Googlebooks have arrived to shake up the computing world. Billed as laptops for Android users, these machines run on the brand-new Googlebook OS, which combines Android OS and ChromeOS and is designed for Gemini Intelligence. This gives users Apple-like interoperability with their phone and laptop, along with on-device AI tools and features.

Google is launching these new laptops in a crowded field that includes the best MacBooks, the best Windows laptops, and even the company’s own best Chromebooks. If you already own or are hunting for one of the best laptops, it might be difficult to see why you would want or need a Googlebook.

To that end, here are four reasons to buy a Googlebook, along with three reasons you might want to skip them.

Googlebooks: Reasons to buy

Android interoperability

The main reason you’d want to buy a Googlebook is if you’re an Android phone user who wants near-seamless integration with your laptop. This is something Apple users have enjoyed for years, and both Google and Windows have tried and largely failed to deliver. Now, Android users can switch between tasks on their phones and these new laptops.

In the past, if you started writing a document or working on a project on your phone, you’d have to manually move it to your laptop. Thanks to Googlebook’s Continue On feature, you can pick up right where you left off from the desktop taskbar. This also applies to pictures you snap or videos you record, thanks to the updated Files app. All of your photos and downloads appear right in your laptop’s file menu.

When you first sign in to your Google account on a Googlebook, all of your phone’s settings, saved passwords, Wi-Fi networks, and messages are automatically transferred to the laptop over end-to-end encryption. Cast My Apps allow you to stream and interact with your phone’s apps in a desktop window, which makes it simple to (for example) order food from a delivery app

None of this is groundbreaking stuff for Apple users who’ve enjoyed seamless interoperability between the company’s devices. But for Android users, Googlebooks could be a huge game-changer.

Googlebook OS features

It shouldn’t be surprising that Google has baked its Gemini AI right into Googlebook OS. While you can certainly use the company’s LLM for the basics, such as asking it for travel advice or brainstorming, some nifty Googlebook-specific features sound very useful.

The most unique feature is Magic Pointer. Shaking or wiggling the mouse cursor while hovering over content on your screen brings up Gemini. From there, you can ask the AI to summarize text, translate languages, or help you organize your calendar.

There’s also Rambler, an enhanced speech-to-text tool that lets you (as the name suggests) ramble stream-of-consciousness thoughts and then have them converted into neat headers, checklists, and takeaways.

For aspiring vibe coders, Create My Widget lets you describe what you need in plain language to generate custom interactive desktop widgets. Basically, you can create your own Android apps in a few minutes.

Design and specs

At launch, there will be five Googlebooks from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo. While each laptop has its own unique design elements, they also share core design elements that identify them as Googlebooks.

All Googlebooks are built with high-end materials like aluminum, magnesium alloy, and carbon fiber. While not every Googlebook will have OLED panels, they all have touchscreen displays — which makes sense if you’re using an Android app on the laptop. Other features include ultraportable designs, large trackpads, and backlit keyboards.

Googlebooks will also have a Glowbar positioned on the exterior lid. This light bar sweeps across in bright colors to indicate battery levels, lights up on startup, and shows fun animations whenever you’re using Gemini.

Under their ultraportable hoods, Googlebooks feature high-end processors from Intel, Qualcomm, and MediaTek, with NPUs capable of over 45 TOPS for AI workloads. The laptops also start with at least 16GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage. Google also claims you’ll get up to 14 hours of battery life.

Googlebooks: Reasons to skip

Platform migration

Even if you mostly work in Google apps, you’ll still be effectively starting over, especially since you’ll need an Android phone to get the most from Google’s new laptops. You’ll also lose Apple features like AirDrop, iMessage, and FaceTime, and Mac-exclusive Pro software like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro.

Googlebooks would have made more sense for me back when I was an Android phone user. But now that I’ve owned an iPhone for four years and enjoy seamless integration between my phone, MacBook, and iPad Pro, I don’t relish the thought of starting over on a new platform. If you’re firmly entrenched in the Apple ecosystem, then a Googlebook will be a tough sell.

Compatibility

Googlebook OS relies heavily on web apps, native Android software, and Linux tools. As such, it can’t run native legacy Windows desktop apps, and it certainly won’t run macOS-exclusive software. Due to that, you’ll effectively be in a walled garden like with the Apple ecosystem, only for Android.

Similarly, since this is a brand-new platform that combines Android and ChromeOS, developer optimization for desktop windowing in certain third-party Android apps is still evolving. In other words, early adopters should expect some hiccups along the way, as some of the features I outline above may not work as well as you’d expect.

Price

Googlebooks aren’t outrageously expensive, but as premium flagship laptops, they’re not cheap. Prices range from $899 for the Acer Googlebook 14 to $1,299 for the Asus Googlebook 14 and HP Googlebook 14. That’s pricey on its own, but if you’re also buying a new Android phone and don’t already own one, that’s an even bigger hit to your bank account.

If compatibility with your phone isn’t important and you only need a dependable laptop for basic web browsing or word document editing, then a Chromebook, which can start between $179 and $369, is the more affordable alternative. If you want something higher-end but still affordable, the $699 MacBook Neo and $799 Dell XPS 13 are also brilliant choices.

Outlook

We'll get a true measure of what Googlebooks can do once we've put them through our lab and real-world tests, but for now, they seem like they could be perfect laptops for Android phone users. But as I said, they might be tough sells for Apple users.

The first Googlebooks are expected on October 4, so stay tuned for more soon!

More from Tom's Guide

• Google's head of Android defends the Googlebook's higher prices
• Googlebooks vs Chromebooks — here are the actual differences
• 5 reasons to buy and 2 reasons to skip the Apple mini M6

Apple has long owned the blueprint for thin, light, silent computing with the MacBook Air. It’s the benchmark that we compare every skinny Windows notebook to, and the Cupertino crew always ends up on top for staying ice-cold under sustained multi-app workloads and delivering all-day endurance.

However, Microsoft just announced a new Surface Pro 12-inch ($1,149) and Surface Laptop 13-inch ($1,199) with Snapdragon X2 Plus — launching October 13th. And in my short time testing them, they look set to change that dynamic.

Beyond the real nice aluminum designs, stellar displays and strong ergonomics, I juggled heavy creative workflows without even a whimper of pressure. After seeing Blender run and the surface of the…Surface remained cool, it is clear that Microsoft finally has legitimate MacBook Air challengers on its hands.

Cold under pressure

Let’s get into the marquee achievement here — that thermal management. Both the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop lack active cooling fans, and use dense cooling pipes instead. In past generations, fanless designs inevitably meant thermal throttling and scorched aluminum chassis. No longer.

During my hands-on time, the hardware was subjected to a rigorous creative pipeline:

• An original sketch was drafted in real-time
• That asset was imported into Blender to render out full 3D geometry
• The completed render was transferred directly into Photoshop for multi-layered

All three resource-intensive applications remained open and active simultaneously in the background. Navigating between them was instantaneous with zero perceptible stutter.

More impressively, this is happening without a fan. I touched the back of the Surface Pro chassis and it remained cool to the touch.

With up to 60% faster graphics rendering and an 80 TOPS NPU handling on-device AI tasks, the X2 Plus architecture is powerful for sure, but this sustained performance without thermal penalties is the real win here.

Hardware, keyboards and the lapability hitch

Both machines pack upgraded 500-nit PixelSense displays that look vibrant and punchy in person, and are paired with tactile, responsive keyboards that offer a satisfying travel.

Plus, this is all packed into some gorgeous aluminum shells that feel great to the touch and have an unmistakable playfulness to them in the colors. Those hues do disguise the real power under the hood here.

Also, shoutout to the haptics on that Surface Pen on the Pro — offering a two-way conversation between you and the apps on screen.

Feeling the sand rumble through the the pen as I rake my zen garden feels like a fun gimmick, but it’s a glimpse of what this tool can do when more apps provide support: feeling a snapback as you align an image in Photoshop, and various swells and pops as you operate around Windows 11.

However, the Surface Pro 12-inch has one notable ergonomic drawback. Whereas on other Surface Pros, you could snap that keyboard deck magnetically to the bottom bezel to form a lock and stabilize the keyboard deck; this attachment connects strictly at the bottom spine.

While I wasn’t able to test the lapability trade-off of this, I can imagine that without the angled magnetic brace, using this on your lap would feel wobblier than a traditional clamshell. I’d have to find out for myself to be sure.

My early verdict

Starting at $1,149 for the Surface Pro and $1,199 for the Surface Laptop, that’s quite a RAMageddon sting, but they are being priced directly against Apple’s core lineup.

While the Surface Pro is the creators choice, but wrestles with its kickstand ergonomics, the clamshell Surface Laptop offers the best of both worlds.

And their fanless operation, sustained thermal composure and snappy silicon make the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop the closest Microsoft has come to matching the everyday magic of the MacBook Air.

More from Tom's Guide

• I just tested the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI — its 240Hz refresh rate and graphics are stunning but everything else feels lackluster
• Vonder may have solved the 'pervert glasses' problem — and the nerd factor, too
• Snap’s CEO told me he hates getting AI-drafted texts from his wife — so what’s the plan to fight brain fry with Specs?

The Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI, on paper, sounds like one of the best budget laptops for gaming and work. Boasting a 240Hz refresh rate and packing up to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series graphics cards (depending on configuration), the Neo 16 AI delivers buttery smooth gaming performance. It’s great for work, too, thanks to strong performance across the board… almost.

While color rendition and raw gaming performance are the Neo 16 AI’s strong suits, its glaring flaws can’t be ignored. The laptop tends to get very hot, and the battery life isn’t anything to write home about. The machine itself is bulky to travel with, and don’t get me started on the amount of bloatware that comes pre-installed (and negatively affects SSD speeds).

For the complete breakdown, read my full Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI review.

Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI review: Specs

Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI review: Cheat sheet

• What is it? A 16-inch gaming laptop with a 180Hz or 240Hz refresh rate
• Who is it for? Gamers on a budget
• How much does it cost? The Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI starts at $1,699 / £1,399
• What do we like? The bright screen, excellent color rendition, gaming and strong everyday performance
• What don’t we like? Where do I start… The ineffective cooling system, slow SSD, bloatware, short battery life, and bulky design

Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI review: The ups

The Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI features a beautiful, bright display with accurate color rendition, and a 240Hz refresh rate that delivers strong gaming performance.

Beautiful, bright display

One of the most impressive things about the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI is its beautiful, bright display. The starting (cheapest) model comes fitted with a 16-inch WQXGA non-touchscreen. Unlike the MSI Katana 15 HX B14W ($1,284) which features a 2560 x 1440 16:9 QHD panel, the Neo 16 AI has a resolution of 2560 x 1600, and you get 160 extra vertical pixels to create a taller 16:10 aspect ratio. You can also splurge on the topline configuration which features an OLED panel. Mine didn’t have an OLED screen, but even so, it felt lovely to look at.

In my lab testing, the Neo 16 AI achieved a peak brightness of 520.8 nits, which is phenomenal and much brighter than the competition. The MSI Katana 15 HX B14W has a measly brightness of 262.2, while the HyperX Omen 15 ($1,099) falls just short with its 460.2 nits. The MacBook Neo ($699) and the MacBook Air M5 ($1,099) perform well, with 480 and 454 nits respectively, but they’re more productivity-focused laptops.

Having such a bright screen meant that I was able to properly view what was on it regardless of the lighting conditions. Even under bright office lights, and with sunlight coming through the windows right behind me, I didn’t struggle to see the panel.

Excellent color rendition

The Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI’s 16-inch screen comes with either 180Hz or 240Hz refresh rates, and both deliver smooth motion while watching. But what good is that if the color rendition doesn’t match up? Thankfully, the Neo 16 AI’s color coverage and accuracy are awesome, and its screen displays vivid, detailed shades and textures.

My lab tests showed that the Neo 16 AI covers 155.2% of the sRGB color space and 109.9% of the wider DCI P3 gamut. This is wider coverage than the MSI Katana 15 HX B14W, the MacBook Air M5 and the Alienware 16X Aurora ($2,499). The HyperX Omen 15 performs better, but a score about 100% across both color spaces is what we’re always looking for, and the Neo 16 AI doesn’t let you down in that regard.

One of our concerns when coverage is over 150% is that colors can often look oversaturated and artificial. I didn’t think that was the case with the Neo 16 AI’s color rendition. Bright shades didn’t have a neon tinge to them. Neon signs in games like Forza Horizon 5 didn’t appear blown out, and there was plenty of detail to be found in the darker areas. And because the Neo 16 AI covers over 100% of the DCI P3 gamut, the laptop’s great for photo and video editing, too.

Colors appear accurate, too, as the Neo 16 AI achieved a Delta-E score of 0.09 in my lab tests. Delta-E is a numerical representation of how much two colors differ. The closer the score to zero, the better. As you can see from the table above, the Neo 16 AI upstages pricier laptops, like the Alienware 16X Aurora and the Alienware 16 Area-51 ($2,529). Seeing the 0.09 Delta-E score reassured me that the colors I was seeing on the Neo 16 AI were extremely accurate, and this helped me confidently color-grade photos for my photography account on Instagram.

240Hz delivers solid gaming performance

Even though it’s a budget laptop, the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI goes toe to toe with mid-range beasts, like the Alienware 16X Aurora. Thanks to its 240Hz refresh rate, the latest graphics card (up to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080), up to 24 cores, and DLSS 4, gaming performance is formidable. Visuals are beautiful and colorful, while motion is smooth with no input lag or unresponsiveness.

To gauge the Neo 16 AI’s performance, I played Counter-Strike 2, Forza Horizon 5 and F1 25 — all at the highest graphics possible and at the laptop’s native resolution of 1600P. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and after I’d spent some hours playing them, I ran in-game benchmarks. As expected, Counter-Strike 2 ran at a silky smooth 228fps. It isn’t a very demanding game which is why I said “as expected.”

The Neo 16 AI handled Forza Horizon 5 in Extreme graphics mode well, too, running at a maximum of 112fps. F1 25, on the other hand, peaked at 60fps in Ultra High graphics mode, which isn’t bad at all. The game features lifelike graphics and the Neo 16 AI managed to keep up. The Alienware 16X Aurora performs better here, though, reaching 109fps in F1 25 — but it’s also pricier than the Neo 16 AI. Swings and roundabouts. You can always drop the resolution down to 1080P for better framerates, of course.

Strong everyday performance, too

Not only is the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI an excellent gaming laptop, it boasts strong performance for everyday tasks, too, like web surfing, photo editing, and other productivity-related tasks. Of course, all of this will depend on your chosen configuration. For context, my review unit came with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, 32GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti graphics card, and 1TB of storage.

It didn’t give me much to complain about when gaming and navigating work-related apps… except for the overheating (which I’ll discuss in the ‘Downs’ section below).

I benchmarked the Neo 16 AI, and you can see the results in the table above, as well as comparisons to its closest rivals. On Geekbench 7, which measures overall CPU performance, the Neo 16 AI pulled an impressive multi-core score of 23,100, outclassing all of its competitors, including the pricier Alienware 16X Aurora.

Using Handbrake, I transcoded a 4K video to 1080P, and the Neo 16 AI took just two minutes and 26 seconds to do so. That’s speedy, especially when compared to the likes of the MacBook Air M5 and the HyperX Omen 15, which did the same in 04:34 and 03:44 respectively.

Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI review: The downs

Alas, the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI is far from perfect, with glaring issues when it comes to its battery life, SSD speeds (hampered by bloatware), cooling system, and its hefty weight.

Short battery life

As I’ve noted in previous gaming laptop reviews, it isn’t rare for these notebooks to have poor battery life. Chances are you’ll be using the laptop plugged in while gaming anyway. But it’s still worth noting that the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI doesn’t boast the longest battery life, even when doing simple tasks like browsing the internet.

I conducted our in-house battery test to see how the Neo 16 AI fared. This test continuously surfs the web and streams videos, with the laptop’s brightness calibrated to 150 nits. In my testing, the Neo 16 AI lasted four hours and 11 minutes before dying. That’s pretty short, and it gets worse when you’re gaming on battery — just over 45 minutes.

Though not the worst (the Alienware 16X Aurora takes the cake there), it’s not great news. The HyperX Omen 15 lasted eight and a half hours in our in-house battery test, while the MSI Katana 15 HX B14W had a runtime of just over five hours. Of course, both laptops’ batteries took major hits when gaming only.

Gets very hot, and those fans are jarring

I’m no stranger to my gadgets sounding like they’re going to take off. I’ve had that issue with my PlayStation 4 before I traded it in for my PS5 Slim, and I’ve also seen it with laptops I’ve tested, like the Alienware 16X Aurora. The Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI is the latest to join those ranks, as its fans kick up a storm to try and stop the laptop from overheating.

The Neo 16 AI is equipped with Acer’s 5th Gen AeroBlade 3D Fan Technology and vector heat pipes which, according to the brand, “keep performance steady under pressure, combining advanced airflow design with intelligent thermal regulation.” Alongside sounding really loud and jarring (I recommend investing in a pair of the best active noise canceling headphones too), I don’t think the heat management is all that great. I found the keyboard and the area surrounding the laptop’s vents quite hot to touch, and it made for an uncomfortable experience.

