student discount price or better, Prime Day is one of the best sales to shop. This is when we typically see Black Friday-like discounts on MacBooks, just in time for back-to-school season.

Apple is leading the charge with a limited-time offer that's hard to refuse. If you are a student or faculty member, from now through September 30, you can get free AirPods, a Magic Mouse, a Magic Keyboard, or a Magic Trackpad when you buy a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro at the Apple Education Store.

Prices start from $899 for the 5-star rated MacBook Air M4. It's the Editor's Choice best-value MacBook for most people.

The cheapest MacBook deal you can get now is the 2020 MacBook Air M1 for $649 ($350 off) at Walmart. While we don't typically recommend products over 2 years old, it's still a great value if you want a sub-$700 laptop.

Explore more summer savings with Amazon's early Prime Day deals and browse my recommended early Prime Day MacBook deals below.

Best early Prime Day 2025 MacBook deals — Quick links

• Apple 35W Dual USB-C Port Power Adapter: was $59 now $39 at Amazon
• Apple Thunderbolt 4 Pro Cable: was $129 now $76 at Amazon
• Apple M3 MacBook Air 13: was $1,099 now $799 at B&H
• Apple M4 MacBook Air 13: was $999 now $849 at Amazon
• Apple M4 MacBook Air 15: was $1,199 now $1,035 at PC Richard
• Apple M3 Pro MacBook Pro 14: was $1,999 now $1,399 at Best Buy
• Apple M4 MacBook Pro 14: was $1,599 now $1,426 at PC Richard

Best early Prime Day 2025 MacBook deals

Early Prime Day 2025 Macbook deals at retailers

• Amazon: Early Prime Day MacBook deals from $849
• Best Buy: Early Prime Day MacBook deals from $799
• PC Richard: Early Prime Day Macbook deals from $849
• B&H: Early Prime Day MacBook deals from $799

In an effort to push the Edge web browser and its Bing search engine to Google's userbase (with all the tact of a used-car salesman), Microsoft has injected pop-up ads, tricked users with a fake Google Search page, flagged other browsers as errors that need to be fixed, and potentially broken a Chrome feature by blocking it through a system update. Oopsie.

However, after years of "coincidental" issues, "unintended" behaviors, and "accidental" bugs, Microsoft may have found a way to at least cut off the youth from being indoctrinated by Google's superior search and browser... By accidentally flagging it as unsuitable using Windows 11's Family Safety feature.

Too hot for Windows: Google Chrome no longer safe for small eyes on Microsoft's OS

In yet another unlikely turn of events that seems to benefit Microsoft's Edge browser and penalize Google's Chrome, Windows 11's Family Safety feature has been effectively blocking the world's most popular browser from opening for the better part of a month under the guise of a parental control measure.

The issue was first reported on June 3 to the r/Chrome subreddit by user Witty-Discount-2906, who claimed that following a crash, Chrome now "Just flashes quickly, unable to open with no error message."

Some time later, another Redditor suggested it was related to Windows' Parental Controls, stating, "I've had 9 students come see the IT Desk in the last hour saying Chrome won't open."

The issue was seemingly confirmed by Chrome support manager Ellen T, replying to a related post to the Google Chrome Help Community message board, stated: "Our team has investigated these reports and determined the cause of this behavior. For some users, Chrome is unable to run when Microsoft Family Safety is enabled."

According to a follow-up post, Microsoft advises that parents (or IT admins in the case of our previous Reddit sleuth) seeking a solution can use the Family Safety web portal or mobile app to select their Child's (or user's) account and choose to disable "Filter inappropriate websites" under the Edge tab.

However, while this will open up access to Chrome once more, it'll also open up access to all of the parts of the internet most parental controls seek to keep restricted.

Alternatively, admins or parents can navigate to Windows > Apps & Games, and unblock Chrome from there.

What's next

If this is a bug, it's an incredible on-brand one, and a genuine blessing. Typically, Microsoft would have to set aside engineers for weeks to plot and scheme ways to attempt to topple Chrome's popularity. This one would then have fallen into its lap for free.

According to Chromium's bug tracker, the problem persists for some, though reports have slowed. One team member shares: "We've not heard anything from MSFT about a fix being rolled out. They have provided guidance to users who contact them about how to get Chrome working again, but I wouldn't think that would have a large effect."

Narrowing down potentially affected users, the Chromium team member shares: "The set of Chrome users who are affected are those who turned on Web Safety under the Edge tab of the parental controls between roughly Nov 2024 and June 3rd."

Whether this is a fault with Chromium or with Windows 11's Family Safety feature remains to be seen. However, Microsoft will likely not see a situation that causes Edge to appear more attractive than the competition as a high-priority issue. So while we wait for a potential fix, I wouldn't blame Microsoft for dragging its heels.

More from Laptop Mag

• Google's latest Gemini 2.5 models are its biggest response to ChatGPT yet — and they're already live
• My favorite AI tool just hit Google Search, and it's actually useful — try it yourself
• Banking Trojans have hit millions of Android devices in 2025 — here are the biggest threats and how to protect yourself

If your raggedy rig just isn't cutting it anymore, Prime Day is one of the best times of year to buy a gaming laptop. Amazon and its competitors will be slashing prices so low that it'll be like Black Friday in July.

