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Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 review: the GPU you’ve been waiting for is finally here

4:00 pm | April 12, 2023

Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets | Tags: CPU, DLSS, GPU, RTX | Comments: Off

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070: Two-minute review

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 is here at long last, and for gamers who've been starved for an upgrade, go ahead and pick this one up. It can do just about everything.

It's hard to follow up the RTX 3070, one of the best graphics cards of all time, and in our Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 review, we praised that card for being an outstanding performer at 1080p and 1440p — which is where the overwhelming number of PC gamers game at — while also being a much more affordable option over the other two launch cards for Nvidia's Ampere lineup. We especially noted how the RTX 3070 offered comparable performance to the RTX 2080 Ti for half the price.

Everything we said about the RTX 3070 applies just as easily to the RTX 4070, only now it doesn't just dabble in 4K; it can competently game at every resolution, making it a graphics card that everybody can fall in love with without spending a fortune.

A lot has changed since the RTX 3070 launched towards the end of 2020, and unfortunately, not everything changed for the better. Things are more expensive pretty much everywhere you look, and the Nvidia RTX 4070 isn't immune. At $599 (about £510 / AU$870), the RTX 4070 is fully 20% more expensive than the RTX 3070 was at launch.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card standing on top of its retail packaging — (Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

I'm not happy about this at all, and you shouldn't be either, but all you have to do is look at the scores the RTX 4070 puts up on the board and you'll be as hard pressed as I am to dock it any points for this. It consistently puts out RTX 3080-level performance more or less across the board and even manages to bloddy the nose of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, and while the RTX 3080 beats out the RTX 4070 at native 4K, turn on DLSS and the RTX 3080 simply gets blown out.

On the other side of the aisle, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is Team Red's nearest real competition, and it struggles to justify itself in the presence of the RTX 4070. While the RX 7900 XT solidly outperforms the 4070, it's also 50% more expensive, and the benefits of the RX 7900 XT get quickly drowned out by the power of DLSS, especially in titles with DLSS 3.

Moreover, the RTX 4070 makes for a pretty competent creator GPU, offering indie developers and artists who don't have the funding to get themselves an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 a handy option for getting some work done within a more limited budget. It's not going to power a major movie studio or anything, but if you're dabbling in 3D modeling or video editing, this card is great compromise between price and performance.

Finally, wrap this all into a package that feels like a downright normal graphics card from ye olden days, back before you needed to include support brackets and balast to keep your gaming PC from tipping over, and you end up with a graphics card that can easily power some of the best gaming PCs that can actually fit into your PC case and your budget.

This graphics card has its issues, which is inevitable, but given what's on offer here, it's easy enough to look past its shortcomings and enjoy some truly outstanding performance at at a reasonable enough price.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 review: Price & availability

An Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card seated inside its retail packaging — (Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

How much is it? $599 (about £510 / AU$870)
When is it out? April 13, 2023
Third-party cards retail prices will match or exceed Nvidia's MSRP

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 is available starting April 13, 2023, with an MSRP of $599 (about £510 / AU$870). Third-party partners will have their own versions of the RTX 4070 that will vary in price, but they will always have a matching or higher regular retail price than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Founders Edition.

Notably, the RTX 4070 is getting a 20% price increase over the card it's replacing, the RTX 3070, which had a launch price of $499 in the US (about £425 / AU$725). While we'd have loved to see the price stay the same gen-over-gen, this should come as no surprise to anyone who has been watching GPU price inflation recently.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080, for example, has a ludicrously high MSRP of $1,199 (a roughly 72% jump over the RTX 3080), while the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 also increased its price over the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 to $1,599 from the 3090's $1,499.

Meanwhile, we haven't seen AMD's direct RTX 4070 competitor yet, the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT, but the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is the closest AMD has this generation with an $899 / £799 (around AU$1,350) MSRP, putting it 50% more expensive than the RTX 4070.

This card is also the same price as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, for what it's worth, and considering that the RTX 4070 punches well above the 3070 Ti's performance, you do at least get a better sense of value out of this card than anything from the last generation.

Price score: 4 / 5

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 review: Features & chipset

The power connector for an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card — (Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

DLSS 3 with full Frame Generation
Third-gen Ray Tracing Cores and fourth-gen Tensor Cores
Lower TGP than RTX 3070

The Nvidia RTX 4070 doesn't change too much on paper over its last-gen predecessor, featuring the same number of streaming multiprocessors, therefore the same number of CUDA cores (5,888), ray-tracing cores (46), and tensor cores (184).

It does bump up its memory to the faster GDDR6X and adds an additional 50% VRAM for a total of 12GB. With a 192-bit bus and a memory clock of 1,313MHz, the RTX 4070 has an effective memory speed of 21 Gbps, equal to that of the Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti, for a memory bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s.

It has a lower base and boost frequency than the 4070 Ti, clocking in at 1,920MHz base and 2,475MHz boost (compared to 2,310MHz base and 2,610MHz boost for the 4070 Ti), but this is a substantial bump up from the 1,500MHz base and 1,725MHz boost frequency of the RTX 3070.

This is owing to the 5nm TSMC process used to fab the AD104 GPU, compared to the Samsung 8nm process for the RTX 3070's GA104. Those faster clocks also power next-gen ray tracing and tensor cores, so even though there are the same number of cores in both the RTX 4070 and the RTX 3070, the RTX 4070's are both much faster and more sophisticated.

Also factor in Nvidia Lovelace's DLSS 3 with Frame Generation capacity, something that Nvidia Ampere and Turing cards don't have access to, and what looks like two very similar cards on paper turns out to be anything but in practice.

Finally, thanks to the 5nm process, Nvidia is able to squeeze more performance out of less power, so the TGP for the RTX 4070 is just 200W, making it a fantastic card for a lower-power, sub-600W build.

Features & chipset: 5 / 5

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 review: Design

The RTX 4070 logo etched into the trim of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

Same size as the RTX 3070
16-pin power connector
Same design as RTX 4090 and RTX 4080

With the RTX 4070 Founders Edition, Nvidia finally delivers a next-gen graphics card that can actually fit in your case without requiring a construction winch to hold it in place.

OK, the previous cards weren't that bad, and even at the reduced form factor and weight, you'll still want to toss a GPU bracket into your case for good measure (there's no harm in protecting your investment, after all).

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An Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card — (Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

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An Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card on its retail packaging — (Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

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The output ports of an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card — (Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

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An Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card standing upright on a pink desk mat — (Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

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An Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card standing upright next to the RTX 3070 — (Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

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An Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card sitting in front of a much larger Nvidia RTX 4080 graphics card — (Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

But holding the RTX 4070 in my hand, this is the first card of this generation that doesn't feel like a piece of machinery. Even the more modestly-sized AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT feel substantial, while the RTX 4070 feels like an old school GeForce graphics card from a couple years back.

The RTX 4070 Founders Edition keeps the same fan design as the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 that preceeded it (a fan on the front and back), but it shrinks everything down to a dual-slot card about two-thirds the size of those monsters. The RTX 4070 also features the same outputs as previous RTX Lovelace cards (so no USB-C out), and a 16-pin power connector with an included adapter for two 8-pin leads to power the card.

With a TGP of 200W, Nvidia could theoretically have just gone with a single 8-pin connector, but Team Green seems absolutely committed to the 12VHPWR cable, it seems. I'll never stop complaining about this, but it is what it is. If you have an ATX 3.0 power supply, you won't need to worry about that, but the rest of us will have to deal with additional cable management.

Design score: 4.5 / 5

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 review: Performance

An Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card slotted into a motherboard — (Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

Phenomenal gaming performance
Can easily push 60 fps in 4K gaming with DLSS
RTX 3080 performance at 60% of the power

Right out the gate, let's just say that the Nvidia RTX 4070 is the best 1440p graphics card on the market right now, and it's likely to remain at the top of that list for a good long while.

Its performance prowess isn't limited to just 1440p, mind you, and when I get into the gaming performance, you'll see that its 4K gaming potential is exciting (with caveats), but for starters, we can dig into its synthetic performance in tests like 3DMark to see how the fundamentals stack up.

General Performance

As you can see, the RTX 4070 outperforms the RTX 3070 by about 21% overall, while underperforming the RTX 3080 by about 1.37%, which is close enough to effectively tie the last-gen 4K powerhouse, and underperforms the RTX 3080 Ti by about 6%. Considering that the RTX 3080 Ti's MSRP is nearly twice that of the RTX 4070, this is an astounding result.

The RTX 4070 does lag behind the RTX 4070 Ti and the RX 7900 XT by quite a bit, averaging about 22% worse performance than the RX 7900 XT and about 13.5% worse performance than the RTX 4070 Ti. These current-gen cards also have substantially better hardware, so this isn't unexpected.

Creative Performance

When it comes to creative performance, well, we have a more limited dataset to work with since Blender Benchmark 3.5.0 decided it only wanted to test half the cards I tried to run it on (including failing to run on the RTX 4070), so we'll have to come back to that one at a later date once the benchmark is updated.

In the meantime, the tests I was able to run really showcased how well the RTX 4070 can handle creative workloads. On Adobe Premiere and Adobe Photoshop, the RTX 4070 performed noticeably better than the RTX 3080 across both apps and fell in very close behind the RTX 4070 Ti for an overall second place finish.

In lieu of Blender's Benchmark, V-Ray 5 is a fairly good stand-in, as well as an excellent benchmark in its own right. Here, the RX 7900 XT wouldn't run, since it doesn't use CUDA or Nvidia's RTX, but we can see the RTX 4070 coming in a respectable runner up to the RTX 4070 Ti.

One of my recent favorite workloads, Lumion 12.5, renders an architectural design into either a short movie clip at 1080p or 4K at 60 fps, making it one of the best benchmarks for creatives to see how a graphics card handles production level workloads rather than synthetic tests.

It requires the same kind of hardware as many of the best PC games in order to light a scene, create realistic water effects, and reproduce foliage on trees, and it's the kind of real-world benchmark that tells more about the card than a simple number devoid of context.

Considering that it can take a five-second, 60 fps movie clip an hour to render at production quality, I switched things up a bit and rather than calculate frames per second, like I do with Handbrake's encoding test, I use frames per hour to give a sense of how long a movie clip you can produce if you leave the clip to render overnight (a common practice).

In the case of the RTX 4070, it rendered a five-second movie clip at 60 fps at draft (1-star) quality 13% faster than the RTX 3080, about 7% faster than the RTX 3080 Ti, and nearly 23% faster than the RX 7900 XT.

It lagged behind the RTX 4070 Ti, though, by about 8%, a deficit that grew wider at 1080p production (4-star) quality, where the RTX 4070 rendered the movie 25% slower than the 4070 Ti and 6.78% slower than the RX 7900 XT.

For Handbrake, the RTX 4070 manages to pull out its first clean win on the creative side, though not by a whole lot. Still, 170 frames per second encoding from 4K to 1080p is not bad at all.

Overall then, the RTX 4070 puts in a solid creative performance, besting the RTX 3080, the RX 7900 XT, the RTX 3070 Ti, and the RTX 3070, while barely losing out to the RTX 3080 Ti.

Gaming Performance

An Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card on a pink desk mat — (Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

As good of a creative card as the RTX 4070 is, in its bones, this is a gamers' graphics card, so gaming performance is definitely where I spent most of my time testing the RTX 4070. I want to note that the included figures here are a representative sample of my testing, and that not all test results are shown.

When it comes to gaming performance, the RTX 4070 offers some of the best you're going to get at this price, though there are some stipulations to bring up right out the gate.

First, broadly speaking, this card can game at 4K on most games not called Cyberpunk 2077 or Metro: Exodus using max settings natively, so long as you keep things within reasonable limits. Or, really, one limit: keep ray tracing turned off.

Overall, the RTX 4070 gets about 58 fps on average at 4K when not ray tracing, with a floor of 45 fps at 4K, which is eminently playable. Turn ray tracing to the max and your get an average fps of 34 with a floor of 25, which is just better than a slideshow.

The RTX 3080 doesn't fare too much better on this metric, managing 40 fps on average with a floor of 29 fps at max settings with ray tacing turned on, while the RTX 3080 Ti averages about 36 fps and a floor of 19 fps. This does put the RTX 4070 just behind the 3080 Ti in terms of average fps and with a higher fps floor than the 3080 Ti.

If you're dead set on ray tracing, the RTX 4070 can certainly deliver, thanks to DLSS, which can bump those numbers back up to 79 fps on average with a floor of 55 fps. Compare that to the RTX 3080's 80 fps average with a 58 fps floor in our tests and the RTX 4070 can definitely go toe to toe with the RTX 3080 when ray tracing on max settings if DLSS is on.

In addition, the RTX 4070 gets about 10% less fps on average than the RTX 3080 Ti at 4K with ray tracing and DLSS on, (79 fps to the 3080 Ti's 88 fps), and a roughly 14% lower fps floor than the RTX 3080 Ti (55 fps to the 3080 Ti's 64 fps).

Overall, the RTX 4070 manages an average 57 fps at 4K, with a floor of 41 fps, across all the settings I tested. This is about 28% lower than the RTX 4070 Ti (79 fps average, overall), about 10% lower than the RTX 3080 (63 fps average, overall), the RX 7900 XT (64 fps average, overall), and the RTX 3080 Ti (64 fps average, overall).

These numbers skew a bit against the RTX 4070, since the RTX 4070 Ti, RX 7900 XT, RTX 3080, and RTX 3080 Ti all handle native 4K gaming much better, but so few people play at native 4K anymore that is a fairly meaningless advantage.

Meanwhile, the RTX 4070 actually beats the RX 7900 XT by about 20% when using DLSS (versus the RX 7900 XT's FSR) at 4K with max settings and ray tracing; 79 fps on average to 66 fps on average, respectively. It also manages to strike a dead heat with the RTX 3080 (80 fps average) and come just 10% short of the RTX 3080 Ti's average RT performance at 4K with ray tracing.

It's important to note as well that these don't factor in DLSS 3 Frame Generation, to make it a fair comparison.

As for the RTX 3070, the RTX 4070 manages about 39% better average 4K performance, with a 53% higher fps floor (57 fps average with a 43 fps floor for the RTX 4070 compared to the RTX 3070's 41 fps average and 28 fps floor).

When it comes to 1440p gaming, the RTX 4070 is on much more solid footing, even if some of the bigger cards definitely perform better in absolute terms. The RTX 4070 underperforms the RTX 3080 by about 8% in non-ray-traced, non-upscaled 1440p gaming, on average (105 fps to the RTX 3080's 115 fps), though they both have a very similar floor around 80-85 fps.

