Laptops

At IFA 2026, Dell announced a new budget laptop set to go head-to-head with Apple's popular and affordable MacBook Neo devices. As an alternative to the impressive Dell XPS 13 (2026), check out our review of the Dell XPS 14 (2026) here: the new Dell 14S (2026) will arrive in multiple colorways, promising all-day battery life and performance for students and professionals, powered by Intel's 'Wildcat Lake' Core 5 and Core 7 Series 3 processors.

Although Apple's MacBook Neo series was able to hit its impressive price-to-performance target by repurposing iPhone processors, Intel's 'Wildcat Lake' series was explicitly designed for everyday use, all-day battery life, and multitasking performance. This means the Dell 14S (2026) series probably won't be great for PC gaming, but it will offer more than enough power for multitasking, running apps, video conferencing, and more.

Multiple Dell 14S (2026) configurations will also be available, with the entry-level variant set to run on the 6-core Intel Core 5 320 processor, 8GB of LPDDR5X memory clocked at 7,467 MT/s, and 256GB of PCIe NVMe SSD storage. At the high end, the more powerful Dell 14S (2026) models will sport the faster Intel Core 7 350 processor, 16GB of LPDDR5X memory clocked at 7,467 MT/s, and up to a 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD.

ASUS has published the full specs and details for one of the first premium laptops set to launch with NVIDIA's new RTX Spark SoC, pairing a 20-Core NVIDIA Grace CPU with 6,144 CUDA Cores of RTX Blackwell graphics. With RTX Spark laptops set to arrive with up to 128GB of unified memory, the ProArt P14 creator laptop specs confirm a minimum spec of 24GB of LPDDR5X memory.

The specs show a wide range of memory options: 24, 32, 48, 64, and 128GB. Alongside 512GB and 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD storage options, this confirms that RTX Spark laptops will be available in a variety of memory and storage configurations. With the RTX Spark chip, the ProArt P14 supports up to 12K video editing with 4:2:2 color, local 4K AI video generation, and rendering large 90GB 3D scenes thanks to its raw processing power and RTX technologies. It also delivers 1 petaflop of AI performance for demanding AI workloads.

The CNC-machined ProArt P14 is both ultrathin and ultralight with a 13.9mm thickness and 1.48kg weight. Designed for creators, it also features an ASUS Lumina Pro OLED display. With its 14-inch size, 3K resolution (2880 x 1800), 120Hz refresh rate, 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, 283 PPI, and up to 1,600 nits of peak brightness, it's the sort of display built for creators and designers.

Whether you're gaming on a Linux system running SteamOS, a PC gaming distro, or a Windows on Arm device, a major stumbling block in recent years has been the lack of anti-cheat support. Beyond locking players out of some of the most popular titles, the main reason for the omission is that these anti-cheat tools run at the system or kernel level.

With the first RTX Spark laptops on track for later this year, powered by NVIDIA's first consumer-facing SoC that combines an Arm-based 20-core Grace CPU with integrated RTX Blackwell graphics, the company is working with developers and publishers to ensure anti-cheat support is there on day one.

As the first Windows on Arm devices with GeForce RTX graphics, NVIDIA has announced that RTX Spark will launch with support for EA's kernel-level anti-cheat tool called Javelin. Since Javelin anti-cheat is required for games like Battlefield 6 and EA Sports FC 26, its support is a welcome addition for those looking to use their RTX Spark devices for PC gaming.

The first premium Windows on Arm laptops powered by NVIDIA's new RTX Spark chip are set to debut later this year. Pairing a 20-core Grace CPU with integrated RTX Blackwell graphics with up to 6,144 CUDA Cores, RTX Spark laptops will arrive in thin and lightweight form factors with access to NVIDIA's full AI stack and the ability to run 120B parameter agents locally.

In addition to being built for the modern AI era, RTX Spark laptops will also deliver the PC gaming and content-creation performance found in GeForce RTX 50 Series-powered x86 laptops. Although NVIDIA hasn't provided any official benchmarks, the company confirms that RTX Spark laptops will power 100 FPS 1440p gaming with ray-tracing and DLSS, and offer creators seamless 8K video editing performance.

