MSI Announces World's First Gaming Laptop with Mechanical Keyboard

For too long, fans of gaming laptops have had to settle for Chiclet-style keyboards, which can be a crapshoot when it comes to key travel and actuation. MSI is hoping to change that with the launch of the GT80 Titan, the world’s first gaming laptop outfitted with a mechanical keyboard. Packing a SteelSeries gaming keyboard with Cherry Brown MX switches, MSI is planning to target players looking for a high-performance rig that they can take on the go.

While we tend to favor Blue switches, Brown switches are no slouch. Brown switches offer great tactile feedback compared to Red switches, which tend to feel more linear. To help gamers get the most out of their shiny new keyboard, the GT80 Titan will also tout an enhanced SteelSeries Engine with CloudSync. Similar to Razer’s Synapse software, players will have the ability to create custom profiles, including lighting configurations, and save them to the cloud and synchronize with from another laptop.

MORE: The Best Gaming Keyboards You Can Buy

But as great as the keyboard sounds, we can’t overlook the notebook it’s attached to. According to MSI, the Titan will be the world’s thinnest and slimmest gaming laptop when it launches, at 17 percent thinner and 22 percent lighter than its closest competitor. Unfortunately, MSI is keeping spec details such as processor and graphics card under wraps, but if that dragon etched on the upper deck is anything to go by, we’re expecting a beastly configuration.

The company is also keeping mum on pricing and availability details, so it’s unlikely that gamers can expect the Titan for the holidays. We expect to hear more about the GT80 by the time CES 2015 rolls around, so stay tuned.

From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

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Also this week, hackers steal data on 4.5 million U.S. hospital patients, Sprint launches a bezel-free smartphone, and a Silicon Valley hotel tries out a robot bellhop.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Lenovo Y50 gaming laptop review: Great performance spoiled by a sub-par display

Lenovo Y50 $1,299.00 The Lenovo Y50 is a bargain among gaming laptops—provided you can tolerate its subpar display, keyboard, and trackpad.

We’ve finally arrived at the long-foretold future where gaming laptops can be slim and light enough to fit comfortably on your lap. Heck, even a non-gaming company like Lenovo has managed the feat. Lenovo’s 2014 Y50 isn’t quite as slim as, say, the 0.7-inch thin Razer Blade, but at 0.9 inches and 5.4 pounds, the Y50 is still incredibly small for a powerful gaming laptop.

The Lenovo Y50 is impressively thin for a gaming laptop with a Core i7 processor and a discrete graphics processor. 

The Y50 delivers a strong price-to-performance ratio. This $1200 laptop ships with an Intel Core i7-4700HQ CPU clocked at 2.4GHz, supplemented by an Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M graphics card. That’s pretty much the same core hardware as the Razer Blade Pro for half the cost, making the Y50 one of the best bang-for-buck mid-priced gaming laptops.

Lenovo worked with JBL on the Y50's speaker design.

The video card features Nvidia’s Battery Boost technology, which dynamically adjusts the GPU’s power draw to keep games at a steady frame rate while putting the lightest load possible on the computer’s battery. And Nvidia’s ShadowPlay technology allows you to record game footage without a performance hit. You can read more about Nvidia’s latest mobile GPU architecture in this story.

The Lenovo Y50's battery life isn't all that impressive considering that the Alienware and Razer machines have larger displays. 

The Y50 comes with 16GB of DDR3L/1600 RAM and a 1TB, 5400-rpm hybrid hard drive with 8GB of solid-state memory. A hybrid drive is better than a purely mechanical one—especially one that spins its platters at just 5400 rpm—but it’s still something of a letdown considering that most gaming laptops are moving exclusively to SSDs. SSDs are expensive, though, so I’m sure that was one of Lenovo’s key cost-cutting moves.

The Y50's backlit keyboard looks much better than it feels. 

The left side of the machine features two USB 3.0 slots, an HDMI-out port, Ethernet, and the power input. The right side has one USB 2.0 port, a memory-card reader, a headset jack, S/PDIF digital-audio out, and a security-lock slot.

The Y50 is a steal at this price. It doesn’t compare to the raw power of something like the Alienware 17, but that’s also a much more expensive machine. Lenovo packed a lot of power into this machine while keeping the price low.

The Y50 delivered a middling Laptop Worldbench score of 90, which is lower than our baseline model (a Dell XPS 15 with an Intel Core i7-4702HQ and a Nvidia GeForce GT 750M) and much lower than the Alienware 17’s score of 122.

The Y50's WorldBench score is 10-percent lower than that of the Dell XPS 15 we've been using as a reference point. 

Much of the problem resides with the Y50’s hard drive, which drags down the whole system. When you move over to games—in other words, experiences that are less restricted by the hard drive—the Y50 begins to hold its own.

The Y50 pumped out a perfectly respectable 92.5 frames per second (fps) when running Battlefield 4 at 1920x1080, medium settings. That’s pretty much on a par with the Alienware 17, which delivered 98 fps, and it’s definitely better than the 60 fps most PC players would consider “standard.”

The full-sized gigabit Ethernet jack has a spring-loaded hinged jaw.

As for BioShock Infinite, here the Y50 managed 73 frames per second—slightly better than the Razer Blade Pro’s 70 frames per second with comparable hardware, although it falls far short of the Alienware 17’s 121 frames per second.

The presence of an Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M graphics processor means the Lenovo Y50 will have no trouble delivering playable frame rates with hardcore games. 

Like the Blade Pro, the Y50 doesn’t offer much in the way of longevity. You’ll need to play games on low settings in a few years, and it will be obsolete soon after that. But that’s less of an issue with a $1200 laptop than a $2000 machine like the Blade Pro.

