Techreport

We reported on always-connected Windows PCs from Asus and HP when they were introduced at Qualcomm's tech summit early last month. The SoC maker from San Diego said at the time that Lenovo would join the other two with an ARM-powered Windows portable of its own. That machine is the Miix 630, a two-in-one convertible with a detachable keyboard and always-on LTE connectivity. ...Read more...

Intel's G-series Core processors are making folks reconsider what kind of performance they can expect from ultrabooks. Dell is the latest company to announce a notebook powered by one of the Core-processor-plus-RX-Vega-M packages. The company updated its XPS 15 2-in-1 convertible with new Kaby Lake G-series processors and slimmed down the notebook in the process. ...Read more...

Sennheiser has been a trusted name in personal audio for years. If you're looking to pump some music into your ears, it's one of the first brands you check out. The company's been getting into gaming in the last few years, though, and it's dropped some solid offerings. The latest is the GSP 600 stereo gaming headset. ...Read more...

When you think about boutique PC vendors, you probably think about the likes of OriginPC, Maingear, or Falcon Northwest. Digital Storm wants to be on that list, and at CES the company is showing its latest custom PC, code-named Project Spark (via AnandTech). The new machine is just about the smallest desktop we've seen packing a six-core CPU.

One of the longest-standing brand names in the notebook world is ThinkPad. With the prestige that name affords, ThinkPad notebooks receive a bit more scrutiny than others. Perhaps to maintain the brand's reputation, Lenovo upgraded the new ThinkPad X1 Carbon and ThinkPad X1 Yoga with Intel's latest processors, doubled down on security features, and added an HDR display option.

Intel and Micron have enjoyed many benefits from their long-standing partnership for the development of NAND flash memory, but it turns out that this particular relationship is about to end. While the two companies intend to wrap up work on the third generation of 3D NAND, Intel and Micron have announced that they will go their separate ways after that point.While Intel and Micron might be parting ways regarding the development of 3D NAND, the announcement reaffirms their commitment to working together on 3D XPoint. After all, the two companies just boosted their production of the non-volatile memory product last November. This work will continue ...Read more...

Intel announced this morning that it's shipping 10-nm Cannon Lake CPUs during a brief media event at its CES booth. Gregory Bryant, Intel senior vice president and general manager of the company's client computing group, took to the stage to confirm that silicon built on the company's next-generation process is on its way to partners, and that those chips were moving before the end of last year, according to reports from Anandtech and Tom's Hardware.Going by those reports, Intel didn't offer any details of the 10-nm chips that it was shipping, but it did state that it's ready to ramp 10-nm production over the course of 2018. While it's heartening to know that 10-nm chips are moving in ...Read more...

Display maker Viewsonic is celebrating its thirtieth year in the business of display pixels by announcing its new XG-series gaming and VX-series entertainment-focused monitors. There's a handful of offerings, so let's take a look at each in turn.First, the XG-series displays. The 25" XG2560's 1920x1080 resolution and TN panel might not be ideal for productivity or content creation, but the 1-ms response time, 240-Hz refresh rate, and inclusion of Nvidia's G-Sync adaptive ...Read more...

While thousand-dollar phones like the iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy Note 8 are grabbing headlines, Asus is busy releasing an affordable phone with a beefy battery. The case in point is the upcoming ZenFone Max Plus, set to hit the US next month. ...Read more...

Bridging the gap between a smartphone and a PC isn't strictly a new concept. Samsung introduced its Dex desktop dock alongside its flagship Galaxy S8 handset, and Motorola took a stab at selling an Android phone with desktop and laptop docks with the Atrix 4G back in 2011. The laptop and the smartphone are still two entirely separate devices, suggesting no one has really gotten the combination just right. Razer thinks it might have the right formula with its Project Linda prototype laptop dock for its Razer Phone. ...Read more...

MSI has been aggressively expanding its monitor line lately. As if to demonstrate that point, the company's showing off its new Optix MPG series displays at CES today. There are two monitors in the series, the MPG27C and MPG27CQ. Both are curved 27" gaming monitors that use VA panels running at up to 144 Hz refresh rates. ...Read more...

