Samsung Series 9 15-inch (NP900X4B-A02US)

Samsung Series 9 15-inch (NP900X4B-A02US). Samsung gets a jump on Apple's anticipated 15-inch MacBook Air with the super-slim and -sexy Samsung Series 9 15-inch (NP900X4B-A02US). Incredibly thin and light for a 15-inch laptop. Bright, hi-res display. WiDi. Expensive. Shallow keyboard. Slippery touchpad. Only 57GB of 128GB SSD available at startup. VGA and HDMI dongles not included.

Design
The Series 9 15-inch (NP900X4B-A02US) boasts an aluminum one-piece shell in a handsome shade— Samsung calls it Titan Silver—with a touch of dark blue. It measures 0.6 by 14 by 9.3 inches (HWD), with an ample palm rest and space on either side of the black tile keyboard.

The keyboard has dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys but no numeric keypad. It offers a tolerable typing feel, but shallower travel than the Spectre and some other thicker systems' keyboards, and is backlit, but quite dimly—we had trouble detecting the backlight in all but the darkest environments. The large touchpad has clickable lower corners instead of dedicated mouse buttons; it has a smooth, almost slippery feel. Annoyingly, it occasionally failed to register our taps on the touchpad surface, but a driver update during our testing helped.

The 15.0-inch display is not dim or dark in the slightest—it's impressively bright even with the backlight dialed down a notch, with a matte finish, sharp contrast, and crisp colors as well as the extra resolution (1,600 by 900 versus 1,366 by 768) that's a real treat for multitaskers or image editors and unavailable on 13.3-inch ultrabooks except for the Asus Zenbook UX31-RSL8. Impressively for such a thin system, the screen shows next to no flex or wobble when grasped by the corners, as opposed to more bendy ultrabooks such as the Toshiba Portege Z835-P370 .

Features
Samsung earns kudos for including an SD card slot—hidden behind a nifty folding door on the laptop's right side—and three USB ports—two USB 3.0 on the right and one USB 2.0 on the left. Other ports are miniaturized, with a micro Ethernet port (dongle included) and micro HDMI port (dongle not included) on the left and a micro VGA port (dongle not included) on the right. In case you haven't guessed, the super-skinny Samsung has no optical drive.

Wireless connectivity options include the trifecta of 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Intel Wireless Display (WiDi), but not the Intel Smart Connect technology that lets the HP Envy 14 Spectre and Dell XPS 13 update e-mail, social network, and other information while the system sleeps.

Samsung backs the Series 9 15-inch with a one-year warranty, and fills its 128GB SSD—all but a scanty 57GB of it out of the box—with an array of helpful system-settings utilities, 60-day trial of Norton Internet Security, Skype, the WildTangent games suite, and a recovery partition. The system's cold boot times, helped by a Fast Boot utility that turns off Windows 7's startup animation, averaged a blazing 17 seconds and its resume-from-sleep times 2.5 seconds by our stopwatch.

TextArticle

Read More

Toshiba Portege Z835-P370

Toshiba Portege Z835-P370. Toshiba plays the value card as well as the featherweight card with its Portege Z835-P370 ultrabook. As light as a 13.3-inch ultrabook gets. Plenty of ports. Backlit keyboard. 6GB of RAM for the price of competitors' 4GB. Screen a little flimsy. Keyboard a little stiff. No Smart Connect technology.

Design
The super-skinny (0.6 by 12.4 by 8.9 inches, HWD) Z835-P370 gets its light weight from a magnesium alloy chassis that makes its base surprisingly sturdy—unlike its vanishingly thin screen, which flirts with the F word (flimsy) if you grasp its corners and wiggle them. In its favor, however, our test unit's screen hinge didn't get the shakes during typing as our Toshiba Z830-S8302's did.

The 13.3-inch display has the same mediocre 1,366 by 768 resolution as every ultrabook we've seen, excepting the 1,600-by-900-pixel Asus Zenbook UX31-RSL8 and HP Envy 14 Spectre. It's nicely bright, with sharp text and colors despite narrowish viewing angles; between the screen and the LED-backlit keyboard, we had no trouble working through a long evening in a less-than-brightly-lit room.

Besides the backlight (which by default turns off after 15 seconds of inactivity, though you can switch it permanently on or off), the keyboard offers an admirable layout, with dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys instead of doubling up these functions on the cursor arrows. We didn't test Toshiba's claim of its spill resistance, but we soon grew accustomed to its firm, somewhat shallow typing feel. Speaking of dedicated, the Toshiba's touchpad has two chrome mouse buttons instead of the mere clicky corners in fashion nowadays; their slightly stiff operation is a contrast to the pad's smooth gliding and tapping.