The Y50’s battery clung to life for three hours and 16 minutes—almost exactly the same as the Blade Pro’s three hours and 18 minutes. That’s about 20 minutes longer than the Alienware 17 delivered—in other words, it’s pretty standard battery life for a gaming laptop.

The Y50 has enough I/O ports to serve as a desktop replacement. 

The Y50’s performance isn’t mind-blowing in the grand scheme of things, but bear in mind that I just compared it to two machines that retail for around $2000 each. The Y50 is clearly no slouch, and it costs much less than some other laptops delivering equal performance.

So what enabled Lenovo to create such a powerful laptop that sells for less than its competitors? Compromises. Many, many compromises.

Lenovo’s most egregious sin was choosing an absolutely abysmal LCD panel. It’s one of the worst HD screens I’ve ever used. It’s dim, it’s lousy at color reproduction, and it looks even worse when viewed even slightly off-axis. It just looks blurry to me. The screen is so ugly I found myself not wanting to use the laptop even to watch movies, let alone play games.

If only the Y50's display looked as good as its aggressively designed enclosure.

The keyboard’s red backlighting is attractive enough, and the keys have a soft and silky finish. By shrinking the keys to squeeze in a numeric keypad, however, Lenovo renders typing a pain. The Enter and Right Shift keys aren’t liable to give you problems, but the comically small Backspace key probably will. I found it hard to locate without looking down. The keys feel a bit mushy, too. Despite how little they need to travel to register, I found myself dropping strokes with regularity.

The trackpad is also annoying. Because it’s off-center, I found myself accidentally dragging my left palm or the heel of my thumb across the trackpad while typing. Even when I could refrain from accidentally triggering the cursor while hammering out a Word document, the trackpad’s recessed elevation makes for an uncomfortable palm rest. Finally, you can click on the bottom left and right edges of the trackpad, but they’re loose enough to produce an unpleasant squawking noise when tapped. The whole contraption feels flimsy.

On the bright side, the Y50’s speakers pump out decent audio with better bass response than the typical treble-heavy laptop speakers deliver. Manufacturers building computers that retail for much higher prices could learn a thing or two from Lenovo’s partnership with JBL. These speakers won’t beat any decent pair of headphones or external speakers, but they won’t disappoint when you’re on the go.

In terms of gaming performance, Lenovo’s Y50 is one of the best laptops in its class. It’s a great choice if you’re looking for a portable gaming rig on a budget. Unfortunately, Lenovo compromised several key components—the keyboard, trackpad, and (most importantly) the display—in order to offer the Y50 at a mid-range price. Hook up a mouse, keyboard, and external display and you’ll have a solid gaming machine. If you can’t tolerate those compromises, you might have to bite the bullet and spend more money for a competitor’s offering.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Dell Inspiron 14 5000 Series review: An attractive middle-of-the-road 14-inch laptop

Elegant and affordable are two words that describe Dell’s Inspiron 14 5000 series. The brushed aluminum and black minimalist styling Dell has treated this laptop with give it an air of class you don’t often see in a mid-range, all-purpose laptop. It looks more expensive than its $750 price tag, which ironically, makes every imperfection seem that much greater. Hence, less-than-spectacular and slightly frustrating are also valid descriptions.

The Inspiron 5447's brushed-aluminum lid makes this mid-range laptop look more expensive than it is.

The Inspiron 14 5000 series sport 14-inch (duh), glossy, relatively low-res 1366x768 touchscreen displays that are prone to glare and have narrow viewing angles. If you buy one, I suggest sitting directly in front of it, adjusting the screen angle, and watching better movies. Trust me on this. If the movie is good enough, you won’t be worrying about pixels. This is one of those instances when the Inspiron 14 5000’s good looks make you think it deserves better. Or at least a non-touch option to lower its price.

The Inspiron 14 5000 series starts at $600 for an Intel Core i3-4030U, 4GB of DDR3L/1600 memory, and a 500GB hard drive; ramps up to $749 for the model 5447 reviewed here (with a Core i5-4210U, 8GB of memory, and a 1TB, 5,400 rpm Western Digital WD10JPVX-75JC3T0 hard drive); and tops out at $850 with a Core-i5-4510U model with the same memory and hard drive. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be an SSD option.

Our model weighed in at 4.65 pounds sans AC adapter; 5.4 pounds with it. It measures 13.5-inches wide, 9.75-inches deep, and 0.8-inches thick—that’s not thin-and-light territory, but it’s not so bulky that your friends will be amused at your purchase.

The Inspiron 5000 series is only 0.8 inches thick, but it weighs 4.7 pounds.

The 5447 has two USB 3.0 ports, a full-sized HDMI port, a headset jack, and a 10/100 ethernet port on its right-hand side; and a USB 2.0 port, media card reader, and AC jack on its left. There’s nothing in back and nothing in front apart from two speaker ports.

Use headphones with this laptop; its speakers sound weak and tinny.

The lack of gigabit ethernet is disappointing, but I’m happy to report the presence of 802.11ac Wi-Fi, plus Bluetooth 4.0 and WiDi (for wireless video streaming to displays that support Intel’s technology). There’s also a 720p webcam with dual-array mics.

Flat, slick, short-throw keys make for a less-than-pleasant typing experience for our reviewer.

The Inspiron 14 5447 scooted to a respectable 54 on PCWorld’s Laptop WorldBench 9 benchmark suite, and it managed to wring 4 hours and 50 minutes out of its internally mounted 43-watt hour battery. Hands on, I could tell it had a rather slow hard drive, especially on a cold boot. But after Windows cached what it needed to, the overall experience was more than acceptable.

No surprise here: This middle-of-the-road laptop produced a middle-of-the-road score on our WorldBench 9 benchmark suite. 