When I was watching my first TV, which featured a dedicated button for each channel and plenty of faux wood paneling, I couldn't have dreamed where we'd be today. Even my first progressive-scan set didn't quite prepare me for the future. Some of the panels on display at CES are nothing short of mindblowing. LG's 88" 8K TV is impressive, as is Samsung's 85" 8K set. But I think it's Samsung's 146" modular display, titled The Wall, that has me most excited. The company calls it the world's first consumer modular TV. ...Read more...

If you're going for a real razzle-dazzle cosmetic build with all the bells, whistles, and blinkenlights, you simply can't skip the RGB LED-lit RAM these days—you might as well just cut an empty hole in your motherboard. But keeping all the lights in sync can be a pain in the joint of your choosing. HyperX's latest Predator DDR4 RGB memory with IR tech might offer a solution....Read more...

2018 looks to be a year of surprises. Besides yesterday's Kaby Lake-G reveal, today we've got a new motherboard announcement from NZXT, of all companies. The case, cooling, and cool-lighting experts have announced the NZXT N7 Z370, an ATX motherboard for Intel's Coffee Lake CPUs. The focus for NZXT's first-ever motherboard appears to be customizable aesthetics—not a surprise, considering where it hails from. ...Read more...

HTC announced an updated version of its Vive virtual-reality headset this afternoon ahead of CES. The Vive Pro boosts the resolution of the original Vive headset from 1080x1200 per eye to 1440x1600 per eye, an improvement that HTC says will result in crisper text and more immersive experiences in VR. ...Read more...

If you're looking to build small and want to walk the path of AMD Ryzen, MSI has an answer for you in the form of its new B350I Pro AC Mini-ITX motherboard. This itty bitty offering has pretty much all you need and very little you don't. ...Read more...

We've already covered enormous, high-refresh displays, gaming systems and accessories of all kinds, and Alexa-enabled laptops from Asus, so now it's time to talk about the company's PB40 and PN40 compact PCs, the Chromebox 3, and an updated Tinker Board S. ...Read more...

It's CES o'clock, and Corsair is hoping you have time to check out its upcoming power supply and case. The company also has new H-series CLCs on display at the show, but we already have a review up, so pop over there to see what we think of them. In the meantime, let's take a look at two new products aimed at decidedly distinct audiences: the AX1600i PSU and the Spec-Omega mid-tower chassis. ...Read more...

Besides its new cases, Cooler Master's also bringing a pack of peripherals to CES. The company has launched what it calls the M800 Gaming Series, comprising a pair of keyboards, a headset, a mouse, and a dual-sided mousepad. Cooler Master's packed some pretty interesting features in these products, so let's take a closer peek. ...Read more...

Games are supposed to be fun, but dealing with tangled cords and dead batteries can make a gamer feel like one of those poor, frustrated folks in an infomercial. Corsair has channeled its inner Ron Popeil and produced a heap of "Unplug and Play" wireless peripherals at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. ...Read more...

Once upon a time, HyperX was a Kingston brand of fast memory. Now, the name refers to Kingston's own brand of gamer gear that spans a full set of peripherals and accessories alongside the familiar RAM and storage devices. At CES, HyperX just revealed its first wireless headset as well as some upgraded input hardware. ...Read more...

Nvidia's Pascal-based GeForce GTX graphics cards are awesome, but the price tag of a complete gaming PC and the associated maintenance headaches can be formidable barriers of entry into high-end PC gaming. Nvidia's GeForce Now cloud gaming service gives users a way to experience high-resolution, speedy graphics without shelling out all of the coin for a proper gaming PC. The company first announced GeForce Now for the PC and Mac at last year's CES, and the service has just now reached beta status on PC. ...Read more...

Take cover, soldier! Product announcements are coming in hot and heavy today. Asus just launched a salvo of notebooks and all-in-one PCs, and they're about to hit a store near you. Let's take a look at each in turn....Read more...

Over at CES today, Cooler Master is rolling out a whole set of cases. New models are joining the MasterCase and MasterBox series, while the Trooper and Stryker are getting "SE" refreshes.

CES 2018 is here, and that means it's time for anyone and everyone in electronics to announce a whole slew of new products. Along with an updated case lineup, Cooler Master is offering new options for cooling and powering your new builds.

We're pretty sure Nvidia isn't launching any new gaming graphics cards at CES this year, but the company is adding new real-time color filters and improved support for Epic Games' Fortnite into its latest GeForce 390.65 drivers. ...Read more...

