Alienware 17 gaming laptop with a haswell processor first look or review with its features and price details.

The spec alone is mouth-watering, with a quad-core i7-4800MQ processor running at 2.7GHz, 16GB of memory and a high-performance GeForce GTX 780M with 4GB of video memory.
There's a 250GB SSD that acts as the boot drive – allowing it to boot in just 10 seconds from fully off - and a conventional 750GB hard drive for storing games and other files. Our review unit was equipped with Windows 8, but you can opt for Windows 7 at the same price if you prefer.
The 17.3-inch screen has a full HD resolution (1920x1080) and provides a very bright, clear image with great viewing angles and a welcome matt-finish that helps to reduce reflections and glare.
The Klipsch-designed speakers are a cut above average too – they still lack bass, but they do create a fuller sound and produce more volume than most laptop speakers.
The size of the screen means that there's plenty of room for a large, comfortable keyboard and touchpad, and the Alienware 17 is built like a tank so it'll certainly withstand the rigors of keyboard-pounding gaming sessions.
As with all Alienware laptops, there's plenty of eye-candy thanks to the AlienFX software that allows you to customise the colour of the backlight on the keyboard. Even the touchpad glows too, which we think looks rather good.
There's a slot-loading DVD drive and a multitude of connectivity options, including both HDMI input and output, Mini DisplayPort and the latest 802.11ac Wi-Fi – although, of course, you'll need a matching 802.11ac router to benefit from those faster wireless speeds.
Alienware 17 review
Performance is predictably impressive, and the Alienware 17's score of 6332 on the general-purpose PC Mark 7 benchmark was one of the highest we've ever seen. Gamers won't be disappointed either, as it breezed through our Stalker test at 1280x720 resolution with almost 130fps. It didn't lose many frames when we stepped the resolution right up to 1920x1080, still managing almost 120fps. See also: The 8 best laptops of 2013.
The two large air-vents on the back had us a little worried at first, but even after several hours of running various tests there was only a mildly warm flow of air from the vents and virtually no noise from the internal cooling fans. Visit Alienware M17x review.
Plus, despite the size of the screen, the glowing eye-candy and high performance, the power-sipping Core i7 processor still managed to provide an improvement in battery life. The previous Ivy Bridge version from Alienware that we reviewed earlier this year could only manage 2.5 hours of streaming video from BBC iPlayer, but that has now been extended to 4.25 hours – an increase of more than an hour and a half. See Group test: what's the best high-end laptop?
Mind you, battery life isn't a major consideration for a laptop like this. The Alienware 17 weighs over four kilos – almost four times the weight of Sony's ultra-portable Vaio Pro 13 – and is a chunky 50mm thick, so it's obviously going to spend most of its life sitting on a desk within arm's length of a power socket.
Although its specification and performance are impressive, the eye-watering price will put it way beyond the reach of most people. In fact, the Ivy Bridge model mentioned earlier provided only slightly worse performance and costs around £1800, so you're certainly paying a premium for the luxury of the latest Intel and nVidia processors.

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Asus X501A-XX277H review

Asus X501A-XX277H review

£299 inc VAT

Put aside your prejudices: this sub-£300 laptop is a gem, and one of the best bargains we've seen recently. Read our Asus X501A review to find out why.

 sus’ X501 laptop range is very much aimed at those on a budget. There are several models in the range but prices start at a mere £299 for this Celeron-based X501A.

Before dismissing the Celeron as outdated, the B830 is quite a recent version, released in late 2012. It’s a dual-core processor running at a respectable 1.8GHz, and backed up by 4GB of memory and a surprisingly capacious 750GB hard drive.

The Celeron isn't bad at this price, but it can't overclock like the pricier Core i5 chips with Turbo Boost. Consequently it produced a relatively modest score of just under 2000 when running the PCMark 7 benchmark suite. This is most noticeable when first starting up, as the X501A seems to pause and gather its thoughts for about 10-15 seconds even after the main Start screen has appeared. (It does live up to Asus' claim that it resumes to the Lock Screen in just 2 seconds from standby, though.)

After this, the X501A is pretty responsive and more than up to the job of browsing the web or running Microsoft Office. It’s no gaming rig, though, as the Celeron uses an older Intel HD integrated graphics processor that can barely reach 20fps even when running Stalker at 1280x720 and with graphics settings turned way down low.

Of course you can’t expect much in the way of gaming performance from a laptop that costs less than £300, and in other respects the X501A is actually quite impressive. It’s very well built for such an inexpensive machine – the casing has an attractive mottled effect, and feels sturdy enough to cope with the occasional bump in a backpack.