High bit-rate 1080p movies played super smoothly, but sound through the speakers was poor. There’s enough volume, but there’s no bass and the overall timbre is gratingly tinny. Whatever Dell did to make its Venue Pro 11 tablet so aurally pleasing should be shared with the Inspiron design team. Gaming is doable in Intel HD 4400 graphics terms, meaning you’re pretty much stuck at 1024x768 if you want anything close to 30 frames per second (the Inspiron 5447 delivered BioShock Infinite at 29 fps at that resolution, with image quality set to low).

Your entertainment options will be limited to movies, YouTube, and casual games. The Inspiron 5447 is not cut out for hardcore gaming.

You may have noticed the reference to an internal battery. You must remove two screws and the pressure-fit bottom panel to get at the 5447’s. These days, however, I don’t know a lot of people who carry extra batteries to swap; most folks prefer to seek an AC outlet at the appointed hour. The 5447’s run time isn’t fantastic, but it’s long enough for most scenarios.

Note that removing said bottom panel also provides easy access to the hard drive, Wi-Fi card, and memory slots. You might want to upgrade the hard drive to an SSD at some point, but 8GB is plenty of memory for most tasks.

Our battery run-down test is harsh. You'll probably get enough battery life for a full day, assuming you're not pounding the keyboard the full eight hours.

The Inspiron 14 5000’s keyboard isn’t one of my favorites. The keys lack the long travel and snap that’s my preference. But establishing a typing rhythm was easy enough, and the perq is that you can bang away in a quiet environment without unduly disturbing your neighbors. I also found the one-piece touchpad smoothly responsive and easy to click. I do have one complaint: The touchpad isn’t clearly tactilely or visually delineated from the rest of the keyboard deck. When not paying close attention, I missed it several times.

The PCMark 8: Office benchmark evaluates performance with Microsoft Office apps. Laptops without SSDs, like this one, don't fare as well as models that do. 

The Inspiron 14 5447 is a generally capable all-purpose laptop with top-shelf styling at an affordable price. But there’s a distinct lack of options to make it faster (SSD and gigabit ethernet, for starters) or even less expensive (via a non-touch display), so its good looks wind up being a bit of a tease.

Perhaps I’m being too being picky. This is good laptop that’s worthy of perusal if you’re shopping the middle of the road.

Editor's note: This article was updated on August 12 to report the correct Laptop WorldBench score of 54 (the chart was accurate, but the body text reported a score of 58).

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

HP EliteBook 840 G1 review: A gem of a business laptop

Hewlett Packard EliteBook 840 $1,464.00 The HP EliteBook 840 G1 has down-to-business looks, a great design, robust performance, and all the correct options for a business laptop. But you should try its eraser-head cursor control before you buy.

Sometimes it’s clear from the very first look that a laptop’s designers understand their market. The HP EliteBook 840 G1 is calmly handsome in a way that will appeal to business users. It’s also rugged, fast, ergonomically sound, and a breeze to upgrade and repair. If you work in an office, you’ll like it—unless you’re an eraser-head fan.

The EliteBook 840 G1 is styled in silver and gray, with a matte top surface that looks nice when it’s clean, but that readily shows fingerprints. Keep a wipe cloth handy if you care about such things. The chassis is magnesium and the keyboard is fabricated from aluminum, making the unit tougher than most and endowing it with a sturdy feel. HP says the laptop has passed a number of MIL-STD 810G tests, including drop, dust incursion, and vibration.

The 840 G1 is by far the easiest laptop to repair and upgrade that I’ve ever used. Flip the unit over, unlock the latch, slide the bottom service cover off, and you have direct access to everything: hard drive, memory, battery, Wi-Fi, RTC/CMOS battery, and the wireless WAN slot. IT types who spend a lot of time repairing laptops be warned—examining the 840 G1 might make you giddy.

HP's EliteBook 840 G1 is supremely easy to service and upgrade.

The keyboard deck design is minimalist. Aside from the keyboard and touchpad, there’s only a power button (in plain sight!) and Wi-Fi and audio on/off switches. Clean. Nice.

HP delivers non-touch 840 G1s with a matte display surrounded by a largish flat-black bezel, rather than the glare-prone, glossy setups that many consumer models employ. Matte doesn’t look quite as nice, but it’s a bit easier on the eye. You can order yours in either 1366 by 768 or 1600 by 900 flavors (we reviewed the former). A touchscreen is also available, although—like most—it’s very reflective.

I was impressed with the 840 G1’s keyboard. The short-throw keys provide merely decent tactile feedback when typed lightly, but scooted up against the magnesium chassis, you get a nice bounce and excellent aural feedback when you apply more force. The touchpad is silky and HP provides two sets of buttons, one above the touchpad for when you’re typing, and one below for when you’re using the pad for navigation. 

As I mentioned earlier, this laptop’s eraser-head track stick is its one truly sour ergonomic note. HP persists in rendering it from a slippery material that even with a pebbled and concave top allows your finger to slip off. It’s an uneasy feeling and a brain-dead moment in an otherwise well thought-out laptop.

We've updated our benchmark suite and picked a new reference laptop. The EliteBook 840 G1's Laptop WorldBench 9 score of 64, which is right in line with our expectations.

The 840 G1 has ports aplenty: Two USB 3.0 ports (one provides always-on charging), a legacy VGA port, and a smart card slot on the left side. A headset jack, two more USB 3.0 ports, a full-sized DisplayPort, a super-slim docking port, and a drop-jaw gigabit ethernet port on the right side. Drop-jaw means that the lower portion expands to accept an RJ-45 connector, then contracts to about the height of a USB port when you unplug the cable. The bottom has a port to connect with the auxiliary battery slice.