Meanwhile, the RTX 4070 falls about 12% short of the RTX 3080 Ti's 119 average fps at non-ray-traced, non-DLSS 1440p.

Both the RTX 4070 Ti and RX 7900 XT kinda clobber the RTX 4070 with roughly 25-29% better performance at non-ray-traced, non-upscaled 1440p gaming, and this carries over into gaming with ray tracing settings maxed out, though the RTX 4070 is still getting north of 60 fps on average (67 fps, to be precise), with a relatively decent floor of 51 fps.

The real kicker though is when we turn on DLSS, at which point the RTX 4070 beats out everything but the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 3080 Ti, including the RX 7900 XT, which it outperforms by about 29% on average (125 fps to 97 fps), with a much higher floor of 88 fps to the RX 7900 XT's 60 fps, a nearly 49% advantage.

The RTX 4070 also beats the RTX 3080 here too, with about 5% better performance on average and a 7.5% higher fps floor on average than the RTX 3080. Incredibly, the RTX 4070 is just 3% slower than the RTX 3080 Ti when both are using DLSS at 1440p with max ray tracing.

As for the RTX 3070, the RTX 4070 gets about 35% better performance at 1440p with ray tracing and DLSS 2.0 than the card it replaces (125 fps to 93 fps), with a nearly 53% higher fps floor on average (87 fps to the 3070's 57 fps), meaning that where the RTX 3070 is setting the 1440p standard, the RTX 4070 is blowing well past it into territory the RTX 3070 simply cannot go.

The story is pretty much the same at 1080p, with there being essentially no difference between the RTX 4070, the RTX 3080, the RTX 3080 Ti, and the RX 7900 XT, with the RTX 3070 languishing about 30% behind and the RTX 4070 Ti off on its own out ahead of everyone else.

There has been a lot of talk about the RTX 4070 ahead of its launch as benchmarks have leaked and people have looked at numbers out of context and downplayed the performance of the RTX 4070 based on one or two tests. They've even pointed to the price increase to say that this card is a disappointment.

Granted, I'm not thrilled about the 20% price increase either, but there's no getting around the fact that you're getting a graphics card here with just 200W TGP that's putting up numbers to rival the RTX 3080 Ti. And I haven't even touched on the new features packed into Lovelace that you can't get with the last-gen Nvidia graphics cards.

The numbers are what they are, and the RTX 4070's performance is simply outstanding across every resolution in all the ways that matter.

Performance score: 5 / 5

Should you buy the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 ?

A man's hand holding the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card — (Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

Buy it if...

You want next-gen performance for less than $600
The Nvidia RTX 4070 offers performance on par with the RTX 3080 and even the RTX 3080 Ti for a good deal less.

You don't want a massive GPU
Graphics cards are starting to resemble transformers nowadays (both the autobot and power plant variety), so it's nice to get a graphics card that's just normal-sized.

You want next-gen features like DLSS 3
Nvidia's hardware is often on the bleeding edge of the industry, but things like DLSS 3 and Nvidia Reflex are Nvidia's not-so-secret force multiplier here.

Don't buy it if...

You can get an RTX 3080 cheap
Generally, the RTX 4070 is going to outperform the 3080, but if you don't care about the advanced features and can grab the 3080 in a bargain bin, you could save some money.

You're looking for Nvidia's next budget card
The RTX 4070 is a lot cheaper than the rest of the current-gen graphics card lineups from Nvidia and AMD, but at $600, it's still too expensive to truly be a "budget" GPU.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 review: Also consider

If our Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 review has you considering other options, here are two more graphics cards to consider...

How I tested the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti

I spent about 50 hours with the RTX 4070 in total
Besides general benchmarking, I used the card for everyday gaming and creative work

My test bench specs

Here is the systems I used to test the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D
CPU Cooler: Cougar Poseidon GT 360 AIO Cooler
DDR5 RAM: 32GB Corsair Dominator Platinum @ 5,200MHz & 32GB G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo @ 5,200MHz
Motherboard: ASRock X670E Taichi
SSD: Samsung 980 Pro SSD @ 1TB
Power Supply: Corsair AX1000 80-Plus Titanium (1000W) Case: Praxis Wetbench

When I test a graphics card, I start by making sure that all tests are performed on the same test bench setup to isolate GPU performance. I then run it through a series of synthetic benchmarking tools like 3DMark as well as in-game benchmarks in the most recent PC games I can access like Cyberpunk 2077 and F1 2022.

I run everything on the maximum settings possible without upscaling tech, and I run all tests at the resolution a reader is most likely to use a given card at. In the case of the RTX 4070, this meant testing at 1080p, 1440p, and 2160p.

I also make sure to install the latest relevant drivers and rerun tests on any competing graphics card that I might have already reviewed and tested, like the RTX 4070 Ti, RX 7900 XT, and RTX 3080 to make sure that I have the most current scores to account for any driver updates. All of these scores are recorded and compared against the card's predecessor, its most direct rival, and the card directly above and below it in the product stack, if those cards are available.

I then average these scores to come to a final overall score and divide that by the card's MSRP to see how much performance every dollar or pound spent actually gets you to find how much value the card actually brings to the table.

Finally, I actually use the card in my own personal computer for several days, playing games, using apps like Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator, and watching for any anomalies, crashes, glitches, or visual disruptions that may occur during my time with the card. Having extensively covered and tested many graphics cards over the years, I know what a graphics card should do and how it should perform, and can readily identify when something is not performing up to expectations and when it exceeds them.

Read more about how we test

First reviewed April 2023

Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition review: my new favorite Chromebook

8:00 pm | April 6, 2023

Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets | Tags: CPU, Intel Core, US | Comments: Off

Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition: Two-minute review

Honestly, I wish I was allowed to put more items in that ‘Pros’ list up there. The Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition (which, I will admit, is something of a mouthful) genuinely might be the best Chromebook I’ve ever reviewed. It’s beautiful. It’s perfect. It’s, uh… wait, it’s a thousand bucks?

Yes, the entry price is sure to make some folks’ wallets shrivel in horror, but don’t run for the hills just yet. That $999 price tag is still less than the HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook that currently sits at the top of our carefully-curated best Chromebooks list - and while Framework’s entry doesn’t quite offer the same level of performance, it does plenty to justify the cost.

For those unfamiliar with Framework, it’s a company that specializes in ‘fixing’ consumer electronics - not physically repairing them but fixing the broken nature of our transient, wasteful consumption of technological goods. Hardware - in particular, laptops - is becoming less and less repairable and long-lasting. Planned obsolescence is a huge problem, with kit designed to essentially become redundant after just a few years so you’re forced to drop more cash on a newer model.

To hell with all that, says Framework - and I couldn’t agree more. Laptops should be user-repairable and user-upgradable; I should be able to crack open my MacBook Air to slap in a bigger drive, faster memory, or a new battery, not be beholden to the whims (and fees) of a teenaged Apple store ‘genius’.

The Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition photographed on a wooden desk. — (Image credit: Future)

Back when we reviewed the original Windows-powered ‘DIY edition’ of the Framework Laptop, we praised its design, repairability, and performance - and I fully believe that Chrome OS is the perfect home for this sort of device.

Since it relies mainly on web apps and cloud computing, Chrome OS demands less system resources from your laptop, allowing Framework to outfit this Chromebook with a relatively tame Intel Core i5 CPU and 8GB of RAM. On a Windows laptop, I might look at those specs with that price tag and scoff; here, it makes a lot more sense. Sure, you’re still paying a hearty sum, but the Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition’s solid performance and unique features make it more than worth the money in my eyes.

In keeping with previous non-Chrome models (and Framework’s overall design ethos), this Chromebook is constructed and packaged using recycled materials, contains easily replaceable internal components, and - best of all - features hot-swappable ‘expansion cards’ that enable you to customize your laptop’s port selection in seconds.

I’m gonna say it: this is the future of laptops. Buy one, buy your kid one, buy your grandma one. I want Framework to succeed so badly; because we’re in a downward spiral of tech hardware consumption that’s only going to get worse for us all.

I don’t like doomsaying, but the numbers don’t lie. We now produce 50 million metric tons of e-waste annually - and a lot of that is down to laptops, tablets, and phones that (by design!) can’t be repaired by consumers. I hope that one day, all the best laptops will be like this one. It’s time for change. It’s time for Framework.

Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition review: Price and availability

Base price of $999 (around £800 / AU$1,500)
Expansion cards range from $9 to $149
Only available in the US at time of writing

I’m not going to claim that the Framework Chromebook is one of the best cheap laptops, although it does offer a lot for the asking price. $999 is fairly expensive for a Chromebook, no doubt. But with a 12th-gen Intel processor, 2K display, and generally solid construction, it’s already well on the way to marking itself as solid value for money.

Customizability is a big selling point here. I’ll get more into it later, but the upshot of the ‘expansion card’ system is that the Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition effectively has four Thunderbolt 4 ports - something that’s still missing from plenty of Chromebooks.

These cards vary in price from $9 for a simple USB-A or USB-C port to $149 for a hefty 1TB slot-in drive, which can be easily removed to take with you. You can buy them from Framework’s own online marketplace, along with a variety of other components for replacing or upgrading your laptop’s internals.

As you’ll learn in the Design section further down, Framework hasn’t skimped on quality. In addition to Thunderbolt 4 support, we’ve got a Full HD webcam, the latest Wi-Fi 6E connectivity, and a robust brushed aluminum outer casing. It certainly feels the way a premium Chromebook should.

It’s worth noting that the Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition isn’t available outside the US at present, hence the pricing estimates provided above for the UK and Australia. There’s currently no news on whether this model will make it to other regions, but if you opt to import one you can purchase regional keyboards - since that’s user-replaceable too!

Price: 4 / 5

Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition review: Specs

There's only one configuration of the Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition available for you to buy - but due to the nature of the laptop, you can upgrade and customize it to an impressive degree.

The default configuration uses a 12th-gen Intel Core i5-1240P with 8GB of DDR4 and a 256GB SSD. The laptop essentially has four Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, but these are hidden beneath the casing for you to slot the expansion cards into them, letting you decide exactly which ports you want and how you want them positioned.

While the SSDs, RAM, keyboard, screen bezel, and obviously the expansion cards are available to purchase and upgrade individually, you can't buy a specific CPU for Framework's laptops. Instead, the company sells integrated mainboards that incorporate a processor, motherboard, and cooling solution. You can now get 13th-gen Intel models, as Framework has started to make new configurations for its Windows laptops - and those are fully backwards-compatible with this version.

Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition review: Design

Almost unmatched build quality for a Chromebook
Comfortable keyboard and touchpad
Swappable ports are amazing

Not content with just making a Chromebook that was sustainably designed and user-friendly, Framework also had to flex a little, didn’t they? This is one of the best Chromebooks out there in terms of physical design, mirroring the best aspects of the regular Framework Laptop but with a few Google-inspired twists.

The outer shell is clean, brushed aluminum with the Framework logo stamped in black on the lid along with the ubiquitous Chromebook logo in the top corner - though here it’s in greyscale, so as not to detract from the laptop’s straightforward aesthetic. Opening it up, we’ve got a pleasingly large trackpad and a black keyboard with soft white LED backlighting.

The keys themselves are a good size and well-spaced, making typing on the Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition feel nice and comfortable even for extended periods. The Chromebook keyboard layout may feel a little alien to Windows users at first, with the caps lock and Esc key replaced by the ‘Everything Button’ and lock key, but it’s an otherwise easy adjustment.

The display is frankly far beyond what I’ve seen in the vast majority of Chromebooks I’ve tested, a 3:2 aspect ratio ‘productivity screen’ with a 2K resolution that matches the great display on the aforementioned HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook. The maximum brightness is great at over 400 nits, and 100% sRGB gamut means bright colors look vibrant.

Google already touts improved digital security as a key selling point of Chrome OS, and we’ve got some decent physical security features here too. The square power button doubles as a fingerprint scanner, while the excellent 1080p 60fps webcam and dual microphone array both feature dedicated kill switches on the top bezel of the screen - a nice touch that far too many laptops forgo.

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Of course, I couldn’t not talk about the expansion cards here. They’re phenomenally easy to slot in and remove, with a simple button on the underside of the laptop to release them so they’ll never fall out while the laptop is in your bag.

Framework was kind enough to send us a selection of cards featuring USB-A, USB-C, MicroSD, and HDMI outputs, but you can also get Ethernet, DisplayPort, and 3.5mm jack adaptors (though the latter is already included separately to the card slots).

Continuing the theme of customizability, Framework also sells swappable keyboard covers and screen bezels, and the fully-recyclable box also comes with a small Torx driver to open up the laptop and swap out the memory, storage, or even the entire mainboard. Like the look of this Chromebook, but wish it came with a more powerful 13th-gen Intel Core i7 CPU and 32GB of DDR5 RAM instead? You can make that a reality. I can’t stress this enough: that’s cool as hell.

Design: 5 / 5

Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition review: Performance

Intel Core i5-1240P is a solid CPU
Doesn’t get as noisy as its Windows counterpart
Chrome OS is still limited in some areas

Benchmarks

Here's how the Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition performed in our suite of benchmark tests:

TechRadar Battery Life Test: 9 hours and 2 minutes
Chromium Github Octane Benchmark: 81,533
Browserbench Jetstream Benchmark: 238.96
Kraken Benchmark: 470ms
WebGL Aquarium (30,000 fish): 42 fps

If those specs up above were for a $999 Windows laptop, I’d be a tad concerned. But Chrome OS has always been able to do more with less compared to Microsoft’s nigh-omnipresent operating system, able to run smoothly on far less powerful hardware than what’s on offer here.

So that Core i5-1240P processor and 8GB of RAM found in my review model is more than enough: Chrome OS runs buttery-smooth here, with no slowdown whatsoever through my entire testing process. Opening a ton of Chrome tabs? No problem. Running games from the Google Play Store? You’ve got it.

In fact, the graphical performance on offer here is impressive. Sure, you won’t be playing all of the best PC games here, but WebGL performance was strong, and when I downloaded some Play Store games to give the integrated Iris Xe graphics more of a workout, I got an impressively steady framerate north of 30fps. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: iGPUs are the future of gaming. Who needs a graphics card, right?

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General CPU performance is also fairly strong, providing speedy operating in just about every area and giving solid results across the rest of our benchmark suite. The Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition also runs very cool and quiet; in our review of the original Framework Laptop, we critiqued the noisy fans, but they rarely kicked in here - only while downloading Genshin Impact’s massive update pack and after running a hardware stress test for several minutes.

