AMD’s new Ryzen Z2 Extreme lineup has expanded with a game-changing twist: A built-in AI engine capable of 50 TOPS (trillion operations per second) of on-device AI compute.

The AI power in the new chip, the AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme, is well above Microsoft’s 40 TOPS Copilot+ PC requirement, and ahead of Intel’s upcoming Lunar Lake platform and Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon X Elite.

The AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme and another chip, the AMD Ryzen Z2A, designed to extend battery life, were announced on Sunday at the Xbox Games Showcase, which also saw the unveiling of the Asus ROG Xbox Ally and Asus ROG Xbox Ally X.

What sets the AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme apart is its AI credentials and the fact that it delivers this power in a 35-watt envelope, making it suitable for compact handheld devices and ultra-portable laptops.

Built for handhelds, ready for Copilot+

The Ryzen Z2 Extreme is built on AMD’s new Zen 5 CPU architecture, paired with RDNA 3.5 integrated graphics and support for LPDDR5X-8000 memory.

It features 8 cores and 16 threads with up to 24MB of cache and a Radeon GPU with 16 compute units. The NPU is based on AMD’s second-generation XDNA architecture, which handles AI inference without drawing heavily on CPU or GPU resources.

This chip is a direct successor to the Ryzen Z1 Extreme, which powered high-end handhelds like the original ROG Ally. It significantly upgrades efficiency, graphics performance, and AI capabilities.

The dedicated NPU is capable of offloading Windows Studio Effects, AI-driven upscaling, noise suppression, and even real-time virtual assistant features, all of which run locally.

A confusing collection of chips?

Not everyone is thrilled by AMD’s approach. Critics point out that the Z2 lineup actually comprises four different generations of silicon under a single name.

PC Gamer emphasizes how Ryzen Z2 A appears to be nothing more than a rebranded Steam Deck’s Van Gogh APU, with old Zen 2 CPU cores and RDNA 2 GPU, despite AMD pretending it’s fresh silicon.

Similarly, the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme is simply the existing Strix Point Z2 Extreme chip with the NPU enabled; there are no changes to core or GPU configurations beyond flipping on the AI engine. Critics argue that this muddied naming strategy makes it harder for consumers to understand what they’re buying.

Others also question the NPU's real-world impact. While the presence of AI hardware brings potential for on-device features such as adaptive gameplay and upscaling, some argue that RDNA 3.5 still lags behind AMD's desktop RDNA 4 and far behind Nvidia’s Tensor core-equipped GPUs.

At best, the benefit is currently theoretical.

Pressure on Intel and Qualcomm

AMD’s new chips are arriving just in time for a wave of next-generation handhelds. Asus has already confirmed that it’s building new devices around the Z2 series. The Asus ROG Ally X is expected to feature the Ryzen Z2 Extreme, while Lenovo’s Legion Go 2 and Go S are set to include both high-end and lower-tier options.

Lenovo and MSI have also confirmed new devices around the Z2 series. MSI is adding a Z2 Extreme configuration to its Claw handheld, while Lenovo’s Legion Go 2 and Go S are set to include both high-end and lower-tier options.

AMD's move into AI-capable handheld chips puts pressure on Intel and Qualcomm. The Core Ultra 7 155H includes an integrated NPU rated at about 11 TOPS, while Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite offers up to 45 TOPS. Intel’s upcoming Lunar Lake platform is also expected to reach 45 TOPS.

By delivering 50 TOPS in a power envelope that works in handheld devices, AMD currently holds the edge in AI performance per watt. Unlike Snapdragon chips, AMD’s processors are x86-based, meaning they offer full compatibility with the existing Windows game library. That remains a major advantage for handheld PCs.

A big win for AI and gaming

Combining high-end gaming performance with serious AI power, AMD is clearly looking to take the lead in bringing AI into the gaming handheld space.

And with strong OEM support and a lineup that covers both premium and entry-level use cases, the Ryzen Z2 series may well power the next wave of portable PCs.

If you're waiting for a handheld that can handle both AAA games and AI workflows, AMD just gave you 50 trillion reasons to pay attention.

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• Nintendo seems ready for a problem the Switch 2 might face
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Since its launch in 2022, Valve's Steam Deck has racked up a considerable audience and left a lasting impression on the gaming scene. However, three years later, its aging hardware is starting to show, with several manufacturers already on their second iterations of PC gaming handhelds. So, can we expect a Steam Deck 2 to follow? I, like you, dared to dream, but recent speculation may have set us both up for disappointment.

My latest beacon of hope came in the form of a "Plus" version of the custom Aerith APU that powers the Steam Deck, spotted within a shipping manifest by X user Olrak29_.

It's not the hardware leap many of us were hoping for, but the Aerith Plus APU does boast higher clock speeds and faster LPDDR5X memory support. It's not much, but it's something. And for those eagerly awaiting a Steam Deck successor, something is enough to spark speculation.

Sadly, while the internet picked up this ball and ran with it, fueling speculation of a Steam Deck 2 reveal on the soon-approaching horizon, a Valve employee has thrown a wet blanket over these embers of excitement. Aerith Plus isn't set for the Steam Deck 2, after all.

So, what is it for?

Enter that one Valve employee who keeps dashing my Steam Deck 2 dreams

How do we know the Aerith Plus APU isn't Steam Deck 2-bound? Enter Pierre-Loup Griffais: Valve coder, Steam Deck project member, and a man seemingly hired to ensure there's always a penny placed on the track, ready to derail my own personal hype train at every turn.

Posting to his Bluesky account, Graffais wasted no time shutting down speculation over the APU ahead of the weekend with a clear and unmistaken two-word message: "Not happening."

This isn't the first time Griffais has publicly set the record straight. They previously took to Bluesky to smother suggestions that freshly revealed Ryzen Z2 APUs could power a Steam Deck follow-up in January, once again clearly stating: "There is and will be no Z2 Steam Deck." This definitively suggests that AMD's new APUs are not the "Generational leap in compute" that Valve designer Lawrence Yang claimed would trigger the company to consider developing a second-generation Steam Deck in an October 11 interview with Reviews.org.

With AMD having provided the horsepower that propelled both the Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go with its Ryzen Z1 APUs, it felt as if this new generation of Z2 chips would provide Valve with the perfect opportunity to play catch-up with its contemporaries. However, part of me wonders: If not now, when? And will it happen at all?

There are other options, this is one of many

Yes, the Steam Deck 2 may be further afield than we'd have hoped for by now, but that's not to say we don't have options in the meantime. Perhaps the closest thing to a Steam Deck 2 alternative is the Lenovo Legion Go S.

Lenovo's follow-up to the Legion Go makes use of an AMD Z2 Go APU, features an 8-inch, full-HD touchscreen display with a 120Hz refresh rate, up to 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, with an improved 12-Core RDNA 2 GPU and expanded 55.5Whr battery.

Better still, while the version currently available to purchase is a Windows gaming handheld PC like its predecessor, the Legion Go S is set to become to first third-party handheld licensed to run Valve's impressive Linux-based SteamOS later this year — offering the "feel" and experience of the Steam Deck with several hardware refreshes.

If not the Steam Deck 2, what is Aerith Plus for?

Still, the question remains: If the Aerith Plus APU isn't destined for the Steam Deck 2, what is it for?

Honestly, we can't say for certain. However, it doesn't seem powerful enough to power Valve's other rumored hardware, a standalone Deckard PCVR headset, and a revival of its Steam Machine.

My best guess is that the Aerith Plus APU is destined for third-party SteamOS handhelds. It could provide them with a serviceable performance boost to differentiate them from the Steam Deck without causing Valve any immediate headaches over how best to handle its Steam Deck verified badge as hardware sporting different and more powerful processors comes into play.

While the Aerith Plus SPU won't power a second-generation Steam Deck, I wouldn't entirely rule out the possibility that it could be part of a future hardware refresh for the handheld. But that suggestion only leaves me open to more pellets of disappointment as Pierre-Loup Griffais readies his blunderbuss to once again pick off my prayers on their way to heaven.

More from Laptop Mag

• Lenovo Legion Go S review: A gaming handheld that’s all beauty with little substance
• Valve's Steam Deck reminded me of what's most important in gaming — and it's not graphics
• I tried gaming on the Lenovo Legion Go S and now I want to buy a Steam Deck instead

Integrated GPUs, built into the processor of your computer, have long been seen as the bottom rung of the gaming hardware ladder — pigeonholed as ultra-low-tier performers best suited for those who enjoy gaming at frame rates comparable to a slide projector.

It's discrete graphics, separate processors with their own dedicated memory, that get most gamers swooning, typically offering unrivaled performance in games, video editing, and more.

However, AMD APUs have been slowly breaking that mold, not only powering quality handheld gaming PCs like Valve's Steam Deck and the Asus ROG Ally X but now directly challenging discrete mobile GPUs from Nvidia following early benchmarks of its new Ryzen "Strix Halo," AI Max chipset.

AMD's Ryzen Strix Halo dazzled us in January, winning our best-in-show award during CES 2025, and with good reason. Outfitted with up to 128GB of memory that can be weighted between CPU, iGPU, or NPU as required, the new Ryzen AI Max chipsets showcase some phenomenal performance, with leaked benchmarks from earlier this month appearing too good to be true.

With the curtain rising on Ryzen AI Max 300 reviews, it appears, in this particular instance at least, that what glitters, is gold.

AMD Ryzen Strix Halo performance: The numbers don't lie

According to several benchmarks shared by Hardware Canucks, AMD's Ryzen Strix Halo, with its iGPU, doesn't just clip at the heels of Nvidia's RTX 4070 mobile GPU — it outperforms it in several gaming tests.

In particular, the Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 APU was able to run Cyberpunk 2077 in 1600p resolution at its highest graphics settings at an average of 39.4 frames per second (fps), while an RTX 4070 mobile GPU using the Ryzen 9 8945HS processor managed an average of 37.3 fps.

Similarly, AMD's Strix Halo APU also outperformed its discrete GPU counterpart while running Bethesda's Starfield in 1600p resolution at its highest settings, running at an average of 36.8 fps compared to the RTX 4070's 34.7 fps.

It wasn't a clean sheet of victories, however. The RTX 4070 retained the lead in titles like Red Dead Redemption 2, Doom Eternal, and Rainbow 6: Siege — though not by a wide margin.

Beyond gaming, the Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 was also able to reach near Apple M4 Pro levels of performance in the Cinebench 2024 multi-core benchmark, netting a score of 1,669, just shy of the M4 Pro's 1,715 rating.

Is the iGPU back?

For something to come back, it generally needs to go away first. To give iGPUs their credit, they've been capable of some solid feats in recent years, and have serviced many budget gamers before that.

However, the integrated GPU is definitely having something of a revival period, with not only AMD showcasing some impressive gaming flair but Intel also, whose Arc 140T iGPUs found in its Arrow Lake chips also impressed during our Elden Ring gaming test using the Asus Zenbook Duo.

There's still some ways to go before the iGPU stands to challenge more powerful discrete GPUs in laptops, and even mid-level GPUs when it comes to Nvidia's ray-tracing prowess, but the Ryzen AI MAX+ 395's performance and lower power draw paint a bright future ahead for integrated graphics and could go some way to eliminating the stigma surrounding these options.

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“Boring stuff changes the world,” AMD’s Jason Banta, Vice President and General Manager of the Client OEM group, tells Laptop Mag, insisting that what we’ve seen from AI and Microsoft’s Copilot+ suite is only the beginning.

“They [Microsoft] are looking at all aspects of the way you interact with a PC and saying, okay, how can we apply AI models, how can we use AI to improve this experience,” and that goes beyond email summaries and AI-generated desktop backgrounds.

AI isn’t everyone’s favorite buzzword. However, advancements in AI computing have helped shape many of AMD’s recent successes, and Microsoft's exploration of AI will be one the company looks to mirror as it expands on the capabilities of its hardware.

While Microsoft's initial suite of AI tools and features for Windows 11 haven't clicked with everyone yet, they're part of a growing snowball effect that could (one day soon) drastically impact the performance we eke out from our hardware and, in turn, the experiences we gain from it.

It's this potential that AMD hopes to tap into, and with major overhauls to the company’s CPU and GPU lineup, and great efforts to bolster the software that takes advantage of it, 2025 looks like a big year for Team Red. So, what can we expect from AMD in the future?

The AMD Advantage

AMD is somewhat unique as far as PC chipmakers go. The company has robust CPU and GPU lines, while Nvidia and Intel are playing catchup on at least one processor front. AMD has also been implementing NPUs into its mobile CPUs for the past three generations. Qualcomm is a new player in the computing space and hasn’t jumped into either the gaming or discrete GPU sectors yet.

When we look at the best AI PC chips of 2024 and the upcoming 2025 processors, AMD is a key player. Our Best in Show Laptop Laurel winner for CES 2025 was the Ryzen AI Max chipset for good reason.

But what makes AMD’s approach to mobile chips different from Intel's or even Qualcomm's?

AMD’s Director of Product Marketing Adam Kozak explained that the difference between the Ryzen Z2 Go and the Ryzen Z2 Extreme is “night and day" because the “software can do more tricks.”

The same can be said for any hardware using AMD’s new Zen 5 architecture compared to its Zen 4 predecessor. “The opportunity for us, at least, is to help partners get devices that have longer battery life, performance, and then we’re adding more and more features to that software that we’re pulling down from our discrete [GPU] cards.”

Part of the benefit of using AMD processors is the cross-pollination of development, allowing for hardware advancements in discrete GPUs to be distilled into integrated graphics chips on a laptop CPU or handheld gaming PC chip.

AMD AI and Gaming

While many enthusiasts, including myself, like to view AI as separate from gaming, there is some overlap. AMD’s Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF) frame-generation technology is a type of AI, the discrete GPU is still the most powerful AI accelerator we have, NPC behavior is AI, and Nvidia’s ACE system can further augment NPC behavior using generative AI to deliver dynamic text and speech outcomes.

But that’s not the only way AI can be used to augment our gaming lives. Banta hints that AI could be used to completely change the way we interact with game worlds, telling Laptop Mag, “Maps are mastered largely static… those environments are somewhat static, somewhat consistent, and that has its advantages as far as predictability of the experience, but it has some disadvantages, and it’s kind of repetitive."

Offering a suggestion on how AI can help to overcome these disadvantages, Banta tells Laptop Mag, "I think world generation is a very natural extension to some of the generative AI concepts we’re seeing right now, because being able to pick up a game, and maybe it’s a game you’re familiar with, and getting an entirely new experience.”

That’s not a pie-in-the-sky dream. In fact, it may be closer to a reality than you'd think. Banta continues, revealing to Laptop Mag, “We’re already having conversations with game engine developers and game developers who are looking for ways of leveraging models that are more generative in nature, whether it’s the world, the characters, the language… there’s a lot to explore there that we’re seeing right now.”

Looking ahead: The AMD roadmap

While Intel and Qualcomm garnered much of the AI PC fanfare in 2024, AMD has incorporated NPUs into its mobile processors since the “Phoenix Point” Ryzen 7000 series launched in 2023.

Those small NPUs helped AMD level out performance against Intel and, with further refinement in the 8000 “Hawk Point” and Ryzen AI 300 “Strix Point” designs, could take the fight to arm-based systems like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and Apple’s M-series Silicon.

The Ryzen 9000 “Granite Ridge” desktop CPUs couldn’t stay on shelves, snatched up by performance enthusiasts in the wake of Intel’s beleaguered Arrow Lake desktop launch.

At CES 2025, AMD announced further additions to its current generation of Ryzen processors, which includes more CPUs in the Ryzen AI 300 series, plus the Ryzen 9000 “Fire Range” gaming laptop CPUs, the Ryzen AI Max “Strix Halo” APU, a new generation of handheld gaming PC Ryzen Z2 chips, and the Radeon RX 9070 series of discrete desktop GPUs.

The first Ryzen Z2 chips will be available with the Lenovo Legion Go S when it launches in mid-February, while the Radeon RX 9070 series GPUs are slated for a March launch.

The expanded Ryzen 9000 “Fire Range” gaming laptop processors, Ryzen AI 300 series CPUs in the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 class, and the Ryzen AI Max chipsets will launch within the first half of 2025.

What’s next for AMD?

AMD has expanded the Ryzen AI 300 series to include more budget-friendly Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 variants. The Z2 series of handheld gaming PC chips is on the way, as is a new series of Radeon 9070 discrete graphics cards.

The Ryzen AI Max is tasked with making a case for the benefits of unified memory in gaming and video editing workflows, something Apple has championed for some time now. We’ll also get gaming laptops featuring the Ryzen 9000 series of “Fire Range” CPUs.

We want to see how AMD’s new silicon holds up in our lab tests before we make any claims, but if you’ve been considering one of the best AMD Ryzen laptops, you might want to hold off another few months.

Of course, that also runs the risk of getting hit with tariffs on tech imports, which could see laptops and gaming hardware prices spike by up to 40%. However, the US tariffs aren’t yet set in stone, so this may change.

But beyond that, Banta tells Laptop Mag that AMD still has “a lot of stuff to come.”

“Our road map just has us doing more and more AI capability because we know some stuff’s coming ... so be ready for that.”

I’ve always associated MSI with Intel chips, because every MSI gaming laptop I’ve reviewed has come with one. It had nothing to do with what was available at the time for me to review, either; Taiwan-based MSI has long partnered with Intel for processors.

Even when MSI started using chips from AMD — the Intel competitor less than two miles away in Santa Clara, California in its gaming laptops — many of MSI laptops still only came with an Intel option.

But this year at CES in Las Vegas, an AMD chip was listed on nearly every one of the little display cards that sat next to new MSI laptops.

This was a huge departure from what MSI has done in the past — and maybe a sign that Intel may be up for a fight if it wants to continue its domination of the mobile gaming space.

MSI reps tell Laptop Mag via email it still considers Intel “the leader in the professional industry,” but now that AMD has expanded its mobile chip catalog, MSI wanted to give more options to different types of users.

The popular AMD Ryzen X3D processor, which can produce higher frame rates and smoother game play for demanding AAA games, is one example of an AMD chip that MSI wanted to utilize in its laptops.

“The X3D solution largely benefits gamers, so we brought the technology to our gaming flagship Raider series.”

MSI went beyond its Raider laptop series this year at CES, announcing the following new configurations (in addition to Intel options):

• AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D for the Raider
• AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX for the Vector
• AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 for the Pulse
• AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX for the Crosshair

Of course, none of those AMD Ryzen chips were around at CES last year. MSI debuted new Raider, Vector, Pulse, and Crosshair gaming laptops with Intel 14th-gen or Core Ultra processors — though the company released an AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D version of its Raider gaming laptop later in 2024.

Still, the AMD Ryzen 8000 series existed last year, yet MSI did not include that configuration in its Crosshair gaming laptop or any of its higher-tier gaming options. Its nostalgic '90s budget Cyborg launched with only an Intel option last year, but this year it will feature up to an AMD Ryzen 7 260 chip.

The new Katana gaming laptop is listed with either an AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS option or the new Intel Arrow Lake processor this year at CES, too. The Stealth is also getting a boost to an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (up from the Ryzen AI 9 365 version Laptop reviewed in November 2024).

The only gaming laptop without an AMD option is the Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition Norse Myth. As MSI tells Laptop Mag, the Dragon Edition is a special edition laptop that will be available in limited quantities.

AMD in MSI laptops is a huge win for gamers

This many AMD configurations is a huge win for gamers. Anyone who might have wanted an MSI gaming laptop but opted not to buy one because it didn’t come with an AMD chip can now include MSI in their decision process. From high-end to budget options, there’s a configuration for almost anyone. There’s no shortage of choices. But it also feels like there is a rift between gaming laptop makers and Intel, one that perhaps has been growing for a while, and we’re just now starting to see its width.

Between AMD making significant leaps in mobile gaming and Intel tripping over hurdles (remember the great 14nm saga of 2021?), a tug-of-war between the two chipmakers has been playing out in yearly laptop announcements. My own memories stretch back to MSI’s budget-priced Bravo 15 (2020), but the company has been working with AMD since before it released that laptop — yet it’s been slower to adopt a full slate of AMD-powered products, as we’ve seen from past announcements.

Now that MSI has gone the whole hog with AMD configurations, it will be the company to watch once gaming laptop reviews start flowing — not just for the quality of those products, but how they compare to their Intel counterparts.

August is National Back-to-School Month in the US and back-to-school sales are going strong right now. For students and educators who like to game during downtime, STEM majors, and creators, the RazerStore is a great to shop for back-to-school essentials.

Register for Razer's student discount offer to save up to 15% on Razer products (student pricing will reflect when you log in). Your education discount nets you 15% off Razer gaming mice, keyboards, and headsets as well as 10% off Razer gaming chairs. Keep in mind that these discounts apply to a product's original price. Razer's Education Program discount may not be combined with any other discounts. 

Discounts will reflect in your cart after you verify and create a Razer ID with your education email. You must also be a current student, employed teacher, or employed staff of an eligible university, college, technical school, or high school. Parents buying on behalf of a student may also shop Razer's back-to-school deals. 

Shop the back-to-school gear at Razer.com — see favorite discounts below.

Razer back-to-school deals — Quick links

• Browse: Razer's entire back-to-school sale 
• Razer Blade 14 RTX 4070: was $2,699 now $2,499
• Razer Blade 16 RTX 4070: was $2,999 now $2,699
• Razer Blade 18 RTX 4070: was $3,099 now $2,799
• Razer DeathStalker V2 Pro Keyboard: was $219 now $159
• Razer Cobra Pro + Mouse Dock Pro Bundle: was $199 now $169
• Razer Kraken V3 X Headset: was $69 now $49
• Razer Kraken Kitty V2 Headset (Hello Kitty): was $139 now $125 for students
• Razer Ornata V3 Keyboard (Hello Kitty): was $119 now $101 for students
• Razer Enki X Gaming Chair: was $399 now $359 for students

Razer back-to-school deals

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In the past, buying one of the best 17-inch laptops meant a big, bulky monstrosity, but slimmer bezels, new materials, and more efficient cooling systems helped these once-mammoth laptops slim down.