With existing Windows on Arm devices powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips, PC gaming performance has been a mixed bag because games must run through an emulation layer and there's a general lack of native support for advanced rendering features. Although things have consistently improved since the first Windows on Arm devices hit the scene, gaming performance is set to reach a new level based on what we've heard from NVIDIA.

A Redditor has stumbled onto a surprisingly effective way to keep a gaming laptop running cooler, and it does not involve spending a single dollar on new cooling gear. Posting in r/GamingLaptops, user MentalReserve2351 explained that switching from a wooden desk to a metal surface made a noticeable difference to his laptop temperatures in an air-conditioned room.

Temperatures while playing Cyberpunk 2077 reportedly dropped from the 80-90°C range down to 75-83°C, just by changing the material underneath the machine. The user was initially worried about the metal getting too hot to touch, but said it stayed cooler than the wood the entire time, and never hot enough to be uncomfortable.

It looks like the explanation comes down to how many laptops pull intake air from the bottom panel before exhausting it out the side vents. Metal simply conducts and dissipates heat far better than wood, so it stays cooler than a wooden table, especially in a room with air conditioning. The Redditor even put up an image of his metal table in the replies, which is nothing out of the ordinary.

Apple's MacBook Neo shook up the budget laptop market when it launched earlier this year, and Windows manufacturers have been scrambling to respond ever since. Lenovo appears to be next in line, with leaked renders obtained by Windows Latest showing an unannounced laptop called the IdeaPad Vibe.

Lenovo's attempt is positioned directly against the MacBook Neo in both price and personality, and you can see that in the IdeaPad Vibe's colour options. Seven of them are reportedly planned: blush pink, bright yellow, terracotta orange-brown, sage green, navy blue, silver, and mint teal.

Each has a matching Lenovo logo on the lid, while the keyboard deck stays dark grey across all variants. Unlike the MacBook Neo's four colour options, Lenovo is going much wider here, which makes sense given how much the Neo's colourful design has contributed to its appeal among students.

Lenovo has not finished asking how much screen it can fit into a laptop bag. Leaked images obtained by Windows Latest reveal a ThinkBook concept internally called Project Swan, a business laptop with a display that physically expands horizontally from both sides of the lid using motorized rails.

The design stores sections of a flexible OLED panel inside housings along the edges of the lid. When activated, dual motors drive the rails outward, expanding the screen into a wider format. From the front, the laptop looks like a standard ThinkBook, complete with a centered webcam, ThinkBook branding on the palm rest, and two USB-C ports on the left edge.

The rear is where the changes become more obvious, with structural cutouts for the sliding mechanism and a shorter, more centrally positioned hinge designed to stay clear of the expanding channels on either side.

NVIDIA's RTX Spark chips are set to power a new wave of premium Windows on Arm laptops, and with the release on track for Fall 2026, we're now starting to see benchmarks and performance data pop up. This week we've got two new Geekbench listings covering two RTX Spark variants, one with a 20-core CPU and one with an 18-core CPU.

For the full 20-core RTX Spark chip, the Geekbench 'OEMQAJ 766_MIS Product Name DV' listing shows impressive results with a 2,570 single-core score and a 23,126 multi-core score. Although it falls a bit short of the new Snapdragon X2 Elite processor, it does pull ahead of AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor, aka Strix Halo. It's also faster than the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, showcasing that RTX Spark is indeed faster than its X86 contemporaries.

When it comes to single-core and multi-core performance, there's not a lot separating the 20-core and 18-core RTX Spark variants, with the latter's CPU performance being within 6% of the flagship configuration. Interestingly, although these Geekbench listings aren't related to GPU performance, they do confirm a difference with the RTX Blackwell GPUs found on each model.

