Tag: laptops

Microsoft Surface Pro (11th Edition) and Surface Laptop (7th Edition): Specs, Price, Features, Release Date

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The Surface Pro (11th Edition) is available for preorder now and starts at $1,000. It goes on sale June 18.

New Copilot and Windows Features

Microsoft also announced several features exclusive to Windows 11, which will be available on June 18. Here are a few notable ones.

Courtesy of Microsoft

Recall

There’s nothing more frustrating than when you can’t find a photo, email, or file from a few days ago on your device. Scrolling through tons of emails, clicking through all your open tabs, and opening files can be time-consuming. Recall wants to solve this.

Microsoft says Recall lets you find anything you’ve seen or done on your PC with a simple search query, and it’s powered by state-of-the-art large language models, which can understand various content on your PC, like text, images, and videos. It works in any application so you can search across your computer. It’s not unlike the Ask Photos feature Google recently announced at its developer conference, except that is only available in Google Photos.

For example, if you’re looking for a blue dress you saw online, you can search “blue dress” in Windows 11 and it will pull together all the choices you’ve viewed on your device. If you’re looking for a specific one sent to you via a messaging app, you can search “blue pantsuit with sequin lace from grandma,” and Recall will find it for you so you don’t have to scroll through hundreds of messages.

Microsoft says the Recall index is stored locally on device and won’t be used to train any artificial intelligence models, so the data is private. It’s customizable too, so you can exclude certain websites or apps, allowing you to prevent it from accessing private content.

Courtesy of Microsoft

Live Captions

With Live Captions, you’ll get instant real-time translation from 44 languages into English across any video or audio call. This can also be used for other scenarios like when watching a movie, allowing you to turn live captions into English subtitles in real-time.

Courtesy of Microsoft

Windows Studio Effects

To help enhance video calls, the webcams in the new Surface computers come with AI-powered features called Windows Studio Effects. You’ll have access to creative filters in three styles (illustrated, animated, and watercolor); Portrait Light, which adjusts the lighting for a more natural appearance; Eye Contact, which adjusts your eyes so they appear to look at the camera even if you’re looking off to the side; Portrait Blur, to add a blurred background behind you; and Voice Focus to enhance your audio and reduce background noise.

This is a developing story. Check back soon for more updates.

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May 20, 2024
Twelve South BookArc Flex Review: Unstable and Expensive

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i’ve never jumped at the opportunity to use a dock for my laptop. I prefer using an external monitor and a laptop stand, with my MacBook as the second screen. It’s been my setup for the last seven years, and up until now, I had no desire to change it. But when Apple launched the M3-powered 15-inch MacBook Air with support for two external monitors—as long as the lid is closed—I realized I’d have to give in to the world of vertical laptop stands to test it properly. I didn’t have room on my desk to let it lie flat.

These stands aren’t the most aesthetically pleasing. I’m not that picky about my desk accessories, but I don’t want a clunky eye-sore of a stand. And it felt like that’s all that was out there. I was super excited when Twelve South reached out about testing its BookArc Flex. It’s a beautifully crafted laptop stand, with a minimalist design that would blend in nicely on my desk. It’s compatible with a wide range of MacBook models too.

I was confident this would be the answer to my problem. At WIRED, we’ve had great experiences with Twelve South’s products. A lot of the company’s products are featured as top recommendations in various buying guides, including the StayGo Mini hub, the Forte iPhone stand, the HoverBar Duo 2.0 stand, and more. These accessories work well and look good. Unfortunately, only the latter applies to the BookArc Flex. And that’s not enough to justify incorporating it into your workspace.

Proceed With Caution

The BookArc Flex has a very distinct design, complete with a metal arc on each side and a flexible rubber cradle in between. When you place your MacBook onto the rubber piece, the laptop stand uses the weight of the laptop to lock the arcs against the lid and the base of the machine. It’s elevated too, which Twelve South claims is to improve airflow and heat dissipation (to keep the MacBook from overheating) and to also keep it safe from accidental spills.

Photograph: Brenda Stolyar

In theory, it sounds simple to use. Unbox it, place it on your desk, and plop the MacBook into the stand. There was no need to read the instructions. But I was wrong. Whenever I put my 15-inch MacBook Air into the stand, it would lean against one of the arcs and topple over. At one point, I thought I had to somehow mold the middle piece to fit the laptop. After some finessing, I was able to get it to sit securely. But the slightest movement still caused it to fall over.