One of the best things about the Framework Chromebook is still the fact that if you’re ever even remotely dissatisfied with the performance, you can just go ahead and upgrade it!

A simple bump up to 16GB of RAM (if you happen to be running more memory-intensive software) will only cost you $30, while an SSD upgrade to a healthy terabyte of storage will run you $99. As someone who got his start in tech journalism by building custom computers, I have to say that Framework’s pricing is pretty damn reasonable.

Of course, this is a Chrome OS system, so you’ll want to be mindful if you’re switching over from Windows or MacOS. While it’s lighter on system requirements and offers better child safety and data security features, it’s also limited in terms of which apps it can run. If you’re aiming to use a specific piece of software that isn’t on the Play Store (or otherwise downloadable for Chrome OS), consider yourself warned.

Performance: 4.5 / 5

Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition review: Battery life

Decent all-day battery life
Doesn’t quite measure up given the price
Does charge fast, however

Our default Chromebook battery test, which sees us looping a 720p video at 50% brightness and letting the battery run down to empty from a full charge, turned up a respectable but not amazing nine hours of runtime. It also charges fast via USB-C, and you can change which side the charge port is thanks to the slottable expansion cards.

If you’re using the Framework Chromebook for more demanding work, it’ll be less; if you opt to turn on the battery-saver mode and lower the brightness, it’ll be more. Framework has previously noted that there’s a known bug with the battery involving certain expansion cards (including the HDMI output, which I was using during my testing process) so it’s possible that with some future firmware updates, the longevity could be improved.

It’s worth noting here that 50% brightness on this particular Chromebook is actually a fair bit brighter than many cheaper options. Nonetheless, this is still a very middle-of-the-road score. Nine hours of battery life is good and should see you through a full day of work, but we’ve seen plenty of Chromebooks that surpass it - most recently the similarly eco-friendly Acer Chromebook Vero 514, which managed a solid 10+ hours.

Battery life: 4 / 5

Should you buy the Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition?

Buy it if...

You’re eco-conscious
If you’re worried about e-waste and want to make an impact, this is the laptop to buy. Framework’s ethos is unquestionably the best around right now when it comes to sustainable hardware.

You want future-proof
The durability and repairability of the Framework Laptop Chromework Edition are simply a cut above the competition, meaning this laptop will last you for years with some periodic upgrades.

You need an office laptop
With its bright 3:2 display, the Framework Chromebook offers plenty of vertical screen real estate for scrolling through web pages and documents, making it great for office work. It’s also compact and light enough to easily take on your commute.

Don't buy it if...

You’re a serious gamer
The Intel Core i5-1240P inside this laptop actually offers decent graphical performance, but it’s not going to measure up to the power of a dedicated graphics card in a proper gaming laptop.

You want ultra-long battery life
The battery life here isn’t terrible, comfortably eclipsing many Windows laptops, but it’s still decidedly average compared as far as Chromebooks go - and it doesn’t even come close to the MacBook Air.

You’re on a tight budget
Yes, $999 is a lot of money for a Chromebook. I’m sticking to my guns; I still maintain that the price is fair for what you get, especially since Framework’s products are so unique, but it’s an entry price that may be simply too high for some people.

Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition review: Also consider

If our Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition review has you considering other options, here are two more laptops to consider...

How I tested the Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition

Used it for everyday work
Watched Netflix in bed in the evenings
Ran some games as well as our standard suite of benchmark tests

As is custom for my laptop reviews, I incorporated the Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition into my daily routine to properly get to grips with it - using it for my everyday work as well as personal activities (mostly watching Netflix and scrolling through Reddit in bed) in the evenings.

I naturally used it to write most of this review, and found it very comfortable for long typing sessions, which was nice to see - I've typed some negative reviews on some pretty crummy laptop keyboards.

Read more about how we test

First reviewed April 2023

Acer Spin 714 Chromebook review

11:27 am | April 1, 2023

Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets | Tags: CPU, GPU, RAM, SIM | Comments: Off

Acer Spin 714 Chromebook: Two minute review

Chromebooks started their rise by being popular with students, who liked their web-based nature and long battery life, but eventually, businesses realised its virtues.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 714 (CP714-1WN) isn’t a low-cost plastic Chromebook for students but an elegant Ultrabook concept with a 14-inch HD touchscreen and an aluminium body.

Designed as a web-based workhorse, Acer gave it a durable, full-size keyboard with a backlit design that makes it easy to type in low light.

Even with a lightweight metal and plastic exterior, the Spin is a hefty 3.09 lbs (1.4 kg) and is 0.7 inches (18.05 mm) thick. That’s an almost identical weight to its predecessor and not so heavy that you would have trouble carrying it.

Acer has previously released two versions of its 713 design, and the new 714 builds on that legacy by providing more power and functionality while retaining much of the form factor and styling that made the 713 series so popular.

However, in this transition to 12th Gen technology, Acer managed to misplace the MicroSD card slot from the previous model, lost the terrific 2256 x 1504 resolution screen, and the battery life of 10 hours hasn’t gotten any better.

What you do get here is a much better Intel 12th Gen processor with more powerful graphics, HDMI out, a Thunderbolt 4 port and a stylus that is neatly housed in the chassis.

The jury is still unsure if this constitutes a significant improvement over the 713, but it’s a classy piece of hardware and a notch above most hybrid Chromebooks.

Acer Spin 714 Chromebook: Price and availability

How much does it cost? $730/ £799
When is it out? It is available now
Where can you get it? You can get it in most regions direct from Acer or through an online retailer.

Acer Spin 714 Chromebook Specs

The Acer Spin 714 Chromebook that was sent to us for review came with the following hardware:

Model: CP714-1WN
CPU: Intel Core i5-1235U
GPU: Intel Iris Xe Graphics
RAM: 8GB LPDDR5
Storage: 512GB PCIe Gen 3, 8Gb/s, NVME
Screen: 35.6 cm (14") Touch screen
Resolution: 1920 x 1200
SIM: N/A
Weight: 3.09 lbs (1.4 kg)
Dimensions: 312.6 x 224 x 18.05 mm
Robustness: MIL-STD 810H
Camera: FHD MIPI webcam (1920 x 1080),1080 HD video at 60fps
Networking: WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2
OS: ChromeOS
Battery: 56Wh 3-cell Li-ion battery

At more than $700, the Spin 714 is at the more expensive end of the Chromebook spectrum, but it is cheaper than ASUS CB9400CEA Chromebook and the Google Pixelbook.

Acer also makes an Enterprise edition of this model that costs £1,099.99 in the UK and is priced specifically for Corporate customers in the USA at around $1049.99.

The Enterprise versions typically come with more RAM, up to 16GB, and business administration tools are preinstalled on them for easier rollouts.

T1here are cheaper Chromebook options from Acer and other brands that can offer a similar specification for much less. Intel, Lenovo, HP, Asus and Acer all make ARM-based designs that are less than half this cost.

As a good example, the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i is closer to $500 for a similar if less powerful design.

Value: 3 / 5

Acer Spin 714 Chromebook: Design

Attractive styling
Excellent port selection
Inbuilt stylus

We’ve seen enough broken Chromebooks to know that they can be abused by their owners, so being able to take a few knocks is essential for a business tool like the Spin 714.

The Spin 714 uses a very similar physical design to the 713, and given how successful that machine was, that Acer stuck with a similar plan isn’t a big surprise.

However, the devil is most certainly in the detail here, and the Spin 714 has arguably lost as much as it gained from the 713.

For those unsure about the ‘Spin’ aspect of this design, this Chromebook has a fully extensible hinge that allows the screen to go from fully closed to 360 degrees open, allowing the machine to operate as a tablet. It can do all the positions between those extremes to provide tent mode for watching a presentation or streamed content.

This flexibility allows for a hybrid use model, where the 714 can be a conventional laptop or a tablet, depending on the demands.

Mostly for tablet mode, the screen is touch-sensitive, and Acer does include an integrated stylus if smudgy fingerprints annoy you as much as they do us. The stylus isn’t a pressure sensitive one or has any buttons, but it's better than using your finger.

A nice touch is that the slot it lives in is also the charger for the stylus, and just 15 minutes inserted in its home is enough to recharge power for four hours of use.

If it wasn’t running ChromeOS, the same hardware could run Windows or Linux happily since it has all the ports and Intel x86/64 parts needed for a good computing experience.

On the left side is a Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port, a full-size HDMI out, the 2.5mm audio jack and a power button. And on the right is another Thunderbolt 4 port, a USB 3.0 Type-A port and a volume rocker.

We’ve seen some poor USB-C implementations on Windows laptops, where the port used for charging is exclusive to that job and can’t be utilised for any other purpose. But here, the Thunderbolt 4 ports on each side are interchangeable, allowing charging on whichever side is most convenient.

This isn’t the biggest keyboard we’ve seen on a machine this size, but it is backlit and has a pleasant key travel for typing. We’re less convinced about the touchpad. It’s small, but as you have a touch screen, you’re not forced to use it without a mouse.

A fingerprint sensor below the keyboard and to the left of the touchpad, and a 1080p webcam at the top centre of the screen with a physical privacy cover (hooray).

Probably the most significant difference over the 713 is the display, which is a less bright and less impressive resolution than what came before.

For those that never saw the lovely 400 nit panel on the 713, the one on the 714 is fine, but it doesn’t offer the same refined experience, sadly.

Design: 4 / 5

Acer Spin 714 Chromebook: Hardware

12th Gen CPU
Thunderbolt 4 port
Same battery size as 713
No LTE or SIM slot

Where the 713 used 10th and 11th Gen Intel parts, the 714 has the Intel Core i5-1235U, a 12th Gen CPU with ten cores. Depending on the 713 model, that machine either had a Core i7-1185G7, i5-1135G7, i5-10210U or i3-1115G4, but the i5-1235U used in the 714 is probably better than all of those options.

Because of the way ChromeOS works and its inherent web functionality, seeing the processing power in this machine in action is challenging. But, we did notice that when using the machine for standard tasks, it didn’t run the fans, something the 713 did, irrespective of the processor model.

Keeping cooler has advantages for power consumption and the life expectancy of the chips, so we’re all for those changes.

A major selling point on the Acer website for this model is that it offers a Thunderbolt 4 port, which has backward compatibility with USB 3.2. On a Windows laptop, this would be a desirable feature, as it would allow the connecting of external Thunderbolt or USB-C SSD storage and high-speed transfers.

However, moving files on and off the device is a 20th-century approach to problems. Because the advantage of a Chromebook is that everything is stored on the Cloud and not shuffled around using file managers.

The deeper we delved into the different strategies that a Windows PC and a Chromebook have to file management, the more we wondered why does this machine have a 12 Gen Core-i5 class processor? Can its power never be effectively used on web-based applications or data? This high-end class of Chromebook ends up wanting to be one thing but acting much more like a Windows PC, and the inclusion of Thunderbolt 4 only highlights this contradiction.

If you’re an IT person who has a user that has a Chromebook that insists on moving files from the system to external storage and back, they evidently don’t understand how to use it.

There are some exceptions to this, like video editing and graphics design, and it could be useful for bringing a media movie collection along on a trip, but the majority of owners that understand Chromebooks are unlikely to use it, ever.

While we did see less fan activity and a cooler running processor, we didn’t notice that this machine lasted any longer on battery.

The 56Wh 3-cell Li-ion battery seems the same as was in the 713, and the quoted ten hours of operating lifespan is effectively the same.

That the battery doesn’t go further with a 12th Gen processor onboard hints that other factors, like the NVMe storage and the new screen, are consuming the extra power that the Core i5-1235U efficiency provides.

Whatever the power consumption equations are, it provides enough power for a good working day, and a 65W Liteon branded USB-C charger is provided that can give you four hours of running time for 30 minutes of charging.

A bigger battery would have been appreciated, but it might have made the 714 heavier than a Chromebook should be.

The missing part of the 714 hardware ensemble is mobile comms because when they’re not connected to the Internet, Chromebooks aren’t at their best.

Why Acer didn’t include a SIM slot to allow for LTE and 5G connections on the move is a genuine head-scratcher, and it forces owners to use a phone as a WiFi access point to get it connected away from the office. That they didn’t even offer this in the Spin 714 Enterprise edition (that has more RAM and preinstalled remote admin tools), is even more bemusing.

Removing the MicroSD card slot from the 713, we’ll forgive, but not including any mobile comms options is less defensible.

Hardware: 4 / 5

Acer Spin 714 Chromebook: Performance

ChromeOS
Too powerful for some benchmarks

Acer Spin 714 Chromebook Benchmarks

Here's how the Acer Spin 714 Chromebook performed in our suite of benchmark tests:

Mozilla Kraken: 488.5ms
Speedometer: 202 runs/minute
JetStream 2: 214.896
GeekBench: Single (1398), Multi (5555), Compute (10773)
3DMark Wild Life: 7830
PCMark Work 3.0: 12135

Chromebooks are difficult to judge from a performance perspective as they don’t typically run predefined executables like Windows machines. This Chromebook can run Android applications, but this is done using hardware emulation. Making it not an apples-for-apples comparison with an ARM-based phone or tablet.

We ran PCMark for Android and 3DMark, with varying results. 3DMark refused to run most tests declaring the system to be too powerful, but we did extract a Wild Life result from it.

What scores we did get told us that this is a powerful machine, which isn’t much of a shock. The performance of a Chromebook is dependent on many things that aren’t internal hardware in most scenarios, so does the power in this one ever get fully exploited? We have our doubts.

The Acer Spin 714 Chromebook desperately wants to be a Windows PC, and that’s somewhat at odds with running ChromeOS and being designated a Chromebook.

Performance: 5 / 5

The Acer Spin 714 Chromebook is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a high-quality Chromebook and is prepared to pay for a refined experience. It has a sleek design, excellent performance, and works effectively with ChromeOS.

It is significantly cheaper than other Chromebooks in its class, but its special features, such as the 360-degree hinge, stylus, and Thunderbolt ports, make it more appealing to power users.

However, as this is a Chromebook and not a Windows PC, will the power in this machine ever be effectively leveraged? And, if it isn’t, then what is the point of such a high specification?

The new 714 design does offer a few new twists over the 713, but owners of the previous generation might miss its superior screen and MicroSD card slot. But the technology that this design most needed was LTE/5G comms, and for whatever reason, Acer engineers didn’t consider that to be something worth including.