Features
The Z835-P370 does not have the Intel Smart Connect technology that the HP Envy 14 Spectre and Dell XPS 13 can tap into to update Microsoft Outlook and other Internet applications while the system sleeps (though one of its USB 2.0 ports can charge handheld devices while the system sleeps). But it has other wireless capabilities including Wi-Fi, WiDi or Wireless Display, and Bluetooth.

While the Toshiba ultrabook has no optical drive, we've already mentioned its impressive array of ports. Microphone and headphone jacks and an SD card slot are found on the left side of the chassis, with a USB 3.0 port on the right. Two USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet port, an HDMI port for modern monitors, and a VGA port for older displays or projectors are at the rear.

The Portege's 128GB solid-state drive has 77GB of free space out of the box, the rest occupied by everything from a system recovery partition to a measly 30-day trial of Norton Internet Security to Google Chrome and a slew of Toshiba-brand utilities. As expected, the SSD makes the little laptop a lot perkier than a hard-drive-based system, booting in 26 seconds and resuming from sleep in 3 seconds by our stopwatch.

TextArticle

Read More

Fujitsu Lifebook T731

Fujitsu Lifebook T731. The Fujitsu Lifebook T731 looks like someone threw a Windows tablet and a 12-inch notebook into a blender, and out popped a 12-inch convertible laptop. But the twist-into-a-tablet form-factor is nothing new to Fujitsu, a company that has been making convertible laptops for several years, and the Fujitsu Lifebook T731 is merely the latest in a long line of touch-friendly laptops.

The Fujitsu Lifebook T731 has two operating modes, first as a traditional 12-inch notebook, and second, as a 12-inch Windows tablet. The 12.1-inch touchscreen works with either fingertips or the included stylus. In notebook mode, the Lifebook T731 is equipped with a standard keyboard, complete with anti-microbial coating. The screen is outfitted with a bi-directional hinge—and industry first—which allows you to twist it in either direction to convert into tablet mode.

One area where the Lifebook T731 leaves other Windows tablets in the dust is the size of its hard drive, which offers 320GB of storage space—not gigantic by notebook standards, but it's a whopper compared to the 64GB and 128GB solid-state drives (SSDs) seen in tablets like the Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 or the Samsung Series 7 Slate (700T1A).

The Fujitsu Lifebook T731 is powered by a 2.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i5-2410M with 4GB of RAM. With a laptop-grade processor, the Lifebook T731 ranks alongside the Series 7 Slate in putting the functionality of a Windows laptop into a touch-friendly form-factor without the compromises of an underpowered Atom processor. The Fujitsu's Intel Core i5 processor pulls double duty for the integrated graphics, but should still be up to the task for all of your Framville-level gaming needs. Anything beyond that will be out of the question.

Read More

Samsung Series 5 Ultra (NP530U4B-A01US)

Samsung Series 5 Ultra (NP530U4B-A01US). A 14-inch screen and built-in DVD burner make the Samsung Series 5 Ultra (NP530U4B-A01US) stand out from the ultrabook crowd. Optical drive and 14-inch screen top generic ultrabooks. Hybrid hard drive system almost as fast as SSDs, with more space. WiDi. No big advantage in weight or battery life over ultraportables and 14-inch slimlines.

With its DVD±RW drive and full array of ports, the NP530U4B-A01US splits the difference between ultrabooks like the Dell XPS 13 and ultraportables like the Editors' Choice Toshiba Portege R835-P50X. It also requires a model-number microscope to distinguish from the NP530U3B-A01US, which is a 13.3-inch ultrabook with no optical drive.

Design
At 0.8 by 13.1 by 9.0 inches (HWD), the Series 5 Ultra is fractionally bigger than 13.3-inch ultrabooks and fractionally smaller than 14-inch laptops like the Lenovo IdeaPad U400. It sports a handsome silver-gray aluminum lid and palm rest with a flat black chiclet-style keyboard.

The keyboard is not backlit, but has a comfortable if somewhat shallow typing feel with an exemplary layout including dedicated, full-sized Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys. The large touchpad also has dedicated left and right mouse buttons instead of just clickable corners, making it a pleasure to use.

The Series 5 Ultra's 14-inch display has the same 1,366 by 768 resolution you'll find throughout the ultrabook segment. It's nicely bright (300 nits), with a non-reflective matte finish and average viewing angles, and showed minimal flex without feeling flimsy in our grasp-by-the-corners test. Two dinky speakers above the keyboard provide sufficiently loud and clear audio, if not booming bass.

Features
Oddly, our test unit's 802.11n Wi-Fi wouldn't work out of the box, reporting no wireless networks within range even when we pressed Fn-F12 for Samsung's convenient wireless control panel to make sure it was switched on. We used the system restore function to return the Series 5 Ultra to factory defaults, after which Wi-Fi worked fine. Other wireless functions include Bluetooth and Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) for streaming screen and sound to an HDTV set equipped with a $100-or-so Belkin or Netgear adapter.