Content creators, in particular, will appreciate the expansive canvas provided by a 17-inch display. Whether editing photos and videos or designing graphics, the extra screen real estate can make a big difference. However, a 17-inch display is a significant advantage, even if you multitask, work with spreadsheets, or immerse yourself in streaming entertainment.

No matter your priorities — power, weight, or budget — there's a 17-inch laptop that perfectly suits your needs.

Here are our current picks for the best 17-inch laptops.

The Quick List

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Best overall 17-inch laptop

The LG Gram 17 is a featherweight laptop that punches like a heavyweight. This powerful laptop is geared toward creative professionals like photo editors, graphic designers, and illustrators. The Intel Core i7-1360P processor won't keep up with the latest Intel 14th gen CPUs, but it was ahead of the class last year with its Geekbench 5.5 score of 9,945, handily beating out the then premium laptop average of 7,048. The SSD was a speedster then, and now, its 1,669.29MBps transfer rate is blowing away even the current premium laptop average of 1,181MBps.

If the battery life and productivity performance didn't have you looking around the outside of the laptop and figuring out how LG fit everything in there, wait until you find out there's also an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card. It's not going to replace your gaming laptop, but for casual gamers or content creators using apps that leverage a dedicated GPU, this is an incredible option for frequent travelers. Be sure to check for that feature if it's important to you; there are numerous configurations with just Intel Iris Xe graphics. This option will be acceptable for productivity and other fundamental computing tasks, but those gaming and content-creation apps will take a hit.

The display will be the other most significant selling point for content creators considering the LG Gram 17. It covers 115 percent of the DCI-P3 color space and delivers an impressive 438 nits of brightness. Both marks exceed the premium averages of 90 percent and 384 nits, respectively. Even a gaming laptop like the Acer Nitro 17 can't match these scores, coming in at 84.3% and 348 nits in the two tests. The LG Gram 17's scores translate to vibrant and realistic colors, crucial factors for creative work.

Additionally, unlike the MacBook Pro, the LG Gram 17 features a wider variety of ports, eliminating the need for dongles and making it more convenient for connecting to various peripherals. Overall, the LG Gram 17 impresses with good battery life, capable graphics performance, and high-quality audio, making it a serious contender against established players like Apple and Lenovo.

See our full LG Gram 17 2023 review

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Best budget 17-inch laptop

You won't find a cheaper 17-inch laptop than the Acer Chromebook 317. Available for under $500, this is a large screen living on a small budget. Now beyond its size, the 17.3-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) display won't blow you away, but it is a massive viewport into Chrome or whatever Google Workspace-powered productivity task you may have slotted in for today.

You need to set your expectations properly for this laptop; it is not a secret performance beast; it has an Intel Pentium Silver processor, which will allow you to browse the web and watch streaming videos. If possible look for the model with 8GB of RAM, but it scored below the Chromebook averages for Geekbench and JetStream 2.0, which test overall performance and web browsing performance, so again stick to this laptop for single tasks. The 64GB of eMMC storage means that you'll need to stick mostly to cloud storage, but it's a Chromebook, so you were hopefully already planning on that.

That seemed like a lot of negatives. What else is there to love about the Chromebook 317? The build quality is outstanding, the keyboard is massive with a full number pad, and the chiclet keys are surprisingly comfortable and responsive. You won't find these features on another laptop in this price range.

The 9 hours and 30 minutes of battery life it achieved in our battery test won't win awards, but it's more than enough for a typical day's usage and just shy of the average Chromebook battery life of 9 hours and 50 minutes.

The Acer Chromebook 317 is intriguing as the world's first, and only, 17-inch Chromebook. While it isn't the best 17-inch laptop for everyone, it is a fine choice for users with minimal needs outside of a big screen.

See our full Acer Chromebook 317 review

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Best 17-inch laptop for gaming

"Affordable" and "17-inch gaming laptop" aren't terms that typically go together, but the Asus Strix G17 is available for under $1,500. This laptop won't disappoint productivity hounds and gamers looking for a powerful 17-inch laptop at a reasonable price.

Asus opts for AMD's Ryzen 9 7845HX CPU paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU. This blend of AMD and Nvidia repeatedly hit it out of the park regarding affordable gaming laptops, so it's no shock to see it doing well here again. On our Geekbench 6.0 test it crushed the category average of 7,185 with a score of 13,430. That was also enough to beat the MSI Katana 15 (Intel Core i7-13620H, 12,562) and Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX, 13,063).

Considering it's an RTX 4060 it fared reasonably well against RTX 4070 competitors. In the Assasin's Creed Valhalla test at 1080p with maximum graphics settings it gave a steady 103 frames per second. That was just behind the MSI Katana 15 (RTX 4070, 106 fps), Origin EON16-S (RTX 4070, 106 fps), and the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (RTX 4070, 113 fps).

Our review configuration featured 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. It maxes out at 32GB of RAM, but don't buy the 8GB model, which is woefully insufficient for a gaming laptop. Adding up all these specs equates to smooth gameplay and the ability to handle demanding tasks, all on a gorgeous 17.3-inch QHD (2560 x 1440) display with a buttery-smooth 240Hz refresh rate.

Are you looking for a large screen without breaking the bank? The Asus Strix G17 is a great choice. This budget-friendly option delivers more than enough performance for everyday tasks. Its AMD processor and Nvidia graphics card make it a capable gaming or content-creation laptop. It offers a well-rounded package with good productivity power, high frame rates in games, and impressive speakers.

See our full Asus ROG Strix G17 review

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How to choose a 17-inch laptop

Step 1 is to make sure it has a 17-inch display, beyond that the features we look for to choose the best 17-inch laptop are the same qualifications we would look for in any laptop. It's also worth noting that 17-inch laptops are a bit of an endangered species, which is why you'll only find three entries on this list currently. We are seeing more laptop makers turn to 18-inch or 16-inch displays for their larger screen offerings.

Screen Resolution: Don't settle for anything less than a 1920 x 1080 (aka 1080p or full HD) resolution, particularly on a 17-inch laptop. You may want a QHD (2560 x 1440), 2K (2048 x 1080) resolution panel, or even a 4k laptop if you're a content creator. Gamers should pay attention to the refresh and response rate. We recommend at least 144Hz and 3-millisecond, respectively.

CPU: An Intel Core i5 or Core Ultra 5 provides good mainstream performance. Some budget systems will come with Core i3, which is good enough for basic tasks, but avoid it for a . Get a Core i7 or a quad-core processor (serial number ends in HQ or HK) for gaming or high-end productivity tasks such as video editing and 3D modeling. AMD is enjoying a renaissance with its Ryzen line of processors. Ryzen 7 is the middle-of-the-road chip that will bring mainstream performance, while Ryzen 5 and 9 cover your entry-level and power user needs.

RAM: 8GB is the minimum we want to see in a laptop in 2024, but if it's within your budget, spring for 16GB, as it will ensure better performance over your laptop's life. Professional power users, content creators, and gamers will look for 32GB and beyond, but that is overkill for most people. While we would not recommend 4GB systems in general, if it is a secondary laptop that will see use predominantly for light web browsing and steaming, it will suffice.

Storage: 256 GB of internal storage is probably enough unless you're a gamer, content creator, or power user. On budget laptops, look out for eMMC memory; while still flash memory, it is much slower than an SSD.

Graphics Chip: Gamers and creative professionals should get either one of the latest Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 or 40 series GPUs or an AMD Radeon 7000 series GPU. Everyone else will be happy with the CPU's built-in integrated graphics, which have improved considerably in recent years.

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How We Test 17-inch Laptops

Over the course of a year, we review over 100 laptops, covering every price point and use case. Whether you’re looking for a productivity workhorse, a badass gaming system, or a multimedia machine to kick back and watch a movie or two, we can help you find your ideal match.

To make our best 17-inch laptops list, the system needs to score at least 4 out of 5 stars on our reviews and deliver on the things shoppers care about most. Our evaluations focus on design, comfort, display quality, keyboard and touchpad, performance, battery life, and value.

Our expert reviewers also test each product to see how it looks, feels, and performs in everyday situations. Because we see so many different notebooks, we can compare each to its direct competitors and give you an idea of how it compares to the average laptop in its price band.

When we bring a laptop into our laboratory, we aim to see how it would work if you brought it into your home or office. While we use industry-standard benchmarks such as Geekbench and 3DMark, we focus heavily on real-world tests that we have developed in-house.

To test endurance, the Laptop Mag Battery test surfs the web at 150 nits of brightness until the system runs out of juice. We use a giant spreadsheet macro that matches 65,000 names with their addresses to judge pure processing power, a video transcoder that converts a 4K video to 1080p, and the Geekbench 5 synthetic test. We measure graphics prowess with both 3DMark Ice Storm / Fire Strike and a series of games, including Assassin's Creed: Mirage, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Red Dead Redemption 2, just to name a few.

We use a colorimeter to measure screen brightness and color gamut, while other instruments help us determine a laptop's key travel and ambient heat. For more details on our benchmarking procedures, see this page on how we test laptops.

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Why Trust Laptop Mag

Laptop Mag reviews over one hundred different 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.

Our experienced team of 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.

One of the world's largest technology publishers, Future Publishing, enforces our editorial trustworthiness. As a company, we have unrivaled experience across every tech sector — and we're the group's specialist for all things mobile tech.

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The 13-inch laptop is a wonder of modern design.

It's often so light you'll barely notice it in your bag while still delivering plenty of performance. Students breeze through campus with these lightweight wonders, while pros tuck them into briefcases for on-the-go productivity (or just conquering emails from the couch). You'll love the convenience and portability they bring, making them the perfect companion for busy, on-the-move individuals.

But just because they're small doesn't mean you should underestimate their bite. These aren't the underpowered thin and light laptops of yesteryear; 13-inch laptops are available to handle almost any workload. They make for the best travel-friendly laptops available, with a sturdy chassis, enchanting display, and long battery life. So ditch the bulk and embrace the possibilities — 13-inch laptops are where extreme portability meets powerhouse.

If you want the thinnest and lightest laptop possible while still offering enough power to handle most tasks easily, a 13-inch laptop is the answer.

If you need a laptop today, these are the best 13-inch laptops based on our extensive testing and reviews.

The Quick List

Best 13-inch laptops in 2024

Best 13-inch overall laptop

Apple's MacBook Air M3 is staggering, asserting itself as one of the best overall laptops. If you need a 13-inch, most people would not go wrong with it, as its excellent performance and miraculously long battery life are impossible to deny.

The MacBook Air M3 towers above the premium laptop's average performance with its Geekbench 6 overall multi-core score of 12,087. Its SSD speeds are also hyper-fast, hitting an average of 3,031 megabytes per second in our file transfer test. Plain and simple, there are very few scenarios in which you can go wrong with the MacBook Air M3.

On the Laptop Mag battery test, which involves continuous web surfing over wifi at 150 nits, The MacBook Air M3 lasted 15 hours and 13 minutes. No, you didn't misread that. Its battery life goes above and beyond reason, and it is one of the longest-lasting laptops you can buy today.

It's also impressive that this is a whole hour longer in longevity when compared to the M2 MacBook, meaning there's no better time to invest in the latest model. MacBooks are also famous for their great-feeling keyboards, and if you want a springy and quiet one to keep your fingers happy while typing the day away, look no further.

Otherwise, its 13.6-inch, 2560 x 1664 Liquid Retina display is crisp enough to perform in-depth work. Its 77.8 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut is solid, but what sets it apart is an average brightness of 476 nits. The brightness is enough to handle even the sunniest days, as there's nothing worse than intense glare, making it impossible to see what's happening on-screen.

See our full MacBook Air M3 review.

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Best 13-inch business laptop

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 is the perfect business laptop for those who need a quality ultraportable. Its total weight of 2.2 pounds is as light as a feather, and if you need something truly capable with solid performance and a bright display, look no further.

Our configuration costs $1,599, and Lenovo built it with an Intel Core i7-1360P processor, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD storage space, and a 13.3-inch 2K IPS touchscreen. While it's important to remember that it's using a last-generation processor, its Geekbench 5.5 multi-core performance of 9,268 is good enough to handle a heavy workload.

We were pretty disappointed by its longevity, though. In the Laptop Mag battery test, which involves continuous web surfing over wifi at 150 nits, its subpar 8 hours and 28 minutes of battery life is enough to sustain an entire workday. Still, depending on how demanding your workflow is, you might need an outlet nearby. This is also worse than the original's 12 hours of battery life and is significantly below the 9-hour and 45-minute ultraportable average.

The laptop can also get bright enough to survive blinding sunlight, with an average brightness of 483 nits. That's even higher than the MacBook Air M3, which hits 476 nits. However, its color depth leaves much to be desired, coming in at a 70.9 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut.

We also wish it had more ports, but considering it's a thin and lightweight laptop, it's typical for these products to have a small selection. At the very least, its two Thunderbolt 4 ports will allow for the best laptop docking stations to be attached. You also get an audio jack, so there's that.

See our full Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 review

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Best 13-inch 2-in-1 Laptop

Counting the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i as a 13-inch laptop might be cheating, as it features two 13.3-inch 2,800 x 1,800-pixel displays, but this adds to the diversity of its use cases. How does it work, you ask? Pop the lid open and use it as a standard laptop, but detach its Bluetooth keyboard and get to work when you want to use two screens at once. You can even use an included external mouse and Lenovo Digital Pen.

It is absolutely worth considering its price, though, as you'll be paying $1,999 for this beast. Beyond just its incredible foundation, its 13th Gen Intel Core i7-1355U is solid, with a Geekbench 5.5 score of 7,765. While this is slightly below our 7,767 premium laptop average, it's not drastic enough of a drop for us to avoid recommending the product.

The dual OLED displays are also a glorious sight, covering 136.5 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut on the top display and 136.7 percent on the bottom display. This isn't a surprise, as they're identical panels, and it pulls ahead of competitors like the MacBook Air M3 (77.8 percent) without issue.

It also sports battery life within our recommended range, lasting 9 hours and 18 minutes on the Laptop Mag battery test, which involves continuous web surfing over wifi at 150 nits. While that's not quite as impressive as the MacBook Air M3's 15 hours, it's still great for a 2-in-1 laptop.

The brightness could be better, though. It is 335 nits on the top display and 344 nits on the bottom display, which is lower than the 392 nits average for this category.

See our full Lenovo Yoga Book 9i review.

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How to choose the best 13-inch laptop

Do your intensive daily workloads require more RAM than the average Joe? Are you a video editor who needs extra storage? Are you a gamer who wants a powerful GPU? Sorting through the best laptops to fit your lifestyle is a tricky business.

Budget: What you get for your money

You can find decent Windows laptops and high-quality Chromebooks for under $500. However, better mainstream laptops usually cost more than $700 and premium Ultrabooks can run over $1,000. The best gaming laptops can cost $2.000 and up, but you can play the latest titles at decent frame rates on gaming laptops under $1,000.

Design: 2-in-1 or clamshell?

More and more of today's laptops are 2-in-1s with screens that either bend back 360 degrees or detach so you can use them as tablets. If you like the idea of using your laptop in slate mode for drawing, media consumption, or just standing up, a 2-in-1 could be for you. However, you can often get better features or a lower price by going with a traditional clamshell-style laptop.

Battery Life: 9+ hours for portability

Battery life matters unless you plan to use your laptop only on your desk. Even in the home or office, having plenty of juice enables you to work on the couch or at the conference table without being chained to the nearest outlet. We recommend getting a laptop that lasted over 9 hours on the Laptop Mag Battery Test for the best portability. The longest-lasting laptops endure anywhere between 10 and 15 hours.

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How we test the best 13-inch laptops

Over the course of a year, we review over 150 laptops covering every price point and use case. Whether you’re looking for a productivity workhorse, a badass gaming system, or a multimedia machine to kick back and watch a movie or two, we can help you find your ideal match.

In order to make our list, the system needs to score at least 4 out of 5 stars on our reviews and deliver on the things shoppers care about most. In our evaluations, we focus on design and comfort, display quality, the keyboard and touchpad, performance, battery life, and especially value.

Our expert reviewers also use each product to see how it looks, feels, and performs in everyday situations. Because we see so many different notebooks, we can compare each to its direct competitors and give you an idea of how it stacks up to the average laptop in its price band.

When we bring a laptop into our laboratory, our goal is to see how it would work if you brought it into your home or office. While we use a number of industry standard benchmarks such as Geekbench and 3DMark, we focus heavily on real-world tests that we have developed in-house.

To test endurance, the Laptop Mag Battery test surfs the web at 150 nits of brightness until the system runs out of juice. To judge pure processing power, we use a giant spreadsheet macro that matches 65,000 names with their addresses, a video transcoder that converts a 4K video to 1080p, and the Geekbench 5 synthetic test. We measure graphics prowess with both 3DMark Ice Storm / Fire Strike and a series of games including Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, Metro: Exodus, Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption just to name a few.

We use a colorimeter to measure screen brightness and color gamut while other instruments help us determine a laptop's key travel and ambient heat. See this page on how we test laptops for more details on our benchmarking procedures.

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Why Trust Laptop Mag

Laptop Mag reviews over one hundred different laptops every year, 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.

Our experienced team of 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.

One of the world's largest technology publishers, Future Publishing, enforces our editorial trustworthiness. As a company, we have unrivaled experience across every tech sector — and we're the group's specialist for all things mobile tech.

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Microsoft unveiled the Surface Laptop Studio 2 and Surface Laptop Go 3 (sorry, the Go 4 doesn’t exist unless you’re a business entity) at the latest Surface Event and they’re already the most disappointing products of the year.

Doubly disappointing coming from the brand that makes Windows, but not unexpected. Windows is a nightmare, and so are Surface Laptops apparently. Yes, they’re pretty, but for how much? Catch me outside begging for change to afford something that won’t last more than a couple years.

You shouldn’t be jumping for these products, and let me tell you why.

Surface Laptop Go (away) 3

Let’s start with the Surface Laptop Go 3 — $799 for 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. Okay, a little much, but wait, we’re forgetting the 12th Gen Intel Core i5-1235U processor. Well, what’s wrong with that? Only that it’s a year behind, and will soon be two years out of date by the time Intel’s 14th Gen rolls out in January.

Yes, $800 is a lot of money for an out of date product. You know what’s just $869? The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED. That’s a 14-inch OLED laptop with 2.8K resolution (Surface is 1.5K), an AMD Ryzen 7 7730U CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. And for just $70 more? How could that be? Easy — Microsoft is upcharging you.

You know who else upcharges its products? Apple. Do you know why it can get away with it? I’m not happy about it by any means, but the Cupertino crew has proprietary software and consistently powerful products. Microsoft has the software, but it’s not doing anything interesting with it. Tell me why I should buy a Surface if I’m not getting anything unique out of Windows?

Surface Laptop (get out of the) Studio 2

If I have to explain why the Surface Laptop Studio 2’s price is so offensive, you must be the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” setting a crime syndicate’s worth of money on fire on a daily basis. But let’s go over the starting specs real quick: 13th Gen Intel Core i7-13700H CPU (yes, Microsoft does know that 13th Gen exists), 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, Intel Iris Xe Graphics, and a 14.4-inch, 2.4K display. Not bad, right? Well, that’ll be $2,000, please.

I feel like I just died and went to a not very nice place. Oh look, we just reviewed the Asus Zenbook Pro 14 OLED for $2,099. It comes with an Intel Core i9-13900H CPU, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU with 8GB of VRAM, and a 2.8K (2800 x 1800) 14-inch OLED display. Wow, upgrades across the board for just $100 more? We must be living in fantasy land, that cannot be!

If you wanted to get a Surface Laptop Studio 2 that wasn’t completely useless, you’d have to pay $2,400 for the RTX 4050 model. But even if you go all in, you’d be paying $3,700 to get only an RTX 4060 GPU and remain uncomfortably at a Core i7 (sure, you get 64GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD, but those are superficial upgrades at this price point). While Microsoft remembered 13th Gen this time around, it forgot about Core i9.

Seriously, what is the point of Surface laptops charging so much for so little? There’s absolutely nothing unique on offer that another Windows laptop can’t completely and utterly destroy.

Surface needs to change

The only way that the Surface brand doesn’t die out entirely is if Microsoft changes course. It either needs to offer the best deals for its products, like how Amazon has cornered the market on cheap tablets. Either that, or it needs to offer something exclusive, like how Google has optimized Android best for its proprietary devices.

As far as I am concerned, Microsoft needs to either get serious about its Surface devices, or just give up and focus entirely on its software. I mean come on, these devices come with only a 30-day trial for Microsoft 365 Family and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. The easiest way to make these laptops worthwhile is to provide permanent licenses for its software on Surface. Wow, solved your problem, and you’ve easily become the best-selling laptop maker in the world. Too bad you won’t do that.

Sigh. I hoped for more out of Surface, but it’s just another drop in the sea of laptops.

Let’s get something out of the way: I’m not a fan of Asus ROG laptops. The company’s popular line of gaming hardware has a considerable reputation for its high quality reliability, and many other writers at Laptop Mag have showered laptops like the ASUS Rog Strix Scar 18 with endless praise. 

But the elements I look for in gaming laptops were lacking during my testing of the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17, as I walked away disappointed by its middling display and cheap feeling exterior for something as expensive as $3,599. As a result, I was apprehensive while pulling the Asus ROG Strix G17 out of its box. It looked similar and I figured it’d feature the same issues—wait, this laptop is only $1,399? 

Sure, my fundamental issues with its thin-feeling exterior have remained, but this is far less offensive at such a low price. The Strix G17’s excellent productivity performance and great frame rates while gaming with its RTX 4060 graphics card speak for themselves. And while I would criticize anything more than $2,000 featuring a display of this quality, it’s decently vivid and bright for midrange hardware. With all of this power underneath the hood of such an inexpensive product, it’s easily one of the best gaming laptops under $1,500, so keep reading to see if it’s for you.

