Lenovo has a new line of laptops featuring Qualcomm chips, meant to handle the workload of AI tools and features while maintaining both performance and battery life. The Yoga Slim 7x 14 is the manufacturer's consumer offering, and it's shaping up to be an excellent one.
From my limited time with the laptop, I can tell you it has a relatively thin and light chassis (though the commercial offering was surprisingly lighter), yet feels sturdy. It's a portable, practical machine, which most office workers and students are sure to appreciate.
The specs are also impressive from what we're seeing right now though, depending on the final performance findings, we'll see just how much of a difference the Snapdragon CPU makes. This could be the deciding factor as to whether the Yoga Slim 7x 14 could even be one of the best laptops.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x 14: Price and availability
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x 14 was revealed just before Computex 2024. Hopefully, we'll find out more information about its availability in other regions once the event comes around.
For now, however, we know that the laptop is launching in the US through Best Buy and Lenovo's online store and will retail for $1,299 (around £1,020 / AU$1,960).
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x 14: specs
The specs for the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x 14 can be seen below:
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x 14: Design
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When considering a standard Lenovo laptop, you think of the classic black color with a very squarish and practical build. But the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x 14 is a beautiful Cosmic Blue color that, coupled with its thinner and lighter form factor, makes for a stylish and sleek machine you can take on the go.
The Yoga Slim 7x 14 sports a sturdy yet light chassis and a gorgeous 14.5-inch 3K OLED display, that supports HDR 600 True Black with 1000 nits of brightness. The keyboard is lovely to type on, with wider keys that mitigate mistypes for those with larger fingers or shaky hands.
The laptop packs a 1080P FHD web camera, which is of standard quality and perfectly suited for video conferencing. Unfortunately, it's covered by an E-shutter button and not a physical one, meaning there's always a risk of someone hacking your laptop and spying on you with the camera.
The most disappointing aspect of the Yoga Slim 7x 14 was the meager port selection, which only comes with three USB Type-C ports and one combo jack. I know priority was given to the thin form factor, but it's still a letdown not having some of the basic ports on the laptop.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x 14: Performance
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The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x 14 is equipped with the Snapdragon X Elite, which not only is expected to give it unparalleled processing power according to all reports we've seen so far. Still, it will also provide the laptop with the battery power it needs to keep up with the energy-intensive AI tasks that it will be running.
According to these same reports, the Qualcomm CPU beats out Apple’s M3 and Intel’s Core Ultra 7 155H in Geekbench 6 – with 85% and 88% of the speed of the Snapdragon respectively. Its thermals are also impressive, it has great AI acceleration, and the battery life wins over similar market laptops in the local video playback testing.
Since my time with the Yoga Slim 7x 14 was limited, I couldn't perform any benchmarks myself. However, the laptop was quite speedy as I tried out various tasks like internet browsing. I also couldn't test out the AI features it comes with, which was a big selling point of the laptop. But I imagine that it'll work like most other offerings we're seeing right now.
Of course, once we get our hands on it for a review, we'll be able to fully and thoroughly test out all aspects of the laptop and see how Qualcomm's chips hold up.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x 14: Early Verdict
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The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x 14 could potentially be one of the best laptops on the market, especially in the 14-inch sector. It's a sexy and lightweight machine that comes in an appealing color, a lovely display, a speedy and powerful processor with a long-lasting battery life, and a great keyboard and mousepad combo.
My only real gripe is the abysmal port selection that many other laptops in the same market beat out. But then again, if Apple can get away with it, Lenovo most likely can too. Otherwise, it's shaping up to be a convenient and well-rounded laptop that's perfect for consumers needing a productivity or streaming machine and the price is pretty affordable as well.
It'll also be interesting to see firsthand how well AI plays with the Qualcomm chip – whether the pair will work well together and create something greater than the sum of its parts or if it'll end up clunky and disjointed.
HP is not only getting in on the AI action with its brand-new laptop, but the HP OmniBook X AI PC represents another massive change for the HP brand - it's consolidating and rebranding to make for an easier consumer shopping experience and to reduce brand confusion.
With this comes both the OmniBook and EliteBook lines, which include all the previous versions of HP laptops but combined within two brands: OmniBook and EliteBook. Both are outfitted with Qualcomm's Snapdragon CPUs and NPU. The latter, in particular, complements each laptop's integrated AI processes.
HP OmniBook X AI PC: price and availability
The HP OmniBook X AI PC was revealed just before Computex 2024.
The HP OmniBook X AI PC will launch in the US through HP.com and Best Buy at a starting price of $1,199.99 (around £1,020 / AU$1,960) with 1TB storage and will begin shipping on June 18, 2024.
HP OmniBook X AI PC: specs
Here are the specs for the HP OmniBook X AI PC at a glance.
HP OmniBook X AI PC: design
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One of the most striking aspects of the HP OmniBook X AI PC is its sleek and gorgeous design. It's also lightweight and thin, two features always welcome in what's supposed to be an everyday portable machine.
It comes in two colors, grey and white, with the latter much more distinctive. The 'OmniBook' label is on the back outside of the laptop, as well as under the keyboard, and opposing it is the new Helix logo representing the line (it's supposed to represent 'AI' and 'DNA').
Opening it reveals an equally gorgeous display and a keyboard filled with wide snappy keys perfect for larger or shaky hands. The touchpad is also sizable, which is a preference of mine as it makes navigation much easier.
The webcam, standard fare in terms of resolution but greatly enhanced by HP's signature lighting tools, has a much more secure physical privacy shutter. It features a poly camera pro-control setting, which automatically transfers over any camera settings to other cameras you connect to the laptop. And the Poly Studio partnership that enhances the camera also adds more audio options.
HP OmniBook X AI PC: performance
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I wasn't able to take the laptop for a true test run, due to the AI features not being available to try out during the hands-on. But, looking at the impressive specs, there's plenty of expectation for the HP OmniBook X AI PC to churn out some excellent benchmark results.
HP did give me some impressive stats that, if they turn out to be true, would put Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite on the map for the foreseeable future. This laptop promises 26-hour video battery life, 22-hour Netflix (or other streaming services) battery life, 20-hour web browsing, nine hours of Teams (or another video conferencing service), and 20 days of battery life keeping the laptop on Standby mode.
It also apparently beat out the M3 MacBook Air on the multithreaded performance benchmark, which would also mean a massive win over Apple when coupled with the battery life. And as for the NPU, I was told that it runs at 45 TOPs
There are tons of AI tools to further enhance the webcam image including spotlight, background blur for conference calls, auto-framing, filters, and camera setting transferring.
There's also the HP AI Companion, a chatbot and hub of AI tools. When used, the data is uploaded to cloud storage first, downloaded again, and then deleted from the cloud to maintain privacy. It seems to be a separate entity from Microsoft Copilot, though I couldn't test it out and see for myself how well it worked.
HP OmniBook X AI PC: early verdict
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Visually, the HP OmniBook X AI PC looks amazing, with a sleek and lovely lightweight design that's sure to appeal to many buyers investing in a productivity machine. Its display is beautiful, and the keyboard and touchpad are also well-crafted and feel responsive and snappy to use.
As for performance and AI, it's difficult to make any judgment calls as I wasn't able to properly benchmark for the former and couldn't test out the latter due to the tools not being available at this time. However, if both the specs and AI features hold up well during our proper review, then we'll have a well-balanced laptop that could easily be one of the best thin and light laptops on the market - even one of the best laptops period.
I've been wondering why Apple released its M4 chip in its new iPad Pro earlier this month when it hadn't even announced its M3 Ultra chip, but after attending Microsoft's Copilot+ PC Showcase and playing around with the new Microsoft Surface Pro, it makes a lot more sense.
The Surface Pro is a gorgeous device that can function as both a laptop and a tablet, easily putting it in the running as the best 2-in-1 laptop on the market, and now that it's packing a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite SoC, Microsoft might very well have a device that can take on the iPad Pro in a very real way.
Like the Microsoft Surface Laptop, the Surface Pro runs on an Arm-based processor which looks to be very similar to the Apple M-series of chips, so it's entirely possible that we'll get Apple M-series performance out of these too.
Since Windows wasn't originally built with Arm in mind, and architectural differences translated into poor performance for 'Windows on Arm' in the past, Windows on Arm devices in the past weren’t great - so could this new generation finally change that?
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After my time with the Surface Pro, these problems look like they've been dramatically improved, though it's too soon to say whether they've been properly fixed until I get one in hand for independent benchmarking.
However, with that caveat out of the way, the difference between the new Surface Pro and previous Windows on Arm devices is night and day, which puts the Surface Pro in a very competitive position vis-a-vis the newly released iPad Pro with M4 chip.
For one, the Surface Pro uses a fully-functioning Windows 11 operating system, unlike the iPad Pro, which uses iPadOS, a beefier version of Apple's mobile operating system for its iPhone, but not nearly as capable as macOS. This alone is going to make the Surface Pro a much more compelling device for those who need the robustness of a PC operating system.
The Surface Pro, which is available for preorder now, comes in two versions, one with an OLED display and one without.
There's wiggle room here to configure your RAM and Storage capacities, but just be wary that the price quickly scales up right alongside.
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There are also four colorways: Black, Platinum, Dune, and my personal favorite, Sapphire. The Surface Pro is very lightweight and is easy to manage, and it has two USB-C ports.
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The keyboard docking pins on the tablet's side also take both the new Surface Pro Flex keyboard as well as previous Surface keyboards so if you already have one, you don't necessarily need to upgrade.
There's also the new Slim Pen, which sits in a trough above the key deck, which can be a bit of a pain to dig out, but it's not insurmountable. There are also a few new accessibility features built into the new Flex Keyboard like haptics and better contrasting keycaps.
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I wasn't able to do too much performance testing with the Surface Pro, so it's too soon to assess how well Microsoft has done with improving the compatibility and performance of Windows on Arm, but all signs seem to be pointing in the right direction on this front.
I haven't tested the battery life either, but I absolutely believe the claimed battery life of 14 hours, which is very much in line with what an Arm chip is capable of, even with an OLED display, and the LCD version could very well get even longer battery life.
All of that remains to be seen once we get a production unit in hand to put it through more rigorous testing, so stay tuned.
Microsoft Surface Pro: Price & Availability
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Pre-orders for the Microsoft Surface Pro are live in the US, UK, and Australia, with deliveries starting on June 18, 2024.
The Surface Pro with LCD display, Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus, 16GB LPDDR5 RAM, and 256GB PCIe SSD storage. Upgrading to 512GB storage will bring that price up to $1,199.
