Perplexity’s Comet is the most advanced AI browser right now, and it’s actually pretty cool. You can watch the browser’s built-in AI perform actions in real time, like clicking buttons on web pages and navigating between links. Yet while Comet might be a foretaste of the future of web browsing, it’s not quite what it’s hyped up to be. I’ve been playing around with Comet on Windows for a few weeks now… and it leaves me wanting. You can use Comet right now with a Perplexity Pro subscription for $20/month, but read this before you spend cash on it. Comet’s AI can browse the web for you Comet’s hallmark feature is unique among AI browsers right now. Yes, it does have “standard AI browser” features like an AI sidebar that summarizes content, a voice mode that lets you speak with Perplexity’s LLMs, and a Perplexity chat box on the New Tab page. But the core feature here is that you can open Comet’s chat experience and then say something like: “Hey, control my web browser and do something.” Research flights, plan travel, find products to buy—nearly anything is possible, and Comet will actually do it for you. Chris Hoffman / Foundry There’s something weirdly magical about opening Google Maps, telling Comet to research and plan a route for you, and watching in real time as it reasons through the process of clicking buttons, typing text, and interacting with the web page. You can see it all happen right before your eyes—and when the AI is controlling a page, you’ll see a blue border around it to let you know. You’ll see how the AI reasoning model talks to itself as it walks through the task, and you can interrupt it at any time. I may have gripes with Comet, but none of them take away from how cool it is to see this agentic AI browser in action the first time. This is a glimpse of the future. Nearly every web browser—apart from Vivaldi—will be following in Comet’s footsteps, whether we like it or not. Comet’s AI browsing can be pretty slow Once you get over how magical the technology seems, the limitations quickly become apparent. This is true for large language models in general, but it’s especially true with Comet. As I watch every task completed by the agentic AI, I realize how much faster it would be to just do all the clicking and navigating myself. Watching the AI use Google Maps is fun, but it quickly loses its luster when you’re one minute into a task and get outputs like: “Oops, I entered the address, but I didn’t hit backspace first to clear the box. I’ll need to erase the text in the box, and then type the address again.” It can be surprisingly slow. You’d save time by doing the browsing yourself, or even just using a more traditional AI chatbot that isn’t built into your web browser. Prompting ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, or even Perplexity itself for information can be faster—it’s just smoother to let the AI focus on compiling and synthesizing data instead of commandeering the browser and navigating user interfaces. In a nutshell, agentic AI is cool but not quite as useful as it sounds. The typical AI chatbot experience still comes out ahead. The AI can access your websites… as you Many websites block access to AI tools, so the conventional AI chatbot search experience can’t always get the job done. But when the AI model has access to your browser, it can use those websites on your behalf. Even if a website requires you to sign in, Comet can use it—as long as you’re sign in to the site before Comet starts navigating it. That’s a huge advantage over the classic AI chatbot search experience. An AI browser can do a lot more with the web, and you can see exactly what it’s doing and take over whenever you like. But it also means that any exploit could directly affect your browser and your data. Comet is vulnerable to LLM exploits Large language models are vulnerable to something called “prompt injections,” which can happen whenever the LLM is made to process and interpret text. The problem is that when text is fed into an LLM, it isn’t always clear whether that text is from you or elsewhere. For example, an LLM might process and analyze the source code of a web page to perform some kind of task. But the source code of a web page could potentially include hidden prompt instructions designed to hijack an AI that’s analyzing the source code. The LLM can’t distinguish the hidden prompt in the source code from the source code itself. In other words, that hidden prompt was injected into the source code, and the AI will be none the wiser. Hence, prompt injection attack. Chris Hoffman / Foundry Security researchers at Guardio found that Comet was vulnerable to attacks like this, and that it could be tricked into falling for phishing scams while online shopping. Security researchers from Brave also found that Comet was vulnerable to indirect prompt injection attacks. Here’s the wildest part from Brave’s blog post: “The vulnerability we’re discussing in this post lies in how Comet processes webpage content: when users ask it to ‘Summarize this webpage,’ Comet feeds a part of the webpage directly to its LLM without distinguishing between the user’s instructions and untrusted content from the webpage. This allows attackers to embed indirect prompt injection payloads that the AI will execute as commands.” Did you catch that? It’s not that Comet’s protections against prompt injection were bypassed, but rather that Comet (in its initial release) didn’t even have prompt injection protections that tried to distinguish between trusted user instructions and untrusted web page data sent to the AI model (at least with the summarization function). This sort of thing is a known problem with large language models. While Comet now has better protections against this, it’s unclear how good those safeguards are. Comet hasn’t been properly battle-tested. Other agentic AI browsing solutions—like ChatGPT’s agent mode—interact with websites by loading those websites in their own browser in the cloud apart from your data. Even when those LLMs are exploited