Bulky for travel

The Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI isn’t a compact laptop. As it packs a 16-inch screen, it measures 14.05 x 10.85 x 1.05 inches and weighs 5.95lbs. That’s quite a bit! It feels heavy to lug around in a day bag.

If you decide to get the 18-inch Neo 18 AI instead, you’re looking at a hefty weight of 7.3lbs. You could probably skip working out your back and shoulders at the gym — all you have to do is carry around this bad boy for 15 minutes.

So. Much. Bloatware.

The Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI isn’t without its faults, and the pre-installed bloatware that accompanies the laptop (and eats into your SSD) is another pain point. There are so many Acer apps on the Neo 16 AI, like ProShield and LiveArt, and I doubt they’ll be useful for everyone.

Annoyingly, when I first booted up the laptop to start testing it, I was inundated with pop-ups and notifications from McAfee, because Acer thought it would be helpful to have a free version of the antivirus software installed. ExpressVPN didn’t hesitate to ask me to activate my VPN subscription either.

I took 30 minutes out of my day to delete all unnecessary apps, and I recommend you do the same if you buy the Neo 16 AI. It sucks, though, because no one should have to do that. And all that bloatware has a detrimental impact on the laptop’s performance, which brings me to my next point…

Not the fastest SSD

Straight out of the box, the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI doesn’t pack the fastest SSD — and that’s the price you pay for not taking the time to uninstall the aforementioned bloatware. As we do with other laptops we test on site, I ran the SSD BlackMagic Disk Speed test to measure the Neo 16 AI’s read and write speeds… and the results weren’t great at first.

Straight out of the box, the Neo 16 AI performed very poorly, with 1,092 write and 934 read speeds (measured in MBps). Needless to say, I was shocked, and I ran the test multiple times to ensure the speeds were correct. Every time, the speeds would be in the ballpark. I then uninstalled all the bloatware and ran the test again. This time around, the Neo 16 AI showed 3,128 write and 3,786 read speeds — that’s more like it!

But do you see the negative impact all that bloatware and spam software has on the Neo 16 AI’s performance? In comparison, the MSI Katana 15 HX B14W and the Alienware 16X Aurora boast better write and read speeds straight out of the box, as you can see in the table above. Even though the Neo 16 AI is a budget gaming laptop, the initial result is still disappointing.

Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI review: Verdict

The Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI is an ambitious laptop, and I so badly wish it didn’t have so many things wrong with it. Its 240Hz refresh rate, excellent and accurate color rendition, and bright display are its saving grace. Performance is fairly strong across the board, too, making it a decent choice for work and gaming alike.

But as I’ve said a few times already, the Neo 16 AI’s flaws are difficult to overlook, and they cast a tall shadow over the things the laptop does right. Straight out of the box, the Neo 16 AI is full of pre-installed bloatware which has a massive impact on SSD performance. Battery life is short, too, and the laptop tends to get quite hot when playing intensive games. Oh, and the laptop itself is bulky for travel.

If you’re looking for a budget gaming laptop, you’re spoiled for choice, really, and it’s worth considering a notebook from Alienware, MSI or HyperX. Ultimately, the Neo 16 AI is a good laptop that’s, sadly, bested by others in its weight class.

Googlebooks have arrived, and I’m sure you’re wondering how they differ from the best Chromebooks. That’s a fair question, but even though they're Google laptops with similar names, these notebook lines are vastly different from one another. Especially since Googlebooks directly compete with the best Windows laptops and best MacBooks.

I recently tested the first five Googlebooks, and the differences between them and Chromebooks were instantly apparent. Instead of plastic, Googlebooks have sleek, sturdy metal chassis that make them feel like premium devices. Inside, they pack fast processors from Intel, Qualcomm, and MediaTek, with Google Gemini features built in for on-device AI workloads.

Googlebooks aren’t replacing Chromebooks, but it’s still important to know what distinguishes the laptop lines — especially as we draw closer to the busy holiday shopping season. To that end, here are the biggest differences between Googlebooks and Chromebooks.

Googlebooks vs. Chromebooks: Price

Chromebooks have long been among the most affordable laptops, ranging from $150 to over $600. This has been a major reason for their popularity, even though ChromeOS isn't as robust as Windows or macOS. If you frequently work somewhere with a reliable internet connection and exclusively use Google’s suite of apps, Chromebooks are a solid choice.

Since Googlebook are marketed as premium laptops, they generally command premium prices—though their starting prices aren’t unreasonable. For example, the Acer Googlebook 14 starts at $899, while the most expensive offerings like the Asus Googlebook 14 start at $1,299. No matter which Googlebook you buy, you’ll get 12 months of Google AI Pro providing 5TB of cloud storage and Gemini Advanced tools, plus three months of YouTube Premium, Adobe Photoshop, and CapCut.

I should note that these are the current prices of Googlebooks. Given the ongoing RAM crisis, that might change. Hopefully, prices will remain the same or at least not go up too much, as these are relatively affordable machines for what they promise.

Googlebooks vs. Chromebooks: Design

The first Googlebooks are manufactured by Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo. While the laptops I checked out each had their respective company’s distinctive flourishes, they also share core design elements that identify them as Googlebooks.

The laptops are built with premium materials like aluminum, magnesium alloy, and carbon fiber. They all feature a responsive touchscreen, large trackpad, and backlit keyboard. Each also has a Glowbar to denote them as Googlebooks. Some models will have OLED panels, while others, like the Acer Googlebook, will be 2-in-1 convertibles. Basically, expect Googlebooks to come in all shapes and sizes.

Chromebooks can be similarly diverse in terms of design. And while there are certainly more “premium” Chromebooks out there, the line is mostly known for plastic chassis, dim, dull display quality, and so-so keyboards. Yes, these aspects help keep Chromebooks relatively affordable, but you get what you pay for.

Googlebooks vs. Chromebooks: Features

No, Googlebooks do not run on ChromeOS. Instead, they run on the brand-new Googlebook OS, which combines Android and ChromeOS. Google Gemini is also a core part of Googlebooks, as the LLM is built into the OS. As a result, it offers AI-driven features that simply aren’t available on Chromebooks.

One of these is called Magic Pointer, which lets you shake or wiggle your mouse cursor while hovering over content on your screen to bring up Gemini right where you’re looking. In the chatbox that opens, you can ask Gemini to summarize text, translate foreign languages, and more.

Other Googlebook features include Ramber, a speech-to-text tool that can clean up your messy stream-of-consciousness thoughts, and Create My Widget, which lets you generate custom interactive Android desktop widgets kind of like vibe coding.

Taking a page from the Apple ecosystem, Googlebooks are designed to work hand in hand with the best Android phones. For example, the Continue On feature allows you to (among other things) start an email or project on your phone and continue where you left off on the Googlebook later. This also applies to photos you snap or documents you download. Lastly, Cast My Apps lets you stream and interact with your phone’s apps in a desktop window.

Googlebooks vs. Chromebooks: Bottom line

As you can see, Googlebooks and Chromebooks are completely different beasts. Yes, they’re both Google laptops that work well with the company’s apps. However, that’s where the similarities largely end, as they ultimately deliver two divergent experiences.

If you’re a dedicated Android user who wants a higher-end laptop that communicates seamlessly with your phone, a Googlebook could be perfect for you. Conversely, if you just want an extremely affordable laptop for using Google’s apps, Chromebooks are an ideal choice.

Of course, we’ll know more about Googlebooks once we’ve fully tested them under real-world use and in our lab, so stay tuned for more!

More from Tom's Guide

• I asked the head of Android why people will pay a premium for its new MacBook alternative
• I've been testing the iPhone 18 Pro Max and iPhone 18 Pro — your 10 biggest questions answered
• Apple's $250 million class action settlement website is now open — here's how eligible iPhone owners can file a claim and how much they'll get

Googlebooks are Android’s answer to the Apple ecosystem. Powered by a new OS that combines Android and ChromeOS and is designed for Gemini Intelligence, this new class of laptops integrates with your Android phone to deliver a seamless cross-device experience. If you’re an Android user seeking greater interoperability between your phone and laptop, Googlebooks could be a game-changer.

At a Googlebooks event, I went hands-on with the first five of these laptops and was more impressed than I expected. Though each machine has unique design elements, all are thin and light notebooks with touchscreens and haptic touchpads. Each also has a Glowbar to denote them as Googlebooks. These notebooks start at $899, pack 16GB of RAM, and feature premium aluminum shells. Chromebooks, these are not!

While all of the Googlebooks I checked out were solid machines in their own right, one stood out above the rest. I’ll detail which I liked most and why, along with the other Googlebooks expected to hit the market in early October. Also, check out our interview with the head of Android for more.

Quick links

• Acer Googlebook 14: $899 @ Best Buy
• Dell XPS Googlebook: $999 @ Best Buy
• Lenovo Googlebook 15: $1,099 @ Best Buy
• Asus Googlebook 14: $1,299 @ Best Buy
• HP Googlebook 14: $1,299 @ Best Buy

Asus Googlebook 14

The standout is the Asus Googlebook 14, which starts at $1,299. The instant I picked it up, I was astonished by how light this 2.2-pound laptop feels—and I say this as someone who regularly uses a MacBook Air! The Nano Ceramic magnesium-aluminum chassis not only looks and feels great, but it’s also extremely sturdy, which is essential for a laptop that’s only 0.43 inches thin. The Dusk Ash color is also eye-catching.

So, what’s under that lovely hood? The base model packs an Intel Core Ultra 5 Panther Lake CPU, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage (up to 512GB). Asus says the laptop has an advanced cooling system that supports sustained performance and quiet operation. The company also claims the 70Wh battery can deliver up to 18 hours of battery life.

Then we have the 14-inch 3K OLED touchscreen, which Asus says can reach 1000 nits of peak HDR brightness. What stood out to me was its anti-glare tech, which effectively reduced the glare from the bright lights at the event I attended. If you work outdoors or in harsh lighting, this’ll be a great addition. I’ll need more hands-on time with the display (not to mention some lab tests), but based on my brief time with the Asus Googlebook 14, it seems plenty bright and colorful.

Other features include a six-speaker system with dual force-canceling woofers and two tweeters, which Asus says create fuller sound for calls, presentations, and media. Then there’s the large haptic touchpad, which uses six-point force sensing that delivers consistent click pressure no matter where you tap. I also liked the relatively roomy keyboard and the springy keys.

Again, all the Googlebooks I checked out were great in their own right, but the Asus Googlebook truly won me over because of its super thin, light design. It’s exactly the kind of laptop I would want to travel with daily because of its ultraportability and sleek aesthetic. I’m eager to put it through its paces and see if it lives up to the hype.

Other Googlebooks

Acer Chromebook 14

After the Asus Googlebook 14, the other one that stood out most was the Acer Chromebook 14. It was the only 2-in-1 convertible I saw at the event, and it was also the most affordable, starting at $899. Like most of the announced Googlebooks, it has an OLED touch display, a sturdy, thin, lightweight aluminum chassis, and claims strong performance and long battery life thanks to its Panther Lake CPU. If you’re looking for a premium device that doubles as a laptop and tablet for under $1,000, keep an eye on this one.

Dell XPS Googlebook

The $999 Dell XPS Googlebook is for folks who want a higher-end laptop than the $699 XPS 13 but much more affordable than the $2,399 XPS 14. It packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip, 16GB of RAM (up to 32GB), 512GB of SSD storage, and a 13.4-inch 2.5K touch display. This notebook is also 2.2 pounds, like the Asus Googlebook, and has a similarly sturdy machined aluminum chassis. I’m a big fan of XPS laptops, so it’s good to see Dell trying that brand with Googlebooks.

HP Googlebook 14

The $1,299 HP Googlebook 14 is another svelte laptop, featuring a 14-inch 2.8K OLED touch display, 16-32GB of RAM, 256GB of SSD storage, a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip, and an all-aluminum build weighing just 2.74 pounds. What stands out most is its lattice-less keyboard, which makes for a denser keyboard deck. Though some aren’t fond of this design, I quite like it—especially since the keys have excellent travel distance.

Lenovo Googlebook 15

Last but not least is the Lenovo Googlebook 15. As its name suggests, this has the largest display of the launch Googlebooks at 15.3 inches. Of the Googlebooks I saw, this has a boxier design reminiscent of a MacBook Pro. It’s also the heaviest at 2.8 pounds, though it’s still relatively lightweight. Other features include a magnesium-alloy and carbon fiber chassis, an Intel Core Ultra 5 Panther Lake CPU, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage.

Outlook

We don’t often get a new class of laptops, let alone ones also featuring a brand-new operating system. Because of that, Googlebooks are genuinely exciting. That said, given how these machines are primarily targeted at Android users, their appeal might be limited. Even if that’s the case, I appreciate that these laptops are more about fitting into people’s lifestyles rather than being machines focused on pure power and specs.

The first wave of Googlebooks arrives on October 4, so it won’t be long until we can all check them out. We’ll have full reviews of these laptops here on Tom’s Guide, so make sure you don’t miss out—especially if you’re a person these notebooks are targeting. Stay tuned for more!

More from Tom's Guide

• iPhone 18 Pro teardown reveals the ins and outs of the latest iPhone models — including one annoying repair issue
• Apple's $250 million class action settlement website is now open — here's how eligible iPhone owners can file a claim and how much they'll get
• We just crowned the LG C6 OLED as our top TV of the year — and it's 41% off at Amazon right now

Right now if you’re shopping for a premium laptop and want a seamless experience with your iPhone you typically get a MacBook Air or Pro. But what if you have a Galaxy Z Fold 8 or Pixel 11 Pro?

Google believes it has a viable Apple alternative for Android fans in the Googlebook. Going on sale Oct. 4, these laptops from Acer, Asus, HP, Dell and Lenovo are designed to deliver much of the same seamless magic while also adding some unique twists that surpass MacBooks — including Gemini built in.

“First and foremost, we want Android users to feel like there is a laptop for them that is as premium and as beautiful and performant as that high-end smartphone that they have,” said Sameer Samat, president of the Android Ecosystem at Google.

Along with Tom’s Guide senior writer Tony Polanco, I sat down with Samat to nail down what a Googlebook is, how they truly differ from Chromebooks and whether consumers will be willing to pay $899 to $1,299 for this new breed of laptop.

What the heck is a Googlebook?

It’s easy to dismiss Googlebooks as just Chromebooks with fancier designs and higher price tags, but Google is emphasizing a unique software experience.

And it starts right when you power up the Googlebook for the first time. You’ll see a pop-up right on your Android phone, and your Googlebook asks you to biometrically authenticate. Once you do, the Googlebook just sets itself up.

“Your Googlebook asks you if you want to bring all your apps over, all your autofill passwords and payments — all of those things just work seamlessly,” said Samat. “So right out of the gate, you have the feeling that (your phone and Googlebook) were made to go together.”

Once you start using your Googlebook, your phone and laptop offer a pretty seamless handoff experience. For example, if you start a Gmail on your phone, the draft will just pop up when you open the app on your Googlebook. And if you take a picture with your Android phone, it will automatically show up in what Google calls the fused file system.

Working in Chrome is another good example of how Googlebooks and Android phones work hand in hand.

“You're browsing something. In the taskbar there's a suggestion,” Samat said. “You open up your Googlebook, and it knows you've been on your Android Chrome browser, and right there, it's waiting for you.”

Gemini inside

The other key Googlebook ingredient is Gemini Intelligence built in. With Magic Pointer, for example, you can shake the cursor while hovering over something you want to know more about and then you can simply ask Gemini a question. It’s like Circle to Search without having to circle anything.

It works well, but I was surprised that you can’t use Gemini to do things like dim the brightness or control the hardware in other ways. But features like this should come in time.

“We are working on all those things for the phone and for and for the laptop,” Samat said. We we think that you know you should be able to not only get information retrieved, but for Gemini to take action on these devices.”

Raising the hardware bar (Glowbar included)

While Apple is known for high-quality hardware, Google believes it has an advantage in that it’s not locking you into a single design. There’s a wide range of brands, sizes and form factors to choose from.

This includes everything from an Acer convertible that doubles as a laptop and tablet and Dell’s 13-inch XPS Googlebook with Snapdragon to Asus’ amazingly light 2.2-pound Googlebook 14 and Lenovo’s 15-incher.

"What I think really distinguishes this ecosystem is choice,” said Samat. “So you've got your Samsung Fold or your Pixel, and you've chosen the HP or you've chosen the Dell. Maybe you like the ASUS device because it's so light, and that choice paired with whatever premium Android phone you've got is really quintessential to the Android openness and choice experience.”

Google also made a Glowbar on the back of the systems standard, a strip of colorful LEDs that sits towards the top of the lid. It’s an aesthetic statement taken from the original Pixelbook, and it’s definitely intended to draw attention from across the room. But it has a functional purpose, too.

“There's a boot up animation that tells you the power left in the device,” Samat said. But one of the things I'm really excited about is we are opening an API for developers.”

What about the apps?

