NVIDIA is having a busy week at the GDC 2026 conference, and its GeForce Now game streaming service is at the forefront with new features and new games just announced.

Similar to a browser extension I highlighted last year that lets you know which Steam games are also available on Xbox Game Pass, NVIDIA's GeForce Now is set to receive in-app labels on games that you already have access to in your Xbox Game Pass and Ubisoft+ subscriptions.

NVIDIA notes that this feature is designed to improve game discoverability, and it appears that you'll be able to launch these games directly from NVIDIA's app.

Also coming to GeForce Now is an expansion to single sign-on capabilities that I first saw with Battle.net and again with Gaijin at CES 2026. In April, NVIDIA will unlock similar single sign-ons for GOG.com accounts, making it easier to authenticate but once to have access to all titles.

As it currently stands, there are more than 4,000 games available through GeForce Now, whether as Ready-to-Play or Install-to-Play. The list is always growing, and indeed, there are five new notable games on the way.

• Control Resonant
• Resident Evil Requiem
• Crimson Desert
• Samson: A Tyndalston Story
• Active Matter

Perhaps more relevant to our readers here at Windows Central is that NVIDIA's list of Install-to-Play games is expanding with new Xbox titles, including Brutal Legend, Quantum Break, and Contrast.

PC gamers who rely on GeForce Now to deliver their VR headsets new games are also getting some good news. On March 29, GeForce Now Ultimate subscribers will be able to stream at 90 FPS, which is a particularly huge upgrade in the VR world, considering the previous max was 60 FPS.

VR headsets that support GeForce Now include the Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest, and Valve Index, as well as several older headsets that no longer receive as much attention (like the HP Reverb G2).

Windows Central's take on NVIDIA GeForce Now improvements

NVIDIA GeForce Now is largely regarded as the go-to game streaming service if you're looking for top-tier performance, and it competes directly with Xbox Cloud Gaming, which is available through Game Pass Ultimate.

Considering GeForce Now can deliver up to a 5K resolution at 120 FPS or a QHD resolution at 240 FPS, it makes it fairly easy (and economical) to enjoy games at a much higher quality than you'd be able to enjoy on lower-tier PC hardware.

With the PC hardware market undergoing one of its biggest hurdles ever, caused by DRAM and NAND shortages driven by AI, it's not a stretch to imagine that a lot of PC gamers will eventually turn to a cloud service.

👉 Conspiracy theory or apt prediction? — The AI-fueled hardware shortage will kill local PCs, paving the way for subscription-based cloud computing

These improvements announced at GDC 2026 aren't exactly major, but it is great to see the service continuing to get so much attention as interest in the platform heats up.

What do you think about these GeForce Now improvements?

Were you hoping for more GeForce Now news out of GDC 2026? Are you happy with the updates to VR game streaming, new game additions, and the new in-app labels?

I also want to know if you're a regular user of GeForce Now or any other cloud gaming services. Is it the best you've used? Why or why not? Please let me know in the comments section!

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

The arrival of new Intel and NVIDIA hardware made 2025 a major year for gaming laptops, and many companies took the opportunity to refresh their offerings. That helped the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 (Gen 10) become one of our top-rated gaming laptops ever in my review, after all.

Now, I'm returning with the Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (Gen 10), the lighter, sleeker, and more reasonable little sibling to the Pro. My first impression when unboxing and setting up this laptop is that the Legion 7i is undoubtedly Lenovo's most beautifully designed gaming laptop yet, and that feeling persisted during my review period.

Of course, that doesn't immediately mean the Legion 7i is my new go-to recommendation. While I do adore this laptop's aesthetics, it may not be the most practical purchase for gamers who prioritize raw performance above all else. It doesn't help that the Legion 7i feels rather pricey, so you're absolutely paying extra for the refined looks.

This review was made possible thanks to a review sample provided by Lenovo. Lenovo had no input nor saw the contents of this review prior to publication.

My Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (Gen 10) review

Design ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

Is the Lenovo Legion 7i the thinnest and lightest laptop with a discrete GPU? Absolutely not, but it is at least 4mm thinner and nearly 2lbs lighter than its beefier Legion Pro 7i sibling, and it makes a huge difference here.

To cut straight to the point, this is — by a considerable margin — the best-looking Lenovo Legion laptop I have personally handled. I actually love the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i redesign (apart from one change), but this laptop easily clears its more expensive sibling in the aesthetics department.

The all-white, all-aluminum chassis, the black-bordered OLED display, the brushed metal edges, the iconic Legion rear-facing vents, the clean RGB-lit keyboard — this laptop is simply fun to look at and use, and most gaming laptops simply don't achieve that level of design.

Build quality is also exceptional, even if I would still give the edge to Razer when we're talking about thin-and-light gaming laptops. There's definitely some panel flex in areas, but the Legion 7i feels every bit like the premium laptop it's supposed to be.

You can feel the "form over function" mentality here, but Lenovo didn't entirely forget to be practical. You get two, split USB Type-A ports, a full-fledged Thunderbolt 4 port, a USB Type-C port, an HDMI 2.1 port, and even a full-sized SD card slot. The charging port and HDMI port are also rear-facing, when one of my greatest Legion Pro 7i criticisms was Lenovo moving away from that design.

I could ask for a third USB-A port, for that Thunderbolt port to also be on the rear, or even for an Ethernet port (even if that feels slightly unreasonable for a laptop this thin), but Lenovo honestly did a great job all around here.

Display ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Lenovo has been adopting OLED displays for many of its Legion gaming laptops lately, and the Legion 7i also benefits from the upgrade. This 16-inch display comes in 165Hz and 240Hz flavors, but each boasts the same visual characteristics and features.

As expected, it's a gorgeous display with excellent color accuracy, vibrancy, viewing angles, and contrast ratios. Performance is also exemplary with a sub-1ms response time and NVIDIA G-Sync VRR support. For playing games, watching movies, doing work, editing photos, and everything in between, this screen rocks.

It's also slightly brighter than your average laptop OLED display, which is nice, and handles HDR content really well, thanks to its even higher peak brightness and Dolby Vision support.

My one major criticism is that this display is very glossy and prone to reflections and glare. Those sensitive to the PWM dimming common with OLED displays don't have an alternative, either.

Performance ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Lenovo Legion 7i isn't positioned as an insane gaming powerhouse, and that's obvious just by the fact that the most powerful GPU you can put inside this machine is an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 (8GB).

Still, this laptop makes great use of what it has, and overall is a strong performer with excellent thermal management. The fans can get noticeably loud, and the keyboard deck can become warm to the touch, but I never noticed any thermal throttling, stutters, or performance hangs during my testing.

The Legion 7i is responsive and stable across the board, and is able to handle even the most demanding PC games (even if it won't be with the highest settings or maximum resolution). This is an expensive laptop, though, so starting with just an RTX 5060 under the hood does sting a little — and it's that model (with an Intel Core Ultra 7 and RTX 5060) that I tested.

• Forza Horizon 5 — 96 FPS (Extreme preset, 1600p resolution, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution/Frame Generation disabled)
• Gears 5 — 85 FPS (Ultra preset, 1600p resolution)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 — 101 FPS (Extreme preset, 1600p resolution, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution set to Quality, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation disabled)
• Cyberpunk 2077 — 46 FPS (Ray Tracing: Ultra preset, 1600p resolution, refresh rate, v-sync, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution Transformer Model set to Auto, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation/Ray Reconstruction disabled)

Battery life ⭐⭐⭐½

Lenovo Legion laptops have never been known for their endurance, but I had hopes the Legion 7i might turn the tide somewhat, given its more compact and portable design... and it did, albeit only a little.

That is to say, the Legion 7i boasts slightly above average endurance for a 16-inch gaming laptop, losing just over 20% of its battery after an hour of looping Microsoft Office tasks or an HD video at 50% volume.

As a rule of thumb, I don't disable features or throttle everything to the max to test battery life, so there's absolutely room to squeeze 6-7 hours of actual usage out of the Legion 7i, but it'll never be a comfortable all-day machine. The bigger concern, though, is that standby time simply wasn't great with the Legion 7i, so I couldn't reliably leave it unplugged overnight without needing to plug it back in the following morning.

Keyboard & touchpad ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

No surprises here, the Lenovo Legion 7i rocks the "TrueStrike" keyboard, except now in all-white. I still love this keyboard, with a comfortable and intuitive layout, full-sized arrow keys, beautiful per-key RGB lighting, and a tenkey number pad that doesn't feel unbelievably cramped.

It's a fun, responsive, and reliable keyboard for gaming and typing. The glass touchpad is also decently spacious, with a smooth surface, consistent performance, and Microsoft Precision drivers. It's no haptic touchpad, but I didn't expect one.

Software & AI ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Windows 11 is the operating system of choice for the Legion 7i, and it feels right at home on this expansive OLED screen. I had no issues with performance or stability, and Lenovo hasn't ruined the setup experience with endless bloatware.

Lenovo Vantage and Legion Space also work well for managing your hardware and settings, even if it is annoying having all those settings divided into two separate apps. It's worth mentioning, though, that the Legion 7i is not a Copilot+ PC because of its underpowered NPU, so it's lacking all the best AI features in Windows (if you cared about them).

This laptop does boast Lenovo's AI Engine+, too, but it ultimately doesn't mean much for the end user and is basically just for optimizing hardware performance and settings in the background.

Everything else ⭐⭐⭐½

Finally, let's wrap up the leftovers. The Legion 7i is a premium laptop, but it does lose some marks here for things like the lackluster, bottom-firing dual speaker system, which sounds good enough for what it is — but falls well behind other high-end laptops.

The 5MP front-facing camera is also average at best, but it does at least boast Windows Hello facial recognition (and that did work great for me). There's an electronic privacy shutter on the side, too, which is always appreciated.

Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 are on board for wireless connectivity, and I had zero issues with either.

Legion 7i 16 review: My final thoughts

✅You should buy this if ...

• You want a thinner and lighter 16-inch gaming laptop.
• You absolutely love this all-white, all-aluminum design.
• You love rear-facing ports for power and display output.

❌You should not buy this if ...

• You need a more powerful GPU with more VRAM.
• You want something that's even more compact.

You can get a great gaming laptop from a lot of places, but one of the first companies I'll recommend to anyone is Lenovo. Legion devices are powerful and reliable, after all, but they're usually not the sleekest on the block, especially when compared to something like the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 (2025) we reviewed.

The Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (Gen 10) is different, with an incredible all-white design that struck me the moment I unboxed it. This laptop is a stunner, and it doesn't pull its punches as a gaming laptop, either. That being said, it is an expensive machine, and there's no option to configure it with a more powerful GPU.

If you're on a tight budget or care most about straight performance, the Legion 7i may not be the best option for you. For a lot of people, though, this is a fantastic gaming laptop that runs great but looks even better. You can find the Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (Gen 10) from $1,779.99 at Lenovo.com, or get my review configuration for $1,869.99 at BestBuy.com.

Alienware isn't well known for its budget offerings, but with the Alienware 16 Aurora starting at just above $1,000 (and often dropping below with sales), the Dell-owned brand is making an effort in 2025.

I have both the 16 Aurora and the upgraded 16X Aurora in my office, and I've been using them a fair amount. While Alienware hasn't suddenly become the undisputed champion of value-driven gaming laptops, both of these devices more than earn my recommendation for those minding how much they drop on their next machine.

The Alienware 16 and 16X Aurora stellar overall performance wrapped in a classic "Alienware" design, with a range of simple-to-understand prices and configuration options. HP and Lenovo should watch out.

This review was made possible thanks to a review sample provided by Dell. Dell and Alienware had no input nor saw the contents of this review prior to publication.

My Alienware 16X Aurora (AC16251) review

Design ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Both Alienware Aurora laptops make use of the brand's "Interstellar Indigo" color, a deep blue hue that I personally love. Both laptops also boast similar, rounded designs with rear- and side-mounted venting and ports, a protruding thermal shelf on the bottom, and Alienware's iridescent logo on the aluminum lid.

At first glance, you may be hard-pressed to tell the difference, and that's a positive for the entry-level Alienware 16 Aurora. The more expensive sibling does transition to a slightly more refined, all-aluminum chassis, though, and features a single-zone RGB-lit keyboard compared to the standard white backlight of the regular 16 Aurora.

While both laptops get two USB Type-A (5GBps) ports, an RJ45 Ethernet port (mounted on the side instead of the rear, for some reason), an HDMI 2.1 port, and a USB Type-C (10GBps) port with DisplayPort 1.4, the Alienware 16X Aurora upgrades the second USB Type-C port for a more powerful Thunderbolt 4 port.

All of these differences make sense. The Alienware 16 Aurora still looks good and enjoys great build quality, but the 16X Aurora is a little better in a variety of ways that make it undeniably more premium. I just wish these laptops were a little less chunky, especially that abnormally thick display lid.

Display ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Just like the design, the Alienware 16 and 16X Aurora share much on the display front — but the 16X enjoys some notable upgrades.

Both laptops are equipped with a 16-inch, 16:10, 1600p IPS LCD panel with great responsiveness and color reproduction, but the 16X Aurora enjoys a faster 240Hz refresh rate (the 16 Aurora is limited to 120Hz), better color accuracy (hitting 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut on top of 100% of sRGB), and a higher max brightness (500 nits compared to just 300).

Both displays look good, but the Alienware 16X Aurora clearly has the upper hand. My only real criticism here is that this display's contrast ratio is barely average, even for an IPS panel, which you may notice when playing video games with a wider dynamic range or lots of dark scenes (like horror titles).

Performance ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

Performance is everything for a gaming laptop, and the Alienware Aurora devices certainly do not disappoint. The configuration I tested the most was the 16X Aurora with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, 32GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 GPU, which retails for $1,999.99 at Dell.com.

It should come as no surprise that this laptop runs well, but its strengths really lie in CPU performance and thermal management. The Alienware 16X Aurora, especially, can squeeze a lot of power out of its HX-series chips, and does an excellent job preventing throttling over time — even in its overclocked "Overdrive" performance mode.

I will say, those fans can get loud at full throttle, but the Alienware Aurora at least isn't constantly fluctuating the fan speeds. It's a consistent drone... but you may occasionally hear the fans roar to life when the laptop is closed and sleeping, which isn't uncommon for a Windows machine.

• Forza Horizon 5 — 113 FPS (Extreme preset, 1600p resolution, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution/Frame Generation/Reflex Low Latency disabled)
• Gears 5 — 105 FPS (Ultra preset, 1600p resolution)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 — 94 FPS (Extreme preset, 1600p resolution, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution set to Performance, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation disabled, NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency enabled)
• Cyberpunk 2077 — 57 FPS (Ray Tracing: Ultra preset, 1600p resolution, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution Transformer Model set to Auto, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation disabled, NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency enabled)

When it comes to gaming, that CPU performance is especially noticeable in games like Gears 5. You don't have to pay this much to get around this level of performance, but the Alienware 16X Aurora is remarkably consistent, and that's a big plus. Its one weakness is that no configuration can be equipped with more than 8GB of VRAM — but that's due to NVIDIA's limitations, not Alienware's.

Battery life ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Gaming laptops rarely impress when it comes to endurance, but the Alienware 16X Aurora actually exceeded my expectations (slightly). I still wouldn't describe this as an all-day machine, but the 16X Aurora can go a little further than a lot of other gaming laptops, draining 16% of its battery after an hour looping a generic Microsoft Office workload and 20% of its battery after an hour looping an HD video with default and balanced settings.

If you enable "Stealth Mode" by pressing the dedicated button in the function row, the Alienware Aurora laptops can go even further by disabling keyboard lighting, silencing fans, and more. It's a simple but clever feature for a gaming laptop, and it's not unreasonable to get a full day's use out of these devices if you're careful about it. Bear in mind that this was with the most power-hungry CPU/GPU combo you can get, so more affordable configurations will likely fare even better.

If you do decide to push this hardware to the max, like with gaming, don't hope for more than an hour or two of playtime, and expect to lose around 25-33% of your performance.

Keyboard & touchpad ⭐⭐⭐½

The Alienware Aurora laptops feature a tenkey number pad, which is somewhat unique in this day and age. Some people will value that addition, but the trade-off is that this keyboard does feel cramped thanks to its smaller keys.

Key travel also feels soft and shallow. I won't go so far as to say this is a bad keyboard, but it's certainly my least favorite of the laptops I've tested in recent memory. It's simply fine. I do like this layout overall, though, especially the inclusion of three customizable macro keys in the function row.

The touchpad is solid. It's smooth and responsive, uses Microsoft Precision drivers for gestures, and doesn't feel cheap. I'm not expecting a haptic touchpad in any gaming laptop, so this is good enough.

Software & AI ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Alienware Aurora laptops come with Windows 11 preinstalled, but don't have the hardware to be full Copilot+ PCs, so they're not on the cutting edge of Microsoft's software (depending on your feelings, that also means like artificial intelligence bloatware).

