It’s been a few months since I started using Starlink for home internet. And apart from some minor flaws and complaints—like weak upload speeds and the occasional global service outage—I have to admit it’s generally better than I expected it to be. One of the best things about Starlink is how normal it feels. Once you get it set up, it behaves just like regular internet: it’s fast, effective, and perfectly suitable for gaming and other latency-sensitive tasks. No, Starlink isn’t right for everyone. But it is good for what it is! In fact, here are some of the ways I find it even better than conventional home broadband internet (including ADSL, cable, and fiber). Starlink is available just about everywhere Jon Martindale / Foundry, Starlink While I might look enviously upon the upload (and download) speeds of my fiber-powered friends and colleagues, it’s not like everyone truly has multi-gigabit home internet. Indeed, outside most major cities, getting even gigabit fiber can be something of a challenge. If all you have access to is older-style cable or fiber broadband—or even ADSL over copper telephone lines—then Starlink’s performance is going to blow that away… and Starlink is just about everywhere. If your local internet options suck, then it can be mighty tempting. Okay, okay, Starlink technically isn’t available everywhere. But just take a look at Starlink’s US availability map. It’s ubiquitous! Across the entirety of the Americas, there are only a handful of countries where it isn’t available. (The reasons why are complex and beyond the scope of this article.) Starlink, by its satellite nature, is widely available because it doesn’t require much local infrastructure. It’s just you, your dishy, and the thousands of low-orbiting satellites that you connect to. For standard home internet, where you are dictates what kinds of internet service you can get. Not so with Starlink. As long as you aren’t living in Russia, China, Afghanistan, or North Korea, you’ve got Starlink now (or will get it at some point). Starlink goes with you when you move Evgeny Opanasenko / Unsplash Moving to another house? No problem. Just take your Starlink dish and router with you. You’ll need to update your address on your Starlink account so it’s all above board, but other than that you can maintain the same service package at the same price with no interruptions. Compare that to cable or fiber internet, which tend to lock you into contracts with termination fees (depending on how predatory your ISP is) and usually require you to return your equipment. You then need to sign up for another internet service at your next home. I love the hassle-free convenience of Starlink. I can just plug everything in, wait for the dish to connect to the satellite network, and I’m immediately online and ready to go. That means I don’t have to wait for service to be re-established or new hardware setup kits to arrive. Starlink is faster than some broadband Jon Martindale / Foundry, Speedtest Getting Starlink was a big speed boost for me. I went from an average speed of 65 Mbps with fiber to about 150 Mbps with Starlink. It’s even better during off-peak hours, as I’m able to hit 300 Mbps later in the evening and have even gotten close to 400 Mbps a few times. Although that’s still a far cry from gigabit fiber—not to mention multi-gigabit options in some major cities—it’s faster than low-tier broadband plans that cost about the same, or costs less than similar-speed broadband plans. (Your mileage may vary based on where you live, and gigabit internet may not even be worth it for you.) Furthermore, Starlink’s latency is better than other satellite internet options, making it more suitable for online games and video calls. Upload speeds do leave me wanting, though, capping out at around 45 Mbps (with an average of about 20 Mbps at the time of writing). That’s plenty for day-to-day use, but it does take a bit longer when I do stuff like uploading the odd video now and again. I can deal with that. You can use Starlink while on the go Roadpass / Unsplash For me, Starlink is a home internet solution. But for others, Starlink is high-speed internet wherever they go… and they really do go places. Check out any of the Reddit communities dedicated to remote living—think van life enthusiasts, house boaters, sailors, anyone who works in remote locations like oil rigs—and you’ll see they’re all using Starlink to get online and enjoy high-speed internet wherever they happen to be. I’ve even seen people strap Starlink to their cars just so the kids have great internet speeds on long drives and trips. Of course, Starlink’s Roaming packages are more expensive than its Residential plans on a per-gigabyte basis, and you’re capped in ways that the standard residential and business options aren’t. But for people who want to live a remote, nomadic lifestyle or need to travel often for work, Starlink is a unique solution that works fantastically well at delivering high-speed internet (almost) anywhere and everywhere. Starlink isn’t vulnerable to local outages Jon Martindale / Foundry Has your home internet ever gone down because a local substation blew or because someone cut through a buried fiber cable while renovating their yard? That simply can’t happen with Starlink. Sure, you have a cable that runs from your Starlink router (inside) to your Starlink dish (outside), but unless someone cuts that—there’s no way someone’s doing that by accident—you’re pretty much safe. That isn’t to say Starlink doesn’t have its own issues. When I first signed up, I was immediately hit by Starlink’s first major global outage in a long time. I’ve also experienced a few other spotty occasions since then, usually because a tree branch leaned in front of my dish or inclement weather got in the way of my satellite view. But on the whole? Starlink is surprisingly reliable and isn’t susceptible to the kinds of outages that most home internet users face. Starlink’s router is actually pretty good Jon Martindale / Foundry Some internet service providers send out legitimately good routers and modems with their internet service packages, but many don’t—especially when you’re on a cheaper plan. (Learn more about choosing a good router and getting started with it.) Although Starlink is very much not a cheap internet solution and absolutely should ship with a decent router, I’m pleased to report the one you get is indeed solid. Not excellent—and certainly worth replacing if you’re a power user—but if you’re just looking for a capable Wi-Fi 6 router to go with your fancy new space internet, it’s good. I have Starlink’s third-generation router and it’s plenty fast for most modern devices. Although it’s missing the newer Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 protocols, I’m okay with that because I don’t have any cutting-edge devices that could even take advantage of it. My Starlink router is tri-band, giving me plenty of network space for hundreds of devices. The router also comes with a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports, and the Wi-Fi range is capped at 3,200 square feet. That’s enough for all but the largest of homes, although some walls and obstructions can get in the way, and the lack of external antennas can make it harder to orient for a better signal. But for most apartments and open homes, it should be plenty. Need more range? It supports mesh networking, and Starlink sells cost-effective nodes for expanding your network if needed. Further reading: I spent $24 to future-proof my home Wi-Fi forever Read...

Explainer - The US government shutdown is into its second week. If you`re planning a trip to the US, what do you need to know? Read...

Two full SH1 closures next month will complete the Brynderwyn Hills recovery, setting Northland up for smoother travel this summer. Read...

Kye Rowles and Patrick Yazbek are discovering the many faces of the 2026 World Cup co-hosts – from world-class players and searing summer heat to deportations, travel bans and a uniquely American gun culture. Read...

TechHive Editors Choice At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Impressive cleaning capabilities Epic battery life Easy waterline retrieval means you can put the pole away for good Endless configuration options available in the app Cons Heavy to lift and unwieldy to handle Relatively useless skimming feature Very expensive Our Verdict The price tag on this robotic pool cleaner might be hard to swallow, but Beatbot’s latest high-end offering has few flaws and an extensive warranty that arguably justifies it. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra Retailer Price $2,799 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices The feature-rich Beatbot AquaSense Pro has been a top seller in the robotic pool cleaner space since its launch, but Beatbot hasn’t been resting on its laurels. The all-new Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra reviewed here is, to put it simply, more, and in every dimension. Is this even more expensive follow-up too much of a good thing? It all depends on how much you’re willing to shell out to escape the tedium of cleaning your pool yourself. Specifications The AquaSense 2 Ultra borrows most of its design cues from the AquaSense Pro I reviewed in October 2024 (which is still available for purchase). It’s a cetacean-inspired design, with fat wheels, treads, and two spinning brushes in between. The Ultra is also much larger and has a new, black color scheme. Weighing 29 pounds, it is also decidedly heavier than the 24-pound Pro, especially when you take it straight out of the pool, when the water-filled bot can hit 45 pounds. It’s bigger, too, in pretty much every way which (spoiler) makes maneuvering it in and out of the pool and onto its charging dock difficult. The Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra (right) is a beefy upgrade from the Beatbot AquaSense Pro we reviewed in October 2024.Christopher Null/Foundry All that heft comes in service of some serious firepower (waterpower?), including a boasted 27 sensors that include ultrasonic, infrared, and AI-powered video to map the pool and actively hunt for debris. It’s the first pool robot that, following a standard full-floor sweep, scans for remaining leaves with a camera the way you or I would with our eyes and a net. Beatbot says the machine can recognize 12 types of leaves by tree type, with more to come via over-the-air firmware updates. The Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra is an exceptional robotic pool cleaner with an extremely long-lasting battery. A 13,400mAh battery powers the unit to up to 6 hours of running time on the pool floor and 10 hours on its surface. A contact-based charging dock similar to the one that shipped with the Pro is included, so you don’t need to physically connect a cable to top up that battery. Lastly, the Ultra has a dual-band (2.4- and 5GHz) Wi-Fi adapter onboard, so you can control it with Beatbot’s mobile app. But that’s possible only while the robot is on top of the water or out of the pool, as Wi-Fi signals don’t travel far through water. Installation and setup The Beatbot Aquasense 2 Ultra features a front-mounted camera that searches your pool for any debris it might have missed while patrolling your pool. It will then go back and vaccum up whatever it found.Christopher Null/Foundry While most robotic pool cleaners require very little setup beyond an initial charging, the Beatbot Ultra has a little work for the user to do. The charging stand sets up easily, with two legs that snap into place. The more onerous work is setting up the two side brushes. These are small horizontal wheels with rubber brushes positioned in the upper front corners of the robot. They’re used primarily when it’s operating as a surface skimmer and as bumpers for when the robot hits the wall of the pool. These wheels are bare out of the box, so it’s up to the user to wrap the two rubber brush strips around them. This is achieved by stretching each strip around the wheel and affixing two loops on either end of the strip to a protrusion on the wheel. This takes a little trial and error and some patience, but I got it done in a matter of minutes. You’ll need to install these side brushes on the Beatbot Aquasense 2 Ultra after you take it