The 1366x768 screen isn’t the brightest we’ve seen, but it’s fine for web browsing or watching some streaming video online. Viewing angles aren't great, and the glossy screen makes it hard to avoid reflections, but it's surprisingly good for the price. Colours are vibrant and accurate enough for editing your snaps.

Build quality is better than you might expect, the overall sturdiness of the unit ensures that the keyboard and trackpad both feel firm and comfortable to use. The trackpad is flush with the casing so you can use gestures to navigate around Windows 8, calling up the Charms bar, switching between apps and scrolling and zooming.

Even the Altec Lansing speakers are a pleasant surprise, lacking the harsh, tinny edge that we’ve come to expect from most low-cost laptops.

You also get a USB 3 port (plus a USB 2 port), Bluetooth 4, 802.11n Wi-Fi and both HDMI and VGA outputs.There’s no optical drive built in, so you might need to budget a little extra for an external drive if you want to watch DVDs, rip CDs or simply install some software.

The benefit is a weight of 2.1Kg - which is well below average for a 15.6-inch laptop. It’s no Ultrabook, but the X501A can be carried around fairly easily all day. With a battery that provides a good 4.5 hours of video streaming via Wi-Fi, it's a real bargain.

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Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch touchscreen Ultrabook review

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch touchscreen Ultrabook 

review

Around £1,400 inc VAT (UK price to be confirmed)

Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon was one of the best Ultrabooks when it launched last year. The 14in Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch adds Windows 8 and a touchscreen to the already impressive mix of stylish design, quality build and solid performance. The additions make this ThinkPad thicker and heavier, but it couldn't be described as either bulky or too heavy. Rather the Carbon Touch is now more like other Ultrabooks, unlike its noticeably svelte predecessor. See : What is an Ultrabook?

ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch: Design and build

Design-wise, we're smitten. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch is one good-looking laptop. It is almost all black, with some red highlights. With lid closed the top of the chassis is a uniform sheet of black with just a Lenovo logo bottom right, and a ThinkPad badge bottom right - the dot of the i in ThinkPad glows red when your laptop is working. Open up and the design is similarly minimalist. The well-sized scrabble-tile keyboard is black out of black - the keys a slightly more shiny black than the carbon body. What trim there is is red, with the ThinkPad TrackPoint button a red dot set into the middle of the keyboard. Indicator lights glow green. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch lid folds back so the laptop sits flat on the desk. See also Group test: what's the best ultrabook laptop?

We really like the keyboard. As with other Lenovo keyboards the bottom of the scrabble tile keys is curved, giving you extra space when typing. And the size is good anyway. Typing is a good experience, with a couple of caveats peculiar to Lenovo. At the extreme bottom left of the Carbon X1 Touch's keyboard is the Function key. If you're used to Control being there, you will make a few mistakes. The trackpad is smooth and responsive, and it's well sized.

Everything feels stylish and premium. The ThinkPad is principally constructed of carbon fibre, the finish feeling strokably smooth to the touch but not picking up fingerprints. It's a sleek design - with the lid folded down the Carbon Touch is almost MacBook Air-like in its slim profile. But that carbon finish gives a feeling of sturdiness: we wouldn't drop test such a beautiful (and expensive) laptop, but we carted it around for days and found not a scratch on it.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch is heavier than the non-touch Windows 7 version. Without the power brick we measured it at 1.54kg, rather than the around 1.36kg of its predecessor. It's noticeable when you hold both devices. The Carbon Touch is not a heavy laptop - I carried it on my daily commute for days without regularly feeling that I was carrying anything more than my usual mix of gym kit, lunch and myriad smartphones and tablets (back off, muggers). But when you compare it to the lighter X1 Carbon you will feel like you are lifting weights.

You won't, however, notice the difference in thickness. We measured the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch at 2.2cm thick at its widest point. It is a smidgeon thicker than the non-touchscreen Carbon, but its a tiny difference.

Connection options include 3G as well as WiFi, although there's no ethernet or display ports there is a USB 3.0 connector. You get an SD card slot and a fingerprint scanner.

One other point to note about the X1 Carbon Touch's build: the charger cable uses a connector the likes of which we haven't seen elsewhere, even on lower-end Lenovo laptops. It's oblong-ended and looks like a big USB connector. Nothing wrong with that, and a gentle tug on the cable doesn't dislodge or damage it. But if you habitually re-use laptop chargers you are out of luck.

ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch: Performance

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch comes with a choice of Intel i5 and i7 processor, and either 4GB or 8 GB of SDRAM. The model we tested had an Intel Core i5-3247U chip running at 1.8GHz with 4GB RAM. There's also a 128GB SSD, although we could see only 111.78GB, and before we even started nearly a third of that was gone to the OS.

Running Windows 8 this makes the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch a zippy performer. General office work, web streaming and movie playing are all perfectly snappy. This was born out by our PCMark7 benchmark score of 4,783. The best-performing Ultrabooks such as the i7-toting Sony Vaio Duo 11 and Dell XPS 12 Ultrabook attained scores of around 4,900 so the X1 Carbon Touch is in good company. It also boots up quickly.

A 4,900 general performance score was also attained by the best gaming laptop we have tested recently - the Alienware M17x. But don't expect the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch to be a gaming rig. It's not. It's a business laptop with integrated Intel graphics, so you could squeek through less-intensive games on their lower settings but that's about it.

One final note on the X1 Carbon Touch's performance: in our tests it ran hot on the underside. Use it on a desk and you'll never notice, but when we tested the Carbon Touch on our lap we soon had hot legs - and not in a good way.

ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch: Battery life

Lenovo makes a couple of big claims on behalf of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch's battery: namely that is lasts for 8.2 hours, and that it goes from zero to 80 percent charged in just 35 minutes. The latter claim we found to be true: this laptop charges quickly, which could prove criticial on the road. The overall battery life was not quite up to the hype, in our experience.

But the good news is that the touchscreen hasn't affected the battery life overmuch. We found the battery life performed much the same as the older, non touch X1 Carbon. We tested that model's measured battery life at 6 hours, 11 minutes. The X1 Carbon Touch is broadly the same: use it for five, even five and a half hours and you should have no problems. And on standby it lasts for days.

ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch: Display

The Lenovo ThinkPadX1 Carbon touch has a 14in a 1600x900 display. And, glory be, it's a matt display - perfectly usable under bright lights. It's even usable outdoors, at a pinch. Obviously the matt means you lose some of the vibrancy of a glossy screen, but we didn't find the Carbon Touch to be at all washed out. Viewing angles are pretty good - you could defintely gather a few people around this laptop, although it doesn't look great from above.

And it's a touchscreen.

I have to say I wasn't expecting to use the touchscreen. It's a laptop, right? But it turns out Windows 8 and touch do make good bedfellows, even when you have a perfectly good keyboard, trackpad and mouse. It helps that Lenovo has given the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch a 10-finger multitouch panel. It's responsive - to gestures as well as taps.

I've used the X1 Carbon Touch for over a week now, and my experience is this: when selecting things, switching and closing programs, scrolling lists and connecting to a Wi-Fi network I naturally reach out and touch. And that's in the Modern UI and in the Desktop interface. I don't image I'll ever type by touch, but it really does make sense to use a touchscreen this good. And the applications for gaming offer good potential.

ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch vs 13in MacBook Pro with Retina Display

It's worth comparing the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch with 13in Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display. The MacBook is a similar screen size, is in essence as fast (4,596 points), lasts much longer on battery (~9 hours), and, although we don't have a final price for the Carbon Touch, is likely to cost roughly the same. The Carbon Touch has a touchscreen, which the MacBook doesn't. But Apple's laptop has a much better display.

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Group test: what's the best budget laptop?

The Top 5 Laptops for less than £600

If you need an affordable, portable laptop, a netbook isn’t always your best option.

• Laptops reviews
• Laptops buying advice
• Netbooks reviews

5. Acer Aspire V5-571

• Reviewed on: 6 September 12
• RRP: £499 inc VAT
• Rating: 

The Acer Aspire V5-571 is very much a budget choice. Its quite-usable battery life, competent screen and generous dimensions make it a workable choice for a portable machine, but you may pine for more power with challenging computing tasks.

4. Lenovo IdeaPad S205-1038

• Reviewed on: 13 September 11
• RRP: £340 inc. VAT
• Rating: 

If you’re after something that’s easy to carry around but has enough power to deal with tasks beyond the everyday then the Lenovo IdeaPad S205-1038 is well worth considering.