There are some preloaded Dell programs and unwanted third-party bloat, but for the most part, the Alienware Aurora laptops feel clean and ready to go. Stability was also excellent for me, which I've not been able to say about some older Alienware laptops. A big part of that is the Alienware Command Center software, which has truly come a long way and now feels reliable, intuitive, and feature-packed.

Everything else ⭐⭐⭐½

When it comes to everything else, Alienware didn't make any major mistakes. All Alienware Aurora configurations come with Wi-Fi 7 support, for example, and I never had any issues or complaints with wireless performance or reliability.

The dual, bottom-firing 2W speakers are basic in quality, but they're usable. The base 16 Aurora's 720p front-facing camera gets upgraded to 1080p with the 16X Aurora, but both are just fine for video conferencing. The more expensive sibling does also get Windows Hello facial recognition, though, which the entry-level 16 Aurora lacks.

I do wish the Alienware 16X Aurora, at least, enjoyed an upgraded speaker system, but both laptops hit all the basics for this price range.

Alienware 16X Aurora review: My final thoughts

✅You should buy this if ...

• You want a capable, reliable gaming laptop without breaking the bank.
• You like having a clear upgrade path if you want to spend more.
• You want a powerful gaming laptop with better than average endurance.

❌You should not buy this if ...

• You want the absolute best performance-per-dollar possible.
• You need a great keyboard and don't care about the tenkey number pad.

The Alienware 16 and 16X Aurora laptops are really good lower-to-upper mid-range gaming laptops, but what most impresses me is the clear and reasonable divide between the two.

The Alienware 16X Aurora gives you more premium build quality and better ports, a faster and brighter display, superior CPU performance and greater memory/storage options, and a better camera with Windows Hello facial recognition — straightforward upgrades that pick up right where the standard 16 Aurora's pricing leaves off.

To summarize, I recommend both of these laptops and find the Alienware 16 Aurora to be a worthwhile budget option. If you're willing to spend around $1,600 or more, the 16X Aurora is a fantastic upgrade. Alienware did a great job bringing the fight to the Lenovo Legion 5 16 and HP OMEN 16.

If you're interested, you can find the Alienware 16 Aurora (AC16250) from $1,099.99 at Dell.com and the Alienware 16X Aurora (AC16251) from $1,649.99 at Dell.com. I'd also look out for sales, because I've seen the former drop below $1,000 and the latter drop below $1,500.

Hardcore PC gamers are always on the lookout for affordable GPUs to run games with optimal performance and graphics, while having leftover change to buy more games or pay the bills.

One such GPU is the MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 5070 (12G Shadow 2X OC edition), which has just received its biggest discount since March 2025. For a limited time, you can grab this graphics card for $499.99 at Best Buy, which is $50 cheaper than its usual MSRP of $549.99.

What makes this graphics card worth buying?

While this GPU may not have the most advanced tech compared to its sibling, the RTX 5070 Ti, the NVIDIA MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 5070 (12G Shadow 2X OC edition) has plenty of features that make it a worthwhile purchase for players wanting to experience PC gaming at 1080-1440P resolution.

It's outfitted with DLSS 4, 6144 CUDA Cores, 12GB GDDR7 VRAM, 192 (988 TOPS) Tensor cores, and more technically-advanced components that will enable your PC rig to run games like Battlefield 6, Baldur's Gate 3, and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 at high 1440p resolutions and framerates potentially above 80fps (even when Battlefield 6 is on its 'Overkill' graphical preset).

It also includes a TORX Fan 5.0 dual-fan for enhanced air pressure and airflow to safeguard against overheating, and a consolidated design (231mm long) so it can fit snuggly inside compact PC cases.

Aside from its 12GB VRAM, which makes it unsuitable for AI workloads, one of the biggest shortcomings of the MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 5070 is its MSRP of $549.99, which critics argue is too much for this device.

Thankfully, Amazon has come to alleviate that steep price point with a 9% discount, bringing it to $499.99 at Best Buy. Additionally, it's also on sale for $499.99 at Walmart and $499.99 at Amazon (exclusively for Amazon Prime members).

A $50 or higher price drop is exceptionally rare for a GPU outside of peak trading events like Amazon Prime Day or Black Friday. Making this a golden opportunity to snag yourself this high-quality GPU at a more appropriate price while it lasts.

FAQ

Creators, engineers, and other professionals the world over rely on powerful 16-inch laptops to keep them working smoothly, even while staying mobile. The Dell XPS 16 (now the Dell 16 Premium), the Apple MacBook Pro 16, the Razer Blade 16 — these are all great choices, but there's another excellent alternative on the block.

This is the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 (Gen 10) Aura Edition... which is a ridiculously long name for an incredibly capable laptop with a practical design, potent performance, and an impressive set of features that make it well-suited to almost any task.

It's also well priced compared to the aforementioned competition, making it one of the easiest to recommend. While other laptops often focus on sleek and minimalist designs (often at the expense of features or practicality), the Yoga Pro 9i doesn't cut any corners — or ports.

This review was made possible thanks to a review sample provided by Lenovo. Lenovo had no input nor saw the contents of this review prior to publication.

My Yoga Pro 9i 16 (Gen 10) review

Design ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

Where the Dell 16 Premium (2025) we recently reviewed boasts a controversial, futuristic, and minimalist design, the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i absolutely prioritizes function over form.

It's a familiar two-tier Lenovo design with a rounded base and squared-off lid, creating a unique profile entirely constructed of high-quality aluminum. The Yoga Pro 9i isn't the most refined high-end laptop I've held in my hand and doesn't feature the slimmest display bezel, but it absolutely looks and feels like a premium product.

At around 17.9mm thick and 1.93kg heavy, there are certainly beefier 16-inch workstations, but the Yoga Pro 9i's design does make it seem chunkier than it actually is.

At least you get a ton of ports. There's the 170W DC power port, an HDMI 2.1 port, two full-featured Thunderbolt 4 ports with Power Delivery and DisplayPort functions, a 3.5mm audio jack, two USB Type-A (5GBps) ports, a side-mounted power button, a webcam privacy shutter, and even a full-sized SD card slot. The only things missing are an Ethernet port (Lenovo would've had to make this laptop a fair bit thicker for that) and a Kensington Nano Security Slot, which may actually disappoint some professional users.

Display ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

Lenovo actually offers two OLED, touchscreen PureSight Pro display options for the Yoga Pro 9i. Both panels boast a 120Hz refresh rate, excellent color accuracy across standard and cinematic gamuts, Dolby Vision HDR and VESA DisplayHDR True Black 1000 support, and the trifecta of TÜV Rheindland Low Blue Light, TÜV Rheinland Flicker-Free, and Eyesafe certifications.

For an extra $150, though, you can upgrade to a Tandem OLED display with a higher 3.2K resolution (up from 2.8K), even greater color accuracy (especially in the AdobeRGB gamut), twice the display brightness at up to 1,000 nits (compared to 500 nits, and that's not even with HDR enabled), and greater efficiency to boot. Sadly, Lenovo didn't send me that configuration to test, so I can't tell you just how much better that panel is.

The entry-level screen is still fantastic, though. It's bright, vibrant, and responsive whether I was working, editing photos, gaming, or watching videos. If the Tandem OLED display is even better, it'll be one of the best panels you'll find on a laptop right now.

Performance ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

The Yoga Pro 9i is powered by an Intel Core Ultra 9 285H, a 16-core CPU with fantastic overall performance and solid efficiency. That's backed by up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 (8GB) GPU, but Lenovo sent me the entry-level configuration with an RTX 5050 inside — and it seriously impressed me.

This laptop is a strong performer in general, backed by Intel Evo guarantees for responsiveness and bolstered by excellent thermal management. The Yoga Pro 9i never got too warm, never suffered from abnormal throttling, and kept quiet enough even under load.

As I mentioned, though, it's the RTX 5050 that surprised me. Lenovo actually offers a GPU overclocking option, and when enabled the Yoga Pro 9i's RTX 5050 performed well beyond the level I expected, coming within a stone's throw of the far more expensive Dell 16 Premium's RTX 5070 without becoming thermally restrained.

I was able to play Forza Horizon 5 with Extreme settings without any issues, either, never dipping below a stable 60 FPS.

Battery life ⭐⭐⭐½

With an 84Whr battery stashed away inside, the Yoga Pro 9i certainly has plenty of juice... but it's not enough to translate to true all-day battery life. In my testing, the Yoga Pro 9i can deliver around 5 hours of real-time usage — slightly better than the Dell 16 Premium and its larger 99Whr battery, but nothing too impressive.

You can use up to 100W USB Type-C chargers whenever you're in a pinch, at least. Performance when off the charger is throttled, but is still absolutely what I'd consider "flagship" level — especially the graphical oomph.

This laptop can't claim to boast the greatest endurance, but it's no worse than much of the competition.

Keyboard & touchpad ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I've historically been a huge fan of Lenovo's keyboards, and that still mostly holds true with the Yoga Pro 9i. The layout, key travel, and consistency are all top-notch, and the keyboard doesn't feel too cramped despite having a compact tenkey number pad off to one side (a feature some will love, and others will hate).

As I noted in my Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i (Gen 9) Aura Edition review, though, the new coating Lenovo puts on its keys isn't my favorite. This is a good keyboard, it's just slippery.

The touchpad is spacious and responsive with Microsoft Precision drivers, so I have little to complain about there... but I do wish Lenovo would finally embrace haptic touchpads on its premium consumer laptops.

Software & AI ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

It should come as no surprise that the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i runs Windows 11, and it does so without issue. Drivers are stable and Lenovo hasn't injected an absurd amount of bloatware onto the device.

You also get some extra features courtesy of Lenovo's "Aura Edition" branding, such as multi-device syncing for photos and files, "smart" performance and settings profiles, and Lenovo's "AI Now" companion, but the Yoga Pro 9i is not a Copilot+ PC thanks to the weaker NPU of its processor, so it doesn't boast all the latest and greatest artificial intelligence features in Windows.

That won't make a difference to most people, but it's worth noting this laptop technically isn't on the cutting edge for software.

Everything else ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

The display isn't the only reason the Yoga Pro 9i is a monster for entertainment, as it also packs a capable six-speaker system (dual 2W tweeters and quad 2W woofers) with Dolby Atmos support.

I won't go as far as claiming these are the best-sounding speakers in a laptop I've heard, but the Yoga Pro 9i does sound full, loud, and clear. You also get a quad microphone array flanking the great 5MP front-facing camera, which is supported by an IR sensor for Windows Hello facial recognition.

I never had any issues with the Wi-Fi 7 or Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity, either. The Yoga Pro 9i doesn't rock any additional features like Human Presence Detection (HPD) or ambient light sensors, or a fingerprint reader, but the basics are covered and they're covered well.

Yoga Pro 9i (Gen 10) review: My final thoughts

✅You should buy this if ...

• You need a powerful, feature-packed 16-inch laptop for work and creation.
• You also want that laptop to be good for PC gaming, too.
• You want a laptop with a top-notch OLED display and speaker system.

❌You should not buy this if ...

• You actually care about Windows 11's Copilot+ PC-exclusive features.
• You need a laptop with consistent, easy all-day battery life.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 (Gen 10) Aura Edition may have a slightly ridiculous name, but it's hands-down one of the greatest laptops in the category of "powerful and premium 16-inch workstations."

While Apple commits to minimalism and Dell pushes even more aggressively in that direction, Lenovo is delivering an equally capable laptop packed with features and ports — all while undercutting the competition on price. It's a shockingly practical laptop for productivity, creation, entertainment, and gaming.

While I do wish the battery could withstand a full day's worth of work without compromise, that doesn't stop this from being one of the best Windows laptops I've tested this year. You can customize your own Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 (Gen 10) Aura Edition from $1,869.99 at Lenovo.com, or pull the trigger on the configuration I most recommend for $2,149.99 at Lenovo.com, which upgrades you to that sweet Tandem OLED display and a more powerful RTX 5060 GPU.

One of the best Windows laptops money can buy is the Razer Blade 14, but it takes a lot of money to add this sleek and sophisticated gaming PC to your desk. The fact of the matter is, most people just don't want to spend that much money on their computer.

Well, the cost of entry just fell by a lot thanks to the steepest sale the Razer Blade 14 (2025) has ever enjoyed, bringing it down a whopping $700 to $1,999.99 at Razer.com. Don't worry, you can also find the same deal at Amazon.com, and wherever you buy the Blade 14, you'll get a copy of Borderlands 4 included.

This is still an ultra-premium laptop, but this stellar discount makes it a much more attractive option for anyone who wants a compact, powerful, and feature-packed 14-inch gaming laptop.

All of a sudden, the Blade 14 is a lot easier to recommend

I praised the Razer Blade 14 (2025) in my review for its incredible unibody design, impressive set of features, and consistent performance, but my greatest criticism was, understandably, the exorbitant price tag.

After all, why would someone consider the Blade 14 when the comparable ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 costs so much less? Razer may have no equal when it comes to design and build quality in gaming laptops, but many would rather save their cash and focus on performance and features instead.

You can get a slightly more powerful Zephyrus G14 for $2,399.99 at BestBuy.com right now, and that's a fantastic laptop. A $700 discount makes the new Blade 14 a strong alternative, though, offering a slimmer and more refined design for $1,999.99 at Razer.com, and it's available in silver on top of Razer's iconic matte black. If you're curious, this configuration is rocking the 10-core AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 CPU and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 (8GB) GPU.

The cherry on the cake is a free copy of Borderlands 4 included with every purchase of the discounted $2,000 Razer Blade 14, as well as the "Gilded Glory Pack." You shouldn't have to worry about any of Borderlands 4's infamous performance issues with this hardware, either.

This laptop now being available at Amazon.com with the same color options and promotions makes it even easier to discover why the Blade 14 is one of our highest-rated laptops.

From the 14-inch, 2.8K, 120Hz OLED display and excellent six-speaker sound system to the reliable performance and all the latest and greatest Windows 11 features (this is a full Copilot+ AI PC), the Blade 14 has a lot going for it. I adore a good 14-inch gaming laptop, and this is inarguably one of the best on the market.

This isn't just for gaming, of course. The Blade 14 is arguably even better for creatives, engineers, and other professionals who need a lot of graphical firepower in a compact package they can slip into a bag and take with them to the office (or wherever else you need to work). Unlike many dedicated gaming laptops, the Blade 14 doesn't cut corners outside of raw performance — all the features you expect of a high-end laptop are here.

The Razer Blade 14 (2025) was a tougher recommendation at an absurd $2,700, but this pricing feels right. If you've been on the fence, this is the time to take that leap. Pick up the Razer Blade 14 (2025) for $1,999.99 at Razer.com (with Borderlands 4) starting today.

NVIDIA is the world's largest AI GPU supplier with roughly 90% of the market, but its AI efforts are not limited to data centers.

NVIDIA's gaming hardware, including RTX graphics cards, includes built-in AI tools that help with upscaling, overall performance, and even game development.

Announced today at Gamescom, NVIDIA's Project G-Assist — an on-device AI helper — has now expanded to all RTX GPUs with 6GB or more VRAM, including laptop graphics cards.

The lower system requirements arrive thanks to "a new, significantly more efficient AI model that's faster and uses 40% less memory while maintaining response accuracy," according to NVIDIA's press release.

NVIDIA says that the updated AI assistant will be available through a Game Ready Driver update within the NVIDIA App on August 19. Just download the G-Assist update on the NVIDIA App's home screen.

With this new update, NVIDIA has also added a collaboration with mod.io that will help discover and deliver G-Assist plugins built by regular users. Anyone can build plugins for G-Assist, just as long as you have an understanding of JSON and Python scripts. A specialized plugin builder is available to download from NVIDIA.

Beyond that, NVIDIA says that another update is expected in September 2025, containing laptop-specific tools to help with NVIDIA BatteryBoost and Battery OPS.

Project G-Assist is a good idea in theory ... not so much in execution. At least not yet. I'm looking forward to giving the updated NVIDIA Project G-Assist a try, as the first attempts at getting it to work were unimpressive (to put it nicely).

What is NVIDIA's Project G-Assist, and should you care?

Announced first at Computex 2024, NVIDIA's Project G-Assist is a free AI assistant built for gamers. It's a Small Language Model (SLM) that runs locally on your PC's RTX graphics card, providing "real-time diagnostics and recommendations to alleviate system bottlenecks, improve power efficiency, optimize game settings, overclock your GPU, and much more," according to NVIDIA's official press release.

The way Project G-Assist is designed allows for "natural language instructions," whether delivered via text or voice. So far, it only understands English, but I expect to see further language support if the project proves popular enough.

As mentioned, users can build their own plugins for Project G-Assist, and they'll now be available directly through the app thanks to a newfound collaboration with mod.io.

When Project G-Assist initially launched, NVIDIA slapped some hefty system requirements on the AI assistant. It required an RTX 30, 40, or 50-series desktop GPU with at least 12GB of VRAM, which excluded even the latest Blackwell RTX 5000 cards like the 8GB RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060. It also lacked support for laptop GPUs and NVIDIA RTX PRO GPUs.