Browse: Early Prime Day gaming laptop deals from $899

During this year's first-ever 96-hour Prime Day sale, expect unprecedented markdowns on RTX 50 laptops made by Acer, Alienware, Asus, Dell, Gigabyte, HP, MSI, and Razer. I predict especially major price slashes on previous-gen RTX 40-series laptops as retailers will be purging the last bits of inventory on last year's systems.

Whether you're a budding, competitive, or casual gamer, if you want to buy a gaming-specific notebook, you'll want to see what July's Prime Day gaming laptop deals have to offer.

As a reminder, Prime Day gaming laptop deals are scheduled to go live on July 8. However, I scanned Amazon's deals today and found plenty of early Prime Day-worthy gaming deals available now. See my recommended discounts below to save up to $400 on a new gamer laptop.

Be sure to bookmark our Amazon Prime Day 2025 hub for the best summer savings on mobile devices, gaming gear, and back-to-school essentials.

Best early Prime Day gaming laptop deals — Quick links

• Shop: Early Prime Day deals at Amazon
• Gigabyte G6X 16 RTX 4060 Gaming Laptop: was $1,349 now $949 at Amazon
• Acer Nitro 14 RTX 4060 Gaming Laptop: was $1,099 now $999 at Amazon
• Acer Nitro V RTX 4060 Gaming Laptop: was $1,129 now $1,019 at Amazon
• MSI Katana 15 RTX 4070 Gaming Laptop: was $1,399 now $1,289 at Amazon
• Asus TUF Gaming A16 RTX 4060 Gaming Laptop: was $1,599 now $1,299 at Amazon
• Asus ROG Strix G16 RTX 4070 Gaming Laptop: was $2,299 now $1,999 at Amazon
• MSI Vector A18 RTX 5080 Gaming Laptop: was $2,845 now $2,699 at Amazon

Best early Prime Day gaming laptop deals 

It's officially June, so you wouldn't typically think that it's the best time to shop. We've left the recent Memorial Day sales in the rearview mirror, and as we ride into the summer, we're still yet to bump into Prime Day deals (although there are already some Prime Day-worthy deals to check out, yay!).

Still, unexpected as they may be, Dell laptop deals are very much here, and the best deal gives you savings of up to $900.

Fine, let's start out big. The Alienware x16 R2 gaming laptop is now $2,799, down from $3,699, at Dell. With $900 in savings and Nvidia's best last-gen graphics card, the RTX 4090, this is one gaming beast that's certainly worth buying. For more inspiration, don't forget to check out our ranking of the best gaming laptops.

Gamers, breathe, I do have a cheaper option for you: the Dell G16 is now $1,381 (down from $1,469) if you apply a coupon at Amazon.

If you want a laptop that does laptop things and doesn't need to be used for (too much) gaming, the Dell Precision 15 5550 was $899, but it's now $460 at Walmart. Dell also has the Inspiron 16 2-in-1 on sale right now, at a major discount, too. It's down to $899 (previously $1,349), and who doesn't love a convertible laptop?

Whether you're eyeing something for gaming, something for work, or something that can do both, this June, Dell laptop deals are shockingly generous. Scroll on down to check out my favorite picks!

The best Dell laptop deals — Quick links

• Dell Precision 15 5550 15-inch: was $899, now $460 at Walmart
• Dell Inspiron i3535 15-inch: was $799, now $699 at Best Buy
• Dell Latitude 3550 15.6-inch: was $999, now $849 at Amazon
• Dell Inspiron 16 2-in-1: was $1,349, now $899 at Dell
• Dell G16 7630 16-inch gaming laptop: was $1,469, now $1,381 at Amazon w/ coupon
• Dell Alienware x16 R2 16-inch: was $3,699, now $2,799 at Dell
• Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 18-inch: was $3,199, now $2,999 at Dell

The best Dell laptops under $1,000

The best Dell laptop deals over $1,000

Dell naming scheme: Which Dell laptop is best for you?

Choosing the right Dell laptop gets a little confusing, but knowing the company's naming scheme lets you differentiate between the best of the best and the mainstream laptops.

But before we get down to the wild and wonderful world of Dell naming conventions, let's talk about series numbers and names.

It's worth noting that Dell recently updated its naming scheme for upcoming products. You'll now see three tiers of products: Dell, Dell Plus, and Dell Premium for consumer products, and Dell Pro, Dell Pro Plus, Dell Pro Premium, Dell Pro Max Plus, and Dell Pro Max Premium for laptops for professionals.

The older names still apply to previous laptops, though, which is why we'll cover them here, but they're no longer relevant to products released in 2025 and beyond.

If you're buying an older Dell, you'll find that some — like the Inspiron and Latitude — are also broken down by series numbers such as 3000, 5000 and 7000. Systems in the 3000 series are typically entry-level devices with lower-end components and a price tag to match, while 5000-series laptops cover mid-tier configurations.

Consumers who are in search of a high-end system will want to check out notebooks with 7000-series stamps, since they typically offer premium build materials as well as top-of-the-line specs.

With that out of the way, let's break it down into different product lines.

Dell XPS (Dell Premium)

The crème de la crème of Dell's consumer laptops, the XPS line (now known as Dell Premium) is all about high-end looks, with specs and pricing to match.