A few weeks ago, we saw NVIDIA RTX GPUs successfully run on ARM-based Snapdragon laptops through modding NVIDIA's latest RTX Spark development driver on the laptop. YouTuber ETA Prime put the new driver to the test, showing what level of gaming performance the RTX Spark driver and Snapdragon X2 Elite are capable of producing.

Tests were conducted using an RTX 4060 paired with a Thunderbolt 5 GPU dock running at 40gbps, with an ASUS Zenbook A16 using a Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme SoC. One unfortunate quirk with the RTX Spark drivers is that the RTX 4060 is allegedly the fastest GPU that works well with the drivers. Putting in a more powerful GPU, including an RTX 5070 Ti, reportedly resulted in worse performance than an RTX 4060.

The YouTuber tested 3DMark TimeSpy, Forza Horizon 6, Cyberpunk 2077, Project Cars 2, Ghost of Tsushima, and DOOM: The Dark Ages with the aforementioned setup. In Forza Horizon 6, the Snapdragon laptop and RTX 4060 combo achieved playable frame rates (unfortunately, the frame rate counter failed to work in this game specifically). Performance in Cyberpunk 2077 was around 60 FPS average at 1080p high settings, using DLSS in quality mode. Bumping up the resolution to 1440p dropped frame rates down to around 40-50 FPS average, and using 1440p with X2 frame generation boosted frame rates up to around 70 FPS average.

The new COLORFUL Rimbook L1 Plus is a lightweight, portable, and powerful new laptop built for creators, everyday users, and students. It's powered by the 8-core, 16-thread AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS processor, which features clock speeds of up to 4.75 GHz, and integrated Radeon 680M graphics. As a lightweight 16-inch laptop weighing just 1.4kg and measuring 16.65 mm thin, the Rimbook L1 Plus is all about portability for those looking for an on-the-go solution.

In addition to the Ryzen CPU, the Rimbook L1 Plus ships with 16GB of LPDDR5-6400 memory and a 512GB PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD. It's also equipped with two SSD slots so users can expand the internal storage as needed. Rounding out the hardware, the Rimbook L1 Plus also sports a large 16-inch IPS display with a 120 Hz refresh rate, 100% sRGB color gamut rating, and 300 nits of peak brightness.

It also sports a 2560x1600 (2.5K) resolution, which COLORFUL notes makes the Rimbook L1 Plus a device for creators and professionals. And on that note, in addition to coming with Windows 11 pre-installed, it also ships with WPS Office for quick access to a wide range of productivity tools like word processing and spreadsheet creation.

In a forum post titled 'I've Spent A Month With NVIDIA's RTX Spark in Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra,' a TechPowerUp forum user by the name of Fouquin details how they've been in possession of an RTX Spark-powered Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra laptop for about a month. With that, they're ready to share their "review" of the device, albeit with benchmarks and analysis based on the recent RTX Spark 616.00 preview driver NVIDIA released for developers, which added CUDA 13.4, OpenGL, and Vulkan support.

Formally announced at Computex 2026, RTX Spark refers to NVIDIA's N1X Arm-based CPU and RTX Blackwell GPU all-in-one chip that's set to power a new wave of powerful AI-ready premium Windows on Arm laptops and mini PCs on track for release later this year. With an optimized version of Windows, up to 128GB of unified memory, and powerful graphics reportedly on par with a desktop GeForce RTX 4070, there's a lot of hype surrounding the arrival of these RTX Spark devices.

This makes this early "review" notable; however, Fouquin notes in their post that they're not an AI person. Even so, they attempted to run the Phoronix AI test suite, albeit with some issues due to the pre-release nature of the software and drivers - with the Phoronix CUDA tests failing. That said, for the tests that did work, performance was in the range of the desktop GeForce RTX 4070.

Huawei has been showing off its new MateBook laptop which is unbelievably lightweight.

As Notebookcheck reports (via VideoCardz), Huawei teased the MateBook Pro S ahead of its full revelation next week (on August 5), letting us know that the laptop somehow only weighs 798 grams.