Next to the tray-loading DVD±RW drive on the Samsung's right side are a USB 2.0 port and SD/MMC memory-card slot. At the left are Ethernet, VGA, and HDMI ports; a headphone/microphone jack; and two USB 3.0 ports.

The Series 5 Ultra's storage system combines a 500GB hard drive (420GB free) with a 16GB solid-state drive dubbed Express Cache. The latter doesn't appear as a drive letter or partition, but is used to speed up booting and resume from sleep, which we stopwatched at roughly 34 and 3 seconds respectively.

Samsung supports the Series 5 Ultra with a one-year warranty. In addition to Windows 7 Home Premium, its software preload includes a 60-day trial of Norton Internet Security, the kudzu-like WildTangent games, and a handful of Samsung-brand utilities ranging from Easy Settings (a friendly alternative to digging through Windows Control Panel) to a Mac OS Dock-like (or Windows Taskbar-like) program launcher.

TextArticle

Read More

Alienware M18x

Alienware M18x. The Alienware M18x looks intimidating and has the performance chops that gamers crave, but it doesn't come cheap. Blazing performance. Solid build quality. Sleek design. Cool lighting effects.

The Alienware brand and PC gaming are synonymous, and with good reason. For the past 15 years the folks at Alienware have been churning out high-end gaming systems, and thankfully they continue to so. Its flagship laptop rig, the M18x, is packed with over-the-top components and presented in a sharp-looking chassis complete with tricked-out lighting effects and a killer 18.4-inch display. You'll pay more at the pump for this high-octane notebook and you don't get a lot of battery life, but for gamers seeking LAN party dominance it's an easy decision: The M18x eclipses last year's Alienware M17x as our Editors' Choice among cost-no-object gaming laptops.

Design and Features

When we reviewed the M17x last June, we were wowed by the laptop's overall design and rubber-like matte finish. This time around the Alienware design team decided to shroud the M18x in an anodized aluminum housing with a Space Black finish that is actually more of a metallic dark gray than black. The familiar illuminated alien head adorns the lid, while the front of the base sports two ominous-looking backlit grilles. The front end has a Corvette-like shape that makes the notebook look fast standing still.

With a pair of heavy-duty lid hinges and the aluminum shell, the M18x has a sturdy look and feel that is best described as being built like a tank. Speaking of which, this monster weighs in at a hefty 12.9 pounds and is 2.13 inches thick. The power brick alone weighs close to 3 pounds and measures 1.5 x 3.7 x 7.6 inches (HWD), so unless you plan to make it part of your workout regimen, this laptop probably won't be seeing much travel.

The 18.4-inch display is a thing of beauty, featuring edge-to-edge glass over black bezels, a 1,920 by 1,080 resolution, and outstanding color quality and black levels. The glossy anti-glare coating can be reflective under certain lighting conditions, but it punches up colors and provides nice wide viewing angles. A 3-megapixel webcam is embedded in the screen's upper bezel and an illuminated Alienware logo is centered on the bottom bezel.

Everything about the M18x is big, including the full-sized keyboard. The latter has a dedicated number pad off to the right and five programmable AlienTactx keys on the left. The keyboard keys are quiet and responsive, as is the touchpad and dual mouse button assembly embedded in the rubbery keyboard deck. A set of flush-mounted media player keys sits above the keyboard. There's also an eject button for the slot loading Blu-ray drive, a Wi-Fi on/off switch, and to the far right, an Alienware Command Center key.

As with the M17x, the M18x offers myriad lighting effects, all controlled by the Command Center's AlienFX utility. Here you can set up a lighting scheme for the keyboard with four different zones and assign different colors for each backlit component, including the front grilles, the alien head lid ornament, the touch pad, the power button, and the media controls. There are 20 colors in the LED palette so you can change the lighting scheme to suit your mood. The Command Center is also home to the AlienTouch (touchpad settings) and AlienFusion (power management) utilities and is where you can program the AlienTactx keys.

The M18x is loaded with features. Storage comes by way of two fast (7,200 rpm) 500GB drives configured for RAID 0 for a total of 1TB of storage capacity. Wireless-N and Bluetooth are also part of the package as are an internal 5.1 sound solution and a Klipsch speaker system that you can crank up without worrying about distortion. In addition to the Blu-ray drive, the right side of the chassis holds two USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI input (a rarity that was also included on the M17x), an eSATA/USB combo port, an MMC/SD/MS-Pro card slot, and an ExpressCard reader. Over on the left side you'll find a pair of headphone jacks, S/PDIF and microphone line-in jacks, two USB 3.0 ports, VGA, HDMI, and mini DisplayPort inputs, and a Gigabit Ethernet port. As always, Alienware leaves the bloatware off and preinstalls Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit), the Alien utilities, including the AlienRespawn restoration tool, and Steam.