Asus ROG Strix G17 price and configuration 

The Strix G17 model we reviewed is available at $1,399 on Walmart. It is built with an AMD Ryzen 9 7845HX processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop graphics card, 16GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. It also features a 17.3-inch, 2,560 x 1,440 display at a 240Hz refresh rate with 3ms response time.

It can also be upgraded to feature an AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX processor, RTX 4070 Laptop GPU, 32GB of RAM, and 2TB of SSD storage that costs $2,199 on Asus’ website. 

Asus ROG Strix G17 design 

Asus has crafted an unwieldy titan, as every time I turn to see the 17.3-inch Strix G17 sitting beside me at my desk, I am joverwhelmd by its sheer enormity. Its lid features the iconic ROG logo that glows white when the laptop is on, alongside unique splotches of white against a black painted section of the back bar. Lifting the lid reveals a massive deck with a full keyboard where the WASD keys feature transparent caps with white plastic beneath it, which absorbs the color of the accompanying RGB color rather well. A diagonal line of tilted triangles also occupies the deck, giving it an aesthetic flair.

Unfortunately, it suffers from the same design issues I noticed when reviewing the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17. While the milled aluminum chassis sounds nice, I could feel the deck sink when placing pressure on certain points of its thin feeling chassis. I was less forgiving towards the Strix Scar 17 considering it’s over $3,000, but at least with this laptop, its price at $1,399 makes its build quality understandable. The hinge also causes the lid to collapse on itself as it gets closer to the bottom, and it feels rather wobbly when adjusting it.

The Asus ROG Strix G17 weighs 6.17 pounds and measures 15.55 x 11.10 x 0.92 inches. Competitors like the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (5.5 pounds, 14.3 x 10.25 x 0.86-1.05 inches) and Origin EON16-S (5.5 pounds, 14.1 x 10.74 x .78 inches) are lighter, while the MSI Katana 15 (8.8 pounds, 14.1 x 10.2 x 0.98 inches) is heavier. 

Asus ROG Strix G17 ports 

Rarely do I review a laptop that is completely devoid of ports on the right side, but the Strix G17 does exactly that. Beyond that however, it offers more than enough for most individuals to game without needing extra accessories.

On its left side are two USB 3.2 Type-A ports and a 3.5mm audio jack, while the back features two USB 3.2 Type-C ports, with one featuring power delivery. It also has an HDMI 2.1 slot and an RJ45 LAN port. 

Asus ROG Strix G17 display 

Built with a 17.3-inch, 2,560 x 1,440 resolution display at a 240Hz refresh rate with 3-millisecond response time, this screen won’t disappoint gamers needing a gorgeous display for their favorite games.

I watched the trailer for “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” and while its degree of vividity and brightness wasn’t overt, the claymation-esque aesthetic of the turtles running around a stylized New York City featured a solid color profile. The sketchbook quality of its world comes to life in the display’s balanced contrast, with the diverse lights of the city against the night sky enchanting me.

I launched “Elden Ring” and rode my steed through the lands of Limgrave, with the deep green grass and beautiful trees hypnotically rustling in the wind. Taking in the giant, brilliantly golden Erdtree in the distance was wonderfully eye-catching on the display. I felt that it could be brighter, but it didn’t suffer at the hands of poor contrast, which can cause an overly faded version of the game world.

The Asus ROG Strix G17 did fine in our color tests, reproducing 76.8% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. This is a bit below the mainstream gaming laptop average of 79.1%. This is worse than the Legion 5 Pro (82.4%) and the EVO16-S (83.5%). However, the Katana 15 (46.1%) was left in the dust by its competitors.

It couldn’t manage much better in brightness tests, hitting a peak of 279 nits on average, which is worse than the 334 nit mainstream gaming laptop average. This makes it below the EON16-S (326 nits) and Legion 5 Pro (319 nits), but the Katana 15 (248 nits) couldn’t quite compete. 

Asus ROG Strix G17 audio 

Featuring bottom-firing speakers that provide crisp and loud audio quality, the Strix G17 sounds pretty good. Its percussion can be a little flat when listening to music, while the dialogue sometimes overshadows sound effects in film, but it’s still punchy and satisfying.

The trailer for “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” sounded fine, providing potent bass when the titular turtles bickered alongside the traditional narrator voice listing the film’s several accolades. I noticed the music and sound effects were lower than the dialogue itself, which made it sound less immersive.

The rustling of the wind alongside the atmospheric strings from the “Elden Ring” soundtrack was pretty wonderful. The piercing sharpness of the sword strikes and explosions felt a little too bassy, but the stomping of hooves and clapping of greaves against the dirt came across with a compelling elegance.

I listened to “Dream Dream Dream” by Madeon and was impressed by its quality overall, especially with the beautiful vocal melody and synth. But the song missed the mark with its percussion sounding a bit flat, while the big electronic drops were underwhelming. Its volume was loud enough to satisfy within my tiny office, but I could understand someone wanting it to be higher.

Asus ROG Strix G17 keyboard and trackpad 

The Strix G17 features a full Chiclet keyboard with per-key RGB lighting. Considering the laptop’s 17.3-inch size, each key is decently sized and the full keyboard doesn’t need to span the entirety of its deck just to fit everything. I absolutely love keypads and they’re vital for gaming laptops, especially when raiding in “World of Warcraft.”

I took the 10fastfingers typing test and managed a 93 words per minute score with an 89.5% accuracy. I normally score around 110 words per minute with around 95% accuracy, but in this case, jumping between each keystroke lacked the clicky satisfaction that I expect out of my favorite keyboards. The keys were spongy regardless of its 1.9mm key travel, so it felt rather unpleasant.

The 5.3 x 3.1-inch trackpad isn’t all that big considering how enormous the rest of the deck is, but it doesn’t need to be. I had little to no issue opening documents, browsing web pages, and navigating through folders. Swapping windows with three fingers was rather easy, while jumping into tab view took little to no effort either.

Asus ROG Strix G17 gaming and graphics 

Built with an RTX 4060 Laptop graphics card with 8GB of vRAM, this power will be enough for you to handle moderate gaming, although if you want something high power, we don’t recommend this type of card. Regardless, you’ll quickly see that it still performed quite well when compared to stronger cards in our gaming tests.

During the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla test at 1080p on maximum graphics settings, it achieved an average of 103 frames per second. The EON16-S (RTX 4070, 106 fps) was close while the Katana 15 (RTX 4070, 106 fps) managed an identical speed to the Origin. However, the Legion 5 Pro (RTX 4070, 113 fps) dominated.

Asus didn’t do much better on Red Dead Redemption 2, managing an average of 55 fps on medium settings at 1080p. The Katana 15 (72 fps), EON16-S (75 fps) and Legion 5 Pro (78 fps) were on a whole different level of performance.

The Borderlands 3 test had the Strix G17 average 87 fps at 1080p. The Katana 15 (99 fps), EON16-S (102 fps), and Legion 5 Pro (110 fps) did quite a bit better, but the Asus laptop’s performance was still pretty impressive.

On the Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition test, which analyzes the game at three graphic settings, the Strix G17 managed 83 fps on High, 65 fps on Ultra, and 42 fps on Extreme. This couldn’t quite match up to the Legion 5 Pro (107 fps High, 84 fps Ultra, 53 fps Extreme), EON16-S (99 fps High, 78 fps Ultra, 49 fps Extreme), and Katana 15 (91 fps High, 74 fps Ultra, 48 fps Extreme).

Asus ROG Strix G17 performance 

The Strix G17 features an AMD Ryzen 9 7845HX processor, 1TB of SSD storage and 16GB of RAM. This gives it more than enough power to handle all sorts of tasks at once, and even though it’s the cheapest laptop among its competition, crushed its foes in quite a few metrics when analyzing performance.

On the Geekbench 6.0 overall performance test, the Strix G17’s multi-core score of 13,430 is rather impressive. Not only is this vastly superior to the category average of 7,185, but the Katana 15 (Intel Core i7-13620H, 12,562) and Legion 5 Pro (AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX, 13,063) were a little behind. However, the EON16-S (Intel Core i9-13900H, 14,068) revealed its greatest strength in this test.

While converting a 4K video into 1080p resolution using the HandBrake app, the Strix G17 performed this task in an impressive 3 minutes and 28 seconds. This makes it faster than the 4:35 average, and the Legion 5 Pro (4:05), Katana 15 (5:04), and EON16-S (3:46) couldn’t complete it quite as swiftly.

Unfortunately, it slowed down a tad in our file transfer test, revealing that its 1TB SSD isn’t quite up to snuff. Duplicating 25GB of multimedia files in 22 seconds for a 1,249 megabytes per second transfer rate is solid performance, but it doesn’t beat out the 1,313MBps average. However, the EON16-S (3TB SSD, 1,819MBps) and Legion 5 Pro (1TB SSD, 2,150MBps) were far quicker, while the Katana 15 (1TB SSD, 784MBps) rested squarely in last place.

Asus ROG Strix G17 battery life 

We never expect gaming laptops to sport decent battery life, even though laptops like the Razer Blade 14 continue to prove that this is possible, but the Strix G17 does particularly poorly in this endeavor. On the Laptop Mag battery test, which involves continuous web browsing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits, the Strix G17 lasted as short as 2 hours and 35 minutes.

Not only is this subpar to the category average of 5 hours and 44 minutes, but Legion 5 Pro (4:38) and EON16-S (5:06) have nearly double the longevity. Even the Katana 15 (2:48) just barely surpasses it.

Asus ROG Strix G17 webcam 

The Strix G17’s 720p webcam is unsurprisingly grainy, but I was caught by surprise at how well it maintained the vividity of my bright shirt. It also made my pink walls and the white ceiling look rather striking. 

The details of my face coalesced into a mesh of missing detail, but even though the camera quality could be better, I was okay with it. If you want something better than 720p for frequent video conferencing, we recommend purchasing one of the best webcams, but this will be fine in most cases otherwise. 

Asus ROG Strix G17 heat 

Gaming laptops love to advertise their incredible cooling solutions, but at the end of the day, few to none manage to overcome the intense heat that inherently accompanies powerful graphics cards. The ROG Strix G17 is no exception, still exceeding our 95-degree comfort threshold even while it isn’t gaming.

The touchpad remained cool at 72 degrees fahrenheit, but the G/H key hit 92 degrees while it got its hottest on its right-rear underside at 97.3. During gaming tests, the touchpad remained exceptionally cool at 63 degrees, but the G/H key went as high as 107 degrees, which is a huge problem if you’re using the keyboard while gaming. The underside went as high as 122 at the lowest left corner, so do not let this thing anywhere near your legs.

Asus ROG Strix G17 software and warranty 

While it’s naturally installed with Windows 11 and many of its expected applications, the Strix G17 comes with tons of software from Asus. Most importantly, Armoury Crate is a one-stop shop for everything you might need to configure your gaming laptop, featuring hardware stats, system configuration settings, GPU modes, settings for Aura Sync and GameVisual for “enhanced” display options. MyAsus also gives you access to product registration, warranty extension and further info on the system.

The Strix G17 comes with a one-year limited warranty. You can see how Asus did in our Tech Support Showdown special report. 

Bottom line 

Asus delivers an inexpensive yet massive 17.3-inch gaming laptop with solid performance through the Strix G17, perfect for those who can’t afford to spend the big bucks on the most powerful gaming hardware out there. Featuring excellent productivity metrics, high frame rates while gaming, a decent enough display for its price, and solid speakers, I came away happy with what the Strix G17 could do.

But its abysmal battery life is hard to grapple with, alongside a cheap feeling hinge and deck. But if you don’t expect to be detached from an outlet for more than a couple of hours, you’ll get by fine. If you want superior battery life and can deal with a slightly smaller 16-inch display, we highly recommend the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro. Otherwise, the Strix G17 is a powerful machine.

Fall is at our doorstep, banging on the window with a flood of news, and among the flood is the HP Pavilion Plus 16 and HP Pavilion Plus 14 making a sub-$1000 showing for casual users and creators.

The HP Pavilion Plus 16 is expected to be available in October for a starting price of $999, while the HP Pavilion Plus 14 is expected to be available in September for a starting price of $849 (links will be active in the fall).

HP Pavilion Plus 16 and 14: Specs, features, and more

Let's start off with the HP Pavilion Plus 16, dressed in either a Natural Silver or Warm Gold, as described by HP. It's packed with up to an Intel Core i7-13700H processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD.

You'll see it also offers a 16-inch, 2560 x 1600, 120Hz display that offers a 100% sRGB and 400 nits of brightness. If those numbers are accurate, that's an incredible showing from HP.

To top that off, HP claims that the Plus 16 can get up to 11 hours and 45 minutes of battery life.

Let's switch off to the HP Pavilion Plus 14, suited in either a Natural Silver, Moonlight Blue, or Tranquil Pink. Changing up the tune, the Pavilion Plus 14 comes with up to an AMD Ryzen 7 7840H processor, an AMD Radeon 780M GPU, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD.

Despite it's smaller size, it offers an even nicer display at 14-inches. It's an OLED panel clocked in at 2880 x 1800, 120Hz with 100% DCI-P3 and 500 nits of brightness. That's a lot of screen in a small machine.

As far as battery life goes, HP claims to offer 12 hours and 30 minutes based on mixed usage.

Outlook

The HP Pavilion Plus 16 and HP Pavilion Plus 14 sound like great all-purpose laptops, especially for people just going back to school and those who need a bit of an extra kick in their tech.

Don't worry, if you're just getting back to school, you won't have to wait too long, as these laptops launch this fall. Stay tuned for our full reviews and benchmarks.

The HP Envy x360 2-in-1 laptop will make your digital creator friends green to the gills. This 15.6-inch clamshell convertible provides powerful productivity in a purely portable package, with plenty of battery life to boot. This Ryzen-powered notebook is loaded with an AMD Ryzen 7 5825U CPU (paired with AMD Radeon graphics), 12GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD, all behind a silky smooth FHD LCD (1920 x 1080) touchscreen display, which can easily shift between laptop, tablet, and tent mode.  

Intel makes some of the best laptop CPUs around, but there are scores of new AMD Ryzen 7-powered laptops that are just as capable as other Core i5 or Core i7 laptops on the market. When we reviewed the first HP Envy x360 15 back in 2021, we noted solid performance thanks to an AMD Ryzen 7 5700U CPU — paired with capable AMD Radeon graphics — and 16GB of RAM. Is its younger brother one of the best 2-in-1 laptops you can buy right now? (Or even one of the best 15-inch laptops, for that matter?) It’s certainly one of the best AMD Ryzen laptops we’ve seen on sale lately, but its lackluster benchmark scores give us pause. Read on to find out why. 

HP Envy x360 2-in-1 (2022, 15-inch) price and configurations

The AMD-powered HP Envy x360 I reviewed comes with an AMD Ryzen 7 5825U CPU (up to 4.5 GHz, 16 MB L3 cache, 8 cores, 16 threads), AMD Radeon graphics, 12GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. Right now, you’ll find it on sale at Best Buy for $750, down from $1,049. 

Dig the Envy x360’s detailed design but not the AMD innards? As of this writing, the Intel-powered $599 Envy x360 base model on HP’s site features an Intel Core i5-1335U CPU (up to 4.6 GHz, 12 MB L3 cache, 10 cores, 12 threads), Intel Iris Xe Graphics, 8GB of RAM, a 512GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD, and a multitouch-enabled 15.6-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) display. Not bad for an entry-level 2-in-1 laptop, especially for high school or college students. 

On the other end of the spectrum, the premium $1,469 config I specced out on HP’s website comes with a Core i7-1355U CPU (up to 5.0 GHz, 12 MB L3 cache, 10 cores, 12 threads), Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 graphics (4GB VRAM), 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD, which should give you a bit more oomph under the hood.

The Envy x360’s 15.6-inch display is plenty big for multitouch productivity, but creators of every ilk will want to consider a multi-monitor setup at home. Never fear: we’ve got you covered with the best monitors, best curved monitors, and the best keyboard and mouse combos. (Oh, and the best mouse.)

HP Envy x360 2-in-1 (2022, 15-inch) design

First things first: this is one beautiful machine. Featuring a slick Nightfall Black aluminum chassis and extra-thin bezels on either side of the 15.6-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) edge-to-edge multitouch display, I felt like a Mission: Impossible side character as soon as I opened the lid. (Which was so damn attractive, in fact, that my fingerprints just couldn’t keep themselves away.) 

HP hasn’t changed the overall design much since our original Envy x360 15 review, and that’s a good thing. In fact, the whole package looks like a younger cousin of the ferocious HP ZBook Fury 17 G8, whose deeper deck is similarly adorned with top-firing Bang & Olufsen speakers. 

Once you pop open that angular lid, however, the Envy x360 is comparably sleeker to HP’s older, bulkier 17-inch workstation, with dual speakers flanking either side of the backlit keyboard (instead of one long speaker above the keys). 

Above the display you’ll find HP’s True Vision 5MP IR camera, capable of streaming video at up to 2592 x 1944 resolution…which will make it easier to watch your nephew pick his nose in the background of your next Zoom chat. Similar to other laptops in this price range, the webcam utilizes temporal noise reduction for enhanced video chats. (More on that below.) 

Flip the laptop upside down, and you’ll find two rubber feet to elevate the machine's lower thermals, and two bottom-firing speakers near the front edge to complement the top-firing ones. 

Measuring 12.3 x 8.4 x 0.7 inches and clocking in at 3.1 pounds, the 15.6-inch HP Envy x360 is a full pound lighter than the previous model. Its rival, the 15-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 (3.4 pounds, 13.4 x 9.6 x 0.6 inches) is another sleek machine, though both 2-in-1 laptops are more portable than the similarly equipped 16-inch Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (5.4 pounds, 14 x 10.4 x 1.1 inches).

HP Envy x360 2-in-1 (2022, 15-inch) ports

Enviously slim as the HP Envy x360 may be, it’s still got plenty of connectivity for jetsetting creators. On the left side of the laptop, you’ll find a headphone/mic combo jack, a USB Type-A port, and a full-size SD card slot, which is great news for mobile photographers. (Though serious photogs may want to invest in a dedicated laptop for photo-editing, not to mention a laptop backpack like the Peak Design Everyday Backpack V2 30L to keep your tech protected.)

There are two USB type-C ports on the right side, along with another USB Type-A port and an HDMI port.  

Not enough cutting-edge connectivity for ya? Fine, get yourself a laptop docking station or USB Type-C hub for even more powerful productivity with your portable peripherals. 

HP Envy x360 2-in-1 (2022, 15-inch) display

At first glance, the 15.6-inch (1920 x 1080) edge-to-edge glass display on the Envy x360 is pleasing to the eye; this multitouch-enabled slab can instantly morph between tent, tablet, or laptop mode. The display’s side bezels are super-slim, with that aforementioned 5MP IR webcam nestled up top.

When I changed the default desktop background to a hi-res image from the James Webb Space Telescope (8423 x 14589), the gloriously detailed Pillars of Creation came through crisp and clean, with well-saturated blues from the distant depths of deep space.

In a 4K YouTube video of upcoming movie teasers, Jason Statham’s jawline came in just as sharp as the sharks’ teeth that were chasing him in the Meg 2 trailer I watched, as did the granular sands (and sandworms) of Arrakis in Dune 2. 

HP Envy x360 2-in-1 (2022, 15-inch) keyboard and touchpad

Sitting front-and-center on the keyboard deck is a generously sized 4.8 x 3-inch touchpad that's just a smidge bigger than the 4.5 x 3-inch trackpad on the Microsoft Surface Laptop 5. I had zero issues executing advanced Windows 11 gestures like two-finger scrolling or three-finger swipes to switch windows; the touchpad was very responsive, with just the right amount of friction and plenty of bounce to boot. This island-style keyboard is flanked by two speakers.

The Chiclet-style keys on the Envy x360 aren’t nearly as punchy as what you’ll find on traditional mechanical keyboards (i.e., the best gaming keyboards, hands-down) but they still provided excellent travel in my testing; there’s just enough room to rest your wrists on either side of the deck as you work. During the 10FastFingers.com test, my dodgy digits achieved 61 words per minute with a 89.3% accuracy — right on the heels of my normal mechanical keyboard speed of 65 wpm and 92.6% accuracy. 

HP Envy x360 2-in-1 (2022, 15-inch) audio

Conspicuously, HP doesn’t have much to say on their website about the Envy x360’s top-firing Bang & Olufsen speakers, and for good reason. When I pumped Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” up to 100% volume, it was barely loud enough to fill my bedroom, with much more background distortion than I was expecting; vocals were muddled, and the acoustics were tinny at best. That infamous bass solo around the 3-minute mark was accompanied by an annoying background hum that stuck around until the electric guitar chimed in again. 

That being said, the Envy x360 is absolutely not a gaming laptop, and even the very best laptops are mostly cursed with subpar speakers. Audiophiles will want a dedicated pair of Bluetooth headphones or external speakers for more dynamic audio.

HP Envy x360 2-in-1 (2022, 15-inch) performance

For this config, HP pairs an AMD Ryzen 7 5825U CPU with AMD Radeon graphics and 12GB of RAM. With 50 Google Chrome tabs open over Wi-Fi (10 playing 4K YouTube videos); music streaming over Spotify; and the laptop connected to an external display, the Envy x360 barely broke a sweat.

To give you an idea of what the Envy x360 can handle on the benchmark side of things, we put it to work in our testing lab. Clocking in at 7,476 on our Geekbench 5.4 overall performance test, the Envy x360 beat the average mainstream laptop score (7,137), but not by much. It also outpaced the Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 (6,560) with its 12th Gen Intel Core i7 1265U CPU and the Ryzen 7-powered Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (7,342).