out of the box.Christopher Null/Foundry You’ll also find a retrieval hook in the box (which you shouldn’t need) and a cover for the robot, which is handy for storage. This is the first time I’ve seen this as part of any robotic pool cleaner bundle. The app sets up quickly over Wi-Fi, being a matter of two button presses on the robot and walking through some basic configuration steps in the app. Using the Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra Much like the AquaSense Pro, the Ultra can be configured via buttons on the device, via the mobile app, or both. The onboard controls are more basic, with four buttons for cleaning floor-only; floor and walls; floor, walls, and surface; or a custom mode configured in the app. To start the robot, just power it on, pick your mode, set it flat on the pool deck for a few seconds, and then place it into the pool. It will spin to scan the pool from the surface to get its bearings and then sink to the bottom to start its work. the AquaSense 2 Ultra has four basic control buttons on its top surface.Christopher Null/Foundry The Ultra’s specific operation depends on the mode you set, but if you’re running the most comprehensive option, the robot will do a full sweep of the floor, clean the walls, and skim the surface. After a full sweep of the floor, the robot’s AI debris detection gets to work. This uses the front-mounted camera to literally look around the pool for leaves it might have missed. And it really does that, scooting around randomly until it catches a glimpse of debris on camera, then it adjusts its course to roll over it, stop, then roll back and forward again to make sure it got it. The good news is that the Ultra is an exceptional cleaner. The unit specifies battery life of 4.5 hours, although as noted above, I easily got 6 hours with it in the water, and my pool was completely free of debris after just 3 hours (I evaluated it with both organic and synthetic test material). I also tested its AI detection mode by adding additional test leaves after the 3-hour mark, scattering them around the pool to see if the robot could find them. Of the 10 additional test leaves I added, the robot picked up all but one before its battery died—and I witnessed it just miss picking that leaf up when it veered a bit too far to one side of it. The Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra’s charging dock. Christopher Null/Foundry While the robot is excellent on the floor, it is not overly effective on the surface, as was the case with the AquaSense Pro. The robot’s design and its narrow profile (compared to standalone skimmers) means floating debris was often pushed out of the way by the bow wave of water in front of the robot rather than being sucked into its mouth. The new side brushes on this model are supposed to help prevent debris from escaping to the sides, but they weren’t effective at overcoming the power of the wave the bot pushed in front of it. In fact, my testing of the skimmer feature showed that it only captured about 40 percent of the test debris, with the rest being left behind or sinking to the bottom of the pool. That was about the same result I got with the AquaSense Pro. The app lets you fine-tune just about everything about how the Ultra runs, specifying 0, 1, or 2 cleanings each of floor, walls, and surface (20 possible combinations in all), or you can pick from a quick AI-only mode (a search-and-destroy as described above), a MultiZone Mode designed for pools with multiple large stepped areas, or an eco mode that cleans the floor every two days. Each of these are configurable in the app, and then selectable by pressing the custom mode button on the robot’s control panel. The AquaSense 2 Ultra has thick treads and robust scrubbing brushes..Christopher Null/Foundry Every mode offers the option to dispense a water clarifier during the cleaning process, but I don’t use this type of solution in my pool and did not test it; clarifier solution is not included with the device. Upon completion of a run, the Ultra returns to the surface and docks against the wall of the pool, where it will float for about 15 minutes. If you don’t retrieve it within that window, the robot will then float freely while remaining on the surface of the pool for easier retrieval. (The Park button on the app will call it back to the wall, provided there’s sufficient battery power.) This waterline retrieval option is one of the best features of both the Ultra and the Pro. Needing to clean debris from this two-sided basket is a minor hassle.Christopher Null/Foundry Debris is stored in a two-piece basket similar to the one on the Pro. It’s relatively easy to clean, though having to clean two different chambers adds a small amount of hassle to the process. The bigger issue is the robot’s nearly 30-pound weight, which is considerably more when it’s full of water. This, combined with its gargantuan size, means it’s difficult to maneuver into and out of the pool, and I found it virtually impossible to avoid getting my lower body wet while retrieving it. After each run, the Beatbot app pushes a mobile notification and then logs the area cleaned and the length of the run. Floor-cleaning runs also include a map of the pool that’s generated as part of the log. The map isn’t all that useful (and it is in a different orientation each time) but it does at least give you some idea of the robot’s level of intelligence. For what it’s worth, the map it generated mostly looks like my actual pool. The Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra draws a map of your pool and logs its activity.Christopher Null/Foundry Lastly, an on-demand remote control is included in the app, though this can only be used when the robot is on the surface, where it’s in Wi-Fi range. You might find this effective when there are a few wayward leaves you want to pick up and the robot is already skimming; but given this robot’s limited debris-skimming abilities, I found it easier to wait for the leaves to sink or to just grab a net instead. Should you buy the Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra? With an MSRP of $3,550 ($2,779 at Amazon at the time of this review), the Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra is easily the most expensive pool robot I’ve tested. Fortunately, Beatbot’s impressive three-year whole-unit replacement warranty takes some of the risk out of a purchase. But to be honest, it’s probably more robot than most pools need. It’s definitely more than I need, and I have a fairly large pool to clean. And while it’s easy to fixate on that pricey bottom line, don’t underestimate this machine’s significant weight and bulk. Owners of more petite pools might find the Ultra just too large to wrestle with—even though it will do an outstanding job of keeping the pool sparkling clean. This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best robotic pool cleaners. Read...

TL;DR: Need a solid backup laptop or something light for travel? This refurbished Lenovo 2-in-1 Chromebook is just $74.99 with free shipping, and it flips between laptop, tablet, tent, and stand modes. If your current laptop is your “main character,” this Lenovo Chromebook is the trusty sidekick. For just $74.99 (MSRP $475.99) with free shipping, this refurbished Lenovo 11.6? 2-in-1 Chromebook 300e 2nd Gen (2018) makes for a perfect backup device, travel companion, or light daily driver. It’s built to multitask. The touchscreen folds into four modes—laptop, tablet, tent, and stand—so you can type, swipe, binge, or present, depending on your needs. With 4GB RAM, 32GB of storage, and Chrome OS, it handles everyday tasks like streaming, browsing, Docs, and Gmail. The 11.6? anti-glare display keeps things easy on the eyes, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth keep you connected. And because it’s a Grade B refurbished model, you might spot a light scuff or two—but at this price, that’s part of its charm. Whether you want something to toss in a bag for travel, a kid-friendly homework machine, or a no-stress backup computer, this little workhorse has you covered. Get this refurbished Lenovo 2-in-1 Chromebook for just $74.99 (MSRP $475.99) with free shipping. Lenovo 11.6? 2-in-1 Chromebook 300e 2nd Gen (2018) 4GB RAM 32GB SSD (Refurbished)See Deal StackSocial prices subject to change. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros DIY installation option can save you lots of money Trusted Neighbor is a great feature Nest cameras and video doorbell support facial recognition and can distinguish between people, pets, and vehicles Step-up Yale smart lock supports fingerprint recognition as well as PIN codes You can add your own Z-Wave smart home devices Cons You must use the Nest app to fully manage the Nest security cams and video doorbell There is no support for Amazon’s Alexa ADT Base doesn’t include a display Monthly service fees can add up quickly Our Verdict The ADT Smart Home Security System emphasizes security over convenience, but there are enough smart home elements for us to recommend it, whether you set it up on your own or pay for ADT’s white-glove installation. Keep a close eye on the services you sign up for, as they’re not all mandatory. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: ADT Smart Home Security Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices ADT is one of the oldest home security companies in the U.S., and the ADT Smart Home Security product reviewed here is its latest offering that melds home security with a robust smart home system. As with every ADT product, you must commit to paying for professional monitoring of this system, where the staff at a central office keeps track of emergency events and will offer to dispatch police, fire, and medical personnel as needed. But unlike many of ADT’s other products, you can either have ADT’s technicians install the system in your home or you can do it yourself. This is a security-first system, but smart home features don’t completely take a back seat. ADT sells smart light bulbs and smart plugs as well as Nest smart thermostats (more on that in a bit), and there’s a Z-Wave radio in the ADT Base that forms the heart of the system, so you can add other smart home components—including third-party products—on your own. ADT does recommend you buy Z-Wave devices that are on its approved list, and anything tied to security monitoring (sensors, smart locks, cameras, etc.) must be an ADT-authorized device, but the company doesn’t bar you from trying anything outside the monitoring realm. In other words, you’re not buying into a completely walled garden. ADT offers DIY installation as an option, and the company has a deep well of tech support articles, instructional videos, and even real-time video tech support to guide you. In this respect, ADT Smart Home Security is closer to the systems from Abode, Ring, or—at the high end—Vivint than, say the security-only products from Arlo or SimpliSafe (I should note, however, that Vivint does not offer DIY installations, although you can add self-installed smart home components to it later, with restrictions similar to ADT’s). You can create smart home automations (or Rules, as ADT calls them) in which any ADT device or any Nest device can act as a trigger that causes any other supported smart home device to perform an action, with the option of setting conditions. These are very much like IFTTT (If This, Then That) routines, and they’re very easy to create in the ADT app. For example, you can set a Rule that when a door is opened (a trigger) between sunset and sunrise (a condition), the Base will trigger an enrolled smart light to turn on (an action). Rules can also have multiple triggers, conditions, and actions. You can also delay any action by minutes and/or seconds. Installation options The ADT Base that forms the heart of the ADT Smart Home Security System has Wi-Fi, LTE, DECT, and Z-Wave radios onboard. LTE is for broadband backup, DECT is for ADT’s sensors, and Z-Wave allows you to add various smart home devices, including smart locks. Michael Brown/Foundry While ADT offers DIY installation as an option, and the company has a deep well of tech support articles, instructional videos, and even real-time video tech support, a representative told me only 10 percent of its customers go that route, so I elected to have an ADT technician install everything for this review. The cost to install the 20 components that made up this configuration was $1,300. Installation costs will of course vary depending on which components you decide to buy. (Scroll down for a list of everything included in this review system.)  