The base OLED model of the Surface Pro will cost you $1,499.99/£1,549/AU$2,699, and has the more powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite SoC, 16GB LPDDR5 RAM, and 512GB PCIe SSD, but it can be upgraded up to 32GB RAM and 1TB PCIe SSD storage as well.
Microsoft Surface Pro: Early verdict
In the end, how well the Microsoft Surface Pro performs will be the biggest determination of whether this device is worth all of the hype around it, but from what I've seen in my limited time with it, everyone from creatives to office professionals may find a lot to love about it.
If the Qualcomm Snapdragon X chips live up to their promise and Microsoft is able to successfully translate x86 apps through its new Prism emulation layer, the versatility, compatibility, and style of the Surface Pro will absolutely give Apple iPad users a reason to be envious for a change.
The Microsoft Surface Laptop that was shown off at the Microsoft Copilot+ PC Showcase this week might be one of the most important devices of the decade, possibly even more important than the initial M1-powered Apple MacBook Air that launched back in 2020.
That MacBook Air model, which I've long argued is still the best laptop for most people even though it's now nearly four years old, kicked off something of a revolution in interest in bringing Arm processors to PCs. Arm chips, long a staple of mobile devices thanks to their incredible energy efficiency, just haven't been powerful enough for a full laptop or desktop OS.
Nobody knows this better than Microsoft, which has worked to develop Windows-on-Arm into a viable product and has largely struggled to make it competitive even with its more restrictive Windows S-Mode devices, much less a current-gen MacBook running Apple Silicon.
Now, however, Microsoft has co-developed the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X SoC specifically to be the Windows PC's answer to Apple's M-series and finally bring the best Windows laptops up to parity with the best MacBooks in terms of battery life, compatibility, and performance — all while retaining everything that makes Windows the most popular PC operating system in the world.
All of that is going to come to a head in the Microsoft Surface Laptop. This is Microsoft's play at dethroning the MacBook Air — and even the MacBook Pro 14-inch with Apple M3 or M3 Pro — and there are a lot of reasons why it just might succeed. If it does, this will have ramifications that extend for many years and generations of laptops to come.
Microsoft Surface Laptop: Price & availability
The Microsoft Surface Laptop is available for pre-order now, with deliveries starting on June 18, 2024. The starting price for the 13.8-inch model is $999.99/£1,049.99/AU$1,899, which will get you a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus processor with 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD storage. The 15-inch model starts at $1,299.99 and comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor, 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD.
There are a number of configuration options available, but the 13.8-inch model maxes out at a Snapdragon X Elite processor, 64GB RAM, and 1TB SSD storage for $2,399.99/£2,049, while the 13.8-inch model maxes out in Australia at 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD for AU$3,399.
The 15-inch model maxes out at 64GB and 1TB in the US for $2,499.99, and maxes out in the UK and Australia at 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD for £2,149/AU$3,699.
This makes it cheaper at the entry-level than the MacBook Air 13-inch with M3, and matches the starting price of the MacBook Air 15-inch. At max spec, the new Surface Laptop will either beat or roughly match the price of the highest-end MacBook Air.
Microsoft Surface Laptop: Design
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Many of the best Ultrabooks on the market have tried in various ways to copy the refined design of the MacBook Air with varying degrees of success. Having recently spent several weeks benchmarking the most recent MacBook models like the MacBook Air 13-inch, MacBook Air 15-inch, and MacBook Pro 14-inch, I think I've stared at that laptop more than just about any other device.
So it's arresting to look at the new Surface Laptop because even though the similarities are striking enough, so are the differences. For one, it was the best-looking laptop in Microsoft's entire showcase. Secondly, laying eyes on the Sapphire colorway of the 13.8-inch Surface Laptop (and Surface Pro, for that matter) exposes just how badly Apple fumbled the bag with the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro in recent years.
Apple's insistence on sticking with its painfully dull Silver and Space Gray after nearly a decade, while desaturating its Rose Gold into 'Starlight' and introducing an off-black 'Midnight' that is really just Space Gray with the brightness slider pushed deep into the darker side sent me into a hot take tailspin a couple of years back from which I haven't recovered. The 13.8-inch Surface Laptop looks like everything the current MacBook Air design should have been, but isn't.
Besides the Sapphire colorway, you can opt for other colors too, including Dune, Platinum, and Black. The latter two are fairly bog-standard for Windows laptops these days (and are the only two color options for the 15-inch Surface Laptop model, unfortunately). However, the Dune colorway offers a warm, peachy aesthetic to the device that is also attractive and different, while not being as attention-grabbing as the Sapphire is.
It's not all about the color though.
The touchscreen display, which you can get in either 13.8-inches or 15-inches, is gorgeous to look at, offering vibrant colors thanks to its wide sRGB color coverage. How much of the sRGB gamut it captures won't be clear until we fully test the Surface Laptop, so we'll just have to wait until we can get our hands on it to see for ourselves.
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In terms of ports, this thin-and-light laptop does a reasonable enough job offering two USB 4 Type-C ports with power and display out for up to three monitors running at 4K, a USB 3.1 Type-A port for legacy devices, a headphone jack, and if you opt for the 15-inch Surface laptop, you'll also get a microSD card slot.
As far as portability goes, the 13.8-inch Surface Laptop clocks in at just under 3 lbs (1.4kg) thanks to its anodized aluminum chassis, and is just under a foot long lengthwise, and 0.69-inches tall at its widest point along the back of the laptop. The 15-inch model is slightly heavier, longer, and taller at 3.67 lbs (1.66kg), 12.96-inches (329mm) in length, and 0.72-inches tall at its thickest point.
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Opening it up, the keyboard is very similar to a MacBook's, but not in a bad way. It was very comfortable to type on, and the trackpad proved snappy and responsive.
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The webcam is Full HD, though it lacks a physical privacy shutter. This might be the one knock I have on this laptop's design, to be honest. This isn't a small issue: it's now 2024, and this should be a standard feature on any laptop at this point. Still, the image quality is quite good.
It will be very interesting to put the Surface Laptop and the MacBook Air together, as they could be in some stores, to see how the two match up head-to-head.
Microsoft Surface Laptop: Specs
Microsoft Surface Laptop: Performance
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There's only so much I can say about the performance of the Surface Laptop, since I wasn't allowed to run any benchmarks or install any apps on the device. However, I did get to play around where I could and the system felt very responsive in a way previous Windows on Arm notebooks didn't.
I also got to try my hand with Microsoft Paint's Cocreator tool to sketch out an image in combination with text prompting. The iterative steps are carried out remarkably swiftly for a laptop without a dedicated GPU, and the output wasn't terrible.
Those who might be looking to illustrate documents or do some graphic design mock-ups will definitely find this feature useful. While I wasn't able to test any of this myself, the claimed 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS) performance of the Hexagon NPU is about 20% faster on paper than the brand-new Apple M4 chip, and 2.5x faster than the Apple M3 Max's NPU.
From what little I could glean from the available demos, on-device AI workloads do feel noticeably faster, but I won't be able to say for sure until we have the Surface Laptop in hand so we can test it.
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One thing that did catch my attention was Recall, Copilot's new ability to create a history of your on-device use. When I was fussing around with Cocreator in Paint to try and produce a space illustration with the text prompt "black hole sucking in a space station in a nebula" — along with a very crude sketch — Cocreator did an admirable job and came pretty close to what I was imagining (though it took its own liberties as well).
I clicked on the new Recall icon on the Windows 11 taskbar, which opens up a notification-like window on the taskbar that brings you right into Microsoft's latest tool to backtrack through your computing history. Here you can figure out what you did, what you saw, or what someone sent you, much like a web browser's history tracks the websites you visit for later revisiting if need be.
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When I clicked that icon it brought up the Recall panel with the sketch I had put into Paint earlier in the afternoon. Since these were all fresh devices with clean installs, there wasn't a whole lot of other material in Recall just then, but as you use your PC, it'll fill up with snapshots of what you've done in the past, letting you go back through much like your browser history does now, just on a much grander scale.
Now I'm an AI-skeptic for the most part, in that I feel that many of the current AI tools and systems are deeply problematic and unethical, but I actually don't have a problem with Recall.
Yes, it's keeping track of everything you're doing, but it is on-device, and in a lot of ways it's a natural extension of your existing web history, File Explorer history, or any other number of similar tools. Once people get used to this feature, I expect that it will get some very heavy use, and I don't see that this will be as problematic as a lot of critics are making it out to be.
Microsoft Surface Laptop: Early verdict
I haven't been this excited about a laptop in a long time. No one was able to tell me anything about the performance of Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Plus or X Elite chips, and trust me, I asked. I asked them all. But one Microsoft representative at the showcase told me that they aren't just confident in the performance of these chips, they encouraged me to throw everything I had at them to see for myself.
I've heard PR reps say stuff like this before, and it usually comes with a level of bravado that is rather transparent. Everyone says that, even if we both know that it's bluster. That's not the vibe I got when they talked about the Surface Laptop. Not at all. It was something of a challenge or a dare, to me, to take my best shot at proving that the Surface Laptop wasn't as good or better than Apple's M3 or even M4.
The Surface Laptop is more stylish and interesting than anything Apple is doing right now beyond the iMac. It's as comfortable to use as a MacBook, it's as lightweight and portable, too, and it has industry-leading accessibility features built into it from the ground up in ways that Apple has just flat-out ignored in its hardware.
I won't know for many weeks whether Microsoft has managed to pull off all this, and so much will ride on whether it has genuinely fixed all of the issues with Windows on Arm that have prevented it from keeping pace with Apple these past four years, so it's too soon to pass judgment.
But when I was walking out of the press announcement and towards the showcase area on Monday, I passed two Microsoft employees hugging in celebration over this reveal, with one emotionally telling the other that "we finally got here." I keep thinking about that exchange I overheard, and I don't know yet where 'here' is, but I can't shake the feeling that a sea change is in the air.
LG launched a separate laptop in its Gram lineup called the LG Gram SuperSlim, which borrows heavily from the adjacent 2023 LG Gram Style model in terms of its looks. However, the latter was a disappointment in terms of performance, despite my loving the extremely thin and light chassis and aesthetically pleasing design.
So color me suspicious about the SuperSlim and whether it could impress me. What I’ve found is a mixed bag, with middling benchmark results and surprisingly solid productivity performance that could rival even the best laptops. However, some drawbacks still hold this laptop back.
