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Latest by M. Smith

acer predator nitro monitor announcement october 2020 xv2 series xv272 dt 1

Acer’s overclocked gaming monitors will up your kill-death ratio this winter

Acer's new lineup of gaming monitors is all-in on high refresh, turning toward overclocking to bump up the refresh rate specifications as high as possible.
amd radeon rx 6000 tease wont beat nvidia rtx 3080

AMD’s RX 6000 tease shows it won’t beat Nvidia’s RTX 3080, but could come close

AMD teased the Radeon RX 6000 series at its Zen 3 event. The tease shows AMD's Radeon RX 6000 series won't beat Nvidia's best, but it could come close.
Intel Core i7-7700K review

Intel Core i7-7700K review

The Core i7-7700K is Intel’s latest flagship enthusiast processor, and it looks quick on paper. It fails to make significant architecture or production process changes that might boost performance. Does that halt it, or does it fight on?
acer swift 7 hands on  0020

Hands on: Acer Swift 7

Acer’s new entry into the luxury laptop market is a super-light, super-thin notebook that brings premium features to a more modest price point.
Microsoft Surface Laptop lid

Microsoft Surface Laptop review

Microsoft is known for its 2-in-1 devices like the Surface Go or Surface Pro, but it also has a traditional laptop. Now that you can usually pick it up at a significant discount, how does the Surface Laptop hold up nearly a year after its release? We run it through its paces to see if it's worth the money.
nvidia geforce now review assassins creed odyssey 1080p 2

Nvidia GeForce Now review (in-depth): Great cloud gaming on a budget

Nvidia's GeForce Now is a cloud gaming service that offers access to games rendered on Nvidia's cloud hardware. It's not perfect, but it is affordable.

Brace yourself. Sony’s PlayStation 5 is going to be expensive

How much will Sony's PlayStation 5 cost? Pricing still remains unknown, but our estimate suggests the price will be higher than PlayStation fans expect to pay.
Surface Book 2 op-ed header

I tried using the Surface Book 2 as my only PC, and it let me down

Can the Surface Book 2 make it as a potential PC replacement? I tried -- and was disappointed with the results. Here's what I found and why it doesn't work.
call of duty modern warfare preview details feat

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is an aggressively familiar reboot

Modern Warfare takes the Call of Duty franchise back to the glory days of Call of Duty 4 with a new campaign mode that bills itself as "realistic" and "morally complex." In truth, it's rather simple, but it could still be a great shooter.
alienware area-51m review

Alienware Area-51m review

The Alienware Area-51m is a massive gaming laptop that paves a new path forward for the brand. While it offers many old-school features, it also brings a new look and design philosophy that gamers will love. Our Area-51M review dives into the guts of this portable battlestation.
best cheap xbox one games 2017 s review 9

Xbox One S Review: Affordable 4K Entertainment

Microsoft started off on the wrong foot this generation, but it isn’t giving up with the smaller, sleeker Xbox One S. But should you wait for the Xbox Series X?
Moto Edge Plus

Moto Edge Plus review: Overshadowed by giants

Motorola has a new flagship phone, but does Android really need another top-tier option? The Moto Edge Plus struggles to answer that question despite its perks.
Acer Swift 7 2019

Acer Swift 7 hands-on review

The Acer Swift 7 is among the world’s thinnest laptops, but it hasn’t received the fanfare that its super-slim profile seems to deserve. The price tag has proved a problem, and while new model shown at CES 2019 is better than ever before, expense remains an obstacle.
moto edge plus feature

Motorola’s flagship Moto Edge+ packs 6.7-inch curved OLED, 108MP camera

After skipping the flagship market in 2019, Motorola is back in 2020 with the Moto Edge+. It has a large OLED screen, 5G support, and a 108MP main camera.
Moto G Stylus

Motorola Moto G Stylus review: Gambling on a stylus

The Moto G Stylus packs a useful stylus at a low price point, but it's not the killer feature that had I hoped for. This Moto G Stylus review goes in-depth.
Intel Ghost Canyon

Intel NUC 9 Extreme Kit ‘Ghost Canyon’ review: All potential

Intel's NUC 9 Extreme Kit uses the company's Compute Element to squeeze modular design in a small footprint. It has potential, but it's far from perfect.
minecraft nvidia rtx ray tracing beta april 16 minecraftrtx1

Minecraft’s RTX ray-tracing beta goes live on April 16

Minecraft's RTX ray-tracing beta will go live on Thursday, April 16. If you have Minecraft for Windows 10 and Nvidia RTX graphics card, you're in for a treat.
Lenovo ThinkPad E450

Lenovo’s new E540/E550 and L450 serve ThinkPad durability at affordable prices

Lenovo's targeting businesses on a budget with its new E-series and L-series ThinkPads, which will debut at $599 and $699 respectively and feature optional 1080p displays.
playstation 5 design renders render 1

Sony’s PlayStation 5 repeats the PS3’s mistakes, with one key difference

Mark Cerny spoke about the Sony PlayStation 5's key features during its livestreamed GDC 2020 presentation. They're promising, but also repeat key mistakes.
Shadow streaming multiple devices

Shadow cloud-gaming service drops prices, adds ray tracing and VR beta test

Shadow, which offers a Windows 10 gaming PC in the cloud, has lowered pricing to compete with cloud gaming services like Google Stadia and Nvidia GeForce Now.
A player plays Destiny 2 on Google Stadia.