The Portland Police Bureau also assesses a residential alarm permit of $25 per year, which was not included in that previous figure (ADT expects you to secure that yourself). Such municipal fees are increasingly common, so you should check your locale. The most important thing to remember is that paying ADT to install your Smart Home Security system won’t bar you from adding other components to it by yourself later. ADT loaned this system for my review, along with a full year of professional monitoring (which would otherwise cost $64 per month (I’ll break down that fee later). I’ve been living with the system since the middle of February 2025 to get a thorough understanding of its capabilities. Specifications You can add Google’s current Nest cameras (not the recently announced Gemini-powered models) to the ADT Smart Home Security System. The 3rd-gen Nest Cam Indoor is shown here.Michael Brown/Foundry ADT partners with Google on many of the smart home and home security components it offers with its systems, and the company sent the current generations of the Nest Indoor Cam, Nest Doorbell (wired, battery), and the Nest Cam with Floodlight for this review. You’ll find a complete list of supported products at the preceding link. These are not the new Gemini-powered products that Google announced on October 1. ADT has not said if it plans to offer the new cameras and incorporate Gemini support later on. It’s also worth noting here that Google took an equity stake in ADT in 2020, investing $450 million in the company. This tight Google integration means you cannot use this system with Amazon’s Alexa smart home platform. Device costs (a la carte, bundles are discounted) DeviceCostADT Base $249.00ADT Carbon Monoxide Detector (2)$120.00ADT Door/Window sensors (multipack)$50.00ADT Glass Break Sensor (2)$99.98ADT Keychain Remote$20.00ADT Motion Sensor$40.00ADT Premium Door/Window sensors (multipack)$80.00ADT Smoke Detector$60.00ADT Water & Temperature Sensor$60.00ADT Window Stickers (4)$0.00ADT Yard Sign $0.00Google Nest Cam (indoor, wired)$99.99Google Nest Cam with Floodlight$279.99Google Nest Doorbell (battery)$179.99Yale Assure Lock 2 Touch w/Z-Wave 800 module$299.99Municipal Electrical Permit (will vary by locale)$42.00Total as-reviewed hardware cost$1,680.94Total installation cost (optional)$1,300.00Total up-front cost of reviewed system$2,980.94 To secure your entry doors, ADT offers the Yale Assure Lock 2 with a Z-Wave 800 module for $300 when it’s purchased with a system. The lock has a backlit numeric keypad along with a conventional key cylinder (just one key is supplied) and a fingerprint reader onboard (with support for up to 20 fingerprints). Locking or unlocking the Yale lock can simultaneously arm or disarm the security system respectively, and this can be done with a registered fingerprint, a PIN, or with ADT’s app. You can also buy a Yale Assure Lock 2 with a previous-gen Z-Wave module, but without a fingerprint reader, for $210. ADT initially provided the latter device, and then shipped the former, newer device when it became available. I installed it myself, and the process was a breeze. The physical installation was the usual, somewhat clumsy process involving a mounting plate and threading the power cord from the exterior escutcheon through the door’s bore hole and plugging it into a socket on the interior escutcheon, but ADT’s software made onboarding and enrolling users quick and easy. The Yale Assure 2 with Z-Wave 800 is an excellent smart lock with an onboard fingerprint reader, a numeric keypad, and a key cylinder.Michael Brown/Foundry Since a Google Nest Cam with Floodlight must be hardwired to your electrical system, ADT brought in a licensed electrician to install it, accounting for $450 of the $1,210 total installation fee. Like most home security vendors, ADT’s technicians are not licensed electricians; they can deal with low-voltage components—like video doorbells—but they won’t touch anything connected to your home’s 120-volt circuits. The ADT Base The $249 Base forms the heart of the ADT Smart Home Security system. The cylindrical device is 4.5 inches in diameter and 5.7-inches high (115mm x 145mm), with a numeric keypad on top for arming and disarming the alarm. You can also arm/disarm the system in ADT’s app or with an optional keychain remote ($20). The Base is powered by an AC adapter and has a backup battery that ADT says should provide 24 hours of operation in the event of a power outage. It has a decidedly mild siren onboard (85dB measured at 10 feet from the Base), and an LTE radio to provide broadband backup in case your primary internet connection fails. The cylindrical ADT Base is the heart of the ADT Smart Home Security system. You can arm and disarm the system using the keypad on top if you don’t use ADT’s app or the optional key fob for that purpose.Michael Brown/Foundry You’ll add the Base to your Wi-Fi network (both 2.4- and 5GHz networks are supported, giving you flexibility as to where to install it). The ADT Base also has Bluetooth and Z-Wave Long Range radios onboard. Bluetooth is used primarily for initial setup, but the Z-Wave radio can be used to expand a security system into a complete smart home system that includes smart locks, lighting controls, and other components. ADT also offers a secondary keypad ($99) with dual-band Wi-Fi and battery backup if you want to be able to arm/disarm the system from another location in your home. If you have a large home, you might want to put one near whichever door you use most often. ADT says the “ADT Base and Keypad are ADT-branded hardware,” so their resemblance to the gear Google provided with its own Nest Secure system—introduced in 2020 and killed in 2024—might be coincidental. Sensors You’ll want ADT’s two-piece, battery-powered door/window sensors ($20 each) mounted to at least your entry doors and lower-floor windows. When the magnetic field between the two pieces is disrupted after the door or window is opened, the electronics in the business end of the sensor send a signal to the Base. The tech who installed the system recommended putting them on every door and window, but I elected to put them only on my three entry doors and the four most easily accessed windows (most of my windows are 5 feet or more above the ground, so you’d need a ladder to climb into them). Carbon monoxide detectors such as this are critical components in any smart home security system. Michael Brown/Foundry Given that these sensors are surface mounted, and therefore completely exposed, they aren’t as attractive as the type where the electronic element fits into the door frame and the other element (a magnet) disappears into the door itself. If the Base is in an armed state when the magnetic field between any sensor is broken, it will send a signal to the ADT’s monitoring facility that there’s been a possible break-in. If you’re returning home and don’t disarm the system before you open the door, you’ll have a 30-second window to disarm the system and prevent that signal from being sent. ADT also offers a Premium sensor ($40 each) that has a button you can press to temporarily bypass the security system, so you don’t need to disarm when you leave your home while others in the family remain and then re-arm it after you close the door. These Premium sensors can also detect shocks, which would occur if an intruder broke a window to gain entry without otherwise opening that window. ADT’s tech installed four of these. There’s a large, 5 x 6-foot (HxW) fixed picture window in my living room, so the tech installed a glass-break sensor in that room in case an intruder decided that would be a good way to get into the house (as unlikely as that would seem—it would make a lot of noise). He also glued one of the Premium door/window sensors to that window, even though it doesn’t open. If an intruder broke the window, it would trigger the alarm even if the dedicated glass-break sensor didn’t. You might find the door/window sensors ADT uses to be unsightly. For doors, I much prefer the type that disappear into the door frame and the door itself.Michael Brown/Foundry These sensors communicate with the Base using a 1.9GHz DECT frequency, a digital standard originally created for cordless phones (the acronym stands for Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications), so their signal traffic doesn’t compete with your 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network, but they don’t travel as far as sub-GHz Z-Wave signals. They run on 3V CR2 batteries. ADT also included three battery-powered life-safety devices in this review system: a smoke detector ($60, installed outside my kitchen) and two carbon monoxide detectors ($60 each, one installed in my kitchen, near my gas range, and the other in my basement, near my gas-powered furnace). ADT’s $60 Water and Temperature Sensor was the final security sensor ADT left me with. I had it placed in the basement next to my water heater, and it will notify me via the ADT app if water appears there, warning me if that appliance or my washing machine develops a leak or if my basement otherwise floods. The temperature sensor in that device will warn me of frigid conditions that could lead to a burst pipe. Money-saving strategies Ultimately, you have a large degree of control over the cost of ADT’s system, since you can pick and choose which elements to install up front and which ones to add later (ADT also offers various discounted bundles of equipment). In addition to installing the system yourself, another way to reduce the total system cost is to install ADT’s motion sensor ($40) and/or its glass-break sensor ($50) in some rooms, instead of placing a door/window sensor on every window in your home. ADT’s motion sensor is designed to ignore pets that weigh less than 85 pounds.Michael Brown/Foundry The motion sensor can be programmed to be active only when the system is in an armed-away state, but you can also program it for a “convenience” mode that turns on connected smart lighting at night. If you have pets, it will ignore motion caused by animals weighing less than 85 pounds. My dog weighs only 10 pounds, so I can’t say how accurate that claim is, but I haven’t experienced a false alarm triggered by motion. The glass-break sensor, meanwhile, is triggered by the sound of glass breaking (duh) within a range of 2 to 25 feet in the same room. If that happens while the system is any of its three armed states (Away, Stay, or Night), it will trigger the siren in the base station, alert the monitoring service, and send an alert to your smartphone. The sensor can be attached to a wall or ceiling (it must be mounted at least 6.5 feet above the floor) with the provided screws or double-sided tape. Each of these sensors will also send an alert to the ADT app and to ADT’s central monitoring office if they’re tampered with. Opting out of ADT’s extended warranties–its Quality Service Plans–or selecting the least expensive version–will also reduce your monthly outlay, but then you’ll be on the hook should something go wrong with ADT’s equipment after the initial 90-day warranty runs out. Where you won’t be able to save money with ADT is by monitoring the system yourself. You’ll need to pay at least $25 per month for “intrusion monitoring,” in which ADT staff will respond to security events such as a break-in by requesting a local police dispatch, and “Life safety monitoring,” in which ADT will dispatch first responders in the event of a fire, carbon monoxide, or medical emergency. I’ll dig deeper into ADT’s fees in a bit. Security cameras My home isn’t wired for a doorbell, so the 2nd-gen Nest Doorbell ADT installed is running on its internal battery.Michael Brown/Foundry While ADT describes the $180 2nd-gen Google Nest Doorbell as battery-powered, it can easily replace a wired doorbell if you have one (in which case, and ADT tech can connect it to your existing transformer and chime). Read our Google Nest Doorbell review for more details. ADT offers the AC-powered Nest Cam ($99) for indoor surveillance. The Nest Cam with Floodlight ($280) was the final element of video security ADT provided for this review, delivering exterior smart lighting as well as security.   Each of these Google Nest cameras records video in 960 x 1280-pixel resolution and stores it in the cloud. To reduce the amount of video you must sift through, you can configure the cameras in the ADT app, so they detect motion and record only when the ADT system is armed. I’ll discuss how the ADT and Google Home apps work together in a moment. Smart home accessories ADT’s embrace of Z-Wave shows the company takes the smart home seriously. In addition to the Z-Wave locks on offer, you can also buy Z-Wave-powered smart plugs and plug-in dimmers ($50 each) and LED light bulbs ($30 each). That said, you’ll find much cheaper alternatives on the open market; remember that ADT won’t bar you from installing third-party Z-Wave products. Again, as you might expect, devices that tie into the security element of the system—such as smart locks—are a different matter. And ADT recommends you only install devices that it has tested and approved. ADT also offers a Netgear Nighthawk mesh Wi-Fi 6 router ($299); the 2nd-gen Google Nest Hub ($100), enabling you to arm and disarm the security system with voice commands, among other things; the 4th-generation Nest Learning Thermostat ($280); or the simpler Google Nest Thermostat ($130). I’ve been more than happy with my Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium, so I didn’t have either of those Nest devices installed. You can install either thermostat yourself or hire ADT to install it for you. ADT Smart Home Security System user classes The ADT Smart Home Security system recognizes several types of users who have varying levels of permission, with Primary users having the most access.Michael Brown/Foundry The system recognizes three classes of users: Family, Trusted Neighbors, and Helpers & Guests. The Family class is subdivided into three other categories: Admin, the Primary user with the most privileges, including the ability to grant other users access to the system; Standard users, with permission to access professional monitoring, arm/disarm the system, and limited access to other settings; and Basic users, who can only arm/disarm the system. You can register the fingerprints of any user except for those in the Basic class. The Admin can also create a “duress” code that will disarm the system but notify ADT’s professional monitoring service that there’s an emergency in the home. If an intruder forces you to disarm the system, for example, you could enter the duress code to disarm the system as instructed, but ADT would then dispatch the police to the home to help you. Helpers & Guests are people to whom you want to grant access to your home on a more limited basis—think housekeepers, dog walkers, contractors, and the like. They’ll be invited to download the ADT app and they can use their assigned PIN on the smart lock, but their access can be restricted to a single day, a range of dates, or a recurring schedule. ADT brought in an outside electrician to install the Google Nest Floodlight Cam. The company’s techs generally install only low-voltage devices. Michael Brown/Foundry Trusted Neighbors are just what they sound like: People you trust with access to your home, who live nearby, and are willing to help manage your home while you’re away. While you can also limit their access to your home to a schedule, a far more useful scenario has ADT notify them of events so they can respond in your absence. These notifications can be set to be active all the time or only when your system is in an Armed Away state. If your Nest Video Doorbell detects a package left on your porch, for example, ADT can notify your neighbor, so they can pick up the package and bring it into your home (provided you’ve given them that access, of course). Or if the system detects a water leak, it can notify your neighbor of that problem so they can go over and shut off the water valve. You’ll receive the same event notifications, and you’ll receive alerts when your trusted neighbor arrives at your home. Trusted Neighbor is a great feature that I hope ADT’s competitors will copy. Using the ADT Smart Home Security System A battery in the ADT Base keeps it running in the event of a power outage, while an LTE radio keeps the system linked to the internet–and ADT’s monitoring service–should your regular broadband connection fail.Michael Brown/Foundry Aside from the Nest video doorbell and security cameras, which I’ll get to in a moment, the user experience with the ADT Smart Home Security System is mostly typical for this class of product. You’ll issue each authorized user a 4- to 8-digit PIN, which they’ll use each time they arm or disarm the system at the Base. They’ll use the same with an ADT-authorized smart lock, which will automatically disarm the system when that PIN is entered on the lock’s keypad. If they download the ADT app, they’ll also be able to lock/unlock the door and arm/disarm the system with their fingerprint (assuming you’ve set them up that way) or the app on their smartphone. You’ll press a button on the Base (or the optional keypad, ADT’s keyfob, the ADT app, or with a “Hey Google” voice command) to arm the system in one of its three armed states: Away, Stay, or Night. That Night state is unusual; most security systems have just two armed states: Stay (or Home) and Away. In Armed Away mode, an exit delay gives you time to open a door to leave your home after you’ve started the countdown to its fully armed state. Since the home will presumably be unoccupied after you leave, motion inside the home or opening any window while the system is Armed Away will trigger the system to go into an alarm state. When you return home, an entry delay will start a countdown before the system goes into an alarm state. The countdown will give you time to enter your PIN at the base inside the home. You can also present your fingerprint on an authorized smart lock unlock it and disarm the system, press the disarm button on the ADT key fob, or disarm with the ADT app. The ADT Home Security System has three arming modes: Away, for when no one will be home; Stay, for when some residents might be away, but others are home; and Night, when everyone is expected to be home for the duration. Michael Brown/Foundry Armed Stay mode also has entry and exit delays, but motion inside the home will not trigger an alarm (opening a window, on the other hand, will put the system into an alarm mode). A exit delay is useful when one member of the household needs to leave the home while other occupants remain inside. The person leaving can arm the system and have a short amount of time to open a door and leave without triggering the alarm. Opening any window after the exit delay has expired will trigger the system to go into an alarm state, but opening any door will trigger a fresh entry/exit delay. Armed Night mode is similar to Armed Stay, except that there is no entry or exit delay. Motion inside the home won’t trigger the alarm, but opening any door or window will. This mode should be used when everyone is home for the night. A backlit icon on the Base will inform you if the system is ready to be armed or not. If the system is ready, for example, you’ll see an icon of a home backlit by a green LED. But if any doors or windows are open, the Base will show an icon of a house with a slash through it, backlit by a yellow LED. You can override any of those sensors and arm the system anyway. Once the door or window is closed, it will return to its “armed” state. But if you have something like an air conditioner in a window, such that the system is reporting the window as open, you’ll need to override it every time you arm the system until you take the unit out and close the window again. You can arm and disarm the ADT Smart Home Security system with this optional key fob, which also has a panic mode that can summon emergency help from ADT’s professional monitoring service.Michael Brown/Foundry Similar icons and colored backlights indicate other alarm modes (armed away, stay, or night; entry/exit delay; or panic), and there a dedicated buttons for summoning police, fire, and ambulance services via ADT’s professional monitoring service. ADT was beta-testing a new feature that allows registered users to unlock a smart lock—and disarm the system—based on their phone’s location and the phone’s familiar-face detection. You can already unlock the smart lock and disarm the system using the facial recognition features of the Google Nest cameras (particularly useful with the Nest Doorbell). Monthly ADT service charges As I’ve mentioned, while you can save some money by installing an ADT Smart Home Security System yourself, you can’t use with without paying ADT for monitoring the system, among other things. You should also be aware that you’ll be obligated to sign a 36-month contract (24 months for California residents) for professional monitoring. Should you end the contract before it has run it’s course, ADT will bill you for 75 percent of the monthly charges remaining in the initial term. As this review system is configured, professional monitoring would cost a consumer $63.99 per month. That figure consists of fees in seven categories, as outlined below: Ongoing service Monthly fee 24/7 Intrusion Monitoring$24.99 Smart Home Automation $5.00Integrated Smart Solutions Subscription (optional)$10.00Nest Aware with Video Verification$10.00Quality Service Plan – Comprehensive$10.00Supplemental Quality Service Plan $4.00Total monthly service charge$63.99 Here’s a description of what each of those services are: 24/7 Intrusion Monitoring: If a break-in alarm or a life-safety sensors (smoke, CO, or water detector) is triggered, ADT’s monitoring center sends you an alert to confirm there is an emergency. If you respond that there is–or if you don’t respond at all–ADT will request an emergency dispatch of first responders. Smart Home Automation: You’ll need to pay this fee to take advantage of the Z-Wave radio in the ADT Base to create rules, scenes and schedules. Integrated Smart Solutions Subscription: This is optional add-in entitles you to unlimited concierge-style remote sessions with ADT specialists for Wi-Fi and network diagnostics, as well as smart home optimization across all the devices connected to the ADT Smart Home Security System, including non-ADT devices. Nest Aware with Video Verification: This is the subscription service that Google used to offer buyers of its Nest cameras and smart home device. The service offered through ADT does not include Gemini support. It includes 30 days of event-based video history stored in the cloud for each Nest camera and video doorbell that’s included in the ADT system (you can add more cameras later at no additional charge). For an additional $7 per month (a feature not included in this review system), you get 60 days of event-based video storage in the cloud; plus, up to 10 days of 24/7 continuous video (wired cameras only). Quality Service Plan – Comprehensive: This is an optional tiered extended warranty plan that “covers repair/replacement of ADT-supplied equipment due to malfunction” up to a pre-discount maximum of $1,000 in equipment. When the value of the equipment exceeds $1,000, you’ll be assessed a supplemental fee (see below) The Comprehensive tier included with the package reviewed here includes security, life safety, automation, and video devices. The more basic Essential tier includes only security and life safety devices, while the top-of-the-line Advanced tier covers the same devices as the Comprehensive tier, but adds “annual virtual preventative maintenance checkup, annual smart home consultation, and certain available equipment discounts after the first year.” Supplemental Quality Service Plan: This is a supplemental fee when the pre-discount retail value of the ADT equipment you install or have ADT install exceeds $1,000. It starts at $2 per month if the equipment retail value is between $1,000 and $1,300 and is capped at $42 per month if the value of that equipment is $5,200 or more. Google Home integration You can configure most of the Nest