On the Handbrake video transcoding test, it took 7 minutes and 30 seconds to convert a 4K video to 1080p, which easily outpaces the Surface Laptop 5 (8:53) and edges out the mainstream laptop average (8:02) by nearly half a minute, but still lagged behind the Legion Pro 5, which completed the same task in 7 minutes and 6 seconds. 

The HP Envy x360 earned methodically mediocre marks when it came to transferring data. Its 512GB SSD duplicated a 25GB multimedia file in 33.7 seconds at a rate of 796.4 megabytes per second. This is markedly slower than the average file-transfer rate for mainstream laptops (933.9 MBps), but still spiffy enough for everyday productivity chores.

In comparison, the 512GB Samsung PCIe NVMe SSD in the Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 took 50 seconds to convert a 25GB multimedia file for a transfer rate of 532.5 MBps. Meanwhile, the Legion Pro 5 achieved an impressive 832.7 MBps transfer rate with its 512GB PCIe SSD.

HP Envy x360 2-in-1 (2022, 15-inch) graphics

I wasn’t expecting too much from the Envy x360’s integrated AMD Radeon graphics, which aren’t meant for mainstream gaming. It scored a disappointing 3,308 on the 3DMark Fire Strike test, which is roughly half the 7,142 premium laptop average. This couldn’t even keep up with the Surface Laptop 5 (4,670), powered by Intel Iris Xe guts. 

Similarly, on the Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: Gathering Storm (1080p) benchmark, the Envy x360 managed a playable 34.5 frames per second, which is just above our 30-fps threshold — and neck-and-neck with the Surface Laptop 4’s 33 fps. The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro, however, was able to consistently bang out 60 fps or more in a variety of different gaming titles like Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2.

Long-story-short: while some Ryzen 7 laptops can certainly be used for light gaming, you might want to check our top picks for the best gaming laptops. 

Lenovo Slim Pro 9i (14.5-inch) battery life

Battery life can be a mixed bag for laptops in the 15-inch range, and the HP Envy x360 didn’t surprise us in the endurance department: it lasted 9 hours and 52 minutes on the Laptop Mag Battery test, which involves continuous Web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits. That’s 50 minutes better than the Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 (9:02), and well ahead of the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (6:16). Most mainstream laptops last 9 hours and 33 minutes, though, and that gives this Envy the edge. 

Still, the first Envy x360 we reviewed back in 2021 (similarly equipped with a Ryzen 7 5700U CPU and AMD Radeon graphics) lasted 11 hours and 23 minutes in our testing, so this feels like a step backwards. 

Thanks to HP Fast Charge technology, the Envy x360’s battery can juice up from 0% to 50% in just 30 minutes. To test this feature, I waited until the laptop was at roughly 1% battery, then shut it down and plugged it in; after exactly 30 minutes, I turned the laptop back on and checked the battery life, which had reached 52%. Nice! This is great news for anyone with limited outlet access in their day-to-day routine. 

HP Envy x360 2-in-1 (2022, 15-inch) webcam

 HP’s True Vision 5MP IR camera has a built-in camera shutter for enhanced privacy. The integrated dual array digital microphones also feature temporal noise reduction, which performed well during my video test chats (via Zoom and Google Meet). There’s also a dedicated mute key situated on the keyboard’s top row, which makes it easier to follow the standard Zoom etiquette we’ve all grown accustomed to.

In a test call over Zoom with video settings on high (720p), my friend said my voice came through crystal clear on her end, as she did on mine. When I turned on some bass-thumping tunes in the background (about ten feet to my right), she could barely hear the music at all, which speaks to the Envy x360’s temporal noise reduction capabilities. 

I never expect much from laptop webcams, but my friend could easily make out plenty of detail in my home office, right down to the hanging plants on the wall behind me (and my bushy brows up front when I leaned closer to the webcam lens.) This webcam is perfectly acceptable for on-the-go video chats, I’d say, even in low lighting.

HP Envy x360 2-in-1 (2022, 15-inch) heat

A quality 2-in-1 laptop should rest as comfortably in your lap as a purring cyber-kitten, and thanks to the Envy x360’s EPEAT Gold rating, one would expect the machine’s temperature output to match the economical energy output. (Not to mention the ergonomic ventilation system you’ll find on the underside of the chassis.) 

Consider our expectations exceeded. The touchpad reached a relatively cool 81.5 degrees Fahrenheit in our benchmark testing; the center of the keyboard (88.5 degrees) and underside (90 degrees) were noticeably warmer, but still well below our 95-degree comfort threshold. The hottest area of the machine — underneath, near the vents — rose to 98.5 degrees, but in my anecdotal testing, the laptop’s exterior rarely rose above 90 degrees during use unless I was stressing the system out somehow. (Like playing YouTube vids from multiple Chrome browsers.) 

HP Envy x360 2-in-1 (2022, 15-inch) software and warranty

You won’t find the Envy x360 among the best business laptops, but that doesn’t mean HP isn’t packing a little security under the hood. For example, you can use the webcam’s infrared (IR) sensor to sign in using Windows Hello, and there’s a proximity sensor to lock out unwanted individuals and wake up Windows when the user returns, and TPM support on the backend. (A fingerprint reader might have been a nice *ahem* touch, but its absence is expected at this price point.)

The HP Command Center lets you adjust system performance, temperature, and cooling preferences. With HP QuickDrop, you can wirelessly transfer photos, videos, documents and more between your PC and mobile device.

The Envy x360 runs on Windows 11 Home, so you’ll find the standard fare of Microsoft apps, including Microsoft 365, Edge, Photos, Teams, Paint, and more. If you enjoy built-in games, check out apps like Simple Solitaire, Solitaire & Casual Games, and Minecraft Education after you settle into your new notebook.

The HP Envy x360 is backed by a one-year limited warranty. See how HP performed on our Tech Support Showdown and Best and Worst Brands ranking.

Bottom line

If you’re on the hunt for a convertible notebook that’s as affordable as it is capable, the HP Envy x360 2-in-1 laptop isn’t a bad bargain, especially if you catch it on clearance.  There’s a lot to be said for the usefulness of this form factor, especially if you’re always multitasking between work and play with your laptop, and you can expect a full workday of battery life on the backend. 

That being said, there are some compromises to be made with the Envy x360 at this price point (ie, under $1,000), and this config didn’t exactly blow us away in the benchmarks department. 

Similarly equipped AMD Ryzen 7 systems like the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 and Lenovo Legion 5 Pro both give the Envy x360 a run for its money when it comes to performance, but the units we tested were also priced a bit higher, too. 

The HP Envy x360 2-in-1 laptop is a good value for high school and college students, and it might be just the back-to-school tool you never knew you needed.

The Acer Swift Edge 16 is a Windows alternative to the wildly popular 15-inch MacBook Air, especially if you don't have an allegiance to particular OS. It's got a gorgeous, 3.2K OLED display, a lightweight from factor that surprises you every time you pick it up, and impressive scores on most benchmarks.

But when we stack it up against the 15-inch MacBook Air, do these incredible qualities still hold water? The answer is a resounding yes. Still, while the Swift Edge 16 slaps the M2-based 15-inch MacBook Air silly on several tests, it fails in several other aspects, too.

The question is, which laptop has a set of pros that are more appealing to you?

Which laptops are we comparing?

Check the chart below to see which laptops we're comparing in this head-to-head competition.

The Acer laptop gives you more storage for less. However, for some, the extra $400 for the MacBook Air 15 may be worth it. I'll let you decide which laptop is best for you with a slew of facts and figures.

Where to buy the Acer Swift Edge 16? At Best Buy for $1,300

Where to buy the MacBook Air 15? At Apple for $1,700

3 ways the Acer Swift Edge 16 is better than the MacBook Air 15

Yes, the 15-inch MacBook Air launched this year, but it's rocking a passé chip (i.e., M2) that was hip when it debuted with the 2022 MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro. Rumor has it that the 15-inch MacBook Air was supposed to feature the next-generation M3 chip, but due to "yield issues," TSMC (Apple's supplier) couldn't supply the Cupertino-based tech giant with enough processors to meet their demand.

So it's no surprise that the Acer Swift Edge 16 had no issues crushing a 2022-born processor. 

1. The Acer Swift Edge 16 has better performance

On the Geekbench 6 overall performance benchmark, which tests for how well a laptop can handle tasks such as file compression, rendering PDFs, processing text, machine learning, editing images, and 3D geometry, the Swift delivered a multi-core score of 10,168.

The M2 chip inside the MacBook Air 15, on the other hand, trailed behind with a score of 9,993.

We also tested casual gaming on both laptops (i.e., Sid Meier's Civilization VI on 1080p). The Swift Edge 16 (AMD Radeon graphics), staying true to its name, edged out the MacBook Air 15 (M2 10-core GPU) by a hair with an average of 44 frames per second while its Apple rival notched 43 fps.

2. The Acer Swift Edge 16 can transcode videos faster

If you're a casual content creator, transcoding video from one resolution to another may be a part of your workflow. If this is the case, you may want to lean toward the Swift Edge 16.

According to our Handbrake benchmark, which tasked the Swift Edge 16 with transcoding a 4K video to 1080p, the Acer laptop took 6 minutes and 4 seconds to complete the test. Meanwhile, it took the 15-inch M2 MacBook Air 7 minutes and 46 seconds to do the same.

3. The Acer Swift Edge 16's display is more colorful and has a better webcam

The Acer Swift Edge 16 sports a striking, 16-inch, 3,200 x 2,000 OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. The MacBook Air 15, on the other hand, has a smaller 15.3-inch display with a lesser resolution of 2,800 x 1,864 pixels.

According to our colorimeter, the Swift Edge 16's display covers 139% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. The MacBook Air 15 only covers 111%.

Speaking of the display, the Swift Edge 16 sports a QHD 1440p webcam on the top bezel that is quite refreshing from the sea of 720p and 1080p shooters on most laptops at the moment. I found that the webcam rendered colors quite accurately, and while there was some negligible noise, the picture was clear and sharp. The M2 MacBook Air's webcam is decent; it has a 1080p webcam. But thankfully, thanks to the Continuity Camera feature Apple introduced last year, you can always attach an iPhone to your MacBook with a Belkin mount, allowing you to use your iPhone as a webcam.

3 ways the Acer Swift Edge 16 is NOT better than the MacBook Air 15

While the Acer Swift Edge 16 has its pros, it has its cons, too. Its most glaring flaw is that it's an energy-guzzling laptop. The MacBook Air 15, on the other hand, is a power-efficient queen. In other words, the battery life on the Acer laptop sucks.

1. MacBook Air 15 has better battery life

We tested the runtimes of both laptops by surfing the web over WiFi at 150 nits of brightness until they tapped out. The Swift Edge 16 powered down after just 7 hours and 18 minutes.

Meanwhile, the MacBook Air lasted a whopping 14 hours and 59 minutes. I don't know about you, but that 15-hour runtime is awfully difficult to pass up. You're gaining an extra 8 hours of battery life!

2. MacBook Air 15 has better speakers

I am not a fan of the Acer Swift Edge 16's dual, bottom-firing speakers. If you're not one to wear headphones or earbuds for whatever reason (perhaps you like to cuddle up and watch shows with a loved one), you'll be disappointed with the quiet sound system on the Acer Swift Edge 16. Even at max volume, the laptop's speakers failed to climb to a proper amplification level. This means you may find yourself straining to hear shows, films, and YouTube videos, particularly if you're in a noisy environment.

The MacBook Air 15, on the other hand, features an upgrade over its predecessor: a sweet six-speaker setup, including a pair of force-cancelling woofers. It supports spatial audio, too. Plus, its sound will fill the entirety of your room (unlike the Acer Swift Edge 16).

3. The MacBook Air 15 has a brighter screen

If you sit next to bright window or you like to sit outside during sunny days, you'll find that the Swift Edge 16's display may be too dim for your tastes. According to our display testing, the Swift Edge 16 has a brightness score of 387 nits.

The MacBook Air 15 is much brighter with a luminosity of 473 nits. (If brightness is important to you, check out my recommendations for the brightest laptops.)

Bottom line

Another interesting differentiator to point out between these two laptops is weight and thickness. Although the Acer Swift Edge 16 is thicker (0.57 inches) than the MacBook Air 15 (0.5 inches), it somehow manages to be lighter. It weighs 2.7 pounds while the MacBook Air 15 weighs 3.3 pounds.

Like I said at the outset, the Swift Edge 16's heft (or lack thereof) will surprise you. You'll pick it up expecting it to be heavy, but you'll be pleasantly surprised by its lightweight chassis.

Overall, determining which laptop is best depends on your needs. If you are seduced by the Swift Edge 16's bang-for-your-buck value (more storage for less), M2 chip-beating performance, and its colorful display, you should snag the Acer laptop. However, if that 15-hour battery life is too alluring, you should definitely opt for the MacBook Air 15.

Acer’s announcement of the Swift Edge 16 had me salivating. I was bloodthirsty for a new beastly, MacBook-murdering laptop to hit the market, and it looked like the Swift Edge 16 was the next candidate for our best laptops page. After all, it was set to be packed with a processor from AMD’s new Ryzen 7040U series CPUs, which are trumpeted as SoCs that can kick Apple’s M2 chip’s high-and-mighty butt.

In other words, the 13-inch MacBook Air (M2), the 13-inch MacBook Pro (M2), and the 15-inch MacBook Air (M2) were expected to eat the Swift Edge 16’s dust in our performance benchmarks.

The Swift Edge 16 review unit I received features the fastest model from AMD’s new U-series lineup. And yes, looking at the performance numbers, the Swift Edge 16 does, indeed, outperform the M2 chips that power the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. However, I can’t help but feel slightly dejected. 

There are so many other aspects, aside from processor prowess, that make a laptop great: display performance, battery life, keyboard comfortability, build durability, and more. While the Swift Edge 16 had me grinning from ear-to-ear in some of these categories, in others I feel slightly let down.

Acer Swift Edge 16 price and configurations

 The only configuration of the Acer Swift Edge 16 you can currently purchase is the one I tested, which costs $1,299 at Best Buy and comes with the following specs:

•  AMD Ryzen 7 7840U processor 
•  AMD Radeon integrated graphics 
•  16GB of RAM 
• 1TB SSD
• 16-inch, 3,200 x 2,000-pixel display with a 120Hz refresh rate 

If you’re looking for something a little cheaper, consider checking out our best laptops under $500. 

Acer Swift Edge 16 design

If you looked at the Swift Edge 16, you’d expect it to be quite heavy, but despite its thick form factor, it’s surprisingly lightweight. 

The Swift Edge 16 is draped in an greenish-black hue Acer calls “Olivine Black.” When I ran my hands over the top lid, I noticed that it has a bizarre grainy texture, but it has an addicting feel. On the top-center position of the lid, you’ll find a silver Acer insignia that has a lustrous, chromatic shine.

There’s a tiny gap between the lid and deck, making it easy to open the lid with one hand. On the deck, you’ll find a backlit, island-style keyboard with white letters and symbols stamped on “Olivine Black” keys. Under the spacebar, you’ll find a large, spacious touchpad that has a stormy gray hue.

The laptop’s bottom features an elongated vent that sits under the hinge; you’ll also find a tetrad of rubber feet positioned at all four corners.

The Swift Edge 16 weighs 2.7 pounds and has dimensions of 14 x 9.7 x 0.57-0.60 inches. Its rival, the 15-inch M2 MacBook Air, weighs the same, but is far thinner (2.7 pounds, 12 x 8.5 x 0.4 inches). The LG Gram 16, another competitor, weighs slightly less, but it’s thicker (2.6 pounds, 14 x 9.5 x 0.66 inches).

Acer Swift Edge 16 ports

The Swift Edge 16 has an impressive stock of ports (something the 15-inch MacBook Air would know nothing about), so a dongle shouldn’t be necessary.

On the left, there’s two USB4 Type-C ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, and a USB Type-A port. On the right side, you’ll find a security lock slot, another USB Type-A port, a headset jack, and a microSD card slot.

If you’re looking for more ports, check out our best USB Type-C hubs and best laptop docking stations pages.

Acer Swift Edge 16 display

The display on the Swift Edge 16 is an absolute gem. When you first open the lid and feast your eyes on this 16-inch, 3,200 x 2,000, 120Hz, OLED screen, you’ll be taken aback by the spaciousness of this alluring panel. (The display has a 90.5% screen-to-body ratio.) The side bezels are thin, but the top and bottom are thick, with the former making room for a 1440p webcam, which I’ll critique later.

I watched the Kraven the Hunter trailer on YouTube, and the sea of sky blue-and-khaki uniformed students playing on a verdant lawn caught my attention. Overlooking them is a gothic-style edifice built with weathered, faded-red bricks and menacing, sharp spires on its roof. We witnessed the range of reds this display can handle as splatters of rich burgundy blood exploded from a character’s skull after getting shot right in the noggin.

According to our colorimeter, the Swift Edge 16 covers 139% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is massively better than the LG Gram 16 (118%), the 15-inch M2 MacBook Air (111%), and the average mainstream laptop (93.7%). 

The Swift Edge 16 has an acceptable brightness of 387 nits, beating the average laptop (359 nits) and the LG Gram 16 (332 nits), but not the 473-nit 15-inch MacBook Air.

Unfortunately, color accuracy isn’t the Swift Edge 16’s forte. It has a Delta-E Score of 0.27 (closer to 0 is best), which matches the LG Gram 16, but is worse than the 15-inch MacBook Air (0.17).

It has a brightness score of 387 nits, which beats the LG Gram 16 (332 nits) and the average mainstream laptop (342 nits), but not the 15-inch M2 MacBook Air (473 nits).

Acer Swift Edge 16 keyboard and touchpad

Let me preface this by saying that I’m a keyboard snob who has reviewed a myriad of laptops, so the average consumer may find the Swift Edge 16 to be perfectly fine. But I’m acutely aware that the Swift Edge 16’s keyboard is mid — pure and simple.

One trait I look for in a great laptop keyboard is some sort of “bounce back” after pushing down on the keys, springing you onto other letters and symbols like a helpful trampoline. Unfortunately, I found the Swift Edge 16’s keyboard to be shallower than expected and it’s lacking that tactile feedback that I love. On the 10FastFingers.com typing test, I hit 78 words per minute, which is about 10 words less than my 87-89 wpm average.

A touchpad needs the right balance of smoothness and resistance. It has just enough of the former to facilitate your glides, but it has sufficient friction to respond to any sudden stops and helter-skelter cursor navigation. The Acer Swift Edge 16’s 5.1 x 3.4-inch touchpad has a little too much resistance and not enough smoothness for my taste, but other than that minor nitpick, it responded very well to Windows 11 gestures such as pinch-to-zoom and two-finger scrolling.

Acer Swift Edge 16 audio

The speakers sound slightly tinny — even when it’s not at max volume. I tried to give the Swift Edge 16 some grace. After all, it’s a $1,299 laptop, and I rarely see laptops in this price range have sound systems that sound like an angelic choir. However, the Swift Edge 16 now has the similarly priced 15-inch M2 MacBook Air to contend with, which features a six-speaker sound system that would make even the most surly man sway from left to right.

I fired up the “Hits 2023” playlist from Spotify’s homepage. When Dua Lipa’s “Dance The Night (From Barbie The Album)” played, I bobbed my head to the disco-pop song as the danceable beat kicked in, but once I heard the vocals, I noticed there’s a slight, barely perceptible scratchiness to Dua Lipa’s upbeat singing.

Another aspect about the Swift Edge 16’s dual, bottom-firing speakers that disappointed me is that it’s far too quiet. It failed to fill up my medium-sized room. It’s worth noting that there’s a DTS Audio Processing app that comes with three presets: Music, Movies and Games. It’s already on Music by default and the other two made Dua Lipa sound even worse. 

Acer Swift Edge 16 performance

The Acer Swift Edge 16 has an AMD Ryzen 7 7840U underneath the hood and 16GB of RAM. Google Chrome can be a RAM-hungry, memory-eating monster, so I challenged the Swift Edge 16 to endure my typical workflow: an onslaught of 50 tabs. Despite trying to push the Swift Edge 16 to its limits, it handled my stress test like a cool cucumber.

On the Geekbench 5.5 overall performance test, the Acer Swift Edge 16 nailed a multi-core score of 9,624, crushing the 15-inch M2 MacBook Air (8,932), the LG Gram 16’s Intel Core i7-1260p CPU (8,431), and the average mainstream laptop (7,137).

On our Handbrake benchmark, the Swift Edge 16 took only 6 minutes and 4 seconds to transcode a 4K video to 1080p. The LG Gram 16 took a shocking 17 minutes to do the same task while the 15-inch MacBook Air completed the test in 7 minutes and 46 seconds. The average mainstream laptop took 8 minutes and 2 seconds to finish the Handbrake test.

The Acer laptop, packed with a 1TB SSD, has a transfer rate of 1,269.79 megabytes per second, which is worse than the 1TB SSD inside the Gram 16 (1,506.9). The average mainstream laptop has a file-transfer rate of 933.86. (Unfortunately, MacBooks don’t support our file-transfer test, so we don’t have benchmarks for the 512GB SSD inside the 15-inch MacBook Air, but for what it’s worth, it has a BlackMagic Read/Write score of 2,794/3,146).

Acer Swift Edge 16 graphics

The Swift Edge 16 has AMD Radeon graphics, and it scored 2,996 on the 3DMark Time Spy benchmark, which is designed to test DirectX 12 performance by rendering a series of scenes that stress the GPU. This score is far better than the Intel Iris Xe graphics inside the LG Gram 16, which delivered a measly score of 1,835. (We couldn’t test the integrated 10-core GPU inside the 15-inch MacBook Air because 3DMark benchmarks don’t support it.)

On the Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm (1080p) benchmark, the Swift Edge 16 managed 44 frames per second, which is 10 frames better than the average mainstream laptop (34 fps). It also crushed the LG Gram 16 (19 fps) and the 15-inch MacBook Air (43 fps).