Our test unit, priced at $1064, sported an Intel Core i5-4200U CPU, 4GB of DDR3/1600 memory, and a 180GB Intel SSD (SSDSC2BF180A4H). It also has a 720p webcam bordered by dual-array microphones and Bluetooth 4.0 wireless connectivty. Wi-Fi was limited to 802.11 a/b/g/n, with 802.11ac available as an upgrade. You can also add features such as vPro support, TPM (Trusted Platform Module), biometrics, larger hard drives, and so on, which will boost that price tag.

The EliteBook 840 G1 delivered a respectable 5 hours and 36 minutes of life using its standard battery.

The laptop garnered a laptop WorldBench 9 score of 64, which is right around where a Core i5 laptop with an SSD should sit. Note that WorldBench 9 scores will be significantly lower than those for WorldBench 8.1, because our new laptop baseline is a Dell XPS 15 with an Intel Core i7-4702HQ CPU, 16GB of DDR3/1600 memory, and a 500GB SSD.

The EliteBook 840 G1 weighs in at 3.48 pounds. An optional 5400 mAh battery slice adds another 1.35 pounds and a half-inch of thickness, but it more than doubles the laptop’s usable life away from an electrical outlet from a respectable 5 hours 36 minutes to a whopping 12 hours 47 minutes.

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This optional battery fits to the EliteBook 840's bottom and more than doubles the time you can use it away from an AC outlet. 

Given the lack of a discrete GPU, the 840 G1’s mediocre gaming scores were expected. The Intel HD 4400 graphics doesn’t cut it for most top-shelf games past 800 by 600 resolution, although it managed just over 30 frames per second on Grid 2 at 1024 by 768.

Video at 1080p resolution played smoothly as you could wish, and the audio through the speakers was quite nice thanks to the DTS Studio Sound enhancement utility. At least when movies were playing. With the system sounds, there seemed to be a bit of distortion. Through headphones at normal volume levels, everything is sonically hunky-dory.

What a difference a discrete GPU makes: Integrated graphics are fine for most business apps, but they still suck when it comes to games.

Our Elitebook 840 G1 came with only a one-year warranty, but there are a variety of more reassuring plans available up to 5-years with free pickup for approximately $400. 

HP touts its Sure Start self-healing BIOS, which is basically a backup of the BIOS that can be restored in if the BIOS is corrupted by malware. Motherboard vendors such as Gigabyte have been using a similar scheme for years. There’s also a software component called Trust Circles which is secure group content sharing. 

Approximately 18 months passed between the release of the 840 G1 and it’s 8470 predecessor, which is a decent lifespan. HP promises to keep parts on hand for at least five years. 

The 840 G1 has distinguished, get-down-to-business looks, a great design, robust performance and all the correct corporate options. My only caveat is that if an eraser-head is your preferred cursor-control tool, be sure you try before you buy.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Apple: Best and Worst Laptop Brands of 2014

Five years. That’s how long Apple has now finished in first place in our Best & Worst Brands report. Getting a perfect score in our reviews category certainly helped, as did a near-perfect score in tech support, design, keyboard/touchpad, and display and audio. Apple also upped the software ante with OS X Mavericks; it doesn’t represent a huge leap, but the update provides welcome enhancements for power users, while offering more synergy with iOS. Yes, the starting prices for MacBooks are relatively steep, but they’re very much worth it.

Apple doesn’t debut many notebooks per year, but when it does, it gets them right. Earning the company first place in this category, all four MacBooks we reviewed received an Editor’s Choice award. One in particular, the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, garnered a 4.5-star rating, the highest score we bestowed to any notebook all year. That system also happens to be our favorite laptop overall.

MORE: Apple MacBook Air (11-inch) vs. Microsoft Surface Pro 2: Face-Off

It seems a safe bet to assume Apple employees really are geniuses. With a score of 19, the Cupertino-based company ties for first in the Tech Support category, thanks largely to its in-store Genius Bar and online Express Lane for support articles. The company’s live chat and phone service were both quick and efficient, but its lack of social media-based support ultimately held Apple back.

MORE: Apple: Tech Support Showdown Rating

Often imitated, never duplicated. The clean, modern look of Apple’s MacBook has set the standard for portability and power, which is why so many other notebooks look like clones. The company even managed to shave a few ounces and inches off the MacBook Pro 13-inch Retina Display. Still, for such an innovative company, it seems as though Apple has fallen into a rut — a pretty rut, but a rut nonetheless. We’d like to see the company add even a dollop of color to its iconic lineup. 

Apple doesn’t change its keyboards or touchpads much from year to year, because the company knows not to mess with a good thing. The MacBook keyboards continue to offer strong tactile feedback, large keys and good layout. Apple’s touchpads continue to impress, offering completely accurate navigation and flawless support for multitouch gestures, without a hint of the jumpiness we still encounter on other button-less designs. 

Apple continues to impress with its lineup of Retina Display MacBook Pro models. Both the 15-inch MacBook Pro’s 2880 x 1800 display and the 13-inch version’s 2560 x 1600 screen dazzled in our reviews. Plus, Apple’s Mac App Store offers 250 Retina-optimized apps to make the most of its gorgeous displays. We only wish Apple would give its MacBook Airs the same Retina treatment. With an average light meter reading of 302 lux, Apple’s 2013 lineup breezed past the 242-lux laptop category average in display brightness.

Apple’s newest MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models produced rich and clear audio during our testing. Even smaller systems such as the 11-inch MacBook Air pumped out sound loud enough to fill a small testing room.

Lacking a complicated operating system like Windows 8, Apple hasn’t had to come up with new ways for users to interact with its laptops. That left the engineers in Cupertino more time to focus on other types of improvements. With the MacBook Air 13-inch, for example, Apple managed to squeeze an impressive 11 hours and 40 minutes of juice out of the laptop using one of Intel’s Haswell processors. That runtime is a lot longer than what you get from similarly sized Windows machines.