Cam settings in the ADT app, but you’ll need to open the Google Home app to access all their settings.Michael Brown/Foundry You can see thumbnail images from the Google Nest cameras in the ADT app and tap those images to see a live stream from the selected camera. You’ll also see indicator showing the camera’s battery status. Tap a Saved Media icon and you’ll get a timeline of recorded clips (curiously, camera events are not including the ADT app’s event history). Clips can be filtered by date range, by camera, and/or by the type of event that triggered the recording: Activity or animal, Doorbell, Face, Motion, Package, Person Talking, or Vehicle. You can also change at least some camera settings in the ADT app, the most important of which are Notifications. You can choose to be notified of motion caused by animals, people, or vehicles; any motion; if someone rings the doorbell; or if a package is within the camera’s view. You can also turn off all notifications, but most people wouldn’t go that far. That’s the extent of camera configuration options within the ADT app. The Google Home app (left-hand screenshot) takes full advantage of the Nest Cams’ facial recognition features, whereas the ADT app (middle and right-hand screenshots) only identifies people as a “face” and a “person.”Michael Brown/Foundry That means you’ll need to fire up the Google Home app if you want more—including such important Nest Aware features as facial recognition. The ADT app will only notify you that a person has come into one of the Nest cameras’ field of view or if a face has been detected. The Google Home app will let you know that person’s name (after you’ve initially identified them, of course). Should you buy an ADT Smart Home Security System? From a security perspective, the ADT Smart Home Security System checks all the boxes: There’s a full complement of high-quality security and life-safety devices with professional monitoring to protect your family and your property. ADT’s Trusted Neighbor feature that lets you give neighbors permission to disarm your security system to enter and check on your property is a great feature. You can add or subtract from the components included in this review to either save some money up front or increase your home security profile. Taking the DIY installation option, meanwhile, will save you a significant amount of money up front. The monthly cost of professional monitoring, which is just a bit higher than what Vivint charges, won’t really change based on the components you install. The ADT Smart Home Security System is also very good from a smart home perspective, but it’s not the best smart home system on the market. This is primarily due to its dependence on Google’s cameras and video doorbell. While we have high opinions of those products, as you can read in our reviews linked above, needing to juggle two different apps to manage your home security system is by no means a showstopper, but it’s not ideal. The absence of support for Amazon’s Alexa, on the other hand, could be for some. The presence of a Z-Wave radio in the ADT Base coupled with the fact that you can acquire non security-related  third-party Z-Wave components and install them yourself is a major plus. This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart home systems. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Simple design with good build quality Lots of physical connectivity Great GPU and game performance for the price Cons Moderate CPU performance Lacks latest connectivity such as Wi-Fi 7, USB4, etc Disappointing motion clarity from 144Hz display Short battery life Our Verdict The Lenovo LOQ 15 is effectively a portable RTX 5060 graphics card. Its game performance is a good value for its current sale price, but a few flaws drag down the laptop experience. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Lenovo LOQ 15 Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Budget gaming laptops are in a pickle. Gamers often expect them at a price around $1,000 or less, but between rising GPU prices and internal trade wars, shipping a laptop with discrete graphics for under $1,000 isn’t easy. The result is laptops like the Lenovo LOQ 15. It’s successful in delivering solid game performance for the price, but Lenovo cuts a lot of corners to make that possible. Lenovo LOQ 15: Specs and features The Lenovo LOQ 15’s specifications feel built around the Nvidia RTX 5060, which takes center stage. The AMD Ryzen 7 250 is an acceptable processor, but based on the older Zen 4 architecture, which has consequences when it comes to performance. Model number: 15AHP10 CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 250 Memory: 16GB DDR5-5600 Graphics/GPU: Nvidia RTX 5060 8GB (115W TGP) NPU: Up to 16 TOPS Display: 15.6-inch 1,920 x 1,080 IPS with 144Hz refresh rate, G-Sync Storage: 512GB M.2 PCIe 4.0 solid state drive Webcam: 5MP with electronic privacy shutter Connectivity: 3x USB-A, 1x USB-C with 100 watts of Power Delivery and DisplayPort 1.4, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x Gigabit Ethernet, 1x 3.5mm combo audio jack, 1x barrel plug power adapter Networking: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3 Biometrics: None Battery capacity: 60 watt-hours Dimensions: 14.17 x 10.19 x 0.94 inches Weight: 5.29 pounds Operating System: Windows 11 Home Price: $809.99 The laptop also sticks with just 16GB of RAM and a 512GB solid state drive, both of which are really the bare minimum for a gaming laptop in 2025, regardless of price. At least the price is attractive. Although it carries an MSRP of $1,299.99, it’s currently sold for $809.99 through Lenovo’s website. Lenovo offers an upgrade to 32GB for $65, and an upgrade to 1TB of solid state storage for $60. The SSD upgrade is a must-have. Lenovo offers a variety of alternative LOQ 15 configurations, new and old, so pay close attention to the specifications of any model before you buy. This review covers the late 2025 LOQ 15 model 15AHP10. It’s successful in delivering solid game performance for the price, but Lenovo cuts a lot of corners to make that possible. Lenovo LOQ 15: Design and build quality Foundry / Matthew Smith Lenovo’s PC gaming sub-brand, Legion, has earned a solid reputation in recent years—but the LOQ 15 isn’t part of it. Or is it? Keen-eyed gamers might notice the LOQ logo shares the same stylized “O” found in the Legion logo. In any case, the LOQ 15 definitely lacks the attractive design of Lenovo’s Legion laptops. It’s instead a simple gray machine with minimal branding. If Lenovo swapped the branding to IdeaPad and sold it as a budget desktop replacement, well, I don’t think anyone would bat an eye. All of which is to say: the laptop looks a bit drab. Functionally, it’s about what anyone would expect from a 15-inch desktop replacement. It’s a thick machine, measuring up to 0.94 inches in profile, and it weighs in at 5.29 pounds. It’s only 14 inches wide and 10 inches deep, however, which are common dimensions for a 15- or 16-inch machine. As a result, the laptop fits snugly in my backpack’s laptop compartment. Build quality is adequate. Faux-metallic plastic is the material of choice. The chassis is reasonably rigid but some flex can be found along the keyboard, as well as when opening or closing the display. It’s good enough for a budget machine, but it doesn’t stand out. Lenovo LOQ 15: Keyboard, trackpad, mouse Foundry / Matthew Smith Keyboard quality is often a highlight for Lenovo’s laptops, but the LOQ 15’s keyboard didn’t leave the usual positive impression. I think the amount of key travel is fine, but the bottoming action felt more subtle than other recent Lenovo laptops. I’d like both tactile and audible feedback. If you like a quiet keyboard, though, you might enjoy it. While the key action wasn’t my preference, the keyboard layout is a positive. Lenovo squeezes in a keyboard with a numpad. Despite that, the primary alphanumeric keys are generally large, while the numpad keys are slimmer than usual. The keyboard also provides oversized arrow keys, which I think is a good move for a gaming laptop. As with most budget gaming laptops, the touchpad is just sort of… there. It measures about 4.5 inches wide and three inches deep, which isn’t large for a 15-inch laptop. And while the surface is responsive enough, it feels inexpensive. The touchpad provides a physical mouse action, but it’s shallow and seems hollow. With that said, these downsides are common for a budget gaming laptop. PC games are often played with an external mouse, so the touchpad becomes less of a priority. Lenovo LOQ 15: Display, audio Foundry / Matthew Smith The Lenovo LOQ 15 ships with a 15.6-inch 1080p IPS display with a 144Hz refresh rate. And honestly? It’s a bit of a disaster. See, there’s one specification that stands out as rather odd on Lenovo’s website. It lists “25ms.” No context is provided, but I expect this is meant to be the panel’s pixel response time. And when it comes to pixel response times, well, 25 milliseconds may as well be an eternity. And here’s the real problem: this specification wasn’t my first indication that the panel was a problem. Instead, I noticed something was fishy while moving windows around the display on the Windows desktop. Normally, a 144Hz IPS panel will look crisp in motion. But on the LOQ 15 I noticed huge, smeary trails following text and icons. I noticed a similar issue in games, which invariably looked more like a 60Hz panel (or perhaps even worse) than a 144Hz display. That’s a big problem. It would be reasonable, of course, to expect even a budget gaming laptop to ship with a display that’s good for gaming. But that’s not what I saw from the LOQ 15. But hey, at least the display supports Nvidia G-Sync. So that’s something. Motion performance aside, the IPS panel is otherwise a typical example of the breed. Color performance is decent, but the contrast ratio is low due to the display’s inability to reach a true, inky black level. Because of that, the display is a better choice for bright, colorful games than for darker, more atmospheric content. The display is also rather dim even at maximum brightness, so it’s uncomfortable to use in a brightly lit room. Audio, meanwhile, is delivered by a pair of two-watt speakers. They’re not going to impress but do manage to provide a healthy maximum volume and reasonable clarity in most situations. They will become muddy and harsh when listening to music at high volumes but they’re fine for games where audio presentation isn’t as critical.   Lenovo LOQ 15: Webcam, microphone, biometrics There’s not a lot to say about the Lenovo LOQ 15’s webcam and microphone. It ships with a 5MP webcam that offers acceptable image quality for Zoom calls, but it’s nothing special. The same can be said of the dual-array microphone, which is fine but doesn’t stand out. An electronic privacy shutter is available. Biometrics, on the other hand, are no-go. That’s typical for a budget gaming laptop, but something you’ll typically find if you spring for an alternative priced around $1,000 and above. Lenovo LOQ 15: Connectivity Foundry / Matthew Smith The Lenovo LOQ 15 has a lot of connectivity. It includes three USB-A ports, one USB-C port with Power Delivery and DisplayPort, HDMI 2.1, Ethernet (RJ-45), and a 3.5mm combo audio jack. Power is delivered over a barrel-plug connector. This is a wide range of connectivity that can handle most situations. An SD card reader is the only option notably missing, but SD card readers aren’t common on gaming laptops. However, the available connectivity is basic in terms of technical specifications. The USB-A ports all support USB 3.2 Gen 1 with 5Gbps data speeds. The USB-C port is USB 3.2 Gen 2 with 10Gbps of data. There’s no Thunderbolt and no high-data-rate USB. Also, the USB-C port’s Power Delivery only reaches 100 watts, which isn’t enough to fully power the laptop at load. To be fair, this is all more-or-less the norm for a budget gaming laptop. It’s not reasonable to expect cutting edge connectivity in a laptop that has Nvidia discrete graphics, yet retails under $1,000. The LOQ 15 also sticks to Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 for wireless connectivity. Wi-Fi 7 is the latest standard, and many laptops support it, while budget machines often get by with Wi-Fi 6E. Wi-Fi 6 is a much older standard at this point and it lacks the high-speed 6GHz band that was introduced with Wi-Fi 6E. Lenovo LOQ 15: Performance The Lenovo LOQ 15’s internals pair an AMD Ryzen 7 250 processor with Nvidia’s RTX 5060 discrete graphics. The Ryzen 7 250 is an eight-core, 16-thread processor with a maximum clock speed of 5.1GHz. The RTX 5060, meanwhile, has 8GB of VRAM and a maximum graphics power of 115 watts. This core duo is flanked by 16GB of DDR5-5600 memory and 512GB of solid state storage. Foundry / Matthew Smith First up is PCMark 10, and you might notice something odd about the results. The LOQ 15 actually crashed mid-way through the benchmark, at the moment the Nvidia GPU had to be engaged, despite efforts to adjust settings (like turning off Nvidia Optimus and G-Sync) to smooth things over. This is not a novel issue for the LOQ 15. PCWorld reviews have, on rare occasions, run into issues with PCMark 10 failing to finish a benchmark run for opaque reasons. Still, the Lenovo LOQ 15 did report Productivity a score for the Essentails portion of the benchmark, which is the first half, and PCWorld has records of those scores posted by other laptops. So, that is what you see above. And, truth be told, it’s not too exciting. The Essentials tasks—which include web browsing and video conferencing—are important, but not exactly difficult for a modern Windows gaming laptop. Foundry / Matthew Smith Let’s move on to a more illuminating benchmark: Cinebench 2024. This is a heavily multi-threaded CPU test that benefits from lots of high-performance cores. The AMD Ryzen 7 250 has just eight cores, however—which isn’t all that many in 2025. On top of that, the Ryzen 7 250 is based on the Zen 4 processor architecture, not AMD’s newer Zen 5. The Cinebench 2024 results suffer as a result. The multi-core score of 818 isn’t terrible but, when compared to a range of gaming laptops, it’s certainly towards the lower end of what’s available. Foundry / Matthew Smith Next up is Handbrake, a program that can transcode a variety of video formats. We use it to convert a feature length film from .MP4 to .MKV format, a task which takes roughly six minutes on the Lenovo LOQ 15. That once again is towards the higher end of what’s available from a modern gaming laptop. However, the Ryzen 7 250 is competitive with Intel Core 7 chips like the Core 7 240H, as well as older hardware like the Intel Core i7-13650HX. Foundry / Matthew Smith It’s clear the Ryzen 7 250, though a decent performer for a budget gaming laptop, isn’t going to set records. But what about the Nvidia RTX 5060 mobile? It’s arguably the most important piece of silicon in the laptop, as it contributes the most to game performance. 3DMark Fire Strike returned a score of 11,779, while Port Royale (a ray traced benchmark) reported a score of 7,529. These results are a bit of a mix. On the plus side, the Lenovo LOQ 15 provides good performance for an RTX 5060 laptop. The RTX 5060 also posts modest but noticeable improvements in both benchmarks. On the other hand, though, the RTX 5060’s gain over the RTX 4060 is slim for a new generation of hardware. It’s there, but it’s slim. Foundry / Matthew Smith Moving on to real games, we first come to Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and an older title most modern gaming laptops can handle with ease. The LOQ 15 is no exception, as it averaged 118 frames per second at 1080p and the Highest detail setting. The LOQ 15’s score is unremarkable for a gaming laptop with RTX 5060, though. Perhaps we’re looking at a CPU bottleneck, as the competitive systems that score better in this game also beat the LOQ 15 in CPU benchmarks. Foundry / Matthew Smith Metro Exodus is also an older title, but one that’s still difficult for modern laptops to run at the Extreme detail preset. Here, the LOQ 15 managed to reach an average of 49 frames per second, which is a solid result. The Alienware 16 Aurora with RTX 5060 isn’t nearly as quick. The LOQ 15 with RTX 5060 also has a commanding lead over older RTX 4060 laptops, which cluster around 40 FPS on average. Foundry / Matthew Smith We wrap things up with Cyberpunk 2077. Though the game has a reputation for demanding system requirements, the LOQ 15 didn’t have much trouble, as it managed to reach an average of 91 frames per second at 1080p and the Ultra preset without ray tracing. The system-slaying Overdrive preset tanked performance down to just 17 FPS. But that’s hardly a surprise, as even RTX 5080 laptops barely nudge over 30 FPS at that preset. It should be noted that games with DLSS 4, like Cyberpunk 2077, can reach much better performance with DLSS 4 and frame generation engaged. For example, the LOQ 15 averaged only 36 FPS at Ultra when ray tracing was turned on—but DLSS 4 with 2x Frame Gen boosted performance to 99 FPS. One final hardware concern worth mentioning is the laptop’s 16GB of RAM and 512GB of solid state storage. The RAM should be enough for most modern titles, but it doesn’t leave much room for future-proofing. The 512GB SSD, on the other hand, is already borderline unusable for a gaming laptop. Just three or four modern games, like Fortnite or Call of Duty, will fill up the drive. You’ll need an external SSD or a high-speed Internet connection that makes installing and un-installing digitally owned titles less painful. Lenovo LOQ 15: Battery life and portability The LOQ 15’s lower price forces a concession in battery life. It provides just 60 watt-hours of capacity. That’s not a lot of capacity for a gaming laptop—or any modern Windows laptop, really. The HP Victus 15 has a 70 watt-hour battery, for example, and the Dell G15 has an 86 watt-hour battery. On the plus side, the LOQ 15 supports Nvidia Optimus switchable graphics. That means the Nvidia RTX 5060 can be turned off in favor of the integrated AMD Radeon graphics in less demanding situations. Foundry / Matthew Smith I measured just over five hours of battery life in our standard battery test, which loops a 4K clip of the short film Tears of Steel. That’s not a lengthy result. With that said, however, it’s about what I would expect from a modern gaming laptop. As the graph shows, some competitors that have larger batteries turn in even less appealing results. Lenovo LOQ 15: Conclusion The Lenovo LOQ 15 could be a decent budget gaming pick if not for one serious issue: the display. I noticed serious ghosting and blurring while using the laptop. This was an issue both in-game and also on the Windows desktop. It’s a shame, because the LOQ 15’s performance level is respectable for its price tag, but I can’t recommend the laptop unless you don’t want to use the included display and instead intend to use the laptop with an external monitor. Indeed, I think that’s arguably the one appealing use case for the LOQ 15. You could just use it as a portable RTX 5060. At $809.99, the LOQ 15 isn’t that much more expensive than a desktop RTX 5060 paired with a PCIe dock and power supply, and it’s way easier to travel with, or even move around your house. Gamers should also be aware that though the LOQ 15 is inexpensive, you arguably get more value if you can spend around $1,000 to $1,200. For example, the Lenovo Legion 5 with an AMD Ryzen 7 260, Nvidia RTX 5060, OLED display, and 512GB SSD can be had for $1,150, or $1,215 with a 1TB solid state drive. A $350 to $400 price leap is nothing to scoff at, but a laptop like the Legion 5 is a far more well-rounded system that should keep you happy a few years longer than the LOQ 15, making the higher price worthwhile if you can stretch your budget. Read...

Intel’s next-generation mobile processor, “Panther Lake,” builds incrementally on the excellent “Lunar Lake” chip populating laptops right now. But there’s something odd afoot: a “16-core, 12 Xe graphics cores” version that could be Intel’s answer to AMD’s Ryzen AI Max, complete with multi-frame graphics generation powered by AI. Intel has officially revealed its new Panther Lake architecture, and it gives enthusiasts a lot to chew on: a return to the performance (P-cores), efficiency (E-cores), and low-power efficiency (LP E-cores) cores of Intel’s first Core Ultra chip, Meteor Lake. Intel has returned with a fifth-generation NPU capable of 50 TOPS and an image processing unit (IPU) that actually uses AI for some functions. Intel’s “Xe3” GPU is worth some discussion all by itself, with its awkward branding and powerful multi-frame generation that will potentially elevate frame rates three or four times what they were before. Can Panther Lake address mainstream laptops, handheld PCs, and this new breed of “AI workstations” AMD’s Strix Halo is aiming for? Well, with three separate processors, maybe. Intel’s confidence in its 18A manufacturing process may be a bit overblown, however, as several portions of Panther Lake are still being manufactured overseas, including the 12Xe version of the new, disaggregated (separate) GPU tile. In terms of performance, we know some further details. Intel says that Panther Lake’s single-threaded performance should be 10 percent higher than Lunar Lake at the same power. Compared to both Lunar Lake and Meteor Lake, Intel’s Panther Lake offers more than 50 percent better multithreaded performance, Intel says. Intel is also claiming that the total Panther Lake system-on-chip will consume 10 percent less power than Lunar Lake, and demonstrated a trio of laptops running a Core Ultra chip from each generation to back that up. Some of this will be due to the design of the chips; some will come from the process technology, including the 18A manufacturing process that’s become a critical part of Intel’s future. A summary slide of the features Intel is offering inside Panther Lake.Intel Intel launched Lunar Lake at Computex 2024, and we had Lunar Lake benchmarking completed by late September. (Intel’s been talking up Panther Lake for over a year, too.) Intel representatives were quite clear that CES 2026 in January will be the launch event for Panther Lake laptops, and they will come to market soon after. I suspect that Panther Lake will be marketed as the Core Ultra Series 3, but that’s just an educated guess. “Panther Lake literally combines the power efficiency of Lunar Lake and the performance of Arrow Lake in a product family, and we’re using Intel 18A to bring these architectures together,” Jim Johnson, the senior vice president in charge of Intel’s Client Computing Group, said at Intel’s launch event in Phoenix. Intel is also quite proud of its 18A process, the foundation of Panther Lake, which Intel fellow Tom Petersen called the most expensive die Intel has ever made. “We can confidently say Intel Foundry is in production on the only two nanometer class process that was developed and will be manufactured here in the United States,” Kevin O’Buckley, the senior vice president and general manager of Intel Foundry Services. Intel’s Panther Lake will be available in multiple configurations. Is this the Core Ultra X?Mark Hachman / Foundry Intel’s Panther Lake: what are the features of its three chips? Intel typically describes the architecture of its upcoming processors during its “Tech Tour” conferences like the one it held to describe Panther Lake near Phoenix, then provides the speeds, features, and prices of the actual processors you’ll be able to buy at launch. This was a combination of the two: some details we know, and some we don’t. Contrast that to Qualcomm’s launch event of the rival Snapdragon X2 Elite: we know how fast each chip is and how many cores are inside them, but not the deep details of their architecture. Right now, Intel’s “Panther Lake” consists of three chips, primarily consisting of the new “Cougar Cove” P-core and the “Darkmont” E-core and LP E-cores: An 8-core chip, with 4 P-cores, 4 low-power (LP) E-cores; 4 Xe3 GPU cores and 4 ray-tracing units; and memory interfaces to either 6800 MT/s LPDDR5x or 6400 MT/s DDR5. A 16-core chip, with 4 P-cores, 8 E-cores, and 4 LP E-cores; 4 Xe3 GPU cores and 4 ray-tracing units; and memory interfaces to either 8533 MTs/ LPDDR5x or 7200 MT/s DDR5. A 16-core chip, with 4 P-cores, 8 E-cores, and 4 LP E-cores, 12 Xe3 GPU cores and 12 ray-tracing units; and memory interfaces to 9600MT/s LPDDR5x, period. Intel We don’t know how much power Panther Lake