Gadgetory

hi everyone we are back with our live coverage of CES 2019 coming to you live from the scene that staged at Tech West I'm Dan Ackerman and I'm here with Josh Goldman and Justin Jaffe and we're here to talk about all the best and coolest laptops of CES 2019 so this has been a great year for laptops I think it's usually very strong Category here but this year I think for seeing a phenomenal amount of new stuff a lot of it is driven by those new Nvidia r-tx graphics cards which is why we have all these gigantic gigantic gaming laptops so these are not that big I mean they must used to be much much larger we used to have the 15 pounders everyone would take that giant one on the subway and shoot photos of them sitting at everyone did the same gag with the big gear of 20 inch laptops I'll show you the one that I think is the wildest in terms of design this is the Isuzu mothership and we got a description of this I think via email at some point and we all read it and we all said to ourselves I don't understand what that subscription means how does this actually work and when we saw it in person you go oh that's it so here you go looks like a regular laptop I'm gonna put it down like this and push down on the back and a little kickstand is going to pop up and then I'm gonna lean it back on the kickstand which is not something you usually do with a laptop open up the lid like this and it's a little bit reversed there's your screen and there's your keyboard and your keyboard tray and you go okay it's a big laptop that needs a kickstand you know there's a little secret here right don't you you pop this off now you've got a removable keyboard you can fold it under like this and just have like a regular keyboard so it becomes basically an all-in-one gaming PC that's battery powered or you can plug it all back together and use it like a laptop is this the most outré design you've seen at CES it's amazing I'd say so I think I think that probably the only thing that would sort of compare that in terms of novelty of design would be this bad boy right here which I'll push forward oh yeah this is the Acer predator triton 900 and you can see here it's got this sort of I'm gonna call it a cantilever design here I'm not an architect but I think that that's what this might be so you can see that it lays down flat almost like a tab here gaming tablet in that mode yes and now what you can do is you can raise up this hinge here and set it like that regular laptop you know so that's kind of an interesting design that I don't know that we've seen before a few laptops do similar things but not really gaming ones but I like that you can take the screen and put it just in just in back of the keyboard and kind of move it screen forward yeah and I think one thing that we're all sort of pleased about here is the previous edition of this model was was the the 700 model and that one had the touchpad in a very odd oh yeah that's right it had the touchpad above the keyboard which economically just crosses glama plate yeah so so I think Acer has heard the feedback the touchpad now is to the right of the keyboard which is I think we can't we can all agree it belongs there if it's not gonna be below the keyboard then to the right play that works and when it's on the glass plate it also got very hot I took out my temperature gun and we clocked it at like 118 degrees at one point yeah that's super nice now you've got a window into the heat pipes for the new Nvidia card fans and yeah that's a nice extra there speaking of showing off I think one of the things I'm most excited about is right next to that and that is that big white laptop right there that is the Alienware area 51 M and I know you're saying area 51 that's a that's a desktop for mailing where it's not a laptop that's why they use the desktop name for this new design which is probably their most complete design overhaul in many many many years because it's got a desktop level GPU and CPU in it and I think the big selling point is they are at least on paper upgradeable the CPU easy enough to GPU if there's a future GPU that's you know also removable and you can you know the small desktop version you can stick it in there you could actually access the back of that and upgrade it yourself which is the big problem so many people have with with gaming laptops they're not they're not upgradable and of course tons of venting they had a whole hex theme around it so on the ban on the bottom of those giant hex vents which just kind of look cool and it comes in white which is a different for alien we're so good for them now if not for these guys I would think this is pretty gigantic but now it seems small in comparison right it is definitely small this is Samsung's newest gaming laptop just called The Odyssey they've had previous odyssey's previous gaming laptops but this one is completely redesigned because the last one what's cool yeah what the logo on the back but umm so this this one is nice it's all metal on there and you can see it's really nice and thin and that's what we're seeing a lot of I like how it puts the screen further up so you're just like looking down with the bigger screen up up and then nice thin bezel right outside so the whole overall thing is nice and small and then they did this nice little I don't know if you can see that little texture tag on pattern on the little liquidy yeah I've talked nice little accent yeah and these are all all of these able to use the new NVIDIA r-tx graphics cards which promise a huge jump in game performance and will probably add a little bit to the price I'm not gonna lie and I love that all these big 4 examples of gaming laptops here do something different like no two of them are the same right and and none of them are what you think of as a traditional big bulky gaming laptop even though they're all pretty big ya know I don't think that's the thing is that we're getting smaller thinner more portable gaming laptops