At first glance, the SuperSlim is in a less impressive black color than its counterpart, but it makes up for that by its 15.6-inch weight and measurements beating out the 16-inch sizes of the Style and matching the 14-inch version. The result is an absolutely dreamy lightweight and razor-thin chassis and, unlike the Style, it doesn’t have that cheap plastic feel to it.
There’s still a slight wobble to the hinge but all around it feels far more stable and solid, with a superior build quality. I also enjoy the material of the chassis, which has a more textured feel to it.
Ventilation has much improved, with the laptop staying cool even during heavy workloads, which is another improvement over the Slim, which suffered from overheating issues. LG seems to have addressed many build issues between these two laptops.
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The keyboard still features snappy and responsive keys, which are nice and wide and perfect for a variety of finger sizes to type on with little chance for typos. Thankfully the touchpad has been restored to a much more standard one, and it’s perfectly responsive, unlike the haptic feedback nightmare on the Style.
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The display’s resolution did take a hit compared to the Style’s 2.8 or 3K, as the SuperSlim is now FHD. It still thankfully retains the OLED screen and supports HDR, giving the display that sharp and bright look.
The webcam is pretty standard, which is to say not particularly great but is fine for conference calls. The sound quality is quite solid, able to differentiate between various instruments as well as reproduce a deep bass. Its volume is also a noticeable improvement from the Style, as it can get pretty loud without losing too much in quality.
LG Gram SuperSlim: Benchmarks
Here's how the LG Gram SuperSlim performed in our suite of benchmark tests:
3DMark: Night Raid: 16,447; Fire Strike: 4,842; Time Spy: 1,778 Cinebench R23 Multi-core: 8,275 points GeekBench 5: 1,842 (single-core); 9,783 (multi-core) PCMark 10 (Home Test): 5,495 points Battery Life (TechRadar movie test): 14 hours, 55 minutes Civilization VI (1080p, Ultra): 42 fps; (1080p, Low): 25 fps
Though on paper through benchmark tests its performance is about the same as the Gram Style, in practice it functions much better. Productivity-wise, it’s capable of having tons of tabs open for both work and play including video conference meetings, word-processing documents and spreadsheets, video streaming, and more. Unfortunately, that means its CPU benchmarks are still below that of other similar Ultrabooks.
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The LG Gram SuperSlim is made for office work and casual use through and through with almost no heavy-duty gaming capabilities. It’s all thanks to the bog-standard mobile GPU, which is rather offensive considering the steep price of the machine.
Other laptops for a similar price are equipped with a proper gaming GPU, so why LG refuses to make the upgrade is mind-boggling. Even a laptop like the Dell XPS 17 (2024) has better specs for a similar price point, and the Apple MacBook Air 15-inch (2023) doesn’t have a gaming GPU but the M3 chip is far superior to Intel’s silicon.
By far the biggest improvement over the Style is its extraordinary battery power, though, which gets close to rivaling even the best MacBook and best MacBook Pro models. During our battery tests, it was even able to last around 15 hours and that was under the stress of constant movie playing.
All in all, the LG Gram SuperSlim is something of a mixed bag, with some fantastic performance in terms of productivity and battery life, but don't expect much more from it than that.
LG Gram SuperSlim: Price & availability
How much does it cost? $1,649 / £1,299 (about AU$2,530)
When is it available? Available now
Where can you get it? Available in the US and UK
The LG Gram SuperSlim is an Ultrabook is currently retailing at $1,649 / £1,299 (about AU$2,530), with availability in both the US and the UK. Unfortunately, this particular model has been discontinued in Australia, so buyers out there would have to import it, making it even more expensive.
As for pricing itself, while it’s overall a superior model to the Style with some much-needed changes and enhancements, it’s still a hard sell compared to other similarly priced products like the Dell XPS 17 (2024) and the Apple MacBook Air 15-inch with M3, which both boast more well-rounded usage and better specs.
Unless the price drops down significantly, it would be difficult to make the SuperSlim more appealing to buyers. This is a shame since it does have a great niche as an incredibly portable laptop that works for offices and during commutes and events. If you can buy this laptop with a decent discount, then it's definitely worth considering.
LG Gram SuperSlim: Specs
As of now, the only model available in both the US and UK is this setup: Intel Core i7-1360P CPU, Intel Iris Xe Graphics, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB SSD of storage. There's also no way to customize or upgrade the SuperSlim either.
Should you buy the LG Gram SuperSlim?
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Buy the LG Gram SuperSlim if...
You want solid productivity performance This laptop can handle plenty of productivity work including video calls, documents, web surfing, and more. It's the ultimate workhorse in a gorgeous chassis.
Don't buy it if...
You’re on a budget
This is an Ultrabook, meaning it has a premium price tag attached to it. Unless you have plenty of spare change, this is not the laptop for budget-minded buyers/
LG Gram SuperSlim: Also consider
If my LG Gram SuperSlim review has you considering other options, here are two more laptops to consider...
How I tested the LG Gram SuperSlim?
I tested the LG Gram SuperSlim for several weeks
I tested it using productivity and creative applications, as well as gaming
I stress-tested the battery using the TechRadar movie test
First, I tested the general weight and portability of the LG Gram SuperSlim by carrying it around in a laptop bag. After I set it up, I ran several benchmarks to thoroughly test out the processor and graphics card. Finally, I used a variety of programs and applications to test out both battery life and general performance during work-like conditions, as well as gaming benchmarks to test the RTX 4050 GPU.
The LG Gram SuperSlim is meant to be a portable laptop with a thin and light chassis. I had to spend a good amount of testing not only on performance issues but also looking for any ventilation issues. I also tested out battery life to see how long it could last off AC power.
I've tested plenty of gaming PCs and laptops, making me more than qualified to understand benchmark test results and how to properly stress test machines to see how well they perform as a work machine.
Ah, the Huawei MateBook lineup. It’s long been the go-to series for those on the hunt for a clean-looking, respectable laptop, with a decent spec list to boot, and this year’s model, the 2024 edition, certainly doesn’t disappoint in that domain.
It’s actually quite an extraordinary unit right from the get-go, as it’s available in a huge number of different specifications. In fact, there are five total, ranging all the way from the Core i5-12450H, complete with 8GB of DRAM, and 512GB of storage, all the way to the model I have here, featuring the Core i9-13900H and amping up to 16GB of DDR5 and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD.
On the surface, the build quality is fairly decent, particularly for the price. You get a nice sleek aluminum finish, complete with a full-size keyboard, healthy-sized trackpad, and a beautiful screen that lacks much in the way of a bezel. There are a ton of ports on board, and the branding is subtle and refined. It’s very much an XPS imitator in a lot of ways, just at a considerably lower price.
(Image credit: Future)
Where that refinement ends, however, occurs when you start actually using the thing. Sadly, the keyboard just isn’t up to spec. It feels spongy to the touch and lacks any form of satisfying tactile feedback compared to other options available at this price point or above. It’s without a doubt. Its one saving grace is that it is rather quiet because of that. The trackpad alongside that, is large and works just fine, but again, nothing particularly to write home about.
As for performance, well it’s certainly there. In day-to-day tasks and light office work, the Huawei MateBook does exceedingly well. It’s quick, smooth, and paired with that IPS panel, makes for a pleasant experience. If you do need to do anything more complex, involving any form of GPU however, you’re going to be quite disappointed, as Intel Iris is quite limited in what it is capable of, in comparison to something like a dedicated GPU from Nvidia or AMD.
Still, if you can look past that, and its clumsy software (more on that later), the Huawei MateBook D 16 2024 makes for a tempting offer, particularly at its £1200 / €1300 price point.
Huawei MateBook D 16: Price and availability
(Image credit: Future)
How much does it cost? Starting at £500 / €600
When is it out? Available now
Where can you get it? Available in the UK and the EU
The Huawei MateBook D 16 2024 is available now in the UK and the EU, starting at £500 / €600 (around $650). For that investment you get yourself a 16-inch screen with a 1920x1200 IPS display, 12th Gen Intel Core i5-12450H CPU, 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM, and a 512GB SSD.
The review unit I have in for testing is available for £1200 / €1300. This upgrades you to 16GB of LPDDR4X memory, alongside a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, and a CPU upgrade to the Intel Core i9-13900H, taking you from 8 cores and 12 threads to 14 cores and 20 threads instead.
Bear in mind that thanks to the US government's ban on Huawei products, you can't buy this at retailers in America - though importing is always an option, and given the low entry price, it could be a good way to snag a great-value laptop if you're in the US.
Value: 4 / 5
Huawei MateBook D 16: Specs
(Image credit: Future)
Huawei MateBook D 16: Design
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Fantastic materials throughout
Good looking styling
Solid I/O Options
Huawei is without a doubt trying to target that XPS market with its MateBook Vision line. One glance at its exterior, and you’ll notice the similarities between the two. The MateBook has an exceedingly slim form factor, measuring just 17mm in height, and coming in at an impressive 1.72 kg to pack it all together. Huawei has gone for a smooth aluminum finish across the MateBook, giving it an impressively svelte look.
(Image credit: Future)
All other branding is fairly subdued as well. There’s a Huawei logo on the back embossed in a mirror finish, and a smaller logo situated in the center of the bottom most screen bezel. Speaking of screens, the MateBook D 16, features a 16-inch 1920x1200 FHD+ IPS display, complete with a peak brightness of 300 nits. It’s crisp and clean thanks to that 142 pixel density, and actually has some pretty stellar stats to back it up as well, not least of all including a 1200:1 contrast ratio, and 100% sRGB compatibility, all thanks to that IPS display at its heart.
Over my time testing the MateBook, its color accuracy never wavered on that front. Combine that with the slim bezel, and not particularly obtrusive inbuilt webcam (which I’ll say now, is as good as you’d expect for a tiny 720p unit), and the screen itself is a genuinely decent experience all around.
(Image credit: Future)
Then we get onto the keyboard, and well, it’s a bit underwhelming, to say the least. Spongey is the word. It lacks any real tactile feedback, and although is well-illuminated thanks to some decent white LED backlighting, it just feels horrendous to use. It’s functional, sure, but it lacks the premium feel we’re starting to see in a lot of laptop keyboards at this price point. And that’s not dedicated mechanical keyboards I’m talking about here either.
Likewise, the trackpad is fine, it's suitably large enough and clicks well on the bottom left and right sides, but again, isn’t exactly anything to write home about. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing when it comes to trackpads.