by prompt injection attacks, at least the damage is somewhat limited. But when the AI has access to everything in your browser—as is the case with Perplexity’s Comet—the risk goes up by quite a bit. From what I can tell, it seems like Perplexity is “moving fast and breaking things” while competitors are at least paying attention to security before launching. Comet is minimal and uncluttered… Comet is focused on AI browsing—and that’s it. You’re getting a clean, uncluttered Chromium browser. It has AI integration, yes, but aside from that it’s stripped down and doesn’t get in your way. Chris Hoffman / Foundry It’s not like using Microsoft Edge, for example. Microsoft’s Edge browser is built on the same Chromium codebase that powers Google Chrome and Comet, but Edge packs in a lot of its own bloat: a New Tab page cluttered with viral junk, a sidebar with links to MSN web games, various shopping tools, and so many other features that I personally can’t stand it. I greatly enjoy the lightweight, stripped-down Chromium experience presented by Comet. Apart from the AI, it’s pretty sleek. …but maybe too minimal? Right off the bat, you’ll notice that Comet doesn’t come in mobile app form. Want to use the same browser on your PC and your phone? With Comet, you can’t—at least not yet. But the problem goes further than that. Even with Comet installed on multiple PCs, it doesn’t yet offer the ability to sync data between multiple PCs. For someone like myself, who regularly switches between desktop PC and laptop while also reviewing many laptops for PCWorld, this is a huge shortcoming and obstacle for daily use. It’s 2025. I need my web browsers (and AI tools) to sync my data between devices, and I can’t be bothered to manually copy or migrate data. I don’t want to be asking myself “Wait, which PC did I have that conversation on?” if I need to dig up an AI chat log. Is that too much to ask for? I mean, I don’t think so… Even if I thought Comet was perfect aside from this—and I don’t—the lack of cross-device sync means Comet just isn’t an option as a day-to-day driver for me yet. Perplexity is working on it, but if sync is important to you, save your $20 until they eventually get it rolled out. Here’s my current verdict on Comet Comet doesn’t feel designed to be your day-to-day browser—as it is right now, it’s more of a flashy demo. Whether it’s the animated video intro or the way Comet was vulnerable to known LLM exploits at launch, it feels like it was primarily made to position Perplexity for acquisition by an even bigger company (like Apple, maybe?). Even the $5-per-month Comet Plus subscription that gives revenue back to publishers who are affected by AI feels more like a PR move to warm up feelings around Perplexity’s brand than a serious long-term solution. (That might sound overly cynical, but I stand by the statement.) Comet is incredibly cool, don’t get me wrong. It’s the first time you can experience agentic AI browsing in action on your PC. But it just isn’t ready to replace the web browser you already trust with everything you do online. It’s a gimmick and it wears off quickly. If you’re interested in Comet, you should give it a try—as no more than a secondary browser. It may be the future, but it isn’t there yet. Subscribe to Chris Hoffman’s newsletter, The Windows Readme, for more Windows PC tips, tricks, and experiments. Read...

Qualcomm’s scintillating new Snapdragon X2 Elite chips have prompted a ton of conversations in the past few days. Can they make it? What do you like about them? And so on. While I can’t say whether or not the Snapdragon X2 Elite and Elite Extreme will eventually succeed, I can offer you an inside look at what people are talking about–at least what I’ve heard and overheard–at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii. If you want to catch up on all the news, the Snapdragon X2 and X2 Elite offer more cores at up to 5GHz speeds, includes optional embedded memory, and preserves the performance on battery from the first generation. The good: eye-watering performance If you want a general-purpose productivity laptop, the first-generation Snapdragon X Elite was nearly perfect. The new X2 Elite Extreme looks to be even better, with (controlled) benchmarks that simply blow away Intel’s Core Ultra (Lunar Lake) and AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 chips, from CPU to GPU to the AI-enabling NPU. Qualcomm is really doing almost everything consumers are asking of it in this space. The CPU benchmarks look particularly juicy. Compared against rival chips in today’s laptops, the Snapdragon X2 Elite absolutely smokes all comers in the Cinebench benchmark beloved by reviewers, in both single- and multi-core tests. Mark Hachman / Foundry And the Snapdragon X2 Elite’s NPU offers a whopping 80 TOPs, leaving the competition in the dust. Whether consumers are asking for more TOPS from an NPU, though, is a question mark. Roughly doubling the TOPS from the first version looks great on paper, and certainly bigger numbers are better. But there’s a lot being bet on whether consumer applications will be able to take advantage of its prowess, including this concept of agentic AI everyone is talking about. No one is still quite sure whether that will happen. UL’s Procyon Computer Vision benchmark tests AI inference performance and can tap into NPUs, unlike some other AI benchmarks.Mark Hachman / Foundry It depends on how you see it: Is local AI still a selling point? Either way, the Snapdragon X2 Elite appears loaded with hardware capable of blasting through most of the tasks you throw at it, AI or not. The bad: Lukewarm PC vendor support, games, and lack of battery life talk I couldn’t help but notice that only Asus and HP endorsed the Snapdragon X2 architecture, and via video to boot — not in person at the Snapdragon Summit. The odd “agentic AI” Humain Horizon Pro laptop (which won’t use the X2, but the X1) was there, but not Qualcomm’s established customers. And where was longtime Qualcomm backer, Lenovo? Sure, new