Latest Gadget Review

Acer Aspire S7 2013 is Like the last gen Aspire S7, the SSD is configured in RAID0 for improved speed, and our 128 gig SSD's speed matched and sometimes modestly exceeded the PCIe SSD in the Sony Vaio Pro 13. We're also thrilled that Acer went with 8 gigs of RAM on this machine, since memory is soldered to the motherboard and you won't be able to upgrade it later. Even if you never exceed 4 gigs of RAM, it's nice to know it's there for the future.

Acer Aspire S7 As noted with other recent Intel Haswell Ultrabooks like the Sony Vaio 13, Intel's fourth generation doesn't bring significant CPU or graphics performance, but it does extend battery life, and that's something the original S7 needed. Our machine runs on the Intel Core i7-4500U dual core CPU with Intel HD 4400 integrated graphics. As with most Ultrabooks, especially one this thin and light, there's no dedicated graphics option.

Specs Aspire S7:

• Display: 13.3" full HD IPS multi-touch display, 1920 x 1080. Intel HD 4400 integrated graphics. HDMI port and Acer Converter port. Supports WiDi wireless display.
• Battery: 4 cell, 6280 Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is sealed inside.
• Performance: Fourth generation Intel Haswell ULV CPUs, all with Turbo Boost. 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-4200U, 1.8GHz Core i7-4500U (with HD 4400 graphics). Mobile Intel HM77 Express chipset. 8 gigs of DDR3 LPDDR3-1600MHz RAM. 128 or 256 gig mSATA SSD options (RAID0).
• Size: 12.72 x 8.78 x .51 inches. Weight: 2.87 pounds.
• Camera: 720p webcam.
• Audio: Built-in stereo speakers with Dolby Home Theatre v4, dual mics and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack.
• Networking: Integrated Intel Centrino Advanced-N7260 dual band WiFi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0.
• Software: Windows 8 64 bit.
• Expansion and Ports: 1 SD card slot.

Price: $1,699

Laptop Asus ROG G750JX is perfect for gamers laptop with skin 17.3" , Asus ROG G750JX has suported with Intel Haswell inside along with the very impressive NVIDIA GTX 770M with 3 gigs of DDR5 VRAM. This quad core beast can chew through the latest games on high settings without breaking a sweat. It stays remarkably quiet and cool when gaming: yes you'll hear the fan but it won't roar and blot out your game's audio track, no it won't toast your hands or singe the hair off your legs. Though at 8.75 lbs. you probably won't be gaming with the G750JX on your lap.

If you are is Republic of Gamers machine, you get good value and our G750JX-RB71 2.4GHz Core i7-4700HQ model with a matte full HD display, 12 gigs of RAM, the GTX 770M graphics card, WiFi 802.11AC, DVD burner and a 750 gig 7200 RPM HDD retails for $1,499. You'll find other variants, including models with a gloss 3D full HD display, a 128 or 256 gig SSD plus HDD setup, a Blu-Ray drive and up to 16 gigs of RAM (32 gigs is max for this machine). Bluetooth 4.0, an excellent backlit keyboard, stereo speakers with a subwoofer, a DVD burner and a full HD display are standard features. The ROG has two 2.5" drive bays and two easily accessible RAM slots (the other two slots require a lot of disassembly for access). It has 4 USB 3.0 ports, HDMI and mini DisplayPort/Thunderbolt that worked fine with our Apple Thunderbolt Display.

Design, Keyboard and Trackpad

This looks every bit the ROG, which is to say a hunky, chunky gamer with unique lines and a soft touch black finish. The keyboard deck has a unified matte finish rather than the faux metal keyboard surround and matte black wrist rest of the outgoing ROG G75. The Asus G750 isn't as understated as the Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 and Y510 crossover gaming-multimedia-general purpose powerful 15.6" notebook, but it's much more staid looking than the glossy, red Toshiba Qosmio that screams gaming. And the front end looks like a normal notebook vs. the aggressive front edge plus multi-color LED lights of the Alienware 17. For those who want their gaming rig to flaunt its identity, the ROG might seem ever so slightly well mannered looking, but for those of you who will take this to the office or college, it's just the ticket... though no one will mistake it for a standard laptop.