That's all changed, and I'm happy to see Project G-Assist become available for more RTX gamers and developers.

Early issues with NVIDIA's Project G-Assist

Since its inception, NVIDIA's AI assistant has been sitting on a Version 0.1 release. It's an experimental release, but Project G-Assist was a lot worse than any of us expected when we tested it in March 2025.

Yes, it works fine for some, but my colleague Richard Devine had a terrible time attempting to use G-Assist with an RTX 5080 Founders Edition GPU — you know, the first-party cards that NVIDIA makes — with 16GB of VRAM.

Devine's testing revealed that G-Assist didn't do much more than tank framerates (often from triple digits to single digits) or completely lock up the system. Devine tested G-Assist with Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Atomfall, and Avowed, and the results were the same across each title.

It's not like Devine was attempting to crash the system. Asking something as simple as "Is G-Sync enabled?" nearly crashed games, and that was despite having 4GB of VRAM more than the previously recommended 12GB.

With NVIDIA introducing a lighter AI model and a new, lower 6GB of VRAM requirement, I'm eager to see how it actually performs on desktop PCs and gaming laptops.

Should you be using NVIDIA's Project G-Assist while PC gaming?

In theory, Project G-Assist could be a useful tool for gamers. Want to make a quick adjustment to system settings without leaving your game? Ask AI to do it for you.

However, as it stands now, G-Assist still has a long way to go. Version 0.2 could solve a lot of the aforementioned issues, and you might find it particularly useful for your specific needs.

👉 Related: The NVIDIA app on Windows 11 could be sapping performance out of your PC games

Project G-Assist is certainly not something I recommend every RTX owner install immediately, but you can test it out with relative ease straight from the official NVIDIA App.

If it's not right for you — or if it continues to flat-out not function properly — you can always uninstall it without harming (as far as we can tell) any other functionality in NVIDIA's app.

Are there privacy concerns related to NVIDIA's Project G-Assist?

Having an AI agent comb through your PC for information might not sit well with everyone, and I don't blame you for being wary.

In the fine print on NVIDIA's main G-Assist page, there are some disclaimers that might make you think twice before installing the feature.

"G-Assist is a pre-release feature and may not be fully functional, may contain errors or design flaws, and may have reduced or different security, privacy, availability and reliability standards relative to commercial versions of NVIDIA offerings."

Below this line is another that basically states that NVIDIA isn't responsible for any damages the AI agent could cause if it gives wrong information or decides to go rogue and tune your PC outside of its operating boundaries.

"AI models generate responses and outputs based on complex algorithms and machine learning techniques, and those responses or outputs may be inaccurate, harmful, biased or indecent. By using G-Assist, you assume the risk of any harm caused by any response or output from it. NVIDIA will not be responsible for any actions, losses, or damages suffered as a result of use of G-Assist or its output. We recommend that you verify the information before relying on it."

Bottom line? Don't take what G-Assist says too seriously, and always put your best common sense before what AI tells you.

HP has been steadily growing and improving its OMEN line of gaming hardware in the last few years, and the brand has become a consistently good option for consumers.

Now, the OMEN family is quite a bit larger, with HP announcing a handful of hardware refreshes — and an entirely new product to sit at the very top of the lineup.

2025 is giving us a new HP OMEN 35L desktop (including a very interesting new edition), a refreshed HP OMEN 16 laptop, and the absolutely ridiculous HP OMEN MAX 45L desktop.

There's some interesting stuff going on here, so let's dive in.

First, we have the all-new HP OMEN MAX 45L. Similar to the HP OMEN MAX 16 (2025) I reviewed, this tower is meant to be the best HP can offer to those who demand the greatest performance.

Equipped with up to an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D (16 cores, 32 threads), NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 (32GB VRAM), 128GB of DDR5 RAM, and 2TB of PCIe Gen5 SSD storage, the OMEN MAX 45L is a monster for gaming, creation, and artificial intelligence workflows.

What makes this desktop "flagship" level, though, is more than just the components inside. Toolless entry into the roomy chassis allows for easy upgrades of the standard parts, you get a high-powered motherboard that enables in-depth CPU, GPU, and RAM overclocking, HP improved its "CRYO CHAMBER" cooling technology (which includes 360mm liquid CPU cooling), and the 1,200W PSU is now fully modular and even includes unique features like automatic fan cleaning.

This tower is massive and it's bound to be expensive, but it should offer some of the best and most consistent performance you can expect out of a modern gaming PC, and compete with PCs like the Lenovo Legion Tower 7i (Gen 10) I just reviewed. I do wish the OMEN MAX 45L got the same "pair up to three wireless HyperX accessories without a USB dongle" feature as the MAX 16 laptop, though.

Before I jump into the new OMEN 35L desktop, a brief mention of the third OMEN product HP announced today.

The HP OMEN 16 gaming laptop has also been refreshed, but it's a simple spec bump to the latest internals, including up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti.

I reviewed the HP OMEN 35L (2024), and I honestly loved that desktop. It wasn't perfect (mostly on the software/firmware front), but its compact chassis was gorgeous. HP hasn't messed with that design for 2025, but the OMEN 35L is getting treated to many of the same on-paper components as the OMEN MAX 45L.

Performance won't be as good thanks to less space for airflow to keep everything running cool, but a lot of people will be more than happy to accept that compromise. The most exciting part about this year's OMEN 35L, though, is the new Stealth Edition.

Designed for esports but aimed at anyone who wants a more understated design, the OMEN 35L Stealth Edition boasts all the same specs as the standard version, but does away with the glass-clad, RGB-lit chassis in favor of a blockier, all matte-black design.

It's a gaming PC that doesn't look like a gaming PC, and I personally think it's awesome. It's an even better version of the reasons I loved the Dell XPS Desktop (8960) we reviewed. I'm willing to be a lot of people will be drawn to the Stealth Edition.

In other news, HP also announced some new HyperX gaming accessories, so be sure to check those out, too. Stay tuned, because as you're reading this I'm in Los Angeles with HP, going hands-on with these new products. My initial impressions will be appearing on Windows Central soon.

It took far too long for me to get my hands on the brand-new ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025), but I'm finally here.

My excitement was palpable when I initially went hands-on with the new Zephyrus G14, but you could also feel my apprehension at the apparent shift in focus.

So much of what made this laptop so amazing last year is still here, only now it's smarter and more powerful — so, what's the deal? It's that ASUS is seemingly walking back some of the decisions it made with last year's laptop, for better or worse.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) brings AMD Ryzen AI and NVIDIA GeForce 50-series hardware under its wing, and it succeeds at surpassing the current Razer Blade 14 at every turn performance-wise. The trade-off is more weight, thickness, and price, however, and I'm conflicted on whether ASUS made the right decision or not.

No matter my feelings, though, this is still one of the best Windows laptops of the year, especially if you want a sleek 14-inch machine with some monstrous power under the hood.

My ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) review

Design ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 hasn't changed much for 2025, with the same sleek aluminum chassis. This time around, however, its redesigned thermal shelf makes the rear two-thirds thicker (18.3mm versus 16.3mm) and the laptop overall heavier (1.57kg versus 1.5kg).

We do get the same port selection, though, with 1 USB4 (40GBps, DisplayPort, 100W Power Delivery), 1 USB Type-C (10GBPs, DisplayPort, 100W Power Delivery), 2 USB Type-A (10GBps), 1 HDMI 2.1, 1 microSD card reader (UHS-II), and 1 3.5mm audio jack.

I would've preferred both USB Type-C ports be USB4 with Thunderbolt 4 compatibility, and I'm still not entirely convinced ASUS made the right decision in making the Zephyrus G14 thicker and heavier — but it's attractive (and now comes in dark and light colorways), built extremely well, and every bit as premium-feeling as a ~$2,000 laptop should be.

Display ⭐⭐⭐⭐

ASUS also didn't change the display with the new Zephyrus G14, so we're still getting the same "Lumina" flavor of the 14-inch, 2.8K, 120Hz OLED screen we've seen in so many premium laptops.

It's vibrant, responsive, color accurate (at least 100% of sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamuts), and supports Dolby Vision HDR — perfect for working, creating, playing, and watching. This display's strengths are well known at this point, but so are its weaknesses.

It's not the brightest at around 400 nits, but it's good enough. It does use Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) for dimming, so people who are sensitive to flickering will have to avoid it. ASUS also took away software options for customizing the display and OLED care features, which helped its displays stand out.

Performance ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the ROG Zephyrus G14 is a strong performer, thanks to the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080. Yes, 5080, because that's necessary in a 14-inch gaming laptop (no it's not, don't waste your money on that configuration).

You also get up to 64GB of soldered LPDDR5X RAM at 8,000MHz and 2TB of PCIe Gen4 SSD storage. This laptop is responsive no matter what you throw at it, and has more than enough firepower to play all the latest games or handle intensive workloads.

ASUS' triple-fan cooling system is also remarkably adept at keeping this laptop running in top form. I ran it through 3DMark's Time Spy benchmark 25 times, and it maintained a 99.3% framerate stability (for reference, the Razer Blade 14 scored 99.1%, and both those scores are excellent).

• Forza Horizon 5 — 109 FPS (Extreme preset, 1600p resolution, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution/Frame Generation/Reflex Low Latency disabled) | 120 FPS (Max settings, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution set to Auto, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation/Reflex Low Latency enabled)
• Gears 5 — 81 FPS (Ultra preset, 1600p resolution)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 — 91 FPS (Extreme preset, 1600p resolution, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution set to Performance, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation disabled, NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency enabled)
• Cyberpunk 2077 — 50 FPS (Ray Tracing: Ultra preset, 1600p resolution, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution Transformer Model set to Auto, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation disabled, NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency enabled) | 112 FPS (Ray Tracing: Overdrive preset, NVIDIA DLSS Multi-Frame Generation set to 4x, NVIDIA DLSS Ray Reconstruction enabled)

My review configuration is equipped with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, and on paper the ROG Zephyrus G14 surpasses the Blade 14 in every single test. When gaming, though, the differences are negligible — until you take advantage of NVIDIA DLSS4 features or need more VRAM.

The Razer Blade 14 caps out at 8GB of VRAM and noticeably struggles with features like Multi-Frame Generation. The Zephyrus G14's 5070 Ti (by the way, that's the configuration I recommend) boasts 50% more VRAM, and it makes a big difference.

The Zephyrus G14 also performs better on battery power with less throttling, at least on the CPU side of things.

Battery life ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Another area that hasn't changed much year-over-year is endurance, which is to say the Zephyrus G14's battery life is good... for a gaming laptop. You get a beefy 73Whr battery and more efficient hardware, so it's very reasonable to get 5-6 hours of screen-on time without disabling features or turning the display brightness all the way down.

The Razer Blade 14 lasts ever so slightly longer, but the G14 also throttles way less on battery power.

Keyboard & touchpad ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

I adored the keyboard on last year's Zephyrus G14, so I'm glad ASUS didn't mess around with it too much. The layout is comfortable and spacious, the keys are clicky and responsive, you get extra macro keys and per-key RGB lighting — it's a nice keyboard.

The touchpad is also pretty great. It's coated with smooth glass, uses Microsoft Precision drivers, and feels both consistent and precise. It's no haptic touchpad, but those are still uncommon (and ASUS as a brand focuses a lot on value).

Software & AI ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thanks to the new AMD Ryzen AI CPU, the Zephyrus G14 is now a Copilot+ PC. That still doesn't mean much to most people, but AI PCs are slowly becoming more useful as Windows 11 continues to gain more features.

ASUS does preload the Zephyrus G14 with a few too many apps for my liking, but it's easy to trim the unwanted fat and the apps you do need (like Armoury Crate) work well. As I hinted at when talking about the display, though, it seems like ASUS is giving users less control over the Zephyrus G14, with fewer software options to customize your laptop.

Everything else ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

A lot of gaming laptops tend to skim over the "extras," but the ASUS was thorough with making the Zephyrus G14 a premium laptop throughout. That means keeping the fantastic six-speaker system (with Dolby Atmos spatial audio) that blows most other laptops out of the water — including the Razer Blade 14's new six-speaker sound system.

Wireless connectivity has been upgraded to Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, which is always nice. The FHD webcam isn't anything exceptional, but you do get Windows Hello facial recognition for easy login.

Razer went thin to catch up, ASUS went the opposite direction

When I reviewed the Razer Blade 14 (2025), I commented on how it felt like Razer had finally caught up to ASUS in some ways with a thinner, lighter, faster, smarter laptop with more ports and speakers.

I expected ASUS to stick to its guns and fire back with a more affordable alternative, but it changed the game a little — yes, the Zephyrus G14 is still lighter and costs significantly less, but it's also chonkier... and objectively more powerful now.

My review configuration is easily the Zephyrus G14 of the year, and it's now the top choice for the most powerful 14-inch laptop you can buy. It's not lightyears ahead of the Blade 14 by any metric, though, and that extra 2mm in mass does make a difference.

Don't even get me started on the highest-end Zephyrus G14 with a GeForce RTX 5080 inside — because there's no point shoving such a power-hungry GPU into a 14-inch, 200W laptop. It'll cost hundreds more for negligible performance gains, don't bother.

Fortunately, there are actually two different ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) laptops.

PSA: There are actually two different Zephyrus G14 laptops

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) with an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti (12GB), 32GB of RAM, and 2TB of SSD storage is $2,499.99 at BestBuy.com. That makes it a pricey laptop, but it's still $200 less than the Razer Blade 14 with a Ryzen AI 9 365 and RTX 5070 (8GB) for $2,699.99 at Razer.com.

I do recommend this model for anyone who's willing to accept more laptop for more power, but ASUS actually did preserve the original (and sleeker) 2024 design and refreshed it with some new hardware.

You can get the ROG Zephyrus G14 with an AMD Ryzen 9 270 (that's right, non-AI), a GeForce RTX 5060 (8GB), 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of SSD storage for $1,799.99 at BestBuy.com. That's $200 more than the equivalent last year, but you are getting more power and better efficiency. For a lot of people, that configuration will be the smarter choice (or you can look for the 2024 version on sale, because it's still awesome).

ROG Zephyrus G14 review: My final thoughts

✅You should buy this if ...

• You want the most powerful premium 14-inch gaming laptop there is.
• You definitely don't want to pay Razer money for it.
• You need more than 8GB of GPU VRAM in a compact laptop.

❌You should not buy this if ...

• You don't need this much power and would rather have a thinner device.
• You'd rather save even more and go for the 2024 version.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 is still my favorite 14-inch gaming laptop for 2025, even if it's not a total upgrade across the board. It's premium, feature-packed, more powerful than ever, and it's still a great value compared to the other big player on the field, Razer.

The configuration I reviewed is $2,499.99 at BestBuy.com, and it has been a great gaming and productivity companion for me. That being said, if you prefer the sleeker design of last year, don't care about AI, don't need a ridiculous amount of power, and want to save money, get the trimmed down ROG Zephyrus G14 for $1,799.99 at BestBuy.com instead.

I'm glad ASUS chose to keep both designs around, even if it's a tad confusing for consumers. It'll be interesting to see if ASUS can give us the best of both worlds in the future; in the meantime, this is still one of the best Windows laptops of the year.

PC gaming elitists will always tell you to build your own gaming PC, usually with the "you'll save so much money" argument, but that's not always the best option.

There are plenty of excellent pre-built towers that provide a reliable, capable, and hassle-free PC gaming experience, even if you want something able to play all the most demanding PC games or handle the most intense workloads.

That's where rigs like the Lenovo Legion Tower 7i come in. Lenovo has become one of the most consistent sources of pre-built gaming hardware thanks to its matured Legion brand, and the Legion Tower 7i rests at the pinnacle of its desktop family.

I adored the last Legion Tower 7i enough that I actively chose it over the barrage of enticing hardware that came across my desk in the months following my review. Now Lenovo has updated its flagship desktop with a refreshed design and the latest internals, and it's just as amazing.

... I just wish it wasn't quite this expensive.

My Lenovo Legion Tower 7i (Gen 10) review

Design ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

Lenovo didn't overhaul the Legion Tower 7i's design with the latest generation, but I don't feel like it had to. It's understated enough to blend into any setup, but still has enough style to fulfil its "gamer" aspirations.

Lenovo did make the Legion Tower 7i more compact, though, shaving off a little height and length without compromising on performance, cooling, or features. This is a 34-liter chassis now, but it's still larger than desktops like the HP OMEN 35L I reviewed.

You get the same number of ports, too, but the bandwidth has been upgraded. One of the 5GBps USB Type-A ports on the front is now a 10GBps USB Type-C port, and the 20GBps USB Type-C port on the rear is now a full-fledged 40GBps Thunderbolt 4 port with Power Delivery 3.1 and DisplayPort 2.1.

Upgradeability ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

The Legion Tower 7i is as easy to open as ever, with just two thumbscrews keeping the side glass panel on. Inside you'll find a pretty standard Intel Z890 motherboard with helpful barcodes to find support documentation for various parts.

