Gadgetory

hello see net fans welcome back to our live coverage of CES 2018 I'm Dan Ackerman here with my pal Xiomara blanco and josh goldman to talk about the best laptops that they've uncovered at this year's show we are going to dive right in because we have a gigantic selection here of some of the some of the cool things that we've seen and I'm actually going to start off with what I think is probably one of the most impressive things here and that's something that Xiomara went to go see and write about and this is the Acer Swift 7 and tell me Xiomara what is it's a big claim to fame well this is really popular because it's technically right now the world's thinnest computer and that is a big trend with laptops if you didn't know they really like to make them really skinny just like supermodels but it has a bigger screen than last year's model and with Acer we're not used to seeing things like that they're usually very middle-of-the-road very affordable as we do a lot of gaming laptops this is like a nice surprise and everyone's been really impressed with it it's been one of the things that people just keep talking about here especially because yeah look at that and last year's model had a 13 inch screen this one has a 14 inch screen I think it's got LTE built in as well you got the fingerprint reader I do feel like at this point we're shaving just like you know percentages of a millimeter off it's not really like it 8.9 millimeters versus nine point nine millimeters it's not a huge difference but it's nice to have sort of those bragging rights I'm looking for lighter though also I feel like this is not it's not the lightest laptop out there it actually feels you're just rather if it feels right a little bit heavier than you think it would looking at it cuz it's so small yeah well and it's also all metal so I mean obviously it's gonna add some weight to it but yeah it definitely feels solid right I don't know how how it could not feel solid this thing so yeah though it's a nice I haven't seen it in person part it's gonna be expensive isn't it yeah I believe it starts at 899 and it has 7th generation Intel Core processors not the latest so that's one knock against it hmm and I think the super I think it goes way up to I think I thought 1699 for at least one of the models yeah now we had a blackout yesterday first time I've ever seen that I've seen a lot of things at CES we saw rain I've seen snow one year but I never saw blackout before and when you have that you probably went really long but if you have a laptop with like really long battery life you might be in a good position because you can survive longer than everyone else if their laptops cop out at five hours six hours eight hours what if you had a laptop that ran for 20 hours that is the promise of this new generation of laptops with Qualcomm Snapdragon processors inside which is basically the same chip you find in a lot of mobile phones and they say that they'll run a really long time because they're super efficient so this is the Lenovo mix 630 it's one of the first you know two or three or four of these systems and it's done in the the Novo mix you know tablet you know surface like tablets with a keyboard that clips on in a cool kickstand style they claim 20 hours obviously it's always on LTE because that's the entire point of these Snapdragon systems it really is taking the best stuff from phones and and putting it into into laptops one thing I did like about this especially is you clip it out of the little kickstand thing so you've got your tablet part right here you haven't seen these tablets here but I like the clip-on keyboard that unlike shall we say some other brands it comes with it you don't have to buy it separately right but the kickstand on it look at that that's like really solid it's got a big hinge right here right in the middle and you just kind of slide it on let's see we can do it in one in one attempt magnetically it snaps right on there and then this has enacted back here and like that so I thought that was pretty cool the one weird thing about these Snapdragon systems is you know what an operating system they all come with by default anybody anybody Windows 10 - yeah exactly so what is what is Windows 10 is since that stripped-down version that can only install apps from the official Microsoft app store and it means that F stores kind of a mess it is Chrome you can't get out the web browsers you can't get like real Photoshop you probably can't I don't know if Spotify is in the mic if it's if it's in the Microsoft Store then no but there's a workaround you can actually upgrade to Windows 10 Pro for free just by clicking a couple of buttons for some contractual reason they feel like they need to put Windows 10 ass on all of these but they they go nod wink you know just just go upgrade it later but they can't promise that the Snapdragon processor will support every bit of software out there that's why they that's why they restrict and that's the thing that concerns me is for the vendor sake so we've got that one and there was one from HP right that came out when they announced our answers they've talked about battery life haven't mentioned anything really about performance this is basically a phone inside a phone brain inside a laptop and I think as we pushed towards people wanting more and more the one thing people complain about still is battery life even we're spoiled now eight hours nine hours years ago that was not imaginable now that now it's not enough 12 hours is grade twenty once twenty becomes the norm you know that's it that's one of the reasons why I think we see bigger 14 inch screens 15 inch screens in these super thin laptops because they can make the bodies wider and that's more battery you can fill up more of the chassis with battery and that's one way they do it but I'm super interested to see what these actually do performance wise we would have to take them out of windows 10s mode to even test them to install our testing apps so so it's a it's it's a little Schrodinger's