As you might expect, Googlebooks have Google Play Store support, but Google isn’t just slapping Android apps on a laptop. It has been working with developers to optimize their apps, and it will call ones out specifically in the store that are ready for the desktop with a specific label.

This includes WhatsApp, Capcut, Photoshop Lightroom, Netflix and more.

“For example, I wanted to make sure we had Antigravity. I wanted to make sure we had a fully fledged Linux terminal, which could run Quadcode CLI, Codex CLI, because these are some of the new ways people are working today,” Samat said. “In terms of the apps in the Play Store, we’re really excited about Disney Plus and Netflix. Netflix supports full HDR, which no other platform has, and has offline (playback) as well, which is unique.”

At the same time, you don’t have to reinstall phone apps on the desktop if you just need to check something quickly. For example, you can just pull up Uber Eats on your Googlebook to check on the status of an order.

Can Google justify the high prices?

All of these systems are pricey, ranging from $899 to $1,299, but Google has pretty strict requirements for what can be a Googlebook. Most of these machines have OLED touchscreens, the latest processors from Intel, Qualcomm and Snapdragon, 16GB of RAM and backlit keyboards.

But that isn’t going to stop people from wondering whether Googlebooks are just high-priced Chromebooks.

“Really what we wanted to do is to make sure that Googlebook enters the world in a clear way for people. This is truly premium hardware. This is a software experience that works extremely well with your Android phone,” Samat said. “We believe that if you're a premium Android user, yep, this is the laptop for you, and you're going to feel that right from the jump.”

Googlebooks are the "new category" of laptops designed to provide Android users with the same seamless bridge from mobile to desktop that iPhone users enjoy with MacBook. After being announced earlier this year at the Android Show, the first devices in this new category are now available to pre-order.

Five different Googlebooks are available today, from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo, starting at $899 (with a year's subscription to Google AI Pro thrown in) and each one is built with premium materials like aluminum, magnesium alloy and carbon fiber. They all feature a responsive touchscreen, large trackpad and backlit keyboard. These laptops come with either Intel or Qualcomm processors under the hood and offer up to 14 hours of battery life.

Although Google has made sure certain rules are followed, each of the Googlebooks launching today offer slightly different features to cater to different tastes. Standouts include the Asus Googlebook 14, which weighs just 2.2 pounds and boasts an anti-glare screen with 16 hours of battery life. Acer offers a neat convertible model, while Lenovo is bringing a 15-inch option with a soft-touch finish in Pantone’s Cloud Dancer.

Quick links

• Acer Googlebook 14: $899 @ Best Buy
• Dell XPS Googlebook: $999 @ Best Buy
• Lenovo Googlebook 15: $1,099 @ Best Buy
• Asus Googlebook 14: $1,299 @ Best Buy
• HP Googlebook 14: $1,299 @ Best Buy

Googlebooks: Price and release

Pre-orders are now open on the Google Store, Best Buy, and other select retailers.

Starting at $899, every Googlebook includes 12 months of Google AI Pro providing 5TB of cloud storage and Gemini Advanced tools, plus three months of YouTube Premium, Adobe Photoshop, and CapCut.

Google has also confirmed that Googlebook OS will come with regular feature drops and updates for up to 10 years.

Devices arrive on shelves starting October 4 in the U.S., and October 5 in Canada, the U.K., Ireland, France, Germany, and Australia.

Apple-like interoperability

These days, most of us switch between doing tasks across our phones and laptops—which is something Googlebooks want to make easier. For example, if you start an email or project on your phone while you’re on the road, Googlebook’s Continue On feature lets you pick up right where you left off from the desktop taskbar.

The same seamlessness applies to your media. When you take a picture or download a document on your phone, you won’t have to email it to yourself or hunt through third-party apps. Thanks to the updated Files app, your phone’s photos and downloads show up in your laptop’s file menu almost like magic.

Setting up a Googlebook is also pain-free, as signing in automatically transfers your phone’s settings, saved passwords, Wi-Fi networks, and messages over with end-to-end encryption. And if you need to quickly grab a two-factor code or order food from a delivery app, Cast My Apps lets you stream and interact with your phone’s apps in a desktop window without breaking your workflow.

Magic Pointer, Rambler, and custom widgets

Google is betting heavily on desktop AI features to justify the launch, and a few of them sound genuinely useful:

• Magic Pointer: Shake or wiggle your mouse cursor while hovering over content on your screen to bring Gemini right to whatever you're looking at. You can ask it to summarize text, translate foreign languages, or organize a messy calendar without juggling multiple tabs. Crucially, Gemini only acts when you ask it to, and you can toggle the feature off entirely if you prefer a standard pointer.
• Rambler: Located right next to the Quick Insert key, Rambler acts as an upgraded speech-to-text tool. You can talk through random notes, action items, or a stream-of-consciousness thought (even switching between languages mid-sentence), and Rambler cleans up the filler words and formats everything into neat headers, checklists, and takeaways.
• Create My Widget: Instead of hunting through app menus, you can describe what you need in plain language to generate custom interactive desktop widgets that track weather, schedules, or stocks in real time. While this isn’t exactly vibe coding, it leads to similar results.
• Quick Insert Key: A dedicated physical key lets you instantly pull up emojis, clipboard items, or recent files. However, I’m still not entirely sold on the fact that it takes over the traditional Caps Lock key real estate.

Google is also bringing back a familiar hardware touch: the Glowbar. Positioned on the exterior lid, this light bar sweeps across to indicate battery levels, lights up on startup, and displays playful light animations whenever you interact with Gemini. It’s a neat way to denote these new laptops as Googlebooks.

App support, gaming, and power-user tools

Android apps on desktop displays haven't always offered the best user experience, but Google claims it is heavily optimizing millions of Play Store apps specifically for large screens, mouse, and keyboard input, with clear optimization labels right in the store interface.

You get full desktop Chrome with extension support, alongside native creative applications like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, and CapCut. Streaming apps like Netflix and HBO Max are supported out of the box with offline viewing capabilities. For gamers, Googlebooks run native mobile titles alongside a bundled 1-year subscription to GeForce Now for streaming AAA PC games.

For developers and power users, Google built in a Level 5 security-certified pKVM hypervisor. This powers an isolated Linux environment with full terminal access to run tools like Claude Code or Antigravity CLI. It also includes Antigravity, Google’s agent development platform, letting developers build, test, and deploy AI agents locally on the machine.

Googlebooks: Outlook

To sweeten the deal on those price tags, Google is bundling 12 months of Google AI Pro (which includes 5TB of cloud storage and Gemini Advanced), 3 months of YouTube Premium, and promises up to 10 years of software updates and feature drops.

I don’t know yet if Googlebooks are going to convince traditional Windows or MacBook users to switch, but the tight Android phone integration, high-end hardware specs, and practical AI tools make this one of the more interesting hardware shifts we've seen from Google in a while. We look forward to putting these through our full suite of lab tests soon.

Would you buy a Googlebook, or are you sticking with your current setup? Let us know in the comments.

More from Tom's Guide

• iPhone 18 Pro teardown reveals the ins and outs of the latest iPhone models — including one annoying repair issue
• Apple's $250 million class action settlement website is now open — here's how eligible iPhone owners can file a claim and how much they'll get
• We just crowned the LG C6 OLED as our top TV of the year — and it's 41% off at Amazon right now

You don’t have to burn a hole in your pocket to get strong performance, and the MSI Katana 15 HX B14W proves it. The 15 HX B14W is excellent for casual gaming, thanks to its 165Hz refresh rate, and it’s good for productivity, too, with strong performance across the benchmark board. Its design is subtle while the build quality is solid. I also love the wide color coverage and accuracy, and all of these things come together to deliver one of the best budget laptops.

But few things in life are perfect, and the 15 HX B14W isn’t one of them. Its screen is a little dim, even at peak brightness, and it appears slightly washed out. Battery life is nothing to write home about either.

Should you still buy it? Read my full MSI Katana 15 HX B14W review to find out.

MSI Katana 15 HX B14W review: Specs

MSI Katana 15 HX B14W review: Cheat sheet

• What is it? A budget gaming laptop with a 15.6-inch QHD display and 165Hz refresh rate
• Who is it for? Casual gamers on a budget
• How much does it cost? The MSI Katana 15 HX B14W starts at $1,284 / £1,299
• What do we like? The QHD display’s color coverage and accuracy, strong gaming and everyday performance on a budget, and the subtle design
• What don’t we like? The dim display, and short battery life

MSI Katana 15 HX B14W review: The ups

There’s a lot to love about the MSI Katana 15 HX B14W. It sports a subtle design, its color rendition is fantastic, and it boasts strong performance across gaming and productivity. Oh, and it doesn’t cost a lot either.

Subtle design, solid build

I’ll be honest: I’m not a huge fan of loud laptops laden with RGB lighting on their lids to tell the world that you are, in fact, a Gamer with a capital G. The MSI Katana 15 HX B14W keeps things low-key and subtle with its inconspicuous design. Branding’s limited to the MSI dragon on the lid, which is black and blends in with the laptop’s all-black design. Though the laptop is made entirely of plastic, it doesn’t feel cheap, tacky or too plasticky. The matte finish is lovely, and feels great to slide your fingers across (don’t look at me like that, you’ve done it, too).

The 15 HX B14W packs a 15.6-inch QHD non-touch screen, so the laptop measures 14.13 x 10.31 x 1 inches. It’s slightly bigger than the Alienware 16X Aurora ($2,499) and the HyperX Omen 15 ($1,099), also 15- and 16-inch laptops. While it isn’t as compact as, say, a 13-inch MacBook Air M5 ($1,099), the 15 HX B14W slides into most backpacks, and at 5.29lbs, I had no issues carrying it to and from work.

The 15 HX B14W’s design is as practical as it’s good-looking. There are plenty of ports for hooking up keyboards, mice, headsets, and other peripherals. All the ports are located along the left and right edges instead of ‘round the back, like on the Alienware 16X Aurora or the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI ($1,699). On the left, you’ll find two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, and a third is located on the right, along with USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 / DisplayPort, HDMI 2.1 and ethernet ports. There’s also a 3.5mm jack for headphones and external microphones.

Beautiful QHD display

There’s no point in spending money — regardless of the amount — on a laptop that doesn’t feature a stunning display. Thankfully, the MSI Katana 15 HX B14W does, and it’s a joy to look at, work on, and play your favorite games on. Its 15.6-inch QHD screen has a resolution of 2560 x 1440, and it has a refresh rate of 165Hz which, for casual gamers, should suffice.

I’ll discuss the 15 HX B14W’s gaming performance in detail shortly, though, and for now, I’d like to talk about the vivid screen. Whether I was gaming or watching videos on YouTube, I thoroughly enjoyed the color rendition. The 15 HX B14W does a great job of displaying deep, rich blues and reds, inky blacks, and textured pastels. I felt immersed in the games I played and the videos I watched on YouTube.

It’s important to note that the 15 HX B14W doesn’t come with an OLED screen, regardless of the configuration, and if an OLED display is a necessity for you, I’d recommend the HyperX Omen 15 or the Alienware 16 Area-51 ($2,529).

Even though it doesn’t feature an OLED panel, the 15 HX B14W goes above and beyond when it comes to color coverage and accuracy. In my lab testing, the 15 HX B14W covered 151.3% of the sRGB color space and 107.1% of the wider DCI P3 gamut. MSI’s offering trumps nearly all of its competitors, barring the HyperX Omen 15. At 151.3% sRGB coverage, colors don’t appear oversaturated, nor do they carry a neon effect.

Alongside wide color coverage, you’re also getting superb color accuracy. The 15 HX B14W achieved a Delta-E score of 0.07. Delta-E is basically a numerical representation of how much two colors differ, and the closer the score to zero, the better. The 15 HX B14W 0.07 score means that colors displayed on its screen are as accurate as they can be. It also upstages its competitors, as you can see above. The differences are fairly negligible, though.

Strong performance across the board

For a gaming laptop that costs under $1,500, the MSI Katana 15 HX B14W puts in a strong performance across the board. This depends on the configuration you settle for, of course, but my review unit didn’t let me down, regardless of what I did on the laptop. It came fitted with an Intel Core i7 14650HX CPU, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 graphics card, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD.

Running multiple applications, having over 20 tabs open in Microsoft Edge, and having Steam running in the background wasn’t an issue for the 15 HX B14W. I didn’t experience any unresponsiveness or lag, but it should be noted that its fans can get quite loud. Thankfully, I didn’t experience any overheating. The same can’t be said for the similarly priced Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI, which I was benchmarking at the same time as the 15 HX B14W. The Neo 16 AI’s fans, air ducts and keyboard got quite hot, in comparison.

After using the laptop for a while, I benchmarked the 15 HX B14W to see how it fared against its rivals. On Geekbench 7, which tests overall CPU performance, the 15 HX B14W pulled in a solid multi-core score of 16,584, outclassing the HyperX Omen 15 and the MacBook Neo ($699) — though the latter is underpowered and is more of a productivity-focused notebook. That’s still respectable for a budget gaming laptop. The Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI takes the crown here, with an impressive multi-core score of 23,100.

I then conducted our Handbrake video editing test, which transcodes a 4K video to 1080P, and the 15 HX B14W did so in three minutes and 24 seconds. That’s on par with the HyperX Omen 15 and the Alienware 16X Aurora. The 15 HX B14W also blows past both the MacBook Neo and the MacBook Air M5. Well played, MSI.

Last but not least, I ran the SSD BlackMagic Disk Speed to measure the 15 HX B14W’s write and read speeds. Again, the 15 HX B14W performed decently here, with 3,490 write and 3,902 read speeds (both measured in MBps). That’s solid SSD performance for a laptop that starts at $1,284 / £1,299. In everyday use, the 15 HX B14W didn’t give me much to complain about. The laptop booted up in seconds, as did applications, and transferring files from one folder to another was quick, too. This is an excellent everyday laptop for those on a budget.

Excellent for gaming

The MSI Katana 15 HX B14W is a powerful and competent gaming laptop, boasting a 165Hz refresh rate and the latest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series graphic cards. At its native resolution of 2560 x 1440 and thanks to DLSS 4.5, running the best Steam games without any issues is a walk in the park for the 15 HX B14W. Visuals are nothing short of stunning, and as I mentioned earlier, there’s no unresponsiveness or jittering.

I ran a few in-game benchmark tests to see how the 15 HX B14W fared, and it performed formidably. Counter-Strike 2 ran comfortably at 159fps, close to the laptop’s 165Hz refresh rate. This didn’t come as a surprise to me as Counter-Strike 2 isn’t the most demanding game — so how did the 15 HX B14W perform in more challenging titles?

Pretty well, actually! With the highest graphics settings enabled in Forza Horizon 5, the in-game benchmark reported an average framerate of 54fps. F1 25, on the other hand, ran at 30fps in Ultra High (lifelike) graphics mode. Both games are extremely system-hungry and intensive, but I didn’t experience any lag or issues when playing them.

All three framerates were recorded with the resolution set to 1440P, and you’re bound to get even better fps at 1080P, if it’s raw performance you’re after. The 15 HX B14W holds its own against the likes of the HyperX Omen 15. For a budget laptop, the 15 HX B14W really doesn’t let you down.

Reasonably priced

If you’re a casual gamer or even a student on a budget, the MSI Katana 15 HX B14W is one of the best gaming laptops you can buy today. Though not without its faults (more on that shortly), this is still a formidable notebook that delivers without breaking the bank. The 15 HX B14W starts at $1,284 at Best Buy U.S. / £1,299 at Currys U.K. This basic configuration features NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 graphics card, 16GB memory, and a 512GB SSD.

Unlike the Alienware 16X Aurora whose price skyrockets the more you add to it, the 15 HX B14W’s topline configuration doesn’t leave a hole in your pocket. Priced at $1,999 at Best Buy U.S. / £1,799 at Currys U.K., it packs an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 GPU, 32GB memory, and a 1TB SSD. It’s worth keeping an eye out for discounts, too, especially during Black Friday sales.

The 15 HX B14W is also cheaper than some of its primary competition, like the Alienware 16X Aurora ($2,499), the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI ($1,699), and the Alienware 16 Area-51 ($2,529).

MSI Katana 15 HX B14W review: The downs

There isn’t a lot wrong with the MSI Katana 15 HX B14W, but it’s worth noting that its screen isn’t the brightest, and battery life is short.

Not the brightest display

Though the MSI Katana 15 HX B14W boasts excellent color coverage and accuracy (as discussed earlier), its panel isn’t the brightest. It appears slightly washed out and dim. My lab tests confirmed the Katana 15 HX B14W’s poor performance, especially against its competitors.

In my lab testing, the Katana 15 HX B14W reached a peak brightness of just 262.2 nits which is pretty poor, bluntly put. All of its competitors outperform it — by a mile, at least. The similarly priced Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI has a peak brightness of 520.8 nits, while even the cheaper MacBook Neo is almost twice as bright.