After this happened a few times, I decided to reach for the brief Owner’s Guide, which clearly states that you should “set the MacBook or laptop hinge down,” which means the logo needs to be facing up. I was doing the complete opposite—placing the MacBook with the logo facing down. “Surely, this had to be the issue,” I thought to myself.

But I was wrong. Yes, placing it right side up kept it upright instead of leaning to one side of the stand. However, it didn’t help lessen how sensitive it was to movement. It would still fall over whenever I reached over to turn the lamp on behind it, accidentally bumped against my desk too hard, or brushed my hand against the edge of my MacBook while moving my mouse around.

I hated how careful I had to be in its presence, especially when I had any sort of liquid on my desk like a cup of coffee or a can of Monster. I was terrified I might knock over the laptop stand and make the MacBook crash down onto the mug or can, spewing liquid all over my keyboard and monitor. I couldn’t even leave my MacBook on the stand when I left the room. The smallest motion would cause it to tumble onto my desk and damage both the MacBook and my peripherals.

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May 13, 2024
16 Best Laptops (2024): MacBooks, Windows, Chromebooks

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MSI Prestige 13 AI Evo for $1,300: This ultralight Windows laptop (7/10, WIRED Review) offers a great balance between price, performance, and portability. This price gets you an Intel Core 7 processor and a 2,880 X 1,800-pixel OLED display. The keyboard and trackpad are not the best, but if they don’t bother you this is a solid laptop at a good price.

Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra for $3,000: There’s much to love here (7/10, WIRED Review), but that price. Ouch. You get what you pay for at least, with the new Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor, the current top-of-the-line processor in Intel’s Core Ultra CPU lineup, along with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card. The 16-inch AMOLED 2,880 x 1,800 pixels touchscreen is magnificent to work on and performance blew everything else we’ve tested out of the water. But that price.

Acer Swift Go 14 for $800: This one is very similar to the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED, our top budget laptop. We found the Asus to be a little faster and have a much nicer build quality, but the Swift Go still offers outstanding performance, especially considering the price (7/10, WIRED Review). It also boasts an impressive 15-hour battery life. The downside is the speakers, which aren’t great, and overall the body feels a little plasticky. But this is the least expensive Intel Core Ultra laptop we’ve tested by a few dollars, so if the budget is tight, the Swift Go is worth considering.

Lenovo Slim Pro 7 AMD for $900: Lenovo’s Slim series are solid laptops. This AMD model (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is particularly nice with good battery life and impressive performance, especially in graphics-intensive tasks. It sports a bright 2.5K, 16:10 screen, aluminum construction, and a variety of ports. This one is frequently on sale; don’t pay more than $1,000.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 for $800: The look of the machine has barely changed since its inception, and it’s most evident with its obscenely sized bezels. It’s a shame, as the Laptop 5 sports a nice keyboard, and the outer design remains stylish if a tad stale. It’s hard to justify the price of the new model given its shortcomings, but it has started to go on sale for around $800, which makes it a little more reasonable.

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May 11, 2024
Razer Blade 18 (2024) Review: The Gaming Laptop of the Future

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Razer’s Blade 14 is my go-to recommendation for anyone hunting for a good gaming laptop, but as impressive as it is, it trades power for portability. If that’s the kind of sacrifice you don’t want to make, then say hello to the Razer Blade 18—this is the powerhouse you’re looking for.

Side-by-side with the Razer Blade 14, the Blade 18 looks like a protective big brother. You can see the family resemblance, but the larger Blade is more imposing. Its 18-inch Mini LED display is so bright it’s almost overwhelming in dark rooms, and it produces vivid colors that rival the already stunning screen on the Blade 14.

The Blade 18 starts at $3,100, but the model I tested is $4,500. You get a lot of power for the price. It packs a 14th-generation Intel Core i9 14900HX processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU (upgradable to the beastly RTX 4090, which is what I tested), 32 GB of RAM, and a 1-terabyte solid-state drive. It’s the kind of power that can tear through even the most demanding games.

Smooth Screen

Razer outdid itself with the display on the Razer Blade 18. The Mini LED panel has a 2,560 x 1,600-pixel resolution, with 2,000 local dimming zones, delivering exceptional contrast between brighter and darker areas of the image. The Razer Blade 14 was already one of the most vibrant laptop screens I’d seen, but the Blade 18 makes it look dull by comparison.

Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

But what sets it apart is the 300-Hz refresh rate. At their best, most gaming laptops only support 240 Hz, which is plenty for most games, but for fast-paced titles like Overwatch 2, you want all the frames you can get, and the Blade 18 is one of the few laptops I’ve tested that can crank out that many reliably.

Maintaining such a high frame rate is going to be a drain on the battery, but Razer’s Synapse software has an option to automatically switch the display to 60 Hz when on battery power. This dramatically cuts down on how many frames your games have to render, conserving power, but will lead to less smooth gameplay. You can also press Fn+R to cycle between 60 Hz, 240 Hz, and 300 Hz while connected to a charger.

Synapse also has a color profile selector that lets you swap between DCI-P3, Adobe RGB, Rec.709, and other profiles to get precise, accurate colors. This is especially helpful for gamers who are also designers and photo or video editors—where color accuracy is incredibly vital to their workflow.

Powerful Performance

A great display doesn’t matter much if you don’t have the horsepower to back it up, but fortunately, the Razer Blade 18 rises to the task. The model I tested comes equipped with the GeForce RTX 4090 (you can also choose between the RTX 4070 or 4080), and it tore through most games. Starfield, a notably less-than-optimized game, was getting 60-plus frames per second in crowded areas like New Atlantis on Ultra graphics settings, and maintaining 80 to 90 fps on Medium.

Overwatch 2 is what blew me away, though. On Medium graphics settings, I maintained a full 300 fps (while the laptop was connected to power). This is a game where I’m constantly flying across the map in seconds, whipping out my pistol to land headshots on an enemy that wasn’t in my view a third of a second ago, before rushing back to heal my teammates. Three hundred frames per second is exactly what I need, and the Razer Blade 18 has the display and the power to give it to me.

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May 10, 2024
Acer Chromebook Plus 514 Review: A Great Budget Laptop

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Last year, Google trotted out a new “Chromebook Plus” label, ensuring Chromebooks meet specific hardware requirements so that they have a certain threshold of quality and—importantly—a starting price of $400. It’s been fairly successful. Chromebooks from companies like Acer and Lenovo perform well for the money—functional, affordable hardware that does the job.

Acer’s Chromebook Plus 514 (model CB514-4H/T) is yet another laptop that achieves this goal. This specific model name doesn’t roll off the tongue, but it indicates that this is the Intel-powered model not to be confused with the AMD-powered Chromebook Plus 514 (CB514-3H/T) the company launched last fall. It’s a bit confusing, and it doesn’t help that there’s also the similarly named Acer Chromebook Plus 515, which is close in price but has a larger screen and a slightly different processor.

Photograph: Daniel Thorp-Lancaster

Despite slight differences in port selection and screen ratio between the Intel and AMD variants of the Chromebook Plus 514, expect them to perform largely the same. The grunt work for this machine is handled by a capable 13th-gen Intel Core i3-N305 processor, which is on par with other Chromebook Plus models and a nice bump over Chromebooks of years past. Combined with the 8 GB of RAM and a 512-GB solid state drive on the CB514-4HT-359X configuration Acer sent me for this review, you have a pretty speedy machine for school and work. This model is just $350 at Costco, and weirdly, the 128-GB model is more expensive at Amazon for $380.

Chrome OS is designed to be lightweight, and the Core i3-N305 processor subsequently tears through most tasks with ease. My daily ritual of writing in Google Docs while watching YouTube videos with several other tabs open never felt sluggish or unresponsive. Battery life has held up, getting me through eight-hour workdays, usually with an hour or two of battery life to spare.

Despite pulling from the cloud, Google Photos edits feel very responsive. I had a lot of fun using the built-in editor to tweak my (many) cat photos, and video edits felt nearly instantaneous. Just keep in mind this relies heavily on the speed of your internet connection to pull photos and videos down from your cloud storage, so your experience may vary.

I’ve never found myself drawn to using touch on laptops, but the 14-inch touch panel on the Chromebook Plus 514 grew on me. Chrome OS lends itself to touch, and the smooth matte display feels great to use under your fingertips (plus it doesn’t leave fingerprints). In my week of testing, I constantly found myself reaching out to get a better selection when editing photos in the Google Photos app or when I wanted to more precisely scroll through YouTube.