so and we're still cooler yeah nobody went to the dorm room special you need that spousal I call the SAF the spousal approval factor and if you're gonna bring a big gigantic gaming laptop with dents and fans and Dragons on the back and everything home that may not fly if you're you know over a certain age so one of these that's a little slicker looking has a better chance of getting through the front door so this might be a good moment to mention that now that we're seeing sort of desktop components in laptop form factors one of the more interesting things I've seen here at the show is this bad boy right here this is the zou Tech mech mini and in this sort of bizarro world where we're seeing desktop components and laptops we now have a desktop gaming rig that is arguably smaller than a laptop of course you don't have the display or the keyboard of the mouse but just in terms of the components this thing starts at about $1500 you have an RT X 2080 in there you can see that it's covered in venting so there's about 270 degrees of a ventilation in this thing so that it can stay cool because there are some really heavy duty components in the airplane there are some antennas that screw on here and cool lights ports lights all over this thing very cool programmable lights on the front of this so kind of a nice counterpoint to some of the the gaming laptops that we've seen because that's why people started to move to these big laptops because the desks us were just shoved gigantic and and gotten away all the time so those are the big guys now let's talk about some of the small guys obviously I think any discussion of this has to start with this little guy right here the Dell XPS 13 there's a brand that's been around for a while they had a big refresh last year really squeezed down the bezels they're one of the first major laptops that did that and it's been a great laptop everyone has liked it but it's always been one fatal flaw the the webcam was always right here under the screen because I couldn't fit it above the screen and that led to what everyone called the up the nose shot if you were using the webcam to go on skype or anything like that and if I thought I didn't think it was a deal breaker because I don't do a lot of web casting or web video chats but I could see how it would bother people so for this new version which is you know roughly the same dimensions as the previous one it's got upgraded components they've filed they found a way to put the webcam right up here on top it's so tiny it's like a 2.3 millimeter high webcam I'm shocked that they were able to fit it in there but that solves that problem and that and that means that you can't complain about the nose cam anymore and that was the only thing holding this back from being one of my absolute absolute favorite laptops the last several years well you can't complain about the nose cam on that one but you can on that one I will oh and I will so so if you're if you do a lot of webcasting or meetings video meetings and you're not the kind of person who puts the little post over your webcam all the time there you go the new XPS 13 which I think continues making nice improvements to that every year now I'm impressed by this but there was one thing I was waiting to see here they didn't actually see in person until today and it knocked me out this is a laptop I really love the original version of last year it's the Acer Swift 7 superlight under 2 pounds very thin bezels and they shaved them down even more here and they've got this really wide touchpad and look at that it's a little bit shorter than most laptops and just feel how light that is no it's right thank you let's see I it doesn't even feel real at this point and it's just it's got a touchscreen which on these super thin ones they sometimes cut to get the weight down and get the battery life better and the fact that they managed to work in the Thunderbolt and a touchscreen and that big touchpad and a keyboard that's ok it's not gonna be your favorite keyboard and a reasonable number of ports and made it smaller I think this is the this would this one's my most improved year-over-year contest although as you point out there's one thing that'll drive you nuts that's the webcam which is right down here because they didn't apparently shop at the same webcam store that Dell does to get that super thin one so it pops up here so if you're doing a lot of webcaming XPS 13 if you want it under 2 pounds swift 7 which i think is just is just fantastic and we have a couple more small ones to show you what does this guy - I don't know oh you can see it it's your pal the HP spectre x360 with now can we tell how this laptop is different from all the others it's got an OLED screen oh boy I love laptops with OLED screens we don't see him that often now can you see the difference between this and a regular LCD screen I think so I think so I mean it's very vibrant the colors are popping in it's it's it's a crisp display I think it actually does make a difference it really does especially on a big 15-inch screen like this and of course being a 360 you can flip it over and you've got like a mini OLED TV right here which I think I think really looks great and I'm always surprised that more companies don't have old laptops a couple of them have them but not in the US where they have them then they discontinued them so here's my vote everybody's listening more laptops weeds in more different screen sizes and I think that dell and alienware did announce that they are starting to bring that technology into more 15 inch models oh I would love that would be fantastic they had the 13 inch OLED from a couple years back that everybody loved and I saw a prototype from Razer of their new blade 15 with an OLED screen it's not something that's ready now but they they put it in there to show us it could be done and that would be that would be fantastic and even Lenovo which we're about to talk about they announced