The G750 feels well made and solid and there's no flex in the keyboard deck. It has four USB 3.0 ports (two on each side), an HDMI port, Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45), a mini DisplayPort/Thunderbolt port that worked fine with our Apple Thunderbolt monitor, 3.5mm stereo out with SPDIF, 3.5mm mic and a VGA port. The 8 cell battery is removable.

The backlit keyboard with number pad is very good and I find it at least as comfortable and responsive as the SteelSeries keyboard on the competing MSI GT70, though it doesn't have enlarged gaming keys (WASD, Control and Space). There's no annoying flex, key travel is good, tactile feedback is pleasing and it's a pleasure to type on as well as game with. The very large Elan trackpad with right and left mouse buttons is very responsive and worked well with multi-touch gestures. The trackpad has a slight hint of texture and overall we found it much more usable than the tiny trackpad on the competing MSI GT70.

Gaming Laptop

We'll let our gaming demo tell the story. We test out several of today's demanding 3D games: BioShock Infinite, Skyrim, Crysis 3, Batman Arkham City and Mass Effect 3 at full HD resolution with graphics settings on high (we show you the settings used for each game). Suffice it to say it can handle any hot 3D title fluently on high to ultra settings except Crysis 3 where we had to drop down to medium settings at 1920 x 1080 to keep frame rates in the low to mid 40's. The ROG G750 lives up to its promise, and it stands in nicely as a gaming desktop replacement.

Display G750JX

Our model has the matte full HD 1920 x 1080 60Hz display. There's a model with a glossy full HD 3D 120Hz display for those who prefer those options. Having gamed with the glossy full HD on the second generation HP Envy 15 for 2 years, I vastly prefer the matte option to gloss when it comes to seeing details in typically dark game worlds. The matte display is brighter than average at 350 nits, and it's 100 nits brighter than the last generation Asus ROG G75. The greater brightness combined with the lack of glare make for wonderful gaming and movie watching, and contrast is excellent at 950:1. Color gamut is also very good and the display covers 95% of sRGB and 74% of Adobe RGB, making it workable for graphics and video pros. In fact, it matches the excellent displays on the Sony Vaio Pro 13 and Sony Vaio Duo 13 for color gamut. Games look rich and vibrant and movies have lively color and good detail in dark areas thanks to good black levels. Our only complaint is that the anti-glare coating creates some grain that's apparent on white backgrounds like web pages and Word documents. Viewing angles are better than average among non-IPS displays, but this isn't an IPS display, so you won't get 180 degree viewing angles. That said, viewing angles are sufficiently wide that you won't have to move the display back and forward with excruciating exactness to find the sweet spot, and side viewing angles are good enough for three people to watch a video together.

Performance Asus ROG G750JX

Here's where the Asus ROG G750JX shines, as do other serious gaming laptops. The full mobile 2.4GHz (Turbo Boost to 3.4GHz) Intel Core i7-4700HQ quad core CPU with 6 megs of level 2 cache walks circles around ULV Ultrabook Core i7 CPUs, and it's perfect for gaming, HD video editing, CAD work and number crunching in Excel. Combine that with the high end NVIDIA GTX 770M graphics card with 3 gigs of DDR5 memory and you've got one of the top laptop gaming machines on the market. In the NVIDIA line, the GTX 770M is bested only by the significantly more expensive, hotter and more power hungry GTX 780M in graphics performance and it's a powerhouse even if the 780M beats it at considerable cost, power and thermals.

The G750 has the latest generation 2.4GHz quad core i7-4700QQ Intel Haswell CPU and that's more important for battery life than performance. Granted, Intel integrated graphics on their fourth generation platform show improvement, but that's irrelevant here since the G750 runs full time on dedicated NVIDIA graphics. There's no NVIDIA Optimus switchable graphics here, and we're not complaining much since this is a gaming machine and we don't have to fuss over graphics settings to ensure that a program or game is using our dedicated graphics card. When unplugged, the G750's graphics will switch to a lower wattage for better battery life, that's surprisingly comparable to Intel HD 5000 graphics for performance and battery life. Plug in the AC adapter, and you'll get maximum performance.