MORE: New Apple Products: What to Expect in 2014

Apple keeps it simple, with just the Air and Pro lines of laptops, which are widely available through Apple.com, as well as Best Buy and Newegg. The MacBook Air sells at a hefty starting price of $999. When the average laptop today costs around $500, that’s a big hike. The good news is that you can configure your system online as you see fit, something other brands like ASUS and Samsung don’t offer. And, for the money, Apple’s MacBooks provide a great design and user experience via OS X Mavericks. 

Apple once again reigns supreme in the software department. The free OS X Mavericks upgrade brought iBooks, Maps and an improved Safari to the MacBook. We also love the new tab feature in Finder and the interactive notifications. In many ways, MacBooks deliver a more traditional desktop-like experience than Windows 8 machines provide. Now, both MacBook Pro and Air users have free access to Apple’s iWork and iLife app suites, which allow for both productivity and creativity. And thanks to iCloud keychain, you can store your password and payment info for instant logins and purchases across your Apple devices.

From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

Lenovo: Best and Worst Laptop Brands of 2014

The world’s biggest PC maker once again turned in a very impressive performance in our report, finishing second out of nine brands. As expected, Lenovo continued to rock the keyboard and touchpad category, but it also fared well in the design, value and selection, and software categories. Lenovo fell a bit flat in tech support compared with the previous year, but overall, we highly recommend this brand for PC buyers, whether you’re looking for a consumer or business laptop — or a notebook-tablet hybrid.

In our reviews, 11 Lenovo laptops received a 4-star rating, and five of those received an Editors’ Choice award. The highest marks generally went to the brand’s business-minded systems, such as the ThinkPad X240 and T440s. But we also praised the gaming- and budget-friendly IdeaPad Y510P and the innovative IdeaCentre Horizon 27.

MORE: 9 Best Lenovo Laptops

By our count, Lenovo’s tech support has grown steadily worse over the past three years. The company’s website is cluttered, its Community Knowledge Base is too specific to be helpful in general cases and its new social media support is inconsistent. Phone-call service is particularly frustrating and time-consuming: Our average call time with Lenovo was a whopping 49 minutes and 18 seconds, almost twice as long as for any other brand.

MORE: Lenovo: Tech Support Showdown Rating

All hail Lenovo, king of the hybrid. Just look at the IdeaPad Yoga 11, Yoga 11s, Yoga Pro 2 and ThinkPad Yoga to see the right way to create a lightweight, portable tablet-notebook. However, the company dropped to the No. 3 spot in design because of the Flex 14; it’s the boxy, chintzy, less-flexible cousin of the Yoga. Lenovo also lost the fun splash of color we’ve come to expect from the IdeaPad line. Instead, the company has been serving up plastic gray (s400 and s405), with a heaping side portion of dark brown (z400 Touch and G580). At least the Y510 boasts intense red keyboard backlighting.

Thanks to their strong tactile feedback, wide key spacing and curved key shape, Lenovo’s keyboards — on both its business and consumer laptops — continue to set the gold standard. The company’s touchpads offer smooth, accurate navigation, and its TrackPoint pointing sticks are the most precise pointing devices you’ll find anywhere, even though the company compromised the TrackPoint experience slightly by eliminating the stick’s dedicated buttons, and building left and right click into the stiff top of the touchpad. 

While Lenovo’s notebooks offer generally pleasant audio and visuals, there are few instances in which its devices stand out from the competition. For example, the IdeaPad S405 was brighter than some competitors, but its viewing angles were poor. The IdeaPad Flex 14's 1366 x 768-pixel display boasted colorful visuals but was dimmer than the average notebook. In general, Lenovo’s laptop displays, which averaged 267 lux, were more luminous than the average notebook (242 lux).

The business-minded ThinkPad T440s suffered from muffled audio, but more multimedia-minded machines, like the IdeaPad Y510p, boasted booming JBL speakers. Lenovo’s laptops matched the 85-decibel category average during our testing.

Lenovo’s innovation score dropped from 10 points last year to 7 this year, but the company is still doing some interesting things. For instance, the ThinkPad Yoga has a keyboard deck that raises to hide the keys when you’re using the hybrid in tablet mode. We are also pleased to see the voice and motion control features in such devices as the IdeaPad U430 Touch.

From business laptops to Ultrabooks, Lenovo has one of the broadest range of laptops of any brand. Within its three main lines — the G Essentials, ThinkPads and IdeaPads — you’ll find good options at a variety of price points. For instance, the ThinkPad line ranges from the rugged X140e ($489) to the $1,343 Helix Ultrabook. You can also customize your laptop via Lenovo’s website. Plus, fans of the traditional Start button will be glad to find a Windows 7 option on many of the company’s laptops.

MORE: Best Windows 7 Laptops Still Available For Sale

Lenovo continues to impress with its software selection, providing handy utilities across flagship notebook lines. IdeaPads, like the Flex 14, feature One Key Recovery for instant backup, a stylish Energy Manager and Lenovo Companion for quick app discovery. Business-minded Lenovo laptops, such as the ThinkPad T440s, pack QuickConnect for controlling your notebook with your Android phone, as well as QuickCast for transferring data between machines on the same network.

From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

HP: Best and Worst Laptop Brands of 2014

HP finished in a solid fourth place in our report — the same position it earned in 2013. The brand fared well in the innovation category (thanks to welcome experimentation with motion control, touchpad design and hybrids), and we also continue to like HP’s design, keyboard comfort, and overall value and selection. Tech support could be better — especially on the phone — but overall, this is a brand you can trust.