Targeting power users and creative professionals alike, the XPS is Dell's answer to Apple's MacBook Pro, offering high-resolution displays and speedy performance capabilities that are perfect for video or photo editing (check out our tips for getting the most usage and value out of your XPS 13).

Dell Inspiron and Inspiron Plus (Dell and Dell Plus)

Inspirons are the wide-ranging brand for Dell's general-purpose consumer laptops, and they come in a variety of sizes, designs and price ranges. They are now known as either Dell Plus (for Inspiron Plus) or Dell (for Inspiron).

These laptops are definitely not made for business, nor do they have the premium features of the pricier XPS line.

Dell Latitude (Dell Pro, Pro Plus, Pro Premium)

A true business line, Latitudes are available in different designs, sizes, and price ranges. You can tell them apart from their consumer-centric siblings by the "Dell Pro" name.

They are built to withstand the rigors of work, and most have some degree of rugged certification and a number of security features that include TPM, vPro, and optional fingerprint readers. As with the Inspiron line, Latitudes are divided up into 3000, 5000, and 7000 series models, with the 3000 series being the cheapest and the 7000 offering the most premium designs.

Dell Precision (Dell Pro Max, Max Plus, Pro Max Premium)

Outfitted with high-end components, these pricey mobile workstations can handle the rigors of mechanical design, engineering simulations or animations without breaking a sweat. Dell Precision has been rebranded to Dell Pro Max.

Dell Alienware

Featuring flashy customizable light shows, powerful specs and gorgeous displays, Alienware laptops are the gold standard for gaming. These systems are available in three main sizes that can be configured to your specific gaming needs.

Typically, this laptop would set you back $2499, so that's $301 in savings. By comparison, it undercuts Amazon's current price for this same configuration by $31. I shop sales for a living and this is one of the best MacBook deals I've seen all year.

If you have room to splurge, PC Richard offers the MacBook Pro with M4 Max for $3,483 ($516 off). Again, beating Amazon's deal price by $116.

Browse: PC Richard's entire sale

In our MacBook Pro 16 with M4 Pro review, we rated it 4.5 out of 5 stars and gave it our coveted Editor's Choice Award.

During our tests, the M4 Pro-powered MacBook Pro surpassed our expectations in every way. For one, we were impressed by its unmatched performance, bright, breathtaking display, excellent webcam, and killer speakers. In our Laptop Mag Battery Test which entails ongoing surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness, the Pro Macbook endured roughly 21 hours.

Finally, the MacBook Pro's M4 Pro processor crushed performance tests and scoffed at everything we threw at it. It landed an astonishing score of 22,822 in Geekbench 6.3's overall system performance test. That's twice as much as the premium laptop average.

If you're looking for a laptop that can keep up with your workload, the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M4 Pro is the best high-performance laptop you can get. With this companion, you'll breeze through demanding graphics tasks like video editing, touching up RAW images, graphics designing, 3D rendering, and more.

As with all Apple deals, this one likely won't last too long, so act now to lock in this stellar price.

Best M4 Pro MacBook Pro 16 deal

This time around, though the shiny new Start menu is simplified and looks much cleaner for the most part, it drags along a new limitation that’s already rubbing people the wrong way.

A more organized Start menu, with one big catch

As spotted by Windows Latest, the new Start menu features a new Category view that groups your applications into, well, different categories. These categories include: Utilities and tools, Productivity, Games, Social, Entertainment, Creativity, Information & Reading, and Other.

Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? In fact, it sounds like it might even make finding the right app quicker. But here’s where things start to fall apart. You can’t create your own categories beyond the existing ones or even decide where each application goes.

Instead, Windows automatically sorts your applications for you based on a predefined system, and you don’t get a say.

Windows Latest mentions that Microsoft doesn’t use AI or cloud-based analysis to sort your apps into one of the categories. Instead, everything is handled locally on your computer using an on-device JSON file.

This is a great thing privacy-wise, as it means your list of installed apps isn’t being sent to Microsoft’s servers. But it also means there’s little flexibility or intelligence in how the sorting process works.

In the case that Windows 11 can’t determine exactly which category an application should go into, it’ll add it to the “Other” category instead. Unfortunately, it doesn’t end here.

Not all the categories we’ve listed above need to show for you. According to Microsoft, a category only appears if the system detects at least three apps that belong to it. So if you’ve got exactly three apps in, say, the Creativity category and uninstall just one, the entire category disappears.

Of course, this means the remaining apps get automatically dumped into the “Other” category, even if they clearly don’t belong there. Microsoft also notes that apps within each category are arranged based on usage. So if you’ve got Paint in the Creativity category and it’s the app you use most often, it’ll appear at the top of that category.

Thankfully, the rest of the Start menu is what people wanted all along

To be fair, though, there’s likely a good chance that Microsoft will direct its efforts toward improving the “Categories” view and might eventually let users create their own categories and move apps around.

Other than this one frustration (which is admittedly a big one), the redesigned Windows 11 Start menu is certainly a step in the right direction and addresses multiple complaints users have had.

It’s cleaner, makes better use of screen space, and finally ditches the cluttered two-page layout for a single scrollable view. It even lets users finally remove the “Recommended” section, which shows recent apps and files they’ve installed.

The all-new Windows 11 Start menu is currently being gradually rolled out to Windows Insiders.

