If your office chair leaves your back begging for mercy after long hours at your desk, you’re not alone! And now here’s an opportunity to change that. The Staples Hyken is one of Reddit’s most recommended budget desk chairs and right now it’s on sale for just $150. That’s 50% off! With a price drop this impressive, you really shouldn’t sit around (literally) on your old chair when you have a chance to upgrade to an alternative that’s comfortable, supportive, and affordable. The Staples Hyken checks all the boxes for ergonomic comfort, complete with an adjustable headrest and armrests, customizable seat height, swivel and tilt settings, as well as the one key feature that you always need in a good task chair: dynamic lumbar support that you can adjust to fit your back just right. The breathable mesh seat and back are the cherry on top, keeping you cool during those hot summer days. For remote workers and PC gamers on a tight budget, the Staples Hyken has become a go-to option, with its versatility and affordability praised across various communities on Reddit. What are you waiting for? Snag the Hyken chair for just $150 while you can! This deal expires tomorrow or when supplies run out, which could be sooner than later. The Staples Hyken with dynamic lumbar support is 50% offBuy now from Staples Read...

For most people, the best computing option for a home office these days is not a laptop, not a desktop, but a mini PC. It takes up a lot less space and offers a lot more bang for your buck in terms of performance. For instance, the Kamrui E3B mini PC is only $272 at Amazon right now with Prime and special discount code 6IFOASQQ (down from its original $430). Snag a free Prime trial to score this extra-low price! This thing is absolutely tiny, fitting comfortably under your monitor or even on your monitor’s back if you use the VESA mount. Despite its size, it’s still rather powerful, running on a Ryzen 7 5700U CPU and a hefty 32GB of RAM. That’s more than enough to smoothly run Windows 11, apps, and browser tabs without choking. The Kamrui E3B only comes with a 512GB SSD (boo), but it’s pre-loaded with Windows 11 Pro (nice). If you outgrow it and need more space, you can manually upgrade the storage up to 2TB and the memory up to 64GB, turning it into a real powerhouse. You can also get away with some light gaming thanks to the integrated RX Vega 8 graphics. Lastly, the Kamrui E3B has solid connectivity with built-in Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, plus numerous ports including HDMI, DisplayPort, and USB-C video for triple 4K@60Hz support along with six high-speed USB-A, a Gigabit LAN port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. Overall, this is a fantastic mini PC for any budget, especially with this crazy discount. Get the Kamrui E3B for just $272 at Amazon, but don’t forget you need both a Prime subscription—start a 30-day free trial now—and code 6IFOASQQ at checkout! Get this Ryzen 7 mini PC with 32GB RAM for just $272Buy now at Amazon Read...

Acer’s new Aspire notebooks for Computex 2025 offer the choice of all three processor platforms, with either 14- or 16-inch display options. But there’s one big problem that the company can’t do anything about. In a word? Tariffs. Acer’s Aspire notebooks typically are its most affordable, so America’s fluctuating import tariffs add a confusing wrinkle to anything Acer announces. As a result, Acer isn’t announcing either the pricing or the ship date for its six new Copilot+ PCs. It is, however, disclosing what European customers will pay. Acer’s new Aspires are easy to understand: the company is shipping two notebooks, each with Intel’s Core Ultra (Lunar Lake) series, the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series, and the low-end Qualcomm Snapdragon X platform inside. In each processor category, Acer is shipping both a 14-inch and a 16-inch version. All qualify as Copilot+ PCs. Perhaps because of the price, Acer executives told us that the emphasis is on the Snapdragon-based Aspires. The 14-inch version will ship for 899 euros ($1,006) and will be available in June to European customers. Naturally, we just don’t know what tariffs will do to your wallet. Acer While there are slight differences, each of the 14-inch Aspires generally shares the same features as the others, and the same goes for the 16-inch Aspires, too. There are some slight variations, we’re told: for example, the Snapdragon PC platform includes a 1440p webcam, while the AMD and Intel versions include a more basic 1080p webcam. The Intel- and Qualcomm-based Aspires include Wi-Fi 7, while the AMD-based Aspire ships with a Wi-Fi 6e radio instead. The Intel variant also includes Thunderbolt 4 ports, while the others include the virtually identical USB4. Finally, the Intel-based Aspire ships with a 1920 x 1280 display option (and a 60Hz panel), while the others ship with a 1920 x 1200 display instead but nudge up to 120Hz. Qualcomm These are the specifications for the new 14-inch and 16-inch Aspire AI notebooks, with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X chip inside. I had a chance to briefly check out the new Aspires in a press preview before Computex. The displays of the new Aspires are better than you might expect, with both OLED options and conventional IPS panels that can reach 500 nits and top out at 120Hz refresh rates — not what you would normally expect for a budget PC. Memory options climb to 32GB of LPDDR5X, with storage options of up to a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSDs. In general, the 14-inch Aspires measure 12.28 x 8.89 x 0.63in. and weigh about 2.73 pounds, while the 16-inch versions measure 13.97 x 9.85 x 0.63in. and weigh about 3.28 pounds. There are some slight variations depending upon the processor. Acer Acer’s 14- and 16-inch Aspire AI notebooks, this time with an Intel Lunar Lake chip inside them. Again, the key is the price. Acer’s two Snapdragon Aspires, the A14-11M and A16-11M, will ship for 899 euros ($1,006) and 999 euros ($1,118) in June and July, respectively. The Acer Aspire A14-53M, a 14-inch Aspire with Intel’s Core Ultra chip, will ship for 999 euros ($1,118) in July and accompany the 16-inch A16-52M for 1,099 euros ($1,230), which will ship in August to the European market. Finally, Acer will ship its 14-inch A14-61M and the 16-inch A16-61M with Ryzen AI 300 processors inside to Europe in July and August for 999 euros ($1,118) and 1,099 euros ($1,230). As for the United States? Acer said that it will announce a ship date and price for the various models closer to when you can buy them. Read...