Despite the reduced internal volume, the Legion Tower 7i also boasts plenty of upgrade and expansion opportunities. You get 4 UDIMM RAM slots (which also support CUDIMM RAM for overclocking), 4 M.2 SSD slots (which also support PCIe Gen5 SSDs), 2 3.5" HDD bays, as well as one each of PCIe 5.0 x16, PCIe 4.0 x16, and PCIe 3.0 x1 expansion slots.

Some of it is a little difficult to access with the sheer size of the NVIDIA GPU, but everything you could want is there.

Performance ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

As you'd expect from a flagship desktop, the Legion Tower 7i is packed with powerful hardware. My configuration is rocking an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (24 cores), an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 (16GB VRAM), 64GB of dual-channel, 5,600MHz RAM, and 2TB of PCIe Gen4 SSD storage.

That's pretty much the best Lenovo offers right now, but an RTX 5090 configuration is likely on the way (not that I recommend it, unless you really need the extra VRAM and don't mind paying hundreds more for it).

You can upgrade this tower with up to 128GB of UDIMM RAM, and you can use more advanced CUDIMM RAM if you'd like to overclock it. It also supports PCIe Gen5 SSDs for the absolute fastest read and write speeds, but Lenovo doesn't offer a configuration that comes with those SSDs pre-installed (at least right now).

That's a shame, because this tower's only real "weakness" is the fact that both of its 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSDs are slower than average; they're not slow, but many other gaming PCs and laptops definitely boast some more impressive scores.

• Forza Horizon 5 — 146 FPS (Extreme preset, 4K resolution, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution/DLSS Frame Generation/Reflex Low Latency disabled) | 196 FPS (Max settings, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution set to Auto, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation/Reflex Low Latency enabled)
• Gears 5 — 130 FPS (Ultra preset, 4K resolution)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 — 135 FPS (Extreme preset, 4K resolution, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution set to Performance, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation disabled)
• Cyberpunk 2077 — 84 FPS (Ray Tracing: Ultra preset, 4K resolution, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution Transformer Model set to Auto, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation/Ray Reconstruction disabled, NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency enabled) | 188 FPS (Ray Tracing: Overdrive preset, NVIDIA DLSS Multi-Frame Generation set to 4X, NVIDIA DLSS Ray Reconstruction enabled)

You definitely don't notice when actually using the Legion Tower 7i, though, which absolutely smashes everything I could throw at it. It's a powerhouse that can crank settings up to the max at 4K.

Lenovo also updated the Legion Tower 7i's thermal management system, and I never struggled with thermal throttling of any kind. It's also a quiet system, with the fans at full blast easily drowned out by any gaming headset.

Software & AI ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Lenovo's Legion ecosystem is mature and the Legion Tower 7i does now benefit from technically being an AI PC thanks to the Neural Processing Unit (NPU) baked into its processor, but I do feel this is one area where Lenovo took a step back.

The new Legion Space launcher is clean and easy to navigate, but it does feel bereft of more powerful features. Beyond very basic GPU overclocking, simple performance profiles, and RGB lighting customization, you're not given a lot of control over your hardware (you won't find much more in the BIOS, either).

This thing is expensive, even compared to other RTX 50-series desktops

The Legion Tower 7i has never been an affordable desktop PC, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series is notoriously expensive. Still, this latest tower is pricey, even compared to other pre-built PCs.

This Alienware Aurora PC with an Intel Core Ultra 9, GeForce RTX 5080, 32GB of RAM, and 2TB of SSD storage is $3,149.99 at BestBuy.com, and the equivalent Legion Tower 7i configuration is $3,799.99 at Lenovo.com. Alienware's not particularly known for being value-driven, either.

There's also this ASUS ROG G700 with a Core Ultra 7 for $2,749.99 at BestBuy.com, while the comparable Legion Tower 7i will run you $3,099.99 at Lenovo.com.

The Lenovo Legion Tower 7i (Gen 10) offers top-notch performance and cooling that even rivals the significantly larger and more expensive Alienware Area-51 PC we reviewed, but if all you care about is on-paper specs, than you can get similar hardware for hundreds less.

Legion Tower 7i review: My final thoughts

✅You should buy this if ...

• You want the best Intel and NVIDIA hardware you can get.
• You believe better cooling is worth having a larger PC.
• You need a lot of ports, including Thunderbolt 4, on your desktop.

❌You should not buy this if ...

• You're willing to put in the time and effort to build your own PC.
• You're looking for the best possible value in a pre-built PC.

There's a reason I kept the Lenovo Legion Tower 7i (Gen 8) for as long as I did, and the latest generation boosts the performance and decreases the size. It's an excellent tower with a lot of room to grow with you over the years.

I do wish Lenovo's software offered more in-depth settings and controls, though. This desktop PC is also pricey, so be sure you want the best (or wait for a good sale to come around).

Once again, though, Lenovo has made my favorite pre-built desktop gaming PC. If you'd like to consider one for yourself, the Lenovo Legion Tower 7i (Gen 10) is now available from $2,699.99 at Lenovo.com.

Earlier this year, the multinational hardware designer and manufacturer NVIDIA introduced its RTX 5000 series of GeForce gaming graphics cards — also referred to as the RTX 50-series, and a follow-up to the RTX 40-series GPUs that launched in late 2022 and early 2023. On top of better raw rendering performance, these cards also support advanced features that elevate performance in other ways as well. Now, though, one such technology has become usable on older 40-series cards, too.

The feature in question is NVIDIA Smooth Motion, which — similar to AMD Fluid Motion Frames — uses artificial intelligence (AI) to inject an AI-generated frame between every pair of traditionally rendered frames. It can effectively double your in-game framerate without any noticeable quality downgrade in many cases, though on occasion, it might cause weird performance issues and visual oddities since it's still being refined.

It's similar to Lossless Scaling, though it's a driver-level solution that doesn't require the use of a third-party program and also notably works with any game. That makes it a great alternative to Super Resolution upscalers like NVIDIA DLSS or AMD FSR, as developers have to make their games support these for you to be able to use them (it can be used in tandem with these, also). In particular, it's useful when player older games made before those technologies were available. It also lets you boost past FPS caps in framerate-locked titles like Elden Ring.

Before now, Smooth Motion was only supported on 50-series GPUs. With the release of NVIDIA's 590.26 preview driver, however, it's now something you can enable with 40-series cards.

Officially, the testing driver is only available through NVIDIA's special developer site, which you have to make an account for. Alternatively, though, you can also download it with this mirror on the Guru3D forums. Once it's installed, you'll find the "Enable Smooth Motion" option in the NVIDIA Profile Inspector software you can get off GitHub.

Guru3D user Macer shared their results testing Smooth Motion on their RTX 4090, posting screenshots of World of Warcraft — a game that doesn't support DLSS natively — running at 164 FPS with the feature toggled on despite an in-game cap of 82 FPS set. "Very excited that RTX 40 finally supports Smooth Motion technology," they wrote.

That's a massive doubling of the framerate, and other players across other forums like Reddit have reported similar improvements in other games, too.

As someone currently using an RTX 4070 Ti SUPER myself, I'm very excited to put Smooth Motion to good use in the games I play, especially ones like Helldivers 2 or Elden Ring Nightreign that are either heavy with action and benefit particularly strongly from performance boosts or have annoying native FPS limits. I'm also looking forward to trying it in my heavily modded Skyrim and Fallout installs, as the extremely advanced graphics mods I tend to use often result in my FPS dropping below 60.

Something important to remember, though, is that the 590.26 preview driver is exactly that — a preview driver for testing, and one that's not even available to the public officially at that. Therefore, there's an increased likelihood of running into in-game visual artifacts or strange performance bugs, and indeed, some have already reported experiencing these. If you have too many problems with the driver, make sure to download and reinstall the latest official ones from NVIDIA.

Still, it's fun to test early versions of tech, and reporting encountered issues can only help NVIDIA ensure that the rollout of Smooth Motion support on RTX 40-series GPUs is a smooth and functional one. With that in mind, I'm definitely going to give this a go later tonight and see how it runs.

A lot of laptops have graced my desk in the last few years, and most quietly fade into obscurity as I move on to newer and more interesting machines. There have been a few machines that carved out a place in my brain, though, and the successor to one such laptop is finally here.

When I reviewed the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2024), I boldly proclaimed it the "best 14-inch gaming laptop ever," and I stood by that. ASUS has now updated the Zephyrus G14 for 2025 with new AMD and NVIDIA hardware, and made an interesting decision along the way.

I've been waiting for months, and I finally have the brand-new ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) on my desk — but can it hold on to its crown? After all, I recently reviewed the redesigned Razer Blade 14 (2025), and I praised that laptop on almost every front.

Ahead of my full, in-depth review, here are my initial thoughts on the brand-new Zephyrus G14, one of my most anticipated laptops of the year.

What's new with the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14?

ASUS redesigned the Zephyrus G14 in 2024, and as I noted in my original review, the company prioritized a better balance between performance and portability. I wholeheartedly agreed with that decision.

In 2025, ASUS is unsurprisingly keeping to the same design, which I loved last year and still love 12 months later. However, ASUS has taken a unique two-pronged approach to the Zephyrus G14 this year.

ASUS updated the Zephyrus G14 with the latest AMD Ryzen AI and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series hardware, which improves performance, efficiency, and AI smarts in one fell swoop. In fact, the new Zephyrus G14 is a full-blown Copilot+ PC and benefits from all the latest and greatest AI PC features.

That's just for the higher-end configurations, though, which come with their own trade-off. There's a second version of the Zephyrus G14, too, which rocks the same overall design, features, and 2.8K/120Hz OLED display... but it's not quite the same laptop.

If you want the true "2025" upgrade for the Zephyrus G14, you also have to accept a thicker laptop. ASUS adopted a similar thermal hood design as Razer with the new Blade 14/16 laptops, but went the opposite direction — instead of making the Zephyrus G14 thinner, ASUS added support for more powerful (and therefore hotter) discrete GPUs.

Last year's Zephyrus G14 was around 16mm in thickness, and the new 2025 model is around 2mm thicker in some places — but it can handle up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 (which is a little crazy for a 14-inch laptop).

If you want the exact design as last year, you can still do that! The entry-level Zephyrus G14 is not a Copilot+ PC, though, relying on the uncommon AMD Ryzen 9 270 and up to a GeForce RTX 5070 GPU. It's absolutely less powerful and a little less future-proofed, but some will prefer the sleeker design.

It's a unique approach, but now there's a Zephyrus G14 for both sides.

What's it like to unbox the new Zephyrus G14?

Unboxing the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) is a nearly identical experience to last year, in that you'll be greeted with your typical, large ROG box with a much smaller box inside of it (and a third box just for the proprietary 200W charger).

There's still a distinct lack of plastic and few weird obstructions to getting to the laptop, though, so I've no complaints. I will note, however, that I immediately questioned if ASUS had made the Zephyrus G14 thicker — even after not handling last year's version for around six months.

My instincts were correct, as the new Zephyrus G14 is noticeably chunkier to help cool the more intense GPU options. Whether ASUS made the right decision here will have to wait until my full review.

How does the Zephyrus G14 compare to the Razer Blade 14?

When I discussed whether the average person should consider buying the ultra-premium Razer Blade 14 (2025), one of my most prominent counterpoints was the existence of the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14.

After all, the Zephyrus G14 is a direct competitor for the Blade 14, but consistently undercuts Razer's offering in pricing while only (at first glance) compromising on sheer build quality.

Now that I've had some time with both 2025 iterations, how does the latest ROG Zephyrus G14 compare to the redesigned Blade 14? It's mostly the same story, but with an interesting twist.

Razer caught up with ASUS in terms of slimness and weight with its latest Blade 14, and it's an impressive (but much more expensive) laptop. On the other hand, ASUS made a thicker (but still lighter) laptop that now offers a higher performance ceiling.

I'll admit that Razer's build quality is still superior, but whether you prefer portability or power, the Zephyrus G14 still has the edge in pricing. I'll need to spend a lot more time with the latest Zephyrus G14 to ascertain if it's still a viable, more affordable alternative to Razer's 14-inch flagship, though.

Should I buy the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025)?

On one hand, most of what I loved about 2024's ROG Zephyrus G14 has carried over into this year's version. On the other hand, you can interpret the lack of change as stagnation, and pair that with the uncertainty surrounding the shift in design principles.

After a few hours with the brand-new Zephyrus G14, I'm feeling very positive overall, but I also feel that slight apprehension around ASUS attempting to shove GPUs typically exclusive to 16/18-inch laptops into a 14-inch chassis. The new Zephyrus G14 is thicker and heavier, and whether that actually translates to better performance is a question dependent on my continued testing.

A full, in-depth review of the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) will be coming in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, I have been loving what I've experienced so far. If you don't mind the loss of AI features and would rather stick to what worked so well last year, the entry-level ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) is available for $1,799.99 at Best Buy.

I'm willing to take the bet on the thicker, smarter, and more powerful Zephyrus G14, though, with my review configuration running for $2,499.99 at Best Buy or $2,499.99 at ASUS. If you're unsure, just wait for my complete thoughts in the coming weeks.

I recently reviewed the Razer Blade 14 (2025), the latest iteration (and a complete redesign) of Razer's best-selling and most portable gaming laptop.

I awarded the new Blade 14 a healthy 4.5/5 star rating and generally praised this premium and powerful device, but hovering over every item of praise was the overbearing price tag attached to it.

That begs the question — Razer may have crafted an incredible gaming machine, but what kind of person should actually spend their hard-earned money on it?

Statistically speaking, most of the people reading this article probably don't. Here's what sets the Razer Blade 14 apart from most laptops, and exactly who should consider making it their next companion.

What makes the Razer Blade 14 (2025) so special?

14-inch laptops are a dime a dozen, even if you only consider premium options from companies like HP, Lenovo, Dell, Apple, and many more. So, where does the Razer Blade 14 fall?

Unlike most premium 14-inch devices, the Blade 14 is designed with gaming and creation in mind. That means it packs some of the most powerful hardware you can squeeze into a laptop, despite being around 16mm thick (to put it into perspective, that's actually thinner at points than the Surface Laptop 7 we reviewed).

The Razer Blade 14 has a lot of other things going for it: an attractive and durable body milled out of a single block of high-grade aluminum, a vibrant and responsive 120Hz OLED display, a bolsterious six-speaker system with spatial audio, all the ports you could ask for, and Windows Hello facial recognition to log you in without a password.

Under the hood, though, you're getting one of the best AMD Ryzen AI chipsets and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series GPU, which enables high-performance gaming, content creation, and support for all the best AI features a Copilot+ PC can offer.

That's a whole lot of PC in a small package.

Aren't normal laptops also quite powerful now?

There's simply no debating whether the Razer Blade 14 is one of the most powerful 14-inch laptops ever made — it is. That doesn't mean that all other 14-inch laptops are slow, though; they're simply designed for something else.

Take the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 (2024) I reviewed. This is still one of the best Windows laptops I've ever tested, and it's the laptop I chose to use as my backup whenever I'm not reviewing something else.

It's thinner and lighter than the Blade 14, boasts a versatile 2-in-1 design with touch and stylus input, and true all-day battery life (where the Blade 14 can only make it through a full day if you cut some corners). It's also cheaper than the Blade 14, despite arguably offering more features.

There's no discrete NVIDIA GPU inside, nor is the Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) chipset it relies on as performant as the Ryzen AI at the Blade 14's center, but performance is still buttery smooth for 99% of what 99% of people do on their computers... even gaming.

Obviously the Razer Blade 14 will play games at higher resolutions, higher framerates, and higher settings. Of course it will render video faster. But the OmniBook Ultra Flip can still play most PC games at lower settings just fine, and that's all most people need.

Why should I consider the Razer Blade 14?

If you need a reliable and competent 14-inch Windows laptop and are willing to pay for a premium device with more features, there are plenty of excellent alternatives like the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 — many with more versatile and portable designs, longer-lasting batteries, and even more AI features.

If you need a powerful gaming laptop that will spend most of its time plugged in, there are plenty of excellent alternatives like the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10) I reviewed — many with far superior performance, greater thermal management, better keyboards, and larger and faster displays.

Even if you need a laptop that carefully straddles the gap — by offering most of the performance of a 16-inch gaming laptop with most of the portability and features of a 14-inch ultrabook — I'd still suggest considering something like the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2024) I reviewed.

That laptop targets a similar niche as the Razer Blade 14 (2025), and it always costs a lot less from configuration to configuration. I also love that laptop (so stay tuned for my review of the 2025 update, because I have that in hand right now).

That's a lot of "buts," and I can still happily recommend the Razer Blade 14 (2025). All I'm offering is a word of caution; be sure the Blade 14 is the tool you need to get the job done.

Depending on your needs, you can find better battery life, better performance, or better value in many of the other best Windows laptops.

If what you need, though, is a thin and light luxury laptop with an industry-leading premium design, enough performance for all the greatest PC games and most demanding workloads, and a battery capable of lasting a full day when you need it to, then the Razer Blade 14 is the peak of that specific category.