Benchmarks

PCMark 7: 3804 (6163 with Samsung PM 840 SSD boot drive)

3DMark 11: P5019, E1715

Geekbench 2: 15,140

wPrime: 8.3 seconds

Windows Experience Index:
Processor: 7.9
RAM: 7.9
Graphics (for desktop): 7.6
3D Gaming Graphics: 7.6
HDD: 5.9 (8.1 with Samsung PM 840 SSD)

Sound

The laptop has a headphone amplifier, and sound through headphones or a good set of speakers is excellent. The ROG has stereo speakers that fire from under the keyboard and a fairly large subwoofer on the bottom (enlarged from the G75). Overall, built-in speaker audio was surprisingly quiet for a 17" gaming machine, but sound quality is balanced with a bit of bass thanks to the subwoofer and none of the shrillness you hear from small laptops. We did note a bug that when gaming, the speakers would crackle (just loud enough to notice) and muting then unmuting the speakers via the Fn key got rid of the crackling until the next reboot. That tells us it's a software bug and not a hardware issue. Asus uses MaxxAudio with a variety of customizable settings, and we found the gaming setting the best for overall use.

Battery Life

Asus G750 has decent battery life for this class and at 50% brightness with WiFi on it averaged almost 4 hours of unplugged use time for productivity work (not gaming, you don't want to game unplugged and give up performance). The machine has a removable 8 cell, 5900 mAh Lithium Ion battery, and that's not very large in terms of capacity or physical size, so we're surprised at the passable runtimes. Haswell is good at conserving power and NVIDIA's graphics card power management gets the job done.

Networking

The Asus ROG G750JX has wired Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 4.0 and Broadcom dual band WiFi 802.11ac (some models have 802.11n). Wireless with our 802.11ac adapter was well behaved with no drop outs and good throughput, even when 25 feet from the router with two sheetrock walls in between. It typically held onto a 300Mbps connection at that range.

Price Asus ROG G750JX: $1,499

Website: www.asus.com

Review Laptop Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus is one of the most gorgeous industrial designs you'll ever see in an ultraportable, a rigid metal casing that could dent a wall, a stunning full HD display and good performance. How do you make that better? Update it to 4th generation Intel Haswell CPUs, add a touch screen for better Windows 8 usability and further increase the resolution. You might wonder if full HD isn't plenty good enough on a 13.3" panel, and honestly it is. But Apple started the resolution craze with their Retina MacBook Pro models, so PC manufacturers are jumping on the bandwagon. Actually Samsung leapfrogged it: instead of matching the 13 or 15" Retina resolution like the Toshiba Kirabook and some upcoming Asus models, Samsung surpassed it with near 4k resolution: 3200 x 1800. Blimey, that's a lot of pixels! Even if you run it at 1920 x 1080, it beats the 13" MacBook Air with Haswell not just for resolution but for color quality.

Specs Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus

The Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus, not to be confused with the much lower spec-d and priced ATIV Book 9 Lite, weighs 3 lbs., is extremely thin at 0.51" and is clad completely in metal. It has Samsung's usual Mineral Ash Black matte finish, which has a hint of indigo blue and a backlit keyboard. The laptop runs on an Intel Core i5-4200U 1.6GHz dual core Haswell CPU with Intel HD 4400 graphics. It has 4 gigs of RAM and a 128 gig SSD drive. The 9 Plus has dual band Intel WiFi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and a webcam. The Series 9 / ATIV Book 9 is Samsung's top of the line (despite the confusing addition of the middling 9 Lite) Ultrabook, and it's never been cheap. This machine costs $1,399, making it one of the more expensive Core i5 Haswell Ultrabooks on the market.