will consume; one executive on Intel’s marketing team said that Panther Lake is “expanding on the segment that we addressed with Lunar Lake,” and that the chip power or TDP will go “up and down” from there. That will obviously affect which products Intel’s Panther Lake chip will fit into. Gameplay demos of an updated Painkiller game running on the chip used both a 45-watt reference platform as well as a 30-watt laptop, and Intel’s Petersen referred to a “max” of 44 watts. In total, Panther Lake can address up to 96 GB of LPDDR5x memory or 128GB of DDR5 memory. Intel’s Panther Lake is divided into tiles, or what rival AMD calls “chiplets”: a disaggregated design that allows tiles to be placed and swapped in and out. (Intel even provided a knockoff Lego kit of Panther Lake as a tchotchke.) In Panther Lake, there is a compute tile, a GPU tile, a platform controller tile, and a “base tile” that the other tiles are mounted upon. All of the tiles are connected together via a second-gen scalable I/O fabric. The base tile connects to the active tiles via Foveros 2.5D packaging technology, allowing Intel to stack die one on top of the other. Intel According to Johnson, the disaggregated tiles means more PC segments and more price points. “Panther Lake will be the most broadly adopted, globally available AI PC platform Intel has ever delivered,” he said. Right now, none of these Panther Lake chips have product names, and Intel isn’t telling us how fast they’ll run either in sustained or in turbo mode. But they will not have hyperthreading; from Meteor Lake on, Intel rearchitected its performance cores to deliver high enough single-thread performance without the need to add an additional thread. Intel chief executive Lip-Bu Tan has called this decision a mistake, but Intel’s plan to eliminate hyperthreading was already baked into the design. The GPU tile is kept separate. Separating the GPU tile theoretically means that Intel could just “drop in” a replacement, though it’s a bit more complicated than that. Still, it’s natural to see this and the eventual RTX chiplets being talked about as part of Intel’s Nvidia investment as two points on the same line — though Intel carefully declined to confirm this. Here’s a detail you may find intriguing: the 16-core, 12 Xe3 chip isn’t designed to connect to a discrete GPU, and that chip only contains a total of 12 PCI Express lanes as a consequence. The 16-core, 4 Xe3 version includes 20 PCIe lanes, which certainly implies that this version may appear in gaming laptops. Intel executives said that there’s nothing there preventing 16-core, 4Xe3 chip from connecting to a discrete GPU, so that seems likely. “The 8-core will service the thin-and-light [market], the second [16-core version] with the small GPU is going to be attached to a discrete GPU, and the big one will have a life of its own, said Fuad Abazovic, principal at ACAnalysis. “It’s whatever you like with Lunar Lake, but with double the cores and much wider, much bigger GPU, but you still keep the battery life.” You can barely make out the tiles on this 8-core implementation of the Intel Panther Lake chip.Mark Hachman / Foundry The 8-core Panther Lake chip will have 12 PCIe lanes (8 PCIe 4, 4 PCIe 5), while the 16-core chip will have 20 PCIe lanes (8 PCIe 4, and 12 PCIe 5). The 16-core, 12Xe Panther Lake option drops back down to the 12 PCIe lanes and configuration of the 8-core chip. Also of interest: integrated Thunderbolt 4, but not Thunderbolt 5. That means another year’s worth of Thunderbolt 4 docks, with discrete Thunderbolt 5 controllers probably only attached to pricey gaming PCs. Enthusiasts shouldn’t really care which process technology Intel will use to make its chips, though Intel has been nearly desperate to win customers for Panther Lake’s 18A manufacturing process and the subsequent 14A process which will follow it. It had to be embarrassing for Intel to make Lunar Lake’s key tiles at rival TSMC. Now, Intel has started to bring its manufacturing in house once again. All of the compute tiles are manufactured on Intel’s 18A process, but all of the platform controller tiles are made at TSMC, as well the 12 Xe3-core GPU tile. The other 4 Xe3 GPU tiles will be manufactured on Intel’s Intel 3 process. Panther Lake CPUs: Cougar Cove, Darkmont, and better user adjustments Inside the CPU tile are the P- and E-cores, the NPU 5, plus what’s known as the Image Processing Unit 7.5 as well as the memory interface. Panther Lake is a system on a chip, so referring to it as a “CPU” isn’t exactly correct. But onboard Panther Lake are two separate CPU architectures: the “Cougar Cove” performance cores, and the “Darkmont” efficiency cores. Stephen Robinson, its chief CPU architect and an Intel fellow, traced the roadmap: Lunar Lake had two types of cores, but it couldn’t scale to a high frequency. Arrow Lake’s Skymont efficiency cores improved performance, but didn’t offer all-day battery. Lunar Lake offered dedicated power delivery for the E cores, and added additional cache memory, for a total of up to 18MB shared level-3 cache. A comparison between Intel’s 16-core and 16-core, 12Xe versions of its Panther Lake processor. Essentially, Panther Lake takes the low-power islands of Lunar Lake, combines them with the additional cores previous generations offered, and upgrades the performance cores for improved single-thread performance. (The latter aspect is usually what gets attributed to how quick and responsive an OS is, at least in the MacOS world.) Intel’s new 18A process also offers what’s called “backside power delivery,” or PowerVia, which routes power away from the signal logic. That improves frequency while reducing idle power loss — both exactly what Intel wanted to achieve. According to Robinson, Cougar Cove is “optimized” for 18A, with better branch prediction and memory disambiguation. In Darkmont, Intel achieved better prefetching. It also implemented what it calls “nanocode,” where Intel has taken some microcode and added the ability to decode in each of its parallel front-end clusters, Robinson said. It all works out to 40 percent lower power for the entire Panther Lake chip at the same performance of Arrow Lake, or 10 percent more performance at the same power, Intel executives said. Intel demonstrated three laptops running its three Core Ultra processors. Here, Intel is measuring the total power consumed by each laptop.Mark Hachman / Foundry Intel also exposes how tasks will be routed through each type of core through a technology called Thread Director. In Panther Lake, Thread Director should feel familiar: a workload will first land on the low-power E-cores, then move to the full-power E-cores if it proves too much for the low-power cores. From there, it will be pushed to the performance cores, Rajshree Chabukswar, the Intel fellow in charge of the technology, said. Intel’s technology is also smart enough to auto-assign some threads based on the application, so Microsoft Teams will always begin on the LP E-cores and likely remain there. A benchmark like Cinebench, which asks for all cores and threads, will get them across all three different types of cores. In games, however, Panther Lake can do something interesting: assign the game to E-Cores, then to P-cores…but then use some of the leftover power and give it to the GPU. “Using OS containment zones and some of our graphics driver hints and our power management, we are able to deliver 10 percent [more] frame rate because we are making power headroom available to graphics,” Chabukswar said. As the HWinfo utuility software shows, a task on Panther Lake is first routed to the low-power Darkmost cores.Mark Hachman / Foundry Normally, users can adjust the Windows 11 performance by adjusting the Windows power slider. With Panther Lake, Intel is going a bit further with what it’s calling the Intelligent Experience Optimizer. Intel already has the Dynamic Tuning Utility, which uses AI to dynamically optimize the system for performance, battery life, or thermals — like the “AI Mode” in an MSI laptop’s system settings. Most gaming laptops already have “turbo” or “silent” modes, but the impression that Intel gives is that users will have more input into how the laptop performs. “It’s purely load-driven. When I see that I need more performance, it will move there,” Chabukswar said. “When I see that I need more efficiency, it will move there automatically.” In two examples, UL Procyon’s Office Productivity benchmark and the single-threaded Cinebench 2024 benchmark, turning on Intelligent Experience Optimizer boosted performance by 19 percent on both tests. Panther Lake GPU: 50 percent better performance than Lunar Lake Intel’s integrated graphics path continues: Meteor Lake included Xe, Lunar Lake added a Xe2 GPU, and Panther Lake moves to Xe3. The killer selling point? Multi-frame generation, which injects AI-generated frames between actual rendered frames. However, there’s an issue with branding. Intel’s “Battlemage” discrete GPU was considered part of the Xe2 generation, while Intel’s Panther Lake contained “Xe3” cores. Yet both Battlemage and Panther Lake are also both part of the Intel Arc B-series of products, which doesn’t make much sense. Intel did show a roadmap that signals a “Xe3P” variant is coming, however. Intel’s GPU branding is still a little odd. Panther Lake, from what Intel showed, will have both 4Xe and 12Xe variants. Not everything scales linearly; while the 32 XMX engines on the 4Xe variant triples to 96 in the 12 Xe version, the amount of level-2 cache quadruples from 4MB to 16MB. Who is the 12Xe version of Panther Lake aimed at? “The cheesy answer is ‘everybody,” said Daniel Rogers, vice president and general manager of PC products at Intel, in an interview. “I think you’ll see it show up in a few ways, One, maybe the most obvious is for gamers. In some gaming designs and some handhelds as well — that’s a good fit.” Rogers said the 12-Xe Panther Lake will also be the “flagship solution for commercial notebooks on the AI side,” Rogers said. Is it Intel’s answer to AMD’s Strix Halo? “Everybody’s chasing high-performance local AI, and we will certainly do the same,” Rogers said. The Xe3 engine also improves the ray tracing, eliminating backups in the pipeline through a new thread sorting unit. It also doubles the anisotropic filtering on die, Petersen said. We’re not seeing actual game benchmarks quite yet, but this is how Intel’s Xe2 compares to Xe3, inside its own internal tests. The Xe3 GPU was re-designed for scalability, Petersen said. In the GPU’s render slice, Intel increased the number of Xe cores from four to six, increased the level 1 cache from 192 kilobytes to 256KB, and upgraded the level-2 cache from 8 megabytes to 16MB, reducing the need to access the local memory and increasing performance. Intel also moved to a variable allocation strategy when assigning threads, with “dramatic” effects on performance, Petersen said. While Intel declined to show actual benchmarks, Petersen did show how traffic to the SOC’s memory fabric dropped by 17 percent to 36 percent on key games. He also demonstrated some “micro benchmarks,” or internal tests that Intel itself uses to determine generation-over-generation performance in specific tasks. The X3 architecture also improves the way in which a frame is rendered, including DirectX calls and pre-rendering, but Petersen said real gains were granted by the larger level-1 cache. All told, Intel was able to cut the time to execute one frame to about 22.84ms on the 12Xe chip, versus 45.44ms for Lunar Lake. Essentially, Intel can generate about 50 percent higher GPU performance than Lunar Lake, or about 40 percent more performance per watt than Lunar Lake, Petersen said. Intel’s Reference Validation Platform motherboard for Panther Lake.Mark Hachman / Foundry Multiframe AI rendering hits Panther Lake’s integrated graphics The Xe3 GPU also supports cooperative vectors, which Intel showed off with Microsoft this June. Cooperative vectors use AI as a way to replace the overwhelming requirement for shaders. Microsoft has also proposed storing them in tbe cloud. Cooperative vectors, in Petersen’s words, essentially “replace that render pipeline, that raster process, with a 3D model.” “So effectively, we can completely eliminate the render pipeline