cat you can't observe it without changing it by installing a Windows 10 Pro instead of that so that's probably I hope that's not the only Schrodinger's cat from someone who's made this week at CES but lenovo has another cool system that josh suggested we bring here and that's this guy right here here you go that's the ESP expert card one is it the carpet of the yoga see if it bends all the way back no there we go so that means it's harder every one all the way back into the yoga but you do get that 180 degrees so you can lay it flat to everybody can gather around and look at presentations or something but it is very thin lenovo says it is the lightest 14 inch business system okay so that they added three things I thought were super interesting number one they have an HDR screen right which not a lot of laptops have so it's the first Dolby vision HDR certified yet we asked them they had a laptop or two with an OLED screen a couple years ago and relooked awesome we love those but they didn't really get picked up anywhere I guess maybe it's hard to get the screens and we looked at that was like is that an OLED screen because it was super bright they said no it's the it's the it's the HDR that's making it look that way so they're getting rid of the OLED and replacing it basically with the HDR school right they also said that OLED screen was only 300 nits the big one of the big selling points on this one and the yoga is that it's 500 nits so super bright use that out outside even with the glossy screen and shouldn't be a problem so number two they're adding everybody's favorite smart home assistant to a bunch of these system they put in 360 degree far-field mics so you can shout out alexa commands at it from wherever you are in the room so you're traveling and you want to turn on your lights at home I guess you could do that I mean I do the weather all the time I do I do turn on my lights and do conversions when we write about something and we have to go like it's this much in dollars now what is it in pounds and I literally shout out the conversions and I get them back from from from Alexa from the lake oh I have I have in my office sorry to interrupt is this little thing right here it has a they call it what a camera they branded the shutter like a little slider so instead of putting a sticker over your webcam you can just switch this over and you don't have to worry about the FBI looking at you while you browse YouTube and I think that just let's just really meet one less accessory you have to buy now do you put a post-it note on your webcam or cover it in some other way I'm informal survey going up a lot of people now what do you use I use a variety of things because I was always have to take it off so I always have to find a new sticker to put back on it but I just got one of those cool little CNET ones to put on my computer now you do that on all the computers you use just your main one just my major print profile red jaw see you cover your webcam yeah I just have a little piece of masking yeah I so interesting I just don't I just can't be bothered don't do it I talked to some security guys we're gonna do a story in see that magazine in the spring about kind of security for paranoia or for paranoid people and like what should you actually do and I really got conflicting views from different experts on whether you should do that some people said yes and other people said you're not a target don't worry about it unless you're like a nuclear scientist or something you're you're probably okay and also as pointed out that besides this camera you've got the microphone and camera in your phone that you carry around with you all the time it's probably easier to hack into than a webcam on a laptop but well so maybe someday we'll see those shutters on phones and oh that's a good idea but I do like because business laptops for a long time you could buy models without webcams on them because they because for security they wanted that so it's cool to have this I haven't seen the physical thing built into a laptop before but years ago some company sent me a little clip on version like a little elongated shutter that you can bet that you could stick on and then order a slider thing so there you go it's got a LexA it's got a shutter and it's got that HDR screen that fooled me into thinking it was OLED for a second now one of our favorite laptops go back a couple years is the Dell XPS 13 it really kicked off that minimal bezel look where they kind of shaved down the the border surrounding the screen but it's been a little while and that design is maybe got a little a little thick a little clunky so they actually redesigned it for this year this is I think when I saw it in person I'm like this is one of the cooler looking laptops here it's the new XPS 13 and you get it white and rose gold on the back and a few other color options I think it's a long-overdue redesign of something that was super awesome went three years ago when it first came out but they kind of got eclipsed by other thinner designs so I'm pleased to see there's not a ton of internal upgrades other than new processors but I'm super pleased to see new colors and a thinner design on that right so in that lenovo being of 14 inch it's this what it's a lightest this is supposed to be for 13.3 inch screen this is the smallest in the world a branded oh right because pretty low when they squeeze it down this way a bunch now how do you feel Xiomara about the infamous nose cam I'm not a big fan I don't know anyone who likes to take selfies from below or who looks good besides like Rihanna it's a weird decision I don't know I'm not a big fan because you can't put it up here there's no room for the webcam so a bunch of these super thin laptops we call them the nose cam and they're right down there and for Skype calls or whatever using your webcam for it it's not always a flattering look unless you what that Vincent Price sort of under lit you know Halloween look right there so the when you're typing if you're typing while you're doing