(Image credit: Future)
For ports, there’s not a huge amount here, but the bases are covered. You get one USB Type C, one USB 3.2 Type A, one USB 2.0 Type A, a HDMI, and a 3.5mm 4 pole combi jack. It’s not a huge array of ports by any measure, you’ll probably need a decent USB dock if you’re looking to use the MateBook in a more advanced setup, but it’s enough for on the fly.
Audio is enough bugbear for sure. You get down-firing speakers on the MateBook, which are fine. Volume is great, however due to a lack of bass and lower end of the mids, you’re going to find most audio is generally quite tinny, and sharp on the hearing in comparison to something more sophisticated found in the likes of a Dell XPS or Asus ROG Zephyrus.
Design: 3.5 / 5
Huawei MateBook D 16: Performance
(Image credit: Future)
Decent productivity performance
Gaming is non-existent
On to performance, and it’s fair to say that the Huawei MateBook D 16, is certainly lacking in this area. If you’re looking to do any form of gaming or creative professional work, you’re far better off looking elsewhere. That lack of a dedicated GPU, even with Intel’s Iris graphics backing it up in my review model, sadly isn’t enough to produce any concrete performance boosts compared to some alternative devices at around these price points.
In fact, you’d be far better off sacrificing the glitz and glam of the professional design and opting for one of the better gaming laptops instead at around this price, if that's what you're looking for.
(Image credit: Future)
At its heart, the CPU inside my review unit is actually fairly decent for a lightweight mobile processor. The Intel Core i9-13900H comes with a total of 14 cores. Six performance cores (these are the full-fat, processors, complete with hyperthreading that prioritizes high load tasks, such as rendering, and managing large data sets), and eight Efficient-cores (designed to really manage background tasks and low power operations, such as word processor, or Discord, or Slack as an example). That gives you 20 threads to play with, and generally, it does fairly well in our benchmark tests.
In GeekBench 6.2.1, it scored an impressive 12,568 points in its multi-core test, putting it just behind a Ryzen 5 7600X, full-size desktop processor. What’s more impressive was the single-core however, which racked up an index of just 2,605, that’s not far off an Intel Core i5-14600K desktop processor, or AMD’s Ryzen 7 7800X3D either. Combine that with a healthy chunk of DDR4 RAM, courtesy of the 16GB of LPDDR4X and this ain’t half bad at Photoshop work either.
(Image credit: Future)
Another moderately impressive area, particularly given the price is that SSD too. A quick run through CrystalDiskMark saw sequential reads top out at 4,905 MB/s and read at 3,952 MB/s making it an impressively zippy drive.
Getting into gaming, however, was another matter. I ran a total of five benchmarks on the Huawei MateBook D 16, to gauge how it performed here. In Borderlands 3, it scored just 10.27 fps at 1920x1200, on the Ultra preset, far from playable. Total War: Warhammer III, netted a more palatable 33.9 fps, but with one major caveat the graphical preset was set to “Low”. Any higher than that, even “medium” would result in the game immediately crashing, due to a lack of memory.
Similarly, I also ran it through a couple of 3D Mark tests. With Wildlife Extreme scoring 13,731, and Solar Bay (the mobile ray tracing test) not being available, as again, no dedicated GPU, means no dedicated ray tracing sadly.
Performance: 3 / 5
Huawei MateBook D 16: Battery life
(Image credit: Future)
Intel Evo efficiency is unmatched
Charges fast
Battery life during my time testing the Huawei MateBook D 16 was generally very good. I easily got a solid seven to eight hours out of it, with mixed-use, before needing to recharge. Doing everything from very light casual gaming to watching YouTube, and responding to emails and work.
If you do decide to game, you’ll likely not see more than 1-2 hours of use out of it, as it doesn’t have a massive battery, but as there is no dedicated graphics card here, the CPU is doing a lot of the heavy lifting and is limited somewhat in that regard. You’ll likely want to plug it in too, if you can in that situation, as the power plans won’t give you full turbo speeds that you’ll really want to take advantage of.
That said, it does charge quickly as well, thanks to an included 65W adapter.
We pride ourselves on our independence and our rigorous review-testing process, offering up long-term attention to the products we review and making sure our reviews are updated and maintained - regardless of when a device was released, if you can still buy it, it's on our radar.
Google wants to push its Chromebook laptops a little upmarket and to do that it's pairing up with several big brands. The latest member of this initiative is the new Asus Chromebook Plus CX34, an Intel-powered 14-inch model.
Google is calling this new class of devices "Chromebook Plus" and it's a little like Intel's Evo standard. The idea is to dictate some minimum standards of performance and features to ensure a certain level of user experience. That applies to both hardware and software.
On the hardware side, that means at least an Intel Core i3 chip or an AMD Ryzen processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 1080p screen. This Asus laptop meets all that with its Intel Core i3-1215U CPU, 8GB of DDR5 memory, 256GB of UFS storage, and a 14-inch 1080p screen.
As for software, Google builds its Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps into the OS, so they all work without needing an internet connection. Meanwhile syncing both to and from Google Drive works seamlessly. Google has also built in some extra features, including webcam enhancements like background blurring and noise cancellation that work at the OS level - and will therefore work natively with any video calling platform.
(Image credit: Future)
You can, of course, run most Android apps from the Google Play Store too, though the lack of a touchscreen can be problematic for apps designed to run on smartphones. More broadly, Google is making a few AI-related claims about these Chromebook Plus machines. But the hardware is nothing special in that regard, so that's a bit of a stretch.
Anyway, as a physical specimen, the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34's all-plastic chassis feels mostly sturdy barring a slightly bouncy keyboard bed. The styling is pretty bland and the screen bezels are hardly minimalist. It's not exactly ultra-thin or ultra-sleek, either, and there isn't much about the design that communicates the intended upmarket vibe.
Overall performance is reasonable from the Intel chip. But this remains an entry-level device in performance terms and we can't help thinking that Chromebooks are better suited to more efficient and cheaper ARM-powered CPUs.
It's worth noting that only the highest spec model comes with a proper M.2 SSDs. Our test system was specified with generic flash storage. And of course, the usual ChromeOS limitations that apply to all the best Chromebooks remain for those who want to run Windows applications. All of which makes this a worthy enough device that offers reasonable value. But it's not cheap enough to be truly compelling.
Asus Chromebook Plus CX34: Price and availability
How much does it cost? $394.99 / £429 (about AU$610)
When is it available? Available now
Where can you get it? Available in the US and UK but not yet listed in Australia
The Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 looks like good value compared with similarly-specced Windows laptops like the Lenovo IdeaPad 3. It meets the Chromebook Plus required specifications at a pretty appealing price - but the lack of touchscreen functionality is conspicuous compared to some alternatives, like the Acer Chromebook Spin 714.
Notionally, you're getting better performance than most similarly priced Chromebooks. But in practice, it's debatable how much CPU grunt matters on a device like this, and a Chromebook with a lesser CPU but a touchscreen and sleeker design like Asus's own Chromebook Flip series will arguably be preferable for many users.
Price: 4 / 5
(Image credit: Future)
Asus Chromebook Plus CX34: Specs
While this is the only configuration currently available at the time of writing, Asus will be offering several other CPU, SSD, memory, and screen options. You will be able to upgrade to 10-core Intel Core i5 and i7 chips, a touchscreen, and up to 512GB of storage. However, the most significant option is arguably 16GB of RAM. That will come in handy for anyone who likes to open lots of browser tabs or indulge in heavy multitasking.
It's also worth noting that you'll need that 512GB storage upgrade to get a proper M.2 SSD. The 128GB and 256GB options make do with generic UFS flash drives with much lower bandwidth. Of course, any of these upgrades will add to the price and arguably detract from the appeal of the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34, which majors on price.
Asus Chromebook Plus CX34: Design
Slightly generic design
Sturdy build quality
Good connectivity
The whole point of Google's Chromebook Plus standard is to deliver a new class of devices that can compete directly with full-feature Windows laptops. It's a premium alternative to cheaper Chromebooks.
However, in design terms, the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 has a pretty bland and basic aesthetic. The plastic chassis is sturdy enough, though the keyboard bed is a little bouncy. But the relatively large screen bezels and slightly boxy chassis don't make for a terribly slick or contemporary vibe. That design also means that this 14-inch laptop isn't especially compact, though at 1.44 kg (3.17 lbs) it is reasonably light for a 14-incher.
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Still, with two USB-C ports, two USB-A sockets, HDMI, and 3.5mm audio, connectivity is reasonable. More of a highlight is the integrated 1080p webcam. It's a definite step above most laptop webcams, even on much more expensive machines. It also has a physical shutter for guaranteed privacy.
That said, the webcam doesn't support facial recognition and there's also no fingerprint reader, so security is password-based. It's worth noting that this is a conventional laptop with no touchscreen functionality as reviewed, nor a 360-degree hinge. We're back to that basic vibe, again.
The trackpad is reasonably proportioned and there's nothing conspicuously wrong with the overall design. But the vibe is slightly dated and dreary. All of this means it's hard to get excited about the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 just based on its looks. If worthy and workmanlike is your thing, this Asus delivers. But if you're expecting Google's new Chromebook Plus platform to automatically translate into something slick and premium, you'll be disappointed.
Design: 3 / 5
Asus Chromebook Plus CX34: Performance
Intel CPU gets the job done
Screen and webcam are both decent
Google's AI pretensions are just that
Asus Chromebook Plus CX34: Benchmarks
Here's how the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34performed in our suite of benchmark tests:
Geekbench 5: 1,458 (single-core), 4,507 (multi-core)
Mozilla Kraken (fewer is better): 476ms JetStream 2 (higher is better): 242 Octane 2.0: 83,372 WebGL Acquarium 30,000 fish: 45fps TechRadar battery life test: 10h 21m
Thanks to a proper Intel Core CPU, albeit the fairly lowly Intel Core i3-1215U with two Performance cores and four Efficient, the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 has the basic performance to take on full-feature Windows laptops. The question is whether it matters.
Google is promoting the offline capabilities of these Chromebook Plus devices, promising double the performance of typical low-cost Chromebooks. Google even makes a pitch for these devices as content creation machines, including video editing.
But that's pretty unrealistic, as is the AI narrative Google is attaching to these Chromebook Plus laptops. The Intel CPU is decent, to be sure, but it doesn't have any particular AI capabilities since it lacks a dedicated NPU. So, any remotely significant AI work will be done in the cloud.
(Image credit: Future)
It's also worth noting that if you're the sort of web browser that likes to have a zillion tabs open, this 8GB model won't cut it and you should opt for the 16GB upgrade which should be available soon. As I noted earlier, you'll need to upgrade to 512GB of storage for a proper M.2 SSD as opposed to the generic UFS flash storage in this model.