Even with the brightness turned all the way up, I struggled to see the screen properly under bright office lights, and with sunlight coming through the windows right behind my chair in the office. I found my four-year-old MacBook Air M2 ($1,099) brighter than the 15 HW B14W — it reached a peak brightness of 495 nits in our lab tests!

Short-ish battery life

Gaming laptops, especially those that don’t cost a fortune, aren’t always known for their long battery life. Most of them need to be kept plugged in constantly if you’re playing intensive games, like Cyberpunk 2077 or Forza Horizon 6. The MSI Katana 15 HX B14W is no different. Its battery life is nothing to write home about.

In our in-house battery test where the laptop continuously browses the web and streams videos with brightness set to just 150 nits, the 15 HX B14W lasted five hours and nine minutes. Not great, given that all it was doing was pretty light work. When playing Cyberpunk 2077, I got a low battery notification after just over an hour.

While neither of those figures are good, it’s important to note that other gaming laptops struggle just as much. The Alienware 16X Aurora, for instance, is pricier than the 15 HX B14W and lasts just a minute over three hours. The HyperX Omen 15 enables you to surf the web for nearly nine hours on a single charge, but gaming quickly drops to 45 minutes, according to our real-world testing.

You can see other competitors’ battery performance in the table above. The 15 HX B14W, then, isn’t an anomaly, and its short runtime isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker.

MSI Katana 15 HX B14W review: Verdict

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed testing the MSI Katana 15 HX B14W for gaming and work. Its 165Hz refresh rate delivers smooth motion across video games, while the CPU and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series GPU ensure responsiveness and speed. You also get exceptional color coverage and accuracy, making the 15 HX B14W fit for watching movies and photo editing.

While the 15 HX B14W doesn’t feature the brightest screen or the longest battery life, they aren’t dealbreakers. You’re still getting a competent gaming laptop that doesn’t break the bank while delivering stunning visuals. For students going back to school, casual gamers on a budget, and everyone else in between, the 15 HX B14W easily warrants a recommendation.

This year has been a rollercoaster for the computing industry, with undeniably awesome new products marred by the ongoing RAM crisis. If you're looking for your next powerful laptop, blazing-fast Wi-Fi 7 router or first pair of AR glasses, the landscape has changed. That's why our team of experts has been busy testing out the best computing and home office gear from the last twelve months.

We've seen laptops deliver twin OLED screens without missing a beat of battery, peripherals that genuinely make your work life easier and the explosion of AR glasses that are currently redefining what computing even means.

Below you'll find our picks for the Tom's Guide Awards 2026, with each and every one worthy of a permanent position on your desk.

Best laptop

Dell XPS 13

The Dell XPS 13 is the best answer to the MacBook Neo. Don’t let its $699 starting price fool you; it’s far from a shoddy budget laptop. The sturdy CNC aluminum chassis makes it feel like a premium notebook, while the sharp 13.4-inch 2.5K touchscreen display outshines the dim panels on most budget Windows laptops. The XPS 13 is also the lightest XPS laptop ever, and it can last nearly 14 and a half hours — both of which make it an ideal travel partner.

Thanks to all of that, along with its impressive Wildcat Lake performance for everyday work, this year’s Dell XPS 13 is hard to top (unless you’re married to the Apple ecosystem). As such, the XPS 13 is an easy choice for the best laptop.

— Tony Polanco, Senior Writer

Best AI laptop

Asus ProArt GoPro Edition PX13

There were many definitions of what makes a good AI laptop, but one is becoming clear: something with the raw GPU power and memory to do the work entirely locally on device. And out of everything I tested this year, the Asus ProArt GoPro Edition PX13 stood tall.

The laptop fundamentals are there — a gorgeous utilitarian aesthetic, beautiful OLED display, strong ergonomics and battery life. But with an AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 chip in here and up to 128GB of RAM, you can run massive LLMs and agentic models with ease. Things like OpenAI’s GPT-OSS 120B, Google Gemma 3 27B Vision model or Stable Diffusion.

I’ve always said that the future of AI is local, not cloud-based. This machine proves it.

— Jason England, Managing Editor

Best keyboard

Epomaker Glyph

The Epomaker Glyph is easily the best mechanical keyboard I;ve tested this year, and it’s the deck for speed demons and hardcore typists. Its typewriter-like aesthetics, beautiful RGB lighting, dual screens that display useful keyboard and OS stats, a creamy sound profile, and a typing experience that’s nothing short of stunning — the Glyph does it all.

It makes a regular day at the office feel more fun, and its accompanying silicone and PVC palm rest ensures all-day comfort, too. I called the Glyph my “dream keyboard,” and after having tested nearly 100 keyboards, it’s my daily driver and one I haven’t stopped using since testing it.

— Nikita Achanta, Senior Reviews Writer

Best gaming laptop

Razer Blade 16 (2026)

The Razer Blade 16 is very expensive but worth every penny, delivering a superlative gaming laptop experience. Inside, it packs an Intel Core Ultra 9 CPU and up to an RTX 5090 for serious horsepower. It looks good doing it, thanks to its classy aluminum chassis, which is as comfortable in an office as it is in a gaming den. Games look as good as they perform, thanks to the gorgeous 16-inch 240Hz OLED panel.

At 4.7 pounds, you’ll definitely feel it in your bag when you’re traveling. This is offset by its exceptional battery life, which can last upwards of 13 hours for basic productivity tasks. However, it can run hot and loud when gaming or rendering videos—not to mention that it lasts less than two hours on a charge when gaming. Those quibbles aside, this is a brilliant gaming laptop, so long as you can afford it.

— Tony Polanco, Senior Writer

Best 2-in-1 laptop

Asus Zenbook Duo

I mean, this one was kind of expected! The Asus Zenbook Duo rewrote the rules on what to expect from a 2-in-1 a couple years ago, and now with this redesign and Intel Core Ultra Series 3 pumping through its veins, it’s the first real time that this dual-screen laptop form factor feels truly ready for prime time.

That monster chip keeps everything running oh so smoothly, while offering a beasty GPU to pull off some shockingly good gaming performance. And Asus has really paid attention to overhauling the design here with a sturdier hinge, a great-feeling keyboard and touchpad, and those dual 14-inch OLED touchscreens are a mesmerizing joy to use.

— Jason England, Managing Editor

Best mini PC

Minisforum G1 Pro

The days of dragging a big, old desktop computer over to your living room to play on your TV are over now that we have full-featured mini PCs built for gaming like the Minisforum G1 Pro. Although it’s smaller than a PS5 Pro, this mini PC still comes packed with powerful internals like an AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX processor and a discrete Nvidia RTX 5060 GPU.

Moving the G1 Pro from room to room is a breeze too thanks to the fact that it has a built-in, 350W power supply instead of a bulky power brick. Despite its small size, you can easily open the G1 Pro to upgrade its memory, storage and potentially even its graphics card down the line. Minisforum has been making excellent mini PCs for years but the G1 Pro is the closest we’ve come yet to a true console replacement, and it easily beats Valve’s Steam Machine when it comes to performance.

— Anthony Spadafora, Managing Editor

Best monitor

Alienware AW3926QW

Wait, why are we choosing a gaming monitor for “best monitor”? That’s because the Alienware AW3926QW is also ideal for everyday work. The curved 39-inch 21:9 tandem OLED panel is not only immersive but also bright and colorful for gaming and reading text documents. You can even switch between 165Hz at 5K for cinematic games and 330Hz at 1080p for competitive titles.

The expansive 21:9 aspect ratio lets you easily place two or three full-size windows side by side without stacking, boosting your productivity. Thanks to its relatively subdued design and dark color, it looks at home in both professional and casual environments. While the $1,099 asking price might be a tad steep and 39 inches won’t fit every setup, this is about as perfect as a monitor can get—so much so that I gave it a perfect 5 out of 5 score. The AW3926QW is definitely deserving of our best monitor award.

— Tony Polanco, Senior Writer

Best AR Glasses

Viture Beast

After an initially bumpy launch, Viture saved the Beast with solid firmware updates that turned an also-ran into the best AR glasses you can buy today. At $549, it’s a premium price, but you’re getting a pair of premium, well-built spectacles that outclass every other set. It starts with a sharp 1200p picture quality thanks to Sony Micro OLED lenses tuned with Viture’s color science.

These are vivid glasses with great fidelity, spatial anchoring, and a comfortable, adjustable design, meaning you can wear the Beast for longer sessions.

I like these glasses not just because of what they are, but because Viture took the time to make them better after a poor start. It’s hard to be patient, especially at these prices, but the Viture Beast was worth the wait.

— Scott Younker, News Writer

Best webcam

Insta360 Link 2 Pro

The Insta360 Link 2 Pro does everything you could possibly need, from being a helping hand with framing, making presenting a dream, to an impressive low-light performance, so looking good is never an issue.

It’s an outstanding 4K webcam that has superb autofocus and subject tracking to keep individuals and groups in frame. It uses a two-axis gimbal to follow you around the frame, zooming in so you’re always clear to the viewer. The gesture controls, desk view and whiteboard sharing features completely streamline presentations and make setting up for calls a breeze. It may be expensive and unnecessary for basic calls, but its smart features justify the cost.

— Ashley Thieme, Reviews Staff Writer

Best tablet

Lenovo Tab Plus Gen 2

The Lenovo Tab Plus Gen 2 wins Best Tablet because it does the impossible—delivering exceptional sound for a slate. That’s thanks to the giant JBL 9-unit speaker on its back, which not only gives the tablet a distinctive look but also pumps out rich, loud Dolby Atmos sound. Whether it’s movies, podcasts, or music, everything sounds incredible, a far cry from the thin, tinny mess you’d normally get from other Android tablets.

In addition to the exceptional sound, the Tab Plus Gen 2 features a 12.1-inch 2.5K 120Hz panel that is bright and sharp. The built-in 360-degree kickstand lets you orient the slate to better suit whatever you’re watching or reading, while the nearly 16-hour battery life ensures you can enjoy your content for as long as you want. While this isn’t a workhorse tablet due to its so-so performance, and it’s a bit cumbersome to hold because of that bulky speaker, it’s a steal of an entertainment-focused slate for $399.

— Tony Polanco, Senior Writer

Best router

Asus ROG Rapture GT-BE19000AI

Asus continues to push the limits of what’s possible with Wi-Fi 7 and its ROG Rapture GT-BE19000AI gaming router takes things a step further. In our real world testing, we reached speeds of over 2.5 Gbps at close range but even at 50 feet, we still saw gigabit speeds over Wi-Fi which is almost unheard of at that distance.

The ROG Rapture GT-BE19000AI comes packed with high-speed multi-gig ports but it’s the router’s built-in AI core and NPU that boost online game performance while securing data and blocking trackers. To top it all off, you get a clear window to see the device’s internals, customizable RGB lighting on top and eight repositionable antennas to guarantee a strong signal in any room.

— Anthony Spadafora, Managing Editor

Best mesh router

MSI Roami BE Pro

Still a relative newcomer in the world of home networking, MSI quickly went from releasing its first gaming router to making mesh Wi-Fi systems for whole home connectivity. The MSI Roamii BE Pro takes the design of its Roamii Be Lite mesh kit and gives it a full-featured Wi-Fi 7 upgrade for even faster speeds. In fact, in our real world testing, we saw speeds of up to 1.8 Gbps at close range.

The Roamii BE Pro features plenty of multi-gig Ethernet ports on the back of its triangular design and even a USB one for sharing data across your network. However, it’s the very affordable $300 price for a two-pack that really impressed us along with the inclusion of the 6 GHz band for full tri-band connectivity. The MSI Roamii BE Pro offers a quick and easy way to upgrade to Wi-Fi 7 with all the bells and whistles without putting a dent in your wallet.

—- Anthony Spadafora, Managing Editor

Best antivirus

Bitdefender

We’ve tested many antivirus suites, but Bitdefender comes out on top for several reasons. It offers extensive protection thanks to anti-theft and anti-scam features which are more important than ever in the age of sophisticated AI-powered scams. Bitdefender sports a clean interface that makes the numerous settings easy to understand, whether you’re on mobile or desktop.

The included VPN is fantastic, as is the comprehensive Identity Protection. What’s great about Bitdefender is that it doesn’t have a negative impact on system resources either, even when you’re playing intensive games like Cyberpunk 2077. If you prioritize peace of mind against evolving AI and malware threats, Bitdefender is simply exceptional.

— Nikita Achanta, Senior Reviews Writer

Best Silicon

Intel Arc G3 Extreme

All kinds of companies have been making impressive moves with new silicon in 2026, so to pick this, I asked one question: which chip made the biggest transformational impact? Through that lens, the answer is simple — Intel Arc G3 Extreme.

PC gaming handhelds have been going through this slow, iterative pace with AMD’s chips, and Team Blue just busted through the wall like the Kool-Aid man and brought that monster GPU from its Panther Lake silicon and all the XeSS optimizations that come with it like multi-frame generation.

The end result is a generational leapfrog moment for handheld gaming that this space has needed for the past few years. It’s highly performant, super power-efficient, and a joy to play on.

— Jason England, Managing Editor

Google is finally ready to let everyone get their hands on the new Googlebook laptops. Sporting a combination of Android and ChromeOS, these premium devices could be what we've always hoped the best Chromebooks would be.

The company says these devices are "a new category of laptops built with Gemini’s helpfulness at its core, designed to work seamlessly with the devices in your life and powered by premium hardware." Whether they can compete with the top MacBooks and premium Windows laptops remains to be seen, but I'm definitely excited to give one a shot, since it sounds like a streamlined laptop with some cool features.

And now that Google has announced that the laptops will be available for pre-order on September 21, I don't have to wait too long to get my hands on one.

Could it be my new daily laptop, replacing my MacBook Air? Maybe. Here are three reasons why I think it's possible and why I can't wait to add one of these to my daily workflow.

Google's Magic Pointer

For my money, the coolest feature of Googlebooks is the Magic Pointer. The mouse cursor has stayed pretty much the same over the years, which makes sense, since it does its job well.

But with all the AI features baked into Googlebooks, it's finally getting a useful tweak. When you give it a wiggle, the laptop will show you contextual information about what it's pointing at (a bit like Google Lens or Circle to Search for your laptop).

I don't know about you, but I feel like I'm constantly stumbling upon things I'd like to know more about online, and this feature sounds like a nice time-saver for looking up information. Plus, it's a very visually appealing cursor.

Android integration

This is a no-brainer for anyone who's ever used a Chromebook. Web apps are great, but in most cases, Android apps offer vastly superior features. And while ChromeOS emulates Android apps, it doesn't always work well. With Googlebooks, the apps are native.

In fact, in an interview with Chrome Unboxed, Google VP John Maletis said, “We now have an ability to run truly native Android applications, not emulated. So performance of these apps is incredible.” That sounds like a vast improvement over Chromebooks.

You'll also be able to cast apps from your Android phone to your Googlebook, which will fill in the gaps for any apps that aren't natively supported.

Custom widgets

What's so exciting about widgets? Just about every laptop in recent memory has had widget support for apps in one form or another.

Well, what makes these so cool is that you can create them on the fly using Gemini, so you're not limited to a bunch of predetermined functions. If you want something specific, you can describe the widget and make it exist.

Google shows an example of someone asking for a custom tracker for an upcoming trip, but there are tons of potential use cases, like live-tracking a package, controlling your music across multiple platforms and so on.

What's missing

While September 21 at 9 a.m. ET is right around the corner, and we know brands like Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP and Lenovo are on board; the big unknown is the final price of the new Googlebooks.

The anticipated price is between $700 and $1,000, positioning these as premium laptops. Stay tuned for our hands-on impressions to see if these Googlebooks live up to the hype.

More from Tom's Guide

• Google just revealed ‘Gemini Intelligence’
• Android Auto is about to change the way you drive
• I gave ChatGPT permission to disagree with me with this prompt

Whether you're picking up an iPhone, iPad or some other Apple device, you'll know that official repairs can get very expensive. Heck, a simple screen repair on the iPhone 18 Pro Max is going to cost $379, which is almost a third of the cost of the phone itself. AppleCare+ makes those fees a little more palatable, so long as you're willing to subscribe and pay a monthly fee.

The problem is that paying for AppleCare on multiple devices can get pretty expensive, especially if you're part of a whole family of Apple users. AppleCare One already offers the chance to cover up to three devices on a single plan, and now AppleCare One Family offers that same coverage for up to six people — for $50 a month.

What devices you can add

There are surprisingly few limits on the number of devices you can add to this plan. All devices that are covered by AppleCare will be automatically added to the Family plan when you sign up, as will any devices purchased within the previous 60 days.

However, devices that are over four years old, or AirPods and Beats that are over a year old, will need to undergo a device check to ensure they're in good condition. This can be done remotely, or by visiting your nearest Apple Store. Apple has also made it clear that you can't add more than six Vision Pro headsets to the plan — not that anyone would.

The usual AppleCare+ service fees still apply. Battery servicing is totally free under the plan, while repairs to the screen and back glass are $29. Other accidental damage is $99, while theft or loss claims come with a $149 deductible. You're also limited to six loss and theft claims over the course of a year.