a c7 30 with an OLED display unfortunately not coming to the United States right now but maybe I that knows but this is their other big announcement the yoga s 9:30 it again super thin very light but it is a it is a very CES laptop thing so what you get is nice thirteen point nine inch screen squeeze into the body it is the first I don't think you can see if it's a linear level but you like it the the way they were able to get the body down and remove here they have a curved glass almost like the original Samsung's with the care of galaxies got that so yeah it curves into the frame there it's a really nice look but you can't really see it unless you're right up on top of it also this camera is up top there's an IR camera for signing in with your your face that windows hello cuz I think the the Dell one can't but it has seven a fingerprint reader right so but this is going to have glance software so that you can if you look away from your screen or you walk away from your screen it'll automatically lock you out of the computer so you don't have to worry about somebody coming out and behind you and getting access but it'll also now they're working the same offer for you I'm always very worried about that when I work with my understand and it will also tell you if somebody's shoulder surfing oh wow pop-up little notification let you know that somebody's right behind you looking at money so that's nice and then also later when it comes out in May they unfortunately couldn't demo this to us because you know see yes you'll be able to if you connect an external monitor you'll be able to if you're working on something on this display and you look over to the other external display the external display will come alive with your windows and stuff so it's a really nice watching you everyone is going to be very comfortable with that concept one point about this some I'm wondering what you guys think about this so this this laptop solves sort of the camera issue by having this little notch at almost yeah I know it sort of looks like that the iPhone XS or X notch my preference is I'm with that over the nose cam any day and so I'm noticing a lot of manufacturers are really consumed with super thin bezels yes and and that that forces them to put the camera in unconventional places that sometimes don't work I think this is totally fine and I think that the message to laptop makers is we're okay with this notch we're we're okay with the camera above the display I think that's where it belongs people are pushing for those thinner bezels and yes and something's got to give speaking of Lenovo I have a little Lenovo bonus for you I was you guys thought I was crazy for just playing with this thing for like an hour and I was fascinated by it it is this Lenovo yoga mouse and it's it starts out flat like this then you twist it and it becomes a little mouse maybe not the most ergonomic Mouse ever but it's portable you can slip it in your jacket pocket like that and I was just going like this for a while and then I discovered it's also a presenter mouse which means your press this little button here and it becomes a laser pointer and I I caught the can't antagonize err so it's a convertible mouth slash presenter slash can't antagonize err and it's called the yoga mouse and for some bizarre reason I I fixated on this and I you maybe F's of doing there I'm collaborating the red dot around the wall so so so that's one of my two little accessory extra picks and the other one I'll tell you about very quickly before we get to our very last device right here a lot of these have USB see only so you have to carry Don goes around with you or little power cables or anything like that our buddies over at pad and quill which is a small company that makes laptop bags and phone cases and things like that I first noticed them when they made book style iPad cases that were really cool they actually just dropped by with some new products and these are these tech folio products and if you open them up it's got room for all of your wires and and little plugs and even even the small plugs that power some of these very small laptops are almost phone size now so they could even conceivably fit in and here's the bigger version in case you have a few more cables and you know I think these are handy for throwing in your bag if you have a laptop and you don't all those little wires and dongles dangling around dangling around in your back there you go now Josh you have you know you're the final word here okay you have two final word here this is super cheap it's the Samsung flash and you think the texture design is I go back and forth I think it's it's either a I don't know if you can see it's either like a burlap or twill yeah surface what is this plastic yeah but Samsung has been known to experiment with plastics on a lot of things on laptops and this this is an example of that so they just wanted to give it a little bit more freely on your laptop yes from book but it's got like Chromebook components in it and they did throw in some extras you get fingerprint reader and relative keys for a little bit we were always had a time somebody just asked Justin real fast what would you what would you go with a plain looking Chromebook or slightly fancy looking Windows laptop both around 300 bucks same components I'm gonna go with I you know I don't object to this texture I love Chromebooks a lot of Chromebook news this year now AMD processors in their new models from Acer HP and a seuss so I think you know with a Chromebook however it appeals to you that's the one that you go with because they continue to be very popular Josh votes no on the texture you vote yes I vote interesting I want to play around with it some more I think that is all the time we have they're yelling at us to wrap it up so these are our favorite laptops of CES 2019 Thank You Justin Thank You Josh I'm Dan Ackerman always keep it on CNET the world's best tech news and reviews site