3. Samsung RV511

• Reviewed on: 31 May 11
• RRP: £534.05 inc VAT
• Rating: 

The Samsung RV511 is a well specified laptop that provides plenty of the features and certainly most of the performance you can expect of any laptop under £1000. Build quality is also fairly solid, if a bit chunky and plasticky feeling. It’s a well-rounded package and certainly worth short-listing if you’re shopping for a no-frills laptop under £500.

2. Toshiba Satellite Pro L850-11U

• Reviewed on: 20 September 12
• RRP: £500 inc VAT
• Rating: 

The Toshiba Satellite Pro L850 lacks the pace of some budget notebooks, and the screen and input device are trimmed to the budget price. Triumphs for the Satellite Pro include its large hard drive and usable speakers, while battery life proved quite usable too. For a business on a budget, it will handle the basics.

1. Acer Aspire V3-571

• Reviewed on: 7 September 12
• RRP: £450 inc VAT
• Rating: 

The Acer Aspire V3-571 laptop is a great example of just how much can be achieved within the constraints of a severely limited budget.

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Hewlett-Packard joins Chromebook fray with 14-inch browser-based laptop

Hewlett-Packard is getting into the Chromebook game after rumors about the company's first browser-in-a-box surfaced in late January.

Hewlett-Packard on Monday said it's officially jumping into the Chromebook fray after persistent rumors about the company launching one surfaced in late January. HP joins Samsung, Acer, and Lenovo selling PCs loaded with Google's browser-as-OS.

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The HP Chromebook features a 14-inch display with 1366-by-768 resolution, step up from most Chromebooks that feature 11.6-inch displays. You also get a 1.1GHz Intel Celeron processor, 16GB solid-state drive, 2GB RAM, and 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi. For ports, the device offers 3 x USB 2.0, HDMI, Ethernet, headphone/microphone combo jack, and a media card reader.
HP is promising a paltry 4 hours and 15 minutes for battery life, and the laptop is also a little heavy at just under four pounds, and measures 0.83 inches thick. The Chromebook 14 is available now from HP and sells for $330, but you also get 100GB of free Google Drive storage for two years--usually an extra $120.
It's not clear how well Chromebooks are selling overall, but there are indications that the concept is catching on with American PC users as more people move their digital lives online. Acer recently told Bloomberg that Chromebooks have, since November, accounted for 5 to 10 percent of Acer's U.S. shipments . Samsung's 11.6-inch Chromebook is currently the top-selling laptop on Amazon , and Lenovo believes its $429 ThinkPad-branded Chromebook will appeal to schools looking to make bulk purchases.
Even though most of us use our computers primarily to get online these days, I still find it surprising that Chromebooks are gaining in popularity. Samsung and HP sell their Chromebooks for around $300-$400, which is the starting price for lower-tier Windows notebooks. The advantage of a desktop notebook is that you have the best of both worlds. You can get online with the browser of your choice, including Chrome, and if you need desktop functionality for applications such as Skype or Spotify, you have the option.
But the counter to that line of thinking can be best summed up by my PCWorld peer Jared Newman who recently used a Chromebook as his workhorse PC during CES in January. "It always booted up quickly, was light on my shoulder and was a pleasure to type on," Newman said. He also noted that many sub-$500 Windows machines don't hold up in terms of quality and performance compared to Samsung's Series 5 550 Chromebook.
If Chromebooks are the next big trend in PCs, that has to be concerning for Microsoft even if Windows devices still account for the majority of PC sales. There's little doubt that many people spend a big chunk of their daily PC time in a browser. And Web applications such as Google Docs and Adobe Photoshop Express make it easier than ever to "live in the cloud" and turn away from desktop apps.
Microsoft is trying to make the jump to the Web too, but the software giant is taking a different approach by merging desktop applications with the cloud, most notably with Microsoft Office 2013 and Office 365 Home & Student. The new version of Office still includes desktop applications, but Microsoft encourages Office 365 subscribers to save their work to SkyDrive, the company's online storage service. That way, your documents are immediately available to you on other PCs running Office installations. Office 365 users can even download "throwaway" versions of Office, dubbed Office on Demand, that can be quickly downloaded and used from any public PC running Windows 7 or later.
Even the ability to quickly download a desktop app, however, isn't quite as seamless and instantaneous as logging onto a Website, such as Google Docs or Microsoft's own Office Web apps.
Perhaps if Chromebooks gain even further popularity, which is still far from certain at this point, Microsoft will have to move more aggressively into the cloud and let go of its desktop-bound focus. For now, Chromebooks are an interesting trend to watch, but until I can get Samsung Series 5 quality for under $200, I'm sticking with Windows (and Linux).

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