TextArticle

Read More

Toshiba Portege R835-P88

Toshiba Portege R835-P88. The Toshiba Portege R835-P88 shows that an ultraportable can still kick ultrabook butt. Only 3.2 pounds including optical drive. Speedy performance. Nice screen and keyboard. Good battery life. WiDi.

The Toshiba Portege R835-P88 is the latest version of a model that's been around for years. It weighs a third of a pound more than the average ultrabook. It has an old-fashioned optical drive instead of a newfangled backlit keyboard. It also costs less than virtually all ultrabooks and runs faster than any of them—and yeah, an optical drive can still come in pretty handy sometimes. For portability, performance, and value, the Portege R835-P88 is what we said its R835-P50X predecessor was 11 months ago: the epitome of what an ultraportable should be, and an easy successor to last year's model as an Editors' Choice in the category.

Design

The R835-P88 weighs 3.2 pounds on PC Labs' scale—more than the 2.9 pounds of the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (Thunderbolt) and numerous ultrabooks, though actually an ounce less than our Editors' Choice ultrabook HP Folio 13. Its magnesium alloy chassis is a handsome dark blue, accented by chrome (plastic) screen hinges.

The screen feels solid, less flexible or flimsy than that of Toshiba's 2.5-pound ultrabook models such as the Portege Z830-S8302. It's a glossy 13.3-inch panel with the usual 1,366 by 768 resolution; vertical viewing angles are narrow enough that you'll find yourself adjusting its tilt, but horizontal angles are sufficiently broad and brightness and color are fine.

The keyboard, as mentioned, isn't backlit but offers a first-class layout, with dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys plus Ctrl and Delete in their proper lower left and top right corners, respectively. Its typing feel is snappy and sure, if a little shallow. The touchpad works smoothly, its twin buttons giving just the right amount of tactile feedback.

Features

On the right side of the R835-P88's chassis, next to the DVD±RW drive, are headphone and microphone jacks, a USB 3.0 port, and an Ethernet port. On the left are VGA and HDMI ports and two USB 2.0 ports, one an eSATA combo port with Toshiba's "sleep and charge" functionality for recharging handheld devices without turning the laptop on.

Bluetooth and WiMax are absent, but the R835-P88's 802.11n Wi-Fi worked fine in our tests and Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) is on hand for users who want to zap audio and video to an HDTV set equipped with a Belkin or Netgear adapter. Toshiba preloads the system's spacious 640GB (550GB free out of the box), 5,400-rpm hard drive with a slew of house-brand utilities and a scanty 30-day trial of Norton Internet Security.

The diminutive speakers above the keyboard pump out pleasant enough audio, but were occasionally drowned out during our tests by the Toshiba's cooling fan—inaudible during routine productivity work, the latter grew noticeably loud during strenuous exercises such as our graphics benchmarks.

TextArticle

Read More

Sony VAIO VPC-EH35FM/B

Sony VAIO VPC-EH35FM/B. If you can live without USB 3.0, the Sony VAIO VPC-EH35FM/B is a good value among desktop replacement laptops.

Design

Measuring 1.5 by 14.6 by 9.8 inches and weighing 5.2 pounds, the Sony VAIO VPC-EH35FM/B is cased in black plastic, with a handsome diamond-embossed pattern on the lid and palm rest that nevertheless picked up a few finger smudges on our test unit. If you don't like the black keyboard, our test unit came with a blue silicone keyboard skin that increased spill and crumb resistance without subtracting from the keyboard's slightly spongy yet comfortable typing feel. There's a full-sized numeric keypad with dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys (although they, the function and Delete keys, and the cursor arrows are slightly smaller than the regular keys), and a medium-sized touchpad with a nicely textured surface and clicky mouse buttons.

The screen resolution is the boilerplate 1,366-by-768 you'll find on most other 15- (and 14- and 13-inch) laptops—for this price, you shouldn't expect the 1,920 by 1,080 of Sony's 4.4-pound VAIO VPC-SE23FX/S ($999 direct, 4 stars) or the HP Envy 15 (2012) ($1,249.99 direct, 4 stars). That's enough for viewing 720p videos from the Web; you can't watch them from a Blu-ray disc because the VPC-EH35FM/B has a DVD±RW drive. The screen is clear and bright, with adequate viewing angles and vivid colors (and no, our eyes couldn't see the difference between the Sony's 15.5- and competitors' 15.6-inch panels, and we bet yours can't either). Audio through the built-in speakers is average.