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• I'm ready to gamble on this alternative gaming-focused underdog to Windows 11, are you?
• Microsoft "fixes" Windows update bug that some users considered a feature

At its core, this peripheral chimera remains a keyboard, featuring a hot-swappable 75% or 82-key ANSI layout with PBT keycaps and mysterious “Yellow” switches — accented by RGB backlighting (and side lit similarly), and including a useful rotary dial at the top right of the device.

For some, that’s enough of a product as it is. However, the Keyview 13 Touch is barely getting started, with its additional 13-inch touchscreen being the tip of a bizarrely compelling iceberg.

Keyview 13 Touch: The keyboard of Theseus

When does a keyboard stop being a keyboard and become something else entirely?

The Keyview 13 Touch takes its keyboard offering and straps so many extras on top that you’d assume Aura Displays, the company behind it, was originally looking to make laptops, but after a failed delivery of mainboards and processors said “Screw it, let’s assemble anyway.”

The result? A 4.6-pound amalgamation of keyboard, monitor, docking station, and storage that’ll make you look like a closeted laptop lover living in denial.

The 13-inch, 24:9 touchscreen features a 10-point multitouch IPS panel with a 1920x720 resolution, a 60Hz refresh rate, and a peak brightness of 300 nits. It’s also hinged, allowing it to lie flat above the keys or tilted up to 90 degrees. It even has a kickstand to gain a little bit of extra height and improve the keyboard’s ergonomics.

Micro monitors like this can be surprisingly useful, and ever since I got my hands on the Asus ZenBook Pro 14 Duo OLED a few years back, I’ve been enamored by the idea of adding a small ultra-widescreen secondary display to my setup. I just couldn’t stomach paying nearly $500 on the 14-inch, 32:9 ASUS ProArt Display at the time — so this, genuinely, appeals to me.

From there, the Keyview continues to blur the lines. It also features a built-in M.2 SSD slot for expanded storage, an SD/TF interface for storage cards, a 3.5mm twin USB 3.0 (5Gbps) ports, and two USB-C ports, one of which has 60W of Power Delivery. There’s even a small 1W speaker. For what reason, I’m unsure.

KeyView 13 Touch: Where to find it

While it might look bizarre, and it may seem overkill, the Keyview 13 Touch is one of those oddly compelling products that will have your mouse cursor hovering over the add to cart button and teetering over the thought to click.

I may even make that click myself. I’ve a soft spot for tech that’s a little odd, and the Keyview's display is something I’ve been looking to add to my setup for a while. If nothing else, it’s a conversation piece.

If you’re interested, the Keyview 13 Touch is available now for $399, 20% off its typical $499 price, from the Aura Display online store.

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It’s called the FlightSense VL53L8CP sensor, and it’s at the heart of ST’s fifth-generation HPD platform. This is no concept: The system is a turnkey solution, pre-trained with AI and ready for laptop makers to drop into next-gen models. And with ST’s track record (their older FlightSense sensors are already in over 260 models of laptops), this tech could land in devices before year’s end.

Smarter sensing through contextual AI

Unlike earlier systems from Dell, HP, or Lenovo that use webcams, ultrasound, or even radar, STMicro’s solution combines multizone Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensors capable of tracking movement up to four meters away and combines them with dedicated AI models trained on thousands of movement patterns. It doesn’t just sense movement but works to understand it.

ST’s HPD system hinges on four purpose-built AI models: Presence AI to detect whether someone is in front of the device, Head Orientation AI to determine where the user is looking, and two additional models focused on posture and hand detection. The system doesn’t just know if you’re there but whether you’re paying attention, if you’ve stepped away, or if someone is lurking behind you.

And crucially, it does all this without capturing a single image. That means no creepy camera footage, no facial recognition, and no cloud upload risks. This is a crucial privacy win at a time when AI is learning fast and loose.

HPD also doesn’t store audio, and it doesn’t need to send anything to remote servers for processing. That makes it fundamentally different from webcam-based systems like Windows Hello, which require explicit visual recognition, and from more intrusive sensing platforms that run afoul of data protection regulations.

With regulatory scrutiny mounting around how laptops and phones “watch” their users, STMicro’s decision to keep its AI local and its data anonymous reads as both ethically sound and commercially savvy.

The power savings argument

There’s also a more utilitarian angle to all this. According to ST, adaptive dimming alone can cut display energy use by over 20% on average per day.

Considering that backlighting remains one of the largest power draws in any mobile device, this kind of AI-managed optimization could meaningfully extend battery life not just in ultrabooks, but in desktops and monitors as well.

It’s a particularly timely innovation as OEMs compete to launch AI PCs with power-hungry NPUs and always-on interfaces. A smarter display system that quietly manages brightness based on attention is the kind of passive efficiency gain that users will feel without even realizing it’s happening.

No further development required

While many emerging sensor technologies tend to languish in concept stages or take years to hit production hardware, this one is different. STMicro says the system is a turnkey solution that requires no further development from OEMs. That’s a strong indicator that the integration pipeline is already underway.

Given that the company’s FlightSense platform is already embedded in more than 260 laptop models, including past partnerships with Dell, HP, and Lenovo, the leap from announcement to commercial rollout could be short.

Based on current OEM product cycles and supply chain availability, the first laptops with this fifth-generation HPD system could arrive by late 2025. But we’re just speculating.