Devices will remain covered so long as you keep your AppleCare One Family Plan active, and provided they connect to an Apple server at least once every 12 months. However, Apple does note that devices can be removed from the plan if it runs out of the necessary parts to service and make repairs.

Coverage is also dependent on the devices being signed into a family member's Apple Account. If they sign out, and a non-family member later signs in, coverage will end.

How to set up AppleCare One Family

AppleCare One Family is currently only available in the United States, and the setup process can be initiated by any adult member of a Family Sharing Group. Payments are automatically made by the family organizer, regardless of which adult actually signs up. However, the person who initiated the subscription can choose their own payment method if they prefer. Other family members will be restricted from signing up for a different AppleCare plan unless they leave the family group.

If you're part of a family or friendship group that's big on using Apple products, signing up for an AppleCare One Family plan feels like a no-brainer. A simple AppleCare One plan costs $20 a month, and coverage for up to three devices is included in the cost plus $6 a month for each additional product.

The Family plan with a full six people means that you're paying $8.33 per person, and without any major device limitations. All you have to do is make sure the participants actually pay you their dues, which should be a lot easier considering sharing money is now as easy as bumping phones together.

More from Tom's Guide

• Your phone may run iOS 27, but only these devices support the new Siri AI
• Why your iPhone says 'Optimizing Search and Siri' in iOS 27 — and how to speed it up
• I’ve used macOS Golden Gate for 3 months — and here’s what I think

macOS Golden Gate is here! Though not a complete overhaul like macOS Sequoia, it brings a slew of new and enhanced AI features and smoother overall performance that make the best MacBooks feel more personal and streamlined.

I’ve been using the Golden Gate beta since it launched in June, and the latest build is what you’ll find in the final version of macOS Golden Gate. So far, I’ve found it a perfectly reasonable OS update that isn’t a radical departure from last year’s. That said, the new, smarter Siri AI can be handy, and Liquid Glass is less obtrusive now.

Here’s my full review of macOS Golden Gate.

macOS Golden Gate review: Supported devices

The Intel era is over, as macOS Golden Gate doesn’t run on those older machines. Here is a complete list of Macs that support Golden Gate.

• MacBook Neo (2026)
• MacBook Air with Apple silicon (2020 and later)
• MacBook Pro with Apple silicon (2020 and later)
• iMac with Apple silicon (2021 and later)
• Mac mini with Apple silicon (2020 and later)
• Mac Studio with Apple silicon (2022 and later)
• Mac Pro with Apple silicon (2023 and later)

macOS Golden Gate review: New features

Hey, Siri!

A dedicated Siri AI app for macOS Golden Gate now functions like chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini. This app is also available on iPadOS 27 and iOS 27, and is arguably the biggest new feature for the Apple devices that support it.

You can access the Siri AI app either by clicking it in the Dock or in the Menu bar. You can also open it from Spotlight. This opens a dedicated chat window where you can ask Siri AI questions or talk to it about whatever’s on your mind. Again, it works like the chatbots you’re already familiar with.

And since Siri AI is now baked into the operating system, it can do more than just chat. For example, if you’re looking at a schedule, you’ll see an “add to calendar” button appear. I’ve even had this happen when I suggest a date/time to meet with friends. When you right-click on folders, files, or apps, you’ll often see an “Ask Siri” option at the very top, where you can begin asking questions about whatever you’re highlighting.

You can even create Shortcuts by typing or speaking what you want instead of building complications manually. While I wouldn’t call this vibe coding, it can feel that way since you’re using natural language.

For those in the Apple ecosystem, Siri AI can be more useful than other chatbots because it’s integrated into the system. However, third-party integrations are still a work in progress, so Siri AI’s usability for you might be limited if you use Google apps like Gmail, since Siri AI doesn’t work with them (yet).

If you’re like me and generally don’t use AI, then the updated Siri won’t make a huge difference with your macOS experience. In fact, you might forget it’s even there! But if you use AI, you can certainly get more done with the new Siri.

Liquid Glass slider

If you’re not a fan of the Liquid Glass UI, you’ll be happy to know there’s now a slider to adjust its opacity. It lets you dial the effect up or down, and I’m surprised it took this long to implement it this way.

Beyond the slider, you’ll notice more complex background visuals appear more diffused, which improves text readability (a big issue for some). The edges of icons are also more pronounced, so they stand out more from the background. All app windows now have a uniform corner radius to help them pop out.

I've never had a problem with Liquid Glass because I think it’s an interesting visual effect. That said, I’m glad that folks can now fine-tune it to their liking. The slider is especially neat because it’s easy to use and clearly shows how much of a difference there is when you go from one extreme to the other.

Spatial Reframing

Spatial Reframing isn’t exclusive to macOS Golden Gate, but since the Reframe tool stole the show at WWDC, it’s a feature worth spotlighting if you take a lot of photos.

As its name suggests, Reframe lets you reframe existing photos and adjust the perspective as you like. This can be especially handy if you need to take photos in a hurry, since you can come back later to fix them.

After you select Reframe in the new Tools option in Photos’ editing mode, Apple Intelligence scans the photo you’ve selected. Then you can swipe your finger across the touchpad to change the perspective. Sliders on the side also give you more precise control over the angle, orientation, or size. When you’re done, the AI shifts things around to fill in any blanks.

This isn’t a feature I use often since I like photos in their original form, even if they’re not perfect. That said, I can’t knock the results, as Reframe does an excellent job of living up to its name. And to be fair, the changes made don’t radically alter the image — you just get a better version of what you’ve already snapped.

macOS 27 Golden Gate review: Verdict

Apple Intelligence wasn’t all it was hyped to be after it was first announced, but it’s now living up to its potential on Macs and the other Apple devices it can run on. If you’re a big AI user already, then macOS Golden Gate could be a huge game-changer for you. Other features such as the more customizable Liquid Glass UI and Spatial Reframing might not be monumental, but they’re nice additions regardless.

Even if macOS Golden Gate feels like a holding-pattern update for Macs, it’s still worthwhile and thankfully doesn’t ruin the great experience we had with Tahoe. If you own a Mac that supports the OS, you should update as soon as you can.

It's mid-September, which means Apple is now releasing its 2026 operating systems, including the full version of macOS Golden Gate.

If you're interested in Apple Intelligence and the new Siri AI, you should try Golden Gate. There aren't many new features, but it improves Liquid Glass readability, offers easier customization, and delivers smoother performance for a better overall experience on the best MacBooks.

The AI features, marking the end of Apple's Intel era, are powered by Google Gemini and designed to work within Apple's ecosystem.

To make the update process as painless as possible, I've put together this quick, easy guide on how to download macOS Tahoe, with photos to walk you through it.

Supported Macs

As with most macOS releases, Golden Gate is a free upgrade for all supported Macs. Not every device that ran macOS Tahoe can run Golden Gate.

Here's the full list of Macs that can install and run macOS Golden Gate:

• MacBook Neo (2026)
• MacBook Air with Apple silicon (2020 and later)
• MacBook Pro with Apple silicon (2020 and later)
• iMac with Apple silicon (2021 and later)
• Mac mini with Apple silicon (2020 and later)
• Mac Studio with Apple silicon (2022 and later)
• Mac Pro with Apple silicon (2023 and later)

Important before you update: back up your Mac! Apple has the built-in Time Machine feature, or you could use a reputable third-party service like Backblaze — our guide to the best cloud storage solutions offers even more recommendations for you.

How to download macOS Golden Gate

Apple makes downloading its macOS updates fairly straightforward.

That’s all that’s required to download macOS Golden Gate.

Your Mac will restart once the download finishes. After that, you can start trying out all the new features. Depending on your connection speed, the download might take a few minutes, so be patient.

More from Tom's Guide

• 7 Apple products expected to be announced in October — touchscreen MacBook Ultra, HomePad and more
• iOS 27: 7 features you need to try first after updating
• iPhone Duo hands-on: Apple nailed it — and just put everyone else on notice

Apple's major "Surprise and Shine" event is behind us and the iPhone Duo, Apple's first foldable, is finally official. But there were some omissions based on the rumors, including a lack of smart home devices.

Those devices could still be on the way. Apple typically announces new MacBooks in October, and we could see some other products then as well. Here are the seven new Apple products that we could see next month.

Touchscreen MacBook Ultra with OLED

Apple has already released a surprising number of Mac laptops and desktops this year. We had the MacBook Neo, M5 MacBook Air, and M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros way back in the spring, plus late refreshes of the Mac mini and Mac Studio.

Next month we're expecting an M6 version of the iMac, which also might get some new colorways, and an M6 MacBook Pro.

But the headliner should be a new MacBook Pro (or Ultra). The big change here should be a new OLED touchscreen display, which would make it the first OLED MacBook.

OLED panels are thinner, so the Ultra should be both slimmer and lighter in both 14- and 16-inch versions. It could be powered by the as-yet-unannounced M6 Pro and M6 Max chipsets. This does mean that we might not see the Ultra until early 2027, as Apple has pushed announcing those chips into the first half of the year.

Unfortunately, all these new features and higher-tier silicon mean that the Ultra could have a starting price around $2,499 for the 14-inch model, up from $2,199 for the current M5 Pro models.

iPad mini with OLED

The iPad Pro has had an OLED display since 2024, but we could finally see an iPad mini with OLED this October. Coincidentally, the mini hasn't received an update since October 2024, when the iPad mini 7 was released.

It will likely get a faster chip, probably the A19, if not the new A20, so it can run Apple Intelligence, especially the new Siri AI. It's not clear from rumors if any other design changes will be made. However, it might be thinner and lighter since the OLED panel is thinner.

We should also see an updated entry-level iPad. As far as we're aware the only update here would be new chips.

Smart Home Devices

We warned before the iPhone event that rumors about Apple's smart home options need to be taken with a grain of salt. For years, leaks and rumor mongers have suggested that Apple is planning to introduce a suite of smart home devices, including a revamped HomePod and an AI-powered Apple TV 4K set-top box.

Rumors suggested that Apple would announce these devices during the iPhone event, which obviously did not come to fruition.

Apple seems to have finally figured out Siri AI with iOS 27. If it releases and works as pitched, we could finally start seeing Apple Home.

HomePod Home hub

Previously, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, long a reporter of the rumored HomePod updates, believed that a new HomePod mini could launch with the iPhones alongside the rumored HomePod Home hub.

However, right before the iPhone event, Gurman cheekily tweeted, "If you don't see the Apple TV, HomePod mini, home display and touch MacBook today, don't worry. It's only September."

Several different iterations of this device have been rumored, including one with a $1,000 robot arm. The most common version involves a wall-mounted touchpad or a HomePod speaker with a touch display about the size of an iPad mini.

This device would have a FaceTime camera for video calls and presence sensors to initiate smart home routines.

HomePod mini 2

A new HomePod mini might also debut, but it might not be as big of an upgrade as the Hub. Most rumors suggest that it will feature a new chip and audio improvements. It will probably get new colors.

The HomePod mini 2 has been on our rumor radar since at least 2023. The current version debuted in 2020, and like the next device, is long overdue for an update.

Apple TV 4K 2026

Like the HomePod series, Apple hasn't released a new version of the Apple TV 4K since 2022. We're long overdue for an upgrade — even if it's only a more powerful chip for stronger performance.

Previously, it was suggested that a new Apple TV could feature the A17 Pro chip, but it's more likely it'll get the new A20 or, to save some money, last year's A19. The device should also get the rumored N2 chip for better Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity.

Outside of chips, the big upgrade would be Siri AI, which could let you connect the Apple TV as a hub for smart devices. One rumor suggested that Apple might release a set-top box with a camera, which would allow for FaceTime calls and gesture-based controls.

However, a rumored refresh of the Apple TV has been making the rounds for multiple years now. I won't believe this one until it actually happens.

More from Tom's Guide

• I interviewed Apple CEO John Ternus on the making of the iPhone Duo — here's what made him say 'yes, that's it'
• People are freaking out about the new 'always-listening' Apple Watches — here's what Apple CEO John Ternus told us
• Apple Event recap — Hands-on with the iPhone Duo and all the big announcements

College studies have changed a lot since I was there, but in some ways, it’s remained the same. Because sure, there are now local AI tools to help with your studies. However, whether it was in the early 2010s for me or 2026 for you: RAM is always the key bottleneck.

And that’s been put to the test in the current pricing crisis we find ourselves in, which gave birth to the MacBook Neo, and subsequently all the budget Windows laptop competitors. Out of all of them that’s launched, the £799 Asus Zenbook 14 is one I’m particularly excited about throwing in my rucksack!

That’s because this is a fantastic frame — definitely feels cheaper than its more expensive brother the Zenbook A14, but quite the looker and solid ergonomics. Plus the OLED screen is a real difference maker from the competition, and that Snapdragon X chip ensures zippy single-core speeds for opening apps fast.

However, it’s worth noting that the model I was given comes packed with 16GB RAM (priced at £1,199 at the time of writing). For running Windows 11 and your broader study load — a bunch of Chrome tabs, a Spotify playlist and AnythingLLM, this is enough. However, I wanted to go deeper, so I went into the bios and restricted RAM usage of Windows to 8GB.

Put simply, it’s ok-ish, but clearly only for the basics at this level. Windows 11 eats memory in a different way to macOS, and you can really feel it in some sluggish app opens and especially when you’re trying to do the classic 20+ Chrome tab study session, or the time taken to get a response from a local chatbot about your ingested coursework.

None of this is to say this is a bad laptop. Asus has taken one of my favorite Zenbooks and made it cheap — this is a great system with solid entry-level performance that outstrips the Neo, and good battery life to boot. But there’s definitely a mistaken identity in what it is and who it’s for.

That £799 model is strong for a very specific kind of studier: the ones who are focused solely on essay writing with a little bit of web research.

Until Microsoft starts optimizing memory usage (which is coming), it’s going to be tricky. No, I’d point you more towards that 16GB option as the sound investment here for not just your studies but your extracurriculars too like creating projects on CapCut or some super casual gaming on the side.

Oh and P.S. This will be launching in the U.S. We just don't know when and for how much!

Asus Zenbook 14: Cheat Sheet

• What is it? This is a budget Windows laptop — made to compete with the MacBook Neo.
• Who is it for? This is an entry-level system for the kinds of students with casual workloads.
• What does it cost? Pricing starts at £799, but the option I snagged is £1,199. No pricing has been announced for U.S., but expect it to be similar (starting from $799).
• What do we like? I’m a big fan of the design — looks premium and feels durable with solid ergonomics. And with enough memory, Snapdragon X is a good performer that slow-sips battery life.
• What don’t we like? Windows 11 is a RAM hog, which makes an 8GB capacity tricky to recommend to students.

Asus Zenbook 14: Specs

Asus Zenbook 14: The ups

So I spoke to a few students at my local university, to figure out (and replicate a various course load demands). In case you’re curious, these were history, science and media studies. The Zenbook A14 kept up with a lot more of it than I expected.

More premium than the price

For all the beef I had with the Zenbook A14 and A16 earlier this year, one thing I loved about them is the lightweight, durable design and great-feeling ergonomics. And while this Zenbook 14 doesn’t quite have that same premium-feeling ceraluminum surface, it takes enough of the A-series’ essence to be a well-built system.

It’s lightweight, feels durable enough to stash in a backpack, and comes with a nice-feeling keyboard for rapid note taking or essay writing, alongside a sizable touchpad with good click ability. Oh, and shout-out to the color finishes — I love this blue option.

Ports-wise, you’ve got everything you’d need for your standard array of accessories, and while the screen side of the clamshell can flex a bit (like the A-series laptops), the keyboard deck has very minimal flex when pushing down on it. All-in-all, this felt like a system that could keep up with the demands of college.

Good for the eyes and ears

I’ve tested a fair few of these MacBook Neo alternatives, and one place they all fall down is that college dorm job of being the central focal point of both working by day and chilling out by night. That means a good screen and speakers are a must — something that’s nice on the eyes and can fill a room with sound.

The speakers on the Zenbook 14 are surprisingly loud with zero noticeable distortion (thanks to Snapdragon Sound), which meant I could keep a room of my friends entertained with my Spotify playlist (which descended quickly into finding Vine compilations to reminisce about being young).

And let’s not forget about that 1080p OLED, which has a decent level of sharpness, a good level of brightness and mightily impressive color reproduction. Great for your work, and great for binge watching by night.

Decent performance and strong battery life

All this talk of Intel Wildcat Lake has almost made people forget about Snapdragon X — a stellar budget-end chipset that is quite the formidable foe to the A18 Pro in the Neo with better multicore processing to crunch tasks and zippy speeds across media encoding and app opens.

What this means in practice is fast program opens, decently quick hot-swapping between different apps and browser tabs, and even a little bit of light photo editing in Photoshop or CapCut edits.

It’s also strong in AI processing too when you go for the 16GB model. There’s a lot of tools out there for keeping on top of your study materials in a convenient way that enhances your learning, and with the headroom of RAM, these run zippy enough.

Finally, the battery life demands of being on campus means you can spend a lot of time away from any outlets. All-day usage is necessary, and in my battery life testing, it’s clear this will keep up with your demands.