Acer is launching two creator-class laptops at Computex 2025: the Swift X 14 and Swift X 14 AI, which give buyers the choice of either an AMD or Intel processor as well as an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070. A creator-class laptop splits the difference between a traditional productivity laptop and a gaming device, with a midrange GPU that can handle both tasks, and with decent battery life, too. In the case of the Acer Swift X line, the two laptops have identical measurements (12.69 x 8.95 x 0.38-0.71 inches) and weigh about 3.5 pounds. What the Swift X offers is demure performance: It lacks the RGB keyboards of Acer’s Predator lineup, and includes a haptic touchpad as an additional feature. A haptic touchpad is equally clickable all along its surface, with minimal effort. Acer even includes a stylus for taking notes on the touchpad or the laptop’s 14.5-inch 2800×1800 OLED display, which delivers 100 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut. That display appears to be just 60Hz, however. The only difference between the two Swift X’s is in the processor: The Swift X 14 AI features the choice of a Copilot+ capable Ryzen AI 300-series chip, from the AI 5 340 on up to the AI 9 365. Alternatively, the Swift X 14 includes either Intel’s Core Ultra 225H, 255H, and 285H. All are members of Intel’s Arrow Lake family, which can only provide 13 TOPS and do not meet Copilot+ requirements. Mark Hachman / Foundry Inside, Acer offers up to 32GB of LPDDR5X system memory as well as up to a terabyte of storage — but with two M.2 slots for SSDs, so users can add more. Acer provides a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, and a pair of USB-A ports, with one available for charging. The laptop also includes an SD slot, as well as an undisclosed HDMI port. Acer includes a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports in additional to USB-A and HDMI.Mark Hachman / Foundry Though there’s just a 1080p webcam, it can identify you for Windows Hello biometric recognition. There’s a fingerprint reader underneath the power button, too. The wrinkle is the pricing and availability. Because of the constantly changing tariffs, Acer isn’t disclosing pricing or availability quite yet. The company will ship the Swift X in 30 to 90 days, but isn’t saying exactly when. “We will announce U.S. pricing, availability, and configurations closer to market availability in the United States/North America,” Acer said in a statement. Both Swift X laptops will be available in Europe in July, for 1,799 euro, or about $2,012. Acer Read...

Acer’s Swift Edge 14 AI laptops already feel like one of the standouts of next week’s Computex 2025 show, combining a matte OLED display with an incredibly light weight. If you’re constantly on the go, this might be a laptop for you. All told, the Acer Swift Edge’s magnesium-aluminum chassis eliminates the vast majority of the weight. At 2.18 pounds, this puts the emphasis on light, which should be one of the focus points for a laptop that is constantly dropped into a bag or backpack. Acer’s Swift Edge 14 AI (SFE14-51 and -51T) and the Swift Go 14 and 16 AI are among the number of laptops that the company is debuting at Computex in the thin-and-light category, along with the Swift X creator series and the cheaper Aspire notebooks as well. Acer is also launching updates to its Predator line of gaming notebooks, too. I had a chance to go hands-on with the new Swift Edge in a preview of Acer’s Computex lineup. The Swift Edge is incredibly light, easily drawn out and moved around with a single hand. The real star of this Core Ultra (Lunar Lake) notebook may be its 14-inch screen, a 2880 x 1800 OLED coated with a Corning Gorilla Matte Pro finish. Laptop makers typically offer reflective screen which can mirror the light and background of your nearby environment. If you’ve ever worked in a library or cafe with overhead lighting, you’ll notice it. On the other hand, a matte screen dulls all that, eliminating reflections and minimizing the reflected light. That’s even more important with an OLED display, whose rich blacks tend to emphasize a reflective display. Acer’s Swift Go laptops, available in 14-inch and 16-inch screen sizes, are a bit more conventional. Like the Swift Edge AI, these are Copilot+ laptops, so the Intel Core 200V chips (Lunar Lake) inside these Swift Go 14 AI and Swift Go 16 AI allow for Microsoft’s Copilot+ experiences like Windows Studio Effects, Windows Recall, and more. The signature feature here is one you may have seen before: the Acer Multi-Control touchpad that provides contextual controls — such as play, pause, and fast-forward/rewind — during specific applications. The Swift Gos also include Acer Assist, a dedicated AI app, which provides a folder into which users can load documents and then assign an LLM to make sense of them all. The new Swift Go platform also includes Purified Voice 2.0, which can filter out ambient noise during video calls like magic. (Rival Asus offers a similar technology. Both use the NPU for noise filtering, which I’ve tested.) Because of the variability of the Trump tariffs, Acer isn’t