Review: Framework Laptop’s 13th-gen Intel upgrade helps fix its battery problem
Enlarge / The Framework logo on the hinge.Andrew Cunningham When you read a laptop review, even if the new laptop looks identical to last year's model, the company has usually sent the reviewer an entirely new product to set up and test. For this review of the Framework Laptop 13—for all intents and purposes, a…
RTX 4070 review: An ideal GPU for anyone who skipped the...
Enlarge / Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4070.Andrew Cunningham Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4070 is here. It's the company's first launch in over a year of a graphics card that could charitably be described as "mainstream," both in performance and in price. It costs $600. It's not productive to keep going back to the also-$600 GTX 1080, at…
Intel’s Core i5 is the best bargain in CPUs right now,...
Enlarge / Intel's Core i5-13400.Andrew Cunningham Fancy, expensive processors are fun, but for most people who just want to build a decent middle-of-the-road PC for gaming (and anything else), the best advice is usually to buy a Core i5 or Ryzen 5 for somewhere in the $200–$250 range and pair it with the fastest graphics…
Ryzen 7950X3D review: An expensive but incredibly efficient 16-core CPU
Enlarge / AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X3D. Andrew Cunningham Toward the end of Ryzen 5000's run, AMD released the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, a special version of the eight-core 5800X with 64MB of extra L3 cache stacked on top of it. The result was an interesting but niche experiment. The extra "3D V-Cache" helped the CPU perform…
Razer BlackWidow V4 Pro review: More than enough buttons, too much...
Enlarge / Razer's BlackWidow V4 Pro wired mechanical keyboard.Scharon Harding Specs at a glance: Razer BlackWidow V4 Pro Switches Razer Green (clicky) or Yellow (linear) Keycaps Doubleshot ABS plastic Connectivity options USB-A cable Backlighting Per-key RGB Size (with wrist rest) 18.3×9.35×1.73 inches(466×237.5×44 mm) Weight (with wrist rest) 3.37 pounds (1,530 g) Warranty 2 years Price…
2023 MacBook Pro review: A refined second generation
All told, it looks like every other recent MacBook. Samuel Axon The luxuriously spacious trackpad returns, along with the improved, no-longer-butterfly "magic keyboard." Samuel Axon Here's the bottom of the laptop. Samuel Axon One of the interesting side effects of Apple's move toward using its own silicon in the Mac is that the Mac update…
M2 Pro Mac mini review: Apple’s Goldilocks desktop for semi-professionals
Enlarge / Apple's 2023 Mac mini. If you've seen one, you've seen them all, but it's what's on the inside that counts.Andrew Cunningham Apple's Mac Studio was its most interesting desktop in years. It lacks the internal expandability of the Mac Pro, but the raw performance and power efficiency of the M1 Max and M1…
Amazon’s Kindle Scribe is pen-centric hardware let down by book-centric software
Enlarge / Amazon's Kindle Scribe e-reader.Andrew Cunningham Amazon's Kindle e-readers have been around for 15 years, and they've remained steadfastly focused on displaying books for reading (and, to a lesser extent, audiobooks). Input has never been something they've been particularly concerned with. The devices' poky processors and laggy touchscreen keyboards are best suited for short annotations…
Review: ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 5 is impressively fast, with the...
Enlarge / Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 5.Andrew Cunningham Specs at a glance: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 5 (As reviewed) Display 16-inch 3840×2400 IPS touchscreen (283 PPI) OS Windows 11 Pro CPU Intel Core i7-12800H (six P-cores, eight E-cores) RAM 16GB 4,800 MHz DDR5 (2 DIMMs) GPU Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti (8GB, 100…
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 5 review: Fast, expensive, toasty powerhouse
Enlarge / Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 5.Andrew Cunningham Specs at a glance: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 5 (As reviewed) Display 16-inch 3840×2400 IPS touchscreen (283 PPI) OS Windows 11 Pro CPU Intel Core i7-12800H (six P-cores, eight E-cores) RAM 16GB 4,800 MHz DDR5 (2 DIMMs) GPU Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti (8GB, 100…