partners could always be announced. But I had questions. Another question: 3D graphics performance. Yes, supposedly the Snapdragon X2 Elite about doubles the performance of the first-gen X Elite platform, which played (some) games at roughly 30 frames per second at 1080p Low performance. Doubling that is, what, 60 fps at the same resolution and image quality? What about all the games that simply refuse to run well on the first-gen Snapdragon chips? On the more enthusiast end of things, “there’s nothing preventing” the Snapdragon X2 from connecting to a discrete GPU like Nvidia’s GeForce RTX, according to Qualcomm’s senior vice president Kedar Kondap…but it doesn’t appear like it has, or will. This is a tough one: Gaming is often seen as a high-profile design win, and proof that a chip like the X2 Elite should be seen as a sexy, high-margin gaming CPU. But doing so would immediately cut into a key Snapdragon benefit: long battery life. Gaming on a phone, weirdly, seems more viable with a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor than on a PC.Qualcomm And that was weird, too: Qualcomm really downplayed the battey life of a Snapdragon X2 laptop, referring it to “multi-day” on a couple of occasions. I’m not sure if that was because the competitive landscape had erased that advantage, or what. But it simply was not a big focus. Again, Qualcomm does have a cross to bear in its Arm legacy, and how that affects application compatibility. This only really affects some weird, dusty old business utilities, the occasional printer, and games. But games are the one area where it can make inroads, though Snapdragon simply can’t offer the “it just works” assurance of its X86 rivals anytime soon. The ugly: A grab bag Naturally, any new launch offers opportunities for criticism. Not only did people take issue with the Microsoft-esque naming scheme — the X2 Elite Extreme, really?! — critics made the very valid point that this was Qualcomm’s first major architecture launch in years. Reviewers got hands-on tests of the X1 Elite two long years ago, in October 2023, ahead of the Snapdragon’s launch alongside Copilot+ PCs in May 2024. Qualcomm followed it up with the cut-down X1 Plus and X in the interim. As one attendee pointed out, “You can’t play on that timetable and expect to win against Intel and AMD,” which launch a new or updated mobile chip architecture on an annual cadence. Intel has been talking about Panther Lake for months…and has already shown more demo systems than Qualcomm has for the X2 Elite.Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry Qualcomm’s X1 Elite also signaled to Intel and AMD that those rivals needed to have their own chips in order. But tying Snapdragon X to Copilot+ and Microsoft’s beleaguered Recall didn’t do much for Qualcomm, if anything. Qualcomm was the flag-bearer for Windows on Arm, and its (now largely undeserved) reputational concerns about app compatibility. Then Intel’s Lunar Lake came along, and offered a very competitive — and maybe even better — chip without any of that baggage. One laptop maker told me that they had bought into the original X1 Elite in part as a bargaining chip with Intel. People had a lot of questions about what that meant for Intel’s upcoming “Panther Lake” chip, which should be unveiled this fall. In my personal opinion, one of the best things Qualcomm ever did was to simply offer a compelling third option to Intel and AMD. That means we all benefited from an competitive market for PC processors that only continues to heat up. Disclosure: Qualcomm held its press briefings in Hawaii, and would not pre-brief reporters in other locations or over video meetings. They 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...

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Sometime after my social feeds started to fill up with ads for mini-PCs, I realized that there’s a silent revolution going on in desktop PCs. Welcome to the era of the mini-PC, where you can do all your computing from a PC smaller than a box of Pop-Tarts and much cheaper than a fully fledged desktop PC in many cases. Naturally, I wanted one, so I bit the bullet and bought a GMKtek G5 mini-PC, the smallest mini-PC of 2024. Now, I couldn’t be happier. The first advantage I noticed was the price. While a new laptop of comparable performance would cost me upwards of $600, the mini-PC cost me just $150 — that’s with delivery and Windows 11 Home pre-installed, too. I was skeptical at first about how I’d use it for work in place of my laptop, but it’s worked out to be just fine. Admittedly, I can’t use my mini-PC on the go without power and a display like I can with my laptop, but then again, I don’t need to. All my computing is done either in the office or at home and my mini-PC has all the peripherals it needs at each location. Its tiny size alone has made my travel to and from work so much easier. While my laptop took up the whole back section of my backpack, my mini-PC slides in next to my lunchbox, taking up no more than a few inches in either direction. At only 7 ounces it’s a lot lighter too. I’ve managed to drop a whole 2 pounds weight from my shoulders on my daily commute. Bonnie Bayley The fact that the performance is excellent has been icing on the cake. The mini frequently hits clock speeds of 3.4GHz; it runs all my apps smoothly and silently; and it feels a lot more powerful than my work-issue laptop. It’s not designed for games, but it’ll also run some lightweight games, and I enjoy playing Fortnite and CounterStrike 2 when I’ve knocked off work. The power draw is very small too, only 12W and it also doesn’t heat up like my laptop does. Sometime down the track I look forward to installing more RAM in it, which I should be able to do much easier than in a laptop. As to setup, it only takes me a few minutes to plug in my mouse, keyboard, and HDMI cables, about the same time that it takes to load up my laptop. I also really like the fact that I can choose the peripherals I want to use with my mini-PC. It means I can use my favorite keyboard at work, the Razer DeathStalker V2 Pro, which feels so good for writing. So, if you only need to use your laptop between work and home and don’t need a device for working out and about, consider switching to a mini-PC. You won’t regret the portability and performance! Further reading: Best laptops 2025: Premium, budget, gaming, 2-in-1, and more Why you absolutely need a mini PC Today’s best laptop deals: Save big on work, school, home use, and gaming Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Highly readable e-ink screen Light and portable Good keyboard Cons Way too expensive No backlight Limited functionality Our Verdict The Freewrite Traveler is way too expensive and lacks basic features like a backlight or spell check, but its focused interface and solid keyboard mean it’s better than other, similar devices. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Freewrite Traveler Retailer Price Astrohaus $549 View Deal Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices I really like the Freewrite Traveler. And I kind of hate that I like it. As I said in a review for a similar device, the KingJim Pomera DM250, I’ve been looking for a small, travel-friendly, dedicated writing gadget (a “writer deck,” if you will) for a long time. And I’ve been aware of the Astrohaus Freewrite devices for a long time, too, and considered the Traveler as an ideal form factor for this admittedly niche category. But various aspects of it rubbed me the wrong way. Michael Crider/Foundry The Freewrite marketing has always smacked of “hipster” to me. It’s the same sort of smarmy, condescending tone that seems to pervade Moleskine notebooks. While I can understand its hyper-focused approach — that’s kind of the whole point — its deliberate lack of utility rankled against my instincts as a tech nerd. And given those limitations, Astrohaus’s prices for its various devices seem ridiculous to me. The Traveler, for example, has specs that would shame an entry-level Chromebook or Kindle, yet costs $550, and hasn’t seen an update in years. (On the subject of price: I bought this particular model secondhand, hence the various dings in the plastic, and with my own money. My editor Brad might slap me if I tried to expense something like this.) Freewrite Traveler: Look at me! I’m writing! Even the aesthetics of the device are smarmy. Whereas the Pomera DM250 went with an understated soft-touch plastic with no exterior logos at all, the Freewrite Traveler has a MASSIVE, engraved metal logo on its glossy lid, the kind of branding that would make even Apple cringe. The interior is attention-grabbing white with red and chrome accents. It’s loud, which is almost ironic for something that’s supposed to be small and dedicated to writing. Michael Crider/Foundry It uses a non-backlit, membrane keyboard. Its small e-ink screen also has no backlight, which presents a serious impediment if you want to use the device in anything but a well-lit room (or add on a book light like it’s 1995). Between the processing power that would be bested by an ancient graphing calculator and the 5.5-inch e-ink screen, the refresh rate is so slow that I’m constantly two or three words ahead as I type this very review. The Freewrite Traveler is overpriced, underpowered, and incessantly pleased with itself. And dammit, I have to admit that it’s pretty darn good. The Freewrite Traveler is overpriced, underpowered, and incessantly pleased with itself. And dammit, I have to admit that it’s pretty darn good. Freewrite Traveler: Minimalism to the max For the distraction-free writing purist, most of these drawbacks are in fact positives, with the possible exception of the price. The lack of advanced capabilities, including any kind of serious editing chops or spell check, means there’s nothing to do but churn out words. (And lots of spelling mistakes.) Astrohaus software lacks even basic copy and paste functionality, so there’s nothing to do but write, write, write in a sort of stream of consciousness flow. You get multiple documents to work in and three different folders, that’s it. Michael Crider/Foundry When it’s time to get your words onto something with more electronic oomph than a Palm Pilot, the easiest way to do so is the Send button. This automatically syncs via Wi-Fi with the Astrohaus Postbox cloud platform, which can also automatically send text documents to Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, and Evernote via connected accounts. This is characteristically clunky — when I connected the service to Google I instantly started getting email alerts because it just sent me an email with the relevant text. But it is incredibly fast and easy, literally one button. Alternately you can scorn any kind of wireless connection altogether, plug the thing directly into a PC, tablet or phone, and simply copy off your words as text files in a simple storage device. The Postbox web interface is also where you can adjust a couple of settings. You can choose between three, three whole font sizes and zero actual fonts, and add a lockscreen for a bit of privacy in case your Traveler gets lost or stolen. You can also change between keyboard layouts (though the physical layout comes in anything you want, so long as you want US-focused ANSI). You can choose between extremely pretentious e-ink screensavers of famous literary figures, (again, shades of Moleskine) or even more Freewrite branding that’s slightly less annoying. Aaaaaand… that’s all. Michael Crider/Foundry The device itself offers barely anything else in terms of customization or tools. The tiny, superfluous strip of a screen beneath the 5.5-inch primary display can show a clock or date, word count, a timer, or simply be left blank. You can move or delete drafts in the three folders. You can connect to new Wi-Fi networks. And that’s about it. We’re taking minimalism to an extreme here — even the obsessively focused Pomera DM250 had at least as much function as, say, a digital organizer from the 1990s. As limiting as I find the Freewrite Traveler, I like it a lot more than the Pomera. The first reason is the one that soured me on the latter without any hope of forgiveness: the keyboard. The Traveler’s keyboard isn’t amazing, but it is solid. Roughly the same as a quality laptop keyboard, though not up to the high standards of, say, a ThinkPad laptop. It’s enough to blow the cramped, non-standard-sized keyboard of the Pomera out of the water.  The Freewrite’s keyboard is a standard 60% layout, and far more comfortable than the cramped, cheap one on the Pomera. Michael Crider/Foundry The typing experience of that device was about the same as a cheap tablet keyboard, whereas the Freewrite feels like something that’s designed with typing in mind. Perhaps the fact that Freewrite’s flagship Smart Typewriter/Hemingwrite device (ugh) uses a standard-sized mechanical keyboard should have clued me into the way this company is far more focused on the experience of typing, not just the functional input of text. And since I’m mentioning that, I’ll say that those who have smaller hands (I’m a 5’10” cis male, for reference) might find the Pomera’s smaller keyboard more forgiving. (Slight aside: the Freewrite Alpha is also worth a mention as a portable design, with a better, fully mechanical keyboard, a lower price… and unfortunately an even smaller screen, though that might be a more functional LCD. It also lacks a hinge, one of the things I wanted for laptop-style typing that I couldn’t accomplish with just a Bluetooth keyboard and a phone or tablet.)  Michael Crider/Foundry You can see this philosophy in another contrast between the devices. The Pomera lets you connect to a phone or tablet over Bluetooth, to effectively turn that gadget into a Bluetooth keyboard. Which is something I never wanted to do, because of the aforementioned poor keyboard quality. The Freewrite Traveler doesn’t have Bluetooth at all, and in fact it goes in the opposite direction. You can plug in any USB-based keyboard into the Traveler’s USB-C port, in case you want to use a better keyboard in this stripped-down, focused interface. The Traveler is about the same width as my ultraportable, 13-inch laptop, but considerably shorter, making it easy to throw in a bag. Michael Crider/Foundry Other design decisions show this commitment to pure writing or drafting. There are no dedicated cursor keys, you can move the cursor with the red “New” keys and WASD. This seems a little awkward at first, but after a few hundred words it becomes second nature to navigate through words, lines, and paragraphs, thanks to smart choices made in how the system handles directions and inputs. Michael Crider/Foundry After a week with the Traveler I’ve already used it far more than the Pomera, mostly because it’s more comfortable. But I have to admit that, despite appreciating the far more capable and even sensible operating system from the Japanese KingJim design, the Freewrite setup is just more conducive to actually getting words down. Even the syncing system, though far less flexible and powerful, is more satisfying — I press a button and my draft appears in Gmail. Freewrite Traveler: An expensive and specialized tool The Pomera DM250 has a better, backlit screen, far more visual options, and it’s less pretentious. But between the keyboard and the singular focus, the Traveler is the better device, at least for me. My techie spendthrift soul cringes at a $550 price tag (thanks, Trump tariffs!) for something so threadbare in terms of actual hardware. But my writer soul says “just shut up and use it, you’re reaching towards 5000 words today and you don’t feel tired at all.” The screen is e-ink with a matte finish, extremely legible, but lacking a backlight for work in the dark.  Michael Crider/Foundry The Freewrite Traveler does everything I wanted the Pomera to do, even if it’s doing a lot less. It’s much smaller and more portable than a laptop, it lasts far longer on a charge, it refuses to offer any distractions, and it’s actually engaging to use as a writing device. This is an expensive tool, even if it makes me feel like an expensive tool for liking it. Michael Crider/Foundry I wish I could rip the keyboard off the Freewrite Traveler and graft it onto the Pomera DM250, and somehow bring its instant Wi-Fi syncing along with it. But until some designer makes that happen, I’ll have to hang with the hipsters. And in the meantime, I’ll sell the Pomera… because neither of these things is anywhere close to a good value. Read...

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If you’re about to spend money on a USB flash drive, maybe hold your horses and think about getting something even better for the same price. I’m talking about this SK Hynix Tube T31 portable SSD that’s fast, has tons of storage space, and is shaped just like a flash drive. Right now, you can grab the 2TB model for just $118.99, which is a 26 percent discount and the all-time lowest price it’s ever been! In our review of the Tube T31, we gave it a 4.5-star rating and praised its ultra-compact design that resembles the oh-so-familiar USB flash drive and maximizes portability. It was so convenient that our reviewing expert Jon Jacobi adopted it as his own daily-use storage drive. If that isn’t a glowing recommendation, I don’t know what is! And this portable SSD is no slouch when it comes to performance. It claims to offer transfer speeds of up to 10 Gbps, and we independently confirmed those claims in our own speed tests. Between its sleek design, fast data transfers, travel-friendly form factor, and extra-large capacity, it’s the best of all worlds—especially so with this discount. Get the 2TB SK Hynix Tube T31 portable SSD for just $118.99 before this limited-time deal expires! Who knows when it’ll drop back down to this best-ever price again? If you miss it or if it isn’t the right drive for you, check out some of our other favorite external drives. This ultra-compact 2TB portable SSD has never been cheaperBuy now on Amazon Read...