HP turned in a slightly better performance than it did last year, with five of its notebooks earning a 4-star rating, five getting a 3.5-star rating and three receiving a 3-star rating. The high-end Spectre 13t — which has an innovative touchpad — and the bang-for-your-buck Pavilion G6z were two systems that received Editors’ Choice awards.

MORE: 5 Best HP Laptops

HP has a well-designed website that makes it easy to find answers to common questions, and the company has been improving its social media tech support, though it still doesn’t offer live chat. However, these improvements barely managed to offset HP’s disastrous phone-support score. We were transferred between multiple representatives each time, who all had difficulty with our fairly basic questions. One rep tried to sell us an unnecessary HP support package.

MORE: HP: Tech Support Showdown Rating

HP deserves praise for creating the best-looking Chromebooks of the year. The Pavilion 14 Chromebook used glittery plastic to lend the notebook an air of sophistication at a low price, and the Chromebook 11 added a pop of color to a gleaming white chassis. The HP Spectre 13t impressed with its stylish, truffle-brown exterior and Control Zone touchpad. However, a couple of less-imaginative MacBook clones, such as the Envy TouchSmart 15, relegated HP to fourth place. The company also needs to find a way to trim the fat; the Elitebook 2750p lives on the bulkier end of the spectrum.

Hewlett Packard offers consistently comfy, flex-free keyboards on both its business and consumer laptops. The company’s touchpads provided accurate, jitter-free navigation on all of the systems we tested. HP’s Elitebook line of business laptops even offer dedicated mouse buttons, which provide the best clicking experience. However, the Elitebook pointing sticks are uncomfortable because of their concave surfaces.

From consumer Ultrabooks like the HP Spectre 13 to the business-focused ZBook 15, HP has upped its audio-visual game. As a result, the company boosted its score by two points to tie for first in this category. While most of HP’s panels delivered rich color and wide viewing angles, the average brightness of 219 lux recorded on the systems we tested is well below the 242-lux laptop category average. 

Sound consistently impressed across the board. Even budget models, such as the sub-$500 Pavilion G6z-2200, have front-mounted speakers capable of blaring full-bodied tunes. On average, the HP notebooks we reviewed in 2013 pumped out sound at 84 decibels, which is just slightly below the laptop category average (85 dB). HP also includes Beats Audio on several of its laptops, which enriches bass and overall sound.

After a lackluster showing in last year’s Innovation category, HP jumped all the way to the No. 2 spot. The boost came as a result of groundbreaking notebooks like the Envy 17, which includes a built-in 3D controller, courtesy of Leap Motion. The company also rolled out its slick Spectre 13 Ultrabook, which features a unique Control Zone touchpad that makes Windows 8 gestures more intuitive.

MORE: Top 10 Ultrabooks

There is a wide selection of HP laptops on the company’s website, and a large range of retailers also sell HP systems. Thanks to a wide variety of price points — from the $479 Pavilion 14z TouchSmart to the $954 Elitebook 850 G1 business notebook — HP earned a second-place spot in this category. The company also offers a Windows 7 option on most of its notebooks, so you can get an up-to-date device with the comfort of a familiar operating system. A colorful line of Chromebooks expands the budget end of HP’s already-wide range of products.

HP’s software suite isn’t quite as impressive as it was last year. Recent HP flagships, like the Envy TouchSmart 15, pack HP Connected Photo and Connected Music, which allow you to easily organize your multimedia content. The HP Savings Center is an online coupon book, and there’s an unnecessary HP Games hub for sampling already-free games like “Plants vs. Zombies.” HP’s SimplePass software offers extra security with a fingerprint reader, and you can register all 10 of your fingers for logging in to Windows and websites.

From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

Best & Worst Laptop Brands 2014

When readers ask us (and they often do), “What laptop should I buy?”, most of them really mean, “Which brand name should I look for?” That’s a tough question to answer, because there are so many factors to consider. How did a company’s systems perform on our benchmark tests? How good is the company’s support? Are the company’s systems well made on both the inside and the outside?

The answers to all of these questions matter, especially as companies experiment more with laptop-tablet hybrids. That’s why every year, we pit the biggest brands on the market against one another in the battle to end all battles, with the ultimate goal of telling you which companies deserve your hard-earned cash.

From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

Lenovo ThinkPad X240 review: A no-nonsense business laptop

If Lenovo’s spendy ThinkPad X1 Carbon is the laptop every corporate drone craves, Lenovo’s thrifty ThinkPad X240 is the laptop their employer is more apt to spring for (assuming, of course, that the company’s IT department has standardized on Lenovo and not Dell, HP, Toshiba, or some other commercial laptop builder).

You might think the ThinkPad X240 is too thick and too heavy to qualify for Ultrabook designation, but it’s only 0.79 inches thick and it weighs just 3 pounds. And there’s a very good reason why the X240 doesn’t taper to a knife edge like the X1 Carbon does: The X240 is outfitted with two batteries and a battery bridge that enables you to swap a depleted battery for one that’s fully charged without turning the machine off. That’s slick.

ROBERT CARDIN

Lenovo's ThinkPad X240 looks thick only next to wafer-thin notebooks like Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon. This machine is only 0.79 inches thick and it weighs three pounds.

PCWorld’s Worldbench suite rewards laptops equipped with SSDs—the configuration reviewed here includes a 256GB model—but the X240’s score of 282 leaves it slightly behind Dell’s XPS 12 Ultrabook Convertible (which has the same dual-core CPU) and Samsung’s Ativ Book 7 (which is powered by a third-generation Core i5-3337U, another dual core). This is a little surprising considering that the ThinkPad had twice as much DDR3/1600 memory: 8GB versus 4GB in the Dell and the Samsung.