Acer Swift Edge 16 battery life

The Swift Edge 16’s battery life is depressing. I couldn’t believe my ears when our lab tester told me that the Acer laptop only lasted 7 hours and 18 minutes on a charge. (The Laptop Mag battery test involves surfing the web over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness.) 

To give you some perspective on why I’m so disappointed, even the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro and the Razer Blade 14 — gaming laptops with power-hungry discrete graphics — managed to last longer than the Swift Edge 16 with runtimes of about 8 hours. The Swift Edge 16 doesn’t have the energy-consuming components of a gaming laptop, so what’s its excuse?

As you might have guessed, the LG Gram 16 (13 hours and 8 minutes) and the 15-inch M2 MacBook Air (14 hours and 59 minutes) outlasted the Swift Edge 16 by a wide margin. The average mainstream laptop lasts 9 hours and 33 minutes, which also bests the Swift Edge 16. 

Acer Swift Edge 16 webcam

I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but I actually love the webcam on the Swift Edge 16. It has a 1440p, QHD webcam that perfectly captured the latte-brown graphic tee I wore as well as my similarly hued complexion. The burgundy curtains looked vivid and striking on the shooter, and even textures were rendered correctly as a black silk pillowcase poked into the frame.

This shooter should be just fine for your video conferencing needs, but if you’re skeptical, I’m not offended — you can always check out our best webcams page for something sharper.

Acer Swift Edge 16 heat

Don’t worry, the Swift Edge 16 won’t scald your thighs off. After streaming a 15-minute video, the Acer laptop’s touchpad hit 74 degrees Fahrenheit while the keyboard center and the underside both reached 86 degrees. All temperatures hovered below our 95-degree comfort threshold.

Acer Swift Edge 16 software and warranty

The Swift Edge 16 runs on Windows 11 Home, so you’ll find your standard fare of Microsoft apps, including Microsoft 365, Edge, Photos, Teams, Paint, and more.

If you enjoy built-in games, you’ll love seeing apps like “Solitaire,” “Solitaire & Casual Games,” and “Hearts Deluxe.”

You’ll also find the Acer Care Center, which lets you update drivers, check battery life health, backup your data, get support, and more.

The Swift Edge 16 has a one-year limited warranty. See how Acer performed on our Tech Support Showdown and Best and Worst Brands ranking.

Bottom line

The Swift Edge 16 has plenty of hits, but has some misses, too. On one hand, the Swift Edge 16 has a striking display with wide DCI-P3 coverage, but it’s color accuracy is off. The Swift Edge 16 has competition-beating performance scores, slapping the 15-inch M2 MacBook Air silly with its impressive processor, graphics, and video-transcoding benchmarks, but it couldn’t keep up on our file-transfer test.

It has a great webcam, but its keyboard and speakers are mid. Finally, its 7-hour runtime is a bit of a bummer. 

If you want some better options among Acer's Swift portfolio, some of my favorites are Acer Swift X and Acer Swift 14. The former also has a 7-hour runtime, but this can be forgiven due to its power-hungry RTX 4050 GPU. The latter has integrated graphics like the Swift Edge 16, but lasts a beautiful 11 hours and 43 minutes. Hallelujah!

If you don’t mind getting a Mac, consider getting a 15-inch M2 MacBook Air, which, like the Swift Edge 16, has a starting price of $1,299 at Apple. 

It's tough to find an affordable laptop that provides the most it can for your money, and while Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 tried to be that — this ain’t it.

For $799, this looks like a sleek machine on the outside, but if you take a closer look you’ll soon see this laptop isn’t worth your time or money. From its poor display and mushy keyboard to its middling performance and below average battery life, the Flex 5 can’t keep up with its competitors. It has certainly fell from grace since its 2022 outing.

I cannot recommend the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 for our best laptops or best laptops under $1,000 pages, let alone recommend purchasing it at all.

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 (2023) price and configurations

Oh boy, it was a journey to find the model of the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 we reviewed. It costs $799 (on sale for $699 at the time of writing) and comes with an Intel Core i5-1335U processor, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 14-inch 1200p display. I found this version is available only at Costco.

However, there are other models available elsewhere. There’s a $605 version on Lenovo’s website that drops down to 8GB of RAM. There’s also an AMD version that costs $829 at Lenovo, which comes with 8GB of RAM as well and a AMD Ryzen 5 7530U processor.

If you’re looking for a laptop even more affordable, check out our best cheap laptops page.

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 (2023) design

One thing I like about the IdeaPad Flex 5 is that it doesn’t look cheap. Instead of the usual black or silver, the Flex 5 sports Lenovo’s Abyss Blue color over its metal hood. That’s complemented by its curved edges and neat Lenovo stamp on the top left corner. 

The interior shifts to a plastic deck and an awkward-looking gray keyboard — it should have been black. There’s a decent-sized touchpad, and a fingerprint reader on the right side. Surrounding the keyboard are top-firing speakers. The display sports relatively thin bezels, but the top has a lip for the webcam.

This is a 2-in-1, so the Flex can literally flex all the way up to 360 degrees, which offers tent and tablet positions for you to experiment with.

At 3.4 pounds and 12.3 x 8.85 x 0.7 inches, the Flex 5 doesn’t get much slimmer or thinner compared with the competition. Except for the 16-inch Lenovo Yoga 7i (Gen 8) (4.5 pounds, 14.3 x 9.8 x 0.7 inches), the Acer Swift Go 14 (2.9 pounds, 12.3 x 8.6 x 0.6 inches) and Asus ZenBook 14 OLED (3.1 pounds, 12.4 x 8.7 x 0.7 inches) are lighter and not as wide as the Flex 5.

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 (2023) ports

There’s a decent number of ports onboard the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5.

If we look to the left, we see the power jack, an HDMI port, one Thunderbolt 4 port, and a headphone jack, whereas the right side holds room for two USB Type-A ports, an SD card slot, and the power button.

Find yourself in need of more ports? Check out our best USB Type-C hubs and best laptop docking stations pages.

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 (2023) display

Oof. Even for a sub-$1,000 laptop, the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5's 14-inch, 1920 x 1200 display performed poorly all around.

I watched Dimension 20's A Court of Fey & Flowers, and the greenery that made up the set was dull and muted. When the background switched to a dimly lit scenic view, it felt like I was watching the show in battery-saver mode, which was made all the worse by its glossy panel. Despite that, the panel was sharp enough to capture the details in Aabria Iyengar's lovely lashes.

According to our colorimeter, the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 covered a measly 42.2% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is less than half of the mainstream laptop average (91.8%). The Yoga 7i (45.8%), Swift Go 14 (175.7%), and ZenBook 14 (95.6%) destroyed the IdeaPad.

At 288 nits of brightness, IdeaPad Flex 5 could not get past the 341-nit average. It did best the Yoga 7i (267 nits), but couldn't get near the Swift Go 14 (395 nits) and ZenBook 14 (375 nits).

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 (2023) keyboard and touchpad

Typing away on the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 felt weird — the keys were shallow and mushy, and not at all satisfying to use.

However, I hit 83 words per minute on the 10fastfingers.com typing test, which is above my 78-wpm average. The keys were well-spaced, like most Lenovo keyboards, which is likely why I did well. But I didn’t like it.

The 4.9 x 2.9-inch touchpad is smooth, but offers shallow clicks, like the rest of the laptop. However, Windows gestures like two-finger scrolling and three-finger tabbing worked fine.

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 (2023) audio

I love top-firing speakers, but not the ones in the IdeaPad Flex 5. The audio was low and hollow, and the only compliment I can pay it is that it was audible.

I listened to Honey Revenge’s “Airhead,” and the opening guitar sounded a bit distorted. When the vocals took over, they were clear, but the guitar in the background remained noisy, if not more hollow. The percussion was low and couldn’t catch a bass. The instruments were distinguishable from one another, but overall, the sound was low and unfulfilling.

While Lenovo packs in the Dolby Access app, with settings for Movies, Music and Games, there’s not much more that the app can do to help the audio.

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 (2023) performance

Tucked in the chassis of the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 lies an Intel Core i5-1335U with 16GB of RAM. It had no trouble working through a couple dozen Google Chrome tabs and a handful of YouTube videos.

On the Geekbench 5.5 overall performance test, the IdeaPad Flex 5 scored 8,440, which doesn’t quite make the mainstream laptop average (9,064). It faltered against the Yoga 7i’s Core i7-1355U (8,663), the Swift Go 14’s Core i7-13700H (11,815), and the ZenBook 14’s Core i5-1240P (8,590) processors.

The IdeaPad Flex 5 transcoded a 4K video to 1080p in 11 minutes and 41 seconds, once again dropping short of the category average (8:10). It fell into last place against the Yoga 7i (10:12), Swift Go 14 (5:35), and ZenBook 14 (8:40).

Lenovo’s 512GB SSD sports a transfer rate of 788 megabytes per second, which isn’t too far from the average mainstream laptop (833 MBps). It crushed the ZenBook 14’s 256GB SSD (246 MBps), but it got nowhere near the 512GB SSDs in the Yoga 7 (1,380 MBps) and the Swift Go 14 (1,481 MBps).

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 (2023) graphics

The Flex 5 isn’t offering anything special in terms of graphics, sticking with its standard Intel Iris Xe Graphics chip just like its competitors. 

Yet, it somehow ended up last again on the 3DMark Fire Strike synthetics graphics benchmark. The IdeaPad Flex 5 scored 3,936, slowing down against the average mainstream laptop (5,073) as well as the Yoga 7i (5,027), Swift Go 14 (5,533), and ZenBook 14 (4,048).

On the Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm (Medium, 1080p) benchmark, however, it scored 28 frames per second, which might not be playable (30-fps), but it averaged better than the Yoga 7i (25 fps), Swift Go 14 (27 fps), and ZenBook 14 (21 fps).

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 (2023) battery life

It could be worse, but it could be better. The Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 lasted 8 hours and 22 minutes on the Laptop Mag battery test, falling below the mainstream laptop average (9:54). It survived the Swift Go 14 (8:05), but died before it could see the Yoga 7i (12:04) and ZenBook 14 (10:52) succeed.

Last year's model lasted 14 hours and 16 minutes. A massive step down.

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 (2023) webcam

I recommend the IdeaPad Flex 5’s 1080p webcam if you feel like being humbled. 

The colorful posters that adorned the wall behind me were muted and faded, like I threw them in the washing machine for a dozen cycles. In terms of contrast — no, the window behind me was washed out and begging for help. Meanwhile, my face looked like a grainy mess. I recommend picking up one of our best webcams.

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 (2023) heat

Poetry — the IdeaPad Flex 5’s lack of power helps it remain relatively cool. It measured 98 degrees Fahrenheit on the underside, which is just slightly above our 95-degree comfort threshold. Meanwhile, the center of the keyboard and touchpad reach 93 and 80 degrees, respectively. The hottest that the machine got was 101 degrees on the underside, near the hinge.

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 (2023) software and warranty

If you’ve ever had a Lenovo laptop, you know that the company packs all of its useful systems in the Lenovo Vantage app. This lets you obtain information about your system and warranty, and lets you adjust settings for power, audio, display and more.

There’s some bloatware onboard, like Spotify, WhatsApp, and Solitaire.

The IdeaPad Flex 5 has a one-year limited warranty. See how Lenovo performed on our Tech Support Showdown and Best and Worst Brands ranking.

Bottom line

The Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 falters in more ways than one. Despite its affordable price and its neat design, everything under and around the hood found itself way below the quality we expect from a laptop at this price.

For example, the Asus Zenbook 14 (Q409ZA) OLED is $749 and offers a bright, sharp display, better battery life, and better performance despite its lacking components.

We cannot in good conscience recommend purchasing the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5. There are better options out there for better prices.

Asus has just announced the heavily rumored ROG Strix SCAR 17 X3D, which sports AMD’s brand new Ryzen 9 7945HX3D, the first mobile CPU armed with a 3D V-Cache.

What this means is a monstrously fast gaming machine that looks sure to set our benchmarks on fire when we get our hands on it. Let’s take a closer look at three reasons why this could very well be the fastest gaming laptop in the world.

1. An AMD beast is born

Let’s talk about the secret sauce to this monster laptop: the brand new AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D — packing 16 cores and 32 threads, and a boost clock up to 5.4GHz. The key difference here to the current Strix Scar 17 comes down to that X3D in the name, which is a dead giveaway that this is the first laptop CPU from AMD to rock the company’s 3D V-Cache.

There is now a full 64MB of L3 cache layered on top of the processor, which turbo boosts performance when it comes to working through certain calculations quicker and more efficiently. 

The end result is what AMD is claiming to be the “world’s fastest mobile gaming processor,” which translates into an average 20% speed increase when combined with the RTX 4090 GPU. Looking at a more specific test run by the company, we see an 11% bump in performance in Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 70W TDP, and 23% at 40W.

In other words, not only is this beast mode powerful at high wattages, it’s also far more efficient at gaming performance at lower levels too. Also, you’re getting up to 32GB of DDR5 RAM and 1TB of storage. This looks primed to eat Intel for breakfast.

2. Keeping its cool

Of course, to keep things running smoothly in a gaming laptop, you need proper thermal management. Asus has pretty much nailed it with Conductonaut Extreme liquid metal on the GPU for up to 17x better thermal conductivity, and a full-cover vapor chamber that covers 43.3% of the total area.

This is sure to keep everything at a regulated temperature and eliminate any risk of thermal throttling.

3. X3D exclusive ‘for the foreseeable future’

As PC Gamer reports, AMD’s Donny Woligroski confirmed that the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D will be exclusively available in the SCAR 17 X3D “for the foreseeable future.” 

That means this powerful new generation of mobile gaming chip is exclusive to this system. You won’t find it anywhere else for a while. That new 3D V-Cache technology will only be in this laptop. While it sort of sucks to not see this come to new systems from the get go, it’s a helluva big selling point for this one.

Outlook

All of this does come at an equally monstrous price. No US price has been confirmed, but you can pick it up on August 22 in the UK for a whopping £3,799. That’s going to sting, so it’s fair to say that the SCAR 17 X3D is going to be for the pros only.

Simply upping the CPU clock speed has diminishing returns, which is what makes the 3D V-Cache such an interesting prospect — an additional attachment to further speed up the processor.

It’s fair to say we can’t wait to get our hands on this beast and see whether AMD’s claims are to be believed.

Gaming laptops require impeccable balance to shine. Excellent specs require paying top dollar, and as things get cheaper, vital aspects of a laptop’s design are sacrificed. I recently reviewed the exceptional Razer Blade 14, and while it cheaps out on no aspect of its make, the $2,699 price tag clearly indicates why. When laptops of this kind get into the $1,500~ range, major elements get tossed onto the chopping block.

But it seems as if Lenovo was as sick of this trend as I am. Enter the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro, a gaming laptop that should by all means have cheaped out several elements at its shockingly low price of $1,469. Yet it somehow scrubbed similarly specced, more expensive hardware in gaming and productivity performance. Beyond that, I fell in love with its tactile and clicky keyboard, solid speaker system and sturdy chassis. And while displays are a common victim for gaming laptops at this price, the Legion 5 Pro’s 16-inch display is decently bright and colorful.

The only fundamental issue that the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro comes away with is its subpar battery life, but even that is nowhere near as bad as you'd expect. Is Lenovo really selling this thing for $1,469? I’m still in disbelief, and it’s without a doubt one of the best gaming laptops as well as one of the best gaming laptops under $1,500 out there. Let’s see how the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro exceeded all expectations.

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro price and configuration  

The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is built with a AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card, 16GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage and a 16-inch, 2560 x 1600, IPS display at 165Hz. You can get it now for $1,469 on Lenovo’s website.

The laptop starts at $1,139 with the same specs outside of a Ryzen 5 7645HX processor, RTX 4050 graphics card, and 512GB of SSD storage. The most expensive model features identical specs to our model except with a Intel i7-13700HX processor and is available at $1,699.

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro design 

Lenovo gets pretty simple with the Legion 5 Pro’s design elements, featuring a smooth-to-the-touch black lid with the iconic silver Lenovo logo at the top right, while a reflective Legion logo sits at the bottom right. It looks a lot like the company’s minimal Yoga style except it’s edgy. Lifting the lid reveals a wide edge-to-edge keyboard with the power button tucked in the middle at the top and the relatively small touchpad pushed to the left. However, I do love how the sides and back look like a flying ship lifting off into space.

While the design is aesthetically simple, Lenovo gets points for making this laptop exceptionally sturdy. When lifting it out of the box, I could feel its palpable weight in my hand and when applying pressure to its deck, it did not budge. Its hinge is also strong — even if I lower the display close to the keyboard, it has enough strength to keep itself up. 

The Legion measures out to 14.3 x 10.25 x 0.86-1.05 inches and starts at 5.5 pounds, making it decently light considering its size. Similarly sized competitor Origin EON16-S (14.1 x 10.74 x 0.78 inches, 5.5 pounds) is identical in weight, while the MSI Katana 15 (14.1 x 10.2 x 0.98 inches, 8.8 pounds) is far heavier. The Razer Blade 14 (12.23 x 8.97 x 0.7 inches, 4.1 pounds) is the lightest of the bunch, though.

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro ports 

The Legion 5 Pro is stacked with a decent selection of ports on all sides. On the left, there’s a USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port and a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port with DisplayPort 1.4 compatibility. On the right, there’s an audio jack, webcam shutter switch and USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port. 

On the back there is an RJ45 Ethernet port, a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, an HDMI 2.1 port and two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, with one of them being always on at 5V2A, and the final port is the DC-in. 

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro display 

The Legion 5 Pro is built with a solid 16-inch, 2560 x 1600-pixel IPS matte display at a 165Hz refresh rate. It’s far from the brightest or most colorful gaming laptop we’ve tested, but it does offer enough vibrancy to make games pop and bright enough to make the little details noticeable.

I launched Elden Ring and explored Limgrave, graced by the faded wonder of this ruined world. What especially impressed me about the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is how well it keeps the dark, death-filled nature of a game like this intact, staying true to its unique combination of beautiful wildlife and foliage alongside this ever-present quietness that reiterates how little life is left within. 

I watched the trailer for The Marvels and, outside of the awkwardly utilized CGI which is of course no fault towards Lenovo, I was happy with how the display presented the distinctly hued colors of Carol’s darker black and red suit against Kamala’s brighter variation. Meanwhile, Monica’s black and white neutral toned outfit pops out from the screen. And during a shot of a futuristic European-esque town, perhaps on another planet, I could pick out the individual beige and terracotta hues of each little building. 

The Legion 5 Pro did decently on our color tests and reproduced 82.4% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, beating the 77.9% mainstream gaming average. However, this is quite a bit below competitors like the Razer Blade 14 (114.3%). The EON16-S (83.5%) is only slightly better and the Katana 15 (46.1%) is significantly worse. 

The Lenovo laptop continued to do well enough on our brightness tests, managing an average of 319 nits of brightness. While this is superior to what the Katana 15 (248 nits) could reach, the category average (324 nits), Razer Blade 14 (465 nits) and EON-16-S (326 nits) had it beat. 

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro audio 

Built with bottom-firing speakers, the Legion 5 Pro might give audio fanatics a moment of pause due to its positioning. But I was surprised when running it through various games and music. There are moments where it can sound a bit hollow, but it’s loud, punchy and full without losing its all-encompassing crispness most of the time. 

I launched Elden Ring and, although these bottom-firing speakers don’t perform anywhere near as well as a top-firing setup would, I was impressed by its crisp and clear representation of the game’s ensemble of atmospheric strings. And as I stepped and slashed my way through Limgrave, the solid weight of my metal boots against dirt and the swiftness of my sword cutting through air all came through pretty well. But even then, some sounds, like the loud gong from activating a Site of Grace, felt a bit hollow.

I then opened Spotify and listened to “The Wisp Sings” by Winter Aid and continued to be surprised by the clear and melodic sound from the intro’s piano. When the vocalist begins his melancholic humming, it doesn't come through too flat or low, and when his singing follows, it accompanies the track with a nice crispness.

I moved onto “Rainbow Connection” by Kermit, where the iconic banjo-plucking asserts itself at the front of the track with a satisfying punch, and as the unforgettable voice of our favorite little green frog merrily serenades us with hypotheticals about the nature of rainbows, each instrumental string and percussion hit all come together beautifully. Due to this track being from a 40+ year old movie now, the speakers didn’t handle the compression perfectly, but it sounded good regardless.

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro keyboard and trackpad 

Utilizing a full keyboard with 4-zone RGB and swappable keycaps makes the Legion 5 Pro the perfect size for a 16-inch laptop. It provides access to my favorite keys—especially when running raids in World of Warcraft—like numlock and all the other number pad additions that offer even more buttons to assign macros to. Additionally, pressing the function key and space bar allows you to swap between various RGB modes. 

I took the 10fastfingers typing test, and although no test is required for me to scream from the rooftops about how much I adore this keyboard, my results speak for themselves: On my first attempt, I hit 118 words per minute at a 99.5% accuracy versus my normal 110 at 95% accuracy.

I adore how clicky each individual key is. There’s an impressive amount of depth and the 1.5mm key travel makes it nearly as satisfying as a mechanical keyboard. Alongside that, it has a number pad, full-sized arrow keys with sufficient space, and the backspace, enter and shift keys aren’t shrunken down. It is the perfect laptop keyboard and the best I’ve ever used.

The 4.8 x 2.9-inch trackpad is nowhere near as impressive, but it still feels fine, allowing me to open up files and scroll through webpages without issue. It feels a bit more sluggish than I’d like, as the friction requires me to push against it. It also has an issue where the uppermost section of it is not clickable.

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro gaming performance 

Built with an Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU with 8GB of VRAM, the Lenovo performed exceptionally well in our gaming tests. We compared it to three other RTX 4070 gaming laptops and, for the most part, it managed better results across the board, with a few exceptions. 