Acer Spin 714 Chromebook: Report card

Acer Spin 714 Chromebook?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also consider

Acer Swift X 16 review: a good laptop, but Intel Arc simply isn’t there yet

4:45 pm | March 30, 2023

Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets | Tags: CPU | Comments: Off

Acer Swift X 16: Two-minute review

Acer’s Swift series of laptops has consistently produced some of the best laptops around for productivity - from the balanced all-rounder Swift 5 to the surprisingly budget-friendly Swift 3 OLED - and the Acer Swift X 16 is arguably the powerhouse of the Swift family.

Designed to be larger and more powerful than its numerical counterparts, the latest Swift X 16 offers a break from tradition: instead of running on integrated graphics or a compact Nvidia laptop GPU, this model uses a new Intel graphics card - more specifically, the Intel Arc A370M.

Intel’s Arc graphics technology is still relatively unproven, with Intel returning to the discrete GPU market to do battle with AMD and Nvidia after 24 years of absence. Naturally, this Swift X pairs the A370M graphics card with a powerful 12th-gen ‘Alder Lake’ Intel laptop processor, and the results are… mixed.

CPU performance is strong, and Intel’s hard focus on AV1 video encode and decode makes this laptop a solid choice for content creators and video editors, but it falls down a bit when it comes to gaming and more demanding 3D rendering tasks. It’s worth noting, though, that the A370M is very power-efficient, meaning that the Swift X 16 gets more longevity from a single battery charge than laptops running comparable Nvidia GPUs.

Acer Swift X 16 on wooden table — (Image credit: Future)

Fortunately, the Swift X 16 has more going for it than just this new Arc GPU - this laptop packs an excellent 2.5K screen and a generally very robust chassis with plenty of physical connections (including HDMI and Thunderbolt 4 for connecting additional displays). The backlit keyboard is also great, comfortable no matter what you’re using it for.

It runs cool and quiet, and while it’s a little chunky for an office laptop, that’s a tradeoff made for the large display and full-size keyboard layout. I found the touchpad wasn’t as responsive as I’d like, though. The design is clean but lacks the sleek style of many other productivity laptops, like Acer’s own Swift Edge, making it look a tad outdated in comparison.

Considering that it comes in at $999 (£899 / around AU$1,499), the Acer Swift X 16 isn’t exactly a budget piece of kit, but it works hard to justify its price tag and should prove a valuable asset to any budding content creators or professional video editors.

Acer Swift X 16 review: Price and availability

Starts at $999 / £899 / around AU$1,499
Can opt for 512GB or 1TB SSD
Nvidia RTX models also available

With a base price of $999 / £899 / around AU$1,499, the Acer Swift X 16 sits pretty squarely in the midrange when it comes to laptops for creative and office work. That’s the current price, by the way - this model of the Swift X 16 originally launched in the US with a $1,299 price tag, but that was evidently deemed a bit steep. Intel’s consistent price-cutting on its desktop Arc GPUs could have been a factor here.

So it’s not going to go on our list of the best cheap laptops, but in terms of the performance offered I’m reasonably happy with the new pricing - bear in mind that in the US, there’s also a 512GB SSD model available, which is a little cheaper. The Swift X doesn’t appear to be officially available in Australia at the time of writing, so the Australian pricing provided here is only a guideline.

Price score: 4 / 5

Acer Swift X 16 review: Specs

There aren't many variants of the Swift X 16, unless you start looking toward older 11th-gen Intel CPU models. You can configure it with up to a 2TB SSD, but the RAM configurations are tied to the processor - the i5 variants come with 8GB of LPDDR5 instead of the 16GB in our review unit.

If you like the look of the Acer Swift X 16 but don’t plan to take advantage of the Intel Arc A370M’s superior video encode capabilities, there’s also a 14-inch variant that uses a less powerful 12th-gen Intel Core i5 processor and an Nvidia RTX 3050 GPU - alternatively, you could opt for a slightly older model with the superior RTX 3050 Ti and an 11th-gen Intel CPU.

Acer Swift X 16 review: Design

Big, bright display
Robust but unexciting chassis
Touchpad isn’t great - buy a mouse

One of the first features of the Acer Swift X 16 that jumps out at you is right there in the name: the 16-inch 2.5K display has a 16:10 aspect ratio and excellent maximum brightness, making it perfect for editing work and reading documents. The bezel is tiny, and the 100 sRGB color reproduction makes it a solid choice for artistic endeavors.

I used the Swift X 16 as my daily work laptop for more than a week, and I never found that it caused me any eye strain; that’s a frequent problem for me personally, since I suffer from occasional migraines and eye strain ever since I was hospitalized for cancer treatment in 2021 (I sometimes use blue-light-filtering glasses when working with very bright screens). The glossy finish on the display here means that it’s not particularly well-suited for use outdoors or in very brightly-lit environments, so bear that in mind.

At 1.75kg, my review model of the Swift X 16 isn’t exactly super-lightweight thanks to its discrete graphics card and machined aluminum casing, but it’s actually not as heavy as many laptops of the same size; for comparison, this year’s MacBook Pro 16-inch weighs in at 2.2kg. The Swift X is also pretty thin, measuring just 18mm thick with the lid closed.

That aluminum chassis feels very durable, able to stand up to roughing it for the busy professional on the go, but I can’t help but feel that the whole thing looks a little… old-fashioned. The entire design puts function over form, which will be amazing for some users, but makes the Swift X look a bit tired next to some of its more aesthetically pleasing competitors.

As I mentioned above, the keyboard here is truly wonderful: it’s a 95% layout that includes a full numpad and function keys, with only a small handful of the keycaps (such as L-shift and the up and down arrows) getting squished in order to fit inside the rectangular profile. The keys themselves have a decent amount of travel with a small bounce, but there’s little to no flex in the casing even on very firm keypresses, which is great. The keys are mostly large enough that typing (or gaming) for extended periods is very comfortable.

Unfortunately, the touchpad lets it all down a bit. While it’s suitably large and the palm rejection is solid, I found the click action to be flimsy and unsatisfying, with far too much depth along the bottom edge - I was actually worried about breaking it. While it generally worked fine, there was more than one occasion where I found its accuracy faltering too, so be sure to pick up a good computer mouse if you do choose to buy a Swift X 16.

When it comes to physical connectivity, you’ve got two USB-A and two USB-C ports, the latter of which are both Thunderbolt 4 enabled for video output and power delivery (this is also how the Swift X charges). There’s an HDMI 2.1 port too, if that’s your display medium of choice, but no SD card reader, which is a shame since that could’ve helped the Swift X 16 appeal to digital photographers.

The webcam is a 1080p one, which puts it ahead of competitors still using lower-res 720p cameras. The speakers were actually better than I expected, but didn’t blow me away - they’re sufficient for video calls and perhaps listening to music while you work, but we’d still recommend getting a headset for heavy use.

Design score: 4 / 5

Acer Swift X 16 review: Performance

Intel i7 CPU works hard
Arc graphics aren’t quite up to par yet
Fans aren’t too noisy

Benchmarks

Here's how the Acer Swift X 16 performed in our suite of benchmark tests:

3DMark Night Raid: 24,374; Fire Strike: 7,901; Time Spy: 3,897
GeekBench 5.4: 1,752 (single-core); 10,340 (multi-core)
25GB File Copy: 1236.5MBps
Handbrake 1.6: 7m 5s
CrossMark: Overall: 1,689 Productivity: 1,618 Creativity: 1,812 Responsiveness: 1,560
Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm: 44fps
Web Surfing (Battery Informant): 7hrs 5m
PCMark 10 Battery Life: 9hrs 44m

CPU performance here is undeniably strong, with good scores in CrossMark and GeekBench as well as generally speedy operation during regular use; I had two dozen Chrome tabs open at one point and wasn’t seeing any slowdown whatsoever. Intel’s 12th-gen ‘Alder Lake’ processors are powerful little chips, put to good use here by Acer.

Looking over at that Intel Arc graphics card, it performs reasonably well in synthetic testing (see the 3DMark results) when compared to similar competing GPUs like the RTX 3050, but when I actually tried using it for gaming, I was getting lower scores than I would with Nvidia and AMD’s cards. It definitely can’t swing with the best gaming laptops.

This is because the Arc graphics platform is still relatively new, with fledgling drivers and some kinks that Intel has yet to iron out. Performance should actually improve over time, and you definitely can already play games on the A370M GPU found in this Swift X - just don’t expect to be running all the best PC games at maximum graphical settings. For a spot of casual gaming at 1080p, the Swift X 16 does just fine, comfortably clearing the 30fps barrier in Sid Meier's Civilization VI.

It’s worth noting here that Raja Koduri, previously the big dog in charge of the Arc graphics project, recently departed Intel to start his own AI gaming software firm. That doesn’t mean Arc is in dire straits - in fact, it could be an opportunity for Intel’s infant graphics division to reset and get back on track after the many teething issues that plagued the original launch of Arc.

Outside of gaming, the Intel Arc GPU is a solid performer when it comes video encoding and decoding; since it uses the more efficient AV1 encode (as opposed HEVC), it gave us a strong showing in our Handbrake 1.6 video encode benchmark - at this price point, anyway. There’s always the risk third-party platforms like YouTube and TikTok will compress the hell out of your footage, but at least the A370M will give you quick, clean, uncompressed video from your editing software of choice.

While the Swift X 16 isn’t exactly a monster in terms of internal components, it’s still good to see that Acer hasn’t skimped on the cooling solution here. Air is drawn in from the laptop’s underside and (in a novel design choice) tiny gaps in the keyboard by two fans, which then expel heat from vents on the laptop’s right edge and above the keyboard.

Normally this would annoy me, because the right-hand exhaust runs the risk of spewing hot air over your hand when you’re using a mouse, but the Swift X ran cool and near-silently during my entire time using it, only kicking up the fans to a level I could call ‘noisy’ while I was running the stress-testing program Prime95. Even then, they’re a far cry from the screeching fans found in most gaming laptops.

Performance score: 4 / 5

Acer Swift X 16 review: Battery life

Good for a full workday of basic office tasks
More intensive software drains the battery fast
Better battery life available elsewhere

The Acer Swift X 16’s battery life is a mixed bag, because while sub-10-hours isn’t particularly impressive for a non-gaming laptop, it’s also worth bearing in mind that this Swift packs a dedicated GPU - which, were it made by Nvidia or AMD, would probably drain the battery faster than the Intel Arc A370M does.

Overall, you’re looking at between 7 and 10 hours of use (assuming you’re not running it at maximum brightness and volume), for everyday office tasks such as web browsing, word processing, and answering emails. If you’re going to use the Swift X 16 for more demanding workloads like video editing or digital art, be aware that your charge will run out faster

It’s perfectly okay, but you can definitely get better battery life at the same price point elsewhere; the most recent M2 MacBook Air is only a bit more expensive and absolutely blows the Swift X out of the water when it comes to longevity. This is due to the Swift X’s relatively small battery capacity of 52Wh; the similarly-sized LG Gram 16 packs an 80Wh battery, for example.

Fortunately, the AC adapter supplied with the laptop is nice and compact, and it charges via USB-C as mentioned above - something we’re going to be seeing more and more of in the near future. Charge times were typical, going from zero to full in about an hour.

Battery life: 3.5 / 5

Should you buy the Acer Swift X 16?

Buy it if...

You want to edit video
The Intel Arc A370M’s powerful AV1 encode capabilities make this Swift a snap choice for video editing - just bear in mind that you’ll need a separate monitor to edit in 4K, since the resolution caps out at 2.5K here.

You’re going to be typing a lot
The Swift X 16’s large, comfortable keyboard will keep your fingers free of strain even after a full day’s typing away in the office, and the inclusion of a numpad is good too.

You want Thunderbolt 4
With two Thunderbolt 4 enabled USB-C ports, the Swift X offers better physical connectivity than many of its peers - though bear in mind that you’ll sometimes need one of those ports to charge it.

Don't buy it if...

You want to game
While the Intel Arc GPU is solid for video editing work, it’s not really up to scratch when it comes to gaming.

You want ultra-portability
While the Acer Swift X 16 is relatively thin and light for a 16-inch laptop, if you want something super portable you’ll be better served by a smaller ultrabook.

You’re going for style points
Look, the Swift X has a perfectly functional and durable design, but it’s not the most eye-catching laptop I’ve ever seen. If aesthetics are important to you, look elsewhere.

Acer Swift X 16 review: Also consider

If our Acer Swift X 16 review has you considering other options, here are two more laptops to consider...

How I tested the Acer Swift X 16

Used as my regular work laptop for over a week
Tried playing some games on it
Watched TV shows in bed in the evenings

As with every laptop I review, I essentially just swapped the Acer Swift X 16 into my daily routine for about a week and a half. This meant using it for researching and producing my articles, watching videos on YouTube, conducting video meetings, and working on my own fiction writing - plus a bit of gaming here and there, when I had the time.

Although I generally used the Swift X 16 plugged in during my testing process, I did make sure to unplug it and take it with me (along with my dog) to a cafe where I could do some work on battery power. I also used it unplugged in the evening to watch Netflix in bed on three separate occasions, and it never died on me.

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.

Read more about how we test

First reviewed March 2023

Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) review: great gaming laptop with a unique gimmick

2:45 am |

Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets | Tags: Australia, CPU, UK, US | Comments: Off

Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023): Two-minute review

The refresh of last year’s model, 2023’s Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 sets out to be a monster of a gaming machine while avoiding the pitfall of taking on the weight and bulk issue of desktop replacements (to a point of course). It comes in only black, a bit boring for color choices, but the chassis itself is surprisingly thinner than most, which is especially impressive for a laptop housing a GeForce RTX 4090 GPU.

The 16-inch display is a beauty, as it’s a QHD+ (2560 x 1600, WQXGA) mini-LED with a ridiculously high 240Hz refresh rate and 3ms response time that also supports HDR and G-Sync. The sound system is one that befits what the best gaming laptop would be outfitted with, as it’s powered by Dolby Atmos, uses Smart Amp Tech, and features two 2W Tweeter and a 2W dual-force woofer. This ensures that during your session, the laptop conveys every bit of audio design and music, making for a more immersive experience.

It seems that RGB lighting is a requirement for any gaming keyboard, and this one doesn’t disappoint, as both the touchpad and keys are beautifully backlit. The Chiclet keyboard itself is smooth and easy to type on, which helps if you prefer gaming on a keyboard versus connecting a controller.

Gaming performance is the crown jewel of this laptop, with some serious specs, memory, and storage even in the lowest configuration. The base model has an RTX 4070 and the highest is equipped with the incredibly powerful RTX 4090. While testing out the latter graphics card in the review unit I received, I found its boosting capabilities to be quite impeccable, thanks to its max TGP of 150W when using Dynamic Boost on Manual Mode.

Another feature of note and one that sets this refresh apart from previous models as well as other gaming laptops is the AniMe Matrix mode. This mode allows you to activate either default animations and messages or create your own, then display them on the outside chassis. It’s a fun, if not useful, feature that’s best for showing off and entertaining others. But you can easily save money by opting for a model without it.

Though it may be a contender for one of the best Asus laptops, there are some drawbacks to this laptop. First, the throttling issue concerning the CPU is more pronounced in this laptop, which not only lowers the potential of the normally powerful Core i9-13900H but even causes stuttering with any tasks not directly related to gaming. The software, while possessing many features and modes, is counterintuitive and requires a lot of time and effort to navigate.

Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023): Price & availability

black closed gaming laptop — (Image credit: Future)

Starting at $2.999.99 / £2,399.99 (around AU$4,417)
Available now
Available in the US and UK, and possibly Australia in the future

The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) is an incredibly expensive and luxurious gaming laptop. Its starting price is $2.999.99 in the US and £2,399.99 in the UK through the official Asus online store. That pricing works to around AU$4,417. Compared to other similar desktop replacements released with current-gen components like the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i, this laptop is definitely a step above in cost. However, compared to something as premium as the MSI GT77 Titan (2023), it’s a more affordable choice for a high-end machine.

Currently, it isn’t available in Australia just yet. According to a representative, that’s likely to change in the future. As of this writing, the ROG Zephyrus M16 is sold out in the US as well, which makes obtaining it a bit more difficult.

Price score: 4 / 5

Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023): Specs

closeup of laptop stickers — (Image credit: Future)

The specs for the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) review unit sent to me are as follows: an Intel Core i9-13900H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU, 32GB DDR5 RAM, and 2TB of storage, as well as the AniMe Matrix mode that comes with only certain models. The base version is nearly identical in specs except for an RTX 4070 GPU, while the most premium version has the same GPU but with 64GB of RAM.

While there are plenty of models to choose from, each model cannot be configured to your unique specifications.

Specs score: 4 / 5

Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023): Design

Simple color, sleek form factor
AniMe Matrix mode is a fun gimmick
Display and sound system are great

Though the color of the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) is a pretty standard black, overall it has a surprisingly sleeker design than most desktop replacements, especially as my own review model is housing an RTX 4090. That beefy card also increases the weight, putting it at five pounds compared to the RTX 4070 laptop at about four and a half pounds. Despite that, its form factor is well-balanced enough that you barely feel it. The chassis is solid, though not as hardy as other heavier laptops.

It has both an excellent display and audio system that’s built for the best portable gaming experience possible. The 16-inch display is a QHD+ (2560 x 1600, WQXGA) mini-LED with a ridiculously high 240Hz refresh rate and 3ms response time. It also supports HDR and G-Sync for those extra smooth and crisp visuals. As an extra bonus, the bezels are thin enough to offer over 90% screen-to-body ratio, meaning more of your favorite PC game’s UI is visible.

AniMe Matrix mode is the defining feature of this laptop, and it’s pretty cool. You use the built-in software to create messages or animations, which is then displayed on the back of the chassis for others to see. It makes for some fun conversation starters but otherwise has no impact on the laptop’s performance. Not all models have this mode, so feel free to purchase a different version if you need to save some money.

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black gaming laptop with techradar logo

(Image credit: Future)

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gaming laptop keyboard — (Image credit: Future)

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black gaming laptop on side — (Image credit: Future)

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closeup of vent — (Image credit: Future)

The sound is much better quality than most other laptops, as it’s powered by Dolby Atmos, uses Smart Amp Tech, and packs two 2W Tweeter and a 2W dual-force woofer. It’s crystal clear and loses nothing in quality when turned up, perfect for capturing audio design and music. It’s complemented by a superior mic quality that keeps background noises out of your conference calls when the webcam is activated, though the webcam visuals are slightly above average.

The keyboard is a Chiclet type, which makes for nicely snappy, responsive keys. However, the downside is that since the speakers are hugging said keyboard, it doesn’t leave room for a numlock pad, which is an important part of any gaming rig. Both the keyboard and touchpad have RGB lighting, great for illuminating a night session and just pretty to look at.

There’s plenty of ventilation going on as well including liquid metal, a vapor chamber, a heat sink, heat pipes, and fans. It can get a bit noisy at times, and despite all the precautions, some parts – namely the underside and space between the keyboard and screen – are prone to warming up. I also noticed that having AniMe Matrix mode active puts even more of a burden on the ventilation so after a while I had to turn it off.

It has a solid port selection as well, including one 3.5mm combo audio jack, one HDMI 2.1 FRL, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, one Thunderbolt 4, one microSD reader, and one Kensington Lock. It is missing an ethernet cable, which for a normal laptop wouldn’t be too big of a deal but for a dedicated gaming laptop that’s supposed to replace a desktop PC? It forces you to rely on wireless connections only, a kiss of death for connection-reliant fighting games for instance.

Design score: 4 / 5

black gaming laptop with rgb lit keyboard — (Image credit: Future)

Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023): Performance

Gaming performance is top-notch
Clears benchmarks
CPU struggles along

Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023): Benchmarks

Here's how the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 performed in our suite of benchmark tests:

3DMark: Night Raid: 64,312; Fire Strike: 32,053; Time Spy: 14,925; Port Royal: 9,843
Cinebench R23 Multi-core: 19,761 points
GeekBench 5: 1,999 (single-core); 14,823 (multi-core)
PCMark 10 (Home Test): 8,148 points
25GB File Copy: 14.35
Handbrake 1.6: 6:52
CrossMark: Overall: 1997; Productivity: 1937; Creativity: 2072; Responsiveness: 1956
Battery Life (TechRadar movie test): 4 hours, 45 minutes
Total War: Warhammer III (1080p, Ultra): 104 fps; (1080p, Low): 270 fps
Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p, Ultra): 71 fps; (1080p, Low): 72 fps
Dirt 5 (1080p, Ultra): 34 fps; (1080p, Low): 193 fps

If there’s one thing the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) does extremely well, it’s gaming. Even the base model of the gaming laptop is absolutely ripped and the most tricked-out version can flex its way through any title at absolutely max settings plus ray-tracing with no issues.

Compared to other gaming laptops like the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i or the MSI GT77 Titan (2023), benchmark scores are lower, except for the latter which loses out on the PCMark 10 benchmark to the ROG Zephyrus M16. And considering that the pricing of said laptop is higher than Lenovo’s own offerings, it calls into question what you’re paying for. Especially since the Pro 7i is using a 4080 compared to the 4090 of the M16.

But that’s not to say that you aren’t getting your money’s worth either. The fact that this laptop weighs significantly less than the other two laptops, can run every possible graphical and performance enhancement, can be overclocked for even better performance, and will still fit into a modest-sized laptop bag is nothing to sneeze at.

Other than the standard benchmarks, I also performed some personalized ones to test out what it could handle in terms of DLSS 3-enabled ray-tracing. Cyberpunk 2077 performed beautifully, with frame rates consistently above 100. Both the Dartmoor and Dubai benchmark in Hitman 3 also stayed above 100fps and 115fps, respectively. Finally, Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered was the clear winner, averaging between 115-150fps during web-swinging and above 150fps during intense combat sections.

However, while the GPU worked splendidly when it came to any PC game I tested it with, there’s a major flaw that could turn away those needing a more well-rounded machine. Not only did the few CPU-based benchmarks feature plenty of throttled results thanks to the overpowered GPU, but there was very noticeable stuttering when I tried out regular productivity tasks like typing documents and browsing the internet. It’s nothing significant but enough that it made anything other than gaming a bit tedious.

Performance score: 4.5 / 5

Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023): Battery

closeup of battery display — (Image credit: Future)

Mediocre battery
Charges fast

I tested the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) using TechRadar’s movie battery test and found that it managed to last, at most, four hours and 45 minutes. That is generally quite bad for a laptop, but for a gaming laptop it’s about average. It’s certainly an improvement over the Legion 7i Pro, which can’t pass the two-and-a-half-hour mark, and it squeaks by with a victory over the GT77 Titan by about 15 minutes.

Of course, this is meant as a desktop replacement, so you won’t be unplugging this machine from the AC power, even to do some productivity work unless you can get anything done in less than five hours. If you need to transport it to another location, though, it’ll definitely last long enough for that transfer. And it also charges fast, about 30 minutes for a half charge, so at least you won’t be waiting long.

Battery score: 3 / 5

Should you buy the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023)?

Buy it if...

You want a gaming performance beast
It chews up and spits out any PC game on the highest possible settings with both ray-tracing and DLSS 3 enabled.

Don't buy it if...

You’re on a budget
Though this is a high-quality laptop that can truly do it all, it also comes at a steep price. The average worker or creative person might have trouble affording it.

Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023): Also consider

If the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) has you considering other options, here are two more laptops to consider...

How I tested the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023)

I tested the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) for several weeks
I tested it using both benchmark tests and video game benchmarks
I stress-tested the battery using the TechRadar movie test

First, I tested the general weight and portability of the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) by carrying it around in a laptop bag. After I set it up, I ran several benchmarks to thoroughly test out how much the graphics card affected gaming performance. 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 4090 GPU.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 is a desktop replacement for gaming, meaning it's meant to be used for hardcore gaming sessions. I made sure to thoroughly test out this laptop in that regard, to make sure it reached certain levels of performance.

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.

Read more about how we test

First reviewed March 2023

Dell OptiPlex 7000 Micro PC review

7:38 pm | March 28, 2023

Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets | Tags: CPU, Dell Latitude | Comments: Off

The Dell OptiPlex 7000 Micro is an impressive little desktop machine that can fit on almost any desk, adding a powerful business computer with to any space with ease. Considering its size, we were impressed with the performance that came from this pint-sized box.

Unboxing and First Impressions

We were shocked at the small size when we first unboxed the Dell OptiPlex 7000 Micro. It doesn't seem, at first glance, like it would be a powerful machine worth relying on for business tasks. However, once we booted up, we noticed that this desktop had a decent amount of power under the hood.

Design and Build Quality

This desktop's overall design certainly fits its micro nomenclature.

Specs

Specs as tested

CPU: 12th Gen Intel Core i7

Memory: 16GB DDR5

Storage: 512GB

Ports:

Front

Rear

Connectivity: WiFi 6E running AX211

Weight: 2.06lbs / 0.94kg

Dimensions:

Height: 7.17in / 182.00mm

Width: 1.42in / 36.00mm

Depth: 7.00in / 178.00mm

The footprint is tiny lying down and takes up even less desk space if upright. The casing is easy to mount to the underside of a desk, cabinet, or shelf if you want it to take up even less desk space. While we have yet to mount this to a desktop or cabinet, Dell's website shows that the Micro can mount just about anywhere with the suitable adapter. The build quality is solid, and it could take a beating before breaking - although, as it's designed for office space, it shouldn't have to do that.

Most of the ports are found on the back of the computer, consisting of three DisplayPort, one HDMI, three USB-A, one Ethernet, and a port for power via a barrel connector. On the front is a power button, an indicator light, a mic line, a headphone line, another USB-A port, and a single USB-C. Though it has an impressive video output ability, the computer is less than 2.1 pounds (less than 1kg) and could hide behind a book thanks to its small stature.

In Use

When we first booted up the Micro, we noted its size and assumed its performance would match its stature. However, after using this computer for a few weeks now, we can say with certainty that this is an impressive computer regarding power and performance.

The ports mentioned above have proven to be well-placed. The DisplayPorts on the back, along with the network and HDMI, stay hidden behind the computer without having to see the cables. Additionally, the USB-A ports on the back are great for plugging in headsets, external drives, and more that do not require daily interaction. The ports on the front have been great for quickly plugging in thumb drives, charging devices, and other quick-access devices.

The Dell OptiPlex 7000 Micro has been our main computer for a few weeks, and thanks to its minuscule size, we can integrate it into multiple desk setups to test efficiently. Whether running one standard monitor or four 4K monitors at 60Hz, this microcomputer can perform and adapt to the setup well.

> Read our full Dell Latitude 9330 2-in-1 Laptop review

> Check out our pick of the best business monitors

> Your workplace Zoom meetings are about to get an OpenAI boost, you lucky things

Our day-to-day use of this machine has naturally been entirely business focused. We have used it for research, emails, virtual meetings, spreadsheets, text documents, light photo editing, project management, and things of that nature.

For confirmation, we ran some benchmark tests to see how this machine would compare to the competition, and all in all, the Dell OptiPlex 7000 Micro has proven to perform far above what it looks like it can do. After rounds of PCMark testing, our exporting tests, and keeping an eye on the task manager to see how hard it was working, we can confidently say this computer is the little engine that could.

The overall PCMark 10 score was 5,858, with essentials topping out at 11,870 and productivity hitting 7,606. What was quite impressive was that the digital content creation score was still up at 6,044, which was admittedly higher than we expected, as that is not the focus of this computer.

It's not the fastest computer in the world, nor should it be - it is a phenomenal solution for those looking for a more miniature PC in an office, a clinic, a business, or the like. While it’s not meant to rip through 4K video at record speeds, like a professional video editing computer, this machine can operate as a business computer, maybe occasionally touching on those elements but not as a main purpose for the machine.

One thing that we were disappointed about was the lack of Thunderbolt 4 connectivity. However, as the design for this computer is business focused, we understood opting for USB-C instead.

Final Verdict

The Dell OptiPlex 7000 Micro is a small-form-factor PC that can get some serious work done. Its frame is well-built, durable, and easy to mount to just about anywhere you may need it in your workspace.

Want something a bit more portable? Check out our best business laptops

Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola review

1:25 pm | March 22, 2023

Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets | Tags: CPU, GPU, RAM, SIM | Comments: Off

30-second review

This phone isn’t a ThinkPad computer, but it has been themed to look similar and work alongside Windows systems.

However, there are a few big reasons why you might want to deploy this Android phone in business, the first being security.

Alongside the usual protections offered by Android 13 (not 12), Motorola put a special security module in this device that isolates encryption keys and other security information from main memory, making them much more difficult to access nefariously.

When you combine that with a centralised management service that allows phones to be wiped, locked, and specific software to be installed remotely, then this is a device that the IT department will hopefully like and not curse.

And, sporting the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC, this is easily one of the most powerful phones we’ve ever tested. In short, it can handle computing tasks that would crush other designs.

We should also mention that it is drop, dust and water resistant (freshwater, not salt), has a fantastic camera that can shoot 8K video, and is dual SIM.

While it has a few minor omissions, the only significant caveat here is the price. But considering the technology that Motorola stuffed inside, the ThinkPhone might well be worth that inflated asking price.

Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola — (Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

Lenovo ThinkPhone price and availability

How much does it cost? $900/ £899
When is it out? It is available now
Where can you get it? You can get it in most regions direct Lenovo, Motorola or through an online retailer.

Business phones often aren’t expected to be cheap, and the ThinkPhone isn’t. At almost £900 in the UK, and the same number in dollars in the USA, that’s more than a 256GB Apple iPhone 14 and slightly less than the iPhone 14 Plus.

Alongside the phone, Motorola has designed a wireless charging stand, but the pricing for that accessory isn’t currently available.

Value score: 4/5

Lenovo ThinkPhone design

Thin and lightweight
Rugged without rubber plugs
Narrow screen border

When the term ‘rugged’ is used for a phone. It is normal to expect chunky and heavy designs that look destined for life on a building site or farm. The ThinkPhone isn’t remotely like that, yet it still achieves the same drop standards and waterproofing as those with industrial styling.

Weighing only 188.5g, this is half the mass of a typical rugged Chinese phone and should easily fit inside a jacked or even a trouser pocket.

Yet, it still has a 6.6-inch display, is dust and waterproof according to IP68 without rubber plugs, and it can handle being dropped 1.5m.

However, there are a few caveats about the robust side of this design that Motorola placed in the copious notes on its product page.

These include the fact that liquid damage isn’t covered by the warranty and that the water immersion of 1.5m for up to 30 minutes is only for fresh water and not the ocean. And, that last detail explains why the camera has all manner of photographic modes, but underwater photography isn’t one of them.

The button layout is predictably Android, with the power and volume controls on the right and a user-customisable button on the left. We should complement Motorola on the user-assignable button, as we’ve seen plenty of implementations that weren’t as flexible as the one in the ThinkPhone.

The SIM slot isn’t on the left side but on the bottom next to the USB-C port. The phone accepts Nano-sized SIMs but has no place for a MicroSD card.

Given how new this design is and the cutting-edge technology in it, that it didn’t use eSIMs or have any MicroSD card reader was disappointing.

The camera cluster is on the top left, and it stands proud of the flat underside of the phone, causing it to rock when placed on a flat surface. The flat base is designed to make charging the ThinkPhone wirelessly easier, but the camera cluster does the complete opposite.

One other design curiosity with the ThinkPhone is that the screen has a very narrow border minimising the chassis of the phone noticeably. As nice as this looks, we had a few occasions when the phone didn’t react to a finger press. We eventually realised that another fingertip had inadvertently made contact with the screen due to the thin border, which interfered with the touch sensor.

For those curious, the fingerprint reader is embedded in the screen, making it equally accessible for right and left-handed owners.

Once we realised this, it was relatively easy to counter, but a new owner might think the phone isn’t working correctly and send it back.

Design score: 4/5

Lenovo ThinkPhone hardware

Ultra powerhouse
Amazing camera specs
Modest battery size

Specs

The Lenovo ThinkPhone that was sent to us for review came with the following hardware:
CPU: Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1
GPU: Adreno 730
RAM: 8GB LPDDR5
Storage: 256GB
Screen: 6.6-inch pOLED 144Hz HDR10+
Resolution: 1080 x 2400 FHD+ (402ppi)
SIM: Dual Nano SIM
Weight: 188.5g
Dimensions: 158.76 x 74.38 x 8.26 mm
Rugged Spec: IP68, IP69K and MIL-STD-810H
Rear cameras: 50MP Sensor, 13MP ultrawide
Front camera: 32MP Sensor (wide)
Networking: WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3
Comms: 2G, 3G, LTE, 4G, 5G
OS: Android 13
Battery: 5000 mAh

With Chinese phone makers pressing more powerful SoCs into their rugged designs from MediaTek, the Qualcomm SoC in the ThinkPhone takes phone performance to a whole new level.

The details of how powerful the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is are further documented in the performance section, but this is easily the most powerful phone this reviewer has tested.

What makes it so powerful is the tri-cluster core arrangement, headed by a single Cortex-X2 core that runs at a blistering 3.0GHz. To that headline act are added three fast Cortex-A710 cores at 2.5GHz, and the final cluster has four efficiency Corex-A510 at 1.8GHz.

The supporting GPU is an Adreno 730, a notch up from that used in the Snapdragon 888 and 865. The icing on this architectural cake is that the SoC connects to 3.2GHz LPDDR5 memory, with 8GB in this model.

That power level will eat most phone tasks for breakfast, but it’s also critical in the camera functions that require that performance.

Another standout choice in this phone is the pOLED display technology that’s rated for HDR10+ presentation. The natural resolution of 1080 x 2400 allows for 1080p video to be fully shown and allows extra pixels for the interface.

The quality of this panel is remarkably high, but it would all be just window dressing if the video encryption technology wasn’t onboard to allow the best streaming quality. Thankfully this phone, unlike so many others, does support Widevine L1, meaning that streaming Netflix, Disney+, or Amazon should result in the best quality images with a good connection.

The ThinkPhone is one of the few phones that is HDR10+, Amazon HDR Playback, and YouTube HDR Playback certified that we’ve seen.

The review phone came with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, but it may be that Motorola will make versions of the ThinkPhone with 128Gb or 512GB depending on demand. Memory can be bumped to 12GB by subverting some of the storage into what appears to be RAM to the system, a feature we’ve seen on Android 12 phones.

Other hardware features include dual Dolby Atmos capable speakers, WiFi 6E networking, and 5G comms.

There are only blemishes on this hardware tour de force, and those are the lack of any support for a MicroSD card and that it doesn’t support eSIMs.

Hardware score: 5/5

Lenovo ThinkPhone cameras

Rear cameras: 50MP f/1.8 primary, 13MP f/2.2 ultrawide, 2MP, f/2.4, (depth)
Front camera: 32MP f/2.5 (wide)

With so many cameras using the Samsung HM2 108MP sensor, it's refreshing to see one that goes for fewer pixels and instead focuses on the delivery of high quality images and video.

The best video resolution we’ve seen from the HM2 is 4K, but the sensor on the ThinkPhone (and we believe it is an Omnivision OV50A) offers 8K at 30fps, 4K at 60fps and slow-motion video of up to 960 fps for 1080p captures. And, its gyro-EIS stabilised to help with getting those smooth shots.

For portrait work, the camera can use Phase detection autofocus (PDAF) to keep the objective in focus while allowing the background to blur. And there is also a continuous shooting mode that’s ideal for getting sporting events or similar.

But even without the special modes, and there are plenty, the results from this camera are excellent, almost irrespective of lighting conditions.

The output is almost certainly the result of a four-way pixel binning algorithm that reduces chromatic aberrations and clarity but still manages images of a good resolution.

And, for those wanting the very best results, it can shoot in RAW mode.

Overall, the camera on the ThinkPhone is excellent, and the photo application has, with a few small exceptions, got all the special modes and manual controls for those that use them.

Camera samples

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Picture taken with the Lenovo ThinkPhone — (Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

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Pictures taken with the Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola — (Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

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Camera score: 4/5

Lenovo ThinkPhone performance

Benchmark breaking performance
Game capable SoC

Benchmarks

This is how the Lenovo ThinkPhone performed in our suite of benchmark tests:

Geekbench: 1314 (single-core); 4259 (multi-core); 6357 (OpenCL)
PCMark (Work 3.0): 16474
Passmark: 16535
Passmark CPU: 8080
3DMark Wild Life Extreme: 2840
GFXBench Aztec Ruins OpenGL: 1080p Offscreen 117fps, 1440p Offscreen 45fps, 4K Onscreen 21fps.
GFXBench Aztec Ruins Vulkan: 1080p Offscreen 126fps, 1440p Offscreen 48fps, 4K Onscreen 22fps.

Having an SoC fail to run a test is usually down to a missing feature, but with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, several of our standard benchmarks refused to execute because it was ‘Maxed Out’. When trying to run Slingshot and Wild Life on 3DMark, the benchmark declared that “Your Motorola ThinkPhone is too powerful for this test”. And, the only 3DMark bench we managed to run successfully was Wild Life Extreme.

As a result of these issues, we’ve included a selection of GFXBench results to represent better the performance envelope that the ThinkPhone is capable.

This phone strongly suggests that we need a whole new slew of testing tools for phones because the performance of the new Snapdragon SoCs is on a whole new level.

However, Qualcomm also has the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 with its Adreno 740 GPU that has been seen previously in the Samsung Galaxy S23 and the Xiaomi 13. Tests on those devices show that the Gen 2 and Adreno 740 silicon is marginally faster than Gen 1 and Adreno 730 combination.

Unless you already have a Samsung S23 or an iPhone 14, the speed and power of the ThinkPhone should impress you.

Performance score: 5/5

Lenovo ThinkPhone battery

Decent 5000 mAh capacity
68W Fast charging
15W Wireless charging

As rugged phones go, 5000 mAh is a modest amount of battery capacity, and realistically the most you can expect from this platform is a couple of working days of use.

But because of the modest-for-a-rugged-phone battery capacity and the 68W charging from the included TurboPower charger, charging is rapid, and you are soon ready to go.

Alternatively, for those that like to charge overnight, the Qi-compliant 15W wireless charging will work equally well and saves the USB-C port from wearing out.

The only aspect of the battery and charging of the ThinkPhone that is mildly disconcerting is how warm the phone can become when rapidly charging over USB. It doesn’t get excessively hot, but it is noticeable when you pick it up.

While all batteries do heat up charging, we’d be wary of this one if it suddenly started to get any warmer than normal.

There is a balance here that Motorola is making about keeping the ThinkPhone light and thin and having enough battery to operate for long enough. The ThinkPhone should get you through two working days unless you play games, but it isn’t enough time for an extended adventure holiday or hiking expedition.

Battery score: 4/5

The hardware in the ThinkPhone is exceptional, and when combined with management tools like Moto OEMConfig and Moto Device Manage, this becomes more than just another Android phone.

There are a few minor issues, like the lack of a MicroSD card slot, but mostly the phone's specification is excellent.

More of an issue is the price because being more expensive than Apple isn’t a notoriety that most phone makers wish to have. With the high quality of the hardware and software platform, we appreciate that Lenovo sees the ThinkPhone as a premium solution. But more aggressive pricing might have been a better choice as it would have attracted more customers not having a business pay for their phone.

Lenovo ThinkPhone score card

Should I buy a Lenovo ThinkPhone?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also consider

Dell OptiPlex 7400 All-in-One Review

4:30 pm | March 17, 2023

Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets | Tags: CPU, RAM | Comments: Off

Dell's OptiPlex 7400 All-in-one is an all-around powerhouse that shoehorns the power of a tower into a monitor's form factor. Many people think that All-in-ones can only handle lighter workloads, but thanks to the 12th Gen Intel core processors, the OptiPlex 7400 is a true workhorse capable enough for power users.

Unboxing

Unboxing the All-in-One was incredibly simple. We merely opened the box, pulled the OptiPlex 7400 AIO out, attached the base, plugged the disc drive base into the back of the unit, and then plugged in the power supply.

Dell OptiPlex 7400 AIO — (Image credit: Future)

First Impressions

Dell's OptiPlex 7400 All-in-One is a handy all-in-one computer with great ports and impressive power.

Specs

Screen: 23.8-inch FHD 1920 x 1080, 60Hz

CPU: 12th Generation i3 - 12th Generation i9

Graphics: Intel® UHD Graphics 730 with 12th Generation Intel® CoreTM i3-12100, i3-12300, and i5-12400 processors

Intel® UHD Graphics 770 with 12th Generation Intel® CoreTM i5-12500/i5-12700/i7/i9 processors

AMD RadeonTM R21M-P50-50, GDDR6

RAM: 4GB - 32GB

Storage: 256GB - 1TB

Connectivity:

Side Ports:

- USB Type-C® port with USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 capability

- USB 3.2 Gen 1 port with PowerShare

- Universal audio port

Rear Ports:

- RJ-45 Ethernet port

- (2) USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports

- (2) USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports with Smart Power On

- Line-out audio port

- DisplayPort++ 1.4a/HDCP 2.3 port

- HDMI-IN - HDMI 1.4a port

- HDMI-OUT - HDMI 2.0 port

Dimensions: 13.54 x 21.26 x 2.07 in / 344.00 x 540.20 x 52.60 mm

Weight: 13.62 lbs. / 6.18 Kg (minimum) - without stand 15.06 lbs. / 6.83 Kg (maximum) - without stand

While all-in-ones have their place, the most obvious benefit is not needing separate units for the monitor and the computer itself. Better yet, this computer has a camera built into the top of the display that retracts when not in use and, when needed, can be popped out (albeit manually). All in all, this all-in-one is ready to go out of the box. Thanks to its touch screen, we only needed to plug in a keyboard and mouse if we wanted to. Eventually, we added a keyboard for ease of typing and a mouse for a more traditional feel, but being able to operate the OptiPlex 7400 without peripherals was quite an interesting experience.

Another noteworthy feature of this computer is the disc drive built into the base. This does not come with all Dell OptiPlex 7400 AIO models, but ours did. For those needing a DVD+/-RW drive, having one integrated within the base of your all-in-one is incredibly handy.

Lastly, even with the stand that has the built-in disc drive, we immediately noticed how adjustable the monitor stand was. Looking at what else is available from Dell, other stand options feature a wider range of motion, yet we could still get the monitor to a comfortable position that allowed for touch, mouse, and keyboard input.

Design and Build Quality

All around, the OptiPlex 7400 is quite sturdy and sleek, thanks to its aluminum chassis. It has built-in speakers that have decent sound quality for a computer. On the back, the all-in-one has a large range of I/O ports, including DisplayPort, HDMI, USB-A, USB-C, and Thunderbolt.

We appreciated the location of them too on this all-in-one. The ports in the back were high enough on the computer that when we had it tilted down, we weren't worried about needing to adjust for the cables sticking out of the back.

In Use

Using this AIO for the last few weeks, we quickly realized just how well it caters to its target market. It is a wonderful option for business computers where space is at a premium in your workplace. The OptiPlex 7400 takes up the same space as an average monitor but being all-inclusive, there’s no need for extra space to store a separate tower unit. Furthermore, the stand can be removed entirely, presenting a VESA mounting bracket so it can be attached to a vast array of stands, arms, and brackets, thus occupying even less space.