Features

The VAIO VPC-EH35FM/B doesn't have the WiMAX mobile broadband found in our Editors' Choice Asus U56E-BBL6 , nor the Bluetooth technology used to sync a laptop and handheld. But it has two other wireless features: the familiar 802.11n Wi-Fi, which worked fine in our surfing and downloading tests, and Intel's Wireless Display (WiDi) for streaming the laptop's video and audio to an HDTV set equipped with a $100-or-so Belkin or Netgear adapter.

There are two memory-card slots on the Sony's front bezel, one for SD cards and the other for the company's Memory Stick Pro Duo format. On the right side of the chassis are three USB 2.0 ports and the DVD drive. On the left are VGA, HDMI, and Ethernet ports; microphone and headphone jacks; and a fourth USB 2.0 port—we looked for the blue connector or SS (Super Speed) label that designates a USB 3.0 port, but were disappointed.

By contrast, only a grouch could be disappointed that the VPC-EH35FM/B's 5,400-rpm hard drive is an ample 640GB instead of the even more ample 750GB of models like the Lenovo IdeaPad Z570-10249ZU ($699.99 list, 3.5 stars) and Asus K53SD-DS51 ($779.99 street, 3 stars). Sony preloads it with a Mac OS Dock-alike program launcher dubbed VAIO Gate, a couple of photo and video managers, and a scanty 30-day trial of Norton Internet Security.

Sony backs the laptop with a one-year warranty with on-site or at-home service. Best Buy offers a choice of two-year extended service plans: a $149.99 deal that covers normal wear and tear, power surges, a single replacement of a dead battery, and "no lemon" replacement of a system that's required four repairs; and a $269.99 plan with the above plus drop and spill protection.

TextArticle

Read More

Fujitsu Lifebook T731

Fujitsu Lifebook T731. The Fujitsu Lifebook T731 looks like someone threw a Windows tablet and a 12-inch notebook into a blender, and out popped a 12-inch convertible laptop. But the twist-into-a-tablet form-factor is nothing new to Fujitsu, a company that has been making convertible laptops for several years, and the Fujitsu Lifebook T731 is merely the latest in a long line of touch-friendly laptops. TextArticle

The Fujitsu Lifebook T731 has two operating modes, first as a traditional 12-inch notebook, and second, as a 12-inch Windows tablet. The 12.1-inch touchscreen works with either fingertips or the included stylus. In notebook mode, the Lifebook T731 is equipped with a standard keyboard, complete with anti-microbial coating. The screen is outfitted with a bi-directional hinge—and industry first—which allows you to twist it in either direction to convert into tablet mode.

One area where the Lifebook T731 leaves other Windows tablets in the dust is the size of its hard drive, which offers 320GB of storage space—not gigantic by notebook standards, but it's a whopper compared to the 64GB and 128GB solid-state drives (SSDs) seen in tablets like the Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 or the Samsung Series 7 Slate (700T1A) ($1,349.99 direct, 4 Stars).

The Fujitsu Lifebook T731 is powered by a 2.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i5-2410M with 4GB of RAM. With a laptop-grade processor, the Lifebook T731 ranks alongside the Series 7 Slate in putting the functionality of a Windows laptop into a touch-friendly form-factor without the compromises of an underpowered Atom processor. The Fujitsu's Intel Core i5 processor pulls double duty for the integrated graphics, but should still be up to the task for all of your Framville-level gaming needs. Anything beyond that will be out of the question.

Fujitsu covers the Lifebook T731 with a three year warranty. The Lifebook T731 can be purchased online through several major electronics retailers.

Read More

Toshiba Satellite C655-S5542

Toshiba Satellite C655-S5542. Like the Aspire 5349-2635 , the Satellite C655-S5542 is a 15.6-inch portable featuring Intel's humble Celeron B815 processor and a 320GB hard drive; even more modestly than the Aspire, it carries only 3GB instead of 4GB of RAM. TextArticle


Design

The Satellite is attractive enough, encased in black plastic with a crosshatched—or what Toshiba calls Trax—pattern. It's not too heavy (5.1 pounds) or bulky (1.6 by 15 by 9.8 inches, HWD) to fit in most briefcases or backpacks, though you'll never mistake it for an ultrabook. The screen shows some minimal flexing when grasped at the corners, but the system feels solid overall.

The keyboard is in the conventional jigsaw instead of island, tile, or chiclet style (i.e., there are no empty spaces between keys). It has a comfortably soft but not mushy typing feel with adequate travel and half-sized but dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys above the numeric keypad, which has a handy LED light to indicate Num Lock. Two speakers above the keyboard pump out adequately loud but nearly bass-free audio.

The 15.6-inch display offers the 1,366-by-768 resolution that's become the universal default for inexpensive laptops (and some not-so-inexpensive laptops), sufficient for 720p video viewing and light image editing. It's not the brightest—white backgrounds look adequately white only on the top backlight setting—but its colors and viewing angles are good.