That's a pretty incredible achievement for the weight of a notebook, and it's over a third lighter than the MacBook Air 13-inch - and almost 200 grams lighter than the featherweight LG Gram 14.

Apple is set to roll out a sweeping overhaul of its Mac lineup in 2026, with the M6-powered MacBook Pro and redesigned iMacs leading the charge.

A new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, a well-known Apple insider with a strong track record, states Apple is finalizing work on the updated 14-inch MacBook Pro, which is expected to arrive in late 2026 before it transitions to the next-gen M7 chip in 2027. According to Gurman, Apple is planning to debut two new versions of every Mac it sells, including updates for its desktop computers. The report states Apple has already finished the design for the low-end M6 MacBook Pro, which will be the first to use the new M6 chip, along with two iMacs.

What is likely the standout from the new line-up is the high-end 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro, which Gurman writes will come with a fresh new design and a touchscreen that uses OLED pixel technology. These two new laptops are pegged to release sometime between this year and early next year, and both will, interestingly, use the previous-gen M5 Pro and M5 Max chips when they release.

MSI unveiled its 40th-anniversary flagship laptop at Computex 2026, and we got to see its impressive design up close. The MSI Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition Draco Epic limited edition laptop certainly lives up to its name, thanks to a physical design with impressive metal etching and art inspired by the Draco constellation, including anodized color embedded directly into the metal chassis.

It's a limited-edition design that comes in a special collector's edition bundle and packaging that includes a gaming mouse, a large mouse mat, and a commemorative coin. Yes, it's a stunning creation, but also a flagship gaming laptop packing some of the most impressive mobile hardware currently available. From a CPU and GPU perspective, it features the 24-core Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus processor and the GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU with 24GB of GDDR7 memory.

The MSI Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition Draco Epic is also on the larger side, with the 18 in the naming referring to its 18-inch 4K Mini LED display that sports a 240 Hz refresh rate and 100% DCI-P3 color accuracy, with VESA DisplayHDR 1000 Certification. The MSI Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition Draco Epic is also built to unlock the full potential of its hardware, with vapor chamber cooling and a total power rating of 270W thanks to MSI's OverBoost technology.

NVIDIA's RTX Spark system-on-chip (SoC) is on track to launch this fall, powering a new wave of Windows on Arm devices with its Grace CPU and RTX Blackwell GPU architecture. Announced at Computex 2026, RTX Spark marks NVIDIA's debut in the APU space, and the first devices will arrive as powerful premium laptops and mini PCs from companies like ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI, and more, with support for up to 127GB of unified memory.

Although specific dates, pricing, and even in-depth performance targets are still TBC, NVIDIA has released its first RTX Spark 'Developer Preview' driver so that developers can start porting their apps to Windows on Arm.

"Developers can begin preparing their applications for Windows on Arm and RTX Spark today," NVIDIA writes in a new post on its developer forums. "You do not need RTX Spark hardware to get started; an existing Windows on Arm development system can be used to port your application, identify incompatible dependencies, and bring up an initial Arm64 build."

For those who might not be aware, NVIDIA, SEGA, and the Virtua Fighter series share a long, storied history dating back 30 years. Back in the 1990s, as 3D visuals in games began to appear, SEGA's arcade fighting game Virtua Fighter quickly became one of the hallmarks of where gaming technology was headed. And as part of bringing the game to PC, SEGA partnered with NVIDIA to leverage its NV1 chip to power this version of the game.

Today, 30 years later, SEGA Akihabara Arcade in Tokyo, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang, SEGA CEO Haruki Satomi, SEGA COO Shuji Utsumi, Virtua Fighter creator Yu Suzuki, and former SEGA CEO and President Shoichiro Irimajiri came together to celebrate this partnership by announcing that the upcoming VIRTUA FIGHTER CROSSROADS is headed to RTX Spark.

RTX Spark is NVIDIA's new custom Arm-based APU built for premium laptops, debuting at Computex 2026, delivering powerful CPU performance with RTX graphics technologies and fast memory. With RTX Spark-powered Windows on Arm laptops on track for later this year, one of the highlights of these devices will be their PC gaming capabilities.