disclosing pricing or the ship date of these laptops for the U.S. markets. In general, however, you should expect them to ship in between 30 and 90 days, Acer tells us. “We will announce U.S. pricing, availability, and configurations closer to market availability in the United States/North America,” Acer said in a statement. Acer did provide European pricing, however, as a point of comparison. Acer Swift Edge 14 AI Previously, Acer’s Swift Edge featured AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 CPUs. At least for Computex, Acer is showcasing the Swift Edge AI with just Intel inside. Acer’s Swift Edge 14 AI helps set the bar for the thin- and-light laptop category.Mark Hachman / Foundry Acer’s Swift Edge 14 AI measures 12.35 x 9.02 x 0.37in (9.3-16mm) and includes processor options from Intel Core Ultra 5 226V to the Core Ultra 9 288V, plus Intel’s integrated Arc graphics GPUs. Though it’s thin and light, it’s not flimsy; the laptop is rated at MIL-STD 810H resilience. Inside the notebook are options for either 32GB of LPDDR5X memory and up to a terabyte of PCIe Gen 4 SSD storage. This is the advantage of a matte screen: look at your phone or laptop edge-on, and note the reflections…which don’t appear here.Mark Hachman / Foundry Although battery life will vary based on a number of factors, the Swift Edge boasts a 65Wh battery, enough for what the company says is good for 21 hours of battery life. Wireless connectivity is supplied by Intel’s Killer Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 and above. There are also plenty of ports: a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, plus two USB-A ports, one that’s capable of charging. The specifications of Acer’s Swift Edge 14 AI.Acer Acer includes a standard 1080p webcam on the Acer Swift Edge 14 AI, but with an additional fingerprint reader mounted behind the power button. The Acer Swift Edge 14 AI (SFE14-51/T) will be available in Europe in June, starting at EUR1,599 ($1,788) and in Australia in the second quarter, starting at AUD3,999. Acer Swift Go 16 AI and Acer Swift Go 14 AI Acer’s Swift Go laptops are thicker, and built out of aluminum. Acer’s 14-inch Swift Go 14 AI, for example, measures 12.3 x 8.89 x 0.63 inches and measures 3.06 pounds; the 16-inch version measures 14 x 9.87 x 0.63 inches and weighs a chunkier 3.53 pounds. They both include 64Wh batteries. Acer’s Swift Go 16 AI.Acer The two laptops are built around either your choice of an OLED (a 16-inch 2040 x 1280 or 14-inch 1920 x 1200) or a standard 1200p IPS display — put another way, the 16-inch offers significant differences in screen resolution while the 14-inch does not. In both, you’ll have a choice between four different Core Ultra (Lunar Lake) processors, with up to 32GB of LPDDR5X memory and a whopping 2TB of storage. Both laptops have two Thunderbolt 4 ports, two USB-A ports, WiFi 7, and Bluetooth 5.4. The Acer Swift Go 16 AI (SFG16-74) will be available in Europe beginning in August, starting at 1,299 euros ($1,453). The Acer Swift Go 14 AI (SFG14-75) will be available in Europe in July, starting at EUR1,199 ($1,341). Acer Read...

Acer’s most interesting gaming notebook for Computex 2025 isn’t necessarily a gaming notebook at all. The Predator Triton 14 AI is a surprisingly thin, creator-class notebook that includes both Intel’s Lunar Lake notebook CPU alongside an Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU cooled by something new: graphene. Acer also is announcing the Acer Predator Helios Neo 14 AI, a slightly cheaper version, plus refreshes of the Nitro lineup that go as large as an 18-inch display. Here’s what you need to know about all three gaming laptops: Acer’s 14.5-inch Predator Triton 14 AI is just 11mm thick at its thinnest point. Acer replaced the traditional liquid metal with graphene for improved cooling, and there’s a haptic touchpad (with its own stylus!) for inking while you’re on the go. Acer’s new 14.5-inch Helios Neo 14 AI combines a Core Ultra 9 285H with an RTX 5070, and should cost a bit less. Acer also is shipping several versions of its Nitro gaming laptops, both 16- and 18-inch versions which focus on the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 processors. One of the questions I asked was if Acer is designing toward a price point, or to the component choices it deemed best for its users. Acer executives said they were making the latter choice, which might be one of the reasons that Acer is keeping the price and availability of the laptops mum for now. “We will announce U.S. pricing, availability, and configurations closer to market availability in the United States/North America,” Acer said in a statement. Acer did provide pricing and availability for Europe, which we’ve included here for comparison’s sake. Acer Predator Triton 14 AI Acer’s new Predator Triton 14 AI reminds me of a classical gangster: dark suit, dark tie, sunglasses, coolly confident. That’s until the per-key RGB lights up, reminding you what you’re here for. Creator-class notebooks have always interested me, since they offer some of the power of a gaming laptop without all of the weight. A few years ago, you might have to think about whether a lower-end discrete GPU could offer enough gaming horsepower; today, frame generation technologies are working to make that a moot point. As I held the Triton 14 AI (PT14-52T) at Acer’s preview, I was impressed by how compact it felt: it measures 12.6 x 8.7 x 0.43 inches at its thinnest, sloping out to 0.68 in (17.31mm) at its thickest — it still weighs 3.7 pounds, but that’s a far cry from the laptops that weigh over 5 pounds or more. (It earned Nvidia’s Studio Premium certification, which requires a thickness under 20 mm.) Acer treated the dark chassis with an anti-fingerprint coating that seemed to really work, and it’s the only one of its new gaming notebooks that included it. Acer’s Predator Triton 14 AI features per-key lighting and an Intel Core Ultra 200-series chip inside. Willis Lai / Foundry Acer built in a graphene thermal interface material into the insides of the laptop, which the company estimates will actually offer 14.5 percent better cooling, combined with the 0.5-mm-thin AeroBlade 3D metal fans that directs cooling air to the laptop’s hot spots. With the additional cooling, Acer has a choice to either push clock speeds faster or go thinner and lighter, and executives said the target market caused them to opt for the latter. While Acer didn’t reveal the key travel, the RGB keyboard does offer per-key lighting, controlled by the PredatorSense app. The touchpad joins the small but growing trend of laptops that use haptics for a uniform click experience across the whole of the trackpad. I didn’t expect Acer to include a bundled stylus, but it has done so, with support for the AES 2.0, USI 2.0, and MPP 2.5 protocols with 4,096 pressure level and tilt support. And look at the photo above. The trackpad almost disappears! Otherwise, the 14.5-inch 2,880 x 1,800 OLED display features 100% DCI-P3 color at up 120Hz — with touch support, which in OLEDs isn’t always a given. There’s just 340 nits of light output, however. Inside is an Intel Core 288V “Lunar Lake” chip, up to 32GB of DDR5-8533 memory and a PCI Express Gen 4 connection allowing customers to configure up to 2TB of SSD storage. Intel’s Killer Wi-Fi 7 and Thunderbolt 5 also appear. These are the specifications of the Acer Predator Triton 14A AI, as provided by Acer. Acer also made some last-minute changes that are reflected in the text.Acer Remember, Intel’s Lunar Lake processor and its 48-TOPS NPU makes this a Copilot+ PC, with support for all of Microsoft’s AI-powered features like Windows Recall. The Predator Triton 14 AI (PT14-52T) will be available in EMEA in July, starting at 2,999 euro Acer said. Predator Helios Neo 14 AI Acer’s Predator Helios Neo 14 AI laptop (PHN14-71), also with a 14.5-inch display, uses the Core Ultra 200H “Arrow Lake” chips, which performed surprisingly well in our laptop tests without all of the issues of their desktop cousins. They don’t offer the AI performance of the Lunar Lake family, however. Acer’s Predator Helios Neo 14 AI.Acer Acer typically uses the “Neo” branding to denote a step down, and some of the innovations on the Predator Triton 14 AI do not appear here. For example, Acer returned to the 5th-gen AeroBlade technology and the more traditional liquid metal thermal grease and a vector heat pipe. Likewise, the laptop uses a slightly older WiFi 6e technology alongside Thunderbolt 4, and the RGB keyboard is divided up into three zones. Physically, the Helios Neo 4 AI weighs 4.2 pounds, and measures 12.7 x 10.2 x 0.81 in., with the thinnest point being 11.5mm. Acer Users will have an option between a 14.5-inch OLED (2880 x 1800, 120Hz, 400 nits, 10 percent DCI-P3) or a 14.5-inch IPS (2560 x 1600, 165Hz, 400 nits, 100% sRGB) and choices of either a Core Ultra 9 285H/255H and an RTX 5060 or 5070 GPU. Users can choose from up to 32GB of DDR5-7467 memory and up to 2TB of PCI3 Gen 4 storage. The Predator Helios Neo 14 AI (PHN14-71) will be available in EMEA in July, starting at 1,699 euro. Nitro 18, 16, and 16S Finally, Acer has the Nitro lineup of gaming notebooks, which typically include almost dozens of different variants. For Computex, Acer is launching the Nitro 18 AI and the Nitro 16 AI, as well as the Nitro 16S and Nitro V 165 AI. They’re all oriented around the Ryzen AI 9 365 (Strix Point) architecture from AMD, which includes Copilot+ AI capabilities. Typically, Acer charges about $1,200 to $1,500 for these laptops. Here’s what we know about the Nitro 18: it will have an 18-inch display with 2560 x 1600 resolution at 165Hz, with 32GB of DDR5 5600 memory and 2 TB of PCIe Gen 4 storage. Acer will use copper and vector heat pipes inside to cool an Nvidia GeForce 5070 Ti. As for the Nitro 16S AI, Acer is offering users a Ryzen AI 9 365, up to an RTX 5070 Ti, 32GB of DDR5-5600 memory and 2 TB of SSD storage, all hidden below a 2560 x 1600, 180Hz display. The Nitro V 16S AI will offer the same display, memory, and storage options, but an RTX 5070 instead, plus USB4. Read...

Acer launches new Aspire AI laptops with 14- and 16-inch models powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series and Snapdragon X, priced from AUD $1,399. Read...