One of the most confusing moments of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit was when I accidentally flipped over the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme in the testing room. Was that actually embedded memory? Yes, it is. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme Arm processor does support on-package memory as an option, though the standard X2 Elite chips do not. Kedar Kondap, Qualcomm’s senior vice president of compute and gaming, told PCWorld that the 48GB of embedded memory that the X2 Elite Extreme was simply a choice Qualcomm made for performance testing, not a number PC makers are locked into. That’s probably why Qualcomm barely mentioned the technology at all — it’s confusing, and probably not a feature consumers will ever see, let alone be aware of. Still, it’s worth knowing about. “There’s a 12-core version, actually, that does have the off-chip memory,” Kondap said, referring to the Snapdragon X2 Elite. “There’s an 18-core version that has an off-chip memory. There’s an 18-core version that can have the integrated memory [the Elite Extreme]. You have the option.” But why 48 gigabytes of memory, exactly? Regarding the memory size of the Elite Extreme, Kondap said that the 48GB inside the Elite Extreme was an arbitrary amount. “It’s not limited,” he said. “48 gigabytes is what was available in this particular device, but it’s not restricted to be 40. Somebody could say I just want to put 24 inside, and I’m good with it and that’s 100-percent perfectly okay.” That memory will be configurable, as it normally is, between ordinary system RAM and VRAM, Kondap added. Aside from the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, it looks like PC makers will have a more ordinary array of memory options than I first thought. And they’ll be able to run them on battery without losing performance, too. Disclosure: Qualcomm held its press briefings in Hawaii, and would not pre-brief reporters in other locations or over video meetings. They 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...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Eye-catching exterior design Enjoyable keyboard, large touchpad Tons of leading-edge connectivity Strong GPU performance in games Cons Modest display quality with questionable 1200p/440Hz mode CPU performance doesn’t measure up Short battery life Our Verdict The Lenovo Legion 9i packs great game performance in a stylish design, but it comes with a few caveats. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Lenovo Legion 9i Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Gamers who want a stylish laptop are likely to love Lenovo’s new Legion 9i. It has an eye-catching “forged carbon” look that’s unique yet not overdone. The laptop also packs great game performance and a wide range of physical connectivity. However, the laptop’s display and CPU performance don’t match up to peers, which narrows its appeal. Lenovo Legion 9i: Specs and features as-tested The Lenovo Legion 9i that I received for review was equipped with impressive hardware. It has not only an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX and Nvidia RTX 5080, but also 64GB of RAM and a 2TB PCIe 5.0 solid-state drive, not to mention Thunderbolt 5 and USB-C 4. The only specification that isn’t impressive is the display, which, though it provides a sharp 3840×2400 resolution, relies on a mediocre IPS-LCD panel. Model number: 18IAX10 CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX Memory: 64GB SO-DIMM DDR5-5200 Graphics/GPU: Nvidia RTX 5080 16GB (175W TGP) NPU: Intel AI Boost up to 13 TOPS Display: 18-inch 3840×2400 glossy IPS with 240Hz refresh rate, G-Sync Storage: 2TB PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSD Webcam: 5MP with electronic privacy shutter Connectivity: 1x HDMI 2.1 (8K/60Hz), 2x USB-C with Thunderbolt 5 and USB-4 80Gbps, DisplayPort, 100-watt Power Delivery, 1x USB-C 10Gbps / USB 3.2 Gen 2, 3x USB-A 10Gbps / USB 3.2 Gen 2, 1x 3.5mm combo audio, 1x 2.5GbE Ethernet, 1x SD card reader, 1x power connector Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: Facial recognition Battery capacity: 99 watt-hours Dimensions: 15.87 x 11.69 x 1.1 inches Weight: 7.72 pounds Operating System: Windows 11 Home Price: $3,695.49 MSRP The Lenovo Legion 9i starts at $3,476.99 with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of solid state storage. Lenovo’s upgrade pricing is incredibly affordable. Moving up to 64GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD adds only $220 to the MSRP. Lenovo provides a “Naked-Eye 3D” display option in some Legion 9i laptops. This is a glasses-free 3D technology similar to Acer’s SpatialLabs. My review unit didn’t have this display, however, and instead came with a dual-mode display that supports 240Hz at 3840×2400 resolution or 440Hz at 1920×1200 resolution. Lenovo Legion 9i: Design and build quality Foundry / Matthew Smith Look, I’m about to tell you what I think about the Lenovo Legion 9i’s design. But before I do, take a moment to look at the photos. I’ll wait. It looks glorious, right? There’s nothing unusual about how the Legion 9i’s design functions, as I’ll discuss shortly. But Lenovo’s unique lid design, which the company calls “forged carbon,” is a winner. It’s attractive and fashionable, but not in-your-face or garish. It’s a design statement, and I like what it says. Overall, the laptop both looks and feels premium, and most of Lenovo’s competitors are a full step behind. That aside, the Legion 9i delivers what I expect from a high-end performance gaming laptop. It’s a beefy machine that measures over 15 inches wide, over an inch thick, and tips the scales at nearly eight pounds. The recycled aluminum chassis is extremely rigid. Flex can be found in the display lid and keyboard deck, but you’ll have to pay attention to spot it. Overall, the laptop