The unexpected-yet-welcome pairing of Intel processors and AMD GPUs into one package seems poised to revolutionize what consumers can expect from thin-and-light notebooks. Hot on the heels of Intel's disclosure of the inner workings of G-series Core processors, HP has announced the Spectre x360 15, an upcoming notebook featuring the new chips. ...Read more...

Asus manages to show up to every trade show with a menagerie of products for gamers, and this year's CES is no different. The company has a couple of ROG gaming laptops, a desktop PC, and a handful of peripherals and odds-and-ends. Let's get right to it and have a look. ...Read more...

Acer sells a wide variety of notebooks at any given time, so it's no surprise that the company announced a number of new models at CES this year. Headling the list is the Swift 7, an ultra-thin notebook with 4G LTE connectivity. The company also tipped its hand about a number of affordable notebooks that will be released in the coming months. ...Read more...

Despite challenges from Google, Amazon's Alexa voice-controlled AI assistant and the Echo-series devices it uses as a host have managed to ensnare the lion's share of users. Amazon has so completely smothered the home voice AI market that Microsoft has even announced plans a while back to team with the e-tailer company. Over the last year we've seen smartphone makers add Alexa to their handsets, and now Asus has joined Acer in announcing that the voice bot is coming to 2018 models of its notebook PC lineups. ...Read more...

Just last month, HP unveiled its Envy x2 two-in-one convertible with a Snapdragon 835 inside. Now, it looks like the PC maker is looking to fill out its lineup with an Intel-powered model.

With its Big Format Gaming Display (BFGD) initiative, Nvidia is making a play to bring the best of PC gaming to the living room—or wherever it is that folks want to hang a massive 65" screen. At CES 2018, Acer is taking the wraps off the Predator BFGD, its take on Nvidia's display concept. ...Read more...

Amazon claims that users bought more Echo Dots than any other other item on its digital shelves over the last holiday season. Folks shouldn't be surprised to find out, then, that Amazon's been shopping for new places to integrate its popular digital assistant Alexa. Acer just revealed a wide range of products that will ship with Alexa integration, including a variety of notebooks, all-in-one desktops, and a new 4K projector. ...Read more...

Being a part of the so-called "PC gaming master race" usually means having access to bigger things, like larger resolutions and higher framerates thanks to ludicrously-powerful graphics cards like Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. One area where PC gaming has typically trailed mainstream consoles is screen size, though. Nvidia's is looking to put an end to that deficit with its Big Format Gaming Display initiative. Asus' ROG Swift PG65 is one of the first displays to be part of that program. ...Read more...

Solid state drives that leverage the NVMe protocol offer an undeniable performance advantage over their SATA counterparts, but their relatively high cost (and the generally high cost of RAM and NAND chips right now) have kept us from making them regular recommendations in our system guides. It's possible, though, that Toshiba's new RC100 line of drives could be the value champions that this market needs.

Nvidia's G-Sync tech powers smooth PC gaming experiences on desktop gaming monitors, and its Shield Android TV set-top box delivers gaming and streaming content to the big screen using a powerful SoC. It's only natural, then, that the company is announcing an initiative to bring PC gaming, G-Sync, big screens, and Shield-powered entertainment together in the living room.

When you want to show a movie to a whole bunch of people at once, you can't beat a projector. As we move into the 4K era, projectors must naturally come along. LG's just announced its first 4K UHD projector, the HU80KA. The company says the compact unit can throw up a 150" area for displaying HDR10 content. ...Read more...

Intel's latest ultra-low-power 15-W mobile processors likely have more than a few gerbils thinking that it's time for a new notebook, since these new CPUs generally offer more cores and threads than last year's offerings, all in the same power envelope. To tempt folks into splurging on a new machine, Samsung is updating its Notebook 7 Spin with a new eighth-gen Core i5 processor, a reasonably-sized SSD, and active pen support. ...Read more...

AMD's Ryzen Threadripper is a big mamma-jamma. The TR4 socket retention assembly itself takes up a bit over 14 square inches of space on the board. Four DDR4 memory channels and all of their associated traces add to that large footprint. ASRock's X399M Taichi is the first motherboard that manages to squeeze Threadripper's 16-core, 32-thread goodness into the microATX form factor. The small TR4 mobo has four DDR4 DIMM slots and three full-speed PCIe x16 slots. ...Read more...