Features

We mentioned that WiDi is not supported, but Wi-Fi worked perfectly in our browsing and downloading sessions, and there's one wireless perk the Acer 5349-2635 doesn't have: Bluetooth, for syncing data with or downloading MP3s to a smartphone.

The menu of available ports, by contrast, is limited to two USB 2.0, 10/100Mbps Fast rather than Gigabit Ethernet, and VGA, along with microphone and headphone jacks. All are on the left side of the Satellite's chassis, with the DVD±RW drive occupying the right. An SD/MMC card reader hides on the front bezel. Missing in action are USB 3.0 and HDMI.

Toshiba preloads the 320GB, 5,400rpm hard drive with a 30-day trial of Norton Internet Security, Google Chrome, a handy Corel CD/DVD label and jewel case insert printing utility, and 20-odd Toshiba-brand utilities ranging from the usual (a recovery media creator, face recognition for the webcam) to the intriguing (a thumbnail timeline view of accessed files). Toshiba's warranty for the Satellite C655-S5542 is one year.

Performance

Intel's Celeron B815 is a 1.6GHz dual-core CPU without Turbo Boost or Hyper-Threading. Given its pairing with only 3GB of memory, we expected leisurely performance, but the Toshiba proved tolerable for Web and office productivity work—and even completed our multimedia benchmark tests a few seconds quicker than the Acer Aspire 5349-2635, which has the same processor with 4GB of memory (3 minutes 2 seconds versus 3:05 in Handbrake; 7:36 versus 7:40 in Photoshop CS5).

Read More

Laptop Lenovo ThinkPad T420

With the ThinkPad T420, the name has changed, but the design remains the same: It’s the same squared-off, matte-black ThinkPad chassis you’d expect. We understand that you don’t mess with a classic, but we can’t help but steal furtive glances at the more au courant laser-etched metal chassis of the HP Envy 14 and others, and wonder what a ThinkPad might achieve given an extreme makeover.

What the ThinkPad T420 lacks in curb appeal is more than compensated for in the internal design. That basic-black chassis is mostly made out of a magnesium alloy for added strength with minimal weight. As with other T-series ThinkPads before it, the T420 features Lenovo’s roll cage: an internal carbon-fiber skeleton that protects the components within from flex. The T420 has also passed eight U.S. military testing specifications ("Mil-Spec," for short), including those for humidity extremes (up to 98 percent), low/high temperature, sand resistance, high-altitude operation, vibration, and mechanical shock. And as before, the keyboard is spill-resistant, with drainage holes on the bottom of the chassis to quickly route spills—up to 4 ounces of fluid, according to Lenovo—out of the machine.

At 4.8 pounds and 1.2 inches thick, the ThinkPad T420 is on the bulky side for a machine at this weight, but it’s still easy to tote around the office and zip into a laptop bag for travel. That said, if you need a 14-inch-screened machine for frequent road trips, you might want to pay the premium for the lighter (3.9-pound) and thinner (0.9-inch-thick) ThinkPad T420s.

While the ThinkPad T420 looks nearly identical to the T410 it replaces, it is not a carbon copy. With the T420, Lenovo has moved to an imperceptibly smaller 14-inch screen, versus the 14.1-inch LCD on the older model. The new panel has an aspect ratio of 16-to-9 (versus 16-to-10 for the 14.1-inch panel), which means the screen resolution matches common HD-resolution specifications, at the expense of a bit of vertical height.

The T420 is not as slender as the T420s, but it still fits comfortably in the thin-and-light category. The left edge sports a VGA connector, a LAN jack, a DisplayPort connector and a USB port.


The edges of the machine contain a good selection of ports. VGA and DisplayPort connectors, for exporting the onscreen image to an external display, are on the laptop's left edge, accompanied by a USB 2.0 port and an Ethernet jack. The right edge houses a headset jack, another USB 2.0 port, an eSATA/USB combo port for connecting external high-speed drives, a memory-card reader, and an ExpressCard/34 slot for popping in expansion devices.

The right edge is also home to a modular-device swappable bay (an "UltraBay," in Lenovo-speak). Most of the time, this bay will hold your laptop's optical drive, but it can also accept a second hard drive or battery. These swap-in accessories are added-cost options.

Hiding around back is a FireWire connector and a third USB 2.0 port. This USB port is the “always on” type, which you can use for charging smartphones and other USB-connected devices when the laptop is off or in sleep mode. Note that the ThinkPad T420 lacks the faster USB 3.0 ports that are becoming common on high-end notebooks. Also, if you need to connect to an external display via HDMI (many HDTVs rely on these, for example), you’ll need to use a DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapter.

The right edge of the ThinkPad T420 houses the removable optical drive, memory card and ExpressCard slots, a classic USB port and an eSATA/USB combo port.