Asus Zenbook 14: The downs

But as I got into the more intensive coursework demos here with that reduced memory profile to the 8GB baseline, I realized that the macOS and the MacBook Neo has a serious leg-up on the competition. And there’s one reason why.

Windows 11 is the problem

Yes, I said it. Microsoft is improving Windows 11 over time, but the key thing of memory utilization is still an issue that can cripple performance of that Snapdragon X chip when you try to do too much.

On 8GB, for example, I found myself being able to play a Spotify playlist, have a Google Docs tab for an essay and a few other tabs with research notes. The moment I hit the seventh tab, I started to feel a little stuttering. And then the moment I opened up AnythingLLM, it all froze up working through the tasks one by one.

It’s a sticky situation, which makes the 16GB the only real option if you’re wanting to stretch your legs a little more than the bare essentials.

Pricing can get out of hand fast

And if you do, things can spiral fast pricing-wise because of the memory crisis going on right now. That jump to 16GB with additional SSD storage is a £400 uplift, and going further causes more problems.

This is entering M5 MacBook Air territory, which becomes an issue. When you go up against the ultrabook king, you best not miss, and those pros from before come with some flaws that prove fatal.

For example, the MacBook Air (and Neo for that matter) are aluminum builds, whereas the Zenbook feels a little cheaper in the hand. The MacBook Air benefits from seriously fast Apple Silicon, but Snapdragon X can’t keep up.

The math stops mathing at a particular point.

Asus Zenbook 14: Verdict

So I find the Zenbook 14 is ideal for a very particular kind of student in very particular courses.

If you’re working in essay-centric/coursework-heavy fields with some light local AI use like transcribing lectures and processing notes, you’ll find enough here for what you need to do.

But if you’re a serious studier with multiple tabs and various apps, this is going to be an issue. I can’t deny this is a great laptop for most learners and beyond, and a breath of value fresh air (provided you only need the baseline model).

And if you fit in that category, this is a seriously good looker and good worker that comes in gorgeous color finishes.

macOS Tahoe was one of the worst updates I’ve used in years. Not since Windows Vista have I seen so many design and usability mistakes—unusual for Apple, of all companies. Long known for its reputation in design and thinking about the user first, 2025’s Tahoe update for the best Macs felt like a huge misstep. But macOS Golden Gate feels like a redemption for Tahoe’s mistakes.

I’ve owned a Mac since 2005, when the computers transitioned from PowerPC processors to Intel processors. For several years, I’ve owned an M1 Pro MacBook Pro, and it’s one of the best laptops I’ve ever owned. From its keyboard to the display, everything felt like a home run after years of strange hardware design choices, like the butterfly keyboard.

But as we get close to the iPhone 18 Pro and the rumored iPhone Ultra/Duo foldable, I’m also looking forward to finally updating my Mac to macOS Golden Gate, the newest update that fixes almost all of Tahoe’s mistakes. However, its other design changes have me wondering what comes next for the Mac. So, with rumors of a touchscreen Mac allegedly called the MacBook Ultra, here’s why I’m very tempted to upgrade when Golden Gate officially launches.

Golden Gate redeems macOS

After trying the macOS Golden Gate public beta over the summer, I was struck by how good Liquid Glass finally looks on my Mac. Tahoe showcased the new design in all the wrong ways—from bizarre layers that separated columns within windows to mismatched window sizes. In Golden Gate, that’s nonexistent, with everything looking sharp and far easier on the eye when you’re working with multiple apps on one screen.

It’s restored my faith that Apple has clearly realized what a mistake Tahoe was in its design, and whilst I’ll be upgrading my current MacBook Pro to Golden Gate once it’s out, it also feels like it’s laying the foundation for the MacBook Ultra.

For anyone unaware, this rumored Mac seems to be the opposite of the MacBook Neo. Instead of being an entry point, the MacBook Ultra seems aimed at those who want the ultimate portable Mac at a high price. Alleged features include an OLED touchscreen, a first for the Mac to accept touch input, as well as coming with M6 Pro or Ultra chips that give even better performance and battery life.

Apple silicon has been a huge leap for the Mac. It’s hard to think back to a time when an Intel MacBook Pro could barely manage 4 hours under heavy load, or struggle with games like BioShock Infinite that were then 3 years old since their PC release. Now, even in 2026, my M1 Pro MacBook Pro can still play games like Resident Evil 4 Remake and others with ease, and I rarely hear the fan whirl. So thinking about what a 5-year leap could do for my Mac gaming, alongside everything else, has me excited.

These rumored features, combined with macOS Golden Gate, make me consider the Ultra as my next Mac, since it replaces two devices in one go.

The Ultra could also be an iPad replacement

I’ve been a fan of the iPad since its 2010 debut, and whilst recent software updates, especially iPadOS 26, have made Apple’s tablet far more productive, its locked ecosystem has always made me go back to the Mac.

But there are moments when a touch-screen can work well, such as editing videos for TikTok via LumaFusion, or reading comics from my childhood. It’s why I can see these two examples, and many others, working well on a touchscreen Mac, without macOS leaving the mouse behind.

Golden Gate clearly hints towards a touchscreen Mac—from being able to slide down to refresh in Safari and Mail, to every button designed as if they’re meant to be touched by a finger. Even Siri AI lets users send an email, record a voice note, take a selfie, and more with their voice or via the Siri app. The newest macOS update looks set to be ready for the MacBook Ultra.

Outlook

When an ultra-high-end Mac seems like it will improve on what my M1 MacBook Pro offers, while replacing the use cases I’ve had for my iPad Pro for several years, it feels like the natural next step for me and how I work. Even for Mac gaming, with ways to play Windows games via Crossover or decompilations like Donkey Kong 64 or GoldenEye, the extra power thanks to the M6 architecture will be a huge step up from what I’ve been using since 2021.

So while many will be excited to own an iPhone Ultra or an iPhone 18 Pro model, I’m more excited to use the MacBook Ultra. From the much-improved macOS Golden Gate update to the OLED touchscreen, it feels like the MacBook Ultra could be one of the best Macs to use for at least another five years. If that happens, then I'll have to say goodbye to my M1 MacBook Pro.

More from Tom's Guide

• Apple MacBook Ultra may run on some of the same chips as MacBook Pro
• Apple just announced the new Mac Studio with M5 Ultra
• Best laptops of IFA 2026: Wild colors, ultrathin designs and rollable displays

For eight grueling months leading up to the end of last year, engineers from Microsoft and Nvidia worked side by side from the silicon bootstrap level upward. And the goal? Making Windows 11 play nice with an unprecedented architectural shift: an Arm-based CPU sharing massive unified memory with a desktop-class Nvidia RTX GPU.

And then, the first RTX Spark machine finally booted. The red LED lit up, and as Microsoft's Principal Product Manager, Peter Dawoud, recalls it: “half of Santa Clara was jumping.” This was a huge undertaking, but now the real work begins: fine-tuning everything.

RTX Spark isn’t just another laptop sticker; it pushed Microsoft to fundamentally overhaul five foundational subsystems inside Windows 11 to bridge the gap between low-power Arm efficiency, top-tier AAA gaming, and local agentic AI.

I spoke to Dawoud about the software underpinning Team Green’s hardware because, as he said, “Windows kind of had to get all these subsystems right all at the same time, so that you can enjoy an RTX Spark device and take the most advantage out of it.”

A Prism Emulator overhaul

Take it from someone who has watched the many attempts to run Windows on ARM chips (and covered the Snapdragon X Elite launch): emulation has always had an Achilles’ heel when it comes to gaming: micro-stuttering and frame pacing.

“When you're playing video games, it's not just about your average FPS. 1% lows, stuttering is really critical, and your CPU actually plays a very big role in stuttering control,” Dawoud explained.

While average frame rates look acceptable, CPU timing can get erratic when you try to emulate a game and play it at the same time, which can make fast-paced gaming feel jerky. When somebody buys an Nvidia laptop in October, the chances are likely that they will want to play games on it — it’s an RTX GPU after all.

So work needed to be done, and Microsoft has overhauled the Prism emulation layer for RTX Spark’s pipelines. By shoring up how tasks are assigned to each of the CPU’s threads, frame rates are much more stable in my testing, and the improvement over past versions is night and day.

UI polish & the agentic future

If you’re going to make what I believe could be a MacBook Pro killer, you need to make sure the UI is ready for power users as well as casual users. And the mission in Dawoud’s mind to do this is clear: “make the OS kind of get out of the way, for you to do the work that you want to do.”

Microsoft is cleaning up Windows 11 for this kind of user: native taskbar customization, customizable notifications, killing unwanted widgets, and remembering displays you connect to—to preserve specific screen layout settings.

Then we turn our attention to the “reinvent the PC” part of the RTX Spark, which comes down to local agentic AI. I saw a demo of Hermes Agent connected to a user’s Google account that acted like his personal chief of staff: setting an agenda for the day, drafting email responses in Gmail, and updating a project tracker in Google Docs. And it all happened on-device without a single bit of cloud AI.

But without guardrails, this could get scary. “Having an agent that you can't control is probably the thing you don't want,” he stated. So the answer is Microsoft Extension Containers (MXC) — isolated sandboxes for your local models to act across your desktop securely without sensitive system control leaking.

Killing OEM bloatware

It’s always been a dream of mine to have a laptop that doesn’t come packed with OEM-specific power management software or an antivirus scanner. While this may not fix the latter, it goes a long way toward killing the need for the former.

Dawoud emphasized the need to eliminate the clunky tug-of-war between Windows and external software. Currently, there are several ways to tweak power management across different apps, but RTX Spark uses the open-source Modern Power and Thermal Framework—letting Windows natively control all thermal and power tuning.

“Users, when they want to set the best performance, they can do it in Windows, and they'll know that the OEM's tuning for best performance has now been set,” he said. “They don't need to go to another app and be like, 'Okay, is that app saying good performance and Windows is saying good performance at the same time?'”

This also helps these laptops maintain the same performance on and off the charger.

The UMA secret

On paper, a Unified Memory Architecture (UMA) sounds great — a big pool for both the CPU and monstrous GPU to dip into at leisure, and take however much (or little) they need. But in reality, CPUs and GPUs digest memory completely differently.

CPUs crave small memory chunks (4-kilobyte pages) to distribute tasks across their many cores. They take a pizza, pull all the ingredients off of it, and share them around. GPUs, however, take that entire pizza, fold it in half, and eat it taco-style. They need massive blocks (up to 2-megabyte pages) to plow through parallel 3D rendering or AI tasks.

“RTX Spark has a very powerful GPU, so making sure that we give it as much memory as possible when it needs it, but also give it the right page sizes, is really critical,” Dawoud commented.

So Microsoft's fix is to add variable page sizing directly to the memory manager. This is a bit complex, but it means Windows can dynamically read the pages of data flowing through and send them to the right places—the 2MB to the GPU and 4KB to the CPU simultaneously.

“Optimizing that is the way you can weaponize the entire stack to get the most performance out of it,” He emphasized.

Taming Nvidia’s custom CPU cores

Unlike Qualcomm’s standardized Snapdragon X chips, Nvidia’s 18- and 20-core Grace CPUs use a proprietary cluster arrangement of performance and efficiency cores to maximize speed while delivering all-day battery life.

Dawoud explained that Nvidia's core configuration is entirely unique, and “previous Arm cores that have run on Windows are not like that.”

Now, historically, supporting an exotic CPU layout required rewriting the entire kernel underpinning Windows — a risky move for sure. But Windows 11 has a new profiling stack that can tune itself dynamically on the fly, meaning the scheduler that throws tasks everywhere can adapt to Nvidia’s unique chip here without breaking legacy compatibility.

The PC has finally grown up

The 14-year partnership between Microsoft and Nvidia finally feels like it is paying off. Dawoud pointed out that this wasn't a sudden alliance — the journey started over a decade ago with the Tegra-powered Surface RT.

But this specific launch represents a fundamental shift in how the two giants collaborate. By letting Microsoft engineers rebuild the OS from the silicon bootstrap level upward, RTX Spark gave Windows the foundation it needed to finally make Arm-based PC gaming a reality.

Microsoft and Nvidia haven’t just bolted a GPU onto an Arm processor; they’ve rewritten the rulebook beneath the surface. This is a huge moment for both companies, and if Windows on Arm succeeds where previous attempts faltered, it will all be traced back to that one moment Microsoft spent eight agonizing months building the foundation to make it feel effortless.

More from Tom's Guide

• I held the Asus ProArt P14 next to my MacBook Pro 14 — and Apple should be genuinely terrified of Nvidia’s RTX Spark
• I tested Acer's wild Project DualPlay Mini — and it's a gaming handheld and laptop in one gadget
• I wanted to hate Nvidia’s DLSS 5 ‘AI filter’ — but the real DLSS 5 is photorealistic black magic

So while NBA 2K27 is officially the first game to launch with Nvidia’s newly launched DLSS 5, you’ve probably already seen it pop up in hundreds of more games than that. And I’ll say it again just like I said it before — in photorealistic games, it’s fantastic. But If you venture out of that into anything more stylized, it’s going to look weird.

That’s why it makes the world of sense in 2K27, but during my hands-on testing with my Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (armed with an RTX 5070 Ti), I noticed something bizarre. The moment I entered a menu or triggered a replay, it suddenly felt like it was trudging through molasses.

I dug into the raw telemetry data to figure out what was going on, and what I found completely changed my understanding of Nvidia’s “3D-guided neural rendering.” That intensive new graphics pipeline of DLSS 5 may indeed be a graphical revolution — but on my humble laptop (and lower end desktops), I get the sense Frame Generation is a requirement to make it playable.

The laptop I’m playing on

I’m seeing a lot of people test it on massive desktop rigs. I’ll of course get round to doing this when I’m not on my honeymoon (my wife will kill me if I started benchmarking DLSS 5 in Cancun), but first I wanted to show you some numbers on something that isn’t really being covered here — my Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 gaming laptop.

Nvidia’s been talking about how the model running this mode of neural rendering has been made super efficient over the past few months. In fact, when it first debuted, it ran on a separate RTX 5090 desktop GPU; whereas now, it’s able to run on a single card with the game.

So let’s give it a go in a notebook with a lower power level running through those graphics.

By the numbers

To figure out why the game was suddenly stuttering, I ran the telemetry on three different game states with DLSS 5 turned on and off. And as you can see, while the gameplay numbers are very close matching, elsewhere, the difference is pretty significant.

In fact, this kind of lines up with PC Gamer’s report of a 50-60% drop in performance. So what’s going on here? Let’s talk about it.

The heavy cost of the transformer

So why does turning off the new tech triple frame rate in menus and replays? Because DLSS 5 is not just an upscale filter. It is a highly complex transformer model that interacts with the on-screen geometry and injects neural rendering.

Speaking to Nvidia, it’s clear that this AI pipeline is a heavy one, and the answer to why you don’t see that same impact in gameplay is a simple one: Frame Generation.

During live gameplay, I engaged the 6x Frame Generation multiplier to take that slower neurally rendered base and fill the gaps. However, developers typically disable frame gen during static menus, UI-heavy pause screens or camera-cut replays.

You can see how much this first iteration of DLSS 5 is sweating the system by looking at a couple of factors in the gameplay. Yes, the framerate is barely touched, but the 1% Lows takes a dip and the latency is upped quite drastically, as well as the GPU utilization spiking.

In a controller-centric game like NBA 2K27, that’s not necessarily a noticeable hit, but I can imagine that when this in its current form is moved to games that require faster inputs with a keyboard and mouse, it could become more apparent.

Take away the prop of frame generation in menus, and you see the DLSS 5 penalty more realistically on an RTX 5070 Ti laptop GPU.

But it looks incredible

Like I said in my first impressions, when faced with photorealistic graphics, DLSS 5 is undeniably impressive. There is one very specific takeaway when I looked at these “before and after” pairs of screen captures: the core game look is preserved impressively.

DLSS 5 does a flawless job of preserving the game’s visual integrity. The shots of Jalen Brunson and Victor Wembanyama show off the micro-details on the skin and the way the sweat catches the harsh stadium lighting. The upscaler isn’t adding any aggressive smoothing or plastic-looking artifacts — it’s remarkably lifelike.

Then there’s the fabric and material textures. Brunson’s Knicks jersey and the fabric of the couch in the cutscene get an upgrade to show off the stitching more with high-resolution clarity, and without any noticeable AI-induced blurring.

The lighting reacts to on-screen characters more realistically, there isn’t any noticeable AI “fizzing” or ghosting around finer textures like hair — something upscalers have had problems with in the past.

Is this a frame-generated future?

DLSS 5 integration proved to me that the uncanny valley is dead, but it also proves that native frame rates are on their way out with it.

Nvidia themselves keep saying that Moore’s law is dead, and getting crafty with AI is what will bridge that generational gap. That threshold has been crossed — photorealism is getting too heavy for high-end silicon to render natively.

And DLSS 5 proves that future of photorealism isn’t just about rendering better pixels; it’s about accepting that a good chunk of the frames you see on your screen aren’t technically going to be “real” at all.