Welcome to the first edition of The Full Nerd newsletter—your weekly dose of hardcore hardware talk from the PC enthusiasts at PCWorld. In it, we dig into the hottest topics from our YouTube show, plus all the juiciest PC news and tidbits seen across the web.  In the best tradition of the show, grab a nice cold one (or your favorite snack food) as you down this info. It’s Friday, y’all! Want The Full Nerd newsletter to come directly to your inbox every Friday morning? Sign up on our website! In this episode of The Full Nerd… Willis Lai / Foundry In this week’s episode of The Full Nerd podcast…Brad Chacos, Alaina Yee, Will Smith, and Adam Patrick Murray talk for over two hours (!) about microstutter in gaming, AMD’s new Radeon GRE graphics card, and what to expect from Computex—the biggest PC event of the year. What if I told you that replacing your graphics card for better gaming performance wasn’t necessary? That’s the intriguing side benefit of minimizing microstutter in games, a geeky rabbit hole we dive into with Will.Frames per second (FPS) is actually a clumsy metric for gauging a game’s smoothness—instead, tiny hiccups in frame pacing can have a bigger effect on fluidity. We humans are incredibly sensitive to these disturbances. But as Will explains, you can measure the ideal framerate to reduce microstuttering in your games. Compensate for badly paced frame timing, and your gaming will be far more enjoyable, even at lower frame rates. The holy grail: Tuning a game to feel as superb as Doom: The Dark Ages does out the gate. Just one country got a new card from AMD last week—the Radeon RX 9070 GRE hit shelves in China as a current exclusive. This fresh 9000 series card fits in just below the RX 9070, and is cut down accordingly. Inside the 9070 GRE you’ll find about 25 percent fewer stream processors, and it also sports less GDDR6 memory (12GB) at slower speeds (18Gbps).Initial reviews say the card is about 5 to 10 percent slower than an Nvidia GeForce GTX 5070 in standard raster performance, but surprisingly, the AMD RX 9070 GRE holds its own in ray tracing. Brad’s take? At $50 cheaper than its RX 9070 sibling, this GRE variant seems reasonable, if unexciting. Whether that pricing holds if it comes to the U.S. remains to be seen, though… Speaking of prices, the vibe around Computex 2025 feels a bit gloomy. What is supposed to be a sleepy show may turn out to be down right lifeless. It’s a depressing thought, as Computex often showcases what to expect for product releases later in the year. And as Brad points out, U.S. residents likely won’t learn prices for anything announced, given the ongoing fluctuations with U.S. tariffs.Still, the news isn’t all dark clouds. We definitely know to expect Nvidia’s RTX 5060 graphics card, and the team debates what Intel could unveil. One potential juicy rumor: A joint venture between Nvidia and chip maker Mediatek. The idea of an Arm-based processor with supercharged integrated graphics is enough to brighten Will’s day, as he continues to hope for a refreshed Nvidia Shield TV console. Our Q&A segment gets a little extra spicy when producer Willis lobs a question to me and Will that raises both our hackles. The source of our ire? A sudden policy shift on Nintendo’s part, one that allows the console maker to brick Switches if they’re jailbroken or modified. Want to hear us chat live about these topics and more? Subscribe to The Full Nerd YouTube channel, and be sure to activate notifications. We also answer viewer questions in real-time—including those that ask for our take on the best variant of yogurt. Need even more hardware talk during the rest of the week? Our Discord community is full of cool, laid-back nerds—come join in the conversation! This week’s hot nerd news Yo, this 5-inch display rotates a full 360 degrees.Antec / TechPowerUp We love hardware. We love software. We love all the cool stuff meant for our nerdy brains.  This week is a big ol’ mix of vibes—come for the quirky cool stuff, bear with the alarming (but interesting as heck) reports. CPU-level ransomware is possible: Malware can now be stashed inside a CPU’s microcode. Yeah. Why Doom: The Dark Ages feels so buttery-smooth: Our very own Will Smith dives into the nitty-gritty of measuring microstutter in games—and puts numbers to why the latest Doom feels so good during gameplay. Fractal Meshify 3 and 3 XL cases are headed our way: An update to make a fan-favorite case more modern looks good, but will it feel good to build in? Antec is releasing an AIO cooler with a 5-inch (!) IPS display: Take my money. Just take it now. The screen rotates a full 360 degrees. I already know which photo of my cat I’m putting on it first. Nvidia’s RTX 5090 can crack an 8-digit password in 3 hours: Turns out, Nvidia’s flagship GPU is able to guess a password while you’re watching a movie. Even more worrying? Cybersecurity firm Hive Mind’s experiment also looks at how fast AI tools can crack passwords. Think minutes instead of hours. Huge demand for Ryzen X3D chips sparked a crazy quarter for CPUs: Who needs sports when you can watch the quarterly numbers for CPU market share? (We are disappointed Warriors fans here.) Team Red’s positioning is particularly interesting, but Arm’s surge is noteworthy, too. The Asus tool PC gamers use to improve security has a security issue itself: Watch out for an exploitable remote execution vulnerability in Asus DriverHub—update your software now! Nintendo warns it can brick Switch consoles if it detects hacking: I’ll give you a hint as to what riled me and Will this week on the episode. If it’s the idea of hardware-as-service, sprung on you long after you bought the device, you’re on the right track. This Asus RTX 5080 Doom-inspired GPU costs as much as an RTX 5090: Itching to spend $2,000 on a graphics card and can’t find an RTX 5090? Well, there’s always this head-turner. Nvidia may raise GPU prices by 10 to 15 percent: Possibly temporary, definitely terrible. It all boils down to how tariffs continue to play out. Zotac teased AMD Strix Halo mini-PCs for Computex: I love everything about mini-PCs, especially when they pack in gaming performance. Zotac is delivering, not just with AMD graphics, but Nvidia RTX models, too. Samsung’s new OLED gaming monitor is 500Hz: Is it crazy expensive? Yeah. Is it also crazy slick? Heck yeah. Also: if you heard about 89 million Steam accounts leaking, don’t stress—but upgrade your security for your account if you still have a weak password and/or haven’t yet enabled two-factor authentication. And it’s not PC hardware, but this transparent turntable from Audio-Technica looks so neat. It’s $2,000. I own one record. I want it. That’s it from me for this week—catch you all on the other side of Computex. A word to the wise…don’t play drinking games based on the phrase “AI” during the keynote speeches. Far too hazardous to your health. -Alaina This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and executive editor of hardware at PCWorld. Want The Full Nerd newsletter to come directly to your inbox every Friday morning? Sign up on our website! Read...