Lenovo has quietly confirmed its first ThinkPad laptops built around Intel's Wildcat Lake chips, adding new configurations to the ThinkPad E14 Gen 8 and ThinkPad E16 Gen 4 in its official product specifications database. This is the first time Intel's budget Core Series 3 platform has shown up in Lenovo's business laptop lineup.

Wildcat Lake officially launched earlier this year as Intel's Core Series 3 family, sitting a notch below the Core Ultra 300 "Panther Lake" chips that already power higher-end ThinkPad models. Both the E14 and E16 will offer buyers a choice between the two platforms, giving Lenovo a cheaper entry point without dropping the newer silicon entirely.

The listed SKUs include the Core 5 315, Core 5 320, Core 5 330, and a Core 7 360 model, each carrying two "Cougar Cove" P-cores paired with four "Darkmont" low-power E-cores, for six cores and six threads total. P-core boost clocks reportedly range from 4.4 GHz to 4.8 GHz, depending on the SKU.

UPDATE: Lenovo has reached out to clarify the below, confirming that it "does not use YMTC SSDs in products configured and shipped to the US market" and that the review in question was conducted on a German SKU (21UX005PGE) not for sale in the US.

Here's the original story.

When it comes to consumer technology and PC hardware, specifically memory and storage, we're currently in unprecedented times. Prices are rising at an alarming rate, with manufacturers shifting focus toward the booming, insatiable AI and data center market. This is leading to scarcity and price increases for hardware that's even a generation or two old, stuff that normally drops in price as the years go on.

Gaming laptops and portability have always been an uneasy pairing. The more powerful the hardware, the heavier and bulkier the machine tends to get. ThundeRobot is looking to challenge that with the ZERO Air 16, a 16-inch gaming laptop it claims is the lightest in the world at its performance tier, weighing just 1.64 kg.

To put the weight in context, 1.64 kg is lighter than many 14-inch gaming laptops with comparable RTX 50-series graphics. The closest 16-inch competitor is the LG gram Pro 16, but that machine uses an RTX 5050, not an RTX 5070. ASUS ROG models can get lighter, but those are 14-inch designs. At 16 inches with a full RTX 5070, ThundeRobot appears to have carved out a category of one, at least for now.

On the hardware side, the ZERO Air 16 pairs an Intel Core Ultra 7 356H, a 16-core Panther Lake chip, with an RTX 5070 Laptop GPU carrying 8GB of GDDR7 memory. The chassis is built from carbon fiber, which explains how ThundeRobot managed to hit that weight figure. The laptop ships with 32GB of LPDDR5 memory and 1TB of storage. Marketing materials mention an HDD, but that is almost certainly a translation error given the form factor.

Apple is reportedly making a significant change to its Apple Silicon roadmap. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the company has canceled plans for M6 Pro and M6 Max chips, making the M6 the first Apple Silicon generation since 2020 to ship without higher-end variants. Instead of following the usual cadence, Apple is jumping straight to the M7, which is being designed primarily around on-device AI performance.

The base M6 chip is still on track for late 2026 and will appear in entry-level MacBook Pro models, the Mac mini, iMac, and potentially upcoming iPad Pro and iPad Air models. It brings meaningful improvements over the M5, including memory bandwidth up to 200GB/s compared to 153GB/s on the M5, an updated Neural Engine, a redesigned GPU with up to 12 cores, up from 10, and performance improvements across all processor cores. Prior rumors have also suggested that the M6 will be built on Apple's new 2nm process to reduce manufacturing costs.

The M7 is expected to arrive in relatively quick succession, with the base chip targeting the first half of 2027. The M7 Pro and M7 Max are slated for the end of 2027, with the M7 Ultra following in 2028. Bloomberg reports that the M7 line is designed primarily around major advancements in on-device AI processing, with the base M7 expected to support around 240 GB/s of memory bandwidth.