both looks and feels premium, and most of Lenovo’s competitors are a full step behind. Even attractive competitors like the Alienware Area-51 strike me as old-fashioned compared to the Legion 9i. Lenovo Legion 9i: Keyboard, trackpad, mouse Foundry / Matthew Smith Typing on the Lenovo Legion 9i is a great experience. The keyboard provides good key travel and each key activates with a light yet satisfying tactile snap. Lenovo provides a good layout, too. Most keys are large, with only the backspace key and the numpad key feeling a bit narrow—though they’re still large enough. The keyboard is RGB-LED backlit and provides per-key lighting customization, although you might not know that at first. The per-key customization is only visible when the “custom” mode is selected from a list of presets in Lenovo’s Legion Space software. The LED backlight is bright, uniform, and offers a wide range of brightness suitable for both dim and bright rooms. Lenovo also packs an RGB-LED light bar on the front underside of the chassis, and RGB-LED lights across the Legion logo for the lid, which can coordinate with the keyboard. I like the lightbar, which provides a subtle gradient between LED light zones that creates the illusion of a single uniform light rather than multiple, individual LEDs. The Legion 9i supports Windows Adaptive Lighting as well, though support must be turned on in the laptop’s BIOS. The included numpad means the keyboard is shifted towards the left, and the touchpad follows. The touchpad itself is sizable at about six inches wide and four inches deep. You can find larger touchpads on some competitive laptops, like the Razer Blade 18, but the Legion 9i has no shortage of room for executing Windows’ multi-touch gestures. I also found the touchpad responsive and didn’t have problems with unintended inputs. A physical mouse button action is available by pressing on the lower half of the touchpad. It does the job, but it’s rather subtle and activates with a dull thud instead of a snappy click. While the Legion 9i’s keyboard and touchpad aren’t perfect, they’re a strong point when compared to alternatives. The Razer Blade 18 has a good keyboard and bigger touchpad, but its RGB-LED lighting options are not as impressive. Alienware’s Area-51 also has a good keyboard, and some decent RGB-LED lighting, but the touchpad is modest. The Legion 9i delivers more than competitors overall and avoids downsides. Lenovo Legion 9i: Display, audio Foundry / Matthew Smith The display is the Lenovo Legion 9i’s only obvious weakness, but it’s a big one. It falls short in display quality and makes a half-hearted attempt to deliver ultra-high refresh rates. Let’s talk refresh rate first. The Legion 9i’s 18-inch display supports a refresh rate up to 240Hz at a resolution of 3840×2400. Alternatively, it can reach 440Hz at a resolution of 1920×1200. However, the details of Lenovo’s implementation aren’t great. Users must access BIOS to flip to 1200p/440Hz or back to 2400p/240Hz. That’s an annoying problem, and Lenovo doesn’t do anything to help users mitigate it. The boot screen doesn’t even state the button a user needs to press to access the BIOS. I suspect most people who buy this laptop will use it for years without realizing the 1200p/440Hz mode exists. Personally, I would never use the feature, anyway. I’d rather stick to 2400p/240Hz, which is already plenty quick, instead of rebooting my laptop to access 440Hz at a lower resolution. The real problem is not just that the 1200p/440Hz is of questionable use, but also that it means the Legion 9i can’t offer an OLED or Mini-LED display. The Legion 9i’s IPS-LCD display is a great example of the breed with superb color accuracy, a color gamut that spans 100 percent of sRGB and 99 percent of DCI-P3, and a maximum brightness of 520 nits (I measured up to 519, but what’s a nit between friends?) However, like most IPS-LCD displays, it has a limited contrast ratio (I measured a maximum of 1340:1). An OLED will deliver far better contrast which leads to a richer and more immersive look. I also noticed the Legion 9i’s display is cool in color tone, with a measured white point of 7,600K at 50 percent brightness. And while the display is bright, it’s also glossy, which means glare is an issue in bright rooms. Ultimately, the Legion 9i’s display is a miss, but the audio system provides some redemption. Lenovo packs the laptop with two speakers, two tweeters, and two woofers, which together deliver a clear, crisp sound stage and reasonable bass. Quality speakers or a good headset will of course be superior, but the Legion 9i’s sound is enjoyable for a wide range of content, from podcasts to music and games. Lenovo Legion 9i: Webcam, microphone, biometrics The Lenovo Legion 9i has a 5MP webcam with an electronic privacy shutter. It’s good, though not exceptional. It provides a sharp and colorful image and handles mixed lighting well, though it’s still obvious that the camera is a webcam. Its quality is comparable to most modern gaming laptops. The microphone is similarly competent, providing good voice capture without the need to raise your voice. An IR camera is included and provides support for Windows Hello facial recognition. This is a fast, easy way to log in to a Windows machine. But, once again, this is a common feature for a modern gaming laptop. A fingerprint reader is not included. Lenovo Legion 9i: Connectivity Foundry / Matthew Smith Lenovo swings for the fences with the Legion 9i’s connectivity, and there’s a lot to dig into. The star of the show is the laptop’s pair of USB-C ports. They deliver Thunderbolt 5, USB 4 with up to 80Gbps of data, up to 100 watts of Power Delivery, and DisplayPort 2.1. It’s the whole enchilada, or very close to it. Most modern gaming laptops support Thunderbolt and USB-C, but the Legion 9i offers great support for the latest versions of