My one disappointment is that this isn’t a convertible laptop. The ability to swing the screen around to turn it into a quasi-tablet would make using touch more comfortable (and fun), so the clamshell design is a bit limiting. On the bright side, the hinge allows the back of the display to extend downward a bit when opened, propping it up on your table or lap for a more comfortable angle.

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May 9, 2024
Asus Zenbook Duo (2024) Review: A Two-Screened Laptop That Nails It

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Conceptually, it’s very close to what Lenovo did last year with the Yoga Book 9i, complete with shorthand gestures that help you pull up a virtual keyboard or touchpad, expand the screen to fill both displays or “flick” content from one screen to the other. This is all fairly easy to get the hang of. For the most part, working with the Zenbook Duo is no different than working with two monitors on a standard PC.

Many prior dual-screen laptops suffered on the performance front, and while the Duo didn’t set any records, it’s perfectly capable across a wide spectrum of benchmarks. Business apps load and run quickly, and graphical capabilities are acceptable despite the lack of a discrete graphics processor. Even AI-oriented performance was reasonably good (again, considering there’s no GPU to boost it). If there’s a downside, it’s battery life. I got just 6 hours and 48 minutes of YouTube run time with one screen active, and that fell to 5 hours and 13 minutes with both live. Neither score is all that great.

The muscle behind this is an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H CPU with 32 GB of RAM and a 1-terabyte solid-state drive. The port selection is fine, if a bit limited, featuring two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, one USB-A port, and a full-size HDMI output jack.

The Zenbook Duo is fairly compact given its design, at 25 mm thick with or without the keyboard sandwiched in the middle. The complete package weighs 3.5 pounds, or 2.8 pounds without the keyboard. That’s a bit on the heavy side, which is to be expected, but less than some traditional 14-inch laptops I’ve tested in the past couple of years.

While the dual-screen concept continues to improve, it’s not without some lingering growing pains. I encountered occasional hiccups where the screens didn’t reorient from portrait to landscape automatically. And the unit had the same problem with third-party chargers that I encountered with Asus’ Zenbook 14 OLED, dropping out of plugged-in mode and switching to battery power and back, almost randomly.

Photograph: Asus

My biggest complaint however is design-related. Unlike the Yoga Book 9i, the Duo’s screens aren’t flush with each other when the screen is opened flat. Instead, one sits more than a centimeter behind the other, creating a staggered, stairstep effect. This displeases the OCD side of my brain, which insists that side-by-side screens be aligned on the same plane.

That said, having two screens does change the game when it comes to mobile productivity, even if they are a little cattywampus. I’m used to working on dual screens in my daily life when I’m desk-bound, but when I’m on the road and have to shift to working directly off a single laptop display, my productivity vanishes.

The Duo has a price tag of $1,700—and that’s for the fully loaded configuration. That’s not exactly cheap, but it’s far less expensive than most other dual-screen laptops and even competitive with many that have a single display. Ultimately, I’m hard-pressed to find a reason not to recommend this device if you’re at all like me, finding that a single, small screen fences you in and slows you down.

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May 9, 2024
Dell XPS 14 and 16 Review: Not Quite a MacBook Pro

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The webcams with the XPS 14 and 16 are surprisingly good, better than most other built-in web cams I’ve tested this year.

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

Pretty Pricey

Dell is selling a number of configurations between these two sizes, but I absolutely do not recommend the base model. The problem with the base model is the screen, which is a 1920 x 1200 screen. At 14 inches, that works out to a pixels per inch (PPI) of 154. While I have not used this model, I have spent plenty of time testing similar specced screens, and you should never pay 1,700 for a laptop with 154 PPI screen (for comparison, a 14-inch Macbook Pro has a PPI of 254). Worse, the 16-inch base model also ships with a 1920 x 1200 screen, which is a PPI so low that frankly it should only be in cheap laptops under $500.

Just don’t buy the base model, mmmkay?

The models I tested both had the gorgeous 3200 x 2000 OLED screens, which are things of beauty, but do bring the base price of both models up by $300. That puts the price of the minimum config I would recommend at $2,000 for the XPS 14, and $2,200 for the XPS 16. Keep in mind that that price only gets you 16 gigabytes of RAM, no dedicated graphics, and a 512 GB SSD. While you can always add your own SSD, the RAM is not upgradable.