Worldbench favors machines with SSDs, and the ThinkPad X240 we reviewed has a 256GB model. 

The x240 packs a fourth-generation Intel Core processor, so you can expect strong battery life. Our eval unit came with a Core i5-4200U, but you can make other choices when you place your order. The three-cell battery in this one ran for 6 hours and 26 minutes, which is typical of Haswell-powered notebooks, but Lenovo also offers an optional six-cell battery that should run much longer than the average workday. That large battery will add weight and about a half-inch of thickness to the X240—it will protrude from the bottom rear of the laptop.

If you don't mind toting an extra battery, the ThinkPad X240's hot-swap feature will keep you productive for many, many hours.  

The X240 has a number of I/O ports you won’t find on the 2013 X1 Carbon, including a gigabit ethernet port, a smart card reader, 34mm Express card socket, a VGA port, an always-on USB 2.0 port, and a docking port on its bottom. Like the X1 Carbon, it also has two USB 3.0 ports, a mini DisplayPort, an SD card reader, and a fingerprint reader (an included option our eval unit).

You can also order your machine with several different 12.5-inch displays, but I recommend staying away from the 1366-by-768 touchscreen I evaluated. It’s a bright IPS panel that’s very responsive to touch, but it looked fuzzy and grainy to my eyes. Place it next to a laptop with a 1920-by-1080 display and you’ll experience severe pixel envy. Ordering one for this machine will add $330 to its $1555 price tag.

I was also a little disappointed in the X240’s backlit, island-style keyboard. I've used a number of Lenovo keyboards, and this one just doesn't feel as nice (for lack of a better term). The spacebar has an oddly stiff feel that made me miss-tap it frequently, and the key spacing didn't feel as comfortable. It's not a terrible keyboard, but it's not as outstanding as I've come to expect from a ThinkPad.

ROBERT CARDIN

The 1366 by 768 display left me wanting more definition. 

TrackPoint fans will still find the nubby red dot in the center of the keyboard, but the dedicated buttons are gone. You'll need to depress the whole glass trackpad and hope your finger is in the right zone (there are five) to get the type of click you want. I found middle clicks especially hard to hit accurately. Speaking of the one-giant-button trackpad, it depresses easily and quietly. Its generous size enables you to make the most of Windows 8’s multitouch gestures, but I ran into a few frustrating moments when it registered two-finger scrolling when I only had one finger down. Apart from that, I found it to be smooth and responsive for navigation.

If you’re looking for a workhorse laptop with incredible battery life, Lenovo’s X240 is a solid choice. Its graphite-black chassis won’t turn heads, but it will help you travel light and get a lot of work done. Just think hard before you order one with the 1366 by 768 touchscreen. This machine deserves better, and so do you.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Gateway NE 72206u review: An affordable, but not so swift, big-screen laptop

Gateway NE72206u This desktop replacement has a strong feature set for its low price tag, even if its performance is only so-so.

Desktop-replacement laptops like the Gateway NE72206u have two major advantages over their smaller brethren, including lots of screen real estate and a full-size keyboard. For many users, these features are paramount, trumping other concerns such as portability and battery life. Of course, some systems take better advantage of their large size than others do. The NE72206u—with its 17.3-inch, 1600-by-900-pixel display and its large keyboard with full numeric keypad—falls somewhere in the middle, mainly because it’s not an overwhelming performer. But with a street price of just 500 bucks, we’re not complaining.

Gateway’s NE72206u isn’t the lightest or most powerful laptop you’ll find, but this desktop replacement does offer a 17.3-inch display and a compelling price-to-performance ratio.

The NE72206u is built around an AMD A6-5200 CPU with integrated AMD HD 8400 graphics. It also has 6GB of memory (500MB of which is allocated to the graphics), and a 500GB, 5400-rpm Toshiba MQ01ABD050 hard drive. Together those components helped the laptop produce a WorldBench 8.1 score of 100—the same as our reference-point notebook (a now aging Asus VivoBook S550CA). Its battery life of 4 hours, 22 minutes, on the other hand, is quite good for a desktop replacement.

In hands-on use, the NE72206u is smooth enough once Windows does its caching thing, but it doesn’t snap to as a machine based on a faster AMD A8/A10 or an Intel Core i3 processor would. Adding a solid-state drive would be an easy way to goose this system, but the NE72206u is a tease in that respect: Although it has a second drive bay just waiting to fulfill that fantasy, the bay lacks a SATA connector. That means you’d have to ditch the hard drive to add an SSD. At least you can easily access both the bays and the memory by loosening nine captive screws and removing one large panel on the bottom of the unit.

The webcam is a widescreen 720p model, and the picture is decent, if not incredibly smooth. Movie playback, however, even high-bit-rate 1080p, certainly is silky. The audio through the speakers is good, with just a hint of bass to keep things listenable.

The NE72206u has a large keyboard, but although typing feels fine, it could use a larger gap at the border of the alphabetical keys and the numeric keypad. Having the cursor arrows share keys with Page Down, Page Up, Home, and End is not an optimal arrangement, either. The touchpad seems a bit oversensitive to tapping, though dragging is okay and the buttons require a minimal degree of pressure to register clicks.

The Gateway NE72206u ships with Windows 8 and a small helping of useful utilities, such as Gateway’s recovery management utility and Nero BackItUp 12 Essentials. The software selection also includes possibly useful trials of Norton Online Backup and Internet Security, as well as of Microsoft Office.

Another advantage that large laptops typically offer is room for an optical drive, a DVD burner in this case. While it’s not the necessity it once was, an optical drive remains handy for aiding recovery, installing older software, and playing movies.