On our Borderlands 3 test, the laptop managed an average of 110 frames per second at 1080p on maximum graphics settings. This is the best of the bunch when compared to laptops featuring the same GPU, as the Katana 15 (99 fps, RTX 4070), EON16-S (106 fps, RTX 4070) and Razer Blade 14 (98 fps, RTX 4070) were all a little behind. 

 The Far Cry 6 test revealed a near sweep once again, as the Legion 5 Pro hit 97 fps, but the EON16-S (99 fps) just barely pulled ahead into first place. Otherwise, the Katana 15 (94 fps) and Razer Blade 14 (85 fps) weren’t as strong. 

We measured the laptop’s gameplay performance in Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition in three separate graphical settings, with it achieving 107 fps on High, 84 fps on Ultra, 53 fps on Extreme. This is superior to its competitors across the board, with the Katana 15 (High 91 fps, Ultra 74 fps, Extreme 48 fps), EON16-S (High 99 fps, Ultra 78 fps, Extreme 50 fps) and Razer Blade 14 (High 88 fps, Ultra 76 fps, Extreme 48 fps) each a step behind.

It continued to pull ahead in our Red Dead Redemption 2 test, managing a solid 78 fps. While every laptop in this category was pretty close in performance, it still surpassed the Katana 15 (72 fps), Origin EON16-S (75 fps), and Razer Blade 14 (73 fps).

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro performance 

Our Legion 5 Pro is packing a AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX processor, 16GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage, making it an unbelievable powerhouse in productivity performance. I was blown away by its metrics across the board and I was shocked that it was easily capable of destroying far more costly competition without a sweat. 

On the Geekbench 6 overall performance test, the Legion 5 Pro’s multi-core score of 13,063 is highly impressive. This is superior to the category average (7,602), Katana 15 (Intel Core i7-13620H, 12,562) and Razer Blade 14 (AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS, 11,425), but the EON16-S (Intel Core i9-13900H, 14,068) pulls ahead in first place.

The Legion 5 Pro converted a 4K video into 1080p resolution using the HandBrake app in 4 minutes and 5 seconds, which is a great score. This is faster than the category average (4:35), Katana 15 (5:04) and Razer Blade 14 (4:45), but the EON16-S (3:46) is 20 seconds faster.

It continued to do phenomenally well in our file transfer test with its Samsung PM9A1 SSD, duplicating 25GB of multimedia files in 12.5 seconds at a 2,150 megabytes per second transfer rate. This is significantly faster than the category average (1,269MBps), the Katana 15 (784MBps, 1TB SSD) and Razer Blade 14 (1,230MBps, 1TB SSD), although the EON16-S (1,819MBps, 1TB SSD) got decently close.

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro battery life 

The Legion 5 Pro’s battery life is subpar, lasting 4 hours and 38 minutes on the Laptop Mag battery test, which involves continuous web browsing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits. This is a bit worse than the category average of 5 hours and 13 minutes.

We don’t typically expect longevity at incredible lengths from gaming laptops, as the Katana 15 (2:48) is quite a bit worse and the EON16-S (5:06) is only a half-hour better. The Razer Blade 14 (8:35) lasted significantly longer than all of its competitors

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro webcam 

The Legion 5 Pro’s 1080p webcam can’t save it from turning my warmly lit pink room into an overexposed nightmare, shifting the finer details of my face into a grainy indistinguishable blur.

You’re going to want a superior webcam by looking at our best webcams page, but if you’re not too concerned with appearing on video, whether that be through streaming games or video conferencing for work, you won’t have to worry about it.

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro heat

The Legion 5 Pro can get pretty hot even while it isn’t gaming, and like any laptop made to handle demanding software, we recommend keeping it far away from your vital parts. Its touchpad hits around 77.5 degrees Fahrenheit and the center of the keyboard hits 88 degrees, while the hottest point near the hinge at the underside reaches 96.5 degrees, which is above our 95-degree comfort threshold.

It continued to stay cool at the touchpad while gaming, remaining at a nice 75 degrees. The center of the keyboard reached as high as 97 degrees, but the underside near the hinge was blistering at 119.5 degrees.

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro software and warranty 

The Legion 5 Pro has Windows 11 installed onto it automatically, coming with the typical arrangement of apps you’d expect. Alongside this, it has Legion Vantage in particular providing access metrics about CPU, GPU and VRAM performance, alongside options for GPU Overclock, Network Boost, GPU Working Mode, OverDrive, and other settings to update the system, scan hardware, change power settings and more. 

The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro comes with a 1-year limited warranty. See how Lenovo did in our Tech Support Showdown special feature.  

Bottom line

Lenovo has done the impossible with the Legion 5 Pro. It has developed a near-perfect gaming laptop at an inconceivably low price, and while its subpar battery life will give some pause, it’s an exceptional feat in design. With phenomenal performance scores, excellent gaming metrics, solid speakers, a sturdy chassis and hinge, decent display and easily the best laptop keyboard I’ve ever used, it’s a reigning champion on most fronts.

If you need something with excellent battery life that maintains this laptop’s jack-of-all-trades nature, the Razer Blade 14 is an easy recommendation. However, its price is shocking, unless you’re willing to spend more than $1,000 extra. Otherwise, the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is a phenomenal feat in gaming laptop design.

Have you ever looked at something and knew it possessed timeless elegance, but also some undefinable beauty, that you lack words for? That is the Zenbook 14 OLED (UM3402). It is so well designed and engineered its exterior and display left me speechless. 

The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED combines portability, performance, and a stunning Pantone- calibrated OLED display. Packed with a spunky AMD Ryzen 7 7730U processor, and thoughtful design elements, this laptop caters to super productive, highly mobile users who may hotdesk in several locations.

However, when it comes to laptops, beauty must be backed by brawn, lets's see if this Zenbook 14 OLED has a little She-Hulk in her to make it to our best laptops, best laptops under $1,000, and best 14-inch laptops. 

Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UM3402Y price and configurations

The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (UM3402) I received sells for $869.00 and features the beautiful 14-inch OLED display, AMD Ryzen 7 7730U CPU, integrated AMD Radeon graphics, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. 

There is also a less expensive configuration for $699.00, which features the same gorgeous 14-inch OLED display, AMD Ryzen 5 7530U, integrated AMD Radeon graphics, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage.

Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UM3402Y design

The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED showcases an elegant and slim profile, making it an ideal choice for users seeking portability without compromising on productivity power. The laptop's all-metal construction is premium and enhances its durability. Weighing in at just over three pounds, the Jade Black Zenbook 14 OLED is perfect for users who are always on the move, while its thin bezels contribute to a more immersive visual experience.

Once opened, the ErgoLift hinge design lifts ever-so-slightly, providing a comfortable typing angle and improving airflow for enhanced cooling.

 You’ll also find the stunningly colorful 14-inch, 2.8K (2880 x 1800) display. After opening it, I closed it again just to get another glimpse of the lovely Asus monogram on the lid in all its luxuriousness.

But I quickly opened it back up to spend some more time gazing into the stunning display.

At the top center of the display, you will find the FHD (1920 x 1080) webcam sitting seamlessly within the micro-edge bezel. The Asus Zenbook logo at the bottom of the display is a perfect kiss of chrome added to the visual splendor.

The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED measures 12.35 x 8.7 x 0.67 inches and weighs 3.06 pounds. Comparatively, the MacBook Air M2 13-inch measures 12 x 8.5 and weighs 2.7 pounds, the MSI Prestige 13 EVO A13M measures 11.8 x 8.3 x 0.67 inches and weighs 2.2 pounds, with the Acer Swift Go 14’s measurables being 12.3 x 8.6 x 0.59 inches and coming in at 2.87 pounds. 

Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UM3402Y security and durability

The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED uses Windows Hello in conjunction with the fingerprint reader embedded in the power button to keep your files safe and secure. There is also an integrated Trusted Platform Module (TPM), creating several layers of protection for your personal and business files.

Although the Zenbook is elegant and svelte, it is very durable, having passed MIL-STD 810H certification, a rigorous standard of testing developed by the U.S. military that proves that it can withstand extreme temperatures, moisture, dust, shocks, and more. The display is made of Gorilla Glass to survive bumps and bruises. One small thing it’s not safe from? Fingerprints. So if you’re looking to become an international jewel thief, this might not be the laptop for you because it’s an absolute fingerprint magnet. 

Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UM3402Y ports

The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED is slim, lightweight, and still packs a solid amount of ports that you can use to connect your favorite peripherals.

On the left, you’ll find the AC power port, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI port, and a combo audio jack.

The right side features a single USB-Type A  port, but if you need more, check out our list of the best docking stations that should do the trick. 

Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UM3402Y display

The 14-inch OLED, 2880 x 1800-pixel resolution touch display on the Zenbook is vivid and bright while consistently producing crisp text while working on documents in Google Workspace and Microsoft Office. When you open this laptop and start it up, you can really see that Pantone-calibrated color comes to life. It also helps that the 14 OLED display fills the space thanks to its micro-edge, barely-there bezel, and 16:10 aspect ratio, creating an immersive view for you to enjoy. 

Asus included an Asus Pen 2.0 stylus (every touchscreen laptop should come with one) that works well and is highly accurate. 

I watched Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War on Disney Plus, and the fight between Cap and Iron Man leaped off the display with Stark’s hot white and yellow repulsor blasts creating a powerful lambent light off of Cap’s shield. The display renders color exceptionally while nicely capturing skin tones and dark shadows within images thanks to its excellent contrast.

We measured the Zenbook 14’s display with a colorimeter, covering 79.1% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is shockingly below the average mainstream laptop (95.6.1%) — I was disappointed by this score because it passed the eye test. The Swift Go 14 not only led our group but obliterated the average by covering 175.7% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. The Prestige was next with 79.4%, followed by the MacBook Air M2, which covered 75.9% of the space.

Next, we ran our display brightness tests, and again, the Zenbook’s 346-nit display came in just above the 345-nit mainstream laptop average. As expected, the MacBook Air led this category averaging 489 nits, followed by the MSI with 415 nits, with the Acer Swift Go averaging 395 nits of brightness. 

Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UM3402Y audio

The laptop's Harman Kardon-tuned speakers deliver above-average sound quality, producing clear audio with a decent amount of bass thanks to the Smart amplifier tech and Dolby Atmos with multi-dimensional audio. Asus did a nice job combining the right software and hardware to gain a great audio experience from this slim laptop. 

I fired up Spotify and listened to Megan Thee Stallion’s “Her.” The house music bassline hit pretty hard, but the Zenbook’s speakers handled the bassline, delivering excellent depth for such tiny speakers. High tones were reproduced clearly and cleanly without tinny distortion. Again, the Smart amp tech came through as I pumped up the volume and listened to some tunes.

Next, I listened to John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things album with its beautiful melodies, smooth piano, and soft jazz drums. The Harmon Kardon speakers allowed me to turn it all the way up so I heard the warm melodious horns across my studio apartment. The Zenbook’s speakers are more than sufficient for a laptop, actually, the audio performance has been one of my favorites on a laptop this year. However, if you require more, I would have a look at our best wireless headphones page. 

During my Google Meet and Zoom calls, the AI noise-canceling mics worked very well, focusing in on my vocals while keeping out background noise without any of the audio choppiness you can sometimes get with overly aggressive ANC. 

Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UM3402Y keyboard and touchpad

The Zenbook 14 OLED features a perfectly centered, near-to-the-edge keyboard that delivers a comfortable typing experience with well-spaced keys and perfect key travel. When you open it and get a look at the new ErgoSense keyboard with the tap-on Number pad within the touchpad, it’s really one of the best thought-out decks on a laptop I have used this year. The keys are backlit, allowing users to work efficiently even in dimly lit environments. The precision touchpad supports multi-touch gestures, providing accurate and responsive navigation, although some users might find it slightly smaller than preferred.

My Mack truck-sized hands managed a spritely 91 words per minute during the 10FastFingers.com test with 93% accuracy. Normally, I hit 88 wpm with 91% accuracy, slightly above my averages. My typing is improving, but that could be my ego talking.

The touchpad is centrally located beneath the keyboard and features a tap-on digital numerical pad Asus calls NumPad 2.0, which I really enjoy. The 5.1 x 2.9-inch touchpad is very clicky and very responsive. It quickly and smoothly handled all my Windows 11 gestures, including two-finger scrolling and pinch-to-zoom. 

Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UM3402Y performance

The ZenBook 14 OLED comes with AMD Ryzen 7 7730U, integrated AMD Radeon graphics, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD, which are solid specs, so I pushed it a bit. I cranked up Google Chrome and opened 50 tabs while working on some documents in Google Docs. Plus, I had three YouTube videos playing. I tried to bog it down, but it held up well with no noticeable laggy performance. It also remained relatively cool with little to no fan noise. 

In our Geekbench 6 overall performance test, the Zenbook scored 7,785, which is below the mainstream laptop average of 9,189. The Acer Swift Go 14 (Intel Core i7-13700H CPU, 16GB of RAM) led our group with a score of 11,950 with the Prestige 13 (Intel Core i7 1360P CPU 32GB of RAM) tallying 8,611. Our MacBook Air M2 (M2 CPU, 8GB of RAM) was tested using Geekbench 5.4 and it scored 8,919 during testing. 

On the Handbrake video transcoding test, which tests how fast a laptop can convert a 4K video to 1080p resolution, the 14 OLED took 8 minutes and 5 seconds, which isn’t too far off the 7:54 mainstream laptop mark. The Acer Swift Go led our group converting the same 4K media in just 5:35 =, with the MBA M2 converting the media in 7:52. The MSI Prestige finished in 10:4. 

The 512GB SSD in the Zenbook took 1 one minute and 44 seconds to duplicate a 25GB multimedia file for a transfer rate of 310.50 megabytes per second (MBps) which is way below the mainstream laptop average of 837.21 megabytes per second. 

The Swift Go’s 512GB SSD said, “watch this kids,” and delivered 1,481.12 MBps, smoking the competition. The MSI’s 1TB SSD lagged behind at 743.81 MBps. Our MacBook Air was not tested using this benchmark. 

Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UM3402Y graphics

The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED comes with integrated AMD Radeon graphics which is solid, but mostly meant to handle document pushing, and media consumption. However, I did download the GPU-heavy DaVinci Resolve on it and was able to edit a short three-minute 4K video without too much lag. As expected, the more I tried to do with the footage, the more AMD’s integrated GPU struggled. Also the integrated GPU isn’t meant for gaming at all.

We tested the GPU using Sid Meier’s Civilization VI benchmark in 1080p. The Zenbook scored 28.1 frames per second, below the mainstream laptop average of 34 fps. The MacBook Air M2 averaged 40 fps during the same test, with the MSI following behind averaging 31 fps, and the Swift Go closed us out tallying 27 fps during this benchmark. 

Running the 3DMark Time Spy benchmark, the 14 OLED tallied a score of 1,481, which sadly is below the 1,977 category average. The Prestige 13 led the way with a score of 2.036, followed by the Swift Go at 2,025. The MacBook Air wasn’t tested with this benchmark. 

Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UM3402Y battery life

The Zenbook 14 OLED’s battery life is solid as it lasted 11 hours and 13 minutes during the Laptop Mag battery test, which involves continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. It surpassed the mainstream laptop average (10:01). The MacBook Air M2 led our group with 14 hours and 6 minutes, with the MSI Prestige 13 coming in at 12 hours and 3 minutes and the Acer Swift Go 14 running out of time in 8 hours and 5 minutes. 

I will add that this laptop features fast charging, and it works, recharging in 25 mins to 65%, which is great when you’re a highly mobile person who must stay productive. When you add this quick charge capability and the over 11 hours of battery life, the Zenbook 14 OLED may outlast you. 

Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UM3402Y heat

During our heat test, which involves playing a 15-minute 1080p video, the Zenbook’s underside reached 92.5 degrees Fahrenheit, within our 95-degree comfort range. The keyboard hit 77.9 degrees between the G & H keys, and the touchpad was a cool 84.2 degrees.

During my time with the Zenbook, it never got steamy, hot, or even noticeably warm. That is a major plus because sometimes, when I am running around, I actually use my lap. Also, I never noticed the fans coming on. I sat outside in my backyard on a pretty hot day and worked on some writing, and the fans came on once and were barely audible.

Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UM3402Y webcam

The Zenbook’s FHD (1920 x 1080) webcam is a solid performer that will easily handle all your daily Google Meet, Zoom, and Teams video meetings. It does very well in good lighting and has quick tracking and autofocus. You will notice some pixelation in darker conditions, but it’s not too bad for a built-in webcam.

If you need a better-performing webcam, look at our best webcams list if you need help. 

Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UM3402Y software and warranty

The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED has a clean installation of Windows 11 Home with barely any bloatware, except for the common offenders: Netflix, Spotify, and the Microsoft Solitaire collection. I do like the MyAsus application as it offers intimate control over the Zenbook, giving users a central location to easily and quickly adjust their laptop's settings. 

The 14 OLED comes with a one-year limited warranty. If you want to see how Asus customer service did in our annual ranking, check out our Tech Support Showdown page.

Bottom line

The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (UM3402) is a beautiful workhorse. It features a balance of productivity performance while being an excellent content-devouring device. You will want to binge-watch everything and anything on its 2.8K OLED display when you add to its durable build, excellent battery life, portability, and price point. It truly is one of the best mobile productivity laptops around. 

If you need a stylish laptop to impress clients, push documents, or add things up that will slide smoothly into your backpack and not weigh you down, the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED is a great option.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2023) is an easy win for the Taiwanese tech manufacturer, I thought — it should have been a simple copy and paste with some new components, but something got lost in translation.

For $1,599, you get a bright display and a clicky keyboard… and well, that’s about it. The AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU underperformed, while the battery life is shorter than expected. And don’t even get me started on the touchpad.

It’s sad to see the titan fall, but fall it did, far away from the best gaming laptops.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2023) price and configurations

Clocking in at $1,599, the Zephyrus G14 I reviewed is outfitted with an AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU with 8GB of VRAM, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 14-inch, 1600p, 165Hz display.

On sale for $1,279 at the time of writing, you can pick up the model with a Ryzen 7 7735HS CPU and RTX 4050 GPU. But if you’re in it to win it, then the $3,299 might suit you better — it offers our CPU plus an RTX 4090 GPU, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD.

If you’re looking for something more affordable, check out our best cheap gaming laptops page.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2023) design

For better or worse, the Zephyrus G14’s design hasn’t changed much in the last three years — I loved the way it looked when it first debuted, but good looks can only last for so long. It’s got the milky-white paint over its magnesium-alloy lid, and half the lid is covered in mesmerizing microdots for the mini LED lights. There’s a reflective ROG logo stamped in the corner like a label on a big piece of machinery.

The interior sports a soft sparkly white paint over the deck and milky white on the keyboard. Its top-firing speakers are right above the keyboard as well as a set of dedicated media keys. The bezels on the display are slim, but thankfully there’s enough room for a webcam at the top.

At 3.6 pounds and 12.3 x 9 x 0.73 inches, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is the lightest amongst our 14-inch competitors. The Lenovo Legion Pro 5i (5.5 pounds, 14.3 x 10.3 x 0.9~1.1 inches), MSI Stealth 14 Studio (3.8 pounds, 12.4 x 9.7 x 0.8 inches), and Razer Blade 14 (4.1 pounds, 12.2 x 9 x 0.7 inches) just couldn’t keep up.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2023) ports

There are a decent number of ports across the board of the Zephyrus G14.

Navigating along the left side of the laptop, you’ll find two USB Type-A ports, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, and a microSD card slot, while the right holds room for the power jack, an HDMI 2.1 port, one USB 4 Type-C port, and a headphone jack.

If you need more ports, check out our best USB Type-C hubs and best laptop docking stations pages.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2023) display

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14’s 14-inch, 2560 x 1600 panel makes up for its average color coverage with a bright screen and a smooth 165Hz refresh rate.

I watched the first episode of The Handmaid's Tale (oof), and Offred’s off-red (haha) clothing popped on screen. When Offred leaves the house at night, I could make out the details in the architecture around her. The panel was sharp enough to capture the pores on the actress’ face.

I ran around in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and the countryside had beautiful green and yellow notes, although I sensed that it could have been a little more vivid. But thanks to the brightness, I didn’t have any trouble navigating through the dimly-lit houses. And with that smooth 165Hz refresh rate, I could see what my enemy was doing before they even knew they were doing it.

On our colorimeter, the Zephyrus G14 covered 78.3% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is just shy of the average mainstream gaming laptop (78.6%). The Legion Pro (82.8%), Stealth 14 (114.4%), and Blade 14 (114.3%) all exceeded expectations.

At 392 nits, the Zephyrus G14 flew over the category average (342 nits) as well as the Legion Pro (349 nits) and Stealth 14 (370 nits). However, the Blade 14 managed 465 nits.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2023) keyboard and touchpad

I love how the Zephyrus G14’s keyboard feels — the font is textured and the keys click and clack to my heart’s content. 

I scored 83 words per minute on the 10fastfingers.com typing test, which speeds past my current 78-fps average. The spacing and travel of the keys helped me navigate around the deck with ease.

Flip side, I hate the keyboard lighting on the G14. The font doesn’t do the RGB lighting any justice — it looks like a mesh of dull Christmas lights from a B-horror movie. Did I mention that it has only one-zone lighting?

The 5.1 x 3.1-inch touchpad is soft and offers a deep, satisfying click, but it’s got one problem. The deck isn’t level with the touchpad, so unless you want a dent in your thumb or index finger, you might have to reposition how you use your touchpad. Gestures like two-finger scrolling and three-finger tabbing work fine.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2023) audio

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14’s top and bottom-firing speakers are loud, but they come off noisy and bombastic.

I listened to Stand Atlantic’s “deathwish,” and the opening vocals were crisp while the guitar was pleasantly bright. However, when the percussion and the rest of the instruments kicked in, it got noisy. It was difficult to discern the instruments from one another.

In Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, I fought one of the thicc bois and my ax slashes were meaty, but sharp. The dialogue sounded clear, if maybe a little too brassy. When someone pounded on the table, it tried to replicate a bassy sound, but it became distorted.

Asus offers up the Dolby Access app to solve the speaker’s woes, and it helps to an extent. The speakers sound uncanny, unfortunately. The app does offer EQ settings to tinker with, so if you want to spend time, you can make it work. However, you’re better off looking at our best gaming headsets page.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2023) gaming, graphics and VR

Packed with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU with 8GB of VRAM, the Zephyrus G14 dominated when I launched axes in the throats of my enemies in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, all at a crispy 97 frames per second on 1080p, Ultra settings.

On the Far Cry 6 (Ultra, 1080p) benchmark, the Zephyrus G14 scored 74 fps, dropping below the average mainstream gaming laptop (80 fps). The Legion Pro (94) and Stealth 14 (85) feature the same RTX 4060 GPU as the G14, but they did much better. To no surprise, the Blade 14 (85 fps) also did better with its RTX 4070 GPU. At 1600p, the G14 hit 60 fps.

The Zephyrus G14 achieved 82 fps on the Borderlands 3 (Badass, 1080p) benchmark, just sliding by the 81-fps category average. It narrowly beat the Stealth 14 (80 fps), but couldn’t get ahead of the Legion Pro (90 fps) and Blade 14 (98 fps). At 1600p, the G14 averaged 53 fps.

On the Red Dead Redemption 2 (Medium, 1080p) benchmark, the Zephyrus G14 squeezed in 65 fps, waving on the way past the average mainstream gaming laptop (63 fps). It even surpassed the Stealth 14 (58 fps), but the Legion Pro (70 fps) and Blade 14 (73 fps) didn't budge. Meanwhile, the G14 scored 39 fps at 1600p.

The Zephyrus G14 hit 90 fps on the Grand Theft Auto V (Very High, 1080p) benchmark, matching the category average. It once again defeated the Stealth 14 (83 fps), but lost its foothold against the Legion Pro (97 fps) and Blade 14 (100 fps). Meanwhile, the G14 scored 50 fps at 1600p.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2023) performance

Tucked away in the light underbelly of the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is an AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS processor with 16GB of RAM. It had more than enough power to shrug off a couple dozen Google Chrome tabs and a handful of YouTube videos.

On the Geekbench 6 overall performance test, the Zephyrus G14 scored 9,176, surpassing the average mainstream gaming laptop (7,165). However, that wasn’t enough to beat the Intel Core i7-13700H CPUs in the Legion Pro 5i (13,634) and Stealth 14 (12,841). And even though the Blade 14 has the same CPU as the G14, it scored 11,425.

The Zephyrus G14 took 5 minutes and 20 seconds to transcode a 4K video to 1080p on our HandBrake test, which is far slower than the category average (4:38) as well as the Legion Pro (3:39) and Stealth 14 (4:41).

Asus’ 512GB SSD has a transfer rate of 1,339 megabytes per second, slipping past the average mainstream gaming laptop (1,247 MBps). With a 512GB SSD, the Legion Pro hit 1,793 MBps, while the 1TB SSDs in the Stealth 14 (1,208 MBps) and Blade 14 (1,230 MBps) actually slowed them down.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2023) battery life

Wow — this laptop has been doozy after doozy, but I didn’t expect it to screw up on battery life too. The previous Zephyrus laptops have all been stellar, but this machine lasted only 4 hours and 56 minutes on our Laptop Mag battery test. That’s below the category average (5:52), and while it did outlast the Legion Pro (4:51) and Stealth 14 (3:17), the Blade 14 (8:34) came out on top.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2023) webcam

Listen, I am grateful that Asus put the webcam back in the Zephyrus G14, but that’s not going to stop me from crapping on this messy 1080p shooter.

In my test shot, my skin and beard were a pixely nightmare, and much to my dismay, it made it look like I didn’t even have a neck (please, this does not help my self-confidence). The colors in the My Hero Academia poster behind me popped well enough — from the red and white lettering of the logo to the green in Deku’s suit. But overall, you’re better off checking out our best webcams page.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2023) heat

Despite not meeting our performance expectations, the Zephyrus G14 still gets a little warm under the hood. After gaming for 15 minutes, the underside hit 117 degrees Fahrenheit, which is above our 95-degree comfort threshold. The center of the keyboard and touchpad reached 110 and 84 degrees, respectively. At its hottest it was 122 degrees on the underside near the hinge.

It was cooler while watching a 15-minute video. The hottest the underside got was 105, while the keyboard and touchpad measured 103 and 95 degrees, respectively.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2023) software and warranty

Like with most Asus gaming laptops, the most important app is Armoury Crate, which manages the performance of the CPU, GPU and fans. In the same app, you can customize the key lighting, aggregate games from other launchers, and create profiles for performance and lighting based on what you're doing. The GameVisual app adjusts the color of your display, while the MyAsus app runs system diagnostics and hardware checks on your system.

There’s some classic Windows 11 bloatware like Spotify and Solitaire.

The Zephyrus G14 comes with a one-year limited warranty. See how Asus performed on our Tech Support Showdown and Best and Worst Brands ranking.

Bottom line

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2023) is a tragic tale of love and loss — mostly the loss part, the love was so 2020. The gaming laptop should be good at gaming, but it’s below average in most cases. And how Asus threw away its stellar battery life is a mystery to me.

If you are looking for something with a little more power at the same size, consider the MSI Stealth 14 Studio.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to recommend the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 — there are better gaming laptops out there at a similar price.

Update July 13 at 5:31 p.m. ET: This popular deal is still available during Best Buy's Black Friday in July sale. 

As Amazon Prime Day deals start ramping up, it's a good time to keep an eye on the largest online retailer's competitors. Best Buy, for example, is throwing down huge savings on today's top laptops during their Black Friday in July sale.

And there's no better deal than nearly half-off a high-end HP gaming laptop. Right now you can get the HP Omen 16 AMD Advantage edition for just $799 at Best Buy. Featuring AMD's Ryzen 7 6800H processor and their Radeon RX 6650M graphics card,  this is undoubtedly one of the best gaming laptop prime day deals so far.

If you're waiting for the universe to send you a sign to indulge in a little something extra this week, this could be it. The HP Omen 16 in this deal is the AMD Advantage edition - offering all of AMD's best in one conveniently discounted package. 

Housing the gorgeous 16-inch 1920 x 1080 FHD 144Hz display is a charcoal-colored aluminum chassis measuring 14.53 x 9.76 x 0.91 inches and weighing 5.33 pounds. Certainly not the most delicate and portable laptop out there, but it's what's inside that counts, right?

While we haven't had the chance to test this build, we're anticipating speedy performance thanks to the Ryzen 7 6800H 4.7ghz processor backed by 16 GB RAM and a 1TB SSD. Plus, the AMD Radeon RX 6650M graphics card can comfortably compete with Nvidia's RTX 3060 any day. 

For those who use plenty of accessories while gaming, the HP Omen 16 comes in clutch. If you need more than the three USB-A ports and 2 USB-C ports, you probably have a USB hub already. As an added bonus, this laptop also comes with an HDMI port, an SD card slot, as well as an ethernet port and, yes, even a headphone jack.

Don't miss out on the HP Omen 16 AMD advantage edition for just $799. 

The new Acer Swift X spec list sounds like a content creator's wish list come to life. From the 16-inch 3.2K 120Hz OLED display to the Ryzen 7000 series CPU and Nvidia 40-Series GPU, you've got everything you need to craft videos, 3D renders, and more.

Sure, but we've seen what's going on with RTX 40 series laptop prices — it's probably $3,000. Not so! The Acer Swift X starts at $1,249, just half the price of the MacBook Pro 16, makes it an impressively affordable content creation station.

However, it takes more than a few eye-catching specs to win us over, so let's take a deeper dive into what Acer has done to improve the Swift X for 2023.

Bigger and better

We got our hands-on the Swift X 14 last year, and it featured a 14-inch (2240 x 1400) laptop with an Intel Core i7-1260p CPU and an Nvidia GeForce 3050 Ti GPU. The Acer Swift X 16 in 2023 has bulked up. It made the jump to a 16-inch (3200 x 2000) OLED display, up to an AMD Ryzen 9 7940H CPU, up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU, 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, up to a 2TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD, and a 76Wh battery — all while staying reasonably thin-and-light at 14 x 9.8 x 0.7 inches and 4.2 pounds.

AI Boost

Beyond the performance enhancements from the new AMD Ryzen 7000 series CPU and Nvidia 40-series, the Acer Swift X joins the rest of the tech world in leaning on AI to squeeze even more out of this hardware.

Some of that comes from a suite of AI technologies created by Acer itself to enhance specific features like the video quality from the 1080p FHD webcam and applying AI noise reduction to your audio. Others come from Nvidia, with the RTX 4050 GPU giving you access to Nvidia Studio Drivers and tools like Nvidia Omniverse, Nvidia Broadcast, and Nvidia Canvas that blew us away at CES 2023.

Acer listened

Our biggest complaint with the previous generation was the virtually non-existent bottom-firing speakers. Acer stepped up its game here with a pair of front-facing stereo speakers with DTS-X Ultra Audio. Our other concern was the shallow keyboard, so we'll have to wait until we have the laptop in for testing before we know if Acer's fixed everything.

The Acer Swift X 16 will be shipping starting in July and again starts at $1,249. If you're a content creator that prefers Windows to macOS, this sounds like it could be a candidate for our best video editing laptops when it arrives this summer, so check back for our full review.

It’s an AMD party and you're invited, courtesy of Alienware. Now granted, this isn’t the exclusive all-AMD party many fans would like, but the Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition is a great start. The laptop marks the return of AMD, which has been making its impact felt in several gaming laptops as of late, to one of our perennial favorites. 

In Alienware’s capable hands, the AMD Ryzen R7 processor shines, delivering great overall performance with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU putting in solid work in the gaming realm. It’s a sleek head-turning rig that manages to keep the price below $2,000. My only real gripe is the battery life, which is way short of what we’ve seen on other AMD systems. But Alienware and AMD fans may have just found their match in the Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition. 

Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition pricing and availability

I gamed, worked and relaxed with the $1,779 version of the Alienware m15. It has a 3.2-GHz AMD Ryzen R7 5800H processor with 16GB of RAM, a 512GB PCIe m.2 SSD, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU with 6GB of VRAM, AMD Radeon Graphics and a 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080 display with a 165Hz refresh rate. 

The $1,429 base model has the Ryzen R7 processor with half the RAM and storage with an Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti with 4GB of RAM. The $2,209 iteration gets you 1TB of storage, an RTX 3070 GPU with 8GB of VRAM and a 2560 x 1440-pixel panel with a 240Hz refresh rate. The $2,509 top-of-the-line model bumps you up to a 3.3-GHz AMD Ryzen R9 5900HX CPU, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB PCIe m.2 SSD, an RTX 3070 GPU with 8GB of VRAM, and a 1080p screen with a 360Hz refresh rate.

Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition design

Hmmm. Perhaps, I’ve been singing the praises of Alienware’s Lunar White stain-resistant finish a little too loudly. Because when I look at the Alienware m15 in Dark Side of the Moon, I found myself captivated by the stately grayish-black finish. It’s got a touch of shimmer that raises the intrigue level with a blocky “15” embossed in the bottom-left corner of the magnesium alloy lid. And with the alien’s head glowing turquoise, it’s a fresh take on the company’s Legend design. The rear vent punches up the flair with a large customizable LED strip surrounding the honeycomb-shaped vents. 

If you want more of that honeycomb pattern, just open the lid and the top-mounted vent is there serving up more of that funky hexagon. A small glowing alien head crashes the party and serves as the power button. Below the vent in more of that Dark Side of the Moon finish on the keyboard deck and palm rest. The deck houses a full-sized keyboard glowing in the default turquoise. The touchpad rests below the keyboard, centered beneath the G and H keys. 

Weighing 5.4 pounds, the 14 x 10.7 x 0.5~0.9-inch Alienware m15 is on the heavier side of the equation. At least it is when compared to the Razer Blade 15 Advanced Edition (4.4 pounds, 14 x 9.3 x 0.7 inches). However, neither is as heavy as the 6.6-pound Asus ROG Strix Advantage G15 (13.9 x 10.2 x 1.1 inches).

Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition ports

The Alienware m15 has a healthy amount of ports starting with the pair of USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports on the right and the trapjaw Gigabit Ethernet port and headset jack on the left. 

The remaining ports, including another USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, an HDMI 2.1 port and the power jack are embedded in the rear vent. 

Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition display

Just because it’s not super high-res, doesn’t make the Alienware m15’s glossy panel any less pretty. When I watched the trailer for Good, I could see all the delicate striations in renowned actor Keith David’s light tan linen jacket. Actress Nefetari Spencer’s red blazer and ruby red lips popped against her caramel brown skin. 

I wanted to stop and take in the gorgeous backdrop when I played Ori and the Will of the Wisps. However, I was being chased by a massive inky black wolf and had to run for my life. That was until I grabbed a piece of burning wood whose flame was a menagerie of deep oranges and reds that leapt at my attacker, driving it back. Despite all the swinging and dodging, the action remained smooth thanks in part to the panel’s 165Hz refresh rate and 3-millisecond response rate. 

When we measured the panel’s color reproduction capabilities, the m15 hit 87.3% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, surpassing the 84.8% premium gaming average and the Strix’s 76.7%. However, the Blade 15 was just a few tenths of a point better at 87.8%.

During our brightness test, the m15 was unparalleled, scoring 328 nits. It outpaced the 321-nit category average, the Strix’s 280 nits and the Blade 15’s 244 nits. 

Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition audio

The Alienware m15’s bottom-firing speakers are powerful and capable of delivering clear audio. That is, of course, as long as you keep anything from potentially blocking them and muffling the sound. I found this out when I was listening to H.E.R.’s “Damage” and the already spacey synths sounded like they were distant and underwater. After realizing the throw pillow on my lap was in the way, the sound filled my smallish living/dining room space. The rich alto spun a tale of wistful love that was music to my ears. The bass didn’t have that expected thump, but few laptops pull it off. 

During my battle with Howl, the massive wolf boss in Ori and the Will of the Wisp, the monster’s growl was intense. As it chased me to the fight zone, the cracking of the dry wood was thunderous and the strings were tight and tenuous, further heighting the anxiety. 

There are six audio presets (Com, Movie, Racing, Shooter, Role Play and Music) in Alienware Command Center designed to give you the best sound depending on the situation. I used Music as my default and switched to Movie when I was gaming. 

Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition keyboard

Clicky and bouncy. The perfect combination for a keyboard, gaming or otherwise. The Alienware m15’s island-style keyboard was really comfortable to type on, delivering strong springy feedback with a satisfying click. My fingers never felt like they were bottoming out, which is always a good thing. I hit 75 words per minute on the 10fastfingers typing test, surpassing my normal 70 wpm.

My only gripe with the keyboard is the LED customization, or lack thereof. While you have access to 16.8 million colors with five effects (Breathing, Spectrum, Pulse, Morph and Color), everything is relegated to four zones instead of per-key lighting. Considering the price, I understand the restriction, but it would be nice if I had control to pick every color for every individual key. 

The 2.4 x 4.1-inch touchpad performed Windows 10 gestures perfectly, quickly transitioning from pinch-zoom to two-finger scroll to three-finger tap. 

Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition gaming, graphics and VR

The Alienware m15 is outfitted with Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 with 6GB of VRAM which allows the laptop to play most AAA titles at medium settings with a high frame rate. I made my way through the dark forest in Ori and the Will of the Wisps, finally beating back Howl with a flaming stick at 172 frames per second on High at 1080p. 

The m15’s RTX 3060 GPU held its own on our benchmarks, starting with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey where the gaming laptop reached 57 fps. That’s below 64 fps premium gaming laptop average, but better than the Strix’s (AMD Radeon 6800M GPU) 49 fps. Neither were a match for the Blade 15 (RTX 3080) which notched 74 fps.

When we ran the Shadow of the Tomb Raider test, the m15 obtained 73 fps, missing the 81-fps average. The Blade 15 and Strix were tied at 88 fps. During Grand Theft Auto V, the m15 produced a respectable 82 fps. However, it couldn’t match the 95-fps average nor the Strix or Blade 15 which got 98 and 107 fps, respectively. 

Things started looking up for the m15 on the Metro: Exodus (Ultra, 1080p DirectX 11) benchmark with it achieving 82 fps, crushing the 68-fps category average. The Blade 15 got 74 fps while the Strix pulled 71 fps. 

On the Far Cry New Dawn test, the m15 captured 79 fps, missing the 88-fps average. The Strix got a few frames higher at 81 fps while the Blade 15 earned 95 fps. During the Borderlands 3 benchmarks, the m15 picked up 66 fps. The category average, Strix and Blade 15 hit 74, 79 and 81 fps, respectively. Running the Red Dead Redemption 2 test, the m15, got 53 fps, which is short of the 63-fps average. The Strix and the Blade 15 were tied at 70 fps. 

In case you want to hook up a VR headset to the laptop, rest assured that you can play Beat Saber or Tetris Effect with the best of them. When we ran the VRMark Orange test, the Alienware m15 scored 9,265, clearing the 8,806 average and the Blade 15’s 8,341. It couldn’t best the Strix however, which hit 10,045.

When you’re not gaming or doing anything else that’s graphically taxing, the Alienware m15 will switch over to its integrated AMD Radeon Graphics. 

Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition performance

It’s Ryzen time! The Alienware m15 has a 3.2-GHz AMD Ryzen R7 5800H processor with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB PCIe m.2 SSD. It’s a surprisingly sturdy workhorse. I launched 45 Google Chrome tabs, some of which were running Twitch, YouTube, Tweetdeck, Google Docs, Google Sheets and a fair amount of shopping and news apps. The notebook kept plugging along without breaking a sweat. 

The notebook also performed well on our synthetic tests including Geekbench 5.4, our overall performance test, where it achieved 7,288, rolling past the 6,823 premium laptop average. The Blade 15 with its Intel Core i7-10875H CPU hit 6,531 while the Strix, with its AMD Ryzen 9 5900X processor, was the overall winner with 7,746. 

During the Handbrake test, the m15 transcoded a 4K video to 1080p in 7 minutes and 5 seconds, outpacing the 7:39 average and the Blade 15’s 9:57. However, the Strix still came out on top with a time of 6:57.

When we ran the File Transfer Test, the m15’s SSD got a transfer rate of 874.1 megabytes per second when duplicating 25GB of multimedia files. It was faster than the 865.8MBps average as well as the Strix’s (512GB SSD) 340.7MBps. However, the Blade 15 with its 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD was the fastest at 890.2MBps. 

Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition battery life

When I saw that the Alienware m15 had an AMD processor, I was expecting some stellar battery life. Boy, was I disappointed! The m15 lasted only 3 hours and 29 minutes on the Laptop Mag Battery Test which consists of web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. That time is below the 4:12 premium gaming laptop average. The Blade 15 lasted 5:14 while the Strix tapped out after 10:14. 

During the PCMark 10 UL battery test, which loops a 3D-render scene until the laptop conks out, the m15’s battery life dropped to 1:18.

Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition heat

I ventured through dark, creepy woods during Ori and the Will of the Wisps for 15 minutes. After, the touchpad, center of the keyboard and undercarriage were measured and we saw temperatures of 101, 85 and 103 degrees Fahrenheit, respectively. The touchpad and undercarriage exceeded our 95-degree comfort threshold but never got concerningly hot. 

We let the system cool down and ran a fullscreen HD video on the laptop for 15 minutes and measured again. The touchpad measured 81 degrees while the middle and bottom reached 96 and 91 degrees, respectively.

Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition webcam

One thing’s for sure, the Alienware m15’s 720p webcam has great color reproduction. It captured the exact electric blue of my tank tool as well as my chocolate complexion with its red undertones. And while there was some visual noise, I could still make out the individual blue sequins on my top. You can definitely use the m15’s webcam to stream, but if you want crisper details, I’d recommend checking out the shooters on our best webcam page. 

Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition software and warranty

As usual, Alienware outfitted its notebook with its typical suite of branded software. We’ve already discussed Alienware Command Center. But the m15 also features Alienware Mobile Connect, which lets you access your smartphone from the laptop’s screen. 

Alienware Update keeps your BIOS, drivers and firmware up-to-date while Digital Delivery keeps your Alienware and Windows 10 software updated. There’s also My Alienware, which has Alienware Support, a tool that puts you in touch with a tech support representative in case you’re experiencing any problems. 

Third-party gamer-centric apps Killer Control Center and Nvidia GeForce Experience round out the experience and let you prioritize network bandwidth and optimize your games' settings for gameplay.

There are, of course, a few pieces of bloatware, including Microsoft Solitaire, Hidden City: Hidden Objects Adventure and Dolby Access. 

The Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition comes with a two-year premium warranty. See how Alienware fared on Tech Support Showdown and Best and Worst Brands, our annual special reports. 

Bottom line

Alienware and AMD make a good team as evidenced by the Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition. The laptop delivered impressive overall performance and respectable gaming performance thanks to its AMD Ryzen processor and Nvidia RTX 3060 GPU. Plus, you get a beautiful display, powerful speakers and a comfy keyboard, in an all-too-stunning package. 

And while I’m pleased with the $1,779 price, I really would like to see this configuration with an RTX 3070 so it can give competing laptops more of a fight. As it stands, it can play games at playable frame rates, but it wasn’t blowing out the competition. And the battery life leaves much to be desired. If you’re looking for high frame rates, the $2,999 Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model is the way to go. If multitasking power and endurance is your thing, then the incredibly affordable $1,499 Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition is your laptop. But if you’re a fan of Alienware and AMD, the Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition in its stylish glory is a great choice. 

Ryzen 5000 series is AMD’s newest CPU line. The arrival of Ryzen and its underlying Zen platform marked a comeback starting in 2017 for AMD in terms of competitiveness with Intel and a stronger approach to the laptop market. The company made serious inroads last year with its Ryzen 4000-series chips. Since then, the Zen microarchitecture has undergone two generational updates, landing us today at Zen 3’s 7-nanometer process.

Zen 3 and Ryzen 5000 laptops are due to market later this year, so if you’re looking for your next gaming or video rendering mobile workhorse, you’ll want to know why everyone’s talking about the latest Ryzen line.

We've put together a guide for AMD's new Ryzen 5000 CPUs to help you decide if these exciting new chips earn a place in your next laptop.

19% performance uplift, 24% more power-efficient

At AMD’s Ryzen 5000 launch event in October 2020, CEO Lisa Su and CTO Mark Papermaster outlined key improvements for Zen 3 over the prior Zen 2 generation. The standout being an increase in instructions per clock (a general marker of performance) with a 24% improvement to power efficiency, providing up to two hours more battery life. For mobile processors, especially, this is a dream combo that you don’t often get: more performance and longer battery life.

What makes Zen 3 next-gen

Zen 3 chips use a completely different layout of CPU cores surrounding a single L3 cache so all cores have faster and equal access to a single memory pool that’s twice the size of Zen 2’s total split cache. This both provides more resources to each CPU core and helps decrease latency across a wide array of tasks. Zen 3 also uses improved LPDDR4 memory to boost performance and reduce power consumption compared to Zen 2.

Zen 3 will continue to use the Radeon Vega series of integrated GPUs with improved clock speeds of between 300 and 400 MHz over Ryzen 4000 equivalents.

Ryzen 5000 U, HS and HX series

When looking for a Ryzen 5000 machine, you’ll want to know the basics of the naming scheme AMD uses to identify its processors. In general, higher numbers are better. For example, a Ryzen 9 5980HX represents the top-line CPU out of the whole bunch. The first number after "Ryzen" indicates one of three models: Ryzen 5, 7 and 9. The “5980” after the above example tells us the performance tier, which is ranged from 5600 up to 5980. 

“HX” represents the CPU series, which tells us the intended category each CPU is designed for. U-series CPUs are for slim-and-lightweight notebooks. These systems offer the lowest performance, but at a great savings to battery life. HS and HX are the gaming and top-performance series, respectively, so expect to see them in larger notebooks. 

Some Ryzen 5000U-series CPUs still use Zen 2

It’s important to note that not all of the Ryzen 5000 laptop processor lines use the latest Zen 3 microarchitecture. The Ryzen 3 5300U, Ryzen 5 5500U and Ryzen 7 5700U still run off Zen 2. Essentially, the lower performance tier of each model number will be left behind on Zen 2. The higher-tier Ryzen 3 5400U, Ryzen 5 5600U and Ryzen 7 5800U will receive the Zen 3 upgrade. 

As we noted above, the U-series is intended for low-power laptops with portability and battery life in mind. If you’re shopping for high-end performance, you’re not likely to be offered a U-series laptop, so just keep it in mind that not everything that says “Ryzen 5000” necessarily means “Zen 3” as well.

What laptops to look for with Ryzen 5000 CPUs

In February, the first Ryzen 5000 laptops will go on sale. At CES 2021, alongside the official debut of the mobile Ryzen 5000 line, several laptop models were unveiled that are sporting the new Ryzen family of processors:

• The Asus ROG Strix Scar 15 and 17 gaming laptops, both equipped with Nvidia 30 series GPUs. There is also the ROG Flow X13, which we praised in our review.
• The more economical Acer Aspire line announced the Aspire 7 and Aspire 5, which should provide a much-needed power boost from previous Aspire laptops.
• Acer’s Nitro 5 gaming laptops were also announced and come in both Intel and AMD equipped variants.
• Four new HP ProBook models, the ProBook 635 Aero G8, ProBook 445 G8, ProBook 455 G8 and ProBook x360 435 G8. HP also showed three new EliteBook models, the EliteBook 835 G8, EliteBook 845 G8 and EliteBook 855 G8.

AMD hit it out of the park last year with its Ryzen 4000 series processors as a number of the best Ryzen laptops appeared on our best gaming laptops and best laptops overall this year.

Well, the Ryzen 4000 series launched at CES 2020 and, with less than a month until CES 2021, the rumors and leaks regarding the mobile Ryzen 5000 processors are coming fast and furious with the latest news surrounding a trio of Asus laptops using the new processors discovered by leaker @momomo_us on a Germain retail site (via NotebookCheck)

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The three laptops in question were listed on Expert.de as using the AMD Ryzen 7 5700U and the Ryzen 5 5500U APU. The former will be using 8 cores with 16 threads and the latter 6 cores with 12 threads. These are, unfortunately, somewhat less exciting Ryzen 5000 variants as they are based on the current Zen 2 architecture rather than the new Zen 3 Cezanne.

The listings have all now been removed, but they included a 17.3-inch and 15.6-inch laptop with the AMD Ryzen 7 5700U, 1080p displays, integrated AMD Radeon Graphics and 16GB of RAM. The smallest is perhaps the most intriguing as it is the upgraded version of the Asus VivoBook Flip 14, a laptop that we reviewed back in September and came away really impressed by its performance at its price point.

Those looking for the full power of Ryzen 5000 to be unlocked are waiting to hear about the H-Series chips rather than these U-Series. Rumored chips include the top-end Ryzen 9 5900HX and Ryzen 9 5900HS, the same class that was in the well-loved Asus Zephyrus G14 this year.

Intel has done a solid job striking back with its 11th Gen Tiger Lake processors, but after seeing how consistently the Ryzen 4000 series performed this year, it will certainly be exciting to see what Ryzen 5000 has in store for us in 2021.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 was recently branded as the longest-lasting gaming laptop to date -- the first of its kind to ever hit the double digits for battery life. The ROG Zephyrus G14 changed our perspective of what a gaming laptop can do, and is now setting an example for all other gaming laptops that succeed it. Its incredible endurance is primarily due to the AMD Ryzen 9-4900HS processor inside of it. It even landed on our laptops with best battery life page.

Needless to say, the G14 is making us more than optimistic about the future of gaming laptops when it comes to battery life. But we wanted to put it to the test. On top of our typical battery life benchmarks, we decided to test how the Zephyrus G14 handles gaming on the go, and how long it takes for it to die; the results are surprising.

Laptop Mag Battery Test

The Laptop Mag Battery Test forces laptops to continuously surf the web over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. 150 nits of brightness is a little dimmer than what most people use, but it's a good mark if you’re trying to conserve battery.

By the end, the Zephyrus G14 had become the longest lasting gaming laptop we’ve ever tested, lasting an incredible 11 hours and 32 minutes. That number is leaps and bounds above the 4:26 mainstream gaming laptop average.

But how does the Zephyrus G14 hold up while gaming?

Battery life while gaming

We then threw one of the most rigorous tests at the Zephyrus G14 to see how long it would last -- and it was surprisingly short.

At 323 nits of brightness with Airplane mode turned on, I played Doom Eternal on Low settings at 1080p. The battery lasted only 1 hour and 40 minutes. You may be wondering -- “How can it go from 11:32 all the way down to 1:40?” Well there are a couple of factors. 

One, we tested it at the max brightness as opposed to our typical 150 nits of brightness. And two, playing a game turns on the power-hungry Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 GPU instead of using the AMD Ryzen 9-4900HS’ less power-consuming integrated graphics card. However, if you have a decently long commute time to work or school, the Zephyrus G14 should still be able to survive a play session of Doom Eternal.

When turning the test down to something less-intensive, the Zephyrus G14 still managed to provide a shocking result. At 150 nits of brightness with Airplane mode turned on, I played Hollow Knight at 1080p and the battery once again lasted 1 hour and 40 minutes. 

It’s mind-boggling how the Zephyrus G14 scored the same run time on the Hollow Knight test vs. the Doom Eternal test. Turning down the brightness didn’t help, so we imagined that the bulk of the power consumption is due to the RTX 2060 GPU.

Then, we were slapped in the face yet again. When we tried running Hollow Knight for a second time with the same parameters but relying on the Radeon graphics instead of the RTX 2060 GPU, the results were exactly the same.

A closer look at the Zephyrus G14

So, what the hell is going on inside the Zephyrus G14? Why is it tied down to 1:40 of gaming? If we take a closer look, the Zephyrus G14 sports a 76 WHr battery, which isn’t the biggest battery you can put into a laptop (the biggest available is a TSA-approved 99.9 WHr battery).

What makes the Zephyrus G14 different from other laptops is the brand-new AMD Ryzen 9-4900HS processor it’s toting around. We already know this, but what does that have to do with battery life? Everything.

The AMD Ryzen 4000 U-Series chips are designed for power efficiency. AMD Senior Product Manager Scott Stankard gave us a deep dive on the battery life increase that the new Ryzen chips would deliver.

“The difficulty with managing power in a laptop is that there are many different actors giving us input all at the same time,” Stankard said. 

He went on to talk about how each user’s performance settings are different and how that also complicates things. However, the Ryzen chip is equipped with “multiple sensors throughout the system” that give AMD feedback and it takes “all that feedback together and [tries] to decide what is the right power state to be in at any given moment.”

The new AMD Ryzen chips offer faster and more accurate clock control. That’s tech speak for: the processor will use the right amount of power for the task and do it at a faster rate, instead of increasing slowly to 100%, which would cause the battery to drain faster.

The next thing AMD talked about was better allocation of power budget. That means the CPU can get the components of your laptop to a low power state faster than usual, and vice versa, to get your system up and running. The chip also reduces the penalty of power state transitions, so there’s even less battery loss when you change your performance settings.

So how does all of this translate into our tests? Well, our initial battery test judges continuous surfing on the web, so both GPUs are in those low-power states that AMD described. But once we turned a game on, regardless of the GPU, they went full force to ensure that the game would be up and running.

Now, where does this leave the longest-lasting gaming laptop that can only last 1 hour and 40 minutes while gaming?

A peek into the future of gaming laptops

The Zephyrus G14 took the first step for gaming laptops -- getting its battery life into the double digits. Right now, there’s absolutely no excuse for gaming laptops that are in the same class as the Zephyrus G14 to have short battery life. As a critic and as a consumer, it’s simply unacceptable. 

And yes, we understand that this battery life is only achievable when you’re not gaming, but once the rest of the major gaming brands, like Alienware and Razer, follow suit with double-digit battery life, then we can move forward into Phase 2. That’s when gaming laptops start to last 3 to 4 hours while gaming. And then eventually, 5 to 6 hours, and so on.

The future is very much here. And with gaming laptops like the MSI GE66 Raider and MSI GS66 Stealth coming through with 99.9WHr batteries, I have nothing but hope for gaming laptops to achieve these goals. AMD and Asus proved that it’s real -- now, everyone else needs to compete.

AMD has confirmed that flaws affecting its Ryzen and EPYC chips, disclosed last week by CTS-Labs, do in fact exist, and promises fixes in the coming weeks. It's also pointing out, as Laptop Magazine did, that the issues require root access to computers, which means that the machines would already be compromised as root users can do pretty much anything.

CTS-Labs, an Israeli security firm, gave AMD just one day's notice prior to issuing a white paper and putting up a website detailing a series of vulnerabilities in AMD chips.

That raised questions about the ethics of the researchers, compounded by the researchers' disclaimer that they may have had financial interests in the performance of AMD stock. However, other security experts confirmed that the AMD flaws, while a low risk to most users, were indeed real.

The CTS-Labs researchers suggested that AMD would take months to fix the issues. But AMD says that within a few weeks, all you'll need to do are install some patches and BIOS updates.

"The security issues identified by the third-party researchers are not related to the AMD 'Zen' CPU architecture or the Google Project Zero exploits made public Jan. 3, 2018," AMD wrote in a blog post. That Google mention refers to Spectre and Meltdown. "Instead, these issues are associated with the firmware managing the embedded security control processor in some of our products."

You can find the full nitty-gritty details here, but the most important one for most users is that AMD claims that this won't affect performance.

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After years of powering mostly low-end laptops, AMD is finally taking the performance fight to Intel. The company's brand-new Ryzen Mobile processors are designed to compete with Intel's 8th Generation CPUs. The chips promise better multi-threaded performance than comparable Core i5 and Core i7 chips and significantly better graphics speeds, thanks to AMD's integrated Radeon Vega GPU. 

These new chips, which are laptop versions of AMD's high-performance Ryzen desktop processors, will appear in three premium ultrathin laptops beginning this holiday season, with more models and higher-wattage processors likely to hit the market in 2018. Here's what you need to know about Ryzen Mobile, and to figure out which processor is right for you, check out our CPU buying guide.

Which laptops have Ryzen Mobile?

The first three laptops to feature Ryzen Mobile APUs (AMD calls its processors APUs rather than CPUs) will be configurations of the HP Envy x360, the Lenovo IdeaPad 720s and the Acer Swift 3. All three laptops are already available with Intel chips, so these will not be new chassis designs, just alternative configurations with Ryzen inside. The laptops should start shipping in November. The Envy x360 will start at $699; we don't yet have pricing for the other two laptops.

The 15-inch Acer Swift 3 and the 13-inch Lenovo IdeaPad 720s will each come with a choice of Ryzen 5 2500U or Ryzen 2700 U processors. However, the HP Envy x360 will come only with a Ryzen 5 2500U chip.

What's inside a Ryzen Mobile processor?

A Ryzen Mobile APU includes the following main components:

• A quad-core CPU, which is based on the company's Zen microarchitecture. Zen promises 52 percent more instructions per clock cycle over the prior generation, without increasing power use.
• AMD Radeon Vega graphics with eight to 10 compute units, AMD's equivalent to graphics cores.
• I/O and memory controllers: The chip includes a DDR4 memory controller for interacting with the RAM, display and multimedia engines, and an I/O and system hub.
• Infinity Fabric: This is a set of sensors that connect the GPU, CPU and controllers. AMD claims that the Infinity Fabric allows its chips to better balance heat and power consumption against clock speeds.

How much faster is Ryzen Mobile?

It almost goes without saying that Ryzen Mobile APUs will be significantly faster than their direct predecessors. AMD claims that the new chips offer up to 200 percent faster CPU performance and 128 percent faster GPU performance than the company's 7th Generation APUs while consuming 58 percent less power.

However, most shoppers will be comparing Ryzen Mobile processors to Intel's 8th Generation Core i5 and Core i7 processors. According to AMD, Ryzen Mobile offers superior graphics speed and comparable CPU performance to 8th Gen Core, besting it on some tests and falling just short on others. For example, the company claims that a laptop with a Ryzen 7 2700U CPU scored 719 on the Cinebench R15 nT synthetic performance test, while one with a Core i7-8550U managed just 498. However on another version of the test, Cinebench R15 1T, Intel's processor scored 159, compared with AMD's 144.

However, on graphics-centric tests, Ryzen Mobile promises to beat the pants off of Intel's offerings. According to AMD, a laptop with a Ryzen 7 2700U APU scored an impressive mark of 915 on the 3DMark Time Spy test, while a system with a Core i7-8550U inside returned a score of 350.

We look forward to testing Ryzen Mobile-powered laptops in our lab so we can verify AMD's claims.

Can you play games on Ryzen Mobile?

Because of its speedy Radeon Vega GPU, Ryzen Mobile should provide more gaming capability than an Intel CPU with integrated graphics. However, it's important to note that AMD's on-chip GPU is no substitute for a discrete graphics card and won't suddenly turn an Ultrabook into a gaming rig.

According to AMD, a laptop with a Ryzen 7 2700U APU inside can achieve a rate of 59 frames per second on League of Legends running at 1080 resolution, 49 fps on DOTA 2 at 1080p and 49 fps on CS:GO at 1080p. The company also claims that its chip can run Overwatch at 66 fps, provided that you drop the resolution to 1280 x 720.

If you turn the special-effects settings down far enough, you can also make many of these games playable on an Intel CPU with integrated graphics. We'll have to see how a Ryzen Mobile-powered laptop runs these titles in real life to find out just how impressive these numbers really are.

How many cores and threads does Ryzen Mobile have?

The initial Ryzen Mobile processors have four cores, each of which enables two threads, for a total of eight concurrent threads overall. Intel's 8th Generation Core Series processors have the same number of cores and threads.

What Ryzen Mobile processors are available?

For launch, AMD is releasing just two versions, both of which are designed for ultrathin laptops that might typically use Intel U series CPUs.

The Ryzen 7 2700U is designed to go head-to-head with Intel's Core i7-8550U. It has base and turbo frequencies of 2.2 and 3.8 GHz, respectively, along with 10 Radeon compute units and 4MB of L3 cache. Built to take-on Intel's Core i5-8250U, the Ryzen 5 2500U features base and turbo clock speeds of 2 and 3.6 GHz, eight Radeon compute units and 4MB of L3 cache.

How much wattage do Ryzen Mobile APUs consume?

Like Intel's mainstream U series CPUs, the Ryzen Mobile APUs will have a standard thermal design profile (TDP) of 15 watts. However, laptop manufacturers can configure the chips to use up to 25 watts in larger systems with more power and cooling. The three launch laptops all use the standard 15-watt TDP.

What can manufacturers do to make their Ryzen Laptops faster?

If they provide extra cooling, manufacturers can use a Ryzen feature called Mobile XFR (extended frequency range), which allows the processor to reach higher clock speeds than it would under normal conditions. Higher clock speeds equate to faster task completion.

How much will Ryzen Mobile-powered laptops cost?

We don't know yet how much HP, Lenovo and Acer plan to charge for their Ryzen Mobile-enabled laptops and whether that price will be more, less or the same as the Intel-powered versions. Given AMD's second-place position in the marketplace, we think the Ryzen Mobile versions may be a little bit less expensive, but we won't know until the companies announce their MSRPs.

What's an APU?

AMD calls its chips accelerated processing units (APUs) rather than CPUs, because they have both the graphics processor and the regular central processor on the same piece of silicon. Intel does the same thing with its integrated GPUs and still calls its products CPUs. AMD's integrated graphics tend to be faster than Intel's, but ultimately, both brands' processors do the same thing.

Image Credits: AMD

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Following the announcement of the Ryzen 7, AMD told us that its mobile version of the CPU, "Raven Ridge," would come to laptops in the back half of 2017. Based on a teaser video, it looks like we'll be getting an official announcement sooner than we thought.

Asus' gaming arm, the Republic of Gamers, has posted a brief video on YouTube showing a ROG computer (it looks a lot like the most recent ROG Strix GL553, at least from the back) over AMD's Ryzen logo with the words "Something has awakened." How mysterious!

The description has the hashtag #Computex2017, so we expect to see it at the Asus ROG press conference in Taipei later this month. Whether it will be part of a new line of laptops or new options for its existing models is still up in the air.

MORE: What Is AMD Ryzen (and When Is It Coming to Laptops)?

We're still waiting on more information on AMD's Vega chipset. The only announced Vega GPU, the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition, is a desktop card aimed more at machine learning than gaming. It's possible that Asus will pair mobile Ryzen CPUs with Nvidia GPUs, or perhaps we'll hear more about AMD's plan for Vega in laptops a whole lot sooner than expected.

The Ryzen CPU is AMD's latest salvo in its long-fought war against Intel, and, based on benchmarks, the closest its ever gotten to Intel's performance at a lower cost.

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AMD is back in the CPU game. Its newest processor line, called Ryzen (pronounced Rye-zen), is meant to face off with Intel's Core i CPUs on both gaming and productivity. Right now, you can only buy the Ryzen 7 series desktop processors, but you'll soon see a wider variety of SKUs -- including laptop chips that could change the mobile market. We've answered some key questions about the new platform below.

What is AMD Ryzen?

Ryzen is AMD's latest generation of CPUs. If you've ever seen an "Intel Core i" sticker on your laptop is referring to your processor, and Ryzen is an alternative. This isn't AMD's first foray into CPUs, but its one of its most serious, and perhaps most critical.

AMD suggests that Ryzen is meant specifically for the enthusiast market -- think gamers and high-end productivity users.

Is Ryzen in laptops?

Not yet. The first batch of CPUs are exclusively for desktop computers.

Will Ryzen Come to Laptops?

Yes. AMD told Laptop Mag that "we expect to see Ryzen in the mobile space in the second half of 2017."

These will likely be in the form of an APU, or accelerated processing unit. That's a marketing term that AMD uses to refer to a CPU and integrated graphics in one chip.

MORE: Which Laptop CPU is Right for You?

What's the AMD Ryzen naming structure?

It's just as confusing as Intel's. The first three Ryzens are:

• Ryzen 7 1700
• Ryzen 7 1700X
• Ryzen 7 1800X

So the structure is Ryzen Y ZZZZ, where Y is the family (3, 5, or 7) and Z is the more specific model number.

Just as with Intel's Core i series, 3 is the entry level, while 5 is mid-level and 7 is for enthusiasts and professionals.

How will Ryzen compare to Intel's Core i CPUs?

According to AMD's own tests, they hold up quite favorably. 

Here are some numbers from a test between the Ryzen 7 1800X and Intel Core i7-6900K, as conducted by our sister site, Anandtech. Note that these are from desktop builds, as the laptop chip is not yet available.

Here's the test build that they used for the Ryzen 7 1800X:

• AMD Ryzen 7 1800X at stock (3.6G base, 4.0G turbo, 4.1G XFR)
• ASUS Crosshair VI Hero Motherboard, BIOS 5704
• Corsair Vengeance Pro DDR4-3000 2x8 GB, running at DDR4-2400
• Rosewill 500W SilentNight 80PLUS Power Supply
• Crucial MX200 1TB SSD
• AMD R7 240 1GB as a GPU
• Windows 10 Pro

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