But short of running out of RAM, general system responsiveness is good. Realistically, most people will use a laptop like this for web browsing and web apps, plus some content consumption. And they'll find it's well up to the task.
As for the 14-inch display, it offers decent working space thanks to 1080p native resolution. Brightness is decent at 250 nits, and the colors are reasonably vibrant. But compared to, say, a typical tablet, it's nothing special for image quality or pixel density. The integrated speakers, meanwhile, are pretty terrible. The volume levels are OK, but the sound quality is horribly thin.
That said, one of the better hardware features is the 1080p webcam. It has much better image quality than most laptops, even far more expensive machines. It also benefits from operating-system level processing, including background blur and noise cancellation, which can be applied to any video calling or conferencing application.
Overall, the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 has the basic grunt to take on lower-cost Windows laptops thanks to its Intel CPU. But given that Chrome OS will run just as happily on a cheaper and more efficient ARM CPU, it's hard to see the logic in paying the Intel premium.
Performance: 3.5 / 5
Asus Chromebook Plus CX34: Battery life
(Image credit: Future)
Medium-sized battery
But decent light-usage battery life
At 50Whrs, the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 doesn't have the biggest battery. Nor do Intel CPUs have the best reputation when it comes to operating away from a wall outlet. But perhaps thanks to the efficiency and minimal bloat of the Chrome OS operating system, battery life in light usage is decent, with over 10 hours of movie playback possible.
You'll get a lot less than that if you put any real amount of load on that Intel CPU, so bear that in mind if you're planning to run demanding software. But given the modest price point, the battery life is in line with expectations.
Battery life: 4 / 5
Should you buy the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34?
Buy it if...
You want a sturdy, reliable, and cheap laptop
The Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 doesn't look exciting. But it's well built, has a decent screen, a good webcam, and reasonable battery life.
You don't need Windows If what you want to do with a laptop mainly revolves around accessing your Google account and apps, the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 gets the job done.
Don't buy it if...
You want something sleek and slick
The Asus Chromebook Plus CX34's design is a little dated, with fairly large bezels and a boxy chassis design.
You want a movie machine If you're looking for something to take on trips and holidays for watching Netflix in your Airbnb, look elsewhere. The Asus Chromebook Plus CX34's built-in speakers are terrible.
Asus Chromebook Plus CX34: Also consider
If our Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 review has you considering other options, here are two more laptops to consider...
How I tested the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34
Used for a week in place of my usual laptop
Office work, general web use, Android apps, media playback
Ran the Techradar benchmark suite
I spent a week with the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 giving it full reign over my Google account and running all my usual apps from web browsing to photo editing. Of course, there was a spot of YouTubing and Netflixing, too, plus our suite of more formal benchmarks. I also tested the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34's battery life for both general usage and light content consumption off the mains.
Along with assessing objective performance, the aim was to get a feel for how this Chromebook stands up as an all-round replacement for a conventional Windows laptop. Just how does Google's Chromebook Plus standard stack up?
The Dell XPS 14 is the newest entrant into an already storied line of laptops, and it is arguably the best laptop of this newest crop of XPS devices thanks to its powerful new processor, stunning OLED display, and a design that looks better than just about any other Windows laptop on the market.
The XPS 14 9440 starts at a somewhat pricey $1,499 / £1,599 / AU$2,998.60, and it lacks the dedicated Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU and OLED display, so you'll want to upgrade these two specs in particular, though it will end up costing you much more for the privilege.
To be clear, Dell XPS laptops have never been cheap, but my recommended configuration, the same as the one I reviewed, will set you back nearly $2,400 / £2,650 / AU$4,300. For the hardware packed into such a slim 14-inch form factor, it's more than worth the investment as this laptop will last for years before it becomes obsolete.
In terms of design, the XPS 14 fully commits to the design changes that the Dell XPS 13 Plus introduced back in 2022, but introduces a couple of quality-of-life improvements on its smaller cousin.
For one, the down-firing speakers have been moved up top alongside the keyboard, producing far better sound in exchange for diminishing the XPS 13 Plus's infinity edge-style keyboard. This is a much better design choice, ultimately, and you don't sacrifice much in the way of key space on the deck itself.
The display is what really steals the show here: a gorgeous 3.2K OLED display with super-slim bezels. This latter feature is impressive because Dell has somehow managed to squeeze in a 1080p webcam. There's no physical privacy shutter, but that's never really been Dell's thing, unfortunately.
The Dell XPS 14's Intel Core Ultra 7 155H and the Nvidia RTX 4050 deliver powerful performance across all workloads, and in some cases can even match or exceed what you'd get from a MacBook Pro 14-inch, especially for gaming (though the RTX 4050 isn't nearly powerful enough to keep up with the best gaming laptops).
Overall, the Dell XPS 14 9440 is a powerful performer for everything from everyday computing use to 1080p gaming to moderate content creation. It's an expensive investment, but on balance, it's one of the best Windows laptops you can buy right now.
Dell XPS 14 9440: Price and availability
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
How much does it cost? Starting at $1,499 / £1,599 / AU$2,998.60
When is it out? It's available right now
Where can you get it? You can get it in the US, UK, and Australia
The Dell XPS 14 9440 is available now in the US, UK, and Australia, starting at $1,499 / £1,599 / AU$2,998.60. For that price, you get an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor with integrated Arc graphics, 16GB LPDDR5x memory, 512GB M.2 PCIe SSD storage, and a 14.5-inch full HD+ (1920x1200p) non-touch display.
My review unit, which sells for $900 / £1,050 / AU$1,300 more, upgrades to discrete graphics with an Nvidia RTX 4050 (30W) GPU, 32GB LPDDR5x memory, 1TB M.2 PCIe SSD, and a 14.5-inch 3.2K (3200x2000p) OLED display.
You can max out your configuration with 64GB LPDDR5x RAM and 4TB M.2 PCIe SSD, in addition to the above, for $3,399 / £3,238.99 / AU$5,999.40.
Value: 4 / 5
Dell XPS 14 9440: Specs
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Dell XPS 14 9440: Design
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Gorgeous design
OLED display is stunning
Upfiring speakers
The Dell XPS 14 doesn't shy away from the design choices that the XPS 13 Plus introduced, for better or for worse, but it does make some very important improvements to the previous design iterations.
For one, let's talk about top-firing speakers. Down-firing speakers are genuinely terrible. They might be necessary, but they're terrible, and any time we can get top-firing speakers on a laptop, your audio experience is automatically going to improve substantially.
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The exterior finish comes in two colors: Platinum or Graphite. The finish is a CNC machined aluminum with a glass palm rest, and everything about it feels premium. The chasis itself isn't all that heavy, but it's not as light as something like the LG Gram or some of the best ultrabooks that prioritize portability over performance.
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
For ports, you have three Thunderbolt 4 ports with power delivery and DisplayPort output, a 3.5mm combo jack, and a microSD slot. Given its size, I'm not expecting all that much on the ports front, but it's good to see the microSD slot included since this at least gives some flexibility for creative professionals or those who might have a device that saves to microSD, like one of the best drone models.
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
As for the keyboard, this is one area that's not so great, since the nearly flat surface of the keys makes it difficult for touch typers who are used to a bit more definition to find their place among the keys. You'll get used to it, but it's not the best typing experience I've ever had on a keyboard out of the box.
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Another major issue is the trackpad, in that it's invisible. This does give the laptop a bit of a 'future' feel to it, but at the cost of accessibility. Likewise, the touchbar along the top is in place of actual function keys. All of these features work fine enough for me, but I can see someone with reduced vision struggling with this keyboard and trackpad.
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Next, you have the webcam. Somehow, Dell managed to fit a 1080p webcam into the narrow top bezel of the display panel, and it's a welcome addition. Too many laptops skip the 1080p webcam in order to retain the thin bezels, and that was fine in the pre-work-from-home era, but nowadays, you need a quality webcam, there's just no getting around it.
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Finally, the air intake on the Dell XPS 14 comes in from the side and bleeds out the back though a vent underneath the display hinge. The heat management is ok, but given its thin form factor, the underside can get hot under load.
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
As far as Windows laptops go, this is possibly one of the best-looking laptops going. There are some who won't love—or even like—the planar-leveled keyboard and lack of physical function keys or clearly defined trackpad, but overall, there is way more to like here than to nitpick, especially if you're opting for the OLED display.
Design: 4.5 / 5
Dell XPS 14 9440: Performance
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Excellent all-around performance
Surprisingly competitive against the MacBook Pro for creative work
Fantastic productivity and solid gaming performance
Finally we come down to the performance of the Dell XPS 14, and I can definitely say that it is among the best you're going to get on a laptop right now.
The direct rival of the Dell XPS 14 is the Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch with M3 Pro, and the XPS 14 holds its own against the best Apple has to offer in terms of general performance, features superior gaming performance, and also manages to battle the MacBook Pro 14 to a draw for some typical creative workloads.
While the MacBook Pro 14-inch ultimately offers better single-core performance and slightly better multicore performance, the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H paired with an Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU does an admirable job against one of Apple's best processors.
In terms of overall system performance, the MacBook Pro 14 with M3 Pro (11-core) does manage to score about 23% better in our Crossmark benchmark, as well as scoring about 12% better in Geekbench 6.2's multicore performance test.
The two laptops are evenly matched for SSD performance, and the MacBook Pro 14-inch scores better in 3DMark's Wildlife Extreme and Wildlife Extreme Unlimited. The RTX 4050 in the XPS 14, meanwhile, pulls ahead of the M3 Pro's GPU in Solar Bay and Solar Bay Unlimited, which are ray-tracing workloads, so this shouldn't be surprising as Nvidia's hardware can handle ray tracing far better than Apple's chips right now.
In terms of creative performance, the Nvidia RTX GPU in the XPS 14 will outperform pretty much any comparable Apple device when it comes to 3D modeling, since just about every 3D modeling tool relies on Nvidia's CUDA instruction set, so Apple, AMD, and Intel will always be at a disadvantage.
When it comes to video encoding, the XPS 14 manages to encode a 4K video into 1080p about 7% faster in Handbrake 1.7, though depending on the app you're using, Apple's specialized encoding engine might be determinative. If you're a creative pro working in film and video, you'll know which tools play best with Apple and which lean towards Nvidia, so which is better will come down to the tools you'll ultimately need to use.
