Samsung's Galaxy Chromebook 2 has arrived in US stores, offering a more affordable price point - but the same splash of color - as last year's Galaxy Chromebook flagship. Announced at CES 2021 in January, the newest Chrome OS notebook is the first to pack a QLED screen, with the display technology making the leap from Samsung's Windows laptops.
A new laptop startup aims to make a DIY, upgrade-friendly notebook, with Framework hoping to build a market from those frustrated by today's breed of sealed-up computers. Combining readily-accessed internal components with modular, interchangeable expansion cards, the Framework Laptop may look like a regular 13.5-inch notebook but it's very different inside and out.
Although Qualcomm and, to some extent, Rockchip, have long been on some laptops running Windows and Chrome OS, respectively, the arrival of the Apple Silicon M1 showed how the market for ARM-based desktops and laptops is still wide open to competition. There are, however, only a few big names that could probably be a good fit for that kind of device and it seems that Samsung's biggest Exynos gamble will be heading to laptops first instead of smartphones.
The VAIO Z series ultraportable notebooks are returning and while they may not have Sony branding any more, the focus on sleek design and a premium price tag are certainly being kept. Built using what VAIO Corporation says is the world's first "three-dimensional molded full carbon body," it means a sub-2.3 pound weight but no shortage on power.
PCs, particularly laptops, have experienced a surge last year, mostly due to new work and education arrangement during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although analysts predict the high numbers won't last long, PC makers are nonetheless putting out as many devices as they can while the positive situation lasts. Just last month, LG announced the latest models in its Gram line of lightweight laptops and most of those are now available for purchase in the US, at least if you're not aiming for the 2-in-1 convertible kind.
During CES 2021 last month, we received a flood of announcements for laptops that feature NVIDIA's RTX 30-series GPUs. Like the RTX 20-series before it, the 30-series will likely make for some particularly formidable gaming laptops, but with every manufacturer under the sun seemingly announcing at least one laptop for this year (and oftentimes many more), it can be difficult to make an informed choice about which is the best laptop for the money.
A lot of rumors have been swirling about incoming MacBook updates lately, and today we have a particularly juicy report to sink our teeth into. Just as Apple is rumored to be updating the MacBook Pro significantly, so too is it apparently looking to make some big changes to the MacBook Air. The first big change is rumored to be a switch back to MagSafe chargers.
The past months have made laptops and even tablets stars of the home show, saving businesses and organizations everywhere by empowering people to work at home or anywhere else outside the office. That, however, has also put a spotlight on home office setups, from the importance of dedicated workspaces to the need for good ergonomics. It's sometimes mind-blowing how the latter can actually be achieved by a simple but well-designed stand, and that's exactly what Twelve South is promising with its redesigned ParcSlope stand for Macbooks and iPad Pros.
Following the return of flat edges and the introduction of MagSafe in 2020's iPhones, it looks like the MacBook is next on the docket to receive some big changes. Notable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is back with a slate of predictions about the MacBooks he expects Apple to release this year, and some of the changes are huge. For starters, Kuo expects Apple to drop the Touch Bar and return to physical function keys with the next MacBook models, which would be newsworthy even if it were the only prediction Kuo made today in a note to investors.
Samsung doesn't always have the best naming conventions, especially when it suddenly skips a number for no apparent reason. At the virtual IFA 2020 event last year, it announced its Galaxy Book Flex 5G, boasting of a few firsts for any Samsung laptop. That was followed by silence, at least until now. On the heels of its Galaxy S21 event, Samsung is finally making that 2-in-1 convertible available, at least in the UK and under a bumped up Galaxy Book Flex2 5G name.
Ahead of its Unpacked event today, where the company is widely expected to reveal the new Galaxy S21 lineup, Samsung has been spotted teasing something of a completely different nature. While today should be most (if not wholly) about mobile hardware, Samsung Display is teasing OLED notebooks with a webcam under the display. This, as you can imagine, will come with a lot of benefits - assuming, of course, that Samsung can actually make it work well enough to warrant putting the webcam behind the display in the first place.
The ASUS VivoBook S14 (S435) is an interesting piece of hardware. This laptop is not made to look particularly extraordinary - instead its value can be found in subtle accents and extreme portability. This is not the first VivoBook S14 to ever be released, but it is the most refined iteration of a VivoBook yet revealed to the public.