The NE72206u’s port array is sufficient but minimal. It has two USB 2.0 ports, a charging USB 3.0 port, HDMI and VGA video out, and headset and microphone jacks. You’ll also find an SD Card slot, an ethernet connection, and both 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 + HS.

The NE72206u is a lot of laptop for $500, even if it’s not the swiftest or lightest. Weighing 7.7 pounds with the AC adapter, it’s not for weak shoulders. It is great for working around the house and for playing movies and casual games—but darn, I wish that second drive bay had a SATA connector.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Dell XPS 15 review: A practically perfect laptop

Dell XPS 15 $2,299.00 What's not to like? The XPS 15 delivers gaming power with Ultrabooks looks. Yeah, it's pricey, but consider all you're getting for the money.

The latest incarnation of Dell’s XPS 15 is the laptop of my dreams.

I’m not being hyperbolic. I adore everything about this machine, from its slim, sleek exterior to its powerful Haswell processor and discrete Nvidia graphics card. I admire its 15.6-inch QHD display and its speedy 512GB solid-state drive. I love that videos play smoothly and audio sounds excellent–with lots of depth and bass–through its built-in speakers.

The only thing I’m not ecstatic about is its price tag. Although the new XPS 15 starts at a reasonable $1500, our review model (which includes all the extras I’m lusting after) costs a pricey $2299. That’s not crazy expensive, but it is a lot of green.

But you have to pay to play, so let’s take a deeper look at what all that cash delivers.

ROBERT CARDIN

Okay, at 4.9 pounds, Dell's XPS 15 is no featherweight. But neither is it a shoulder-straining behemoth. 

The XPS 15 houses an Intel Core i7-4702HQ processor, an Nvidia GeForce GT 750M GPU with its own 2GB GDDR5 frame buffer, and 16GB of DDR3/1600 memory in a pretty, well-constructed chassis of smooth brushed aluminum with a carbon-fiber base that stays cool to the touch. At first glance, it looks a lot like an Apple MacBook Pro, but with sharper edges and a shiny Dell logo on the lid. Inside this 4.9-pound package resides a full-size, backlit, island-style keyboard; a large, smooth clickpad; and a 15.6-inch Quad HD display.

That exquisite display—resting behind super-tough, edge-to-edge Gorilla Glass NBT—is definitely the XPS 15’s biggest draw. The glossy touchscreen is super-bright (400 nits, where most displays top out at around 300) and extremely sharp, thanks to its 3200-by-1800-pixel resolution—enough to give any Apple fanboi a raging case of pixel envy (for the record, the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch with Retina display has a resolution of 2880 by 1800 pixels).

ROBERT CARDIN

If not for the Dell logo, the XPS 15 could easily be mistaken for a MacBook Pro (with a better-than-Retina display).

The screen is sharp, with crisp, clean images and text, and bright, accurate colors. Although it’s glossy, there’s very little glare, and its ultra-brightness means you can use it just about anywhere–even outside, in direct sunlight. And since the XPS 15 isn’t your typical 15-pound performance machine, you’ll want to take it everywhere.

As a touchscreen, the XPS 15’s display is good, if not fantastic. Touch is accurate and smooth, but I did notice a slight lag when I was moving between windows. Still, everything looked so good that I didn’t really mind. HD video playback is smooth and effortless, with very little artifacting and just a smidgen of noise in high-motion scenes.

ROBERT CARDIN

Edge-to-edge Gorilla Glass guards the XPS 15’s gorgeous touchscreen. 

Dell provides a generous array of I/O ports, too, including three USB 3.0 (with PowerShare, so you can charge mobile devices using the XPS 15’s battery), both Mini DisplayPort and HDMI, an Intel Centrino Wireless-AC 7260 Wi-Fi adapter, and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity.

Although I’m (obviously) a big fan of this laptop, not everything is excellent. While the XPS 15’s clickpad is roomy and easy to use, its keyboard is a bit cramped and the keys are slightly stiff. This makes it difficult to type on quickly and accurately. The keyboard is backlit, but the lighting looks a little uneven. Okay, so that’s not exactly a fatal flaw, but I’m trying!

Dell's XPS 15 gets beat by larger, heavier gaming-oriented laptops, but a WorldBench 8.1 score of 356 is impressive for a notebook this light. 

Performance-wise, the XPS 15 is practically a gaming laptop, but without the bulk. It scores an impressive 356 in our WorldBench 8.1 benchmark tests, which means it’s about 3.5 times faster than our baseline testing model (an Asus VivoBook S550CA). This score puts it below genuine gaming laptops, such as the Origin EON17-S (which scored a 449).

The XPS 15 is clearly geared more toward businesspeople than gamers (it scored 5259 on our Office Productivity test, which is close to the EON17-S’s score of 5955), but that doesn’t mean it can’t run games reasonably well. In our BioShock Infinite graphics test (at 1024 by 768 resolution, with image quality set to low), the XPS 15 managed a frame rate of 107.4 frames per second, a distant third to the EON17-S’s rate of 214.2 fps.

Here again, the gaming rigs outpace the XPS 15. But gaming really isn't this machine’s raison d’être.

The XPS 15 didn’t fare quite as well in our BioShock Infinite Ultra test (at a resolution of 1920 by 1080, with image quality set to Ultra), posting frame rates of just 23.3 fps. Still, the fact that it could even run that test is saying something, given that most laptops can’t. By comparison, the EON17-S managed rates of 62.9.

All that power and more than 5 hours of battery life? Yes, please!

If you’re looking for a sexy notebook that can deliver at least credible gaming performance, and you’re prepared to pay for the privilege of owning a powerful machine in a thin, lightweight package, Dell’s new XPS 15 is definitely for you. The XPS 15’s positives—great screen, great performance, great overall look, and easy portability—easily justify its lofty price tag.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference