Short domestic flights are now cost as much as $3 a kilometre if booked shortly before travel - is that okay? Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Light design feels premium Great display Cool and quiet Cons Unimpressive battery life Low graphics performance for its class A little expensive at MSRP Our Verdict The HP OmniBook 7 Aero is a light, cool, and quiet ultraportable. This machine feels great on the go, but the battery life is a problem — it’s behind Intel and Qualcomm-powered competitors. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: HP OmniBook 7 Aero Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket The HP OmniBook 7 Aero is a 13.3-inch laptop that weighs just 2.2 pounds or less, depending on the configuration you choose. With a beautiful white design and an all-metal magnesium-aluminum alloy chassis, it feels premium. Plus, it runs cool and quiet. This machine feels made for portability. Unfortunately, HP paired an unusually small battery with an AMD chip that isn’t as power-efficient as the most efficient CPUs Intel and Qualcomm have to offer. The result is an ultraportable that feels like you never want to take it too far from an outlet. With an Intel Lunar Lake CPU or a bigger battery, this laptop would’ve really wowed. HP OmniBook 7 Aero: Specs Foundry / Chris Hoffman The HP OmniBook 7 Aero packs an eight-core AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 chip with Radeon 860M graphics. AMD’s Ryzen AI hardware delivers a good combination of performance and battery life, complete with an NPU that’s fast enough to run Windows 11’s Copilot+ PC features. Our review model had 32 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD — that’s more than enough RAM and storage for a lightweight ultraportable like this one. The RAM in particular seems a little overspec’d given the rest of the hardware here. Most people would be better off with 16 GB of RAM and a faster CPU. While this is a beautiful machine, the $1,299 retail price point feels a tad high considering the mid-range AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 CPU, despite the generous amount of RAM. However, while I was wrapping up this review, HP had it on sale for $869. That price feels excellent for this machine. Model number: HP OmniBook 7 Aero 13-bg1077nr CPU: AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 Memory: 32 GB LPDDR5x-7500 RAM Graphics/GPU: AMD Radeon 860M NPU: AMD NPU (up to 50 TOPS) Display: 13.3-inch 2560×1600 IPS display with 60Hz refresh rate Storage: 1 TB PCIe Gen4 SSD Webcam: 1440p webcam Connectivity: 2x USB Type-C (10 Gbps), 2x USB Type-A (1x 10 Gbps, 1x 5 Gbps), 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x combo audio jack Networking: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: IR camera for Windows Hello Battery capacity: 43 Watt-hours Dimensions: 11.70 x 8.31 x 0.69 inches Weight: 2.2 pounds MSRP: $1,299 as tested The HP OmniBook 7 Aero is a little marvel of a laptop. At 2.2 pounds with a beautiful white all-metal design, I loved using it, and I loved picking it up and moving it around. HP OmniBook 7 Aero: Design and build quality Foundry / Chris Hoffman The HP OmniBook 7 Aero is immediately impressive. Our review unit was the Ceramic White variant, and it’s an incredibly clean look in a world of silver laptops. (HP also offers a “Glacier Silver” variant.) Even the keyboard deck is white, although the bezel around the display is black. This 13.3-inch machine is one of the lightest laptops I’ve ever reviewed. HP says it weighs a maximum of 2.2 pounds depending on your chosen hardware configuration. It’s about as light as a laptop can be, and the metal chassis (a magnesium-aluminum alloy) has a slightly rubbery-feeling surface that’s pleasant to hold. The build quality feels premium, and the hinge feels solid without obnoxious wobbles, but the machine is so light that I need to use two hands to open it. The laptop comes with more bloatware than I’d like to see — the Start menu has shortcuts for Adobe Offers, Booking.com, and “Dropbox promotion.” But this is easy to remove if you don’t want it. HP OmniBook 7 Aero: Keyboard and trackpad Foundry / Chris Hoffman The HP OmniBook 7 Aero has a chiclet keyboard that feels good to type on. It’s got a nice white backlight, too. The typing action feels reasonably snappy and responsive. But there’s something a little off about it: the key travel is a little shallow. That’s not a huge surprise for a 2.2-pound laptop that is 0.67 inches at its thickest point. HP has compensated well for the thinness, but it does feel a little shallow. This machine’s trackpad also feels good. It’s a standard mechanical trackpad that’s a reasonable size and feels responsive to move your finger over, with a nice “clunk” action when you click down. HP OmniBook 7 Aero: Display and speakers Foundry / Chris Hoffman The HP OmniBook 7 Aero has a 13.3-inch IPS display with a 2560×1600 resolution and a nice anti-glare surface. HP rates it as 400 nits, but it seemed even brighter. It’s a beautiful display, although it only goes up to a 60Hz–a faster refresh rate would’ve been nice. However, the combination of a high-resolution, decent amount of brightness, and anti-glare surface is a real winner. It performs better than glossy displays in challenging lighting conditions like direct sunlight. The display is one of this machine’s best assets, but it’s not a touch screen. I test every laptop’s speakers by playing Steely Dan’s Aja and Daft Punk’s Get Lucky. The HP OmniBook 7 Aero delivers a good amount of top-end volume. Audio quality was okay — the highs could be a little grating in Get Lucky, especially at maximum volume, and the bass was less than usual. I’d plan to use headphones for the best experience with music, movies, and TV shows. HP OmniBook 7 Aero: Webcam, microphone, biometrics The HP OmniBook 7 Aero has a 5MP webcam with a 1440p resolution. Despite that impressive resolution number, the image quality was a little grainy, especially in darker lighting conditions. I’ve used laptops with 1080p webcams that do a better job. This laptop does include a physical webcam shutter switch, which is always nice to see. The “dual array digital microphones” did a good job of picking up my voice with clear audio quality. I’d be happy to use this microphone setup for online meetings, although I wish the webcam was a bit nicer. The HP OmniBook 7 Aero includes an IR camera for Windows Hello, so you can sign in with your face, but there’s no fingerprint reader here. HP OmniBook 7 Aero: Connectivity Foundry / Chris Hoffman The HP OmniBook Aero has a decent number of ports for a 13-inch laptop that only weighs 2.2 pounds. On the left side, there’s a combo audio jack and a USB Type-A port that supports up to 5 Gbps speeds. On the right side, there’s a second USB Type-A port (this one is up to 10 Gbps) as well as an HDMI 2.1 port and two USB Type-C ports (both 10 Gbps speeds.) This machine charges via USB Type-C, so you’ll be plugging the charging cable into one of the ports on the right side. It’s a reasonable selection of ports, although there’s no Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 here. There’s no microSD card reader or Ethernet jack, either. You’ll need a dongle if those are important to you. This machine supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4, so it’s a bit dated on the Wi-Fi — there was no Wi-Fi 7 or even Wi-Fi 6E on the model we reviewed. However, you probably haven’t switched to Wi-Fi 7 yet, so that’s not a huge problem. HP OmniBook 7 Aero: Performance The HP OmniBook 7 Aero with its AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 CPU delivered reasonable desktop performance in everyday desktop apps: web browsers, communication tools, and productivity apps. It ran cool and quiet, too. Considering this is a 2.2-pound ultraportable laptop, that’s what people will likely use it for! As always, we put this machine through our standard benchmarks to see how it performs. Foundry / Chris Hoffman First, we run PCMark 10 to get an idea of overall system performance. With a PCMark 10 score of 5,969, this machine came behind Intel Lunar Lake-powered PCs like the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 and AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX-powered machines like the HP OmniBook Ultra 14. This AMD hardware was neck and neck with Intel’s slower Intel Core 5 210H chip in the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3, and the AMD hardware here is a better choice — it’s a more modern chip that has an NPU capable of running Copilot+ PC features, and it runs cooler. Foundry / Chris Hoffman Next, we run Cinebench R20. This is a heavily multithreaded benchmark that focuses on overall CPU performance. It’s a quick benchmark, so cooling under extended workloads isn’t a factor. But, since it’s heavily multithreaded, CPUs with more cores have a huge advantage. With a multithreaded score of 5364, AMD’s “AI PC” hardware showed how much better it is at multithreaded performance than Intel’s “AI PC” hardware. AMD pulled ahead of Intel here. Foundry / Chris Hoffman We also run an encode with Handbrake. This is another heavily multithreaded benchmark, but it runs over an extended period. This demands the laptop’s cooling to kick in, and many laptops will throttle and slow down under load. The HP OmniBook 7 Aero completed the encode process in an average of 1,199 seconds, just about 20 minutes. Once again, it outclassed Intel’s Lunar Lake hardware on performance, but Lunar Lake will win when it comes to battery life, as we’ll see below. Foundry / Chris Hoffman Next, we run a graphical benchmark. This isn’t a gaming laptop, but it’s still good to check how the GPU performs. We run 3DMark Time Spy, a graphical benchmark that focuses on GPU performance. Despite AMD’s reputation for strong graphics hardware, the Radeon 860M graphics here performs like onboard graphics. With an overall 3DMark Time Spy score of 2,726, this machine delivered half the performance of Intel’s Lunar Lake GPUs. Overall, the HP OmniBook 7 Aero delivers solid performance for this class, especially in multithreaded tasks. And it does it while staying cool and quiet. But 3D graphics performance is a particular weakness. HP OmniBook 7 Aero: Battery life The HP OmniBook has a 43 Watt-hour battery, and that’s small. Thankfully, the AMD Ryzen AI hardware in this machine is reasonable power-efficient. This machine’s battery life is decent, but it’s below modern standards for a lightweight PC in 2025. That said, a larger battery would make this machine heavier. The smaller battery contributes to the light weight. Foundry / Chris Hoffman To benchmark the battery life, we play a 4K copy of Tears of Steel on repeat on Windows 11 with airplane mode enabled until the laptop suspends itself. We set the screen to 250 nits of brightness for our battery benchmarks. Real-world battery life in day-to-day use is always going to be less than this. The HP OmniBook 7 Aero lasted for an average of 632 minutes before suspending itself — that’s ten and a half hours. It’s a great number for a PC with such a small battery, but it’s well behind laptops with larger batteries. With an Intel Lunar Lake system and a larger battery, you could get more than double this machine’s battery life. Lunar Lake machines may be able to get away with a battery this small, but HP is pushing it by pairing AMD hardware with this battery. Video playback is a best-case scenario and real-world desktop app usage will drain the laptop’s battery faster, so I’m not sure you’ll get a full day of battery life from this machine. You might be able to get close to a full workday’s usage out of this battery if your workload isn’t too demanding and you keep the screen brightness low — maybe. HP OmniBook 7 Aero: Conclusion The HP OmniBook 7 Aero is a little marvel of a laptop. At 2.2 pounds with a beautiful white all-metal design, I loved using it, and I loved picking it up and moving it around. It stayed cool and quiet, too. Unfortunately, HP’s decision to include a small battery—possibly to keep the weight down —feels like a compromise that impairs the usability of this machine. I loved this laptop the first time I touched it, but I winced when I saw the battery spec: 43 Watt-hours is just too low for this AMD chip. This number used to be fine but, in a post-Lunar Lake and post-Qualcomm Snapdragon X world, this is low. If you’ll never be far from an outlet and you want more multithreaded CPU performance than Intel’s Lunar Lake can deliver, this might be the ideal laptop for you. Read...

Keyless systems are supposed to make driving more convenient. However, it’s precisely this technology that has become one of the biggest security risks in modern vehicles. Criminals are increasingly using radio devices to extend the signals of car keys and unlock vehicles without their owners realizing. This method is particularly widespread at night and in parking garages. The good news? A simple piece of aluminum foil can help protect your car from such attacks. Here’s how it works and what you can do. How keyless car theft works A smart key (also known as “keyless go” or “passive keyless entry”) continuously transmits an RFID radio signal that’s recognized by your car. As soon as the key is within range, you can unlock, enter, and start the car without even pulling the smart key out from your pocket. This always-on RFID signal is what thieves intercept. Using something called a relay device, they can extend the always-on RFID signal so that it reaches your vehicle even when you aren’t near it. Your car “believes” that its rightful owner is standing next to it, so the doors can unlock and the engine can start. Boom! Stolen. How aluminum helps foil car thieves Aluminum reliably shields electromagnetic signals. Wrapping your car key in aluminum foil creates a kind of miniature Faraday cage that RFID waves can’t penetrate. The smart key’s always-on RFID signal can therefore no longer be intercepted by a relay device. If your smart key is securely stored in aluminum foil or a metal container, your car will remain locked even if thieves are standing right outside the front door with their devices in hand. Using the aluminum foil trick correctly For the aluminum foil protection trick to actually work, the aluminum foil wrapping must be tight and wrinkle-free. Two to three layers are usually sufficient. Here’s how you should proceed: Wrap the key completely in several layers of aluminum foil. Test it! If your car no longer opens, the insulation is working. Alternatively, you can also put your smart key inside a small box that’s lined on the inside and covered on the outside with aluminum foil. Is there a better solution? Aluminum foil is a simple trick that works as an immediate stopgap measure. However, if you regularly park in densely populated areas, or if you park your vehicle on the street at night, or if you travel frequently, then you should consider a more permanent solution. RFID-blocking Faraday pouches are convenient, durable, and protective. They’re extremely affordable and they come in different sizes to best fit your particular key fob. You can find them on Amazon for between $7 to $15, depending on size and brand. Get an RFID Faraday Pouch on Amazon Security experts recommend that smart car keys should never be left near doors or windows, as this is where the signal is most easily intercepted. You should also check whether the passive keyless function on your car can be deactivated. Some manufacturers offer corresponding options via the menu or a key combination. Other smart car security tips include: Park your vehicle in well-lit, visible areas. Use visible anti-theft devices such as steering wheel claws as an additional deterrent. Check the behavior of your key regularly. A change in range may indicate malfunctions or technical problems. Read...

When I was reaching out to companies in search of ridiculous standing desk accessories for a recent article I wrote, a laptop stand was on my list of must-gets. I don’t mean the desk converters that give you a standing desk-like experience, but the little ones that just seem to prop the laptop up a bit. As a perennial desktop user they always seemed like a waste of time to me. Just get a desktop, or another monitor, right? Well consider me suitably chastised and with enough humble pie in my stomach that I won’t need to eat for a week, because these things aren’t as stupid as I thought. In fact, after a couple of months of playing around with one, they’re actually pretty great. I’m an idiot. And to prove just how much, here are all the useful ways I’ve found to use my new laptop stand. What’s in a laptop stand? Jon Martindale Just before we dive into what I like about my new laptop stand, let’s just define what we’re talking about. The one I have is this overblown, overpriced thing from Egonofis. Gorgeous as it is – it even matches the wood grain of my desk – it’s completely unnecessary. Branch does one which is both sturdy and attractive, with similarly wood-grain inspired styling, and it’s well under $100. It also has near flawless reviews with close to 100 of them, which is rare to find on any product, let alone a laptop stand. Rain Design’s all-metal one isn’t as easy to fold away, but it’s very strong and gives you most of what you need from a laptop stand for less than $50. There are also some capable Amazon Basics models too, which you can have for around $25. Point being, you don’t need to spend over $200 on a laptop stand. You certainly can though, and there may be some quality of life reasons why you might. Useful for third screen Who needs a monitor arm when you can just setup your laptop on a stand as an extra screen. Jon Martindale Until I can afford that super, ultra-wide gaming and professional grade do-it-all monitor of my dreams, I’m a multi-screen guy. I have a big vertical 4K thing from Dell, and an older but still-good Asus high refresh rate display for gaming. But I could always use more screen space. That’s where the laptop stand comes in. I don’t want a screen that’s flat down on the desk – it’ll ruin my posture staring at that thing. But with the Egonofis stand, I can have my gaming laptop propped up next to me with something useful on it. Maybe it’s my email, or the various chat apps I use through Rambox. Whatever I want, it’s right there, and with the stand it’s easy to position it wherever it’s useful or not cluttering up the desk space. Improving ergonomics and posture I am an utter bore when it comes to posture during the work day, but when you’ve gone through months of crippling nerve pain, you’ll do almost anything to avoid it. Even using silly laptop stands that prove to be anything but. I have my desk and monitors setup just how I like them for excellent posture. Proper eye height, proper distance, etc. That’s really hard to do with most laptops, as they’re either down on a desk surface, or you’re crunched up trying to get down to their level. Not so with a laptop stand. It’s not quite a desk converter, but for getting the laptop up off of the desk and at a better, more neutral, posture-enhancing height, it works like a charm. It’s also easier to position the keyboard at a neutral height and angle for comfortable arm and wrist position. Alternatively, I can more easily attach an external keyboard and maintain the right distance from the screen by making the laptop more vertical. Great for controller gaming As silly as this may look, the practicality of bringing your screen closer to you while gaming on a laptop makes it worth it. Jon Martindale A laptop keyboard is an important component for day-to-day use, but if you’re gaming with a controller and trying to relax back to do it, I often find myself sitting too far from the laptop to see the screen as comfortably. The keyboard just ends up pushing the laptop further from me because there isn’t the physical space in my cramped office to put it where I want. With a laptop stand, I can make the most of the space I have, while sitting as close as I like for maximum visual clarity. Using a laptop like a Kindle Proprietary Eponym aside (I’m a Kobo man, myself), I’ve found my laptop stand can also be particularly useful for turning my laptop into a multi-device… device. Either propped on its side, or flipped around in tablet mode, I can lift the laptop up into a comfortable, vertical position and prop it up somewhere within easy reach. Combine it with reader mode and a wireless mouse for easy scrolling, and it’s a great way to set yourself up for reading longform documents, website articles, or even an Ebook. The same goes for watching movies and TV shows, too. With a laptop stand you just have so much more control over how you look at your laptop. That makes it the perfect tool for building out a little media station for watching your favorites. Much better than slouching down and watching it on your lap. My back hurts even writing that. Better thermals A laptop stand allows for better airflow which can increase thermal proficiency. Sincerely Media This one is more important for gaming laptops, but most laptop stands can also act like a basic cooling pad. They don’t (usually) have fans built in, so they aren’t going to increase airflow dramatically, but by lifting your laptop up off of whatever surface it was on, it certainly increases its access to cooler air. Especially if it tends to pull that air in from the underside. This is particularly useful if you want to use your laptop on a bed or otherwise flexible fabric surface that will almost completely block up any intake and exhaust vents your laptop has, causing it to swiftly overheat. Using a laptop stand isn’t perfect, but it’s much better than trying to play games on a cushion. Portability I don’t know about you, but when I travel, I really miss my home office set up. The multiple monitors, the ergonomic display arms, the keyboard tray and standing desk set at just the right height. While I can’t bring all that with me when I travel, I can bring my laptop stand. It’s not the same, and I still miss my usual set up when using it, but if I want to bring a little taste of ergonomic home comforts with me, I now can. It’s even the right wood grain. Regardless of how it looks, though, a laptop stand is an ergonomic enhancer that you can bring with you. Considering the potential for worse posture and bad habits forming when working or living out of a hotel or airport lounge for a while, a laptop stand will now forever be on my travel inventory. It’s that important. Read...

The PM mixed and mingled with some of the world’s most powerful leaders at Apec. Read...

Keyless systems are supposed to make driving more convenient. However, it’s precisely this technology that has become one of the biggest security risks in modern vehicles. Criminals are increasingly using radio devices to extend the signals of car keys and unlock vehicles without their owners realizing. This method is particularly widespread at night and in parking garages. The good news? A simple piece of aluminum foil can help protect your car from such attacks. Here’s how it works and what you can do. How keyless car theft works A smart key (also known as “keyless go” or “passive keyless entry”) continuously transmits an RFID radio signal that’s recognized by your car. As soon as the key is within range, you can unlock, enter, and start the car without even pulling the smart key out from your pocket. This always-on RFID signal is what thieves intercept. Using something called a relay device, they can extend the always-on RFID signal so that it reaches your vehicle even when you aren’t near it. Your car “believes” that its rightful owner is standing next to it, so the doors can unlock and the engine can start. Boom! Stolen. How aluminum helps foil car thieves Aluminum reliably shields electromagnetic signals. Wrapping your car key in aluminum foil creates a kind of miniature Faraday cage that RFID waves can’t penetrate. The smart key’s always-on RFID signal can therefore no longer be intercepted by a relay device. If your smart key is securely stored in aluminum foil or a metal container, your car will remain locked even if thieves are standing right outside the front door with their devices in hand. Using the aluminum foil trick correctly For the aluminum foil protection trick to actually work, the aluminum foil wrapping must be tight and wrinkle-free. Two to three layers are usually sufficient. Here’s how you should proceed: Wrap the key completely in several layers of aluminum foil. Test it! If your car no longer opens, the insulation is working. Alternatively, you can also put your smart key inside a small box that’s lined on the inside and covered on the outside with aluminum foil. Is there a better solution? Aluminum foil is a simple trick that works as an immediate stopgap measure. However, if you regularly park in densely populated areas, or if you park your vehicle on the street at night, or if you travel frequently, then you should consider a more permanent solution. RFID-blocking Faraday pouches are convenient, durable, and protective. They’re extremely affordable and they come in different sizes to best fit your particular key fob. You can find them on Amazon for between $7 to $15, depending on size and brand. Get an RFID Faraday Pouch on Amazon Security experts recommend that smart car keys should never be left near doors or windows, as this is where the signal is most easily intercepted. You should also check whether the passive keyless function on your car can be deactivated. Some manufacturers offer corresponding options via the menu or a key combination. Other smart car security tips include: Park your vehicle in well-lit, visible areas. Use visible anti-theft devices such as steering wheel claws as an additional deterrent. Check the behavior of your key regularly. A change in range may indicate malfunctions or technical problems. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Brilliant display Sleek design and hardware Respectable gaming performance Great speakers Strong battery life Cons CPU and GPU aren’t top of the pack Non-upgradeable memory Our Verdict The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 offers a well-rounded package with plenty of performance and surprising battery life for a 3.3-pound system. The fact that it’s built so well with a good selection of ports, a solid keyboard and trackpad, and a truly great display and speaker pairing make it all the more compelling. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 Retailer Price $1,678.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Asus had a great machine on its hands with the 2024 ROG Zephyrus G14, and the 2025 model brings some commendable updates without messing with the formula. While much remains unchanged in the chassis and display, the 2025 model brings some under-the-hood updates for a boost in graphical performance and efficiency. All of this culminates in a laptop that’s great for work on-the-go, a joy to use, and potent enough for gaming at home with a few tweaks to graphics. The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 being so well rounded may not make it the best laptop for pure gaming, but it makes it an excellent all-arounder. Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: Specs and features CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 270 Memory: 16GB LPDDR5X-7500 Graphics/GPU: Nvidia RTX 5060 8GB 100W Display: 14-inch 2880×1800 120Hz OLED, Glossy, G-Sync Storage: 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD Webcam: 1080p IR Connectivity: 1x USB4 with Power Delivery and DisplayPort Alternate Mode, 1x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 with Power Delivery and DisplayPort Alternate Mode, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x microSD card reader, 1x 3.5mm combo audio Networking: WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: Windows Hello facial recognition Battery capacity: 73 watt-hours Dimensions: 12.24 x 8.66 x 0.64 inches Weight: 3.3 pounds MSRP: $1,799 as-tested ($1,799 base) This test unit with the specs above is a unique Best Buy offering (though a similar config has shown up on Amazon and Walmart from third-party sellers) with lower specs and a lower base price than what Asus offers directly from its store. There, the G14 starts with an RTX 5070, double the memory, and a $2,099 price tag but is otherwise identical. For $2,499, that can bump up to a configuration with a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, an RTX 5070 Ti, and 2TB of storage. That CPU upgrade for the top-tier configuration is notable, as it not only jumps to a different class of CPU but also a very different architecture. It also brings along a much more powerful NPU that pushes the system up into Co-pilot+ territory thanks to 50 TOPS of NPU compute compared to the Ryzen 9 270 NPU’s 16 TOPS. Even with those upgrades, the chip has a lower default TDP (though both have overlap in their configurable TDP ranges) and has the potential to make that configuration more efficient than the one tested here. While the base configuration offers decent value, its 16GB of soldered on memory could become an issue, and the upgraded $2,099 model will likely be more competitive with its extra GPU horsepower and the better longevity it can provide thanks to its 32GB of memory.  For anyone after a gaming laptop that can work well on-the-go, this is an excellent choice. Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: Design and build quality Foundry / Mark Knapp The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is a brilliant piece of hardware. Between its slim, 0.64-inch design, its 3.3-pound weight, and its CNC’d aluminum construction, it feels like a great little laptop. And that’s before considering how nice the design looks and feels. The display has a clean glass cover and swings up on a smooth and firm hinge that still allows one-handed opening. The bottom bezel may be a little thick, and the top bezel isn’t even with the sides, but it’s easy to overlook once you see the display.  The keyboard deck is a lovely piece of aluminum with a very smooth finish and very little flex. It wraps down the side with chamfered corners that improve comfort. And the bottom aluminum panel offers clean seams with the upper portion of the frame. The display lid is smooth and adorned with small ROG branding in one corner and a bold, mirror-finished, diagonal slash across it with integrated lighting.  The system sits on two wide rubber feet that angle the laptop up slightly and provide an air intake channel underneath. Surprisingly, there are no exhaust vents leading out of the hinge and up toward the display, nor are there exhausts above the keyboard or at the sides. The exhaust in the rear sits below the display hinge in very cramped slits and behind the rear rubber foot.  All in all, I’d be happy to have a laptop with this build whether it was a gaming laptop or not. It feels sturdy, smooth, and well polished.  Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: Keyboard, trackpad Foundry / Mark Knapp The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 continues to demonstrate its rocking hardware with the keyboard and trackpad. The keyboard offers flat, square keys with strong stabilization, a firm actuation force, and a modest travel. It can make quick, light typing a little difficult, but I was able to get up to a typing speed of 113 words-per-minute at 98 percent accuracy with little practice in Monkeytype, which is a good result. Slightly more contour to the keycaps would help some, as the force needed combined with the flat surfaces made it hard for me to get up to a great typing speed and accuracy on the keyboard. The arrow keys are small, but at least not cramped into the space that should be home to other keys. Asus also included dedicated volume keys above the function row that can come in handy.  The keys have RGB backlighting that does a good job of lighting up the primary legends on most keys, but they don’t illuminate some of the bigger legends on some keys (like Enter) and they struggle to illuminate legends for secondary functions almost at all. It’s a small and common fumble, but a fumble nonetheless.  The trackpad is lovely. Asus used up just about all the available vertical space and made it quite wide as well. It has a super-smooth glass surface and matches the surrounding metal well for a cohesive look. Depressing it offers a gentle pop with a soft clicking sound.  Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: Display, audio Foundry / Mark Knapp The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 has a brilliant display. It provides a sharp picture with a 2880×1800 resolution across its 14-inch panel. It can run that at 120Hz for smooth game visuals, and it supports G-Sync to avoid tearing. As an OLED display, it also has a very fast pixel response time that makes visuals appear all the more fluid. It’s also a stunner for its color, which covers 100 percent of the DCI-P3 color space. That color is accurate as well with an average dE1976 of 1.08. OLED hasn’t always been known for being bright, but the display here happily reaches up to 401 nits in SDR and was able to hit 631 nits in HDR for a full white screen. For folks with eyes sensitive to alternating current flicker, Asus offers DC dimming support for the display in its Armoury Crate program.  The speakers only enhance the experience further. Asus has packed six speakers into the system, combining four woofers and two tweeters, to provide impressively rich sound. These fire out of the bottom of the laptop and at the sides of the keyboard. Not only does the volume reach uncomfortable peaks without significant distortion or terribly harsh sound, but the bass depth is considerable for a laptop. There can be a little sibilance at max volume, but it doesn’t ruin the experience. The soundstage is even surprisingly wide, with some stereo audio even sounding like it’s coming from outside the bounds of the system. These are simply some of the best laptop speakers I’ve heard, and it’s all the more impressive they’re squeezed into a 14-inch laptop that’s also housing a large battery and high-power hardware. Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: Webcam, microphone, biometrics The web camera on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is decent but not exceptional. It captures decently exposed video with natural color, but even with its 1080p resolution, visuals appear a bit grainy and soft. Having IR sensors for Windows Hello facial recognition is nice, though, providing a consistently quick way to sign on. The three-mic array on the laptop is also decent. It captures my voice with a modest fullness and doesn’t sound overly compressed, but I do sound somewhat distant. It avoids picking up too much background noise, like that of a fan I had running loudly nearby, but it didn’t eliminate the sound of me typing while I recorded.  Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: Connectivity Foundry / Mark Knapp The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 offers up respectable connectivity for a laptop of its size. You’ll find USB-C ports on either side of the system, and both are capable of charging the laptop (requires 20V/5A) or transmitting display data. Only the left one offers USB4 speeds, but the right one connects to the GPU to support G-Sync with its video output. Asus has also put USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports on both sides — this splitting is a lovely gesture for those who want some flexibility on where they plug in accessories.  The system includes a UHS-II microSD card reader on the right side as well. An HDMI 2.1 port and 3.5mm jack on the left side round out the ports. Since the system also comes with its own proprietary charging port, you can run the system on AC power and still keep all the ports freed up for whatever you want. Wireless connectivity is also a plus on the Zephyrus G14. It supports tri-band Wi-Fi 7, and it has proven very fast and stable in my testing, albeit while connected to a Wi-Fi 6 network. Its Bluetooth 5.4 connection has also proven consistent, though it’s getting disappointing to not see Bluetooth 6.0 nowadays.  Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: Performance The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 offers excellent performance thanks to its potent hardware, though it may not be quite as powerful as one would hope from a gaming system. In particular, its CPU performance lags a bit behind many of its competitors, even trailing the 2024 model slightly, though it can still come out ahead next to thin-and-light productivity laptops. One surprising thing is that the Zephyrus G14 never seems to get very hot under load. It does get warm, but the base and keyboard area where you’re likely to rest your hands avoid getting painfully hot. The AMD Ryzen 9 270 inside the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is solid, but not a showstopper. It’s older architecture from AMD, and therefore isn’t showing the kind of single-core or multi-core performance uplift you can get from newer Ryzen AI and Intel Core Ultra chips. Across Cinebench CPU benchmarks, the Zephyrus G14 generally trails the Alienware 16 Aurora, which uses an Intel CPU, though Alienware’s laptop is also much larger and should have the advantage in cooling. Meanwhile, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 can’t keep up with AMD Ryzen AI 9 365-powered Razer Blade 14, but the Zephyrus G14 is also much cheaper. Perhaps the bigger blow is the Intel Core i7-14700HX-powered Lenovo Legion 5i 15IRX10 (at $1,199) dominates the Zephyrus G14 and the rest of the group here in CPU performance The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 puts a stronger foot forward where graphics come into play. It’s not going to be an absolute performance powerhouse considering its running a lower-tier RTX 5060 GPU and doing so in a thinner and lighter chassis than most other gaming laptops. But that actually makes it all the more impressive that it can manage fairly decent performance. In the demanding Port Royale graphics benchmark, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 actually manages to narrowly exceed the much larger Alienware 16 Aurora. Though it’s still clear there’s room for improvement as the two Lenovo systems offer a nearly 20 percent uplift running the same RTX 5060 GPUs. Lenovo has a knack for making the most of the GPUs in its gaming laptops, but that doesn’t excuse Asus for lagging behind. Even with Asus’s Turbo profile boosting performance in this benchmark to 7132 points, Asus trails Lenovo. While 3DMark demonstrated a more extreme scenario where the system is largely bottlenecked by the GPU, actual game benchmarks can show some differences. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 actually manages to flip the script in some cases, having a little extra CPU potency helps it actually step out ahead of the Lenovo LOQ 15, which may offer faster GPU performance but doesn’t have the CPU speed to keep up with the Zephyrus G14.  Unfortunately for the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, some games are so graphically demanding, they can still create heavily GPU-bottlenecked scenarios. That’s the case for Metro Exodus with its Extreme graphics preset turned on. This sees the Zephyrus G14 struggle to break an average of 40fps. The curve here ends up looking a lot more like what we saw in 3DMark’s Port Royale test with the exception of the Alienware 16 Aurora managing to lead the Zephyrus G14, likely thanks to more effective cooling over the course of this longer benchmark.  Cyberpunk 2077 demonstrates another highlight demanding scenario for the GPU, and the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 continues to fall behind here. It does manage a playable average framerate over 60fps at 1080p Ultra, but the beefier systems it stacks up against lead it by a considerable margin, showing that extra cooling can go a long way when you need to run a power-hungry component like the GPU hard. While the Razer Blade 14 demonstrates that a higher-end chip alone can make a difference, the RTX 5060-powered Zephyrus G14 might be a more attractive option for those seeking extra performance in a compact form, especially since it’s available at a substantial discount compared to the higher-end system. Alas, none of the systems provide playable framerates at 1080p with Cyberpunk 2077’s RT Overdrive settings.  To the Zephyrus G14’s credit, Asus does a good job managing thermals. Running 3DMark’s Steel Nomad Stress Test, the Zephyrus G14 maintained 98.7 percent consistent performance over the course of 20 runs. That’s all the more impressive considering that the fans aren’t very loud.  Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: Battery life The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 may have fallen short in performance, but it more than makes up for that in battery life. The system runs on a 73-watt-hour battery, which is sizable for a 14-inch laptop. And Asus pulled all the right levers to ensure that when the system is operating on battery power, it can sip on power. This let it run for almost 13 hours in our video playback test, dramatically outstripping its competition here and offering a marked improvement over the 2024 model. That’s a great showing for a gaming laptop, and it’s helped by Asus’s software automatically ensuring the GPU is disabled on battery power when it’s not needed.  Running on battery power and using the integrated graphics has its downsides though. The system still experiences the same freezing issues I’ve seen for years on AMD’s Radeon integrated graphics. It seems to crop up whenever there’s a call for too much video memory. This will commonly occur while browsing with a window on one half of the screen and playing a YouTube video on the other half.  Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: Conclusion The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 isn’t a perfect machine, but it’s brilliant. For the most part, it’s delivering great hardware with a largely elegant design, solid inputs, ample I/O, a wonderful display, and outstanding speakers. Pairing that with respectable performance and excellent battery life in its class, the Zephyrus G14 proves a very well balanced system that should have the Razer Blade 14 shaking in its boots because Asus’s system is nearly the same size, lighter, and much cheaper. For anyone after a gaming laptop that can work well on-the-go, this is an excellent choice. Read...

I bought a mini PC before I knew what to expect. At first, I thought it would just handle basic tasks, but I quickly discovered how capable these tiny machines can be. Now, in hindsight, there are a few things I wish I’d known sooner. Here are my top five. 1. They’re more capable than you think When I first saw a mini PC, I assumed it would be good only for basic tasks like web browsing, but that was before I discovered just how powerful these tiny machines can be. Today’s mini PCs, especially those with chips like the Intel N97 or N150, are surprisingly capable. Even the smallest machines can support 16GB RAM, quick SSDs, and multiple 4K displays. Processing power is something I thought was only going to be decent in the larger models, but my tiny GMKtek G5 has a maximum operating speed of 3.6GHz, which is very impressive. It runs all the apps and software I’ve ever asked it to, just like a laptop or larger desktop would. 2. They’re great for travel I’d always relied on my laptop for travel, but now I just pack my mini PC. My GMKtec G5 is smaller than a pack of Pop-Tarts and much less bulky. It easily fits in a coat pocket or my backpack and takes up a lot less space than my laptop did. Paired with a foldable keyboard, mouse, and portable monitor, I have a full mobile workstation at my fingertips. Setup doesn’t take long either, just a few minutes. 3. The power draw is very low One thing that isn’t stated enough is how impressively low the power draw is in most mini PCs. Most will idle at between 10-15 watts and rarely exceed 25 watts. That’s far less than an average desktop PC, which typically averages around 60 watts. The low power consumption makes mini PCs ideal for home servers and media centers. You can leave them running all day long without worrying about your electricity bill. They also run relatively cool and quietly, making them a low-maintenance, easy computing solution. Bonnie Bayley 4. Expandability options are very good It’s a common misconception that mini PCs are locked down and you can’t upgrade them, but that’s generally not the case. Most mini PCs come with at least one or two upgradable slots, usually for RAM or storage. It’s not uncommon to find spare M.2 or SATA slots inside, either. Because of that, you can end up with a very capable little computer after upgrading. Some even offer NVMe storage, 32GB of RAM, and even a discrete GPU in some cases. The external options are also strong–you can add USB-C docks, Ethernet adapters, and eGPU enclosures for graphics. If I’d known this earlier, I would’ve considered some of the lower-end models that I dismissed and budgeted accordingly for later upgrades. 5. Not all ports are the same You have to check the specification sheets carefully when buying a mini PC, because not all ports are created equal. For example, some USB-C ports don’t support video output and power delivery, even if they look identical to ports that do, and some HDMI ports are limited to 30Hz at 4K. A good way to learn about your mini PC’s I/O capabilities is to read reviews. They’re a reliable source of information to guide your buying decisions. Related content: I switched to a mini PC—but I’m thankful I knew these 5 things first I swapped my $1,000 desktop for a $300 mini PC and regret nothing Why you absolutely need a mini PC Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Great value Solid display Generous RAM and storage for the price Reasonable webcam and mic Cons Slow Intel N-series CPU No fingerprint reader or facial recognition Middling battery life No keyboard backlight Our Verdict The Acer Aspire Go 15 may be one of the best budget laptops you can buy for under $500, but it makes some compromises to get there. This machine shines with light desktop use, but it isn’t built for demanding tasks. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Acer Aspire Go 15 (2025) Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices The Acer Aspire Go 15 is a 15.6-inch budget laptop that delivers great value for your dollar. With reasonable desktop performance, a nice 1080p display, 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of storage, there’s a lot to like here. But the Aspire Go 15 won’t pass for a premium laptop any time soon. Acer’s choice of budget-tier N-series Intel CPU and a small battery are compromises that were likely necessary to hit this price point. You’ll notice this compromise in day-to-day use. Acer Aspire Go 15: Specs Foundry / Chris Hoffman The Acer Aspire Go 15 pairs an Intel Core i3-N355 CPU with 16 GB of DDR5 RAM and a 512 GB SSD — that’s a good amount of RAM and storage for a $499 laptop. It’s available from both Best Buy and Target. While I was wrapping up the review, Target had it on sale for $429, which is a solid value. Compared to last year’s $299 Acer Aspire Go 15, this year’s model delivers 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage (up from 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage.) There’s been some inflation of laptop prices, but these spec bumps make the pill easier to swallow. This is a good amount of RAM and storage you’d want in a laptop. Anything less can become hard to live with. You could probably get by with 256 GB of storage, Acer is being generous! The big thing holding this laptop back is its Intel CPU and graphics. Intel N-series chips are designed for budget machines. It’s fast enough for basic desktop and productivity application use, but this is a budget CPU experience. Additionally, the Intel graphics hardware here is very slow. This machine isn’t a good fit if you plan on playing PC games or using other 3D apps. Acer chooses to ship this laptop in S Mode, which is a strange decision in 2025. You can’t install software from outside the Store unless you take it out of S Mode, but that just takes a few clicks and is free. Our review model came preconfigured by Acer already out of S Mode. Model number: Aspire Go 15 (AG15-32P-30YE) CPU: Intel Core i3-N355 Memory: 16GB DDR5 RAM Graphics/GPU: Intel graphics NPU: None Display: 15.6-inch 1920×1080 IPS display Storage: 512 GB PCIe Gen4 SSD Webcam: 720p webcam Connectivity: 2x USB Type-C (USB 3.2 Gen 2), 2x USB Type-A (USB 3.2 Gen1), 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x combo audio jack, 1x Kensington Lock slot Networking: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.1 Biometrics: None Battery capacity: 53 Watt-hours Dimensions: 14.29 x 9.44 x 0.92 inches Weight: 3.74 pounds MSRP: $499 as tested The Acer Aspire Go 15 is a great pick if you’re looking for a budget Windows laptop under $500, especially if you can catch it on sale. The screen is solid, the build quality is reasonable, and the desktop performance is good enough for day-to-day application usage. Acer Aspire Go 15: Design and build quality Foundry / Chris Hoffman The Acer Aspire Go 15 is a 15.6-inch laptop made of plastic. It’s a combination of silver — a color Acer calls “Pure Silver” — and black. It’s a classic design. While this is a plastic chassis, it feels solid, there’s no concerning creaking. With a weight of 3.74 pounds, it’s possible to pick the laptop up by one hand on one side and hold it, if necessary. At 0.92 inches thick at the thickest point, it’s a little chunky compared to the average thin-and-light machine, but it’s a fine experience. The keyboard deck has a bit of flex to it, but I wasn’t worried about it. It feels fine for the price. The Aspire Go 15’s hinge feels good and solid, with a nice action. I did have to hold it with two hands while I opened it. But, once opened, the screen stayed firmly in place and didn’t shake around as I typed. You can keep pushing the screen back and the keyboard will tilt towards you. I was able to open it to a 145-degree angle or so. The Acer Aspire Go 15 is also a classic experience in terms of bloatware, with icons like “Booking.com” and “Dropbox promotion” pinned right to the taskbar out of the box. That’s to be expected at this price range, and you can remove it. Acer Aspire Go 15: Keyboard and trackpad Foundry / Chris Hoffman The Acer Aspire Go 15 has a full-size keyboard complete with a number pad at the right. Unfortunately, there’s no keyboard backlighting. That’s a shame, as it’s the kind of nice-to-have feature that would make this laptop easier to use. This machine’s keyboard is quite nice to use. It feels like it has a good amount of key travel, perhaps 1.5mm or so. Thinner laptops often skimp on the key travel to get even smaller, which makes the typing experience less satisfying. The trackpad also feels pleasant – it’s a good size, the surface is smooth enough, and it clicks down with a satisfying clunk rather than a noisy click. It’s good for the price range. Acer Aspire Go 15: Display and speakers Foundry / Chris Hoffman The Acer Aspire Go 15 has a 15.6-inch IPS display with a 1920×1080 resolution and up to 300 nits of brightness. It’s not a touchscreen. It’s matte and not glossy, so it will be better outdoors and in challenging lighting conditions than a glossy, reflective panel. The display looks solid. It’s a good size. Budget laptops tend to be 13 inches or smaller. A 15.6-inch 1080p display on a budget laptop is a great find. It has good viewing angles, which isn’t guaranteed on a budget laptop display. More expensive often deliver higher resolution displays, OLED panels, touchscreens, more brightness, and better color accuracy, but this is a good display for the price. The display’s brightness is a problem: I wanted to crank it up to 100% to make it readable in normal conditions. And that affects the battery life, as we’ll see. This machine’s speakers are okay. They’re on the quiet side, but there’s enough volume to hear them clearly in a quiet room. I test each laptop’s speakers I review by playing Steely Dan’s Aja and Daft Punk’s Get Lucky. While the instruments in Aja weren’t particularly crisp, the high notes didn’t run together. Get Lucky sounded fine but there was less bass than even the average laptop speakers — not a surprise for the price here. Acer Aspire Go 15: Webcam, microphone, biometrics  The Acer Aspire Go 15 has a 720p webcam. It’s fine, but it’s nothing special, a 1080p webcam will look better. It’s more than good enough for light video meetings, which is what matters. However, there’s no physical webcam shutter switch. Acer says this machine has “dual digital microphones” that “ensure voices are captured with precision.” This laptop’s microphones sound pretty good, actually. With a pair of headphones, this machine is nicely equipped for online meetings and video chats. This machine doesn’t have any biometric hardware — no fingerprint reader or facial recognition for easy Windows Hello sign-ins. It would’ve been nice to at least see a fingerprint reader. Without one, you’ll likely be typing a PIN to sign in each time you use your laptop. Acer Aspire Go 15: Connectivity Foundry / Chris Hoffman The Acer Aspire Go 15 has a good selection of ports. On the left side, it’s got two USB Type-C ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, and a USB Type-A port. On the right side, you’ll find a second USB Type-A port, a combo audio jack, and a Kensington lock slot. This machine charges via USB Type-C, which is convenient, but the USB Type-C ports are only on the left side. It would be nice to have a USB-C port on each side for flexibility. Additionally, the USB-C ports are USB 3.2 Gen 2, while the USB Type-A ports are USB 3.2 Gen 1. You won’t find Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 here, either. That’s not a surprise given the price and hardware class, and people who would be looking at this machine probably won’t need Thunderbolt 4 speeds anyway. This machine doesn’t have a microSD card reader or Ethernet jack, so you’ll need a dongle or another laptop if those are priorities. Under the hood, you’re getting Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 wireless hardware. That’s a little dated, but is still reasonable. Wi-Fi 6E isn’t critical, and Wi-Fi 7 is still just getting started. Acer Aspire Go 15: Performance The Acer Aspire Go 15 isn’t a speed demon on paper. Any Intel CPU with an “N” in its name is suspect, as this is a slower budget line. But, with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB SSD, this machine punches above its budget laptop weight. And, in light usage — apps like web browsers, Microsoft Office, and Spotify — the laptop delivered reasonable day-to-day performance. Intel’s N-series CPUs have become better than I remembered them being for light desktop usage, but the CPU and GPU show their slow speeds when we put the machine through our standard benchmarks to