and replace it with a per pixel AI,” Petersen added. “You can see this might be kind of a look forward into a future where graphics is really substantially different, and it is primarily AI,” Petersen added. That future is already here…sort of. XeSS 2, launched alongside Intel’s “Battlemage” GPUs, launched XeSS Super Resolution, XeSS Frame Generation, and Xe Low Latency, all designed to speed up the graphics powering video games. XeSS Frame Generation injected an AI-generated frame between two “real,” rendered frames, and used the low-latency technology to offset the delay that engendered. “Hybrid rendering is kind of where we are for most titles today,” Petersen said. “Things have indeed moved forward, and we are now into the world of hybrid rendering, plus AI. And in this world, not all pixels are rastered. In fact, most pixels are not rastered. They are generated.” Now, Intel has launched XeSS-MFG, or XeSS Multiframe Generation, which can inject as many as three additional interpolated frames, in conjunction with the existing upscaling and multiframe generation technologies. You’ll be able to control it as paert of Intel’s existing Intel Graphics Software package, where you’ll have the option of setting the additional frames, or letting the application itself make that decision, Petersen said. That software will also offer options such as specifying how much system memory is shared with the GPU, a feature Intel announced earlier and that AMD has exploited for better AI. Intel’s Intel Graphics Software will allow user control over the new multiframe generation feature. The idea is simple: more frames means a smoother gaming experience, and happier gamers with PCs which can exceed playable frame rates. Even games designed to benefit from XeSS 2 will support XeSS 3, Petersen said. Yes, those frames will introduce lag. Each generated frame will add about 1.5 milliseconds of latency per frame, with about 1 ms of setup, Petersen said, or about 6 ms per three generated frames. That’s bad when the frame rate is always high, he said, but when frame rates are at 25 to 30 fps, the latency isn’t as bad versus the value of the added frames. According to Petersen, the latency or lag that bothers gamers isn’t really the “click to photon” latency where there’s a delay in the player’s action. The more noticeable lag is what he called “motion to photon,” where the latency between a user’s input and perceived motion creates nausea in VR and wobble when mousing. Eventually, that could be solved by AI prediction of mouse movements or a variable rate of rasterized to AI- rendered frames. “There’s a whole bunch of technologies that have not been announced, that are not done, that could make that [latency] better, but right now you can see some,” Petersen added. “And if you’re more latency sensitive, depending on the game type, I would say, turn off frames and just run regular frames.” In addition to working toward cooperative vectors, Intel is also launching precompiled shader distribution, where your PC doesn’t have to wait to compile shaders, it just downloads precompiled shaders from the cloud. It is also developing Intelligent Bias Control version 3, first launched this summer, in which the CPU and GPU talk to one another and route power to the appropriate logic. It’s the complement to Thread Director, where GPU performance could be increased by 10 percent by that technology alone. Finally, Intel’s PresentMon software will differentiate between rasterized and rendered/generated frames, and provide an indication whether a given frame was real. It will also demonstrate animation stutter, if frames are out of sync. Intel’s PresentMon will now offer more granularity into what you’re seeing. According to James Sanders, a senior analyst at TechInsights, said that there’s potential for creating a market for thin-and-light gaming laptops with the 16-core, 12Xe3 Panther Lake part. “Games that are like Marvel Rivals I would imagine would be a really good fit for that type of hardware,” Sanders said. “If you’re doing esports, that’s something that would be a good fit. But if you’re playing Final Fantasy, where you’re worried more about the graphics performance, you’ll want to go to a discrete GPU. But it is clear that that communicating what that market is going to be something that Intel and their OEMs need to work on, and that’s going to take time.” Panther Lake’s NPU: more effective, but not much changes The story of Panther Lake’s NPU: it’s about the same as Lunar Lake, just more efficient. Lunar Lake’s NPU 4 supported 48 TOPS. The NPU 5 inside Panther Lake supports 50 TOPS in a much smaller package. An NPU basically performs a ton of multiply-accumulate operations, performed by what’s known as a MAC array. Lunar Lake and Panther Lake both have the same number of MACs — 12,000 — but Lunar Lake spread those out into six neural compute engines, while Panther Lake has only three. Panther Lake’s NPU 5 also has 4.5MB of scratchpad RAM, 256KB of level-2 cache, and 6 SHAVE DSPs. Panther Lake’s NPU can perform 4,096 MACs/cycle at int8 (8-bit integer), 4.096 MACs/cycle at FP8 (8-bit floating-point), and 2,048 MACs/cycle at FP16. Those numbers become more significant and more familiar when you’re performing generative AI functions, where you’re specifying the complexity of a particular task. One future Intel envisions involves “agentic” browsers performing those agentic functions locally, on the NPU instrad of the cloud.Mark Hachman / Foundry “What we really wanted was more MACs and less of the other stuff,” Petersen said. Some of the improvements are just Intel trying to be smarter about how it handles data. Running Stable Diffusion’s AI art generator, the algorithm doesn’t really need the more complex FP16 granularity. Instead, FP8 can be used; in Petersen’s example, energy usage dropped 35 percent from 108 joules to 70 joules. Panther Lake also includes what’s known as the Image Processing Unit 7.5, responsible for taking the image your PC’s webcam sees and making it look its best. One of the AI features Intel itself uses: local tone mapping, designed to improve the image quality by using AI.Mark Hachman / Foundry “That means handling the full spectrum of lighting from bright outdoor sunlight streaming in through a window to dim corners of a warehouse at night,” said Tomer Rider, the IPU product marketing manager. “It means capturing and preserving fine details and high resolutions without introducing the noise, so what you see is crisp and accurate. It also means creating a life like natural image, vivid colors, true to life, skin tones and high frame rate that makes everything feel real wherever you are and whatever the line is, the IPU makes sure that the image looks its best.” For Panther Lake, the IPU does three things: it adds enhanced HDR for wider dynamic range, and includes AI-based noise reduction and AI-based tone mapping. The “staggered HDR” takes both a short exposure and a long exposure and merges them together. All of these work with both integrated laptop webcams as well as standalone devices. Up to 5 Mpixel sensors are supported, which translates to 2560 x 1920 pixels in the real world, all whie shaving off 1.5 watts or so of power. Intel showed off a trio of laptops of varying camera quality (the middle being best) to highlight its Panther Lake Image Processintg Unit.Mark Hachman / Foundry AI noise reduction actually uses AI to filter out noise, especially in low-light environments, Rider said. And tone mapping divides up an image or video into different regions, then uses AI to improve the visuals. In this case, the IPU may be actually asking the NPU to perform these functions. “Either the NPU or the GPU” will handle the AI, Rider said. “We’re working with all the NPU and GPU teams in order to make sure that the system makes the right choice when selecting whether it’s the GPU or the NPU.” Panther Lake’s wireless features are surprisingly cool Finally, Panther Lake also includes a wireless module, which places the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi MAC onto the chip and separates the remainder into a separate die inside the package, known as Whale Peak 2. Panther Lake supports both Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth Core 6.0, but with some neat twists. The most interesting wireless features Panther Lake adds are part of Bluetooth. Panther Lake now supports Auracast, a wireless technology launched in 2024 that supports simultaneous playback across multiple devices, so that you don’t have to share an earbud with a friend. Intel’s chip also supports platform sounding, which uses distance- and phase-change modeling to track the distance between two devices, to better locate them quickly. Bluetooth also uses both wireless antennas, and not just one, which should lengthen Bluetooth connectivity. Intel fellow and wireless CTO Carlos Cordeiro used 52 meters as an example distance. One of the best arguments for the use of Wi-Fi 7: the improved performance in terms of specific CableLabs tests. Panther Lake actually supports what’s known as Wi-Fi 7 Release 2, which haven’t been officially certified. Basically, the R2 features facilitate better communication between the access point and your PC, resulting in fewer dropped connections and improved communication speed and latency, Multilink reconfiguration allows the router to shift your PC from one channel to the other, while restricted TWT allows the two to figure out which applications (and devices) deserve the most priority. Single-link eMLSR allows one of the two antennas on your laptop to “sniff” out a different channel, and quickly shift if it opens up. It also allows the laptop to signal of it’s using a channel for peer-to-peer communication. You probably don’t use Intel’s Connectivity Performance Suite, a small Windows app which allows you to see the various access points available to your PC and allows it to prioritize voice and video calls or streaming apps. Intel is adding AI to this list of options, so if yor PC is having a prolonged session with a cloud service like ChatGPT, you can ensure that that traffic is given priority. What’s next for Panther Lake? Intel’s deep dive in the desert certainly opened the doors to reveal a number of features about Intel’s next-gen mobile chip. What we still don’t know is how many versions of the chip itself will eventually ship, and what they’ll be called. Reports from Asia now indicate that the 12Xe version will be branded as the Core Ultra X, to differentiate them from the “vanilla” version of the Core Ultra chip itself. Naturally, we’ll have to wait even longer for the first performance testing of the chip itself, as well as the subsequent announcements of laptops using the chip. Those should happen at or near the time of the CES 2026 show in January, we’re told. It’s there we should expect customer announcements, as well. It was a little surprising not to see any future Intel CPU roadmaps, at all, after Panther Lake has been talked about for over a year. “Nova Lake” should be the next step. “Meteor Lake served its purpose,” said Mario Morales, the group vice president and general manager of semiconductors at IDC. “You needed to have a dog in the race. That can be easily relegated into the lower end. Lunar Lake came in and hit the sweet spot, and it did emphasize a lot more performance efficiency, which I think was another important message for them as they introduced new P-cores and E-cores into the…PC space. Panther Lake is important for them, as it’s the next step. Nova Lake is what gets them to par — with AMD for sure, but also maybe with Apple.” Still, we now know details of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite as well as Intel’s Panther Lake. Waiting in the wings: AMD. Is Gorgon Point the next name you’ll need to know about in laptop processors for 2026? Disclosure: Intel held its press briefings in Phoenix, and would not pre-brief reporters in other locations or over video meetings. The company paid for my room, boarding, and travel expenses, but did not ask for or exert any editorial control over this story or other PCWorld content. Read...

Ecommpay teams up with humm to offer flexible finance up to GBP £3,000 for UK merchants, boosting sales in travel and high-value retail sectors. Read...