Just be prepared to pay for it, as the Razer Blade 14 (2025) starts from $2,299.99 at Razer. It's not a question of whether the Blade 14 is worth it, because it does justify that cost — it's a question of whether it's worth it to you.

I recently reviewed the Razer Blade 16 (2025) and found it to be a massive improvement over its predecessor, a gaming laptop that felt mismatched with its engorged price tag.

It's Razer's smallest gaming laptop that is its best seller, though, and the Blade 14 received the same treatment for 2025 as the Blade 16 — a thinner and lighter redesigned chassis, and all-new AMD and NVIDIA hardware for better gaming performance and more AI features.

The result? One of the greatest compact gaming laptops you can buy. The Blade 14 is a seriously impressive display of engineering with far more strengths than weaknesses, but the real question most should be asking is: who should actually buy the Razer Blade 14 (2025)?

This review was made possible thanks to a review sample provided by Razer. Razer had no input nor saw the contents of this review prior to publication.

Blade 14 review: Pricing and specifications

Like always, the Razer Blade 14 (2025) is a ridiculously pricey laptop, but you are getting the pinnacle of premium design, as well as most of the features you could ask for in a laptop.

The Razer Blade 14 (2025) starts from $2,299.99 at Razer, which is equipped with an AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 chipset, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of SSD storage.

My review configuration upgrades to an RTX 5070 GPU and 32GB of RAM for $2,699.99 at Razer. If you want the best of everything, you can upgrade to 64GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD storage for $2,999.99 at Razer.

There's also a "Mercury White" (it's silver) colorway.

In the box, you'll find the Razer Blade 14 (2025) gaming laptop, Razer's proprietary 200W DC charger, and 1 month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Razer also offers its RazerCare extended warranty and colorful Razer skins for the Blade 14.

Blade 14 review: Design and build quality

The Razer Blade design language is iconic at this point, and Razer hasn't dramatically changed its hand with the latest round of redesigns. This is all about refinement, and the finer details do make a sizeable impact.

The new Blade 14 is 11% smaller than the Razer Blade 14 (2024) we reviewed, dropping around 2mm in thickness and a third of a pound in weight. It's still CNC-milled out of a single block of high-grade aluminum, but it's sleeker and more comfortable than before.

Razer didn't make any noticeable changes to its anodization and electrochemical bonding process, though, so the matte black color looks as amazing as always — until you touch it, where it'll greedily hold on to every smudge.

I mentioned in my initial hands-on of the new Razer Blade 14 that it felt like Razer finally closed the gap with the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 I reviewed, and my mind hasn't changed. The Blade 14 always had phenomenal build quality, but the new design is a big improvement in aesthetics.

It's impressive enough to make a 14-inch gaming laptop smarter, faster, thinner, and lighter in one go, but where Razer really surprised me is that it didn't cut any features to make those reductions... In fact, it added more.

You're looking at a very familiar array of ports, with connectivity rivaling much larger laptops thanks to dual USB4 ports with Thunderbolt 4 capabilities (including 100W Power Delivery for when you're on the move and need a quick charge), full bandwidth USB Type-A ports, and HDMI 2.1 display output.

However, Razer actually added a new microSD card slot as well, which will make some people very happy. I'll talk more about them later, but there's also an additional two speakers under the hood, so the Blade 14 rocks the same six-speaker system as both its larger siblings.

Blade 14 review: Display quality

On the display front, last year's Blade 14 rocked an IPS LCD panel with a 240Hz refresh rate. This year, Razer decided to follow in the wake of many other premium, 14-inch laptops with a higher resolution, lower refresh rate OLED display.

You're looking at a 2.8K resolution (1800p instead of 1600p from last year), a 120Hz refresh rate, a blisteringly fast 0.2ms response time, and all the vibrant colors and punchy contrast expected from OLED.

It's a familiar screen, and that comes with the same strengths and weaknesses. On one hand, this display looks gorgeous and offers best-in-class performance for gaming. While the refresh rate has technically been downgraded, 120Hz is perfect for the Blade 14's capabilities, and everything looks crisp and defined.

The new OLED display is also more color accurate than last year's panel, which will make a difference for creators. White balance is very consistent across higher brightnesses, too, so photo and video editors shouldn't have any complaints.

High Dynamic Range (HDR) support is here, although Razer didn't disclose the exact standards to me. Either way, though, this is where the weaknesses come in. This OLED display boasts only average brightness, and it's noticeably lower than last year's IPS LCD screen.

On top of the lowered brightness, you do also need to contend with Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) for dimming. Most people won't be affected, but there are sensitive users who may experience headaches or eye fatigue from the rapid flickering at lower brightnesses, and Razer sadly doesn't offer an alternative display option for the Blade 14.

Blade 14 review: Performance and thermals

It's a given that you'll have to sacrifice some performance with a 14-inch gaming laptop, because that's how physics works. Still, the latest Blade 14 is consistently more performant than its predecessor while being both thinner and lighter, and there are some reasons for that.

Largely, it's due to the completely redesigned thermal hood, which moves the hottest components under the same comprehensive vapor cooling chamber and refined dual-fan system. On the other side, the new AMD Ryzen AI and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series hardware are more efficient than the last generation.

AMD, especially, makes a big difference here. I have a lot of respect for the latest Ryzen AI chipsets, which can't quite compete with Intel and Qualcomm's most efficient mobile hardware, but easily bests both in terms of gaming, creative, and AI performance.

The result is an excellent computing experience. The Blade 14 feels every bit as responsive as it should, considering how much it costs, and is completely quiet the majority of the time.

My only complaint is that AMD still isn't as good as Intel or Qualcomm when it comes to quickly waking from sleep or standby.

There were no surprises when benchmarking the Blade 14. Its AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 is a highly capable 10-core chipset, but it's also far from the most powerful in the Ryzen AI lineup.

The same goes for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070, which is a balanced mid-range GPU with 8GB of VRAM, so it's more than enough for all the best PC games right now. In the Blade 14, that 5070 is running at 115W TGP, which is less than Razer's larger laptops but competitive with other 14-inch gaming machines.

Year-over-year, performance gains are minimal (around 12% for CPU and 3% for GPU), but the Blade 14 (2025) possesses one extremely important advantage: much better thermal performance.

The new Blade 14 runs cool and quiet most of the time, but the fans can get loud as they spin up — at least it's a low whir, rather than a high whine. The Blade 14's keyboard deck can also get hot, but never quite hot enough that I couldn't comfortably touch it.

I ran the Blade 14 through 3DMark's Time Spy benchmark 25 times consecutively, and there was a 99.1% similarity between the best and worst loops. For comparison, the Blade 16 scored 98.1%, which is where a lot of modern gaming laptops land.

• Forza Horizon 5 — 106 FPS (Extreme preset, 1600p resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, v-sync enabled, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution/Frame Generation/Reflex Low Latency disabled) | 74 FPS (Max settings, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution set to Auto, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation/Reflex Low Latency enabled)
• Gears 5 — 81 FPS (Ultra preset, 1600p resolution, uncapped framerate, v-sync enabled)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 — 92 FPS (Extreme preset, 1600p resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, v-sync enabled, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution set to Performance, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation disabled, NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency enabled)
• Cyberpunk 2077 — 51 FPS (Ray Tracing: Ultra preset, 1600p resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, v-sync enabled, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution Transformer Model set to Auto, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation disabled, NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency enabled) | 51 FPS (Ray Tracing: Overdrive preset, v-sync disabled, NVIDIA DLSS Multi-Frame Generation set to 4x, NVIDIA DLSS Ray Reconstruction enabled)

When gaming, the Razer Blade 14 (2025) is a competent performer for QHD (1600p) gaming at high to ultra settings, and games will still look great on the 14-inch display at a lower 1200p resolution if you'd prefer more frames.

I had zero issues with the Blade 14's performance, but I have two interesting things to note: first, the RTX 5070 may benefit from NVIDIA's DLSS AI upscaling and multi-frame generation, but the improvements aren't nearly as dramatic as the 5070 Ti and up.

Secondly, the Blade 14 sometimes behaves weirdly with NVIDIA Advanced Optimus, where switching to the discrete GPU causes the display to freeze on its static RGB pixel array until you close the laptop and open it again. It only happened twice, but I've never experienced that with any other laptop.

Blade 14 review: Software and AI experience

The Razer Blade 14 follows the Blade 16 as one of Razer's first true AI PCs, thanks to the AMD Ryzen AI silicon inside. This is a full Copilot+ PC, so it's future-proofed to get all the best Windows 11 features as they're released.

Razer isn't really taking advantage on its own, with no real AI features to speak of, but between the 50 TOPS Neural Processing Unit (NPU) and the NVIDIA GPU, the Blade 14 should be able to handle any AI task you throw at it across productivity, creativity, and gaming workloads.

Beyond that, this is a clean build of Windows. You'll find the typical NVIDIA and AMD apps, but basically nothing else beyond Razer's Synapse and Chroma applications for managing your laptop, Razer accessories, and RGB lighting.

Razer Synapse 4 doesn't go crazy with the amount of control it gives you over your Blade 14, but all the basics you need are there, plus a few more.

Blade 14 review: Battery experience

You shouldn't be buying a gaming laptop if you need amazing endurance, but the Blade 14 attempts to strike that balance better than most, with some degree of success.

Running the Blade 14 through an hour-long loop of generic Microsoft Office tasks resulted in a battery drain of 22%, while looping an HD video at 50% volume took off 21% of the battery.

That's already a bit better than most 16-inch laptops, and running a Windows Battery Report showed I was able to get around 6 hours of actual usage out of the Blade 14 without throttling every feature into the ground, which isn't bad.

With some compromise, like disabling the keyboard lighting, reducing performance, and lowering screen brightness, you can get the Blade 14 through a full work day (as long as you're not constantly spinning up that GPU).

On battery power, expect to lose around 30% and 37% of your CPU and GPU performance, respectively — that's a sizeable bump down, but it's again better than a lot of larger gaming laptops.

Blade 14 review: Keyboard and touchpad

The keyboard is one area where the Blade 14 didn't receive the same treatment as its big sibling, as it's still the shallow 1mm keyboard as before. Off the bat, this isn't my favorite keyboard in a 14-inch laptop by any means, but I enjoyed typing and gaming on the Blade 14 more than I expected.

Key action is tactile and responsive, and I do like this layout. Razer also implemented its two-stage RGB lighting for keys with secondary functions, helpfully highlighting them when you press the Fn or Shift keys. It's an amazing detail that all premium laptops should adopt.

As an aside, Razer still has some of the best RGB lighting in the business, so the per-key lighting on the Blade 14 looks fantastic and is easy to customize.

The touchpad is still comically large, which some people will love. It's a mechanical touchpad, rather than a more premium haptic touchpad, but it's at least coated in slick, high-quality glass, employs Microsoft Precision drivers for gesture support, and is responsive and precise to use.

Blade 14 review: Other hardware

The Razer Blade 14 is undoubtedly a premium laptop, so it boasts a lot of luxuries you're not guaranteed elsewhere... But Razer didn't stuff everything and the kitchen sink in here.

The front-facing, FHD webcam and microphone array are decent and more than usable, but nothing exceptional. You at least get an IR sensor for Windows Hello facial recognition, but that feature no longer works in the dark (and you don't get a fingerprint sensor for backup authentication).

There's also no proximity sensor for the Human Presence Detection (HPD) features common with other premium AI laptops, nor an ambient light sensor for automatic brightness or color temperature adjustment. Most people won't miss those features, though.

Wireless connectivity is at least cutting edge with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 on board, although I do wish Razer would bake its proprietary HyperSpeed Wireless technology into its laptops for easy accessory pairing.

One area where the Blade 14 is hands-down at the cutting edge is with audio, as it boasts a mighty impressive six speakers packed into its petite frame, tuned with THX 7.1 surround sound in mind. Physics still plays a part with such a small laptop, but these speakers are really good.

Blade 14 review: Also consider

Blade 14 review: My final thoughts

✅You should buy this if ...

• You want a premium 14-inch laptop with power for high-end gaming.
• You want your laptop to make a statement with its design.
• You want a gaming laptop designed with AI features in mind.

❌You should not buy this if ...

• You only plan to occasionally use the discrete graphics.
• Reliable, all-day battery life is an absolute must.

Razer laptops have never been known to be affordable, and the Blade 14 is no exception. This is a costly machine, and a lot of that is tied up in the intricate way Razer constructs it.

The redesigned Razer Blade 14 (2025) is easily my favorite Razer laptop so far, though, and proves to me why the smallest in the lineup is also the best-selling. This is an excellent gaming companion with enough power for all the latest and greatest games, but a design thin and light enough to carry around with you everywhere.

It's also more capable of surviving a full day of work than most gaming laptops, making it a potent option for those who want a premium device for work, play, creativity, and — increasingly important — artificial intelligence.

The Blade 14 is still overkill for a lot of people, though, and those only planning to casually game or occasionally use those beefy NVIDIA graphics may be better off with one of the shockingly capable Intel or AMD ultrabooks from companies like Lenovo or HP.

Those of you who know what they need, though, can get the Razer Blade 14 (2025) from $2,299.99 at Razer right now. If you want my recommendation, get it in silver.

The ASUS ROG Strix G16 is a popular gaming laptop that sits at the entrance to the premium segment, and it often comes in both AMD and Intel variants.

For 2025, those versions couldn't be more different, with the Intel models enjoying a redesign while the AMD models recycle last year's chassis. Despite a less exciting upgrade, though, it's the AMD-powered ROG Strix G16 that I think most people should have their eye on.

AMD's most powerful mobile processor ever puts up an impressive fight against Intel, and the ROG Strix G16 in general offers an excellent gaming experience. While this is still an expensive laptop, you can also argue it provides greater bang for your buck than its Intel competitors.

This review was made possible thanks to a review sample provided by ASUS. ASUS had no input nor saw the contents of this review prior to publication.

ROG Strix G16 review: Pricing and specifications

The ASUS ROG Strix G16 (2025) is actually and confusingly two entirely separate laptops.

The AMD version of the ROG Strix G16, which is the model I'm reviewing, starts from $2,399.99 at ASUS, but effectively only comes in two configurations, both with a 16-inch, 240Hz IPS LCD display, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti GPU, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of SSD.

The ROG Strix G16 you can get for $2,499.99 at ASUS is basically identical, but that extra $100 gets you AMD's unique X3D tech for even better gaming performance.

The Intel version of the ROG Strix G16 starts from $1,999.99 at ASUS with an Intel Core Ultra 9, GeForce RTX 5060, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of SSD storage.

In the box, you'll find the ASUS ROG Strix G16 (2025), a proprietary 280W charger, and 3 months of PC Game Pass.

ROG Strix G16 review: Design and build quality

The latest ROG Strix G16 (at least the AMD variant) utilizes the same chassis design as last year, so you're getting a predominantly plastic build with a metal lid, RGB accents, and ROG flourishes.

That plastic does make the Strix G16 feel less premium, but it also doesn't feel cheap. It's solidly pieced together, and there's only minor flexing in the keyboard deck. The use of plastic also helps the Strix G16 achieve a slightly lower weight, although it's still a very thick, heavy device.

Overall, though, it looks good, and ASUS' little design flourishes avoid stepping into the realm of "garish."

For ports, the ROG Strix G16 is relatively decked out, and at the very least makes good use of the limited space not occupied by the prominent vents.

Aside from the barrel plug for charging, you'll find an Ethernet port for wired connectivity, an HDMI 2.1 port for display output, two full-speed USB Type-A ports, and two USB Type-C 4.0 ports — both with the same bandwidth and display output as Thunderbolt 4.

ROG Strix G16 review: Display quality

High-end gaming laptops have begun to phase out traditional, back-lit IPS LCD panels for OLED or mini-LED displays, but the ROG Strix G16 achieves its slightly more competitive pricing by sticking with the older tech.

It's not to this laptop's detriment, either; this is a beautiful, vibrant screen with great color reproduction and excellent performance. Company-specific branding normally doesn't mean much, but I understand ASUS calling this an "ROG Nebula Display."

It's a QHD+ panel with a 240Hz refresh rate, and it's comfortable for productivity, punchy for media consumption, and responsive for gaming. The backlighting is also quite consistent across the panel, which is a common problem for IPS LCD displays.

Slim bezels on three sides put the screen front and center, and there's a surprisingly effective anti-reflective coating to keep the glare off.

In testing, the ROG Strix G16's display performs well, achieving higher-than-average color accuracy and a respectable max brightness of over 500 nits. If this screen has any weakness, it's the average contrast ratio across the board and the slightly inconsistent white balance (the panel tends to get cooler as it gets brighter).

You do get Dolby Vision HDR support, but like with most laptop displays, it's not going to make a dramatic difference. There is adaptive sync with NVIDIA G-SYNC compatibility, too.

ROG Strix G16 review: Performance and thermals

Unlike many of the latest, performance-focused gaming laptops we've seen lately, this version of the ROG Strix G16 does not rely on the latest Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) chipsets.

Instead, we get AMD's most powerful mobile processor ever, the Ryzen 9 9955HX (or 9955HX3D on the higher end). It's a 16-core monster designed solely with gaming in mind, and this is some impressive silicon.

That processor is paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, the upper mid-range of NVIDIA's new 50-series GPUs. Alongside that, you'll find two SODIMM slots and two M.2 slots to upgrade the memory and storage yourself — by default, you're looking at 32GB of dual-channel RAM and 1TB of SSD storage.

How does this combination perform? Incredibly well, as you can imagine. The ROG Strix G16 tears through basically everything you can throw at it, and it tests well, too.

The AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D is powerful enough that I'm honestly shocked ASUS doesn't offer a configuration of this laptop with the GeForce RTX 5080 GPU inside. The 5070 Ti we got is more than enough for most people, but I would've been interested in some more direct comparisons with Intel-powered systems.

Either way, I can't complain about performance — and that includes thermal management. This laptop's fans can get audibly loud but not obnoxious, I never felt an uncomfortable amount of heat, and the ROG Strix G16 maintained a 98.2% framerate stability after 25 consecutive loops of 3DMark's Time Spy test.

Long gaming sessions are a breeze.

• Forza Horizon 5 — 134 FPS (Extreme preset, 1600p resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, v-sync enabled, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution/DLSS Frame Generation/Reflex Low Latency disabled) | 195 FPS (Max settings, v-sync disabled, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution set to Auto, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation/Reflex Low Latency enabled)
• Gears 5 — 124 FPS (Ultra preset, 1600p resolution, uncapped framerate, v-sync enabled)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 — 135 FPS (Extreme preset, 1600p resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, v-sync enabled, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution set to Performance, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation disabled, NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency enabled)
• Cyberpunk 2077 — 69 FPS (Ray Tracing: Ultra preset, 1600p resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, v-sync enabled, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution Transformer Model set to Auto, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation/Ray Reconstruction disabled, NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency enabled) | 142 FPS (Ray Tracing: Overdrive preset, v-sync disabled, NVIDIA DLSS Multi-Frame Generation set to 4x, NVIDIA DLSS Ray Reconstruction enabled)

With the RTX 5070 Ti in tow, the ROG Strix G16 performed exactly where I expected in games. There's more than enough power here to play practically any modern PC game at high to ultra settings and achieve stable, smooth framerates, and leaning on NVIDIA's impressive DLSS 4 tech can let you keep those settings and take advantage of that 240Hz display.

ROG Strix G16 review: Software and AI experience

One of the major differences between AMD's Ryzen 9 9955HX3D and the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX is the complete lack of a Neural Processing Unit (NPU), so the ROG Strix G16 isn't technically an AI PC.

Of course, you can still take full advantage of the NVIDIA GPU, which is designed from the ground up with artificial intelligence in mind. Just don't expect any Copilot+ PC or ASUS-specific AI features.

What you will find is an assortment of AMD, NVIDIA, Dolby, and (especially) ASUS apps. ASUS preloads a little too much of its own software, in my opinion, and you'll also catch unwanted add-ons like McAfee Antivirus and CapCut, but this build of Windows 11 is mostly clean.

Most of your management of the ROG Strix G16's hardware will be divided between the MyASUS and Armoury Crate programs. It's a little annoying to have two separate apps, and Armoury Crate confusingly and arbitrarily divides your system settings, though.

ROG Strix G16 review: Battery experience

Gaming laptops like the ASUS ROG Strix G16 may pack some of the largest batteries possible, but often boast some of the shortest battery lives. I didn't expect any different with the ROG Strix G16, but I was gently surprised.

This 90Whr battery cell still can't be described as having "all-day" endurance, but I was able to get 3-5 hours of actual usage without trying too hard or disabling default features like the RGB lighting.

A Windows Battery Report confirmed those findings, and running the ROG Strix G16 through an hour-long loop of a generic Microsoft Office workload and HD video playback via Procyon resulted in battery drains of 28% and 22%, respectively.

To summarize: this is a gaming laptop, but the ROG Strix G16 does perform a little better in this regard than many of the comparable Intel-powered laptops I've tested.

In terms of performance, you lose around 29% CPU performance and 62% GPU performance on battery power. That's a pretty severe dip, especially for the GPU, but even with that throttling, the ROG Strix G16 is still more performant on both accounts than most laptops without a discrete GPU.

ROG Strix G16 review: Keyboard and touchpad

I figured the ROG Strix G16 would have a good keyboard, but that's not a positive enough descriptor to adequately capture how much I ended up enjoying these keys.

Many gaming laptops take normal keyboards and slap RGB lighting on them, but the ROG Strix G16 really feels like it was designed for gaming. You get large, spacious keys with deep travel and a responsive, tactile action, full-sized arrow keys with built-in page navigation, dedicated, full-sized media controls, five additional macro keys, and per-key RGB lighting.

It offers a great typing and gaming experience, and I'm a big fan. The only oddity here is the touchpad, which brings over a productivity-focused feature from some of ASUS' non-gaming devices: a hidden ten-key number pad, lit up in LEDs.

The touchpad itself is average. Microsoft Precision drivers enable gesture support, but this touchpad doesn't feel as responsive as the best. Hold down the "Numlk" text, though, and you'll activate the number pad. It's better to have than not have, and I'm sure some will appreciate having this (and not having a cramped keyboard with a down-sized number pad squeezed in).

ROG Strix G16 review: Other hardware

It's in the finer details where you can see where ASUS made some cuts to shave costs down. For example, the FHD webcam and microphone array are exactly as average as most gaming laptops, and you don't get any Windows Hello facial recognition (or any other biometric authentication, for that matter).

Wireless connectivity is great, but also a generation behind with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.

There aren't any standout features, although I already mentioned the extra (customizable) keys ASUS provides on the keyboard, which is a nice plus, and the per-key RGB lighting and front-facing RGB lightbar are of a higher quality than I've come to expect from ASUS' beefiest gaming laptops.

I was a little shocked to spin up these speakers, though. Dual, down-firing speakers do not instill confidence, even with Dolby Atmos support, but these speakers are louder, clearer, and deeper than they have any right to be. It's still only two speakers, though, and with poor positioning at that, so don't expect the world.

ROG Strix G16 review: Also consider

ROG Strix G16 review: My final thoughts

✅You should buy this if ...

• You want an AMD-powered gaming laptop instead of Intel
• You want enough power to play all the latest and greatest games.
• You like a deep keyboard with lots of extra keys.

❌You should not buy this if ...

• You care a lot about having a sleek, premium design.
• You want an option to upgrade to an RTX 5080 GPU.

I have to give ASUS its just dues, the ROG Strix G16 is a much better gaming laptop than I would've predicted had you asked me before I began testing it. I absolutely love the Zephyrus line and ASUS' consumer laptops, but the Strix products have never particularly amazed me.

The ASUS ROG Strix G16 (2025, AMD) isn't revolutionary by any means, but it is a really good, well-rounded gaming laptop with an excellent keyboard and fantastic, reliable performance. It's also priced well, and it's sure to go on sale in the coming months, too.

It was nice to test a gaming laptop powered by AMD's latest instead of Intel, too. I just wish this version had benefited from the same design update as the Intel-powered Strix G16, and that we had more configuration options to build our dream laptop.

Still, I really like this machine, and you might, too. You can get my recommended ASUS ROG Strix G16 (2025, AMD) configuration for $2,499.99 at Best Buy.

Among Razer's popular gaming laptops, the smallest offering is apparently the best-selling. For 2025, that laptop is getting a makeover alongside some serious hardware upgrades.

Razer was kind enough to send me an early non-final sample of the brand-new Razer Blade 14, making me among the first outside the company to go hands-on. I already reviewed the Razer Blade 16 (2025), and I see many similarities in its smaller sibling.

You'll have to wait for my final review (with final hardware) to get the in-depth breakdown on performance, battery life, and more, but I can provide my initial impressions after spending a few hours with the new Razer Blade 14 (2025).

This hands-on was made possible thanks to a pre-production sample provided by Razer. Razer had no input or saw the contents of this article before publication.

What should I know about the all-new Blade 14?

The Razer Blade 14 is the most compact gaming laptop in the Razer family, and it's also a fan favorite (enough that Razer even offers it in different colors).

Where the larger Blade 16 just recently (and with much fanfare) made the jump to AMD instead of Intel, the Blade 14 has relied on the red company for computational power for years.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the latest Blade 14 is powered by the latest AMD Ryzen AI chipsets, making it the first 14-inch AI PC from Razer. More than that, this is a full-fledged Copilot+ PC, complete with all the newest AI features baked into Windows 11.

Of course, you'll also find fresh NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs inside the Blade 14, which should result in a hefty performance boost over previous generations.

This certainly won't be the most powerful gaming laptop around, but the Razer Blade 14 is still packing some serious power while focusing on premium portability. If that's all you need to hear, the Razer Blade 14 is now available from $2,299.99 exclusively at Razer.

What is it like to unbox the new Blade 14?

My Razer Blade 14 isn't final hardware, so the packaging it came in may not represent the final product, either. Still, anyone unboxing a Blade 14 of their own should expect a similar experience.

Razer prefers to enclose the laptop in a compact box of its own, made entirely from sustainable or recycled materials. It puts the Blade 14 front and center, even if it's nothing special.

You'll find the proprietary Razer charger in a separate, smaller box, this time clocking in at 200W of charging power. That does provide fast charging support, but you can also use universal USB Type-C chargers (up to 100W) for when you're in a pinch.

As a bonus, Razer offers a standard 2-year warranty for every Blade 14 battery.

Is the Razer Blade 14 really redesigned for 2025?

Razer has a very consistent design language across its portfolio, and especially the Razer Blade laptops. Looking back at our Razer Blade 14 (2024) review, it'd be easy to assume this is another iterative year-over-year spec bump.

While the new Razer Blade 14 does appear similar, a lot is all-new, especially on the inside. This has allowed Razer to make the Blade 14 thinner (15.9-16.2mm versus 18mm), lighter (1.63kg versus 1.78kg), and even narrower (224mm versus 228mm) than last year.

Most of this is thanks to the completely redesigned thermal hood, which keeps the hottest components (CPU, GPU, and memory) cool as a cucumber under a new thermal gel, a massive vapor chamber, and dual fans.

Every Blade 14 is still CNC-milled from a single block of high-grade aluminum, and this laptop truly feels exceptionally well-constructed in the hand.

What are some of the best changes Razer made?

The latest Razer Blade 14 sacrifices some internal volume due to its tighter dimensions, but Razer refused to compromise on a single feature. In fact, the Blade 14 now offers more.

Last year, the Blade 14 featured a quad speaker system; this year, there are six speakers to offer louder and higher-quality audio, complete with THX Spatial Audio support.

The Blade 14 already had an excellent port selection, neatly dividing its two USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports and two USB Type-C 4.0 ports (with equivalent capabilities as Thunderbolt 4) across both sides, as well as an HDMI 2.1 port, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a Kensington Nano Security Slot.

This year, though, you also get a UHS-II microSD card slot.

The Razer Blade 14 has also made the jump to OLED, replacing last year's 1600p, 240Hz IPS LCD panel with an 1800p, 120Hz OLED screen. That refresh rate perfectly matches the Blade 14's capabilities, and you also get massively upgraded image quality across the board.

I can confirm that this display looks gorgeous. I would still wish that Razer offered last year's display as an option, though.

How good is the performance or battery life?

I have already discussed how Razer redesigned the thermal management system for the Blade 14. Razer took the same approach as with the Blade 16, and it did make a considerable difference there.

As a result, the new Blade 14 should run cooler and faster than ever, but I'm not allowed to benchmark this non-final sample. The Blade 14 should also be more efficient, with Razer claiming an added hour of battery life across the board, but I can't truly test that, either.

The precedent was already set with the redesigned Blade 16, though, so I have high hopes the Razer Blade 14 (2025) will also deliver.

Is the Blade 14 better than the Zephyrus G14?

When I reviewed the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2024), I crowned it the king of 14-inch gaming laptops. With ASUS also set to update the Zephyrus G14 with similar internals as the Blade 14, how will these laptops stack up against each other?

The new Blade 14 closes many gaps with this redesign. It's now about as thin and about as light as the Zephyrus G14, with a similarly specced OLED display and a more competitive array of ports.

Putting both side by side, I still give the slight edge to the Zephyrus G14 in terms of aesthetics, but that's purely subjective on my part.

I still expect ASUS' 14-inch champion to offer better overall value than Razer's offering, but even this early hardware does feel more premium and refined than the Zephyrus G14.

If Razer can go toe-to-toe in performance, battery life, and user experience, then it'll be much harder to choose between these compact heavy hitters this year.

Should I buy the latest Razer Blade 14 laptop?

I'll have to send this pre-production sample back to Razer and wait to receive a final unit for my full review, but I'm already immensely impressed by the all-new Blade 14.

The Razer Blade 16 (2025) represents a massive year-over-year improvement, and I get a similar feeling with the Blade 14. It's thinner, lighter, and even more feature-packed than before, but it should also be a stronger, cooler, and longer-lasting performer.

I also love this silver color, but I do hope we see a return of Razer's iconic "Quartz" pink colorway for the Blade 14 in the future. Either way, Razer's best-selling laptop is looking good for 2025.

It'll be a few weeks before you see my review, but I'm excited to deep dive into the new Razer Blade 14 (and hopefully pit it against the new Zephyrus G14). If you can't wait that long, the Razer Blade 14 (2025) is available to order now from $2,299.99 exclusively at Razer, with the first units expected to ship out in early June.

If you have any other questions, drop them in the comments below, and I'll do my best to answer them. 👇

We've seen some great gaming laptops come out of the HP OMEN brand, but most are either budget/mid-range machines or focus on portability instead of power.

This year, HP is coming out swinging with the new OMEN MAX 16, the company's new flagship beast packed with the most powerful and capable mobile gaming hardware on the market.

The result is one of the best premium 16-inch gaming laptops you can buy, able to go toe-to-toe with Lenovo Legion, Alienware, and other trusted brands. It's powerful and feature-filled, but still boasts a sleek and premium design.

The HP OMEN MAX 16 (2025) can even lay claim to some unique features, like automatic fan cleaning and surprisingly flexible software (including overclocking support).

Any potential purchaser needs to be aware that this laptop takes a bigger-than-average hit to performance when disconnected from the charger, though, and those fans are among the more obnoxious I've heard in a high-end gaming laptop.

This review was made possible thanks to a review sample provided by HP. HP had no input nor saw the contents of this review prior to publication.

OMEN MAX 16 review: Cheat sheet

• What is it? A high-end 16-inch gaming laptop powered by the latest Intel and NVIDIA hardware.
• Who is it for? Those who want a premium, feature-packed gaming laptop with excellent performance.
• How much does it cost? The HP OMEN MAX 16 (2025) starts from $2,099.99 at HP, but our recommended configuration is $3,339.99 at Best Buy.
• What did I like? The premium all-metal design, great performance and thermal management, and useful extra features.
• What did I not like? The performance throttling off the charger, the loud fans, and the average keyboard.

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OMEN MAX 16 review: Pricing and specifications

Being the new king of the HP OMEN laptop lineup, this isn't a cheap device.

The HP OMEN MAX 16 (2025) starts from $2,099.99 at HP, and that's with an Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD storage, and a 1200p IPS LCD display.

You have plenty of display, CPU, GPU, memory, and storage configuration options from HP, and you can even choose between black and white.

My review configuration upgrades to a Core Ultra 9 275HX, RTX 5090, 32GB of RAM, 2TB of SSD storage, a 1600p OLED display, and a few other changes for around $1,900.

I personally don't recommend upgrading all the way to the RTX 5090, though, as it's a $540 up charge over the RTX 5080 and does not provide meaningful performance gains when gaming.

In the box, you'll find the HP OMEN MAX 16 (2025) gaming laptop and an AC charger between 280-330W, depending on your configuration.

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OMEN MAX 16 review: Design and build quality

The HP OMEN MAX 16 embraces the "MAX" portion of its name, an imposing hunk of aluminum and glass that you'll definitely notice on your desk or in your bag. That being said, this laptop is also noticeably more premium than your average plastic-clad machine.

At 23-25mm thick and just over 6lbs, the OMEN MAX is a fair bit chunkier than the svelte Razer Blade 16 (2025) I reviewed, but it's around the same size (just a bit sleeker) as the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10) I also reviewed.

Build quality is immaculate, though. This laptop is constructed entirely of matte black (or silver) aluminum and feels incredibly solid, with minimal flexing anywhere. The 16-inch display is covered by glass and surrounded by slim and seamless bezels, giving the OMEN MAX a modern look.

You can't have a high-end gaming laptop without RGB lighting, though, and HP delivered with an RGB light bar on the front edge of the laptop and the unique (and divisive) lattice-less keyboard.