If the AI PC trend has been defined by flashy silicon and visible performance gains, STMicro’s new presence detection platform takes a different approach. It operates invisibly. It watches without seeing. It reacts without needing to ask. And it quietly changes how we interact with machines by removing friction instead of adding features.

That may be the most compelling innovation of all… not what the tech does but rather what it no longer needs to do.

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But the home console? Not a chance.

If the Nintendo Switch 2 is anything to go by, consoles are getting more and more expensive, so I wasn't planning to budget for a next-gen Xbox.

And then Microsoft and AMD had to announce a continuation of their hardware partnership for the next generation of Xbox consoles earlier this week.

Xbox President Sarah Bond said in the announcement, "I’m thrilled to share we’ve established a strategic multi-year partnership with AMD to co-engineer silicon across a portfolio of devices — including our next-generation Xbox consoles in your living room and in your hands."

But it's not the hardware that changed my mind. Instead, one of Microsoft's smaller tweaks to the next-gen Xbox just might mean I shell out for yet another Xbox console.

Here's what we know about the next-gen Xbox so far.

The new Xbox is powered by AMD, again

Microsoft has used AMD hardware for the last couple of generations, so seeing that partnership continue isn't much of a surprise.

The original Xbox, released in 2001, was powered by a combination Intel Pentium III processor and an Nvidia NV2A graphics card. It also featured just 8GB of internal storage and 64 MB of RAM.

The Xbox 360 launched in 2005 and used a custom 64-bit IBM XCPU (later referred to as "Xenon") and a custom ATI Xenos graphics chip. It also featured 512MB of RAM and came in 20 GB or 60 GB storage variants, with later upgrades bringing the Xbox 360 to 120 GB of "internal" storage.

The Xbox One launched in 2013 and was the first Microsoft console with an AMD processor. It featured a custom 8-core AMD APU based on the Jaguar architecture and built-in AMD Radeon graphics. The Xbox One featured 8GB of DDR3 RAM and came in 500 GB or 1 TB storage models.

The Xbox Series X and Series S first launched in 2020 and are powered by a custom AMD 8-core Zen 2 APU with built-in AMD Radeon RDNA 2 graphics. The Series S features 8 GB of GDDR6 RAM while the Series X is upgraded to 10 GB of memory. Both consoles came in multiple storage configurations from 512 GB to 2 TB.

While this week's announcement confirms AMD hardware for the next-gen Xbox console, we didn't get many details. However, we do know it will be another custom AMD APU.

Based on the expected 2027 launch of the next-gen Xbox, the custom AMD APU could be based on AMD's Zen 6 architecture and RDNA 5 graphics architecture. Depending on cost and optimization, the APU could feature a Zen 5 CPU and RDNA 4 GPU. But that's still just speculation.

It's not the hardware that changed my mind

I've got a gaming desktop. I spend my days reviewing laptops, including gaming rigs. And all of Microsoft's exclusives and first-party titles always launch on Xbox and on PC, so there's no real point.

And, okay, maybe the thing that's changing my mind about the new Xbox doesn't really break that pattern.

Since the Xbox One, Microsoft's consoles have basically just been well-optimized gaming PCs in a custom ITX case. In fact, you can indeed install the regular version of Windows 10 and Windows 11 on the XBox One and Series X|S consoles.

While the Xbox consoles have traditionally used a proprietary Xbox System Software OS, that software isn't too far from Windows 10 and Windows 11's S-Mode.

But, despite owning a high-end gaming PC, the idea that the next-gen Xbox console is "not locked to a single store," is a compelling selling point.

Despite my love for my gaming desktop, and my quality gaming chair, I’m a big fan of couch gaming, which makes consoles an attractive option.

Sure, I can obviously access my Steam library on my gaming PC. But putting my Steam library on an Xbox just feels more reasonable than moving my gaming PC onto my TV stand. The bulky ATX case just will not fit in nicely. Additionally, the Xbox System Software is far better for gamepad controls than Windows 11.

And let's be real, Windows 11 is the inferior Microsoft OS.

Plus, my gaming rig is getting up there in years. And if trends continue, it won't be able to play new games on the best settings in just a few years. So rather than overhaul my gaming PC, I may as well just wait and buy a next-gen Xbox.

Though the other option for cozy couch play without sacrificing your living room aesthetic is, of course, a quality gaming laptop.

When will the next-gen Xbox even arrive?

Microsoft is expected to launch the sixth-generation Xbox console in the fall of 2027.

Gaming hardware typically launches in the September-November range, though there are exceptions. Particularly in the mid-cycle refresh phase. So this release date is subject to change.

The fun thing about this next generation of Xbox hardware is that it won't just come in home console form. Microsoft is not launching a proprietary Xbox handheld, but the ROG Xbox Ally X is expected to launch later this year.

There are also rumors floating around of an Xbox-branded VR/AR headset, which could also see a release as early as September 2025. While the launch date is just speculation, it wouldn't be out of pocket to see an Xbox VR headset.

As Xbox President Sarah Bond said in the AMD partnership announcement, "At Xbox, our vision is for you to play the games you want with the people you want, anywhere you want. That’s why we’re investing in our next-generation hardware lineup — across console, handheld, PC, cloud, and accessories."

