Many members of the workforce are returning to the office after over 18 months of working from home. But folks might not be quite ready to give up on some of the luxuries they treated themselves to while they were cooped up in a private workspace. Perhaps you picked up a fancy mechanical keyboard, but don't want to take it to the office, since the clacking might annoy your coworkers.
Perhaps with that in mind, Razer has a couple of new products in its Productivity lineup that might give you that enjoyable tactile typing and clicking sensation without infuriating those around you. The Pro Type Ultra wireless keyboard and new Pro Click Mini mouse have "silent mechanical switches," which Razer says will offer a quieter experience wherever you're working from.
Razer
The keyboard also has dampening foam to mitigate the sound, and Razer claims the keys will be good for up to 80 million presses. The fingerprint-resistant keycaps have a "soft-touch coating for a luxurious, cushioned feel," according to the company. A wrist rest is included too.
Razer says you'll get up to 214 hours of use over Bluetooth and up to 207 hours of use via the low-latency Razer HyperSpeed Wireless connection before you need to recharge the keyboard. You can use it in wired mode over USB-C too. In addition, you'll be able to connect up to four devices and switch between them without having to re-pair them with a Pro Type Ultra.
If you're buying a new keyboard, you might want a matching mouse. As luck would have it, the Pro Click Mouse shares the Pro Type Ultra's white, dull-by-Razer-standards design. You can also pair the mouse (which isn't entirely silent based on an audio demo on Razer's website) with up to four devices.
There are a few scroll-wheel modes you can switch between depending on your current task. The free-spin mode is designed for zooming through long documents and webpages, tilt-click is geared toward horizontal scrolling and tactile mode is centered around more precise scrolling.
Razer
The mouse is rated for up to 15 million clicks. Razer claims you'll get up to 725 hours of battery life over Bluetooth and up to 465 hours via Razer HyperSpeed Wireless if you're using two AA batteries. There's an option to use only one battery if you'd prefer to reduce the weight. If you decide to pick up both the keyboard and mouse, you can pair them to the same USB dongle to free up a port on your computer.
The new peripherals follow the Pro Type keyboard and Pro Click mouse Razer released in August 2020. Those devices had more muted designs than Razer's gaming-focused products to help them blend in a bit more.
The $80 Pro Click Mini is available now from Razer's website and other retailers. The Pro Type Ultra keyboard costs $160, and will be available by the end of the year. Razer also introduced an enormous Pro Glide XXL mousepad with "thick, high-density rubber foam," which will run you $30.
If you’re thinking of getting a laptop or tablet as a gift, you’ve got a wealth of options. Thanks to the latest round of hardware from Intel, Apple, AMD and NVIDIA, all of our portable devices have gotten steadily faster and more efficient. Even the cheapest iPad can be a decent productivity machine, while gaming laptops now have almost all of the power of their desktop siblings. And with the arrival of Windows 11, it's a perfect time to give someone a nifty PC upgrade, especially since very old computers won’t be able to step up.
Dell XPS 13
Dell
Not to sound like a broken record, but the XPS 13 is still the best Windows ultraportable you can buy. The design hasn't changed much, but that's not a huge problem: It's still incredibly light and features extraordinarily thin screen bezels. And now you can also take advantage of Intel's latest 11th-generation processors. The XPS 13 can also be configured with an OLED screen, an ideal gift for someone who could use a bright and color accurate display. And if you’ve got someone in mind who could use even more power, the new XPS 15 has the same sleek design, but it has more room for a bigger display and better hardware.
Apple's MacBook Air hasn't been upgraded since last year's miraculous model — which gave it the winning combination of Apple's M1 processor, a fan-less design, and incredible battery life — but it's still one of the best laptops on the market. It's powerful enough to handle most productivity tasks and a few games, and whoever’s lucky enough to get it won’t have to worry about any fans spinning up, since it’s completely passively cooled. You can also find the M1-equipped MacBook Air on sale occasionally, making it one of the smarter gift purchases this season.
Kudos to Apple for continually improving its entry-level iPad. Once again, it's one of the best tablet gift options on the market. It's faster than ever, thanks to Apple's A13 Bionic processor, and it includes more storage. The $329 model now comes with 64GB, or you could bump up to 256GB for $479. That's more than enough space to save every episode of Bluey and several seasons of Sesame Street to survive long car trips. Sure, the design hasn't changed much since last year, but that doesn't matter much — it’s still a more than capable tablet.
Amazon's Fire tablets are basically just video-first Android slates, but they also prove you don’t have to pay a ton to buy a useful tablet for someone. This year, the Fire HD 10 is a bit faster, has 50 percent more memory and features a slightly brighter screen. And, as a bonus, there's a Bluetooth keyboard accessory that can turn it into a cheap productivity tablet. But its core selling point is the same as always: it can tackle most tablet tasks easily, and it won’t cost too much. (There are also kid-centric Fire tablets worth considering, which come with a more durable case and two years worth of free replacements.)
You can take all of the praise we've given Razer's Blade 15 over the years and apply it to the latest model. Razer's flagship gaming notebook still has a sleek unibody aluminum case, and it packs in the latest CPUs and GPUs, including NVIDIA's top-end RTX 3080. And thanks to improved screen choices, you can also gift models with fast 1,440p displays, which are sharper than 1080p screens, and easier to run natively than 4K displays. If portability is a greater concern, take a look at the new Razer Blade 14, a sub-four-pound notebook sporting AMD's latest processors.