The HP OMEN MAX 16 has a protruding rear shelf that houses ventilation and a handful of rear-facing ports, and HP chose those ports well. You'll find the charging port, HDMI 2.1 display output port, Ethernet port, and a single USB Type-A port tucked out of sight for a cleaner setup.

Around one side, you'll find a 3.5mm audio jack and dual Thunderbolt 4 ports with the full range of Thunderbolt features, including Power Delivery for when you need to charge in a pinch. I do wish one of these Thunderbolt ports was on the other side, though.

On the other side, all you'll find is a second USB Type-A port. It's not the greatest number of ports on a gaming laptop and a third Type-A port would be useful to have, but two Thunderbolt 4 ports gives you a lot of flexibility.

The OMEN MAX has a secret weapon, too — built-in wireless connectivity for up to three supported HyperX accessories, which should reduce the strain on your valuable USB ports.

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OMEN MAX 16 review: Display quality

No gaming laptop is complete without a smooth and responsive display, and the OMEN MAX 16 (2025) employs one of the smoothest and most responsive panels you'll find on any machine.

At the high-end, you'll find a 16-inch OLED display with a crispy 1600p resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, and class-leading 0.2ms response time. Of course, that OLED tech also means punchy colors, perfect blacks, and fantastic color accuracy.

Visually, the OMEN MAX 16's large and striking screen is a treat to use, and it excels at content creation, web browsing and productivity, media consumption, and gaming in equal measure.

Yes, performance is excellent, with NVIDIA G-SYNC and NVIDIA Advanced Optimus support to keep your display, your laptop, and your games in perfect harmony.

If you really dive into this display's capabilities, though, you'll see it doesn't quite reach the same heights as my current personal favorite screen on a gaming laptop, which belongs to the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10).

Don't get me wrong — this is a top-notch panel, but it doesn't get quite as dim or as bright, its white balance isn't quite as consistent across brightness levels, and HP provides even fewer display customization options through its software than Lenovo does.

High Dynamic Range (HDR) performance isn't as impressive, either, with a peak brightness of 500 nits and no Dolby Vision certification. The Legion Pro 7i is a more expensive laptop, but it's not without reason.

One shared weakness? The use of Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) for dimming. This display does seem to flicker at a high rate, so only those with extreme sensitivities should be affected, but it's always worth mentioning (especially with the lack of software customization).

Fortunately, HP does offer IPS LCD display options for the OMEN MAX 16 (2025), which is absolutely not a given for modern premium laptops.

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OMEN MAX 16 review: Performance and thermals

To lay claim to the title as HP's most powerful gaming laptop, the OMEN MAX 16 needs the most impressive hardware money can buy. That's where Intel and NVIDIA step in with the latest Core Ultra (Series 2) chipsets and GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs.

My review configuration twists the dial beyond its limit with a 24-core Core Ultra 9 275HX and 24GB RTX 5090. As you'd expect, the OMEN MAX blitzes any task or game, breezing through the toughest workloads without breaking a sweat.

You can go even further with a PCIe Gen5 SSD and up to 64GB of RAM, but this laptop doesn't really need it.

The HP OMEN MAX 16 (2025) impresses when it comes to thermal performance, too, thanks to HP's redesigned vapor chamber cooling solution and new "Cryo Compound" thermal paste.

I ran this laptop through 3DMark's Time Spy benchmark 25 times, and this laptop maintained a 99.4% framerate stability — one of the best performances I've ever seen. The trade-off is that these fans are loud, and tend to break through the noise with a wider, higher-pitched frequency.

If you pore over the HP OMEN MAX's benchmark results, you can observe three things: this laptop is a proper powerhouse, it's still not quite as performant as the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i, and the GeForce RTX 5090 GPU still isn't worth paying for.

On the first two, the OMEN MAX really is an incredibly capable laptop, but it can't claim to be the most powerful laptop you can buy. It's also thinner and costs less than the Legion Pro 7i, so the minor power differential is easily forgiven.

On the third point, don't bother paying extra for the RTX 5090, unless you absolutely need the most VRAM possible. The RTX 5080 will save you hundreds and offer nearly identical gaming performance.

Speaking of gaming performance...

• Forza Horizon 5 — 168 FPS (Extreme preset, 1600p resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, v-sync enabled, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution/Frame Generation/Reflex Low Latency disabled) | 239 FPS (Max settings, v-sync disabled, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution set to Auto, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation/Reflex Low Latency enabled)
• Gears 5 — 156 FPS (Ultra preset, 1600p resolution, uncapped framerate, v-sync enabled)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 — 146 FPS (Extreme preset, 1600p resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, v-sync enabled, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution set to Performance, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation disabled, NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency enabled)
• Cyberpunk 2077 — 86 FPS (Ray Tracing: Ultra preset, 1600p resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, v-sync enabled, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution Transformer Model set to Auto, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation/Ray Reconstruction disabled, NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency enabled) | 177 FPS (Ray Tracing: Overdrive preset, v-sync disabled, NVIDIA DLSS Multi-Frame Generation set to 4x, NVIDIA DLSS Ray Reconstruction enabled)

One of the main selling points of NVIDIA's latest generation of graphics cards is DLSS 4, and most notably Multi-Frame Generation (which uses AI to create up to three imaginary frames for each frame that's actually rendered in-game), but I didn't need to rely on those features to enjoy fantastic and stable framerates.

Just make sure you have a headset handy, those fans are more than capable of drowning out game audio.

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OMEN MAX 16 review: Software and AI experience

The HP OMEN MAX runs Windows 11, of course, and it runs it very well. I was unsurprised (if continually disappointed) to find HP still loads its consumer devices with a ton of preloaded bloatware and ads, though, including embedded links you have to hunt down in your files to remove.

HP's own apps are still fragmented across seven different apps, too, and when you add the OMEN Gaming Hub, HyperX's app, and Intel and NVIDIA's programs you get quite the list of preinstalled software.

The OMEN MAX 16 technically is an AI PC, but it is not a Copilot+ PC and is therefore missing a ton of Windows AI features. That's on Intel choosing to bake a less powerful, 13 TOPS Neural Processing Unit (NPU) in its highest-end chipsets, far below the 45 TOPS the best AI laptops need.

That NPU can still be used, though, and you can also rely on the absurdly capable NVIDIA GPUs for all your AI needs.

HP takes advantage in some ways, too, most notably with its unique OMEN AI feature, which aims to automatically and dynamically tune not just your laptop's hardware and Windows, but even your games themselves to obtain the best visuals and performance.

That feature is built into the OMEN Gaming Hub, and it's good to have (and easy to ignore if you don't want it). The OMEN Gaming Hub is the control center for the OMEN MAX 16, and is a rather messy all-in-one app that combines a launcher, a game store, performance overlays, hardware settings, lighting customization, and media management in one.

It works well, though, and you get a fair number of options for managing your laptop, including in-depth performance metrics, key remapping, RGB customization, and more.

The best part, though, is the "Unleashed" performance profile, which provides granular controls for overclocking, CPU calibration and power limits, fan speeds, and much more. It's seriously impressive how much control HP gives you out of the box, and will be a big boon for power users and hardcore nerds.

The OMEN Gaming Hub is also where you access the fan cleaner, another feature unique to the OMEN MAX 16. Basically, this laptop's cooling system is designed to allow the fans to spin in reverse, ejecting any dust or debris buildup. The goal is to improve the long-term health of your laptop and prevent thermal degradation over time.

I obviously can't test for years of use, but if this feature makes a difference, I hope we see it in many more laptops moving forward.

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OMEN MAX 16 review: Battery experience

HP stashed an 83Whr battery inside this 16-inch laptop, which is actually on the small size for a full-sized gaming laptop. These machines rarely achieve great battery life as it is, so the OMEN MAX 16 is a little worse than its competitors.

Looping an HD video for an hour at 200 nits display brightness and 50% volume resulted in a 38% battery drain, where the Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10) drained 35% under the same criteria.

Running a Windows Battery Report returned around 3 hours of real-world usage. You can add to that runtime by nuking every setting and feature, but the OMEN MAX 16 will never be a reliable all-day machine.

Considering how much it throttles itself off the charger, that's a shame. The OMEN MAX 16 saw a 32% reduction in CPU performance, but a whopping 80% drop in GPU performance. That's one of the most aggressive cuts I've ever seen, and makes this laptop no better at gaming on battery power than the latest Intel and AMD integrated graphics.

There's no real workaround, either, as HP forces the OMEN MAX 16 into a battery-specific performance profile and ignores all your performance settings until you plug it in. Even if you'd only get an hour or two of battery life, some people highly value being able to flex that GPU anywhere, and the OMEN MAX 16 doesn't really let you.

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OMEN MAX 16 review: Keyboard and touchpad

HP has carried its distinct and divisive keyboard design to the OMEN MAX 16 (2025). You'll be able to spot this keyboard from a distance, thanks to the translucent edges of each key, giving the RGB backlighting far more space to breathe.

Some will love the vibrant colors and others will prefer the precise lighting of other laptops, but either way, the OMEN MAX 16's keyboard is... Decent. This is a lattice-less design, which makes the keyboard feels more cramped than I'd like, and the typing action is softer and less responsive than the best.

The layout is solid, as long as you're okay with a down-sized tenkey number pad off to one side and half-sized up and down arrow keys, but HP at least illuminates secondary functions for keys, and holding down the FN key will highlight shortcuts.

The touchpad is equally decent. It's smooth, with precise inputs and gestures thanks to Microsoft Precision drivers, but it's also a little on the small side and didn't feel quite as accurate as the best laptop touchpads.

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OMEN MAX 16 review: Other hardware

As a high-end laptop, the OMEN MAX 16 is expected to tick a lot of boxes for a lot of people. The FHD front-facing camera is solid, and it even boasts Windows Hello facial recognition (something the more expensive Legion Pro 7i sadly misses), and there's a physical privacy shutter.

Audio is handled by a dual-speaker system and dual-array microphones, are both are equally good. The speakers aren't the loudest and sound flat and narrow in general, but the audio quality is at least clean and detailed.

The OMEN MAX 16 can be equipped with up to Wi-Fi 7 2x2 and Bluetooth 5.4 for wireless connectivity, and I never encountered any issues with either.

One of this laptop's unique features, though, is the ability to connect to up to three wireless HyperX accessories without a USB dongle, which is awesome — and I wish Razer would do the same.

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OMEN MAX 16 review: Also consider

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OMEN MAX 16 review: Score card

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OMEN MAX 16 review: My final thoughts

✅You should buy this if ...

• You want a premium, powerful 16-inch gaming laptop.
• You appreciate having a choice between OLED and IPS LCD displays.
• You use wireless HyperX gaming accessories.

❌You should not buy this if ...

• You still need great performance when off the charger.
• You want a quieter laptop, even when gaming or working.

Competition is fierce in the high-end gaming laptop segment, and HP is joining the fray with the OMEN MAX 16. HP's first crack at a properly premium and potently powerful 16-inch machine is far more good than it is bad.

This laptop is attractive and well-built, with a good selection of configuration options (including multiple displays), and top-notch performance that — while not surpassing — does at least keep up with the very best in the category, with above average thermal management to boot.

The OMEN MAX 16 even boasts some unique features of its own, like a way to keep the fans clear of debris over time, a built-in receiver for connecting to HyperX accessories, and a ton of performance tuning settings straight out of the box.

The keyboard and other extraneous hardware features are on the average side, performance takes a massive hit off the charger, and those fans are loud, but this is still a great gaming laptop for those with the cash to splash for it.

You can configure your own HP OMEN MAX 16 (2025) from $2,099.99 at HP, but my top recommendation will run you $3,339.99 at Best Buy if you want a more capable machine.

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Razer recently delivered one of its biggest year-over-year upgrades with the redesigned Razer Blade 16 (2025) I reviewed, and now its 14-inch sibling is getting the same treatment.

Computex has arrived, and Razer has taken this opportunity to announce the Razer Blade 14 (2025), and this isn't a simple spec bump. Razer's smallest gaming laptop got the AI PC treatment, of course, but it also took plenty of cues from the new Blade 16.

I'll provide all the information you need, but I'll give you the lead now: the new Razer Blade 14 (2025) is available from $2,299.99 exclusively at Razer starting now.

What did Razer update with the new Blade 14?

Let's start with how the most compact Razer Blade has been upgraded for the new year. Razer adapted the redesigned Blade 16 chassis to this smaller form factor, making the new Blade 14 the thinnest (at around 15.7mm) and lightest (at around 1.63kg) 14-inch laptop Razer has ever made.

This is made possible with the same redesigned thermal hood that debuted with the Blade 16, positioning all the hottest components under the same vapor cooling chamber and dual-fan system.

The Razer Blade 14 already relied on AMD hardware, but you'll now find the 10-core AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 chipset under the hood, as well as an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 or 5070 GPU.

That makes this Blade 14 more powerful and efficient than ever, improving gaming performance and battery endurance, but it also enables AI features. Just like the Blade 16, the new Blade 14 is a full Copilot+ PC with all the latest and greatest Windows 11 features.

Elsewhere, you'll discover the QHD+, 240Hz IPS LCD display of last year has been replaced with a sharper 2.8K OLED display, with half the refresh rate (120Hz) but a much faster response time (0.2ms). Despite this laptop being smaller, Razer also found space to add two new speakers (for a total of six) and a microSD card slot.

Did we lose anything with this Razer Blade 14 update?

You may be wondering if Razer had to compromise on anything or remove any features compared to the Razer Blade 14 (2024) we reviewed for this redesign, and I have some good news here. Yes, the display is only 120Hz instead of 240Hz, but it's also sharper, faster, and significantly better looking.

Some may lament the loss of upgradeable RAM, though, as the new AMD Ryzen AI chipsets feature soldered memory, but Razer compensated by making that RAM faster than ever (8,000MHz) and offering configurations with up to 64GB of RAM. You can still upgrade the SSD storage, too.

You still get a massive 72Whr battery, too, and Razer claims the more efficient hardware adds around an hour of additional usage across the board, which I'll never say no to.

The one area where the Blade 14 wasn't updated is the keyboard. The Razer Blade 16 redesigned its keyboard, too, but the Blade 14 is still left with the same, shallow 1mm keyboard as before. Razer told me this is due to the tighter confines giving the company less flexibility to make changes here.

When will the Razer Blade 14 be available?

At least some configurations of the new Razer Blade 14 are going live today, sold exclusively through Razer's own store (at least in the USA). It's available in both black and silver at launch, too, although there's no pink version right now.

As for pricing, you'll be able to purchase the Razer Blade 14 (2025) from $2,299.99 at Razer, which will be with an RTX 5060 inside. Speaking of that GPU, another Razer laptop is also getting it as an option.

Also starting today, consumers can pick up a new entry-level Razer Blade 16 (2025) for $2,399.99 at Razer with an RTX 5060 GPU, so it'll only cost you $100 more to get a bigger 16-inch display and a deeper keyboard.

Windows Central should be getting our hands on the new Razer Blade 14 (2025) for review soon, so stay tuned for our full thoughts!

Year over year, one of the top recommended gaming laptops is the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i.

With Intel and NVIDIA both launching new generations of hardware at the same time, Lenovo took this opportunity to redesign its flagship gaming laptop and make some big improvements.

The result is once again one of the easiest recommendations for anyone seeking the most powerful 16-inch laptop they can get their hands on, but not every change Lenovo made is a positive in my book.

A wonderful new display, more power than ever, and a more premium chassis is somewhat offset by a higher starting price and the loss of rear-mounted ports, which I personally loved about previous Lenovo Legion laptops.

Even so, Lenovo has a really impressive device on its hands. This is one of the best gaming laptops of 2025.

This review was made possible thanks to a review sample provided by Lenovo. Lenovo had no input nor saw the contents of this review prior to publication.

Legion Pro 7i review: Cheat sheet

• What is it? A flagship, 16-inch gaming laptop powered by Intel and NVIDIA hardware.
• Who is it for? Hardcore gamers who are willing to spend more to get the most powerful portable gaming PC they can.
• How much does it cost? The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10) starts from $2,909.99 at Lenovo.
• What did I like? The rock-solid build quality, incredible OLED display, and top-notch performance.
• What did I not like? The loss of rear-mounted ports, the rising price, and the lack of any biometric authentication option.

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Legion Pro 7i review: Pricing and specifications

The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i has always been a premium gaming laptop, but the price has risen over the last few generations.

Now, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10) starts from $2,909.99 at Lenovo, which includes that 16-inch OLED display, Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti GPU, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of SSD storage.

The model I reviewed runs for $3,599.99 at Lenovo, which upgrades you to an RTX 5080 GPU and 2TB of SSD storage.

In the box, you'll find your Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10) gaming laptop and a 400W, proprietary DC charger.

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Legion Pro 7i review: Design and build quality

In my initial hands-on experience with the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10), I spent some time comparing it to the previous generation. This is a redesign, after all, so there are a few notable differences.

The quick rundown? We still got an aluminum chassis with a dark matte coating, but Lenovo made the Legion Pro 7i slightly thicker, slightly larger, and slightly lighter than the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 9) I reviewed.