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Whether you are in the market for a new MacBook, iPad, or iMac, you can select a free pair of AirPods or select accessories with the MacBook or iPad. If you just need the MacBook or iPad, you can find a deeper discount amoung our best MacBook deals or best iPad deals, but the free AirPods or accessory changes that math during the back-to-school season.

Prices start from $899 for the MacBook Air M4 — the best-value MacBook you can get and a rare 5-star Editor's Choice laptop. Eligible free items are:

• AirPods 4 with ANC
• AirPods Pro 2
• Magic Mouse
• Magic Trackpad
• Magic Keyboard with Touch ID.

Apple offers a similar back-to-school deal on the iPad Air and iPad Pro, but free options only include the Apple Pencil Pro or AirPods 4. The following AirPods and accessories are available at a discount of $119-$129, so you just pay the listed shown here:

• AirPods 4 with ANC ($50)
• AirPods Pro 2 ($120)
• Magic Keyboard for iPad Air 11-inch ($130)
• Magic Keyboard for iPad Air 13-inch ($180)
• Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro 11-inch ($160)
• Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro 13-inch ($210)

Of course other retailers also have great Apple deals for back-to-school season, so if you're looking for the best Apple back-to-school deals, there are plenty of ways to save.

Browse our favorite Apple back-to-school deals below.

Apple back-to-school deals — Quick links

• Apple Edu Store: up to $100 off MacBooks, iPads, + free AirPods or accessory
• Amazon: up to $400 off MacBook, iPad, AirPods, Apple Watch, more
• B&H: up to $300 off MacBook Air, up to $400 off MacBook Pro
• Best Buy: up to $200 off MacBook Air, up to $700 off MacBook Pro
• Walmart: Save on MacBooks, iPads, and Apple accessories

Apple back-to-school Apple deals

MacBooks

iPads

Apple Watch

AirPods

Previously priced at $1,999, that's a whopping $600 off and its lowest price ever. I track deals for a living, and I rarely see this MacBook Pro priced so cheap. The last time it hit this record low price was in March of this year on Amazon.

Browse: B&H's entire sale

As far as Prime Day-worthy MacBook deals, this is one of the best in town. It's also $380 cheaper than B&H's current price for the latest M4 Pro MacBook Pro with 24GB of RAM.

Launched in late 2023, the M3 MacBook Pro series was replaced by Apple's latest M4 Pro-powered MacBooks seven months ago. Though it's technically been dethroned, the M3 Pro-powered MacBook Pro is still one of the best laptops worth buying in 2025. Especially now.

Over its predecessor, the M3 Pro-charged MacBook Pro delivers stronger performance and supports more unified memory. It's beneficial to power users and creators who work with advanced Adobe Photoshop functions like panoramic images.

At $600 off, the MacBook Pro with M3 Pro with 18GB of RAM is the cheaper alternative to the M4 Pro MacBook Pro with 24GB of RAM.

This deal ends June 18 at 11:59 pm ET, so don't dilly-dally too long!

Today's best M3 Pro MacBook Pro deal

The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable is an AI PC powered by an Intel Core Ultra processor. When not in use, the bottom half of the screen rolls up like a newspaper. It’s just as novel as it sounds.

When the OLED laptop unrolls, it extends vertically from 14 diagonal inches to 16.7 diagonal inches, adding nearly 50% more screen space. It will go on sale on Thursday.

The prototype Laptop Mag saw at CES extended its screen after you pushed a button, but it appears that the screen on the laptop that will ship this week also extends by hand.

Lenovo rollable laptop history and benefits

It officially debuted at CES in 2025, though Lenovo showed off the prototype in October 2022. After missing a March release date, Intel announced on Monday that Lenovo would sell the laptop on Thursday, just 971 days since Lenovo first uploaded a YouTube video about the concept.

Intel says the laptop took two years of engineering to complete and presented a number of challenges, not least of which was producing two tiny motors that unroll and roll the screen. This caused more problems, like where to position the other laptop components displaced by the motors -- like the circuit board and battery -- which had to be redesigned.

The ThinkBook Gen 6 creates a taller screen and also allows you to use the display as two screens. Our hands-on experience with it felt ready-made for reading articles, mapping projects, or using digital whiteboard tools -- any situation where a taller laptop screen would benefit you.

We haven’t confirmed this, but Intel claims that Excel spreadsheets go from 39 visible rows to 66 when the screen is unrolled. In a wonderful bit of symmetry, two 16:9 images fit on top of each other. Finally, in this era of vertical video, Instagram and TikTok content can appear in all its glory.

Lenovo has been teasing the rollable technology for years. In 2022, Luca Rossi, president of Lenovo's Intelligent Devices Group, explained in a video how the expanding-display tech would work on phones and laptops.

"The possibilities of a rollable laptop are also compelling," Rossi says in that video. "It will bring multitasking, browsing, and mobility applications to another level. I believe form factor innovation is a very dynamic space, and you will continue to see Lenovo's innovation here."

There’s more behind-the-curtain brilliance shared in Monday’s announcement from Intel regarding how hardware engineers had to solve the complex problems associated with a laptop screen that unrolls and rolls back up. A joint team of Lenovo and Intel engineers at Lenovo’s R&D Center in Shanghai faced problems that fell like dominoes before them.

For one, when that hot screen is rolled up like a newspaper, it heats the whole laptop, which creates another problem: How do you turn off the rolled-up part of the screen?