If the gamer in your life wants something more flashy and a bit lighter than the Razer Blade, consider the Zephyrus G15. With the combined power of AMD's latest processors and NVIDIA's latest graphics cards, it'll handle practically any game thrown at it. And if you're on a budget, you can find lower-end models cheaper than the equivalent Razer's. Mostly, though, we love this laptop because it has pretty much everything we'd want in a mobile gaming rig — that includes an excellent keyboard, a speedy 165Hz 1440p screen and excellent battery life. The only downside is that there's no webcam, but any aspiring streamer would rather have a separate external camera anyway.
The best Chromebooks are cheap, sturdy and powerful enough to handle basic school and office work. Acer's Chromebook 512 is one of the best current options, especially if you're looking for something for a child. It has a spill resistant keyboard, a sturdy impact-resistant case, and anchored keys that are harder for kids to pull off. Its Intel Celeron N4000 chip isn't the fastest, but it's enough to work on Google Docs, Sheets and Presentations without breaking too much of a sweat.
Sometimes it seems like there are just too many PC ultraportables to choose from, but Microsoft's Surface Laptop line are always a solid option. They feature some of the best keyboards on the market, excellent displays and support for all of Microsoft's notebook accessories, like the Surface Stylus. But mostly, we appreciate them for their design simplicity. They're sturdy, attractive and built for productivity. The latest 15-inch model also packs in speedy AMD processors that are powerful enough to play a few rounds of Overwatch.
You'll have to go large if you want an Intel-powered Mac desktop. 9to5Macreports Apple has quietly discontinued the 21.5-inch iMac about half a year after introducing the M1 model. The company had been selling a lone dual-core model for $1,099 through a relatively hard-to-find page, but YouTube Tech God noticed that it disappeared sometime on October 29th.
We've asked Apple for comment on the move. The company has a long history of keeping legacy Macs around for a while before silently dropping them, but it seldom elaborates on those decisions. A notable exception came in March this year, when Apple confirmed it was winding down iMac Pro sales.
This won't thrill educational customers that may still want the 21.5-inch iMac for its relatively low price, small size and legacy ports. You'll have to buy at least a 27-inch iMac or a $1,099 legacy Mac mini if you're not ready to leap to Apple Silicon. This does signal Apple's confidence in its processors, though — it clearly believes its mainstream desktop customers are ready to make the switch.
Apple may have given us a glimpse of what the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros' insides look like, but it had a surprise waiting for the folks at iFixit nonetheless. The iFixit team said removing batteries from recent MacBook Pros required "infinite patience, a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, and an optional bottle of human-friendly alcohol." They expected the same from this generation of laptops but were pleasantly surprised by the presence of pull tabs instead when they tore down the new MacBook Pros.
The outer battery cells have noticeable pull tabs that you can, well, pull to detach them from their adhesive underneath. Even the central battery cells have pull tabs — they're just harder to find inside the laptop chassis beneath the trackpad. iFixit was able able to confirm that the laptops will recognize and work with battery replacements just fine.
In addition, most of the laptops' ports, except for the SD card reader and the HDMI port, are modular. That means they can be easily and cheaply replaced if they suddenly break or malfunction. Conversely, the laptops' keyboard will still be hard to replace, but hey, at least the days of Apple's butterfly keyboard are now over. You can watch iFixit's teardown process in the video below, and it also has more photos of the laptops insides on its website if you want to have a better look at their components. iFixit also took apart Apple's $19 polishing cloth, in case you're wondering what makes it more expensive that its typical counterparts.
Alienware didn't wait long to release its redesigned Aurora gaming desktop. The Dell brand has released both the Intel-powered Aurora R13 (above) and AMD-based Aurora Ryzen Edition R14 with their expected chassis redesign and, for the R13, a processor upgrade. The Intel machine now uses 12th-generation Core (aka Alder Lake) processors ranging from a 10-core 3.7GHz Core i5 through to the unlocked 16-core, 3.2GHz Core i9K and i9KF. The AMD models continue to use Ryzen 5000-series chips up to and including the 16-core 5950X.
The highlight, as you might expect, remains that distinct Legend 2.0 chassis. You can expect 50 percent more internal volume, tool-free entry, more customizable lighting and a more widely available clear side panel. That and an overall cleaner layout should help the Aurora run cooler and quieter than its predecessor while still allowing for easier upgrades. It probably won't sway you if you're determined to build your own rig, but it could make life easier if you're content to buy a pre-built system.
The R13 and Ryzen R14 models are available today starting at $1,250 for the AMD machine and $1,480 for its Intel-equipped counterpart. Upgrade options will remain familiar and include up to 128GB of RAM, GeForce RTX 3090 or RX 6900 XT graphics and 4TB of total storage (2TB SSD and 2TB spinning disk).
And don't worry if you're a creator who'd prefer a more sedate case — Dell has you covered as well. The company has teased a new XPS Desktop (below) that maintains the 'safe' design of before, but in a much larger (27L versus 19L) form that improves airflow and customization in the toolless chassis. You'll have to be content with 'just' 12th-gen Intel Core i5, i7 and i9 processors, but you'll have the same memory, graphics and storage choices. You can use liquid cooling, too, if fan noise or throttling are issues.