The 10-point touchscreen is responsive and easy to use, making a keyboard and mouse redundant for some workflows. The touchscreen has a 23.8-inch anti-glare and anti-smudge coating and up to a 4K resolution. If the screen is rotated to portrait orientation, the computer recognizes that it has been turned and automatically matches the display to the proper direction.

Turning to the audio, the built-in speakers are better than your average monitor speakers.

> These are the best Mobile Workstations

> Lenovo's new all-in-one system looks to solve all your video call issues

> HP Chromebase all-in-one 22

However, they are nothing mind-blowing. They will be more than satisfactory if used in an office setting for quick videos, quiet music, video calls, or notification dings, but nothing more.

This all-in-one has a wide range of ports on the back and left side. There are multiple video outputs, several USB ports - including USB-C - and an ethernet port. Since this is an all-in-one, this computer also has an HDMI-IN, allowing the computer to become a display for a separate client.

Final Verdict

Throughout our time using this all-in-one, we noticed it ran relatively quietly and stayed cool, even during benchmark testing. Though that is not to say it is designed to take on the most intensive tasks. It fared well in our tests; however, if you are looking for an incredibly powerful workstation, this is not your computer. But it is an excellent option if you need something for an office, meeting space or the like.

Looking for a standing desk for your office? Check out our Best Standing Desks

Lenovo Legion 5i (2022) review: Lenovo delivers again – and it won’t cost the world

4:01 pm |

Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets | Tags: CPU, Total War, UK | Comments: Off

Lenovo Legion 5i (2022): Two-minute review

Lenovo’s Legion line of gaming laptops has been putting out bangers for years. Back in 2021, we reviewed the previous model of this laptop - the RTX 2060-equipped Lenovo Legion 5i - and were generally impressed by the solid performance and fair pricing. More recently, we awarded the Legion 5 Pro a rare 5-star review, again citing its excellent gaming capabilities and sensible price tag.

We’re pleased to report that having spent some time with the most recent 2022 model of the Lenovo Legion 5i, it remains able to trade blows with the best gaming laptops and packs a punch despite its humble appearance.

The model we tested came with an Intel Core i7-12700H CPU and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card, which puts it pretty squarely in the mid-range space as far as gaming laptops go. There’s a variety of other models with different processors and GPUs, all of which look to offer a comparable price-to-performance ratio to our review unit.

The Lenovo Legion 5i (2022) gaming laptop on a wooden desk. — (Image credit: Future)

Although this model of the Lenovo Legion 5i (2022) comes with a 1440p display, the RTX 3060 inside it is arguably more of a 1080p card. You can squeeze some extra frames out of it at 1440p using Nvidia’s nifty DLSS tech, however, so the pairing isn’t entirely foolish. There are models of the Legion 5i (and the AMD Ryzen-powered Legion 5) that use a 1080p display instead, but we think opting for the higher resolution is worth it here since the display on our review model is actually excellent for the asking price.

On top of generally solid performance and specs, the Lenovo Legion 5i is also just a very nice piece of hardware. It might sound like a silly thing to fixate on, but all of the best laptops have an appealing physical design, and the Legion 5i is no exception; a sleek metallic grey finish with a backlit keyboard and a robust hinge.

Lenovo hasn’t skimped on the features here either, with a solid selection of physical ports and the latest Wi-Fi 6E capabilities. The DDR5 memory is a great added bonus (especially since a lot of more affordable gaming laptops are still rocking DDR4, and it’s not a mandatory upgrade for the 12th-gen Intel CPU), and we were surprised to see not just regular USB-C ports but also a Thunderbolt 4 port.

It’s a bit on the heavy side, and the battery life is unsurprisingly garbage, two pitfalls that almost every gaming laptop trips into. Ultimately though, this isn’t a laptop for on-the-go gaming; it’s a desktop replacement system, and it does that just fantastically.

Lenovo Legion 5i (2022) review: Price and availability

Starts at $1,099.99 / £1,293.49 / AU$2,349
UK version tested costs £1,800
Massive variety of configurations

The Lenovo Legion 5i starts at $1,099.99 in the US, which gets you essentially the same system as the one we’ve reviewed here, but with a 1080p display and an RTX 3050 Ti instead of an RTX 3060. For our money, the 1080p RTX 3060 model available in the US is a massively better value since it’s only marginally more expensive at $1,229.99.

The highest-spec model - which packs double the RAM and an RTX 3070 Ti GPU - costs $2,499.99 - not quite as much bang for your buck, in our opinion. There are also the Legion 5i Pro models and Legion 5 models of both (which use AMD Ryzen CPUs; note the lack of ‘i’ denoting ‘Intel’). The cheapest Legion 5 available costs $1,049.99, but we wouldn’t recommend getting the bottom-dollar model.

Our review model is a UK unit that costs £1,500 (AU$3,169), which doesn’t quite hold up to the US pricing but is still decent considering the 1440p screen and i7 processor (the cheaper models in the US use a Core i5-12500H). It looks like this exact model isn’t available in the US; if you want a higher resolution, it means opting for a slightly bigger screen. We ran our tests in 1080p, though, so the performance stats found below will be useful for both British and American readers.

Overall, it’s not going to touch the best cheap laptops out there if you’re looking for a super-budget device, but it does offer a strong level of performance and a wide feature set for the asking price. It’s also worth noting that Lenovo has regular flash sales on its own online store, and many of its gaming laptops come with a free 3-month trial of PC Game Pass, further adding to the value.

Price score: 4.5/5

Lenovo Legion 5i (2022) review: Specs

The Lenovo Legion 5i comes in a wide range of configurations, with the CPU and GPU being the primary varying factor. It can come with an Intel Core i5 or i7 processor and a variety of Nvidia RTX 3000 GPUs, from the 3050 up to the 3070 Ti. RAM and SSD capacity also vary between models; you can see the version we received below, along with the highest-spec and lowest-spec configurations.

Lenovo Legion 5i (2022) review: Design

Robust, well-designed chassis
Relatively thin, but heavy
Ports are mostly on the rear edge

Lenovo hasn’t made any huge changes to the physical design of the Legion laptop line for a little while, but that’s fine by us. This Legion 5i is a good-looking laptop with a relatively minimalist style, a far cry from the gaudy RGB-laden products that typically populate the gaming laptop section of your local tech hardware store.

The exterior is mostly brushed metal, which gives the chassis a solid, durable feel that should hold up to bumps and drops. It’s also thinner than many gaming laptops in its power and price class, making it a bit more portable, but this is somewhat counteracted by the metal construction resulting in increased overall weight. It’s not the heaviest gaming laptop we’ve reviewed, but at two and a half kilos for a 15-inch model, it’s certainly not lightweight.

While there are some USB ports and a headphone jack on the sides of the laptop, most of the physical ports are situated along the back edge. This will be a matter of personal taste; we’re divided here on the TechRadar team as to whether these rear ports are actually more convenient. Some gaming laptops position literally all the ports on the rear edge, which can make plugging in a USB mouse or flash drive inconvenient, so it’s good to see that at least some of the ports are more accessible here.

The keyboard isn’t doing anything particularly revolutionary here, but it’s comfortable to use and the slightly curved shape of the keycaps means that your fingers easily find each key when you’re typing. Lenovo has done a good job of packing in a full-scale keyboard with a numpad here. Nothing feels cramped, and the arrow keys jut out slightly from the keyboard’s outline to avoid compacting the up and down buttons (as many laptops do).

The touchpad is perfectly fine but isn’t likely to see much use since this is a gaming laptop, and anyone using it for extended periods is almost certainly going to connect a gaming mouse. The same goes for the twin stereo speakers, which are functional but decidedly unimpressive. Know that you’re going to want a proper gaming headset - though again, this is a criticism we could level at the majority of gaming laptops.

Design score: 4/5

Lenovo Legion 5i (2022) review: Features

Wi-Fi 6E and Thunderbolt 4 support
Good display
Legion software suite is just okay

The Lenovo Legion 5i’s display is a pretty straightforward 1440p panel, which offers a snappy 165Hz refresh rate for esports gaming and generally pretty excellent color reproduction. We do wish the blacks were a little deeper, but considering the price point here, we couldn’t reasonably expect visual perfection. Some cheaper versions are available with a 1080p display instead (specific model availability varies a lot between regions, though).

Above the display is a 720p webcam and mic array, which feel like a bit of an afterthought but are a welcome inclusion nonetheless for anyone who might want to use this laptop for video calls. We were pleased to see a physical kill switch for the camera on the side of the laptop, so you can disable it when you’re not using it. Don’t expect to use it for streaming, though, since we’d say 1080p is really the minimum for that.

All models of the Legion 5i (including the entry-level configurations) use Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.1. The former has been around for a while in more premium gaming laptops, so it’s good to see that it’s now becoming the norm - replacing the slower Wi-Fi 6 standard - in more budget-friendly devices too.

There’s also Thunderbolt 4 support, specifically for one of the USB-C ports on the laptop's right-hand side. It can’t be used for input power delivery so you won’t be able to charge the laptop with this port, but the speed of Thunderbolt 4 will no doubt be a boon for users who intend to take advantage of the USB-C ports.

Lastly, we need to discuss the preinstalled software that comes with the Legion 5i. Lenovo Vantage is a relatively straightforward utility software for monitoring and tweaking your system performance; it’s nothing groundbreaking, but it does the job well enough. There’s also the Legion AI Engine, which uses deep learning to intelligently redirect power between the CPU and GPU to optimize performance.

Legion Arena, on the other hand, is pointless. It’s a ‘shared launcher’ tool that allows you to launch games from different apps (like Steam, Epic, or GoG) all in one convenient place. Every gaming laptop seems to have a version of this now, and it’s broadly useless. What’s wrong with desktop shortcuts?

Features: 4.5/5

Lenovo Legion 5i (2022) review: Performance

1080p is ideal; 1440p is an option for most games
12th-gen Intel i7 CPU works hard
Gets a little warm when gaming

Benchmarks

Here's how the Lenovo Legion 5i (2022) performed in our suite of benchmark tests:

3DMark Night Raid: 52,681; Fire Strike: 20,792; Time Spy: 9,753
Cinebench R20 multi-core: 7,313
GeekBench 5: 1,768 (single-core); 12,904 (multi-core)
PCMark 10 (Modern Office): 8,062
PCMark 10 (Battery life test): 3 hours and 32 minutes
TechRadar Battery Life Test: 3 hours and 59 minutes
Total War: Warhammer III (1080p, Ultra): 66 fps; (1080p, Low): 175 fps
Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p, Ultra): 70 fps; (1080p, Low): 113 fps
Dirt 5 (1080p, Ultra): 75 fps; (1080p, Low): 159 fps

Considering the price point, the overall performance of the Lenovo Legion 5i (2022) is incredible. Sure, that RTX 3060 isn’t going to blow you away with 4K gaming delights, but it provides excellent framerates at 1080p in all the best PC games. You can comfortably play Cyberpunk 2077 at maxed-out settings in FHD without your fps dropping below 60.

It’s definitely competent enough to make full use of the 1440p display in our review model, too - provided you dial back the graphical settings a bit. You can also use DLSS to boost the framerate at higher resolutions. We don’t feature these in our benchmarking tests since they’re not running natively, but you should be aware that it’s an option!

The Intel Core i7-12700H at the heart of this Legion laptop is fantastic; the upgraded performance/efficiency split core architecture of Intel’s 12th-generation processors produces amazing multicore performance, meaning that the Legion 5i sings in CPU-intensive games such as real-time strategy titles. DDR5 memory support is also a nice bonus here; Lenovo could’ve easily stuck with cheaper DDR4 instead.

CPU performance outside of games is great too, with decent results in the Cinebench R20 and GeekBench 5 multicore tests. The midrange GPU means that this isn’t going to be the perfect machine for high-end workloads like video editing or 3D animation, but it should be able to handle some casual creative work - something that is in increasing demand among younger users.

The twin fans that comprise the Legion 5i’s cooling solution aren’t too noisy - a rare sight among gaming laptops these days, which frequently sound like they’re about to blast off Team Rocket-style - but the laptop’s metal casing does get a bit warm on the underside during extended use.

It’s nothing too egregious (we’ve reviewed laptops that could double as space heaters) but it’s too hot to actually put it on your lap while you’re gaming. If you’re planning on using this laptop for long gaming sessions, you might want to invest in one of the best laptop cooling pads - or just get a hardback book to prop up the back edge and give the fans underneath some breathing room.

Performance score: 4.5/5

The Lenovo Legion 5i (2022) AC adapter on a wooden desk. — (Image credit: Future)

Lenovo Legion 5i review: Battery life

Maxes out at four hours
Significantly less for actual gaming use
Supports fast charging

We could fill this entire section in basically every gaming laptop review with a single sentence reading ‘look, it’s a gaming laptop; the battery life is bad’. But we won’t, because we’re professional journalists (and our editorial overlords would shout at us).

This wasn’t a shock. With any modern gaming laptop you’re going to spend most of your time near a wall outlet, and the overall battery life isn’t terrible, so we can’t count it too much against the Legion 5i. On the bright side, it charges very fast indeed, topping the battery up by as much as 80% in just half an hour.

Battery life: 3.5/5

Should you buy the Lenovo Legion 5i (2022)?

Buy it if...

You want bang for your buck
While there are certainly cheaper laptops out there, the Lenovo Legion 5i (2022) offers a perfectly sound price-to-performance proposition with affordable entry-level configurations.

You need lots of ports
The Legion 5i has basically every physical connection you could want from a gaming laptop, including Thunderbolt 4, HDMI, and an Ethernet port to ensure your internet connection remains speedy and stable.

You like esports games
The 165Hz screen is great for twitchy esports shooters like CS:GO and Valorant, where high refresh rates are king, and the RTX 3060 GPU should be able to easily handle running those games at buttery-smooth framerates.

Don't buy it if...

You’re a streamer
Anyone hunting for a gaming laptop to stream on Twitch with should probably be looking at some slightly higher-end hardware; the 720p camera and RTX 3060 on offer here aren’t quite going to cut it.

You don’t want to wear a headset
While most gamers will be perfectly happy with donning a pair of cans to play, some prefer speaker audio - and in this area, the Legion 5i underdelivers. If you want to be playing music, movies, or game audio out loud, you may be better served elsewhere.

You want ultra portability
The Lenovo Legion 5i (2022) is actually fairly thin and compact for a gaming laptop, but its all-metal construction makes it quite heavy overall, and it’s still a 15-inch laptop so it won’t fit in smaller bags.