Once that problem was solved, they had to figure out how to compensate for lag when the screen expanded so the images would adjust seamlessly to the larger display.

“We engineered all the thermal technology and power control to happen inside the Intel Core Ultra system-on-chip dynamic thermal tuning tool, or DTT,” said Zheng Jiong, Intel’s senior director of Customer Engineering in China, in a statement released Monday.

“We worked with Lenovo to apply these technologies to control the thermal and manage the power. Then, in an industry first, we customized the Intel graphics driver software in a way to create the very smooth screen transition.”

Lenovo rollable laptop price and specs

Any discussion of a new product’s price should be taken with a grain of salt, as everyone has different budgets and opinions on the right price point for a device with a first-of-its-kind form factor.

With that in mind, the price may shock some who don’t find the appeal in a taller screen or bleeding-edge technology more generally. But if you want to be among the first, be prepared to spend more than you might on a laptop with a comparable configuration.

With that out of the way, the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable starts at $3,499 and will be sold on Lenovo.com along with the other outlets where you find Lenovo products. As of Tuesday, no listing for the laptop was on Lenovo.com.

Given the hardcore engineering required to produce this laptop, one might better understand what can be seen as a higher-than-market-value price tag. After all, the first cell phone cost about $4,000 ($11,500 when adjusted for inflation). A pineapple cost the equivalent of $8,000 in 1700s America. Things cost more when they are new, whether because of rarity or innovation.

Lenovo no doubt hopes the price of this new rollable laptop goes down because that very likely means it has a hit on its hands.

More from Laptop Mag

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Last year, Amazon Prime Day deals offered the best summer discounts and back-to-school savings of up to 75% and up to 70% on Amazon devices. I also saw the lowest prices of the year on some of our favorite laptops, tablets, smartphones, headphones, wearables, and more.

I expect this year's discounts will be on par.

New subscribers get 30 days of Amazon Prime for free — no strings attached.

If you cancel before your free trial ends, you won't be charged. If you decide to continue with your membership, you'll pay $14.99 per month thereafter. Or pay $139 for a one-year membership, which reduces it to $12 each month.

What started in 2015 as a 24-hour sale, Prime Day has now quadrupled in length for 2025. With four days of deals for shoppers all over the world to partake in, Prime Day 2025 will be Amazon's biggest summer yet.

As we do each year, we'll be scouring all the deals during the sale to share the best ones worth your while. Until then, see what's new for Prime Day 2025 and browse Amazon's early deals this week.

1. Amazon Prime Day 2025 sale dates

Amazon announced on June 17 that Prime Day 2025 will run from July 8-11. Now four days long, that's twice as long as previous sales, which ran for 48 hours.

The first Prime Day in 2015 was a 24-hour sale and grew to a 48-hour event in 2019. Fast forward to 2025, and Prime Day will be a 96-hour sale.

Offering 4 days of great deals, Prime Day 2025 will be Amazon's biggest summer sale ever.

2. Prime Day "Today's Big Deals"

For Prime Day 2025, Amazon will debut Today’s Big Deals, featuring new deal drops each day throughout the sale. These Prime member-only daily deals will offer deep discounts across top brands like Samsung.

Keep in mind that Today’s Big Deals go live at midnight PT / 3 am ET from July 8-11. Much like Amazon's Lightning Deals, Today’s Big Deals will be available for a limited time, stock permitting.

3. Prime Day AI Shopping Guides

We live in a time where AI is everywhere, and Amazon is throwing its hat into the ring. Amazon's AI Shopping Guides tool provides insights for over 100 product types, including TVs and headphones, all in one place.

However, while browsing through the list, I found that some products are dated like these Sony headphones, circa 2009. As a deals expert, I typically don't recommend products more than two years old.

If you prefer human-curated Prime Day deals on products our tech experts have tested and rated, visit our Prime Day deals hub for guidance.

4. Early Prime Day deals now

Amazon Prime Day 2025 will offer first-time discounts on newer products. So if you've had your eye on a gadget the released earlier this year, you're bound to see it on sale during Prime Day 2025.

This week, there are plenty of early Prime Day deals to shop now with discounts of up to 62% on select Amazon devices like the Luna Controller, eero mesh routers, and Fire TVs.

Some discounts are Amazon Prime-only deals, so if you don't have Prime, you'll want to join now to access these savings.

Although a portion of Prime exclusive deals are now live, I'm seeing some great discounts and back-to-school savings you can get without Prime.

For example, you can get the Laptop Mag Editor's Choice Award-winning M4 MacBook Air for $849 ($150 off), the Asus TUF Gaming A16 for $1,299 ($300 off), or the AirPods 4 for $99 ($30 off).

Prime Day deals on Amazon devices & services — Quick links

• Shop: Early Amazon Prime Day deals
• Browse: Amazon Prime only deals
• Amazon Music Unlimited: 4 months free at Amazon
• Amazon Prime Gaming: 6 free bonus games at Amazon
• Amazon Basics Mini Tripod: was $11 now $7 at Amazon
• Amazon Echo Glow Multicolor Smart Lamp: was $29 now $19 at Amazon
• Amazon Luna Wireless Controller: was $69 now $39 at Amazon
• Amazon Fire TV Soundbar: was $120 now $85 at Amazon
• Amazon 32-inch 2-Series Fire TV: was $149 now $109 at Amazon
• Amazon 50-inch 4-Series Fire TV: $399 now $259 at Amazon
• Amazon Fire TV Soundbar Plus: was $489 now $389 at Amazon
• Amazon 55-inch Omni Mini-LED Fire TV: was $819 now $699 at Amazon

Prime Day deals on Amazon devices & services

A recent survey revealed the impact rising GPU prices are having on the PC gaming community. It's even leading a significant number of gamers to take a closer look at cloud gaming as a potential solution.