these standards. That translates to better data rates. If you need high-speed connectivity, or want to connect to a dock or a Thunderbolt / USB-C monitor with numerous downstream ports, these ports are up for the task. However, the Legion 9i isn’t focused exclusively on Thunderbolt and USB-C. It also provides HDMI 2.1, three USB-A ports, Ethernet, an SD card reader, and a 3.5mm combo audio jack. I have no notes: this is an excellent array of connectivity options. Wireless connectivity is strong, too, as the laptop supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. These are the latest versions of each standard. It’s standard equipment for a modern gaming laptop, but still good to see. Lenovo Legion 9i: Performance The Lenovo Legion 9i has an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU paired with an Nvidia RTX 5080 GPU. The GPU has a maximum thermal graphics power of 175 watts, which is the most available to the RTX 5080 mobile—though, most other gaming laptops also hit that mark. The Legion 9i has healthy specifications in RAM and storage with 64GB and 2TB, the SSD connects over PCIe 5.0. Foundry / Matthew Smith Our first test is PCMark, a holistic system benchmark. It turned in a respectable score of 8,417. Though this is technically a bit behind some alternative laptops, the margins are thin. I’d say this is more or less a tie between the four top-scoring machines, which includes the Legion 9i. Foundry / Matthew Smith Next up is Cinebench 2024, a heavily multi-threaded rendering benchmark. Here the Lenovo Legion 9i came up short with a score of 1,511. That’s quick but, as the graph shows, it’s behind a range of laptops that are similar in size and have similar hardware. Foundry / Matthew Smith Handbrake, a heavily multi-threaded video transcoding and encoding tool, also puts the Legion 9i in an unfavorable light. Lenovo’s laptop completed the transcode of a 1080p feature-length film from a .mp4 to .mkv format in eight minutes and 12 seconds. That’s a speedy result, and closer to the competition than in Cinebench 2024. Still, the Legion 9i lags the field. Foundry / Matthew Smith While the Lenovo Legion 9i struggles a bit in heavily multi-threaded CPU tests, it delivers better results in GPU tests. 3DMark’s Fire Strike and Port Royale tests show the Legion 9i can deliver results that are towards the high end for an RTX 5080 mobile. It’s also not too far off the RTX 5090 mobile. Foundry / Matthew Smith The performance spread widens a bit in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, an older game that’s not too demanding on newer hardware. The Legion 9i achieved an average of 191 frames per second at 1080p resolution and the Highest detail setting, without use of DLSS or other frame reconstruction. Ray-tracing wasn’t used, either. As the graph shows, this hits the mark for an RTX 5080 laptop, and can leave some RTX 4090 laptops in the dust. However, the RTX 5090 laptops take a sizeable lead here, as the game’s average FPS is roughly 35 to 40 FPS higher on those machines. Foundry / Matthew Smith Metro: Exodus narrows the field again. While this is an older game, and we do not run this benchmark with ray-tracing enabled, it remains a formidable title when the Extreme preset is used. The Legion 9i does well here, scoring between the Maingear Ultima 18 with RTX 5080 and the pair of RTX 5090 laptops. Foundry / Matthew Smith Cyberpunk 2077 also speaks favorably of the Legion 9i. Here, Lenovo’s laptop can average 148 frames per second at 1080p and the Ultra preset, or 43 at the insanely demanding Overdrive ray-traced preset. Both figures, remember, are without any form of DLSS or frame reconstruction, so in practice better performance is possible. Still, these numbers stack up favorably. They’re good for an RTX 5080 mobile and not all that far off the RTX 5090 laptops. On the whole, the Lenovo Legion 9i’s performance seems to favor GPU performance over CPU performance. That leads to solid results in games and somewhat disappointing numbers in heavily multi-threaded CPU tests. On balance the Legion 9i is a fine performer, but it’s definitely tilted towards gaming rather than productivity. Lenovo Legion 9i: Battery life and portability The Lenovo Legion 9i has a 99 watt-hour battery. This is the maximum available in a consumer laptop due to limitations on the size of lithium-ion batteries allowed on a passenger airliner. It’s a very large battery. And the Legion 9i goes to the trouble of supporting Nvidia Optimus, a switchable graphics solution that can turn off the Nvidia GPU (and switch to the Intel IGP) when the GPU isn’t needed. Still, it’s not enough to deliver great battery life. You can expect anywhere between two and six hours of real-world battery life, depending on how much effort you put into avoiding demanding tasks. Foundry / Matthew Smith However, as the graph shows, this is not unusual for a high-end gaming laptop. The fastest laptops tend to land around two to three hours of battery life. Those that do manage to surge ahead, like the Razer Blade, do so with the use of less powerful CPUs and more miserly GPU power configurations. There’s a clear trade-off here. A modern gaming laptop can deliver maximum performance, or decent battery life, but it can’t provide both. The Legion 9i leans more towards performance. Lenovo Legion 9i: Conclusion The Lenovo Legion 9i is a design statement that looks great and proves enjoyable to use day-to-day. It also delivers strong game performance and an incredible array of leading-edge ports. These benefits are countered by a mediocre display with a 1200p/440Hz (or, alternatively, glasses-free 3D) mode that’s of questionable use. CPU performance also fell short of expectations. Still, the Legion 9i is a reasonable choice if you care mostly about GPU performance and will often connect the laptop to an external display. Read...