Ultraportable articles

The Best Laptops 2018

When choosing the right laptop it all comes down to what you are willing to spend and what you plan to use it for. After looking at several of the best devices this year and analyzing dozens of professional reviews and user opinions, we bring you the best of the best in a handful of popular categories.

External GPU Testing: GTX 1080 in a Box + Core i7-8550U Ultraportable

Last year, we briefly looked at external GPUs when we reviewed the Aorus GTX 1070 Gaming Box attached to a Kaby Lake-powered ultraportable. Now that Intel's 8th gen CPUs are widely available in a range of ultrabooks, with significant performance gains in hand, it's the perfect time to revisit eGPUs and determine whether the hard CPU bottleneck still exists in most games.

The $400 Ultrabook: Chuwi LapBook Air Review

The Chuwi Lapbook Air is billed as an ultraportable 14-inch machine with a price tag of just $430. This puts it in the realm of some of the cheapest Windows laptops on the market of this display size. Chromebooks are also available for $400 or less, but let's just put those over in the dunce corner for now, because we're mostly interested in true Windows systems.

Patched Laptops: Testing Meltdown & Spectre Patches on Ultraportable-Class Hardware

You've probably seen our coverage and tests over the past few weeks on the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, or more specifically the performance drops you can expect from the patches that address these issues. We've already covered what you can expect on modern desktop systems, however today we'll be diving into the mobile side of things to see how Meltdown and Spectre patches affect ultraportable laptops.

Razer Blade Stealth (Mid 2017) Review

The Razer Blade Stealth has received a refresh featuring the same great design, portable form factor, and solid selection of internal hardware, but now addressing previous downsides with a larger screen with smaller bezels, a better trackpad, among others, that make this a superb ultraportable contender.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Review

Lenovo's signature business ultraportable, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon is now in its 5th generation, adding new Intel Kaby Lake processors and a larger battery without sacrificing portability. Having used this laptop for a few weeks now, it's clear that Lenovo's minor year-on-year improvements have led to a stunning device that's the best ThinkPad ultraportable yet.