The new XPS tower arrives later in the fall starting at $919. As such, it might be the better buy if you're more interested in raw power than an attention-grabbing enclosure.
We've been hearing about Intel's powerful hybrid chips for so long, they've achieved almost mythical status. The idea behind them is intriguing: they feature both performance-cores (P-cores) and and efficient-cores (E-cores) on a single die, giving you chips that can be beefy and a bit more power-conscious, depending on the task. Previously, all of Intel's CPU cores were pretty much the same, which led to the energy-hungry designs we've seen over the last few years.
Now the company is ready to launch those chips, previously codenamed "Alder Lake," as its 12th-gen desktop processors. And maybe, just maybe, it'll be able to steal the spotlight back from AMD and Apple.
In addition to their hybrid configuration, these 12th-gen chips are also the first under the "Intel 7" process technology, which was previously seen as a refined 10nm design. When Intel revised its product roadmap in July with new names, it seemed to just be steering us away from its 7nm delays. But the performance of these 12th-gen chips may be enough to justify the new branding.
Intel
Intel is throwing some major numbers around: it says 12th-gen chips are up to 19 percent faster than 11th-gen CPUs overall, and they're twice as fast in the Adobe After Effects Pulse benchmark. When it comes to multithreaded performance (tasks built specifically for more than one core, like video and 3D rendering), the company claims the top-end i9-12900K is 50 percent faster than last year's 11900K while using less power. And even better, it can achieve performance parity while using only around a quarter of the power. Basically, everyone who held off on upgrading over the last few years is in for a treat, as these chips promise to be a big leap forward.
Intel's 12th-gen Core chips can fit in up to 16 cores on the i9-12900K. That's a combination of 8 P-cores and 8 E-cores, with a total of 24 process threads (every P-core counts double, since they support hyper-threading, but the E-cores don't). Given that this is an entirely new way of designing its chips, the company also worked together to develop a new Thread Director with Microsoft, which intelligently assigns tasks to the appropriate core. That way you don't have to manually assign a background thread to an E-core, or start mucking about your settings once you start working on concurrent tasks. (If the hybrid core design seems familiar, it's because ARM has been pushing something similar for the past decade with its big.LITTLE technology on mobile CPUs.)
Intel
Intel claims P-cores can perform up to 28 percent faster than its 10th-gen Comet Lake S chips in single-threaded performance. The E-cores, meanwhile, are just as fast as the 10th-gen hardware on their own. As you'd expect, these chips shine best when you're throwing serious workloads at them. Intel says the i9-12900K can get around up to 84 percent higher framerates while playing Mount and Blade II and streaming over OBS, compared to the previous generation chip. Similarly, it's 47 percent faster while multi-tasking with Adobe Lightroom Classic and Premiere Pro.
Intel
Intel's figures sound impressive when compared to its own hardware, but the company also noted that its Ryzen benchmarks were run before AMD and Microsoft deployed Windows 11 updates to fix some performance bugs. At the time of its testing, the i9-12900K appeared to have a commanding lead over the Ryzen 5950X in many games, like Troy: A Total War Saga and Grid 2019. But it'll be interested to see what those numbers look like now. And of course, AMD could easily come back with speedier hardware of its own early next year.
The new 12th-gen chips are also looking towards the future, with support for up to 16 lanes of PCIe 5.0 and DDR5-4800 RAM. Intel's new 600-series chipset will feature PCIe 4.0 support, integrated WiFi 6E, and an updated Direct Media Interface (DMI) that'll offer "double and faster bandwidth between the chipset and the processor." There's also support for up to 4 USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 ports, as well as far more USB 3.2 Gen 2 connections in general.
As you'd expect, it'll cost a bit more to jump into Intel's 12th-gen chips. The Core i9-12900K will go for $589, compared to the 11900K's $539 to $549 price range. You could always save $20 or so by getting the "KF" chip without onboard graphics, but in general I'd recommend keeping graphics in case your GPU gets fried. The more approachable Core i7-12700K, thankfully, hasn't budged from its predecessor's $409 price, while the Core i5-12600K is around $20 more than before if you want onboard graphics.
The real question for Intel is how this new hardware stacks up against what AMD and Apple have coming. Benchmark leaks suggest that the i9-12900K is faster than Apple's M1 Max chip, but that's also a power-sipping laptop part. A faster, desktop-focused chip from Apple would likely leave Intel lagging behind again. Still, this uncertainty is a good thing for the PC industry as a whole. Now we've got several companies producing powerful processors. Their attempts to one-up should ultimately be a very good thing for consumers.
Apple's latest pro-level notebooks are barely one week old and they've already received a discount on Amazon. Both the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros with M1 Pro CPUs are $50 off right now — that means you can grab the 512GB 14-inch model for $1,950 or the 512GB 16-inch version for $2,450. Is it a huge discount? No, but it's notable for Apple's newest laptops for which price might be a big barrier to entry for some. Both laptops will ship starting tomorrow.
Despite being announced just last week, we managed to check out the latest MacBook Pros and gave them a score of 92. Apple addressed a lot of complaints people had with its high-end laptops here, namely their lack of ports. Both machines have three Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI connector, a MagSafe power port, a headphone jack and an SD card reader. The only thing missing is a USB-A port, but that's a small sacrifice to make when you have so many connectivity options that you didn't have on previous MacBook Pros.
