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Dell XPS 15 L521X: A Detailed First Look
by Jarred Walton 5 days ago

Last week Dell’s new XPS 15 L512x landed on our doorstep, and we’ve been hammering on it ever since. Combining many of the best elements of the previous generation XPS 15 (L502x) and XPS 15z (L511z), the new model may finally silence the critics. It’s reasonably thin but more importantly, the new chassis has a solidity that was sorely lacking in previous designs. It’s Dell’s take on Apple’s unibody aluminum construction, and it feels like the type of laptop you could use for several years without it going to pieces.

The Dell XPS 15 (2012) is also our first chance to look at Intel’s new 35W quad-core Ivy Bridge processor, the i7-3612QM. As a premium brand offering, Dell also pairs the XPS 15 with a standard 1080p display (there’s no more 768p option, thankfully) and NVIDIA’s GT 640M GPU with GDDR5 memory. The combination provides for a potentially potent set of hardware capable of serving just about any need, provided of course that everything works properly. Is the latest XPS 15 a Windows laptop we can finally recommend without any reservations? We may not be able to fully answer that question with this First Look, but we’ll try.

The 2012 MacBook Pro Review
by Vivek Gowri on 7/18/2012

With most of the attention from Apple's hardware refresh event centered around iOS 6 and the new Retina MacBook Pro, the updated 2012 edition of the regular MacBook Pro has flown a little bit under the radar. Basically, it’s just an Ivy Bridge-infused version of the venerable unibody MacBook Pro chassis that we’ve known and loved for the last few years. The details don’t bring any particularly earth-shattering revelations, with 13” retaining the dual-core processor and integrated graphics, while the 15” makes the switch from AMD to Nvidia’s new Kepler-based GT 650M dedicated graphics. Along with Ivy Bridge, the 2012 MBP line gets HD 4000 graphics and USB 3.0 across the board, plus a free update to Mountain Lion when it releases later this summer. Naturally, it doesn’t generate the same kind of excitement that the all-new, all-awesome Retina MacBook Pro does. But is a less headline-worthy computer necessarily a worse one?

The 2012 MacBook Air (11 & 13-inch) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on 7/16/2012

Things are getting very blurry.

The MacBook Pro once stood for tons of power plus upgradability. Add a Retina Display and now it's just tons of power. It's a thicker, faster MacBook Air (with an awesome display). It's not bad, in fact it's quite amazing, but it confuses the general order of things.

The MacBook Air doesn't help in the clarity department. You can now order a MacBook Air with up to 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, for the first time in MacBook Air history. Users who were once forced into Pro territory because of RAM and storage requirements can now happily live with an Air. And thanks to Turbo Boost, you do get similar performance in lightly threaded workloads.

Today the MacBook Air is even more affordable. The 11-inch model still starts at $999, but the 13-inch version is only $200 more. From the outside not a lot has changed, but that doesn't mean there's any less to talk about. Ivy Bridge, USB 3.0 and faster SSDs are all on the menu this year. Let's get to it.

Acer Aspire S5 Ultrabook Review: The Steady March of Progress
by Dustin Sklavos on 7/9/2012

First generation technology is seldom perfect, and the fruit of Intel's ultrabook initiative was no exception. While vendors came out in force with some fairly impressive pieces of hardware, these first shots at the form factor all came away lacking in some way. Be it thermal performance, general performance, build quality, or display quality, no matter where you looked you were forced to make some kind of compromise. Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture wasn't horribly suited to the tasks, either, but it was also clear that at least another generation of processors would be more ideal to the increased thermal constraints of the platform.

We're now into our second generation of ultrabooks. Vendors have had the opportunity to begin working the kinks out of their initial designs (as well as experimenting with some new ones), and Intel's 22nm Ivy Bridge is much better suited to the form factor. Today we have on hand one of the more premium examples of the second generation of ultrabooks, Acer's Aspire S5. At just 15mm thick, Acer claims it's the thinnest ultrabook yet, but it still comes fairly feature rich and includes Intel's Thunderbolt technology. At $1,399 the S5 doesn't come cheaply, though; was Acer able to pack enough value into this new ultrabook to justify the price tag?