When we checked in with Adata last summer, the company made it clear that it was focusing on M.2 and PCIe storage, potentially even phasing out SATA drives. The collection of hardware that Adata will show off at this year's CES demonstrates the company's focus on contemporary and upcoming form factors. Adata has a variety of new products to show off, including SX8200 M.2 SSDs, a next-generation small form factor (NGSFF) SSD, and new Spectrix memory modules. ...Read more...

The two latest vendors to react to what may be some of the most wide-ranging computer security flaws ever found are Apple and Nvidia. Both companies have released statements about the exploits, information about affected hardware, and their plans for dealing with these infosec disasters. If you're impatient, the short version is that both Apple and Nvidia either have fixes in place already or are planning to release them posthaste.Nvidia isn't a company you probably think of when you think of "CPUs", but the company's graphics processors are apparently impacted in some way by the security holes. The guys in green don't go into great detail, but have released a security bulletin saying that its GPU drivers are "potentially affected" by two of the three variant attacks. Nvidia lists those ...Read more...

Some of us start off a new year with a renewed commitment to exercising at the gym. Lenovo is starting off 2018 by enticing professionals with a new pair of displays. The larger ThinkVision P32u offers brilliant colors and Thunderbolt 3 daisychaining, while the ThinkVision X24 may attract more than a few glances with its ultra-thin design. ...Read more...

Thunderbolt 3 (TB3) can be pretty awesome, even if getting access to the 40 Gbps of bandwidth isn't as straightforward as Intel has advertised. The standard has yet to really spread across the entire PC market, as it's currently reserved primarily for relatively high-end laptops and Apple's premium products. Intel is hoping to spread the adoption of TB3 with its just-announced JHL7x40 "Titan Ridge" series of TB3 controller chips.The new silicon doesn't crank up the peak available bandwidth when compared to the current-gen Alpine Ridge parts, but it does add support for the DisplayPort 1.4 standard , up from version 1.2. Perhaps more interestingly, ...Read more...

The world and its dog have been following the rather scary story of the Meltdown and Spectre CPU exploits. As a quick recap, a security vulnerability in most modern CPUs allows a standard unprivileged program to extract sensitive information in memory, like passwords and encryption keys. Intel CPUs are particularly affected since the Meltdown vulnerability is apparently specific to them. The company's now issued a statement saying it's "made significant progress" in deploying software patches and firmware updates to partners that will make its chips "immune" to the exploits.Intel says that it already has patches in place for "the majority of processor products introduced within the past five years." The company's own list of affected CPUs extends much farther back than that, so it's ...Read more...

Lenovo's taking the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as an opportunity to introduce a complete refresh of the Thinkpad laptop series. CES doesn't actually start until next week, but Lenovo's already showing its hand. Updated ThinkPad X- and T-series models are complemented with an all-new ThinkPad L series.

Fun fact, it's also National Trivia Day, but that's harder to find an image for.

Asus was one of the first companies to experiment with external graphics adapters for laptops when it showed off the XG Station all the way back in 2007. The use of graphics silicon for purposes other than gaming has spread in the intervening decade, as has the convenience factor of external graphics adapters. Asus has now teamed with boutique case manufacturer In Win to create the XG Station Pro, a Thunderbolt 3 external graphics dock designed for content creation and CAD professionals that need the capabilities of power-hungry GPUs at their desks and the portability and battery life of an ultrabook when out of the office. ...Read more...

Remember that 8K display from the other day? Driving such a display can be difficult simply due to the challenge of sending a signal to it. Recent revisions of the DisplayPort standard are up to the task, but you'll need quality cables to keep signal integrity. Finding those cables should be a bit easier soon, at least. The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) just announced a new DP8K certification for existing cables that marks them as ready for high-throughput connections. ...Read more...

Samsung just announced the latest member of its Exynos family of system-on-chips. The Exynos 9810 marries an eight-core CPU with powerful image-processing hardware, deep learning acceleration, and a refined LTE modem. ...Read more...

Dell's XPS 13 laptop has become a pretty familiar sight for ultrabook shoppers since its introduction halfway through Barack Obama's second term in office. The thin-and-light machine has always used razor-thin bezels to pack a 13" screen into a frame size that would typically accommodate an 11" display.The company has upgraded the XPS 13's specs and added a 2-in-1 version over the intervening three years, but the time has come for the laptop's biggest work-over yet. The 2018 take on the XPS 13 claims to be 30% thinner ...Read more...