To house these bevy of ports, the new MacBook Pros are thicker and slightly heavier than previous editions, but they remain portable (the 14-inch a bit more so than the 16-inch). They also have lovely Liquid Retina XDR displays capable of reaching 1,600 nits of brightness thanks to their Mini-LED backlighting. They also support 120Hz refresh rates with ProMotion, which will help prevent your eyes from getting fatigued after hours of scrolling through documents and web pages. The webcam notch is a noticeable difference as well, albeit one that might frustrate some, but at least the 1080p webcam is a big upgrade from the 720p camera in previous models.
Unsurprisingly, the new MacBook Pros have stellar performance. While the M1 chipset in last year's laptops fell a bit short when it came to heavy duty creative work, the M1 Pro processors remedy that and we found the SSDs in these Pros to be speedy as well. While those who need serious power for 3D renderings and similar tasks may still want to consider machines with dedicated GPUs, others will find the power provided in the new MacBook Pros to be more than sufficient. And they last long, too — the 14-inch model survived over 12.5 hours in our testing, while the 16-inch machine lasted over 16.5 hours. If you knew during Apple's event last week that the latest MacBook Pro was the laptop for you, now's a good time to grab one while you can save a few dollars in the process.
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Apple is finally restoring balance to its portable lineup with the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros. If you wanted a big-screen Mac notebook for video editing over the past year, you were stuck paying a premium for outdated Intel and AMD hardware. So, we've been eagerly awaiting an M1 upgrade for the 16-inch MacBook Pro, a machine I called Apple's best laptop ever when it debuted two years ago.
But it's worth remembering that, for all the hype around Apple's M1 chip last year, it was a let down for creative professionals. It just couldn’t handle the kinds of heavy duty video editing and 3D rendering that they demanded, in part due to being capped at 16GB of RAM. That made the 13-inch MacBook Pro a bit of an odd duck, since the Air was nearly as fast.
Apple's redesigned MacBook Pros, powered by its new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, are exactly what media professionals have been waiting for. The processors are far faster than last year's M1, they support up to 64GB of RAM, and both laptops feature XDR display technology borrowed from the iPad Pro. But Apple also looked backwards as it stepped forward, restoring ports and adopting a design that resembles many of its older machines. Just call them PowerBooks, reborn.
What's new
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
Apple isn’t currently planning to replace the 13-inch model with the MacBook Pro 14. It’s more an expansion of the highest-end model. It can do almost everything the 16-inch model can, it’s just smaller. (The only exception is "High Power Mode," which gives the 16-inch M1 Max version a temporary speed boost.) That's one way I've come to terms with the high $1,999 starting price. The bigger model now starts at $2,499, $100 more than the Intel version.
Both notebooks still look like MacBook Pros, with sleek unibody aluminum cases. But lean in a bit closer and you'll notice some retro flourishes. They're slightly thicker, with more bulbous edges that hearken back to Apple's notebooks from the 2000's. They're also heavier than you'd expect: the 14-inch model comes in at 3.5 pounds, while the 16-inch varies between 4.7 and 4.8 pounds, depending on the chip you choose. That's about half a pound heavier than the last 16-inch MacBook Pro.
All of that heft isn’t for naught, though. In part it allowed Apple to cram in a lot more ports. Joining three Thunderbolt 4 USB-C connections are a full-sized HDMI port, a MagSafe power connection, a high-impedance headphone jack and an SD card reader (cue triumphant horns). Sure, you’ll still need adapters to connect older USB Type-A devices, but at least you can offload photos and video without extra gear. You can still charge the notebooks over USB-C — always useful in a pinch — but the MagSafe connection is less likely to cause accidental falls and you won't have to use a precious USB-C port just to stay powered up.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
Looking at the MacBook Pro's screens makes it clear they're anything but retro, though. They feature 14.2-inch and 16.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR displays, respectively. Mini-LED backlighting lets them reach up to 1,600 nits of peak brightness, which is great for HDR content. The screens are a sharp 254 pixels per inch, with a 3,024 by 1,964 resolution on the 14-inch and 3,456 by 2,234 on the 16-inch. Neither are true 4K (the 16-inch comes close), but you'll still be able to work on 4K and 8K video, just at a reduced scale.
Best of all is that the MacBook Pros support ProMotion, Apple's technology that enables refresh rates up to 120Hz. With that flipped on, scrolling through web pages and documents just felt silky smooth. And after spending hours writing up this review, I definitely noticed that my eyes were less fatigued thanks to the speedy refresh rate. This is becoming more common in the laptop world. Microsoft already beat Apple to the punch by putting a 120Hz screen in the Surface Laptop Studio. ProMotion is also intelligent enough to lower the refresh rate when it makes sense, which goes a long way towards saving battery life.
Really though, you don't have to think about all of the technology going into Apple's Liquid Retina XDR displays. Just know that they look incredible, with eye-watering brightness in sunny HDR scenes and inky black darkness in night shots. These aren't OLED screens, but mini-LEDs get Apple pretty close to that level of contrast.
Embracing the notch life
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
Now let's talk about the elephant in the room: that notch in the middle of the screen. Much like the last batch of iPhones, Apple carved out a portion of the display to fit in a camera. In this case a 1080p webcam. Upon first glance, it's almost laughable that Apple is leaning even more into a design element that everyone hates. But, honestly, the notch isn't a big deal.