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Finally, taking the average 1200p gaming performance on Max settings, the Dell XPS 14 does a better job than the MacBook Pro 14 across the board. The XPS 14 does about 62% better with Civilization VI, getting nearly 90 fps at 1200p with performance and memory impact set to max. In Total War: Warhammer III's battle benchmark, the XPS 14 gets around 40 fps, which is about 25% higher than the MacBook Pro 14-inch's 32 fps. It's only in Shadow of the Tomb Raider that the MacBook Pro 14-inch scores a win, getting 48 fps at 1200p on highest settings, while the Dell XPS 14 manages to get 47 fps, but there's a huge caveat there.
This doesn't factor in the RTX 4050's DLSS upscaler, which can push the XPS 14's fps much higher than that, depending on the settings you select. This is a huge advantage for the XPS 14 that, for right now at least, Apple's best MacBook struggles to counter since its upscaler, Apple MetalFX, is developer-dependent, and not a lot of games include it as an option.
In the end, then, the Dell XPS 14 manages to go toe-to-toe with the venerable MacBook Pro 14 and comes out with some very important wins in the process.
Performance: 5 / 5
Dell XPS 14 9440: Battery life
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Intel Evo is back, baby!
Charges to full in less than 90 minutes
Intel chips have not had good battery life for years. Back in 2020, Intel Evo was a big deal, and one of its biggest qualifiers was achieving more than 9 hours of battery life on a standard battery test. With the 12th-gen Intel Alder Lake laptop processors released in 2021, battery life on Intel laptops absolutely tanked, and Intel Evo faded away for a few years as Intel went through Alder Lake, Raptor Lake, and Raptor Lake Refresh, all of which had generally terrible battery life (even on an ultrabook!).
Now, with the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, Intel seems to have refocused itself on more battery efficiency rather than dumping electrons into maximum performance.
The Dell XPS 14 benefits with a nine-hour 35-minute battery life on our proprietary web surfing test, which is far better than the six or seven hours these laptops were getting just a year or two ago.
Under heavier load, the XPS 14 still struggles to get more than seven hours of battery life on PCMark 10's Modern Office battery test, and the PCMark 10 Gaming battery test only ran for about one hour 50 minutes before shutting down.
These are a far cry from what Apple is able to pull off with the MacBook Pro 14-inch with M3 Pro, which lasted about 17 hours 32 minutes in our battery tests, but knowing where Windows laptops have been in the past couple of years, I'll gladly take a laptop that can last a full workday without a charge.
We pride ourselves on our independence and our rigorous review-testing process, offering up long-term attention to the products we review and making sure our reviews are updated and maintained - regardless of when a device was released, if you can still buy it, it's on our radar.
If you like the look of Apple's MacBooks but prefer or simply require the Windows ecosystem, well, you can do a lot worse than the new Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro. Like its predecessor, the very similar Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro, it owes its overall look and feel to the MacBook.
Thanks to its sleek wedge-shaped chassis, it's most similar to Apple's now defunct MacBook M1 Air in terms of design. But for features and performance it probably falls somewhere in between the newer and boxier MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) and the base model MacBook Pro 14-inch.
Available in both 14-inch and 16-inch formats, this 14-inch model has both advantages and weaknesses compared to Apple's alternatives. The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro's OLED screen is a definite highlight with incredible image quality plus 120Hz refresh. It also supports touch input. Apple simply can't compete.
On the other hand, the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro's speakers disappoint and its trackpad is merely OK. Apple definitely does those things better. As for performance, it's a close-run thing compared to the Apple M2 chip, though the latest M3 is arguably a step above. You get Intel's hot new Meteor Lake CPU in Intel Core Ultra 7 155H configuration with six performance cores and eight efficiency cores.
Samsung says the new Intel chip improves the Galaxy Book4 Pro's already impressive battery life by about 10% and we found you can get nearly 14 hours of video playback and over 11 hours of more intensive use. Put simply, this laptop offers genuine all-day longevity.
On the downside, the design is definitely derivative, the speakers are very disappointing and the trackpad is merely OK. But overall, this isn't just one of the best Windows alternatives for MacBook fans. It can take the fight to any competing laptop in our best laptop 2024 guide.
(Image credit: Future)
Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro: Price & availability
How much does it cost? $1,449 / £1,599
Where is it available? Available in the US and UK
Priced at $1,449 in the US and £1,559 in the UK for the entry-level model with 16GB of memory and a 512GB SSD, the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro is definitely premium priced but it's not outrageously expensive. It's a little pricier than a comparably specced MacBook Air, but cheaper than the entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro.
On the other hand, Dell's XPS 13 can be had with the same Meteor Lake CPU with matching memory and storage specs for a little less money, and the XPS 14 for about the same money.
However, the XPS 13 can't be had with an OLED display and with the XPS 14 an OLED panel can be configured, but adds $300 / £200 to the price. All of which means the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro isn't cheap, but it does still offer a strong value proposition.
Price score: 4 / 5
Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro: Specs
The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro comes in two configurations, 14-inch and 16-inch versions.
Specs score: 4 / 5
(Image credit: Future)
Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro: Design
Good build quality
Apple-derivative design
Very portable
There's no denying it. The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro wouldn't look like it does were it not for the Apple MacBook and more specifically, the MacBook Air and its wedge-shaped chassis. The Galaxy Book4 Pro is awfully, awfully similar, from the tapering chassis thickness to the keyboard design, the look of the trackpad, and the way the screen lid hinges and closes.
Samsung has also come pretty close to matching Apple's signature build quality and engineering. The keyboard bed is super rigid and the chassis feels strong even if the way the various parts fit together doesn't quite match Apple's peerless precision.
There are other details where Samsung can't match Apple. The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro's speakers don't even come close to those of the MacBook Air, let alone the MacBook Pro. That's a real pity and it's hard to understand why Samsung can't give this laptop high sound quality to match the stunning OLED screen. That display, of course, is a touchscreen, which adds an extra string to this Windows laptop's bow that no MacBook offers.
The trackpad, meanwhile, is fine by Windows laptop standards, but isn't quite as precise and satisfying to use as Apple's haptic trackpad. On the other hand, Samsung has managed to offer better port selection than the MacBook Air. Along with a pair of Thunderbolt USB-C ports, you get a legacy USB-A, a full HDMI socket, microSD, and a headphone jack.
That's impressive given the compact form factor which comes in at just 11.6mm thick and 1.23kg. This is an extremely portable laptop, a fact that's only helped by the teeny-tiny 35W USB-C power adapter.
So, this is a very nicely designed and engineered machine on pretty much every level. Among Windows laptops, few if any are better built. But it is, ultimately, a pretty derivative machine in aesthetic terms. Dell's XPS portables are much more distinctive, while Apple's MacBooks are ultimately the real deal.
Design score: 4 / 5
(Image credit: Future)
Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro: Performance
Intel Meteor Lake CPU is punchy
OLED screen is stunning
Good storage performance
Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro: Benchmarks
Here's how the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro performed in our suite of benchmark tests:
Intel's new Meteor Lake CPU isn't a radical step forward for performance. But it does deliver all the performance you could reasonably ask for in a thin and light laptop like this.
The Intel Core Ultra 7 155H gives you six meaty Performance cores running at up to 4.8GHz, plus eight Efficient cores capable of 3.8GHz. For day-to-day tasks like web browsing and content consumption, the combination of the Intel chip plus 16GB of fast DDR5 memory and a really quick Samsung SSD makes for an ultra-speedy and responsive experience.
But you also have plenty of performance in hand for some pretty serious workflows like image and video editing. Really, the only limitation involves graphics performance. The new Intel Meteor Lake CPU has a good integrated graphics processor. But it can't quite match that of the integrated GPU in AMD's competing Ryzen laptops APUs and it isn't up to the job of playing modern PC games.
Of course, you can get similar performance from a whole slew of Windows laptops that offer Intel's new Meteor Lake chips. But it's still impressive to experience this level of performance in such a compact and portable laptop.
Another highlight is the AMOLED screen. It's just so vibrant and offers perfect per-pixel lighting control, so the HDR experience is truly spectacular. No LCD screen, even one with local dimming, comes close. It's also much brighter than comparable desktop OLED monitors. What's more, it runs at 120Hz for extreme smoothness and responsiveness and has touchscreen functionality.
(Image credit: Future)
The only slight flaw involves the screen's dynamic refresh mode. It can switch between 60Hz and 120Hz on the fly and according to application demand. The idea is that running at 120Hz increases battery load, so the screen only steps up to 120Hz when significant on-screen motion is detected. We noticed very occasional stutters that may be related to this feature. It's not a major flaw and, in any case, you have the option of running in conventional 60Hz and 120Hz modes.
Overall, our only significant reservation regarding the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro's performance is those aforementioned speakers. By Windows laptop standards, they're OK. But if you are familiar with Apple's MacBooks and thinking of making the switch, you'll be very disappointed.
Where watching movies and video content on MacBooks, perhaps while on holiday, is a really enjoyable experience, thanks to some great speakers, on the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro you'd have to bring an additional Bluetooth speaker to get a similar experience. That's a pity.
Performance score:4 / 5
(Image credit: Future)
Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro: Battery life
Even better than before
Genuine all-day battery life
The Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro already had great battery life. With the upgrade to Intel's latest CPUs, it just got better. For movie and video playback, you're looking at the thick end of 14 hours, more than enough for pretty much any plane flight.
Even under heavier loads browsing the web and undertaking more demanding workflows, well over 10 hours is possible. That means with light and occasional use, you'll get multiple days out of this laptop. And when you're getting important work done, you can rely on it lasting all day away from the mains.
Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro?
Buy it if...
You want a MacBook-style Windows experience The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro looks and feels a lot like Apple's MacBook machines and that's mostly a good thing.
You want great battery life With around 14 hours of video playback and well over 10 hours with more demanding use, all-day battery life is genuinely achievable.
Don't buy it if...
You want to play games The Intel Meteor Lake CPU is great for just about everything. But despite an improved integrated GPU, that doesn't include games.
You want to watch movies and video The OLED screen is fabulous. But the built-in speakers are very disappointing and spoil the content consumption experience.
Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro: Also consider
If our Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro review has you considering other options, here are two laptops to consider...
How I tested the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro
I tested the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro for a week
I used it both on a desk and while travelling
I used the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro as my main workhorse for a week, including as a desktop machine plugged into monitors, when on the move, lounging on the sofa, the works.
That gave me a good idea of how it coped with all kinds of tasks, how portable it is and how well the battery lasts in the real world (spoiler, it lasts really well). I have a MacBook Air of my own, so it made for an intriguing comparison. And I have, of course, been testing and reviewing laptops since the early Mesozoic period, so I have plenty of context to draw on.