Read More

Laptop Gateway ID47H02u

A laptop with a 14-inch screen generally offers a good balance between utility and portability. Machines at this screen size are large enough to keep multitaskers productive by day and film buffs entertained by night, while also being compact and light enough for daily travel. The Gateway ID47H02u balances those factors out better than most, though—especially considering it's a budget machine.

At a hair less than 4.5 pounds (4.48, to be exact), the Gateway ID47H02u weighs less than most 14-inch laptops. The competing Dell Inspiron 14R, for example, is a typical 14-inch model and weighs in at 5.3 pounds. Conversely, the 13.3-inch Lenovo IdeaPad Z370, with its smaller screen, is only barely lighter than the ID47H02u, at 4.4 pounds. And despite the differences in screen size, the IdeaPad Z370 and the ID47H02u share similar dimensions. The Gateway machine measures 13 inches wide by 8.9 inches deep, and it's only 1.1 inches thick. The IdeaPad Z370 has almost exactly the same footprint, but it's way thicker, at 1.4 inches. By contrast, the 14-inch Dell Inspiron 14R is significantly bigger in all three dimensions.

The Gateway ID47H02u boasts clean lines and a simple design, though the glossy, buttonless touch pad may take some getting used to.


The Gateway ID47H02u is so compact, in part, because of its thin screen bezel. The LCD nearly reaches the edges of the lid, where the bezel is only three-eighths of an inch thick, and this measurement includes both the plastic frame and the black border below the display glass. Also helping the Gateway ID47H02u cut such a thin profile is its use of aluminum in places, which is thinner and stronger (and better-looking, to boot) than the plastic that dominates many under-$1,000 laptops. The competing Dell Inspiron 14R, for example, has an all-plastic chassis.

The Gateway ID47H02u features aluminum on both the lid and keyboard deck.

The bottom of the Gateway ID47H02u is made from a single piece of plastic with smooth, rounded edges. It offers a better feel than the often-uneven underside of your typical laptop, but the trade-off for this is that the battery is sealed inside. (More on that in a bit.). Also, the bottom has no panels to access the hard drive, the memory, or other components inside.

The keyboard sits in a piece of aluminum that is sunken and separate from the rest of the keyboard deck. A small gap surrounds this keyboard tray, and we weren't too keen on that; it will likely attract dust and dirt over time. Keep some canned air handy, and it shouldn't be a problem, but we still wish the keyboard deck were fashioned from a single piece of aluminum, as it is on pricier laptops such as the Apple MacBook Pro and HP Envy 14.

The keyboard features Chiclet-style keys, which are generously spaced and offer good travel. Although they are plastic, the keys are not clacky and offer a subtle, soft feel. Gateway adds a column of keys to the right of the keyboard that offer volume and mute functions along with a "social media" button. The last item launches a small, instant-messenger-like window in which you can track Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube activity. We tried it out, but we ultimately found it easier to access our social-media sites via a Web browser.

The keyboard features generously spaced Chiclet-style keys.

Below the keyboard is a large, buttonless touch pad that extends to the front edge of the laptop. It supports multi-finger gestures, and basic scrolling with two fingers was smooth and responsive. You'll need to get used to mousing without your thumb resting on the bottom edge of the touch pad, however. We made a bunch of accidental cursor jumps and mistaken mouse clicks before we made a conscious effort to keep our thumb clear of the pad. Also, the glossy black surface of the touch pad doesn't provide the best feel. Our fingertips tended to drag against it.

Read More

Laptop Dell XPS 14z

It takes more than fancy tattoos and a cool haircut to be a rock star—you need to have the complete package. That includes being thin, attractive, and powerful—and you have to hit all the right notes. Dell attempted this with its slim, gorgeous Adamo XPS a few years back, but the company soon realized that the system met only two of those requirements. What could have been a great laptop lacked power and features, with a low-powered processor, limited storage and ports, and short battery life.

So on October 24, 2011, Dell is launching its XPS 14z, a thin, gorgeous, full-featured notebook that brings to mind the old Adamo. It’s meant to be a rock-star notebook for rock-star professionals who buy their own PCs and use them at work—just like many of us have been doing with our smartphones for years. And while we tested the base unit (minus 2GB of RAM), we see enough raw talent here to pass it through to the next round and recommend it for the rock stars among you.

Unlike the Adamo, which was heavy on the beauty but light on brains, the XPS 14z is equipped with solid components, even at its lowest configuration. Our test unit featured an Intel Core i5-2430M CPU, a 500GB hard drive, Intel's on-processor integrated graphics, and 4GB of RAM. (U.S. models will come with 6GB of RAM standard for the same price.) This base configuration is $999. Dell offers three more configurations that reach up to $1,599. The top one has a Core i7-2640M processor, a 256GB solid-state drive, 8GB of RAM, and a dedicated Nvidia GeForce 520M graphics processor with 1GB of video memory. The mid-level models use one of these two processors, 750GB hard drives, and the same Nvida graphics card as in the high-end model. You can find those for $1,199 and $1,299, and they all go on sale November 1.