Apple wisely pushed the MacOS menu bar around the camera, so it's really just taking up space that would go unused anyway. The menu bar also gets blacked out entirely whenever you put an app or video in fullscreen. You could also use a black wallpaper which effectively hides the notch.
I'll happily give up a bit of screen real estate, though, if it means Apple can finally squeeze in a decent camera. And judging from the dozens of video calls I've been on over the past week, it's a huge upgrade. There's a clear leap forward in resolution, sharpness and detail compared to my 2017 MacBook Pro. And it definitely looks better than the M1 MacBook Air, which had a few tweaks, but was still stuck at 720p. It would have been nice to see FaceID on the MacBook Pro though, which would have brought it on-par with Windows Hello-equipped PCs. For now, you'll still have to rely on the TouchID sensor on the power button.
In use
Our 14-inch review model was equipped with an M1 Pro sporting 16 GPU cores, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. The 16-inch had the 32 GPU core M1 Max, a 2TB SSD and a whopping 64GB of RAM. (This, by the way, marks the first time I've reviewed a laptop with that much RAM.) Both of Apple's new chips also feature 10 CPU cores — for comparison, the M1 had eight CPU cores and eight GPU cores.
Geekbench 5 CPU
Cinebench R23
Disk speed (top reads/writes)
Apple MacBook Pro (14-inch)
1,767/11,777
1,515/12,118
5.1 GB/s / 5.8 GB/s
Apple MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2021)
1,783/12,693
1,524/12,281
5.1 GB/s / 6.2 GB/s
Apple MacBook Pro (Apple M1, 13-inch, 2020)
1,696/7,174
1,492/7,467
3GB/s / 3GB/s
Dell XPS 15 (Intel i7-11800H, RTX 3050 Ti)
1,536/7,551
1,506/9,453
2.8 GB/s / 2.6 GB/s
Razer Blade 14 (AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX. RTX 3080)
1,443/7,226
1,461/11,502
3 GB/s / 2 GB/s
Just based on specs, I expected to see some wild performance improvements. And the benchmarks didn't disappoint: According to GeekBench 5, both MacBook Pros blew away every Windows PC we reviewed this year by a significant margin. That includes the NUC 11 Extreme powered by Intel's Core i9-11900KB, a high-end desktop CPU! The single-core performance on the M1 Pro and Max was similar to the M1, which is unsurprising. But the multi-core figures were far higher. Another nice plus: Both of these computers are equipped with very fast NVMe SSDs, which will be a huge help when working with large projects.
The GPU-heavy Geekbench 5 Compute score made it clear that Apple hasn't completely surpassed the likes of NVIDIA and AMD, though. The 14-inch MacBook Pro was more than twice as fast as the Surface Pro 8 (running Intel's Xe graphics) and the M1-equipped 13-inch MacBook Pro, while the bigger notebook was on-par with the Surface Laptop Studio equipped with an NVIDIA 3050 Ti. These aren't bad scores, but it makes it clear that users who need serious power for 3D rendering or data crunching may be better off with PCs equipped with dedicated GPUs.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
I don't think those are the people Apple is trying to court, though. Instead, the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros seem like an attempt to get back in the good graces of audio and video producers. Apple's new chips will certainly be more than enough for dealing with media. Both computers managed to convert a 4K video clip to 1080p in 34 seconds with Apple's VideoToolbox hardware encoder, which is four seconds slower than the NUC 11 Extreme, but four seconds faster than the XPS 15. They were also among the fastest Cinebench R23 performers we saw this year — only the ASUS ROG Strix G15 gaming laptop bested them.
And before you ask, no, the M1 Pro and M1 Max don't magically turn these computers into gaming rigs. Sure, everything on Apple Arcade runs smoothly, but that was true of the MacBook Air. When I tried to load Borderlands 3, one of the few semi-recent games that actually works on Macs, I just got an unplayable mess running below 30fps. Maybe the the guarantee of decent GPUs will encourage more game developers to build for Macs, but more likely they'll just end up making sure their iPhone and iPad games run smoothly.
Surprisingly, I didn’t notice a huge difference in performance when I was running the MacBook Pros on battery. PCs often slow down dramatically whenever they’re disconnected from a socket, but not so with these notebooks. That’s useful if you need to encode something remotely and you’re willing to sacrifice battery life to get it done.
Don’t worry though, the efficiency of the M1 chip’s ARM design leads to great battery performance. The 14-inch MacBook Pro lasted 12 hours and 35 minutes in our benchmark, while the 16-inch went for 16 hours and 34 minutes. That’s over five hours longer than the last Intel model.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
It’s clear that Apple listened to many of the complaints from Mac fans (and perhaps even lowly reviewers). But really, that’s something the company has been doing more over the years, like when it finally moved away from those awful butterfly keyboards to more tactile Magic Keyboards. By the way, typing on the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro remains excellent, and the trackpad is a dream to use, as always.
Apple didn't skimp on the audio front either. Both MacBook Pros sport a six-speaker array, made up of two tweeters and four force-cancelling woofers. Simply put, they sound miraculous. I normally just play a few songs on notebook speakers to confirm how disappointing they are. But these laptops sounded like I was listening to two small bookshelf speakers, with transparent vocals and punchy bass. Yes, I'm as shocked as you are.