While Apple’s announcement came out of the blue – there was no event to announce the launch, just a press release emailed to media outlets – it wasn’t entirely surprising.
As well as all those aforementioned rumors about new MacBook Airs, when Apple launchedits M3 chip last year it also launched new M3-powered MacBook Pros and a new iMac. The fact that this was the first M-series launch to not feature a MacBook Air didn’t go unnoticed – and many of us assumed (or hoped) that an M3-powered Air would appear at some point. Thankfully, we’ve not had long to wait.
Starting at $1,099 / £1,099 / AU$1,799, the latest MacBook Air model straight away addresses one of my main complaints about the previous M2 version: the high starting price. The M2 MacBook Air launched in 2022 with a new, noticeably higher, price for its base model ($1,199 / £1,249 / AU$1,899), and while it remained the best laptop you could buy due to design and performance, it wasn’t as good value as the earlier M1 MacBook Air model, which launched at $999 / £999 / AU$1,599.
So, the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) is a much better-value proposition, and in a world where the price of everything seems to be climbing it’s great to see Apple buck that trend and release a laptop that’s cheaper than its predecessor. With the launch of the M3 version, Apple has officially dropped the price of the M2 model to $999 / £999 / AU$1,599, and has stopped selling the M1 version altogether (it’s still available for the moment from third-party retailers, and will likely drop further in price).
(Image credit: Future)
While the base M3 model’s price is a nice surprise, what’s less surprising – and less nice – is the fact that this model has the same 8GB of unified memory and just 256GB of SSD storage space as its predecessor. In 2024, those specifications don’t really cut it – especially for a laptop that starts at just over $1,000.
The configuration I was sent from Apple comes with double the memory and storage and 16GB and 512GB, along with a slight bump to GPU cores in the M3 chip over the base model, and it’s a much more well-rounded offering that won’t feel outdated after a year or so. This model is significantly pricier, though, at $1,499 / £1,499 / AU$2,399.Other than the switch to the M3 chip, the new MacBook Air 13-inch keeps essentially the same design as the M2 version, which is no bad thing, as that model remains one of the nicest-looking thin and light laptops out there. I much prefer the 13-inch MacBook Air to the 15-inch model, as the smaller device is much more easy to carry about. The fact that the battery lasted over 14 hours on a single charge in our battery life tests again shows just how good the 13-inch MacBook Air is for people who want a compact laptop they can use almost anywhere.
Performance-wise, the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) does an excellent job with day-to-day tasks such as web browsing and watching TV shows, while also putting in an impressive showing when used for content creation. I used applications including Adobe Photoshop and Ableton Live 11, and even played a few games, and the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) proved fast and dependable at all times. Even when putting this laptop through its paces by trying out a range of apps (often at the same time), the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) didn’t once freeze or crash. The M3 model retains its predecessors' fan-less design, so it’s essentially silent when in use.
While the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) isn’t a radical reimagining in the way the M2 model was, it doesn’t need to be. This is an assured release from a company at the top of its game, offering improved performance for a lower price, which means I have no trouble recommending the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) as the best laptop you can buy right now.
(Image credit: Future)
Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) review: Price and availability
Starts at $1,099 / £1,099 / AU$1,799
Lower launch price than M2 model
M2 model is now the cheapest MacBook sold by Apple
The base model costs $1,099 / £1,099 / AU$1,799, and comes with an M3 chip with an 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, 8GB of unified memory, and 256GB SSD storage. This is the same M3 chip as found in the baseiMac 24-inch (M3), which starts at $1,399 / £1,399 / AU$2,199. That’s quite a leap in price for the all-in-one PC.
You can also get the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) with an 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 8GB unified memory, and 512GB SSD storage. This model also comes with a more powerful 35W dual USB-C power adapter (the base model’s adapter tops out at 30W), and costs $1,299 / £1,299 / AU$2,099.
Finally, you can get a pre-configured MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) with the same M3 chip and other specs, but with 16GB of unified memory and 512GB SSD storage for $1,499 / £1,499 / AU$2,399. This is the model I’m reviewing here.
As with previous models, you can further configure the new MacBook Air with up to 24GB of unified memory, 2TB SSD storage, and a 70W USB-C power adapter. This fully maxed-out model costs $2,299 / £2,299 / AU$3,599.
In a rather rare bit of welcome news, the M3 MacBook Air has launched at a lower price for the base model than the M2 MacBook Air. When that MacBook Air debuted back in 2022 the base model was priced at $1,199 / £1,249 / AU$1,899. Since then, it’s had an official $100 price cut, but one of the few complaints I had about the M2 MacBook Air (which went straight to the top of our best laptops list) was that high price. It’s great to see Apple somewhat rectify that with the M3 model, and while it’s still an expensive laptop, it’s now better value for money – which is an important consideration these days.
Apple will also continue to sell the 13-inch MacBook Air with M2, dropping the price to a very appealing $999 / £999 / AU$1,599. This is a repeat of the move it made when it launched the M2 MacBook Air, as it continued to sell the M1 model at the lower $999 price point.
It’s good to see Apple doing this again, as the M2 model remains an excellent laptop, especially at this new lower price. Unfortunately, it means that the M1 model is no longer sold by Apple. However, we’re already seeing that model on offer for an even lower price at other retailers looking to clear their stock ahead of the new MacBook Airs arriving.
So, if you’re looking for the cheapest sold-by-Apple MacBook to get into Apple’s ecosystem, the M2 MacBook Air is the one to go for, but the M3 model represents very good value for money – and it’s now the cheapest M3-powered Mac on the market (until an M3-powered Mac mini arrives at some point, which is likely).
Price score: 4.5/5
Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) review: Specs
The Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) comes in three pre-configured options, and you can further configure the amount of memory and storage space before you buy. You’ll need to do that to match the review and max configurations below.
The specs of the new MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) are broadly in line with what we were expecting. However, and as mentioned above, in 2024 the base configuration with just 8GB of memory and only 256GB SSD storage is looking increasingly outdated, especially for the price. With the 8GB of memory being shared between compute tasks (regular day-to-day jobs, essentially) and graphics, it could start to struggle if you’re running multiple apps at once.
The 256GB SSD will likely fill up fast as well, especially if you’re thinking about buying the new MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) for creative work, such as photo or video editing. In typical fashion, Apple has made the MacBook Air as difficult as possible to open up, so you won’t be able to upgrade the memory or storage later. Add in the fact that the base model comes with a weaker integrated GPU in its M3 chip (eight cores as opposed to the 10-core GPU included in the other models), and I’d recommend spending a bit more to get the review configuration that I tested, as the more powerful GPU, 16GB of memory and 512GB SSD makes it far more future-proof.
(Image credit: Future)
Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) review: Design
No major redesign
Midnight color has been improved to reduce fingerprints
More recycled materials than ever
The Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (M3)’s design doesn’t break any new ground – but it didn’t really need to. While we loved the M1 MacBook Air, its design increasingly felt dated, and when the M2 MacBook hit the shelves in 2022 it came with a bold redesign that included a better and larger screen, thinner bezels around the display and a much more modern look. I personally loved the redesign, so the fact that the M3 MacBook Air looks pretty much identical doesn’t bother me.
This is still an impressively thin and light laptop. The 13.6-inch LED display looks bright and vibrant, and the native 2560 x 1664 resolution offers 224 pixels per inch, leading to a pleasingly sharp and detailed image. As with the previous generation of MacBook Airs, the 15-inch MacBook Air (M3), which launched alongside the 13-inch model, comes with a larger screen, but also a higher resolution, which means the pixels per inch number is very similar to the 13-inch model.
Basically, you won’t lose out on image quality no matter which MacBook Air model you go for. For many people, the 13-inch model will be much more convenient as it’s lighter and smaller, yet still very powerful. The keyboard once again feels comfortable to use, with a surprising amount of key travel for such a thin device. This means that typing away on the MacBook Air’s keyboard feels tactile and responsive. It comes with a Touch ID button that powers on the MacBook and can quickly log you in by just using your fingerprint. The touchpad below the keyboard is spacious and performs well - just as it did with the previous model.
(Image credit: Future)
Port-wise the MacBook Air M3 keeps the same selection as the previous model, with two Thunderbolt 3/USB 4 ports that offer up to 40Gb/s data transfers, a MagSafe 3 port for charging, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
The MagSafe 3 and Thunderbolt ports are all on the same side (the left) which can be a bit fiddly if you’re using them all at once, and it also means you don’t get a choice of which side of the laptop to plug the charger into (you can also use USB-C chargers from other manufacturers to top up the battery if you find yourself without the MagSafe connector).
None of the new MacBook Air models support Thunderbolt 4, which remains exclusive (in the Mac space) to Macs running M3 Pro and M3 Max chips.
(Image credit: Future)
The bump to M3 also allows the new MacBook Air 13-inch to support two external monitors at once, one with up to 6K resolution and 60Hz, and the other with up to 5K resolution. The previous M2 model could only handle one 6K external monitor.
There is a rather large caveat to this, however: you can only run two external monitors with the MacBook Air’s screen closed. Opening the lid turns off one of the screens – so don’t go thinking this new feature will let you work on three screens simultaneously. For office workers who usually use their laptop in a dock with the lid closed this may not be an issue, but it’s a curiously inelegant implementation. Interestingly, the MacBook Pro 14-inch with the M3 chip launched without this feature, but Apple will be enabling it in a future software update.
Overall, the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) is another fine-looking thin and light laptop from Apple, and while it looks almost identical to the previous model, it still feels like a stylish and modern device.
I say ‘almost identical’ as there is a tiny difference with the new MacBook Air. The model that comes in the Midnight color (essentially, a very dark blue) now benefits from a “breakthrough anodization seal to reduce fingerprints.” This seems to be a response tocriticisms of the previous model in the same color due to how easily fingerprints, scratches and other marks showed up (and remained) on the body.
While the 13-inch MacBook Air that Apple sent me to review was in the Starlight color (four colors are available – Midnight, Starlight, Space Gray and Silver), I was also able to get my hands on a Midnight 13-inch MacBook Air for a few minutes at Apple’s headquarters in London, and from what I could see the new Midnight finish does indeed seem more resistant to fingerprints.
Apple is also keen to highlight the fact that the new MacBook Air is its first product to be made with 50% recycled materials. The body uses 100% recycled aluminum, and the main logic board uses 100% recycled copper. While I would like to see Apple be more flexible when it comes to allowing its customers to repair or upgrade its products, having any company use more recycled materials is always welcome.