Google Stadia review: The revolution isn’t now

Google Stadia is a cloud gaming platform that plays games remotely and beams them to your device through the Internet. Stadia delivers much of what it promised, including console-quality gaming on smartphones, but its success comes with plenty of caveats.
dell xps 13 enterprise features 2 in 1

Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 review (2017)

Dell’s new XPS 13 2-in-1 aims for excellence by copying many treats that made the normal XPS 13 stand out, but have users moved on to newer, better designs?
Xbox Series X

The Xbox Series X is faster than your gaming PC. Now what?

Microsoft's Xbox Series X console packs 12 Tflops of GPU compute power, more than Nvidia's RTX 2080. What does that mean for the age-old PC vs. console battle?
intel command center graphics gdc 2019 intelcommandcenter3

Intel Command Center lays foundation for next year’s ‘Arctic Sound’ GPU

Intel revealed its new Command Center driver software at GDC 2019. The updated interface will control current Intel integrated graphics, but it also lays the groundwork for next year's Intel video card. New features include one-click optimization and a completely revised interface.
Henry Cavill as Geralt in season 1 of The Witcher.

Backlog: The Witcher is a great show, but The Witcher 3 is still better

After binging 'The Witcher' on Netflix, I turned back to 2015's 'The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt' to get my Geralt fix. Playing it on Nintendo's Switch, I was pleased to find the game is a true classic. In fact, the Netflix show still has a lot to live up ot.
LG CX-Series OLED

So actually, PC gamers should just buy TVs now

CES 2020 brought a pair of 48-inch OLED displays, one of which even has G-Sync support. These televisions easily beat the image quality of gaming monitors, even those that cost several thousand dollars. Maybe PC gamers should just buy televisions now?
Pimax 8K X VR headset

Pimax 8K X hands-on review: Long-awaited 8K VR headset is here, and it’s awesome

The Pimax 8K X VR headset is the end of a long journey for Pimax, which launched a Kickstarter to fund the headset back in 2017. It failed to meet its initial shipping date of January 2018, but it didn't back down. Our Pimax 8K X hands-on finds it was worth the wait.
intels ces keynote demonstrates a forward thinking attitude intel perspective 5

Intel shows a bit of everything at CES 2015, and it actually works

Intel casts a wide net in its CES 2015 keynote presentation, focusing less on computers and more on up-and-coming technologies that ought to keep the company relevant well into the future.
sony playstation 5 ces 2020 announcement 01 06  3

Sony’s PS5 logo is exactly like all the other PlayStations

Sony surprised the gaming world by making a PlayStation 5 announcement at CES 2020, sharing the first look at the PlayStation 5 logo. It's exactly what you would expect. The logo looks similar to the PS4 logo. Sony has kept its PlayStation branding extremely consistent across generations
ces 2014 overview long exposure

5 PC trends we noticed at CES 2014

While CES 2014 didn;t focus on computing, it's still important to the PC industry. Here's five trends that will determine the path of PCs for the next year.
origin reveals new millennium genesis modular case originpc ces2014 1

Origin reveals new Millennium and Genesis with modular case

Origin's new PC case, shipping with its Millennium and Genesis desktops, features a modular internal layout and expansion for up to 19 hard drives.
Lenovo Miix laptop screen

Hands on: Lenovo Miix

The affordable Lenovo Miix is a powerful convertible with a keyboard dock that harnesses the magic of magnets. Is this the Windows tablet to buy?
needs gestures tobiis eye tracking sensor returns ces tobii 2014 1

Who needs gestures? Tobii’s eye-tracking sensor returns to CES

Tobii has announced a partnership with SteelSeries to release its eye-tracking sensor this summer and has also slashed the price of its dev kit to $195.
Asus ROG Swift PG32UQX.

Go home, gaming monitors. You’re drunk

CES 2020 has raised the bar on gaming monitor quality. And that's awesome. Except for one small problem: They're way too expensive. CES 2020's gaming monitors have been a parade of ridiculously high-end screens that most gamers of average means can't hope to ever afford.