The 16-inch MacBook Pro sounds a bit better, since it has room for slightly bigger drivers, but both notebooks are enough for a private jam session. The MacBook Pro's microphones also do a solid job of capturing speech during video calls. I wouldn't use them to record professional music, as Apple suggested you could, but they’re probably fine for a quick podcast session on the road.
Wrap-up
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
So if you’re in the market for one of these new computers, which should you get? If you’re mostly using it for general productivity tasks, then I’d lean towards the 14-inch model, which was just easier to travel with. It’s a good option for coders and people who may not need a ton of screen real estate. But all of the video and audio producers I’ve talked to were unequivocal: they wanted to go big with the 16-inch model.
The biggest downside of the new MacBook Pros are their high prices — but really, what else do you expect from Apple? The 14-inch model, in particular, will probably give you the vapors if you're comparing it to the 13-inch MacBook Pro. But in the world of gaming and high-end productivity notebooks, Apple's pricing isn't that far off. The Razer Blade 14, for example, is just two hundred dollars less than the MacBook Pro 14-inch. Dell's XPS 15 OLED is around $500 cheaper than the cheapest 16-inch MBP, but that's with a CPU that's much slower than Apple's. Once you start speccing that machine up, though, you’ll likely pay close to $2,500.
On the whole, these computers have practically everything we’d want in a powerful notebook. If you're a creative professional with a large budget for a new computer, and you want something that'll genuinely speed up your workflow, the new MacBook Pros are exactly what you need.
With the COVID pandemic still upon us, a monitor is one of the most important computer buying decisions you can make. Luckily, there’s never been more choice, and we’ve seen vast improvements in color accuracy, size and resolution since our last update.
It’s great to have lots of choice, but it can also make your buying decision a challenge. For example, do you need HDR, and if so, how bright should your monitor be? How important is color accuracy, refresh rates and input lag? What size do you need? Should it be curved or straight?
Luckily, we’ve done the research and can help you figure all that out depending on your specific needs and, most importantly, budget. Read on to see exactly what to look for in a monitor and which makes and models to choose.
The basics
Screen size, resolution and display format
In this day and age, screen size rules. Where 24-inch displays used to be more or less standard (and can still be useful for basic computing), 27-, 32-, 34- and even 42-inch displays have become popular for entertainment, content creation and even gaming these days.
Nearly every monitor used to be 16:9, but it’s now possible to find 16:10 and other more exotic display shapes. On the gaming and entertainment side, we’re also seeing very wide and curved monitors with aspect ratios like 21:9. If you do decide to buy an ultrawide display, however, keep in mind that a 30-inch 21:9 model is the same height as a 24-inch monitor, so you might end up with a smaller display than you expected. As a rule of thumb, add 25 percent to the size of a 21:9 monitor to get the size you need.
4K is nearly a must for content creators, and some folks are even going for 5K or all the way up to 8K. Keep in mind, though, that you’ll need a pretty powerful computer to drive all those pixels. And 4K should be paired with a screen size of 27 inches and up, or you won’t notice much difference between 1440p. At the same time, I wouldn’t get a model larger than 27 inches unless it’s 4K, as you’ll start to see pixelation if you’re working up close to the display.
One new category to consider is portable monitors designed to be carried and used with laptops. Those typically come in 1080p resolutions and sizes from 13-15 inches. They usually have a lightweight kickstand-type support that folds up to keep things compact.
HDR
HDR is the buzzy monitor feature to have these days, but be careful before jumping in. Some monitors that claim HDR on the marketing materials don’t even conform to a base standard. To be sure that a display at least meets minimum HDR specs, you’ll want to choose one with a DisplayHDR rating with each tier representing maximum brightness in nits.
However, the lowest DisplayHDR 400 and 500 tiers may disappoint you with a lack of brightness, washed out blacks and mediocre color reproduction.If you can afford it, choose a model with DisplayHDR 600, 1000 or True Black 400, True Black 500 and True Black 600. The True Black settings are designed primarily for OLED models, with maximum black levels at .0005 nits.
Where televisions typically offer HDR10 and Dolby Vision or HDR10+, most PC monitors only support the HDR10 standard, other than a few (very expensive) models. That doesn’t matter much for content creation or gaming, but HDR streaming on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and other services won’t look quite as punchy.
Refresh rate
Refresh rate is a key feature, particularly on gaming monitors. A bare minimum nowadays is 60Hz, and 80Hz refresh rates and up are much easier on the eyes. However, most 4K displays top out at 60Hz with some rare exceptions and the HDMI 2.0 spec only supports 4K at 60Hz, so you’d need at least DisplayPort 1.4 (4K at 120Hz) or HDMI 2.1. The latter is now available on a number of monitors, particularly gaming displays. However, it’s only supported on the latest NVIDIA RTX 3000- and AMD RX 6000-series GPUs and requires a very powerful PC.
Inputs
There are essentially three types of modern display inputs: Thunderbolt, DisplayPort and HDMI. Most monitors built for PCs come with the latter two, while a select few (typically built for Macs) will use Thunderbolt. To add to the confusion, USB-C ports may be Thunderbolt 3 and by extension, DisplayPort compatible, so you may need a USB-C to Thunderbolt or DisplayPort cable adapter depending on your display.