Design and Ergonomics

Nothing has changed here from the ATIV Book 9 and Series 9 full HD models, and that's a good thing. This is one of the best looking Ultrabooks on the market, and attention to detail from machining to seams to the silky smooth hinge are all fitting of a high end machine with a price tag to match. Clearly you're paying extra for three things here: design, manufacturing quality and the high DPI display. You do get what you pay for. The all metal body (with not a hint of plastic anywhere except the keyboard keys), the rigid casing, the super slim design are all perfect. The teardrop side taper and complex curves are unique and I find it more compelling than the MacBook Air. It's incredibly thin yet built like a tank; seriously it could dent wallboard. What's different from the older models? Previous 13" Series 9 and ATIV Book 9 models weigh an impossibly light 2.55 lbs. while the 9 Plus weighs 3.06 pounds. The display can be laid flat on a desk via a 180 degree hinge that has a detent point at the commonly used 110 degree angle.

The ATIV Book 9 Plus has 2 USB 3.0 ports (one on each side), micro HDMI, mini VGA (adapter to full size VGA sold separately for $40), wired Gigabit Ethernet (via included dongle adapter that doesn't use a USB port) and 3.5mm combo audio. The SD card slot lives under a spring-loaded metal door on the side under the curve, and the card sticks out a few millimeters.

Despite the thin metal body, the Book 9 Plus doesn't get uncomfortably hot when working on MS Office documents or streaming 1080p video. The internal twin fan cooling with copper heat pipes effectively keeps heat under control. Air vents on the bottom and near the back edge get the job done nicely and the machine was silent or near silent unless installing copious Windows updates or playing a demanding 3D game. Our CPU ran at a safe 41 degrees Centigrade with moderate demand (100 degrees is max allowable), while the bottom surface rarely got hotter than human body temperature except when playing 3D games like The SIMS 3 and Civ V.
You can remove the bottom cover by unscrewing 10 Phillips head 0 screws, but the only upgradable parts are the wireless card and the M.2 SSD drive. Removing the bottom cover does provide access to the nominally "sealed inside" battery should you need to replace it. The laptop has two 2.0 watt stereo speakers that fire downward from grilles on each side near the front. They deliver pleasing audio that's much louder and richer than most Ultrabooks. Samsung does a fantastic job with audio here, and the 9 Plus outperforms many larger notebooks.

Performance Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus

Samsung starts with just one 9 Plus model, though we have hope that higher end configurations will follow. The machine runs on the 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-4200U fourth generation CPU with Intel HD 4400 graphics. It has 4 gigs of DDR3 RAM soldered on the motherboard and a 128 gig SSD drive. Our SSD was made by Toshiba and it uses the M.2 gum stick format with a SATA3 interface (sorry, not the even faster PCIe). It benchmarks very well, though Sony's PCIe Vaio Pro 13 is even quicker, as is the Acer Aspire S7's RAID0 SSD. Will you be able to tell the difference? No. According to CPUz and SiSoftware Sandra, RAM is dual channel, though the Windows Experience Index score of 5.9 is typical of single channel RAM. We reached out to Samsung and they state that it's single channel. I respectfully disagree. Memory is listed as two 2 gig modules in BIOS, and I really think it's dual channel from benchmarks and system utility reporting. Why does dual channel matter? Integrated graphics use system memory (RAM) as video memory, so faster RAM speeds up graphics a bit. That's even more appealing when driving an extremely high resolution display.

Some of you lament 4 gigs of RAM, and for some power users that use VMs, do heavy software development or edit full HD video professionally, that's warranted. For the rest of you who use MS Office, a web browser with 10 tabs, email, Photoshop and edit HD video occasionally for work or play, 4 gigs is fine. I routinely have IE with 10 tabs open (Chrome is nice but its touch support is weak and each tab grabs lots of RAM), Photoshop CS, Dreamweaver, Word, email and social networking. I have never exceeded 4 gigs of RAM even when running at 3200 x 1800 resolution. Most games are 32 bit and thus don't use more than 4 gigs of RAM (Civ V uses 1.5 gigs at full HD), and this isn't really a gaming notebook anyhow.

The Intel Wireless-N 7260 + Bluetooth 4.0 card is socketed and upgradable, as is the SSD drive. Note that the SSD drive uses the newer and less common M.2 format, so a standard mSATA SSD won't fit. The drive uses a SATA3 interface (M.2 is a form factor, not an interface), and you'll find just a few M.2 SSD drives available aftermarket if you want to increase storage capacity. The 128 gig drive has the usual recovery partition, though you can use Samsung's excellent Recovery program to migrate the contents of the partition to a 32 gig USB flash drive, if you wish to recover that space. After Windows updates, the drive has the usual 65 gigs free (add 20 gigs if you do remove the recovery partition).

