Skip to main content

Asus NovaGo, the first gigabit LTE-capable laptop, promises fast download speeds

asus novago
Matt Smith/Digital Trends
The NovaGo, which Asus bills the world’s first gigabit LTE-capable laptop, was unveiled by CEO Jerry Shen at this week’s second annual Snapdragon Technology Summit in Maui, Hawaii.

In recent years, the rise of the smartphone has raised our expectations when it comes to the availability of internet access. There was once a time when it was assumed that mobile connectivity would be slower and less stable than a home Wi-Fi connection – but a new wave of always on, always connected hardware is attempting to change things.

The Asus NovaGo boasts a gigabit Qualcomm Snapdragon X16 LTE modem. The company claims that this allows the device to deliver download speeds better than typical home Wi-Fi can manage: A two-hour movie can reportedly be downloaded in as little as 10 seconds.

The laptop is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 mobile PC processor. It can operate for up to 22 hours on a single charge, and last for 30 days in its modern standby mode. It also features a built-in eSIM to ensure users aren’t caught short when traveling internationally.

“Today marks the beginning of a new era of personal computing, and ASUS is very proud to be paving the way with Qualcomm Technologies and other partners to develop this new landscape for ‘always connected’ Windows on Snapdragon PCs,” said Shen at the event. “The Asus NovaGo reinvents the concept of laptop connectivity and productivity — it’s the world’s first laptop that is connected anywhere, at any time, with the new gigabit LTE network.”

The NovaGo is part of what’s being described as a new category of computers that are always on and always connected. While improving upon what might be expected of mobile internet connectivity, these systems also aim to imitate the convenience of a smartphone.

Users can wake the NovaGo from sleep mode at the touch of a button, and the laptop will be ready for action in the same way a smartphone would be. While it’s asleep, it will wake up intermittently to check for emails and notifications, and perform other similar tasks.

The introduction of touch interfaces and 2-in-1 form factors has had a huge impact on the Windows laptop market. Now, we’re seeing manufacturers take further inspiration from smartphones in terms of connectivity and sophisticated sleep modes – and the results could help us be more productive.

Asus is offering two configurations, starting with the $599 version which comes with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. The second configuration starts at $799 and comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

Brad Jones
Brad is an English-born writer currently splitting his time between Edinburgh and Pennsylvania. You can find him on Twitter…
This Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon laptop is 62% off right now
lenovo thinkpad x1 oled deal march 2022 extreme feature shot

Lenovo probably has one of the widest laptop offerings of any brand, so if you're looking for a work laptop, then Lenovo has some great options. For example, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 is made to be the quintessential work laptop with a lot of quintessential business-related features. You can grab it now from Lenovo for just $1,200 rather than the usual $3,229, although it is important to note that, while it may seem like a large discount, Lenovo does have a tendency to over-rice the list price of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. That's not to say it's a great deal; taking the laptop as is without the MSRP, the $1,200 is still excellent.

Why you should buy the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11
Under the hood, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon has an Intel Core i7-1365U vPro Processor, which is a mid-to-high-end processor in the latest generation, so you're getting something up-to-date. It also means that you're going to be able to handle pretty much all productivity work without issue, and that includes everything from document processing to slideshow making. It can also likely get some editing work done, which is handy if you need a couple to do a bit of simple photo editing now and again. Besides the powerful processor, the 32GB of DDR5 RAM will give you an overall solid day-to-day experience. Plus, it's a good amount of RAM to have if you're a programmer or do a lot of CAD stuff.

Read more
This HP gaming PC with an RTX 4090 is $1,000 off right now
HP Omen 45L logo on desktop.

Building a PC from scratch can be daunting, and if you don't have the time or the tech-savvy, then going for a pre-built gaming PC might be a much better option. Luckily, there are a lot of excellent deals on them, especially from big companies like Dell and HP. That said, if you want something with the best specs on the market, this HP Omen 45L is probably one of the best, with a massive sale on it. While is usually goes for $4,000, HP has discounted it down to $3,000, and while that may seem like a lot, that's a good price for the specs it has.

Why you should buy the HP Omen 45L
Behind the plexiglass of the case, you'll find an RTX 4090, the most powerful GPU currently available on the market. It is the only card that will actually let you hit over 100FPS at 4k with high graphical settings, so if you want to game at 4k with a high framerate, the RTX 4090 is perfect. Not only that, but the RTX 4090 is leaps and bounds better than any other card when it comes to ray tracing, and you even get access to the latest DLSS 3.0 technology, although you may not need it given the pure processing power that it has.

Read more
One year ago, ChatGPT started a revolution
The ChatGPT website on a laptop's screen as the laptop sits on a counter in front of a black background.

Exactly one year ago, OpenAI put a simple little web app online called ChatGPT. It wasn't the first publicly available AI chatbot on the internet, and it also wasn't the first large language model. But over the following few months, it would grow into one of the biggest tech phenomenons in recent memory.

Thanks to how precise and natural its language abilities were, people were quick to shout that the sky was falling and that sentient artificial intelligence had arrived to consume us all. Or, the opposite side, which puts its hope for humanity within the walls of OpenAI. The debate between these polar extremes has continued to rage up until today, punctuated by the drama at OpenAI and the series of conspiracy theories that have been proposed as an explanation.

Read more