Lenovo Legion 5i (2022) review: Also consider

If our Lenovo Legion 5i (2022) review has you considering other options, here are two more laptops to consider...

How I tested the Lenovo Legion 5i (2022)

I used the laptop for everyday work for two weeks
I played games on it for just under eight hours in total
I dropped it on my kitchen floor

Anyone who knows me won't be shocked to hear that I've reviewed dozens upon dozens of gaming laptops, and at this point, my testing process is quite refined. I spent close to eight hours just playing games such as Destiny 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 on the Lenovo Legion 5i (2022) - outside of work hours, to be clear - as well as using it for general tasks during the day.

I specifically used it to write the majority of this review (along with some other articles) in order to get a good feel of the keyboard quality, and specifically used it without a mouse for the majority of my non-gaming time with it - something I would never normally do, but it's useful for gauging the performance of the trackpad.

I also, upon first unboxing the Legion 5i, managed to drop it directly onto the wooden floor of my kitchen. This was not an intentional piece of durability testing, but the laptop was mercifully undamaged, allowing me to remark on its robust chassis. While years of testing laptops may have attuned me to their strengths and flaws, it has not made me any less of a klutz.

Read more about how we test

First reviewed March 2023

MSI GT77 Titan (2023) review: a gaming laptop that lives up to its name

12:01 am | March 15, 2023

Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets | Tags: CPU, Intel Core, RAM, Total War | Comments: Off

MSI GT77 Titan (2023): Two-minute review

The MSI GT77 Titan (2023) is the first laptop I've gotten my hands on that features Nvidia's latest mobile RTX 4000-series GPUs and Intel's latest 13th-gen Core i9 HX processor, and I can confirm that the hype around this hardware is very, very justified. If anything, the media buzz can't even prepare you for how powerful this laptop actually is in practice, especially the RTX 4090 mobile GPU.

To start, the GT77 Titan can be configured with either an Nvidia RTX 4080 or Nvidia RTX 4090 mobile with the Intel Core i9-13980HX. There are no options for a Core i7 or lower, because that's for peasants, probably. There will be no scrimping with this laptop.

Obviously, the specs are the reason you are buying this gaming laptop. There is nothing all that compelling about its design, which is the same standard black stealth-bomber-car-transformer looking thing with twinkly RGB lighting that gaming laptops have been sporting for a very long time now.

Yes, it's a stale design, but if you're worried that someone might see it and roll their eyes, this thing is never leaving your desk because it weighs close to 7.5 lbs / 3.5kg. This is strictly a desktop replacement.

In terms of ports and other features, this is a very solid laptop, with just about every port you could ask for with a gorgeous 4K display running at 144Hz and seemingly as bright as a headlight on a car when turned all the way up. There's even a privacy shutter over the webcam, which is something you just don't see on too many gaming laptops out there.

Finally, when it comes to performance, there are some slips in terms of CPU performance (which is still generally outstanding) and the RTX 4090 GPU offers best-in-class gaming performance, but the premium you're paying for that performance might be too much for some to stomach.

MSI GT77 Titan (2023): Price & availability

An MSI GT77 Titan on a pink desktop mat — (Image credit: Future)

Starts obscenely expensive and goes up from there
More or less in line with competitors running the same hardware

Ok, so you will need to understand that the MSI GT77 Titan (2023) is more like a Ferrari than it is a Ford Focus or Dodge Neon. This is a top-tier kit, but you will be paying a very high price for entry, or about as much or more as the best gaming PC with comparable performance, and in terms of value, I don't very much that this laptop will compare well to the latest crop of gaming laptops set to start coming out in the first half of 2023.

The GT77 Titan is available in the US for $4,299.99 (about £3,570 / AU$6,240) as its starting price. This will get you an RTX 4080 GPU, 64GB DDR5 RAM, and a 2TB NVMe SSD. For $4,699.99 (about £3,905 / AU$6,820), you can get it with an RTX 4090 GPU, while a $5,299.99 (about £4,400 / AU$7,690) configuration can get you an RTX 4090, 128GB DDR5, and 4TB of storage. All three models come with the Intel Core i9-13980HX CPU.

I can (and I will) argue that this is possibly the best gaming laptop I have ever come across, performance-wise. But it is also something that most of us will only ever look at online and go "That's wild, man!" before going for something far more affordable, like the model in our Lenovo Legion Pro 7i review.

If you're in the position of hitting the "Buy it now" button, then this is probably one of a small handful of laptops you should consider. But if that isn't you, the Legion Pro 7i is about half the price and is still going to give you outstanding performance.

As always with tech this premium, availability outside the US is also a bit of an issue, and we've reached out to MSI about when the GT77 Titan will be available in the UK and Australia and at what price. We'll update this review if and when we hear back from the manufacturer.

Price score: 2 / 5

MSI GT77 Titan (2023): Specs

Latest Nvidia RTX 4000-series GPUs
Intel Core i9-13980HX processor
Bright, 144Hz refresh 4K mini-LED display

The MSI GT77 Titan features the latest and greatest both Intel and Nvidia have to offer, with every model of GT77 Titan for purchase coming with the latest Intel Core-i9 13980HX CPU, which is as good as it gets for mobile processors this generation.

Pair that with the new Nvidia RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 mobile GPUs, and you've got about as powerful a machine as you're going to find. You also start out with 64GB DDR5 RAM and can get as much as 128GB DDR5, with either 2TB or 4TB of storage space.

The display is one of the biggest draws here beyond the incredible hardware under the hood. The mini LED IPS panel is 144Hz at 4K resolution, so this is not only as crisp and fast a laptop display as you're going to get, but also makes it possible to get HDR 1000 as well as one of the brightest laptop displays I've seen outside of a MacBook or OLED panel.

Finally, it's packing a 99.9WHr battery, managing a decent amount of battery life for what it's packing. Though that also means it's absolutely huge and weighs a metaphorical ton at 7.28 lbs (3.30 kg). This is purely a desktop replacement-level kit.

Specs score: 5 / 5

MSI GT77 Titan (2023): Design

Plenty of ports
Full-sized keyboard
Physical webcam privacy shutter

Spec Sheet

Here is the MSI GT77 Titan (2023) configuration sent to TechRadar for review:

CPU: Intel Core i9-13950HX Processor
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090
RAM: 64GB DDR5 (32GB x 2)
Screen: 17.3-inch IPS, mini LED, 4K, 144hz
Storage: 2TB SSD
Ports: 3 x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 2 x Thunderbolt 4 w/ DP, 1 x HDMI 2.1, 1 x Mini DisplayPort 1.4, 1 x 3.5mm combo jack, 1 x SD card slot, 1 x RJ45
Camera: IR 720p HD w/shutter
Weight: 7.28 lbs | 3.30 kg
Size: 15.63 x 12.99 x 0.91 inches | 397 x 329.95 x 23.11 mm

Since this laptop is largely going to sit on your desk and nowhere else, we'll start with its rather massive footprint. At nearly 16 inches wide and over a foot deep, even the best backpack around isn't going to fit this laptop unless it's one of those massive hiking ones you see at Machu Pichu or something.

And God help you if you try to carry this thing up the block, much less up a mountain. At 7.28 lbs (3.30kg), not including its brick of a power supply, only the strongest backs can support carrying this thing around anywhere.

Still, for something that's going to sit on your desk, it's the standard MSI sports car hood aesthetic. To its credit, it's about the pinnacle of the form, even if that form is getting a bit old.

Open the lid, and you're looking at a per-key RGB backlit mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX switches for a very satisfying experience. Is it overkill for a gaming keyboard? Absolutely, but this entire laptop is overkill, and to its credit, the GT77 Titan leaves everything on the field.

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There are plenty of ports, which we would expect from something this huge, and there really isn't a need for a dock. With three USB 3.2 Gen 2, two Thunderbolt 4 (w/ display output), one HDMI 2.1, and one Mini DisplayPort 1.4 port — as well as a 3.5mm combo jack — you're not going to be left wanting. There's even an SD card slot and an ethernet port to round everything out.

Finally, I want to shout out the physical privacy switch on the webcam, which slides over to close the lens. It has been just over three years since the first Covid-19 lockdowns and everyone has been using the webcam on their laptops for just about everything, but not enough laptop makers have been including this essential privacy function. It's not hard, but it's not ubiquitous, so good on MSI for making sure this laptop is up to speed with the times.

Design score: 4 / 5

MSI GT77 Titan (2023): Performance

Best-in-class gaming performance
Sounds like a jet engine under load
Solid sound out of a laptop

It's still the early days of the new Intel and Nvidia mobile kit, so we don't have a whole lot to fairly compare the latest MSI GT77 Titan to. But it absolutely blows last year's Titan out of the water in our benchmark tests, and the model we tested is less powerful than the i9-13980HX that you would actually buy (though not that much less powerful).

In terms of gaming performance, both processors are fairly close in our Cyberpunk 2077 test on the low end of the resolution spectrum, with the GT Titan (2023) pulling out a solid gain of 9.09% over the previous year's model. Push that up to ultra settings at 1080p, however, and you get a 74.62% jump for 2023's GT77 Titan over the 2022 model.

Similarly, in Total War: Warhammer III, we get a much larger gain with the GT77 Titan (2023) over the 2022 model at low resolution (about a 75% improvement), while it doubles the frame rates at ultra resolution and 1080p.

Things get somewhat more complicated when looking at the GT77 Titan (2023) against the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (2023). These two gaming laptops aren't even in the same class really, with the Legion Pro 7i sporting a Core i9-13900HX and an RTX 4080. But the Legion Pro 7i still outperforms the GT77 Titan in processor performance by a decent amount.

The i9-13900HX is only slightly slower (5.4GHz boost compared to the i9-13950HX's 5.5GHz), but it can score anywhere from 12% to 15% better on processor benchmarks than the GT77 Titan's i9-13950HX. These advantages extend to gaming performance on low settings where processor speeds are more determinative, but all these differences fall away when the GPU comes into play, such as when playing on ultra settings or using features like ray tracing and DLSS.

Now there are a lot of reasons for why this might be the case. If I had to pick, I'd argue that Lenovo is a much better system integrator than MSI, and so Lenovo is better able to squeeze some extra performance out of the same specs. But it could also be a matter of the settings used, the cooling, etc. Still, the difference is there, even though you're likely not going to see the same kind of performance I did since the only chips that will be going into the GT77 Titans to hit the shelves will be the faster i9-13980HX.

Another thing to note about gaming performance here is that we don't benchmark using DLSS or ray tracing generally, since not all hardware is capable of those features - though I will say that DLSS 3 is the 2023 GT77 Titan's secret weapon here.

DLSS has been far more of a revolutionary graphics technology than even ray tracing, and DLSS 3 is absolutely next-level incredible in terms of the performance gains you can get.

Turn on DLSS 3 with Frame Generation, and you can get an average fps of 167 in Cyberpunk 2077 with ultra settings at 1080p, which is better than a lot of desktop PCs, and 30 fps better than the Legion Pro 7i with DLSS 3 turned on.

Turn things up to max settings with full ray tracing and DLSS 3 set to ultra performance with Frame Generation, and the GT77 Titan can get an average of 131fps, with a minimum of 100fps. Boost the resolution to 1440p, and you can get an average fps of 126 (59fps minimum), and at 4K, you can get an average of 110fps, with a minimum of 35fps.

To say these numbers are phenomenal is an understatement. These are high-performance desktop numbers, and the RTX 4090 mobile pushes out performance akin to an RTX 4070 Ti desktop card, which is the best graphics card most people can get right now. All of this is to say that the MSI GT77 Titan (2023) is a top-tier desktop-replacement gaming laptop, and few laptops are going to effectively compete at this level of graphics performance.

Something like the Legion Pro 7i might be configurable with an RTX 4090 at some point as well, and so it could theoretically get this kind of performance. Sadly, right now, you can't buy one with an RTX 4090 mobile in the US so the point is a bit moot.

Performance score: 5 / 5

MSI GT77 Titan (2023): battery life

Pretty decent given the hardware
Charges reasonably fast

The MSI GT77 Titan isn't a laptop in name only, thanks to its 99.9WHr, as-large-as-legally-allowable-in-the-US battery. While you might think that the Nvidia RTX 4090 mobile chip would be the energy hog here, it's actually pretty decent. It's the Intel CPU that's really going to cut into that battery life if you're using this laptop for any length of time.

Still, it's good enough to get four hours and 30 minutes of video playback, though its PCMark 10 battery life test result is actually a smidge worse than its predecessor, coming in at three hours and one minute.

It charged from empty to full in about two hours, which is impressive given the enormous size of the battery that needs to be recharged. But considering the 330W power adapter you plug into this thing, it damn well better charge that fast.

Battery Score: 3 / 5

Should you buy the MSI GT77 Titan (2023)?

Buy it if...

You want the best gaming performance around
With an Intel Core i9-13980HX and an Nvidia RTX 4090 mobile GPU and DLSS 3, no game will put up much of a fight here, even at 4K.

You want an absolutely gorgeous display
This is the best-looking gaming laptop display I've seen that wasn't a high-end OLED panel.

You want lots of customization options
With per-key, lid-logo, and accent RGB, you can really get that gamer twinkly light look exactly to your liking.

Don't buy it if...

You want something affordable
The price of this laptop puts it out of reach of just about everyone reading this review.

You want something portable
Lulz. Better get a donkey if you want to cart this one around.

MSI GT77 Titan (2023): Also consider

If my MSI GT77 Titan review has you considering other options, here's another laptop to consider...

How I tested the MSI GT77 Titan (2023)

I spent about a month testing the GT77 Titan
I used it as my main PC gaming machine for several weeks as well as creative work
I used in-game benchmarks from titles like Cyberpunk 2077 in addition to 3D Mark, CineBench R23 and others.

To review the MSI GT77 Titan (2023) I set the Titan up at home as my main PC gaming and content creation workstation (Lightroom, Photoshop, etc). I used it extensively for over a month to get a true sense of how well it performed.

This is ultimately a gaming laptop, so I focused most of my efforts in that direction, but with 100% DCI-P3 coverage, I also tested out its creative chops by editing photos and videos.

I've reviewed dozens of laptops in this class over the years, including high-end desktop replacements and professional creative workstations, so I'm very keen on the subtleties of HDR 100 vs HDR 400 and what it means to have proper color coverage. As a lifelong gamer, I am also very sensitive to performance issues that can trip up PC games.

Read more about how we test

First reviewed March 2023

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