Design score: 4.5/5
(Image credit: Future)
Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) review: Performance
M3 chip brings decent gains
You can actually game on this MacBook
New focus on AI
Benchmarks
Here’s how the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) performed in our suite of benchmark tests:
Geekbench 6.2.2 Single-Core: 3,148; Multi-Core: 11,893 Cinebench 2024 Single-core: 141 ; Multi-core: 615 Battery life (TechRadar movie test): 14 hours and 19 minutes
The major change for the new MacBook Air 13-inch is the inclusion of the M3 chip, Apple’s most recent piece of silicon, which debuted at the end of last year alongside new MacBook Pros. Unlike last year’s MacBook Pros, the MacBook Air 13-inch only comes with the M3 chip, not the more powerful M3 Pro or M3 Max versions. However, the MacBook Air is a much more mainstream device, so it’s unlikely that people will be using it for heavy-duty creative tasks.
The Apple MacBook Air 13-inch comes with two versions of the M3 chip: a base model with an 8-core GPU, and a slightly more powerful chip with a 10-core GPU. Both versions feature an 8-core CPU with four high-performance cores and four efficiency cores, which the MacBook Air switches between depending on what kind of tasks you’re performing. This allows it to achieve a good balance between performance and battery life.
The Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) can be configured with up to 24GB of unified memory and 2TB SSD storage, and the review sample the company sent for me to test comes with the 10-core M3 chip, 16GB of memory and 512GB storage. So, if you go for the cheaper base model of the MacBook Air 13-inch, the performance might not quite match what I’ve experienced, though I’d be surprised if there was a huge difference.
However, I would recommend going for a MacBook Air with more memory and storage if possible. In 2024, 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD feels a bit mean for a laptop, with the SSD especially likely to fill up quickly if you install lots of apps and store a lot of photos and video. Out of the box, the MacBook Air I tested had 30GB of space already used by macOS and pre-installed apps, and while this isn’t an issue with the 512GB model, it may be more of a concern with the 256GB model.
In day-to-day use, the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) performs brilliantly. macOS Sonoma feels fast and responsive, and there’s now a large library of apps that have been built natively for Apple’s M series of chips, which means they can take full advantage of Apple’s latest hardware.
I used a variety of apps, including Safari, Garage Band, and Apple TV, and the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) kept pace with ease. Even when I was using more demanding applications such as Adobe Photoshop, the MacBook Air performed really well. For the vast majority of users, the MacBook Air 13-inch with the M3 chip will be plenty powerful enough.
One of the best things about the efficiency of Apple’s M-series chips is that they produce less heat, and thanks to Apple’s thermal design of the modern MacBook Airs, it means the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) is completely fanless. So, even when it’s working hard, you’re not getting annoying fan noise in the background.
This is impressive, and a very pleasant change from many Windows laptops, which often fire up their fans at the drop of a hat. It’s also incredibly useful if you’re using the MacBook Air to record audio, as it means the built-in microphones (or any external ones you plug in) won’t pick up any background noise from the laptop.
(Image credit: Future)
Speaking of the built-in microphones, the new 13-inch MacBook Air comes with a three-mic array to help with clarity and minimize pick-up of ambient noise, and the FaceTime HD camera is again 1080p. In a world where many laptops at this price point still come with 720p webcams built in, it’s good to see Apple include a high-quality camera for the video calls and meetings that have become a regular feature of both work and social interactions since the pandemic.
According to Apple, the M3 chip also pitches in to improve video and audio quality, and while I couldn’t see any difference in quality compared to the M2 MacBook Air, which has the same webcam and mic array, the results are nevertheless crisp and clear.
The M3 MacBook Air also gets an upgrade to its Wi-Fi, as it supports Wi-Fi 6E (the previous model has Wi-Fi 6). This offers faster speeds and more reliable connections over larger distances, and during my time with the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3), I found its wireless connection to be excellent.
The MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) also makes a decent fist of playing modern games, even some rather graphically-intensive ones. I played a few titles, including a fast-paced racing simulation game, and while it’s never going to challenge the best gaming laptops out there, gaming on a thin and light MacBook Air is possible – something that until recently didn’t seem like a realistic prospect. And, while you won’t be able to crank up visual settings to the max, the games I tried looked very nice on the vibrant 13.6-inch screen. As a PC gamer, it’s also a real novelty to play games on a fan-less laptop – usually, gaming laptops are big and bulky beasts, with noisy fans that keep the powerful components cool, but which can also be distracting. Not so with the MacBook Air.
When Apple announced the new MacBook Air 13-inch (M3), a lot of people noted that the company made a big deal about its AI capabilities. Artificial intelligence, especially when it comes to generating content, is a hot topic at the moment, with many of Apple’s competitors, most noticeably Microsoft and Google, going in hard on the technology. You’ll certainly be hearing a lot about AI laptops this year – and it almost felt like Apple was being left behind.
So, Apple’s focus on the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3)’s AI performance was a pleasant surprise – especially as the M-series chips have actually been ahead of the game for quite a while for AI thanks to the Apple Neural Engine, which has been included since the original M1 chip, and which even back then was pitched as being able to help with machine learning tasks. While Apple’s chip-making rival Intel has only just put out new processors with NPUs (Neural Processing Units) dedicated to AI tasks, we’ve now had three generations of Apple silicon that have this capability – and Apple is now, understandably, making a big deal about it.
The M3 comes with an upgraded 16-core Neural Engine, which Apple claims is “faster and more efficient” than previous versions, making this MacBook Air, in Apple’s words, “the world’s best consumer laptop for AI.” While it’s difficult to confirm this, especially until other laptops with AI-focused chips come out, I saw how the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) coped with cloud-based AI in the form of Microsoft Copilot – which is included in the Mac version of Microsoft Office and is dependent on an internet connection – as well as on-device AI in apps such as Pixelmator Pro and Photoshop. The on-device performance was especially impressive, as everything is handled by the M3 chip – so you can be offline and still make use of AI tools to automate repetitive tasks such as sharpening photos, or generating content like text based on a simple prompt.
The screen and speakers aren’t the best you’re going to get in a MacBook – the far more expensive MacBook Pros offer mini LED technology for stunning contrast and vibrancy, along with ProMotion features that offer faster refresh rates for smooth and snappy scrolling.
The new 15-inch MacBook Air also comes with better speakers – you get six speakers with force-cancelling woofers in the larger model, which offers richer and deeper sounds.
The 13-inch MacBook Air (M3) makes do with four speakers, which to be honest is still a lot for a thin and light laptop, and while this model doesn’t feature Apple’s highest-end tech, it still does a very good job when you’re watching or listening to media, or working on projects. The sound is loud and clear – certainly a far cry from the often tinny speakers in most laptops. The screen is also bright and crisp, and as usual comes with support for the P3 color gamut to help ensure colors are accurate. This means the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) remains a compelling and affordable alternative to the MacBook Pro for content creators.
Performance score: 4.5/5
(Image credit: Future)
Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) review: Battery life
Lasts over 14 hours
Charges quickly
The battery life of Apple silicon-powered MacBooks has always impressed, and is one of the reasons why I recommend them so enthusiastically. The MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) continues this – while the M3 chip brings performance increases, it remains impressively efficient, so the battery doesn’t appear to drain significantly faster.
Apple claims the 13-inch MacBook Air (M3) is good for up to 18 hours of Apple TV and up to 15 hours of wireless internet browsing – this is the same theoretical battery lifespan that Apple quotes for the 15-inch MacBook Air (M3). While the 15-inch model comes with a larger 66.5 watt-hour battery, compared to the 13-inch’s 52.6 watt-hour battery, the reason for the parity is most likely due to the larger 15.6-inch screen being more power-hungry.
In our battery life test, where we play a looped 1080p video until the battery dies, the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) managed 14 hours and 19 minutes. That’s a drop from the 16 hours and 6 minutes the M2 version managed in the same test, and may be evidence that the performance gains of the M3 chip have come at a cost to efficiency. Still, the drop isn’t huge, and over 14 hours is still very impressive – you should get through a full work or school day on a single charge, although the more intensive the tasks you perform, the quicker the battery will drain. Impressively, even when gaming, the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) lasted for hours, when usually gaming drains battery extremely quickly.
Another thing I really appreciate about the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) is that even when it’s unplugged there’s no impact on performance. Other laptops usually throttle performance when on battery power to prolong battery life, but the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) doesn’t seem to do that – at least not in any noticeable way. That, combined with the long battery life, makes the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) a brilliant laptop for people who want a device to work on when out and about. Using the included charger, the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) charged to over 50% in under an hour. As with other MacBooks, the new 13-inch MacBook Air also does a great job of conserving battery life when not in use, so you can leave it for several days, open it up and you’ll still have battery. To prove this – and as a nice touch too – the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) comes fully charged out of the box, so you can set it up and start using it straight away.
Battery score: 4.5/5
Should you buy the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (M3)?
Buy it if...
You're after the best laptop in the world Apple has done it again with an incredible laptop that isn't outrageously expensive and will cope with almost any task you throw at it.
You want a laptop to work on while travelling The 13-inch formfactor is ideal for taking this laptop out and about with you, and the long battery life will also help.
You don't need extreme power The MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) offers brilliant performance, so if you don't need a MacBook Pro for heavy creative tasks, the Air is a great alternative.
Don't buy it if...
You want a big screen The 13.6-inch screen makes the MacBook Air a great portable device, but some people may prefer the 15-inch model for working on.
You want the cheapest Mac The M2 MacBook Air has a new price cut, and the Mac mini both offer lower costs of entry if you want a modern Mac.
Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) review: Also consider
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How I tested the Apple MacBook Air 15-inch (M3)
(Image credit: Future)
I used the Apple MacBook Air 15-inch (M3) for most of the week
I used it as my day-to-day work laptop
I ran several apps and games throughout my time using it
The MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) was announced on Monday, March 4, and by Tuesday I was at Apple's headquarters in London to test out the new laptop. I also received both the 13-inch and 15-inch models to fully review, and have been using the 13-inch model primarily throughout the rest of the week.
I used the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) for various work tasks, including writing some of this review, while also testing out various apps including Adobe Photoshop and Ableton Live 11. I also watched a few movies and TV shows, and played a couple of games as well.
I've reviewed almost all of Apple's MacBooks for TechRadar over the past 10 years, as well as hundreds of Windows laptops and Chromebooks, and used this experience, alongside my time with the MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) to draw my conclusions.