We’ve been coming to this moment in the PC gaming space for a while now, and it’s also happening on consoles too.

And personally, I have no problem with it if it looks this good — provided it’s used the right way (such as in photorealistic games).

More from Tom's Guide

• Best of IFA 2026: We found the 26 top new gadgets
• I held the Asus ProArt P14 next to my MacBook Pro 14 — and Apple should be genuinely terrified of Nvidia’s RTX Spark
• I tested Acer's wild Project DualPlay Mini — and it's a gaming handheld and laptop in one gadget

Despite how hard I try, I always end up bringing too many gadgets when I travel. With a transforming device like Lenovo’s new Project Swan, though, those days may be done for good.

Alongside one of the best laptops, I often pack a portable monitor for those times when I need extra screen real estate. This setup has served me well in the past, but between chargers, power banks, and cables, my tech bag gets unwieldy fast. In fact, on my last trip to Taiwan for Computex, my carry-on ended up weighing more than my checked bag.

At IFA 2026, Lenovo unveiled two new concept laptops. While Project AeroBlade was remarkably thin and light, Project Swan transforms from a compact 14-inch laptop into a 17-inch workstation with the push of a button. We saw a similar horizontal expansion mechanic with the company’s Legion Pro Rollable concept back at CES, but that machine was built strictly for gaming.

Now, Lenovo is taking that same core idea — using a streamlined motor array — and tailoring it to a business laptop. Here is everything you need to know about Project Swan, and why it could mark the end of portable monitors (if you’re willing to pay up, of course).

Wider but not unwieldy

With its screen retracted, Project Swan looks like a standard, highly portable 14-inch notebook weighing about 3.5 pounds. While that’s slightly on the heavy side for a 14-inch laptop, keep in mind that this is a concept — and having it in your bag means leaving a secondary display at home.

The idea is to give mobile power users a workspace that expands only when required. You can comfortably use the 14-inch screen on a cramped airplane tray table, then expand the display once you get to your hotel desk or a coffee shop.

While full internal specs haven't been released yet, the physical layout includes two side-mounted USB-C ports and a headphone jack. A rear USB-C port handles charging, flanked by a tiny LED status indicator. Despite housing a rolling screen assembly, the chassis stays surprisingly trim at 17.9mm (0.7 inches).

As with the AeroBlade concept, you get Lenovo’s signature keyboard with generous key travel, paired with a spacious trackpad. Toggling between retracted and expanded modes is effortless: just tap the Insert key, and the laptop’s motors handle the rest.

Fully extended, the display rolls out into a wider 16:9 layout. That extra horizontal space is built for running two full apps side-by-side. As someone who writes with dual windows open, even on a 16-inch MacBook Pro, that added horizontal space would make an immediate difference.

The second screen's swan song?

I still catch myself wishing Project Swan rolled out even further. As someone who uses an ultrawide monitor at home, stretching out to a full 21:9 aspect ratio to fit two uncompressed, full-sized browser windows side-by-side would be the dream.

Even as a 16:9 expansion, having a single laptop that stretches on demand feels like the ideal solution for business travelers who hate setting up an external monitor. I’ve tried solving this issue with display glasses connected to a mini PC, but even a pair of the best smart glasses can lead to eye fatigue over a long workday.

Although Project Swan is technically a concept right now, I wouldn't be surprised to see a retail version hit the market relatively soon. Unlike companies that showcase flashy concepts never meant for production, Lenovo actually ships them. Case in point: their vertical rollable concept at CES eventually made its way to store shelves as the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable.

If Project Swan makes the jump to a retail product, it will undoubtedly carry a steep price tag. But for business travelers who want maximum screen real estate without pulling extra gear out of their bag at airport security, it might be worth every penny.

More from Tom's Guide

• Best of IFA 2026: We found the 26 top new gadgets
• This tiny AI box could save me from upgrading my perfectly good laptop
• Best laptops of IFA 2026: Wild colors, ultrathin designs and rollable displays

There's been a sudden surge of AI agents that can help you perform tasks on your PC, even while you're away. You've probably heard about tools like OpenClaw, which can run autonomously on your behalf. But one of the problems with running these kinds of agents locally is that they often require plenty of hardware resources to function properly.

I'm not someone who changes laptops every year. I still use a MacBook Air M3 from 2023, and I'll probably continue using it until it gives up on me, which hopefully won't be for another five to seven years. But that also means my laptop isn't necessarily built for running powerful local AI agents, and upgrading my entire computer just for that doesn't make much sense.

Well, for people like me, Violoop might have an interesting solution. The company has just showcased its new hardware AI agent at IFA 2026, and unlike software agents that run directly on your laptop, use its resources, and potentially drain more battery, Violoop is a separate device that connects to your computer and handles much of the AI processing itself.

Similar to software-based agents, Violoop is screen-aware. It can understand what's happening on your display and help perform tasks based on that context. For example, if someone asks you to send them an address, Violoop can pull up the relevant information and fill it in for you. If you're looking at a long PDF that you don't have time to read, you can ask it to summarize the document instead.

The idea is that the device gradually understands you better the more you use it. Violoop builds what the company calls a continuous memory graph, which learns about your workflows, preferences, and patterns over time so the agent has more context when you're asking it to do something.

Of course, having an AI constantly looking at what's on your screen and building a memory around what you do immediately raises some privacy questions. Violoop says it has taken a local-first approach here. Screen data is processed directly on the device and, according to the company, is never transmitted to the cloud.

Inside, there's an 8-billion-parameter local AI model with 26 TOPS of on-device AI performance handling these tasks. When Violoop does need to use the cloud, the company says it sends "only the information necessary" to complete the task, while your screen itself is never streamed.

There's also a dedicated STM32H563 security processor for handling approvals around sensitive tasks. The company says you'll be able to connect your preferred AI services, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others.

The hardware itself is also pretty interesting. There's a small display on the front showing things like the time and what the AI agent is currently doing. The whole thing almost looks like a tiny old-school computer monitor sitting next to your laptop, which I actually quite like.

One thing worth noting is that Violoop isn't powered directly through your laptop's USB-C port. It requires its own external power source. Around the back, you'll find three connections: USB-C, HDMI, and a dedicated power input.

There's also a physical button on top that acts as a hardware-level approval key. When the agent wants to perform a sensitive action or something that involves multiple steps, you can physically press the button to approve it rather than letting the AI simply go ahead on its own.

Perhaps the most interesting part for me is that Violoop isn't tied to one operating system. The company says it works with both Windows and macOS, and setup is supposed to be largely plug-and-play. At least, that's what Violoop tells me.

Violoop is launching on Kickstarter on September 15, 2026, with an introductory price of $399. The company expects to begin shipping in mid-October, after which the device is expected to be more widely available for $799.

More from Tom's Guide

• Best laptops of IFA 2026: Wild colors, ultrathin designs and rollable displays
• I tried Acer's new 7-inch gaming handheld at IFA 2026 — this might be the sweet spot
• I used Dell's latest MacBook Neo rival — and I'm not complaining about having another one

The new Alienware 16 Area-51 gaming laptop is largely a refresh of last year’s model, but it includes the one feature I wanted: a glare-free OLED panel. Toss in the latest Intel and Nvidia components, along with the otherworldly design, and you have one of the best gaming laptops on the market.

As with 2025’s Alienware 16 Area-51, this gaming laptop has serious flair, thanks to the Liquid Teal finish on the anodized aluminum chassis, which gives it a dark, iridescent sheen that shifts colors under different lighting conditions. The Gorilla Glass window on the bottom lets you see the internal components, while the RGB lighting enhances the laptop’s otherworldly appearance.

You can configure the Alienware 16 Area-51 (from $2,529, $3829 as tested) with up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus Arrow Lake Refresh CPU, an Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU, 64GB of RAM, and 12TB of SSD storage. My review unit, with its RTX 5080, Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus, and 32GB of RAM, had no issue handling even the most demanding PC games.

The star of the show is the new OLED panel, which provides rich contrast between dark and light elements. The anti-glare does rob the display of some of its luster, but the bright HDR and vibrant colors make up for that. You won’t complain much given how beautiful games look on this 16-inch 240Hz display.

While this laptop is still too bulky for my liking and has worse battery life than the previous model, this is undeniably a powerful gaming laptop with a fetching design like no other. If you have the cash for this beast, you won’t be disappointed. Find out more in my full review of the Alienware 16 Area-51 (2026).

Alienware 16 Area-51 (2026) review: Cheat sheet

• What was it? The Alienware 16 Area-51 is a high-end gaming laptop.
• Who is it for? The Alienware 16 Area-51 is for hardcore gamers who want a machine that can easily play graphically demanding modern games and look good doing it.
• What does it cost? The Alienware 16 Area-51 starts at $2,529 on Dell’s website at the time of writing. This configuration has an Intel Core Ultra 7 270HX Plus CPU, an Nvidia RTX 5060 GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of SSD storage.
• What do we like? We like the futuristic design, killer performance, and stunning OLED panel.
• What don’t we like? We don’t like the laptop’s bulkiness and poor(er) battery life.

Alienware 16 Area-51 (2026) review: Specs

Alienware 16 Area-51 (2026) review: The ups

The Alienware 16 Area-51 finally features an OLED panel while retaining the best aspects of its predecessor, including the eye-catching design, monstrous performance, and mesmerizing RGB lighting.

Futuristic design

Alienware didn’t change the design here, which is good, since this is still one of the most distinctive gaming laptops on the market. The rounded corners, Liquid Teal finish and RGB lighting on the keyboard deck make you feel like you’re using a laptop from the future. The smooth, sturdy aluminum chassis also feels good to touch and hold.

The model I reviewed came with a Cherry MX ultra-low-profile mechanical keyboard. Thanks to that, I had a great experience typing, as the keys are clicky and have a short travel distance. The touchpad is still relatively small, but it didn’t ruin my flow. I also like that the spacious keyboard deck gave my hands plenty of room to move.

You’ll find the lion’s share of the laptop’s ports on the back, with the 3.5mm headphone jack and an SD card slot located on the left-hand side. There’s a good selection of ports, including three USB-A, two USB-C, and an HDMI port. It’s not always easy to connect and reconnect peripherals when the laptop’s lid is open, but if you always keep everything connected, then it shouldn’t be an issue.

Powerful gaming performance

The Alienware 16 Area-51 I reviewed is purpose-built for high-end gaming performance, thanks to powerful components such as its Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX CPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 laptop GPU, and 32GB of RAM. If you want to play games at native resolution with high graphics settings, you won’t be disappointed.

At native resolution and default graphics settings, with frame generation disabled and the laptop’s performance mode enabled, I got Cyberpunk 2077 to generally run at around 110 frames per second. This includes both walking and driving. Frame rates dipped into the low 90s in some of the denser downtown areas, but it’s hard to complain about a game running at 90 fps.

Using a game’s built-in benchmarking tool, we saw impressive results when we tested the laptop in our lab. At native resolution and maximum graphical settings, with the laptop’s performance mode disabled, Cyberpunk 2077 ran at 38 fps—certainly lower than when I ran it with performance mode on and at default graphics settings. Other titles, such as Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Doom: The Dark Ages, ran much better under these same conditions.

The Alienware 16 Area-51 also fared well against competing laptops with better specs. This includes the Razer Blade 16, which has a more powerful RTX 5090 GPU, and the Asus Zephyrus G16, which has the same CPU and GPU but double the RAM.

Even with frame-boosting DLSS disabled, you can still enjoy extremely high frame rates with performance mode enabled and medium-to-high graphics settings. You’ll get fantastic performance out of the box thanks to the Alienware 16’s powerful components.

Vivid OLED display

This is the big update for the Alienware 16 Area-51, and it’s a welcome one, as the lack of an OLED panel on last year’s model was one of its few setbacks. Now, games look as glorious as they perform, making the overall experience even better.

A game like Cyberpunk 2077 literally shines on this 16-inch OLED panel. The contrast between dark and light elements helps the colorful neon signs and holograms really pop out during the in-game night cycle. The scorching sun during the day is also impressive, with dark shadows contrasting nicely against the daylight.

The model I reviewed has an anti-glare screen that effectively reduces glare from light sources. While that’s a plus, it can also make the overall image look less vibrant than on a glossy screen. This is a minor setback, and one I can overlook since I’d rather have an anti-glare screen than not.

How did the Alienware 16’s display perform in our lab tests? As you can see above, it has strong color reproduction (sRGB and DCI-P3) and solid color accuracy (Delta-E). Hues are somewhat oversaturated, which benefits games like Cyberpunk 2077. SDR and HDR brightness are also good for an OLED panel.

Games run buttery smooth thanks to the fast 240Hz refresh rate. I didn’t encounter any stuttering or flickering during testing. The response time is now 0.2ms, which is much lower than last year’s model’s 3ms. Granted, you likely won’t notice a major difference unless you’re a competitive gamer, but the lower response time will benefit you regardless.

Fun RGB lighting

Like last year’s model, this Alienware 16 laptop has some seriously impressive RGB lighting. And I don’t say that lightly since I’m not typically an RGB fan. But the way it’s implemented here complements this laptop’s unique design.

The Gorilla Glass bottom allows the RGB lighting to cast an underglow. And this same lighting also spills out through the top of the keyboard deck. As before, I haven’t seen other gaming laptops match this effect.

Naturally, you can customize the lighting effects however you prefer via the Alienware Commander Center app. The app is easy to use if you just want to use presets, but it’s also very granular for more in-depth fine-tuning.

Alienware 16 Area-51 (2026) review: The downs

Though the Alienware 16 Area-51 has a lot going for it, it has some noticeable drawbacks.

Poor battery life

I never expect gaming laptops to have stellar battery life, as they’re usually lacking in that area. The Alienware 16 Area-51 is no different, except that it actually runs out of juice faster than last year’s model.

In our testing, Alienware’s gaming laptop lasted an hour and two minutes on the PCMark 10 gaming benchmark and three and a half hours while surfing the internet. That’s about an hour less on both tests than before, which is a bummer.

You’re likely going to keep the laptop plugged in for better performance, so battery life won’t be an issue in that instance. However, if you plan to use this laptop on the go, don’t expect it to last as long as you’d need it to.

Cumbersome to carry

There’s no denying that the Alienware 16 Area-51 is an attractive laptop thanks to its unique design. Unfortunately, the main downside is that at 14.37 x 11.41 x 1.12 inches and 7.92 pounds, it’s not exactly portable. Yes, you can take it with you, and it will fit in a standard backpack, but you’ll feel it.

I typically take the laptops I’m reviewing home, but because of this notebook’s weight, I kept it at the office throughout the entire testing process. I also kept it in one of our lab rooms because even carrying it around the office isn’t pleasant.

Granted, the laptop’s weight won’t be an issue if you’re not going to travel with it and mainly plan to have it as your primary at-home computer. But if you want to take it on the road, then I suggest you build some muscle first.

Alienware 16 Area-51 (2026) review: Verdict

While the Alienware 16 Area-51 is mostly a refresh of the previous model, the inclusion of an OLED panel is a significant addition that makes an already fantastic gaming laptop even better. Thanks to that, it’s hard not to recommend this laptop to anyone willing to spend top dollar for a high-end gaming experience.

Alternatives like the Razer Blade 16 and Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 are solid choices if the Alienware’s design is too outlandish, though you’ll still pay a similar price for both. So given that, why not go for a gaming laptop with a truly unique design?

As with its predecessor, the Alienware 16 Area-51 comes with my highest recommendation. Forgive the cliché, but it truly is out of this world.

Alongside massive TVs, home robots, and all sorts of futuristic tech, PC makers came out in a big way for IFA 2026 — and for good reason. With Nvidia’s new RTX Spark chips on the horizon and local AI ramping up fast, we saw tons of fresh silicon and hardware in Berlin this year.

What we didn’t expect was for them to be so colorful, thin, and experimental. From budget-friendly laptops in every shade imaginable to designs so impossibly slim they’d make Steve Jobs jealous, and even the return of the netbook in a totally new form factor, this year’s show was an absolute blast for computing.

Here are our 7 favorite laptops from IFA 2026, including models landing before the holidays and wild concepts that show us where PCs are heading next.

Best laptops of IFA 2026: The ones you can buy soon

Lenovo Yoga Flip 9n 2-in-1

If you’re an artist who needs a powerful machine to work on, the Lenovo Yoga Flip 9n 2-in-1 is the convertible laptop to watch. Packing an Nvidia RTX Spark chip for handling AI workloads on-device, and the ability to draw on its OLED screen or haptic touchpad, this is one seriously versatile notebook for busy doodlers on the go. And for work, it even packs a full keyboard and plenty of ports.

We don’t yet have a price or release date, but the Yoga Flip 9n 2-in-1 could be the perfect fit for creatives.

Tony Polanco

Dell 14S

Dell’s adding another MacBook Neo competitor to its lineage after the stellar XPS 13, and this one's aimed more at the college student/those just entering the world of work. The Dell 14S has gone through a huge upgrade since the last time I heard that name last year!