For better or worse, young people live in a world of surveillance. The best we can do as parents is to make sure they know how to identify shifts in behaviour. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Greatly improved graphics and battery over 2024 model Stable keycaps USB4/Thunderbolt 4 on both sides Cons Display quality got even worse Can’t sustain peak performance Our Verdict The 2025 Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1 is a troubled machine. It’s fine for everyday productivity and has great battery life. But it’s not well-suited to the activities it’s meant for all thanks to a very low-grade display. Creatives should steer clear, and those looking for a good office machine ought to Consider a traditional laptop instead. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today The Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1 is nothing new. It’s the 10th generation of this laptop line, and Lenovo hasn’t made any terribly dramatic changes to it in a couple of years. While that means it’s familiar, bearing a ton of resemblance to the Yoga 7i that I tested last year, including some of the issues I had with it, the new Yoga 7i brings some helpful improvements to performance, the keyboard, and the battery life.  Even then, the new Yoga 7i remains a somewhat confused machine. It’s not cheap, and it appears to target creators. But its performance can’t handle some of the heavier demands of creative workloads, and its display is bad enough that it may as well be monochrome for how well it’ll work in creative endeavors.  Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1: Specs Model: 16ILL10 CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 256V Memory: 16GB LPDDR5x-8533 Graphics/GPU: Intel Arc Graphics 140V Display: 16-inch 1200p IPS Touchscreen, Glossy Storage: 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSD Webcam: 1080p + IR Connectivity: 1x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, 2x USB-C (Thunderbolt 4 / USB4 / Power Delivery 3.0 and DisplayPort 2.1), 1x microSD card reader, 1x 3.5mm combo audio, 1x HDMI 1.4b  Networking: WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: Windows Hello fingerprint, facial recognition Battery capacity: 70 watt-hours Dimensions: 14.24 x 10.11 x 0.62 inches Weight: 4.25 pounds MSRP: $1,199 as-tested ($917 base) The 2025 Lenovo Yoga 7i has launched with very limited configuration options. At the time of writing, Lenovo only offered customizable storage capacities—512GB or 1TB— and the option of Windows 11 Home or Windows 11 Pro. In a full breakdown of the product’s specs, Lenovo lists additional CPU options within the Core Ultra 200V lineup: up to 32GB of memory, a 5MP webcam, and a 2880×1800 OLED display that would make a huge difference in the quality of this system (and also appear to shave a good amount of weight off the system). Our test configuration has the specifications listed above and is available at Best Buy for $1199. On its store, Lenovo offers a stepped-down model with an Intel Core Ultra 5 226V and 512GB of storage starting at $917 or 1TB of storage at $999.  The system is simple and elegant, with speaker grilles and air intakes consisting of simple perforations. Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1: Design and build quality IDG / Mark Knapp Lenovo seems to be pleased with what it’s created, as the Yoga 7i looks and feels much like the 2024 model, which hadn’t changed much from the 2023 model in turn. That’s not horrible news, though. It’s rocking an all-aluminum chassis that looks great with nice curves and tidy seams. I wish the front lip was also curved, but that’s a small nag.  The system is simple and elegant, with speaker grilles and air intakes consisting of simple perforations. Nothing is too ostentatious. The rectangular display does look a little off at the top corners, where it meets the rounded corners of the chassis and has uneven bezel spacing, but that’s another minor hang up.  The Yoga 7i has Lenovo’s flipping design with a two-part hinge that allows roughly 306 degrees of rotation for the display. The hinge may enable the laptop to flip over into various positions, but it makes using the machine as a laptop just that little bit worse. It’s not a very firm hinge, so the display wiggles about a lot. Just typing away on the keyboard, I see the screen wiggling, and tapping on the touchscreen is only worse. It’s not quick to stop wiggling either, with wiggles lasting for a few seconds. The reflectivity of the screen (more on that later) only makes the wiggling more apparent.  This instability can be annoying, though it’s a fairly common issue for 2-in-1 laptops like this. Another common issue is the thicker bezel at the bottom of the display, which isn’t quite keeping up with the trend of thinner and thinner bezels all around.  Above the display, Lenovo has a small lip that houses the webcam and provides a convenient area to grab when opening the laptop. The webcam includes a small physical privacy shutter with a red cover to make it clear when the camera is covered.  Between its large display and thick bottom bezel, the Yoga 7i takes up a lot of space. It’s 14.24 inches wide and a bit over 10 inches deep. It’s also almost two-thirds of an inch thick. It also weighs in at 4.25 pounds, making it rather large and heavy for a simple productivity machine. Since the Yoga 7i may be used as a tablet, Lenovo saw fit to situate the system’s power button on the side of the laptop rather than near the keyboard. Unfortunately, I find I’m often touching it by accident, and it’s much too sensitive. A light tap while I’m shifting the laptop on a table is enough to put the system to sleep. It just adds a little extra friction to everyday use. Unsurprisingly, I had the same issue with last year’s model. Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1: Keyboard, trackpad IDG / Mark Knapp The Yoga 7i keyboard has a comfortable, nicely contoured surface with solid stabilization, which makes for a good time typing. It’s a step up in feeling over its predecessor, which was mushy. I felt at ease typing around 110 words per minute with over 95 percent accuracy in Monkeytype — a little slower and less accurate than an exceptional keyboard would allow, but a relatively good result. The long keyboard deck may be a nuisance for those with smaller hands, though, as it could see the edge of the laptop jab into your wrists. The keys also take a somewhat firm press, which likely has played into why I had to type a little slower to feel comfortable — going faster led to lighter taps and more missed strokes.  The keyboard includes effective white backlighting with two levels of brightness. If you enable that mode, the backlighting can adjust automatically, so you won’t have to search for the keyboard shortcut to turn it on in the dark. The trackpad is quite spacious and pleasant to mouse around in. The offset to the left side of the laptop can make it a bit awkward for right-handed users, though. Lenovo has made it so that right-clicks on the trackpad are only registered near the bottom right corner, so even if you’re right-handed, you’re not likely to make accidental clicks. The tactility of the physical click is disappointing, feeling a bit cheap and hollow.  Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1: Display, audio IDG / Mark Knapp Much like last year’s Yoga 7i, this new model has a thoroughly disappointing display. The 16-inch panel has a stretched 1920×1200 resolution, which is acceptable but not impressive, especially since many laptops offer higher resolutions on smaller panels that provide much finer clarity. And that’s the excellent part of the display. The screen can hit 320 nits of brightness, which is plenty indoors and away from windows, but with the glossy finish, it simply won’t do for even somewhat bright outdoor use. On top of that, it’s not colorful at all, hitting just 65 percent coverage of the sRGB color space — somehow falling short of even the 67 percent achieved by its predecessor. Contrast has also contracted compared to last year’s model, with this unit only reaching 1320:1 compared to its predecessor’s 1500:1. How this device gets the Dolby Vision approval is beyond me.  The display is a touchscreen, and the utility of that may allay some of the gripes that come from the quality of the display. But that’s only true if you really want that touchscreen. And though it feels pretty good to swipe on, the display lacks a high refresh rate for super smooth movement. The system seems to keep up poorly with touch-based scrolling as well, making for a clunky time using the touchscreen. And since the hinge is a little wobbly, every tap on the screen is going to result in some wiggling. The display also supports an active stylus with pressure and tilt sensitivity, but our review sample did not include this. Lenovo lists the Yoga Pen as an included accessory, though, so customers should expect to get it with their purchase. The Yoga 7i’s speakers offer a distinct experience. The system fits a pair of speakers above the keyboard and another pair underneath the base of the laptop. These put out a good deal of volume while keeping it crisp and clear. That’s likely thanks to one set being woofers and the other being tweeters. They also provide a decently wide soundstage when sitting close, boosting the effect of stereo sound in music. Oddly, the speakers sound best when the Yoga 7i is in its laptop position. The tent position that should be more ideal for watching shows and movies sees two of the speakers pointing away.  Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1: Webcam, microphone, biometrics The Yoga 7i’s webcam isn’t a great one. It may be sharp on paper with a 1080p resolution, but it captures very grainy, blocky footage even with decent lighting. If lighting is even a little bit dim, the quality falls off a cliff.  On the bright side, the camera does support facial recognition for quick sign-ins. There’s also a fingerprint scanner at the bottom right corner of the keyboard that has worked quickly enough. The mics on the Yoga 7i do a better job than the camera. They capture my voice with a natural tone. There’s a bit of room echo to them, and my voice isn’t completely full, but it doesn’t sound horribly compressed or like it’s coming from another room.  Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1: Connectivity IDG / Mark Knapp The Yoga 7i offers modest connectivity for a laptop its size. Both sides include a USB-C port, providing convenient flexibility to charge or dock using either side. Both USB-C ports support Thunderbolt 4, USB4, and charging via Power Delivery 3.0. They can also handle DisplayPort 2.1 output. The left edge of the laptop also offers an HDMI 1.4b port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The right side provides a microSD card slot (full size would have been nice to see on a machine this big) and a 5Gbps USB-A port.  Wireless connectivity has also proven fairly solid. The Yoga 7i supports Wi-Fi 7, and I’ve enjoyed fast and stable connectivity in my testing. Bluetooth has also been largely consistent when connecting to wireless headphones. I enjoyed a whole movie while running on a treadmill with Bluetooth earbuds connected to the Yoga 7i and no stability issues. One specific pair of headphones struggled to maintain a connection with the Yoga 7i, consistently dropping their connection every 30 seconds. But, having tested other headphones with the laptop and finding no issue, I think it’s safe to chalk that up to the headphones being at fault or some unique issue.  Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1: Performance The Lenovo Yoga 7i is designed to be a flexible machine that can do a bit of everything. To that end, it’s kitted out with some modest hardware. But it’s not the only system that aims to offer similar flexibility. There are other 2-in-1 systems that can give it a run for its money, like 2024’s Dell Inspiron 16 2-in-1 7640 (tested at $1,349) or the 2025 Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 (tested at $1,699). The Yoga 7i also has to contend with large, traditional laptops like the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 Gen 9 (tested at $1,699) and Acer Swift 16 AI (tested at $1,199). Thankfully, Lenovo has done a good job upgrading the performance of the 2025 Yoga 7i over the 2024 model. The Lenovo Yoga 7i generally offers decent performance. Next to this handful of its competitors, it’s roughly in line with their overall performance for office productivity, as we see with its PCMark 10 score. It is in part bolstered by a fast SSD, which gave it a leg up in the app startup portion of the test compared to Samsung’s and Acer’s laptops. And its upgraded integrated graphics help in the content creation portion of the test, which let it keep up with the Dell Inspiron 16 2-in-1, which otherwise offered some advantages from its higher-performance CPU. While holistic performance is good to see, the raw performance of the Yoga 7i leaves something to be desired. In Cinebench, the Lenovo Yoga 7i shows off fairly strong single-threaded performance, but when it comes time to dial up the performance of all the cores, it ends up sinking back behind its competition. We can see that well in Cinebench R23, where its single-core score of 1903 was well ahead of the rest here, but its multi-core score lagged behind all but the Acer Swift 16 AI.  The Intel Core Ultra 7 256V inside just isn’t quite on the level of the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H or Intel Core Ultra 9 185H found in the Dell Inspiron 16 2-in-1 7640 and Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 Gen 9, respectively. Even though they’re earlier CPUs, they are higher-power versions with more cores, and they show it. The Yoga 7i also fails to keep up with the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360’s slightly higher-tier Intel Core Ultra 7 258V.  Even worse, the Yoga 7i doesn’t have great sustain. While it could zip ahead of the Acer Swift 16 AI in the shorter Cinebench tests, it dropped way behind Acer and the rest of the crowd in our HandBrake video encoding test. As heat builds up in a system, it will throttle performance to help manage that heat. In this case, that’s what the Yoga 7i did, and it led to a much worse result here with the test stretching out over 36 minutes, while every other system took less than a half-hour. Adding insult to injury, this was one area where the 2025 Yoga 7i managed to fall well behind the 2024 model, which took only 30 minutes. The Yoga 7i at least benefits some from its enhanced Arc integrated graphics. It manages to pull ahead of the Dell Inspiron 16 2-in-1 by a decent margin, and that’s fairly crucial, as those two laptops are rather head-to-head rivals. The Yoga also outperforms the Acer Swift 16 AI again, showing it’s willing to put a bit more juice into its CPU and GPU than Acer. Still, the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 shows there’s yet more performance to be squeezed out of the Intel Arc 140V graphics, and the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 Gen 9 reminds us that integrated graphics still absolutely pale in comparison to even low-end discrete graphics.  Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1: Battery life The Yoga 7i may not come out ahead in terms of performance, but the lack of power coming from its internals makes for more battery-friendly operation. In our 4K video playback test, the Yoga 7i managed just shy of 19 hours. That gives it a big leg up on the Dell Inspiron 16 2-in-1, which fell under 13 hours — never mind the Yoga Pro 9i Gen 9, which was ruined by its discrete graphics sucking down power. The Yoga 7i even narrowly pulled ahead of the Acer Swift 16 AI, letting it nab a performance and battery life win. The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 once again showed its superiority, though, coming back with outlandishly good battery life (in spite of having a sharper OLED display, no less) and running for over 23 hours in our test.  To the Yoga 7i’s credit, its battery life was at least consistent. Some systems will perform well in offline video playback but then slurp down power in everyday use. Throughout my testing, the Yoga 7i continued to sip from its battery through the day, letting me easily get through a workday or put a few hours in after starting with a low battery.  Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1: Conclusion The Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1 is lost looking for purpose. It has all the trappings of a machine for creatives — it’s stylish and can flex to fit different modes of use. But its performance is really suited to more basic productivity, and its display simply won’t allow a visual artist to see the work they’re creating because it is woefully lacking in color gamut. Because of this, the Yoga 7i largely undermines its own purpose as a 2-in-1 while struggling to be as good a laptop as it could without the concessions made to be a 2-in-1. While the launch configurations are all stuck with the experience-hindering display, the option to get a sharper, faster, more colorful OLED display could help the Yoga 7i out of the mire it’s caught in. But with the price increase that would certainly entail, the Yoga 7i is likely only going to find itself further squeezed against the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 — a faster, thinner, lighter laptop that already has the excellent 16-inch display and 2-in-1 flexibility. Read...