The issue of latency remains a barrier, though. Gamers also have to ask themselves: Is a cloud gaming subscription actually cheaper than buying a better GPU or gaming laptop?

Here's a look at what the data shows and which cloud gaming services you should try first if GPU prices have risen beyond your reach.

See also: Best gaming laptop deals in June 2025

Survey shows GPU prices are pushing gamers toward cloud gaming

A survey conducted by Liquid Web found that 62% of gamers would "switch to cloud gaming full-time if latency were eliminated."

That's nearly 2 in 3 PC gamers. For many, the reason for this rising interest in cloud gaming is all about budget. The survey showed that 57% of gamers said they were unable to buy a new GPU due to scalping or price hikes, and nearly half (43%) said they "delayed or canceled [GPU] purchases due to other life expenses like rent and bills."

The vast majority of respondents (81%) said they prefer to keep their GPU for 3-5 years before upgrading and view Nvidia GPUs as being better value, yet most (69%) could only afford a GPU under $700.

For context, at the time of writing, you can get Nvidia's latest RTX 5060 graphics cards for less than $400, but the RTX 5070, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090 are all difficult or impossible to find for less than $700, with some cards costing thousands.

AMD graphics cards are generally more affordable, but that doesn't seem to be making a difference since 65% of the survey respondents said Nvidia GPUs hold their value the best.

Considering all this, it's not surprising that more and more gamers are starting to look to cloud gaming as hardware upgrades become unaffordable. If you're in the same camp, there are a few cloud gaming services you should try out first.

Top 3 cloud gaming services to try first

Depending on your needs, budget, and subscription tier, cloud gaming can be less expensive than buying a new GPU or even a budget gaming laptop. For instance, at $200 per year, the Nvidia GeForce Now Ultimate Plan is significantly cheaper than, say, a $1,200 gaming laptop or an even pricier desktop GPU.

Unless you're only considering sub-$1,000 budget GPUs like the RTX 5060, cloud gaming is usually more economical.

Unfortunately, latency is still a concern. Since you're streaming games from a server that could be dozens or hundreds of miles away, you're going to have higher latency compared with gaming on your own device.

I've never noticed significant latency issues or lag, but it depends heavily on what you're playing, where you're located, and what kind of internet service you have.

So, I highly recommend trying a day pass or a single-month trial to test out how well a cloud gaming service works for you, as performance can vary from one user to another.

Here's how a few of the top cloud gaming services compare to get you started:

• Nvidia GeForce Now: Arguably the best starting point for cloud gaming thanks to day passes that are currently less than $3. You can connect third-party accounts to play compatible games you already own on Steam, Epic, GOG, Xbox, and others. I've had nothing but good experiences on GeForce now so far. I've seen pretty impressive performance, too, like running Cyberpunk 2077 at 76 fps on a Chromebook.
  
• Xbox Cloud Gaming: Has some pros and cons, but definitely the best choice for Xbox Game Pass subscribers. However, you can't play games from Steam through this service, which could be a deal-breaker. I've had a pretty good experience on Xbox Cloud Gaming, but noticed a bit more lag than Nvidia GeForce Now.
  
• Boosteroid: Best for users in Europe, although also available in the US. Like GeForce Now, Boosteroid allows you to connect third-party accounts, like Steam or Epic, to play games you already own. One advantage it has, though, is that Boosteroid's Ultra plan doesn't have a session limit, unlike GeForce Now, which has a cap of 8 hours even on its most expensive plan.

If you're new to cloud gaming, it's probably worth giving all three services a spin. Nvidia GeForce Now is generally the best option for most users in the U.S. right now, although there's definitely a case for Xbox Cloud Gaming and Boosteroid, too. Plus, all three are cheaper than a new GPU.

More from Laptop Mag

• How to turn any laptop into an RTX gaming rig for only $2.39
• If you have $29, every laptop is a gaming laptop
• Budget gaming laptops are now entering the next gen with the Nvidia RTX 5060

Some of my favorite daily driver devices are from Apple, like the iPad 11, which offers fantastic bang for your buck. Apple gear can be great, but it can also be pricey. That's why I highly recommend you wait for sales to roll around to save hard-earned cash.

For instance, right now you can pick up the iPad 11 for just $299, a $50 discount off the regular price. The Magic Keyboard Folio is also $50 off, so you can save a total of $100 on a budget-friendly laptop alternative. I had a surprisingly good experience with this combo, which is likely to get even better with some major upcoming improvements to iPadOS.

Even if you're not an iPad fan, there are still plenty of great deals you can snag right now on M4 MacBooks and Apple's full headphones line-up. These devices could sell out during Prime Day, so you might want to pick them up now ahead of that big sale.

See also: Amazon Prime Day 2025: When it starts and what to expect

Top 9 early Prime Day deals on MacBooks, iPads, and headphones