Acer Aspire V3-571G-9435: The Value Proposition
by Jarred Walton on 7/4/2012

We’ve had plenty of Acer laptops come in for review over the years (along with visits from their close relatives, Gateway). Rarely do we find such laptops reaching for the upper echelons of performance, build quality, design, or features, and yet many people buy Acer products. The reason is pretty straightforward: while they may not be the “best” in any single area, what Acer does well is produce well-equipped laptops that target the value conscious buyers. With their new V3 and V5 lines, Acer once again goes after that familiar territory, and today’s V3-571G packs some decent performance into an updated design that addresses a couple of our previous complaints.

Make no mistake, however: this is still an inexpensive Acer laptop, with quite a few questionable choices made in order to hit a lower price point. Those of you longing for decent quality displays are going to want to look elsewhere, and if you’re looking for a sturdy chassis that eschews glossy plastic you’ll also be disappointed. But while those are some significant and sometimes painful omissions, taken as a whole the V3-571G does plenty of things right. Those of you interested in seeing just how much performance you can grab for under $800 might be in for a surprise—like a quad-core processor and switchable NVIDIA Kepler GPU. Can the new V3 hit the sweet spot, or are the compromises too much to stomach? Read on for our full review.

Capsule Review: Toshiba's 14" USB Mobile LCD Monitor
by Dustin Sklavos on 6/27/2012

While notebook hardware has steadily improved over the years, outside of the recent MacBook Pro with Retina Display there haven't really been any moves forward in improving desktop real estate in some time. In fact, for productivity-oriented users this continues to be a major reason for sticking with a desktop setup (if not a desktop system): more monitors, more space to work in. This fact of life has resulted in a bit of a niche market in the form of small, USB-powered screens.

We've tested both of GeChic's OnLap monitors and found that while they were flawed in their own ways, they were still able to expand useful work space without incurring too much of an inconvenience in terms of size or power requirements. Yet GeChic's screens need an HDMI or D-SUB port in addition to a USB 2.0 port for power, and if for one reason or another your notebook doesn't offer one of these, you're out of luck. Enter solutions based off of DisplayLink's USB technology, which are able to add another screen driven entirely over USB. Solutions like the screen we have on hand today, Toshiba's catchily-named 14" USB Mobile LCD Monitor.

The next-gen MacBook Pro with Retina Display Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on 6/23/2012

Apple makes the bulk of its revenue from devices that don’t look like traditional personal computers. For the past couple of years I’ve been worried that it would wake up and decide the traditional Mac is a burden, and it should instead be in the business of strictly selling consumer devices. With its announcements two weeks ago in San Francisco, I can happily say that my fears haven’t come true. At least not yet.

It’s been a while since Apple did a really exciting MacBook Pro launch. Much to my surprise, even the move to Sandy Bridge, the first quad-core in a MacBook Pro, was done without even whispers of a press conference. Apple threw up the new products on its online store, shipped inventory to its retail outlets, updated the website and called it a day. Every iPhone and iPad announcement however was accompanied with much fanfare. The MacBook Pro seemed almost forgotten.

With its WWDC unveil however Apple took something that it had resigned to unexciting, dare I say uncool status, and made a huge deal about it. Two weeks ago Apple did the expected and offered relatively modest upgrades to all of its portable Macs, all while introducing something bold.

Apple calls it the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. You’ll see me refer to it as the next-gen MacBook Pro, Retina MacBook Pro, rMBP or some other permutation of these words.

After using it for the past two weeks I can honestly say it’s the best Mac Apple has ever built. And there’s a lot more to it than hardware.

Read on for our full review!

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M: Kepler GK104 Goes Mobile
by Jarred Walton on 6/4/2012

Origin PC spoiled the GTX 680M launch party a bit with their announcement of their new EON15-S and EON17-S notebooks this morning, but NVIDIA asked us to avoid discussing the particulars of the new mobile GPU juggernaut until the official NDA time. As you’ve probably guessed, that time is now (or 6PM PDT June 4, 2012 if you’re reading this later). NVIDIA also shared some information on upcoming Ultrabooks, which we’ll get to at the end.

On the high-end notebooks, so far the only Kepler GPU has been a higher clocked GK107, the GTX 660M, but increasing the core clocks will only take you so far. NVIDIA has continued to sell their previous generation GTX 570M and 580M as the GTX 670M and 675M (with a slight increase in core clocks), but clearly there was a hole at the top. Now it's time to plug that hole with the GeForce GTX 680M. Read on for the full specs.

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