it your hands are just gigantic in the camera's hands but every guy every laptop that has those super thin bezel and has the same problem I don't know what the other solution is unless you have like a clip-on on the top or something where you make this top part thicker but televisions televisions have super thin bezels all around now it took a while for laptops to catch up I feel like you can't really you can't really go backwards on that maybe they need a notch just like that yes that's right right in the middle of the screen imagine imagine the outcry over that if you not your your Windows 10 system but I think that's super cool and I like white laptops I just think it's everything is gray and silver and dark grey whenever somebody has a different color yes I think they used a layered glass fiber for that and they've treated it so yeah yeah they've treated it so it doesn't yellow mhm I know that was a bit conservative in past they'd have like white surfaces yeah yeah this is treated HP vector the new the new one that came out late last year also is available in white with a really nice white right i factored about heating rose gold white lap yeah yes the other new thing from jowl is this guy right here which is the XPS 15 two in one and they've had XPS 15 s before same you know super thin bezel here but this is now one of those guys that flips all the way around it becomes a tablet like that but it's a big tablet as something who uses a lot of tablets would you use one like this gigantic no I would not I guess like it's useful when you're watching and I do the kiosk sometimes I go look at this write it down yeah that's why I called the kiosk mode I don't know what everyone else called it that's what I call it Oh once again you have the knows camera here but this is this is notable for one super big reason it's one of the first two things that we've seen with a new combo chip inside a new Intel chip I think they call it KB Lake G and it's an Intel processor with an AMD GPU together on the same chip it's like a team of rivals thing these two companies working together usually bitter rivals now they've got a combination thing that's supposed to be you know very efficient you know doesn't hurt your battery life but gives you really good discrete graphics power without having to have a separate GPU that would I guess presumably come from Nvidia so this is the first one that I ever saw with this new chip there's one other we have here that has that we'll talk about that in a second what I like about this is that if you could I like the larger ones for that even though it's awkward to use as a tablet I like it so that you can put it down like this on a desk and then set up a keyboard and mouse in front of it you've got the keyboard out of your way that's a lap so yeah so you just bluetooth you drop it on your desk and yeah like a little bit like exchanging game to a desktop getting a keyboard out of the way so you it's not really far away for me if you want to use the touchscreen like I'm really interested to test one of these for gaming and see what kind of you know game scores they they give out with that with that AMD's GPU and it we haven't had a chance to do that yet but if you can get decent gaming performance its up being super thin like this without having to pay extra for a regular full-size GPU right that's potentially very cool but deal it's not the only guys doing this did you know that because right next to it just in cousins if you will right here is the HP Spectre x-360 15 inch frankly very similar but it actually has a cool difference well number one they put the touchpad look at this off on the side well the Dell one is centered I don't know which I like better you see this touchpad is off center because it's lined up with the yeah with the spacebar and on this 15-inch it's exactly in the middle that's a good question I never think about that until I see it and then I go I think I might like the middle better I don't know but I like having the number pad so that's do use a number pad a lot no I don't but I like having it I feel uncomfortable I don't have it anyway this has also got the Andy until combo but you can also get it if you don't want that just with a regular NVIDIA MX 150 we've got a pretty pretty decent you know a man stream graphics chip so you have a bunch of options with this which I also like instead of just having that one Intel AMD chip you can go in Vidya and frankly for casual gaming that's perfectly fine and I love the gold accents I think they've just done a spectacular job really cool very modern this Spectre x-360 the 13-inch one that I know Laurie loves a lot and the regular Spectre clamshell it's not a two and one that I love a lot and I actually use all the time I think they just done a spectacular job with designed end of 2017 beginning of 2018 it's I think it's tough to find sharper looking laptops than what than what HP is doing right now I think I mean they said that they were going after MacBook Pro users I don't know if there's any MacBook Pro users out there who would be willing to switch to Windows but I mean it's a really nice system yeah yeah we always say that this guy and frankly the the non before we had the two of on the regular Dell XPS 15 was the other kind of MacBook Pro alike that people liked a lot and frankly the designs were very similar we always pointed people in that direction I'm gonna say probably a lot but maybe not too and these guys are probably pretty similar if you get the Nvidia I think it's probably more expensive in this rather rather than the Intel AMD combo but these things are gigantic we've got a much smaller one right next to it that is the Samsung notebook 9 pen really nice laptops too and they've had the notebook we tested the notebook 9 Pro and a couple different ones last year this guy combines elements from a few of them and add some new stuff it's a new they happen something I don't think they've had something called a notebook 9 pen before how why do you think it's called that look at