Panel type
The cheapest monitors are still TN (twisted nematic), which are strictly for gaming or office use. VA (vertical alignment) monitors are also relatively cheap, while offering good brightness and high contrast ratios. However, content creators will probably want an IPS (in-plane switching) LCD display that delivers better color accuracy, image quality and viewing angles.
If maximum brightness is important, a quantum dot LCD display is the way to go — those are typically found in larger displays. OLED monitors are now available and offer the best blacks and color reproduction, but they lack the brightness of LED or quantum dot displays. Plus, they cost a lot.
The new panel on the block is MiniLED. It’s similar to quantum dot tech, but as the name suggests, it uses smaller LED diodes that are just 0.2mm in diameter. As such, manufacturers can pack in up to three times more LEDs with more local dimming zones, delivering deeper blacks and better contrast.
Color bit depth
Serious content content creators should consider a more costly 10-bit monitor that can display billions of colors. If budget is an issue, you can go for an 8-bit panel that can fake billions of colors via dithering (often spec’d as “8-bit + FRC”). For entertainment or business purposes, a regular 8-bit monitor that can display millions of colors will be fine.
Color gamut
The other aspect of color is the gamut. That expresses the range of colors that can be reproduced and not just the number of colors. Most good monitors these days can cover the sRGB and Rec.709 gamuts (designed for photos and video respectively). For more demanding work, though, you’ll want one that can reproduce more demanding modern gamuts like AdobeRGB, DCI-P3 and Rec.2020 gamuts, which encompass a wider range of colors. The latter two are often used for film projection and HDR, respectively.
Engadget picks
Best monitor around $200
Acer KG241Q
Acer
Whether you need a monitor for gaming, entertainment or work, Acer’s 24-inch KG241Q offers a lot of value. Resolution is limited to 1080p, but it delivers a 144Hz refresh rate and comes with AMD FreeSync support. Other features include a 1-millisecond lag time, 300 nits of brightness, HDMI and DisplayPort inputs and a tilting stand. The downsides are tricky access to the ports and a TN display that looks dim at an angle, but it’s a heck of a steal right now at $155.
Moving your budget up by just $100 opens up a whole lot more options. A case in point is our pick for content creation chores, the ASUS ProArt PA278QV. You get a larger 27-inch size, increased 2,560 x 1,440 resolution and a superior IPS panel. As with other ProArt models, the PA278QV is designed specifically for photo and video editing, with a 100 percent Rec.709 gamut, Calman verified color accuracy and ProArt presets and palettes for different kinds of work. It also offers DisplayPort and HDMI ports and tilt, swivel, pivot and height adjustments. That’s a lot of monitor for a current street price of $315.
There are numerous decent gaming monitors around $300, but we’ve managed to narrow it down to one: Dell’s S2522HG. For a monitor in this price range, you get a lot: a 24.5-inch IPS 1080p display with a 240Hz refresh rate, 400 nits of brightness, 1-millisecond response time and AMD Free-Sync and NVIDIA G-Sync compatibility. It comes with HDMI, DisplayPort and SuperSpeed USB 3.2 Gen1 inputs, along with a stand that allows for height adjustment, tilt, swivel and pivot. You can pick one up now at Amazon for $320.
LG’s 27UK500 is a nice all around monitor that can cover gaming, entertainment and some content creation. The 27-inch 4K IPS display covers 98 percent of the sRGB gamut and supports HDR10 with 10-bit color, though it only outputs 300 nits of brightness so it isn’t DisplayHDR certified. If you like 4K gaming, it can handle that decently thanks to AMD FreeSync support, a 60 Hz refresh rate and a 5-millisecond response time. The downsides are a tilt only stand, but it’s very well priced at just $347.
For creatives, the BenQ PD2700U pushes all the right buttons. The 27-inch 4K IPS panel delivers 10-bit HDR color and covers 100 percent of the sRGB gamut with Calman verified Delta E color accuracy less than 3. It’s also a fine choice for entertainment and gaming with 350 nits of brightness, a 1300:1 contrast ratio, viewing angle of 178 degrees and a 5-millisecond response time. It has tilt, swivel, pivot and height adjustment and most of the ports you need, including HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.4. You can pick one up now at B&H for $500.
Acer’s Nitro XV252Q is the only gaming monitor under $500 that supports 360 Hz refresh rates, but there’s more to it than just that. The 24.5-inch HD display outputs 400 nits of brightness, so it’s DisplayHDR 400 certified for HDR games and movies. It also comes with AMD FreeSync compatibility, a 99 percent sRGB color gamut and DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0 connections. You can tilt, swivel, pivot and adjust the height by up to 4.7 inches, and it looks pretty snazzy, with very slim side and top bezels.
Dell’s 27-inch, 4K U2720Q IPS monitor offers 4K HDR performance for a decent price. It conforms to the DisplayHDR 400 spec while offering 10-bits of color and 99 percent sRGB coverage, with a Delta E color accuracy of less than two out of the box. So this is a good monitor for HDR movies and doing some graphics chores, particularly HDR video work — all for under $700.
Though it’s marketed as a gaming monitor thanks to the 120Hz refresh rate, 1-millisecond response time and G-Sync support, Acer’s 4K quantum dot Predator XB273K is really a jack of all trades. It’s also DisplayHDR 400 compatible, covers 90 percent of the challenging DCI-P3 color gamut and offers a Delta<1 color accuracy. You also get tilt and height adjustments, HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.4 ports and pivot and height adjustment.