see how it performs. Foundry / Chris Hoffman First, we run PCMark 10 to get an idea of overall system performance. With an overall score of 3,851, the Acer Aspire Go 15 and its Core i3-N355 CPU were well behind other machines without Intel N-series CPUs. Foundry / Chris Hoffman Next, we run Cinebench R20. This is a heavily multithreaded benchmark that focuses on overall CPU performance. It’s a quick benchmark, so cooling under extended workloads isn’t a factor. But, since it’s heavily multithreaded, CPUs with more cores have a huge advantage. With a multithreaded score of 1,760, this machine’s eight-core CPU proved it isn’t ideal for CPU-heavy workloads. Foundry / Chris Hoffman We also run an encode with Handbrake. This is another heavily multithreaded benchmark, but it runs over an extended period. This demands the laptop’s cooling kick in, and many laptops will throttle and slow down under load. The Acer Aspire Go 15 took 2,663 seconds to complete the encode process — that’s over 44 minutes. It’s an unusually slow score. Foundry / Chris Hoffman Next, we run a graphical benchmark. This isn’t a gaming laptop, but it’s still good to check how the GPU performs. We run 3DMark Time Spy, a graphical benchmark that focuses on GPU performance. With an overall 3DMark Time Spy score of 731, the Intel graphics in this machine were unusually slow. If you want to do any PC gaming or use any professional apps that need GPU acceleration, this isn’t the right laptop for you. Overall, the benchmarks demonstrated that this laptop’s hardware isn’t particularly fast. It delivers reasonable day-to-day desktop performance with lightweight apps, but it isn’t ideal for more demanding workflows and you’ll notice the speed difference on this machine compared to one with a higher-end CPU, even when using basic desktop apps and web browsers. Acer Aspire Go 15: Battery life The Acer Aspire Go 15 has a 53 Watt-hour battery, which is on the small side. In day-to-day use the battery life seemed below what Acer’s reviewer guide promised and what I was led to expect in other reviews. The problem? I was cranking this 15.6-inch display up to 100 percent brightness, and that was hurting battery life Foundry / Chris Hoffman To benchmark the battery life, we play a 4K copy of Tears of Steel on repeat on Windows 11 with airplane mode enabled until the laptop suspends itself. We set the screen to around 250 nits of brightness for our battery benchmarks. This is usually a best-case scenario for any laptop since local video playback is so efficient, and real battery life in day-to-day use is always going to be less than this. The Acer Aspire Go 15 lasted an average of 401 minutes before suspending itself. That’s over six and a half hours, but not quite seven hours. Acer says to expect about ten and a half hours in this test, and I don’t doubt I would have seen those numbers if I lowered the brightness. In real-world use, you may get less battery life than you’d like from this machine unless you’re prepared to turn the brightness down more than you may like. Thankfully, this being a 15.6-inch laptop, you may be planning to use it as a desk and plug it in frequently enough. Acer Aspire Go 15: Conclusion The Acer Aspire Go 15 is a great pick if you’re looking for a budget Windows laptop under $500, especially if you can catch it on sale. The screen is solid, the build quality is reasonable, and the desktop performance is good enough for day-to-day application usage. Even the webcam and mic are decent, you’d look and sound fine using these in online meetings. But the compromises are real. This isn’t a premium experience, the battery life is below what I’d like to see, and this machine isn’t ready for you to put serious demands on its CPU or GPU. But let’s be honest: This machine will be more than enough for many people’s needs. And I’m thrilled to see 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage in a budget laptop like this one. Read...

A gamer’s preference for their keyboard switches is a personal affair. You’re almost always guaranteed to start a debate if you ask a room full of gamers which they’d prefer: linear or clicky switches, with each side claiming that their choice is the best. But beyond personal preferences, there are some real differences worth considering that make me lean towards the linear switches for all my gaming needs. Let me explain. The difference between clicky and linear switches The difference is denoted in the naming. Linear switches travel straight down with a consistent resistance. It’s a smooth ride downwards. Popular names include Cherry MX Reds and Gateron Yellows, and there are equivalent switches from Razer and SteelSeries. Clicky switches, on the other hand, are all about registering the, well, clicks. They have a tactile bump and audible click when the key activates. Common clicky switches are found in Cherry MX Browns and Kailh Box Whites. Because of these differences, linear and clicky switches feel different. Linear switches feel smooth and precise whereas clicky switches feel like they are giving deliberate feedback with each keystroke. The reason I prefer linear switches for gaming is that they have the edge in raw performance. Let’s consider how that’s the case now. Why linear switches win out in competitions Without a bump to overcome, keys register more quickly with linear switches, especially during rapid or repeated presses. Most linear switches activate around 1.2-2mm into a keystroke whereas clicky switches typically need more travel, about 2-2.2mm before registering. The difference is particularly noticeable in games that require super-fast reactions. Linear switches tend to be faster, which is why most pro gamers prefer them. Linear switches also require less actuation force. They can get away with 45-60 grams of force or, in some speed variants, as little as 35-45 grams. Clicky switches, on the other hand, generally need 50-60 grams actuation force. This is because extra force is needed to overcome the tactile bump. This is significant for player endurance. Less actuation force means players are less likely to suffer finger fatigue, so linear switches are the better choice for marathon gaming sessions. Pexels: Alena Darmel Linear switches also come off better when you consider the reset point of a key–the point at which the key can be pressed again after being released. Linear switches have a reset point very close to their actuation point while clicky switches have a bigger gap between actuation and reset with a longer travel between presses. That said, clicky switches aren’t completely without merit for performance, as they offer more certainty in actuation. The tactile bump and sound offer players indisputable confirmation when a key registers. That can be a big benefit in games where deliberate inputs matter more than speed (like MMOs and some strategy games). Some people perform better with that kind of clarity. It’s also just about the feeling Beyond performance, it also just comes down to how the switches feel while I’m gaming. The consistent resistance through each keystroke on linear switches just feels more comfortable, especially for extended gaming sessions. The smooth action puts less pressure on my finger joints and lets me use a lighter touch on the keys. That’s much less fatiguing when I’m playing games that require sustained key pressing–for example, using the arrow keys to move forward. Pexels: Alexander Kovalev For actions like stutter-stepping or quick double-taps on the WASD keys, the uniform feel of linear switches is crucial. Without a tactile bump, my fingers don’t have to work against additional points of resistance, so presses feel very smooth. Clicky switches, by comparison, demand a more deliberate keystroke. The force builds to overcome the bump, then drops off rapidly, but this variable resistance can cause fatigue in longer gaming sessions. That’s why I’m sticking with my linear switches for the foreseeable future. Related content: Best gaming keyboards 2025: The top budget, mid-tier, RGB, and more What are hybrid switches in gaming mice? I can’t stop thinking about Logitech’s radical Superstrike gaming mouse Read...