Adding the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 bumps the price of the 14-inch model to $2,400. This is the config I tested, and frankly performance was wanting in demanding tasks.

Performance Problems

I was surprised by the benchmarks I got from the XPS 14 with the RTX 4050, but not in a good way. My results were notably lower than other laptops using the same chip, particularly in Geekbench, which measures graphics performance. After looking up some specs and puzzling through the test results, I’ve come to the conclusion that Dell is underpowering the RTX 4050 graphics. The XPS 14 only gives the RTX 4050 40 watts, which is just above the bare minimum of 30 watts that Nvidia recommends. On one hand that keeps down heat, which means the fans spin up less and the battery lasts longer. Indeed, the fans on the XPS 14 and 16 ran less than other laptops I’ve been testing, at least until I started doing more demanding things like editing video.

The cost of that efficacy, though, is performance. The XPS 14 performed roughly on par with similarly specced Windows laptops we’ve tested this spring, and is very snappy for average tasks like browsing the web or editing documents, neither of which ever caused the fans to spin or the laptops to get warm. The bad news is that if you want a video editing workstation, the XPS 14 is not the answer.

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May 3, 2024
Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (2024) Review: Good Performance for the Price

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The march of lower-cost laptops that offer some measure of artificial intelligence-focused tuning continues with the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED, the latest in a line of affordable, no-nonsense, ultralight laptops that has been kicking around for more than a decade. Like the Acer Swift Go 14, the Asus Zenbook 14 (model UM3406HA) hits the market at a price that’s comfortably less than $1,000. But unlike the Swift Go, the Zenbook is built around AMD’s latest Ryzen CPU. Among other questions, I was curious to see how the two directly compared.

The Acer and Asus laptops have more than a little in common. Both feature 14-inch touchscreens at 1,920 x 1,200-pixel resolution, 16 GB of RAM, and integrated graphics. The Zenbook has a more basic 512-GB solid-state drive compared to the 1-terabyte model on the Acer, but the biggest difference is the CPU, an AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS on the Asus instead of Acer’s Intel Core Ultra 7.

Photograph: Asus

Walk around the laptop and you’ll see a considerably less well equipped port lineup too. Two USB-C ports (one USB 4, one USB 3.2; one is used for charging), a single USB-A port, and a full-size HDMI output are your connectivity options, altogether a clear step down from what Acer has on offer. Again, all ports are side-mounted here, as the design of the screen causes the rear edge of the LCD to cover up the backside of the chassis when the screen is opened.

The aluminum frame feels much sturdier than you typically find in this price bracket, but I wasn’t in love with the overall design. It’s entirely black with a lid that’s etched with seemingly random lines, creating a haphazard geometric pattern that feels more and more like it was drawn from the ’80s the more you stare at it.

I like the keyboard, which is compact but thoughtfully laid out and offers acceptable key travel, including a Copilot key and functional, half-height arrow keys. The keyboard backlighting is understated. The touchpad is large but just shy of being too big; my palms tended to brush against the corners when typing, but this fortunately didn’t adversely impact the user experience. The Harman Kardon speakers are loud and offer plenty of range for any entertainment needs.

Photograph: Asus

The big question surrounds performance, and I’m happy to report that compared to the Acer Swift Go, the two laptops turned in similar results. On a few tests, the Zenbook would score moderately higher, on others, the crown would go to Acer. Quite a few benchmarks saw results that were functionally identical, including big ones like PCMark 10, which measures mainstream application performance.

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May 2, 2024
Dell Alienware m16 R2 Review: Gaming Power in a Business Suit

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The Alienware m16 R2 uses a 2,560 X 1,600-pixel resolution IPS display that’s decent for its price but not particularly remarkable. The display lacks HDR support, instead opting for a basic sRGB color gamut. This isn’t a huge deal, but when similarly priced laptops like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 pack vibrant OLED panels, it’s hard to ignore.

It peaks at 300 nits of brightness, which is slightly lower than some gaming laptops I’ve recently tested. Sitting next to a window during the day, I could still easily make out what was on the screen, but I started to struggle while outdoors in broad daylight.

The m16 R2’s display does have one advantage: It has a 240-Hz refresh rate, which is especially welcome in fast-paced games that can take advantage of it. While playing Doom Eternal on medium settings, I got an excess of 200 frames per second, which made jumping around and shooting demons a buttery-smooth experience.