Instead of a cheap plastic build, we’re now to an all-aluminum build in a selection of fresh colors. The keyboard feels great on it, you’ve got display options starting from a 2K resolution all the way to 2.8K OLED, and the pricing will be “complementary” to the XPS 13 — Dell’s words not mine.

Take from that what you will…but also…$699 is my prediction.

Jason England

Lenovo IdeaPad Vibe

The Lenovo IdeaPad Vibe aims to be the next MacBook Neo killer, and it certainly has a decent shot at dethroning Apple’s affordable laptop. Lenovo’s machine features a sturdy metal chassis available in seven unique colors to match your personality. It also packs a wide range of ports — more than the MacBook Neo and Dell XPS 13 — and even swappable keycaps.

Configurable with AMD, Snapdragon, and eventually Intel CPUs, the IdeaPad Vibe, with its expected $699 asking price, is hard to ignore.

Tony Polanco

Acer Swift Blade 14

Yes, I know there’s the Acer Vero 16, and it’s modularity/repairability chops. All great and nice. But I’m here for the laptops that blew my tiny mind, and the 799g Swift Blade did indeed blow my mind, because it’s insanely lightweight.

You get a full-blown OLED display, decent build quality Intel Core Series 3 chipsets and the RAM and storage you need in something that’s lighter than two cans of soup. It’s really quite the shocking piece of kit to hold in your hands.

Jason England

Best laptops of IFA 2026: The prototypes

Lenovo Project Aeroblade

Lenovo’s Project AeroBlade gives off serious MacBook Air vibes thanks to its ultraportable design. At under 10mm thick and just 1.83 pounds, it feels like a screen with a keyboard attached. It achieves this with a fanless design. Instead, four tiny Frore AirJet modules use silent ultrasonic vibrations to cool an Intel Lunar Lake chip without sacrificing sustained performance. You still get OLED, Thunderbolt 4, Wi-Fi 7, and Lenovo’s excellent keyboard in a magnesium-aluminum shell.

It’s only a concept for now, but if this ships, it could be a game-changer for thin-and-light laptops.

Tony Polanco

Lenovo Project Swan

Lenovo didn’t want its Legion Pro Rollable gaming laptop to have all the fun when it comes to horizontally expanding screens, so this year at IFA, it unveiled a more business-friendly solution using upgraded tech.

Project Swan starts out as a small and compact 14-inch productivity laptop but with the push of a button, its screen extends out on either side to become a 17-inch display. That way, instead of bringing a portable monitor with you on your next business trip, you can just pack one device.

Just like Lenovo’s incredibly light laptop, Project Swan is only a concept for now but as we saw a few years ago with the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable, this design could find its way into a product you can actually buy sooner than you’d think.

Anthony Spadafora

Acer Project DualPlay Mini

Now I know the initial thoughts here. “This is a gaming handheld, wtf are you thinking!?” Well, actually, this is a netbook…you can’t see it yet but when you open the handheld like a clamshell and flip the display, you’ve got that QWERTY keyboard inside.

As someone who has missed using something like my Asus Eee PC in the mid 2000s, this was a serious trip back in time to a better time. And when you think about the versatility of it, not only does this mean “work by day, play by night,” but it also means wider gameplay accessibility. Have you ever played an RTS with a controller? …that’s what I thought!

Jason England

More from Tom's Guide

• I just went hands-on with the new Circular Ring 3 — and it beats the Oura Ring 5 in 3 big ways
• I wanted to hate Nvidia’s DLSS 5 ‘AI filter’ — but the real DLSS 5 is photorealistic black magic
• I just tried the world’s first AI espresso machine — I'm a coffee snob, and it was surprisingly... good?

John Ternus has finally taken over as CEO of Apple, and his term could kickstart a wave of new and redefined Apple devices. It all starts next week with the "Surprise and Shine" iPhone event.

However, that's just the beginning, and Bloomberg's Mark Gurman just released a massive report that highlights 41 devices that could be released in the next three years and beyond.

That includes new devices like the foldable iPhone Ultra and Apple's first foray into smart glasses.

Later 2026 and Early 2027

Most every device meant to launch in the next six months should arrive during one of two events: the September 9 iPhone soiree and an announcement in October or early November.

Mostly, the difference here is that new MacBooks are usually announced in mid-fall, usually with a new chipset.

The key devices to be aware of in the next few months include Apple's first foldable iPhone Ultra and the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max models, all of which are expected to launch next week. There's also the first iPad mini with an OLED screen and the rumored HomePad with a screen, which should be Apple's next steps into smart home devices.

There's also the rumored MacBook Ultra, a high-end version of Apple's Pro laptop with a touch display and OLED panel. Personally, I'm interested in the refreshed Apple TV 4K with a faster chip and more Siri features. Though that has been rumored for years now and has yet to actually be released.

• iPhone Ultra
• iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max
• Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4
• AirPods 5
• Apple TV 4K set-top box
• HomePod mini
• HomePad
• iPad mini with OLED screen
• M6 iMac refresh
• M6 14-inch MacBook Pro refresh
• MacBook Ultra

In development for 2027

Next year is when we could start seeing some truly updated designs for Apple's products from the all-glass iPhone 20 to redesigned Apple Watches and even more smart home products.

Some devices will be a simple chip refresh, like the M6 MacBook Air or the A19 Pro MacBook Neo, which proved so popular the first go-round that Apple couldn't keep it in stock.

A slew of iPads, from a refreshed iPad 12 to an iPad Air OLED are also expected next year.

iPhones will get weird next year starting in the spring where Apple splits the launch of the iPhone 18 series. We should see the vanilla iPhone 18, alongside the iPhone 18e and iPhone Air 2.

In the back half of the year, the 20th anniversary iPhone could feature one of the largest design changes in years. The biggest is a curvy all-glass wraparound design that seamlessly covers the entire phone. An analyst claimed this design was canceled in August, but Mark Gurman pushed back, saying that it's still on track. There are more potential changes, but the glass look will be immediately noticeable.

We were expecting to see camera-laden AirPods this year after leaked code and videos appeared, but Gurman claims these have been delayed until 2027. The cameras would enable Siri AI to "see" the world around you and respond to queries. People are voicing privacy concerns already, but presumably the cameras would not record photos or video.

Finally, Tim Cook was allegedly obsessed with Apple Glasses, but it's not clear if Ternus shares that same excitement. Apple's take on the form should arrive next year and be similar to the Meta Ray-Ban allowing you to take calls, pictures and videos but lacking a display. Rumors had slated the glasses for 2028 but a summer report claimed Apple was rethinking its roadmap after Vision head Paul Meade left for OpenAI.

• M6 MacBook Air
• A19 Pro MacBook Neo
• Entry-level iPad refresh
• iPad Air OLED
• iPad Pro
• New Apple Pencils.
• iPhone 18 and 18e
• iPhone Air 2
• M7 14-inch MacBook Pro
• AirPods with cameras
• In-home security sensor and system.
• Apple Glasses
• iPhone 20 (XX)
• iPhone Ultra 2
• Redesigned Apple Watches
• M7 Pro and M7 Max MacBooks

2028, 2029 and beyond

The next batch of potential Apple devices could be released any time between 2028 and 2030. Some are chip and OLED updates, but a couple are new devices that we haven't seen from Apple before.

The HomePod on a robot arm was rumored two years ago and apparently will actually debut in the next couple of years. Per Gurman, this version will have a 9-inch display and advanced AI features.

Before the rumor mill settled on the foldable iPhone, Apple's first foldable device was actually supposed to be a giant foldable 18-inch iPad or MacBook. Apparently, this is still in the works and could launch in 2028. Gurman claims manufacturing issues pushed a potential launch back.

Apple allegedly wants to release its own AR glasses à la the Meta Ray-Ban Display. The glasses would superimpose data on your real-world view. There's no specific release year for these, but they could arrive before 2030.

Apple is apparently working on an AI pendant as well. The Apple version would work with your iPhone and use AI and the camera for tasks.

• HomePad with a robot arm
• M7 Max and M7 Ultra Mac Studio
• Apple Vision Pro revamp
• AI Pendant
• Larger foldable iPhone
• Foldable iPad
• MacBook Air OLED
• Higher-end iMac OLED
• Augmented reality glasses

More from Tom's Guide

• Apple HomePad rumored release date, price and all the latest leaks
• iPhone Ultra price rumors — here's how much you can expect to pay for Apple’s first foldable
• Nvidia’s RTX Spark N1X launches this October: My price predictions for the potential MacBook Pro killer

As I keep saying, there’s a big two-device compromise problem. I love my 14-inch MacBook Pro for its rigidity, battery life, silent thermals, great ergonomics, and raw performance for my prosumer workload. But macOS locks me out of native PC gaming (mostly), so I need another machine to do that.

So when Nvidia’s RTX Spark was announced, I saw the possibility of a future daily driver pull into view — the everything machine I’d always wanted. And then when I held the Asus ProArt P14 in my right hand and the 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro in my left, it became clear I’d found my top pick of Team Green’s roster.

That’s because Asus didn’t just build a competitor; they pretty obviously reverse-engineered the MacBook Pro’s footprint and low-profile industrial aesthetic. It was going to take a lot to get me to switch from my Apple lifestyle, but coming as close to the Apple feel as possible is a helpful start, to say the least!

So for the first time, a Windows machine has the silicon architecture to challenge Apple Silicon, and Asus is packing it into a machine that rolls tanks onto the MacBook Pro’s turf.

Design and build: spotting the physical differences

Stacking them directly, you can see how much Asus took inspiration from Apple, as the ProArt P14 matches the MacBook Pro 14 almost millimeter for millimeter. But there are subtle differences.

First is the finish. Apple’s anodized aluminum has a smoother, more metallic texture, whereas Asus’ stealthy matte charcoal coating has a much more interesting texture under your fingers.

And second is the weight balance. Holding them both one-handed, the Pro definitely feels denser, but the distribution feels better balanced. Whereas in the ProArt P14, it’s lighter but more heavily weighted toward thermal management at the back of the system (more on that later).

Ports-wise, both are effectively set up for creators with full-size HDMI, high-speed USB-C, a headphone jack, and a full-size SD card slot. But the ProArt flex here comes with the legacy USB-A port on the right flank — a minor detail that saves you from carrying dongles.

Screen showdown: 2.8K OLED vs Liquid Retina XDR

So when it comes to picking between these screens, I know the default is to say “OLED is better,” but there are levels to this.

Because yes, the infinite contrast, instant pixel response times for gaming, zero blooming, and no camera notch give the ProArt P14 an advantage. It’s a gorgeous display — this is Asus’ bread and butter after all, as colors melt off the screen.

But the MacBook Pro (I’m assuming, as we won’t know until full testing — this is just based on what’s always happened before) will likely have a higher sustained peak brightness for outdoor work.

Really, it comes down to what you’re going to do with it. For gaming and color-accurate video grading in indoor/studio settings, the OLED wins on pure punch. However, for working out and about in bright coffee shops, Apple’s Mini-LED will probably retain the top spot.

The tactile friction point: Key feel and trackpad

The MacBook Pro has always been one of my favorites ergonomically speaking —packing shallow but snappy scissor keyboard switches set in a well. It feels familiar, reliable, and fatigue-free, but it does lack the travel for deep gaming presses.

Meanwhile, the ProArt P14’s keys have a deeper dish, a little more key travel, and a softer landing underneath. The added depth creates a more satisfying impact, and the WASD stability for gaming feels a little better. But the slight added mushiness may come back to haunt me if I type all day.

Then there’s the trackpads. Now don’t get me wrong, the ProArt’s physical trackpad is massive and smooth, with a nice tactility to the physical click. But Apple’s Force Touch haptics are basically witchcraft, with an identical click anywhere on the glass and zero chance of any mechanical dead zones.

Under the hood

Currently, I’m on an M5 MacBook Pro, but you can spec it up to M5 Pro or M5 Max with unified memory shared between CPU and GPU cores. The end result is lightning-fast performance across all your tasks that has always been one step ahead of the competition from Qualcomm, Intel, and AMD.

And now, the ProArt P14 is taking on Apple with the RTX Spark N1X platform — marrying an Arm-based Nvidia Grace CPU with a dedicated Blackwell RTX GPU, backed up by up to 128GB of unified memory.

In terms of how much you can spec it, ProArt P14 configurations start from that baseline N1X with fewer cores and 24GB of memory, so the versatility of configs means you can run the full gamut against the MacBook Pro.

Apple’s machine falls down in modern AAA PC gaming backlogs — some of it works through Metal compatibility, but most will be left to crippling emulation or cloud streaming.

But with N1X’s CUDA cores, the ProArt P14 can run 1440p games at 100 FPS, complete with DLSS support and anti-cheat compatibility. Beyond that, I expect they’ll be pretty evenly matched in creator performance and AI. Differences there will come down to the software optimization for the silicon.

The potential dealbreakers

I’m just going to summarize some quick things that may become the thorn in the ProArt P14’s side once we get one in the labs to fully test.

• The fan noise: When I tested the ProArt P14 for gaming, it was the loudest RTX Spark laptop in the room. The MacBook Pro stays near-silent during everyday tasks, and hopefully the P14 is the same — but it’s clear that an insane amount of Nvidia silicon requires aggressive airflow.
• Battery endurance: Nvidia is claiming “all-day” battery life and the same performance both on and off the charger. During my testing, I can confirm the latter, but we don’t know about the former yet! If it can achieve that 12-14+ hours of mixed real-world productivity, Apple loses its biggest single advantage.
• The price: The MacBook Pro starts at $1,999. To get the equivalent amount of memory (24GB), that price goes up to $2,199. This is the big question mark for N1X laptops, and hopefully they’ll be competitive on cost.

Early verdict

This is a way-too-early verdict, as I’m piecing together the few times I’ve had to test the ProArt P14 and its potential against months of MacBook Pro use. But I’ll give it a stab.

More from Tom's Guide

• I tested Acer’s wild flip-and-swivel handheld — why Project DualPlay Mini is the ultimate netbook love letter
• I wanted to hate Nvidia’s DLSS 5 ‘AI filter’ — but the real DLSS 5 is photorealistic black magic
• As a PC snob, I wanted to catch GTA 6 making console compromises. Instead, I’m in awe of the trickery

Laptops are in a pretty unique place in 2026. On one end, we have companies pushing performance to the absolute maximum, with new flagship laptops soon to be powered by chips like Nvidia's RTX Spark. On the other hand, we have brands going directly after Apple's MacBook Neo, pushing prices lower while still trying to deliver as much value as possible.

Dell is jumping on the latter bandwagon at IFA 2026 with its new Dell 14S. The company already has the XPS 13, which sits as its more premium MacBook Neo competitor, but the Dell 14S is targeting a slightly different buyer.

Dell tells me this laptop will sit one tier below the XPS 13, aimed primarily at pre-college and high school students who want something sturdy and capable without spending too much money.

On first inspection, the Dell 14S feels extremely similar to the more expensive XPS 13 in the hand. You get an all-aluminum build that feels premium, and unlike some other thin-and-light laptops I've tried here at IFA, there isn't much flex in the keyboard deck when you press down hard. The display lid doesn't feel flimsy either.

It's certainly not the lightest laptop I've used at IFA this year, but I'll happily take some extra weight when the trade-off is a machine that feels this solid.

I also really like what Dell is doing with the colors. Similar to Apple with the MacBook Neo, Dell isn't sticking with the usual dark finishes. The 14S comes in four much more playful colors: Linen (beige-silver), Dusty Rose (pink), Washed Denim (light blue), and Velvet Green.

Washed Denim (the one on the top in the image below) is easily my favorite of the bunch, although all four look much better in person than their names might suggest.

And despite being positioned below the XPS 13, Dell isn't cutting too much when it comes to performance either. The Dell 14S will be available with Intel's Core Series 3 "Wildcat Lake" processors, with options including Core 5 and Core 7 chips.

Other internal hardware includes up to 8GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard storage. Those aren't exactly flagship specifications, but they're pretty much what you'd expect given the price range Dell is targeting and with the ongoing RAMageddon. The port selection is also surprisingly good. You get two USB-C ports, but Dell has also included a full-sized HDMI port, something you don't even get on the more expensive XPS 13.

In terms of display options, you're getting two options. The higher-end model comes with a 2.8K panel with a 120Hz refresh rate, while the other configuration drops down to a 2K display running at 60Hz.

The biggest question right now is the price. Dell hasn't announced U.S. pricing yet, but the company tells me the 14S will sit below the XPS 13 in its lineup. Considering the XPS 13 starts at around $699, I wouldn't be surprised if the Dell 14S lands somewhere around the $599 to $649 mark.

And if Dell can actually hit that price, I think the 14S could be a very interesting MacBook Neo competitor. There's no exact launch date for now, but Dell tells me that the 14S will launch in the U.S. sometime this fall, with pricing to be announced closer to availability.

More from Tom's Guide

• I tore apart Acer’s £1,599 Vero 16 with my bare hands — Framework finally has a lethal rival
• We benchmarked the MacBook Neo vs budget Windows laptops — here's the truth
• I tested 6 RTX Spark laptops for gaming — and the winner completely shocked me