that right up there in the front the pop out the pop out stylus and that is actually the regular S Pen that you get with Samsung phones they're they're cross-compatible so it's basically the same stylist you get with a with a note phone and they had that didn't have a tablet that was like that a Windows tablet that you reviewed last year but the stylus was different it was bigger and didn't have a little place to hide that's that's what I like most of having a place to actually put the stylus on the on the surface products and Microsoft that you can usually magnetically attach them to the side but it's pretty rare you get a little little holster for it right there and of course it's a you know hybrid flips around I think it's super light actually too looks like it's got the IR cameras for windows below sign in how do you do that at all I'm just what I'm testing to make sure it works but I don't have it on my personal so that does the windows hello facial recognition login and I just turn it on by default and I never you know turned it off and frankly it's fantastic I just sit there if I'm like not paying attention I click on it to like turn it on and I turn away and talk to somebody then I turn back around it's still looking for me but as soon as I look at it it's actually really fast yeah face ideas really fast too but you know you can get something that's pretty much the same for Windows and you've had that long before you had face ID on it on an iPhone so I actually vote for facial login for Windows I think it works great looking at your camera right oh my gosh it's Microsoft or get the fingerprint you know you can't before I use the fingerprint reader on the MacBook Pro also I think I think that works really well too and you know it's super fast because nobody should have their computer even at home without a password on it these days I think we've all heard that yes just like your phone needs to be locked out in your laptop needs to be locked down too so we got one more over here on the list to look at this is an another this is the Isuzu Zenbook 14 and the Sousa always has a ton of stuff here at CES and you thought this was the this was the coolest thing that they had yeah I really like the Zenbook 14 flip it has a 360 degree hinge just like some of the rest of these but I just really like a CSS design they have this like circular brush they also have it in a gold which looks really nice but it's just a solid convertible it comes with the Asus stylus and it's a touchscreen full-size keyboard fingerprint reader knocking for that but I'll give it credit for something else you see a little sticker right here there's an NVIDIA GeForce sticker on it because you can get this with the NVIDIA MX 150 which again seems to be the go-to mainstream graphics card for people and again I've used to play games and stuff I think it works great if you want to go you know crazy you'll get a laptop with a within the video you know 10 60 or 1070 you can even get the 1080 and super thin laptops now but those get very very expensive for mainstream I think that I think that's great and it also has the latest generation into the 8th gen which actually gives you a pretty big performance bump in a couple of systems that we've that we've tested with it yeah I mean these are all eighth gens right they one thing we haven't seen here since we have all these year I didn't see a ton of big new gaming laptops here I saw some gaming desert apps that were cool very stylish stuff not really well there was the one gaming laptop you saw I guess we talked about it even though we don't have it here the one prototype for me it wasn't even a gaming laptop razor had their prototype this year last year they had the three screen laptop right this year they had what they call Project Linda which is basically the razor blade stealth but there's a big hole where the touchpad is and you take your razor phone if you're one of the people who bought the razor phone right which is actually it's supposed to be a really good phone and you drop it in there and that becomes your touchpad and the second screen the laptop is basically just a dock for it it's a prototype it'll probably never actually come out but I thought it was kind of cool and of course it's got all the you know multi-million color your razor lights inside so people always like seeing their prototypes I'm a little disappointed we didn't see more specific gaming stuff here but I did see one gaming thing that was cool Nvidia does a lot of game streaming they have a great game streaming service I think it's called GeForce now and we saw them demo that you can get I think a beta client on Windows and on Mac now also where basically the games are being played in a cloud somewhere on a powerful system and you're just streaming it to your whether it's a they have the HP the little stream I think it's called the super cheap like $200 HP laptop that we actually like a lot from being a cheap laptop and and people were playing you know full PC games on it and it'll actually look really good no I know there was another thing Laurie I think wrote about it was I hate cold was it shadow or something like that oh was it all the different cultures and stuff no no it was it was another cloud computing thing where you could you basically rent a gaming system in the cloud that's definitely a future we tried streaming there was a couple of companies that did that they all went out of business but that was years ago now you may not have to buy a gaming laptop you can just get one of these supercool things like the world's thinnest a swift 7 and and just get a subscription to a cloud gaming service and play games on it that way I guess that's the that's our collection of cool laptops here for CES 2018 we survived the blackout we survived the rain and we managed to get all these cool systems here to show everybody and talk about so uh Thank You Xiomara Thank You Josh thank you and I that we'll be back here and 365 days doing it again next year there you have it best laptops of 2018