Apple’s $5,000 Pro Display XDR is much too rich for most of us, so the next most logical option is LG’s $1,300 Ultrafine 5K display, also sold on Apple’s Store. With a 27-inch 5K panel, you not only get very high resolution but also 500 nits of brightness (albeit, without HDR capability). It’s color-accurate out of the box, making it great for video- and photo-editing work on a Mac or MacBook. Finally, it supports Thunderbolt 3 with daisy chaining and power delivery, all of which is very useful for Mac users.
If that model is too much, you can also consider LG’s 24-inch Ultrafine 4K. For nearly half the price ($700), it offers many of the same features (including the powered and daisy-chained Thunderbolt ports, color accuracy and more) in a smaller size and with just a bit less resolution.
Ultrawide 21:9 monitors are a great option for some types of content creation, flight sims and financial work. The best model this year (with perhaps the worst name) is MSI’s Optix MPG341CQR. With an 1800R curve and 3,440 x 1,440 resolution it’s ideal for gaming, with the 120Hz refresh rate, 1-millisecond response time and HDR 400 also helping in that regard. It also offers a frameless design, tilt, swivel and height adjustment and HDMI 2.0/DisplayPort 1.4 ports. It also has an LED strip that provides helpful cues for in-game status like remaining health or ammo, too.
To best complement your laptop, a portable monitor should be small, lightweight and not too expensive. The model that best meets all those requirements is ViewSonic’s VG1655. At 15.6 inches and weighing under 2 pounds, the 1080p 60 Hz IPS display can be toted around fairly easily but still provide crisp, clear visuals. It’s also reasonably bright at 250 nits, comes in standard and touch version, packs dual speakers and has a built-in stand with a cover.
If you’re gaming on the bleeding edge at 4K and 120Hz, you’ll first need either a fast PC or PS5/Xbox Series X console. If you’ve got that and would prefer to use a monitor rather than a TV, your best bet will soon be Acer's Nitro XV282K display. Along with 4K resolution at up to 144Hz, it offers a 1-millisecond refresh rate, 10-bit color and 400 nits (DisplayHDR 400 compatible) of brightness. It comes, of course, with an HDMI 2.1 input, along with DisplayPort 1.4. It’s not yet available, but should arrive soon for $900.
ASUS still holds the prize for best luxury monitor, but it discontinued the previous mini-LED $4,000 ProArt PA32UCX monitor and replaced it with the $5,000 PA32UCG-K display. It uses the same mini-LED tech, but ups the ante with 1,600 nits of brightness, an HDMI 2.1 port, 4K 120Hz resolution, 10-bit, 98 percent DCI-P3 coverage and an impressive 85 percent Rec.2020 coverage. Oh, and it’s one of the few monitors out there that supports Dolby Vision, along with HDR10 and HLG.
You’re probably doing it wrong if you’re using a $5K monitor for gaming. However, it does support AMD FreeSync (good for gaming creation) and has a 5-millisecond response time, very respectable for a display essentially designed for professional colorists. And to that end, color accuracy is calibrated to Delta E < 1 and it’s a true 10-bit panel delivering billions of colors.
Faster than we think, 8K video will be upon us, so you might be pondering an 8K monitor to stay ahead of the curve. Dell’s UP3218K is part of its UltraSharp lineup for creators, so it not only delivers 8K (7,680 x 4,320) 60p resolution but other nice pro features, too.
The 10-bit native IPS panel delivers 400 nits of brightness, though the UP3218K isn’t an HDR monitor. It also delivers 1.07 billion colors and covers 98 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut, with a Delta E of less than two out of the box. It’s also one of the few monitors that flips around 90 degrees, making it good for portrait photo work.
This monitor isn’t cheap either at $3,500 (8K monitors are still very rare), but Dell’s UP3216Q 4K monitor has most of the features for less than half the price. It’s not quite as bright at 350 nits and covers just 87 percent of the DCI-P3 gamut, but it offers 1.07 billion colors and is just as precise for color correction out of the box.
After months of rumors, Apple has revealed not one but two new processors, along with a pair of new Macbook Pro laptops. The original M1 processor paired four high-performance and four low-power cores with a 7- or 8-core GPU, and with that set up it delivered impressive results. The M1-powered 13-inch MacBook Pro bested a 16-inch MacBook Pro with an 8-core Intel i9 CPU and dedicated GPU when we tested it last year, and did so while staying impressively cool and quiet.
The new M1 Pro and M1 Max bump the core count to eight high-performance and two low-power cores, and add 16, 24, or 32 GPU cores. With twice the high-performance CPUs, and up to four times the GPU cores as the original M1, these chips should be incredibly fast, but expect it to come at the cost of more heat and noise.
Despite a shortage of compatible games, the original M1 proved to be a remarkably adept processor for gaming, and these new chips should be even better, outpacing most Intel CPUs and maybe even besting a mobile NVIDIA RTX 3080 GPU's performance. The new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBooks also come with a 120Hz display with HDR, and improved speakers. Add that all together, and suddenly the new MacBook Pro looks like a pretty capable gaming machine, compatibility issues aside. If only Apple still supported Bootcamp.
For all the details on these new chips, check out the video above.