The thinnest 14-inch laptop with an internal optical drive, Dell’s XPS 14z showed us a lot to like in our trials. We have some quibbles about the audio, as well as the placement and selection of the ports, but if you’re just as serious about design as you are about your work, the Dell XPS 14z deserves an equally serious look.

Read More

Laptop Sony VAIO F Series (VPCF233FX/B)

With the VAIO F Series, Sony plays to its multimedia and entertainment strengths, delivering a 16.4-inch-screened notebook with plenty of power and features for serious media creation and consumption. It's a good value, too: Sony throws in a terrific software bundle and enough power for casual gaming, all without saddling the machine with an untenable price tag. In fact, at $999 for the base model and $1,149 for the Best Buy-specific VPCF233FX/B configuration we tested, the VAIO F Series is among the best-performing multimedia laptops for the money that we've seen in 2011.

The 16.4-inch screen on this machine positions this laptop at the high end of what we call a "mainstream notebook," a kind of laptop that usually comes with a 15.4- or 15.6-inch screen. The extra inch here makes a big difference not just in screen real estate but also in performance, in an indirect way. With a larger screen, you get a larger chassis, which allows for more airflow and therefore the inclusion of faster, hotter-running components. And since this machine is not quite a 17.3-inch behemoth (what we'd call a true "desktop replacement" machine), you get a little more portability, as well.

Our Best Buy configuration is fixed, meaning you can't configure it the way you want. It comes with the same processor that you'd get in the $999 base model F Series directly from Sony, which is a nonetheless-impressive 2.2GHz Core i7 quad-core chip, capable of auto-speedup via Intel's TurboBoost technology. If you have your sights set a little higher, though, you can opt for one of Sony's configure-to-order (CTO) F Series models. You can spend $90 more (beyond the $999 base price) to bump up the processor speed to 2.4GHz, or $290 more for a 2.5GHz Core i7 CPU.

The Best Buy model we tested does come with the better of the F Series' two possible graphics options, however. Our system included an Nvidia GeForce GT 540M with 1GB of dedicated memory. You can save yourself $50 and go with the GeForce GT 520M and 512MB with a CTO model, but we'd recommend this splurge in whatever model you get. Variations in hard drive size and the amount of RAM are also available on Sony's site. Whether you go with the fixed Best Buy model or you configure your own, however, all the F Series notebooks come with impressive audio, a gorgeous screen, and excellent viewing angles for both work and play.

Read More

Laptop Apple MacBook Pro (15-Inch, Fall 2011 Version)

On the heels of the hugely hyped release of the Apple iPhone 4S, it's hard to imagine Apple releasing anything on the QT. (And by that, we don't mean "QuickTime.") So imagine our surprise to learn that Apple ever-so-quietly rolled out a refresh of its MacBook Pro line. There was no official announcement, and few rumors and speculation preceded the release, which is all but unprecedented for a new Apple product. Sure, Apple just refreshed the MacBook Pro earlier this year, and its signature laptop has never generated the mass hype that the iPhone and iPad have. But for a company whose every whisper is analyzed by Apple fanatics the world over, we're surprised at how low-key this refresh rolled out.

That said, the latest MacBook Pro isn't a landmark revamp of the line, by any means. All told, the understated improvements match the understated announcement. The 13-inch version of the machine simply got a slightly faster processor than the early-2011 13-inch MacBook Pro had, jumping from a 2.3GHz Intel Core i5 to a 2.4GHz one. (Both are dual-core chips.)

When closed, the MacBook Pro is just less than an inch thick.

The $1,799 15-inch base model, which we reviewed here, gets a slightly more impressive bump. This MacBook goes from a 2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor to a 2.2GHz quad-core Core i7, and it gets an excellent improvement in graphics, from a single AMD Radeon HD 6490M graphics chip to a switchable-graphics arrangement. The late-2011 model is powered by both the Intel HD Graphics 3000 circuitry that's built into the processor chip and separate AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics, backed by 512MB of onboard video memory.

Our test unit also had a 500GB hard drive. In sum, the base-model 15-inch MacBook Pro now has most of the components that were previously found in the top-level 15-inch MacBook Pro—and for $400 less. The new, higher-end $2,199 15-inch model, as well as the 17-inch MacBook Pro, also get speedier processors, better graphics, and larger hard drives than their previous iterations, without price increases. But before we go in to more detail about the inside of the new MacBook, let's talk about the outside.

Read More