Many other gaming laptops at this price (like the Zephyrus G14) are limited to 120 Hz, so that makes the m16 R2 an attractive alternative if you’re looking for extra-smooth gameplay. It’s worth noting that the refresh rate is useful only if games can take advantage of it, which means you’ll need to consider your spec options carefully.

For Work and Play

The base model of the Alienware m16 R2 comes with an Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU, but it can be upgraded to an RTX 4070, which was in the model I tested. With the RTX 4070, I played Overwatch 2 on medium settings while hitting well over 200 fps. In a competitive game where split-second decisionmaking matters, this is a huge benefit.

In more modern, graphics-intensive single-player games like Starfield, I reliably got 50 to 60 fps in crowded areas like New Atlantis, with higher frame rates in less-demanding areas of the game. Cyberpunk 2077 fared similarly, regularly maintaining 70 to 80 fps during combat, dipping to 50 to 60 fps while driving through crowded parts of the city.

Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

All of these tests were done while plugged in, but it’s important to remember that if you plan to play on battery, more frames means more power drain. The m16 R2 has a substantial 90-watt-hour battery, which is among the largest you’ll find in a laptop. But cranking graphics settings to their maximum will burn through that fast. Performing normal tasks on the m16 R2, I achieved roughly nine to 10 hours of battery life on a single charge. Gaming dropped that number substantially, but I was able to get an hour and a half to two hours of continuous gaming if I was careful to optimize my graphics settings and not push the machine too hard.

Overall, the Alienware m16 R2 balances power with everyday needs. You can use this laptop as your daily driver for work and get a full day of battery life out of it, then plug it into a dock at the end of the day to do some pretty robust gaming.

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May 1, 2024
Acer Swift Go 14 (2024) Review: Great Power for Under $1,000

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With all the talk of “AI laptops” (and, well, AI everything), it’s natural to wonder how much these advancements will cost you. The first laptops to include Intel’s new Core Ultra CPU and neural processing units, which help accelerate AI tasks, haven’t been cheap, with some models like the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra hitting as much as $3,000.

There’s good news though. The Acer Swift Go 14 (I tested the model SFG14-73T-75FA) is the least expensive Intel Core Ultra laptop I’ve tested to date, and at just $800 it’s the first to break the $1,000 barrier. Clearly, some sacrifices have been made to get there. The question is, are they dealbreakers?

The new Swift Go covers the basics at least. Its 14-inch touchscreen at 1,920 X 1,200 pixels is about the bare minimum acceptable resolution I’d consider today. The screen is moderately bright, though there are plenty of more eye-searing laptops on the market. Processing is courtesy of the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU—a healthy step up from the pokier Core 5 entry-level chip. There’s 16 GB of RAM and a 1-TB solid state drive to back it up—acceptable specs.

Photograph: Acer

A tour around the device reveals a surprisingly robust collection of ports considering the smallish size of the laptop: two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, a full-size HDMI output, two USB-A ports, and a microSD card slot. All ports are located on the sides of the device, as the screen hinge is designed such that the back of the lid folds backward to cover the rear of the laptop’s base, eventually hitting the desk and raising the keyboard a couple of millimeters at an angle.

Performance is better than expected considering the Swift Go 14’s specs, turning in above-average benchmarks on general productivity and graphics work. For a laptop without a discrete graphics processor, it even performed well on AI-based benchmarks, besting other laptops with more advanced CPUs at the same tasks. How excited you’ll be then that the Swift Go 14 includes a dedicated Copilot key on the keyboard, making it easy to quickly jump into Microsoft’s new (and still in beta) “everyday AI companion.” As for battery life, I achieved exactly 11 hours of rundown on a full-brightness YouTube test, a bit above average for the field.

Another innovation on the laptop is its new “multi-control touchpad,” which is made from Gorilla Glass and features backlit media controls that activate whenever you’re playing audio or video— such as when you’re in Windows Media Player or on YouTube in a browser window. It’s a handy way to interact with pause/play and volume controls if you’re using your laptop to watch a movie at arm’s length, but note that these controls don’t pop up for every website—including video previews that may play in the Chrome or Edge browser when you’re not actively in YouTube or another streaming platform.

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May 1, 2024