Benchmarks Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus

(Core i5-4200U, 4 gigs RAM and 128 gig SSD)
PCMark 7: 5050
3DMark 11: P877
wPrime: 22.8 sec.
Windows Experience Index:
Processor: 6.9
RAM: 5.9
Graphics (for desktop): 5.9
Gaming Graphics: 6.5
HDD: 8.1

WiFi

Laptop Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus a compatibly with Intel's new WiFi ac module, found in the Vaio Pro 13 and MacBook Air with Haswell, had growing pains, but even Sony's Broadcom 802.11n in the Duo 13 has some folks complaining. Older Samsung Series 9 models with 802.11n earned their share of complaints, but Samsung addressed that with an improved antenna design. The good news? In our tests the ATIV Book 9 Plus has excellent WiFi with good range, good throughput and no drops. It occasionally fails to reconnect after 10 sleep/wake cycles but toggling flight mode revives the connection. We test using a dual band 802.11n network, and test both 2.4 and 5GHz. The Intel 7260N supports Intel WiDi wireless display. Bluetooth 4.0 is built-in.

Battery Life

The Series 9 was no slouch for battery life, and things get better with the ATIV Book 9 Plus thanks to Intel's Haswell platform whose strong point is power savings. The large 55 Wh (7300 mAh) battery also helps. The battery is sealed inside, but as noted it's easy to open up the laptop and the battery uses a connector rather than solder, so you could replace it yourself if it dies of old age. Samsung uses the same very compact charger with tiny charging tip as with their other Ultrabooks and Windows tablets. The pin isn't fiddly or stubborn like the Series 7 Ultra / ATIV Book 7, and it's easy to plug in. Not that you'll be plugging it in often: battery life is superb. It falls between the Sony Vaio Pro 13 and Vaio Duo 13 Haswell ultraportables and is closer to the long-lived Duo 13. We managed 8.5 hours of actual use time with brightness at an ample 50%, WiFi turned on and adaptive brightness enabled, all while using Samsung's default power plan. In our test we do a mix of MS Office, email, social networking, HD video streaming from YouTube and Netflix and photo editing in Photoshop CS 6.

Price Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus: $1,399

Website: www.samsung.com

Apple's has release new ultra-portable laptop, though not faultless, MacBook Air 13-inch is sixth-generation of the MacBook Air.

MacBook Air 13-inch offers significant improvements in its solid state storage speed, graphical power, battery life and wireless capabilities, but the processor's clock speeds actually take a backward step. But as we'll see, for most real-world applications, the MacBook Air 2013 matches or out-performs its predecessor.

Review Apple MacBook Air 13-inch:
Like most recent MacBook Air refreshes, the mid-2013 update brings us four new models; two with 11-inch screens and two with 13-inch displays. All use Haswell 1.3GHz Intel Core i5 dual-core processors, replete with Intel HD Graphics 5000, the latest version of Intel's integrated graphics chipset. They also all run the OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion operating system, although this will change to OS X Mavericks when available.
The cheaper model in each of the two screen sizes has 128GB of solid state storage, the more expensive version has 256GB, and all offer 4GB of RAM.

The version on test here is the top-of-the-range 256GB 13-inch MacBook Air, which costs £1,129 / US$1,299 / AU$1,449. The lower specced 128GB 13-inch model is £949 / US$1,099 / AU$1,249.

Specifications MacBook Air 13-inch:
As mentioned earlier, the 2013 13-inch MacBook Airs use Intel's new Haswell processors, the latest in the company's Core range. Off the shelf, they're dual-core 1.3GHz Intel Core i5 chips.

Their Hyper-Threading feature enables each of the two cores to run two threads simultaneously, for four virtual cores, and at times of intense needs, underused resources can be reallocated to Turbo Boost their speeds to up to 2.6GHz.

Source: http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/laptops-portable-pcs/laptops-and-netbooks/13-inch-macbook-air-1158388/review