Now, the Legion Pro 7i's lid is flush with the larger rear when closed. There's a reason for this, as Lenovo redesigned this laptop's thermal shelf and installed some massive vents on the rear to allow for greater airflow.

This did mean relocating the ports (more on that soon), but Lenovo also outlined those vents in RGB lighting and gave the "Legion" logo on the lid the same treatment, so you now have a lot more lights to play with.

The new Legion Pro 7i is also built like a tank. Build quality is excellent, and Lenovo somehow manages to make this massive and heavy machine feel premium. In terms of look and feel, this is my favorite Lenovo Legion laptop so far.

That new thermal system does mean accepting an unfortunate compromise, though. There's no longer room on the rear of the laptop for any ports, thanks to the enlarged vents, so they've been relocated to the sides.

I really like having power, display, ethernet, and one or two USB ports on the rear of the laptop, as that keeps those cables out of the way even with a full setup. This is especially convenient when you want to use a mouse on one side, as most users are bound to do.

It's not just that these ports are side-mounted, either. Lenovo had to position most of the ports halfway down the chassis, so they're impossible to ignore.

While I appreciate that one of the USB Type-C ports was upgraded to Thunderbolt 4, it's also unfortunate that we lost one of the USB Type-A ports year-over-year. At least Ethernet and HDMI 2.1 are still onboard, and you can still take advantage of 140W charging via one of the Type-C ports, if you're in a pinch.

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Legion Pro 7i review: Display quality

Another major upgrade bestowed on the tenth-generation Legion Pro 7i is in the display department. Namely, the familiar IPS LCD panel of old has been replaced with a shiny new OLED display, and it's gorgeous.

It's still 16 inches across diagonally, it's still a taller 16:10 aspect ratio, it's still comfortably balanced and sharp with a QHD+ resolution, and it's still ultra-smooth with a 240Hz refresh rate. It still lacks touch support and is surrounded by relatively thin plastic raised bezels.

That's where the similarities end. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10)'s image quality is noticeably and substantially superior in all other departments, including vibrancy, color accuracy, contrast, responsiveness, and consistency.

Even as far as OLED displays go, this panel is impressive. Lenovo did an excellent job tuning this panel, and those optimizations are backed by X-Rite, TÜV Rheinland Low Blue Light, and TÜV Rheinland High Gaming Performance certifications.

Benchmarking this display returns some impressive metrics, too. The Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10) easily hits 100% of the sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamuts, and Lenovo bakes in the X-Rite Color Assistant software to help keep the display calibrated over time.

This display also gets beautifully bright with a max of over 500nits, which is a great improvement over the 300-400nits we've come to expect from other OLED displays. It also gets deliciously dark, too, so you won't have any issues with those late-night gaming sessions.

Across all brightness levels, the blacks are infinitely deep, and the white balance is practically perfect, tuned to perfection and consistent across the board. This screen looks great, plain and simple.

Performance is top-notch, too. Aside from that 240Hz refresh rate, the new Legion Pro 7i boasts a sub-1ms response time, as well as NVIDIA G-SYNC and Advanced Optimus support. Games look and feel flawless, with no sign of ghosting, screen tearing, or latency.

Support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) is also well above average. The Legion Pro 7i supports Dolby Vision, but also earns the uncommon VESA DisplayHDR True Black 1000 certification. Basically, small areas can peak at incredibly high brightnesses, which has a major impact on how punchy HDR content looks.

There's always a downside, though, and in this case, that's the use of Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) for dimming. This display is far less extreme than many other OLED displays despite its lack of an "anti-flicker" certification or feature, at least, so only those with extreme sensitivity to PWM's characteristic flickering should be affected.

I'm also disappointed in the distinct lack of software features or customization. There's a single catch-all toggle for the Legion Pro 7i's OLED screen burn-in protection, and that's really it outside of the X-Rite app. ASUS is still the gold standard here. While I'm complaining, this display is a little glossier than I'd like.

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Legion Pro 7i review: Performance and thermals

Lenovo always packs the most powerful Intel and NVIDIA hardware it can into its laptops, and this year is no exception — the Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10) is even going toe-to-toe with larger laptops that should be more powerful on paper.

Every Legion Pro 7i model will be powered by an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, a 24-core monster that manages to best its predecessor (the Core i9-14900HX) in most scenarios with 8 fewer threads and a lower max clock speed.

Alongside that CPU, you can equip this laptop with up to 64GB of DDR5 RAM and 2TB of SSD storage. Two CSODIMM slots and two M.2 2280 slots mean you can upgrade your memory and storage down the road, but Lenovo does let you upgrade at least the main 1TB SSD to PCIe Gen5 for the absolute best speeds (my configuration did not feature this option).

You can also go up to the full-fledged NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, but the RTX 5090 is a terrible value unless you very specifically need its increased VRAM or RT cores. You can see that the Legion Pro 7i easily competes with the best using just the RTX 5080, so save your money and stop there.

It's a Herculean task to make this laptop so much as stumble in general computing, as it's loaded with more than enough firepower to crush any regular workload.

In benchmarks, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10) either shatters Windows Central's records or at least comes close. It's a beast whether you're stressing the CPU or GPU, and it's a healthy upgrade over last year's laptop.

Lenovo's upgraded thermal management system is something special, too. We're also reviewing the ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 18 (2025) with the same CPU, memory, and storage as the Legion Pro 7i... and the more powerful RTX 5090 GPU.

The Legion Pro 7i bests that significantly larger and more expensive laptop more often than not, and easily keeps up everywhere else. In 3DMark's Time Spy benchmark, the Legion Pro 7i's RTX 5080 scored only 4% worse than the SCAR 18's RTX 5090.

I ran the Legion Pro 7i through that benchmark 25 times non-stop, too, and it achieved a framerate stability of 98.7%, more than earning my nod of approval. During my most intense testing or gaming, the Legion Pro 7i never felt hot to the touch, and its fans — while certainly loud — stayed consistently and comfortably low-pitched.

Here's how the Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10) handled the usual slate of games I use to benchmark:

• Forza Horizon 5 — 158 FPS (Extreme preset, 1600p resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, v-sync enabled, AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution/Intel XeSS 2/NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution/Frame Generation/Reflex Low Latency disabled) | 233 FPS (Max settings, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution set to Auto, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation/Reflex Low Latency enabled)
• Gears 5 — 134 FPS (Ultra preset, 1600p resolution, uncapped framerate, v-sync enabled)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 — 145 FPS (Extreme preset, 1600p resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, v-sync enabled, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution set to Performance, NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency enabled, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation disabled)
• Cyberpunk 2077 — 80 FPS (Ray Tracing: Ultra preset, 1600p resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, v-sync enabled, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution Transformer Model set to Auto, NVIDIA DLSS Reflex Low Latency enabled, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation disabled) | 179 FPS (Ray Tracing: Overdrive preset, NVIDIA DLSS Ray Reconstruction enabled, NVIDIA DLSS Multi-Frame Generation 4x enabled)

When gaming, the Legion Pro 7i was a stable performer, with little latency or stuttering in my testing.

The RTX 50-series can obviously better advantage of the new DLSS 4 features, like Multi-Frame Generation, but I absolutely didn't need it to see framerate improvements across the board compared to the last generation — 21% and 13% better in Forza Horizon 5 and Gears 5, respectively.

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Legion Pro 7i review: Software and AI experience

Windows 11 runs like a dream on the Legion Pro 7i, and Lenovo's software additions are (mostly) useful or at least unobtrusive.

Device settings are now split between the existing Lenovo Vantage app and a new Legion Space launcher, which is fine, I suppose. The latter is at least clean and easy to navigate, but there's a notable lack of in-depth options, including for overclocking (you can toggle GPU overclocking, that's it).

I don't love the annoying, spammy Lenovo Subscription Marketplace, Lenovo Now, and McAfee Antivirus preinstalls, either, but you'll likely want to keep everything else.

Now, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10) is an AI PC, but it does not qualify for Copilot+ PC status. You can blame Intel for putting an underpowered Neural Processing Unit (NPU) into its most powerful CPUs, for some reason.

Still, you get 13 TOPS of AI computational power through that NPU, as well as Lenovo's own "AI Engine+" chips. The former can be leveraged by some programs to improve performance and efficiency, and the latter enables... machine learning for performance optimization? That seems to be it, really.

The Legion Pro 7i may not be completely invited to the future of AI in Windows, but the entire suite of NVIDIA RTX 50-series GPUs specializes in hardcore artificial intelligence workloads, and they do deliver in that regard.

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Legion Pro 7i review: Battery experience

Normally, this section can be summed up as "battery life is terrible, but did you expect anything else from a Lenovo Legion laptop?"

Battery life is still terrible, but I've been pleasantly surprised by the latest generation Legion Pro 7i. Its 99.9Whr battery seems to be benefiting from the more efficient Intel and NVIDIA hardware, and possibly whatever optimizations Lenovo managed to make under the hood.

Looping an hour of a generic Microsoft Office workload and then an HD video with the default Balanced performance profile, 200nits display brightness at 240Hz, RGB lighting, and 50% speaker volume resulted in losses of 32% and 35% battery, respectively.

Again, though, that was with default settings. I didn't completely disable the RGB lighting, throttle the display refresh rate to 60Hz, or jump down to the lowest possible performance settings.

Running a Windows Battery Report confirmed those results — without any added effort on my part, I could expect around 3 hours of actual usage (with more casual, non-gaming workloads, obviously).

This will never be an all-day work laptop, but it's perfectly reasonable to squeeze decent battery life out of it if you're willing to tweak your settings and disable some features.

Performance is also decent on battery power, with around 23% loss in multi-core CPU performance and 46% loss in GPU performance. That may sound like a lot, but on battery power, the Legion Pro 7i's CPU is on par with the Razer Blade 16 (2025) at full throttle, and GPU performance tracks somewhere around a mobile RTX 4070.

That performance is still impressive, and charging is incredibly fast with the gargantuan 400W charger included in the box. If you're out and about, though, and don't plan to be gaming or demanding peak performance, you can get away with carrying a compact, 140W USB Type-C charger.

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Legion Pro 7i review: Keyboard and touchpad

Lenovo didn't overhaul its "TrueStrike" keyboard for the new Legion Pro 7i. This was already one of the best keyboards on a gaming laptop, and a fresh coat of paint with a more playful font (including the "Legion" icon replacing the "O") was all it really needed.

There's still a compact tenkey number pad, which will make some users ecstatic and make others groan in exasperation, but I appreciate its addition, as well as the full-sized arrow keys.

Lenovo still highlights all the shortcuts when holding down the "Fn" key, too, which all manufacturers everywhere should do. The per-key RGB lighting still looks great, too, even if it's not quite as clean as what Razer accomplishes in its Blade laptops.

It's everything you want from a gaming keyboard. Spacious layout, deep travel, responsive action, and rapid snapback, smartly chosen Fn row shortcuts, all of it. I could complain that there aren't reprogrammable macro keys, but that's the trade-off for having the number pad.

The touchpad hasn't changed much. It's small and you don't really want to use it, but it's at least usable thanks to Microsoft Precision drivers. Would I prefer a haptic touchpad that would become an unmoving surface when disabled? Of course, but Lenovo knows what to prioritize with its Legion laptops, and it's not the touchpad.

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Legion Pro 7i review: Other hardware

It's 2025, and Lenovo's $3,000+ flagship gaming laptop still doesn't support Windows Hello biometric authentication, either through facial recognition or a fingerprint sensor. That's a convenience I wish this laptop had.

The webcam is also decidedly average, like usual, but that falls into the same category as the touchpad — not a priority for this category of devices. You can assume the microphones are the same, but you do still get an electronic privacy shutter on the side of the Legion Pro 7i. This time around, it seems Lenovo dropped the Tobii eye-tracking feature, but I'm not confident anyone was really using it.

The sound system, however, did get an upgrade this time around! Lenovo doubled the speakers to four, still tuned by Nahimic, and it's a noticeable improvement. These speakers are loud and consistent across volume levels, with good enough clarity and detail for music listening.

You'll find low-end bass lacking, mids can get muddy, and highs fall short in definition and depth compared to the absolute best laptop speakers, but the Legion Pro 7i is still above average.

Wireless connectivity is on the cutting edge with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, and I had no issues with either.

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Legion Pro 7i review: Also consider

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Legion Pro 7i review: Score card

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Legion Pro 7i review: My final thoughts

✅You should buy this if ...

• You want the most powerful 16-inch laptop you can get.
• You want a premium design with tank-like build quality.
• You want the best OLED display you'll find in a gaming laptop.

❌You should not buy this if ...

• You really want a Copilot+ PC on the cutting edge of AI in Windows.
• You need a laptop that's easy to carry around and can last all day.

I loved the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 9), but it was clear that the design was growing old and needed a refresh. Lenovo answered, entering double-digit generations alongside a new era of Intel and NVIDIA by pulling out all the stops.

The new Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10) is an excellent follow-up to one of our top recommendations of 2024, and it's more powerful and capable than ever before.

The performance is unmatched, the thermals are cool and breezy, the OLED display is among the best I've tested... Pit the Legion Pro 7i against a rampaging truck, and I feel this laptop may emerge from that confrontation the victor with how sturdily it's built.

Do I wish we had Windows Hello? Yes. Could Lenovo improve its software? Absolutely. Is this laptop expensive to a nearly ridiculous degree? I can't deny it. If you want one of the best 16-inch gaming laptops you can buy right now, though, you're looking at it.

You can pick up the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10) from $2,909.99 at Lenovo, but you can easily spike that price with more impressive hardware. Again, just avoid the RTX 5090.

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Yesterday, NVIDIA updated its "Game Ready" driver for GeForce desktop and laptop graphics cards to version 576.28 25.4.1 — now available for download directly from NVIDIA.com.

The new driver supports the brand-new RTX 50 Series GPUs, which are currently bundled with free copies of DOOM: The Dark Ages, and previous models all the way back to prehistoric GTX cards.

Rather than boasting any breakthrough performance bumps with its DLSS 4 Transformer upscaling model, NVIDIA is mostly fixing issues from its previous driver, which is part of an ongoing fiasco that plagued RTX 50 Series GPUs with intermittent problems.

That's not to say game-specific fixes aren't present, because Black Myth: Wukong and Red Dead Redemption 2 are among the list of bug fixes. Nothing for the excellent Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, though, that's up to Bethesda and Virtuos to improve performance for now.

Of particular note is a fix for lower-than-expected NVIDIA GPU clock speeds during idle states, and a solution to a collection of display bugs that were causing flickering at high refresh rates and outright blank screens when using HDR on a monitor connected via DisplayPort 2.1.

Is it safe to update your NVIDIA drivers?

While I'm an advocate of updating most firmware as soon as it's available, I'm a self-confessed pessimist when it comes to graphics drivers. Unless something is explicitly broken, I generally ignore them — that's a bad thing, by the way!

Well, it should be known as a bad thing, but the recent string of bugged NVIDIA GPU drivers almost justifies my scepticism. Still, this list of fixes looks like a positive turn for GeForce graphics.

If you have suffered any of the problems listed below, particularly the flickering monitor bug, then you absolutely should upgrade. Besides, you can always uninstall an NVIDIA graphics driver and fall back to a previous version if you need to. I've done it plenty of times in the past, and my RTX 4090 PC is still alive.

Patch notes

Fixed Gaming Bugs

• [RTX 50 series] [Black Myth]: The game will randomly crash when Wukong transforms [5231902]
• [RTX 50 series] [Red Dead Redemption 2]: The game crashes shortly after starting in DX12 mode. No issue in Vulkan mode [5137042]
• [RTX 50 series] [Horizon Forbidden West]: The game freezes after loading a save game [5227554]
• [RTX 50 series] Grey screen crashes with multiple monitors [5239138]
• [RTX 50 series] [Dead Island 2]: The game crash after updating to GRD 576.02 [5238676]
• [RTX 50 series] [Resident Evil 4 Remake]: Flickering background textures [5227655]
• [RTX 50 series] Some games may display shadow flicker/corruption after updating to GRD 576.02 [5231537]
• [RTX 50 series] Some games may crash while compiling shaders after updating to GRD 576.02 [5230492]
• [Forza Horizon 5]: Lights flicker at nighttime [5038335]
• [Forza Motorsport]: Track corruption occurs in benchmark or night races. [5201811]

Fixed General Bugs

• [RTX 50 series] Lower idle GPU clock speeds after updating to GRD 576.02 [5232414]
• [RTX 50 series] Momentary display flicker occurs when running in DisplayPort2.1 mode with a high refresh rate [5009200]
• Lumion 2024 crashes on GeForce RTX 50 series graphics card when entering render mode [5232345]
• GPU monitoring utilities may stop reporting the GPU temperature after PC wakes from sleep [5231307]
• [RTX 50 series] [LG 27GX790A/45GX950A/32GX870A/40WT95UF/27G850A]: Display blank screens when running in DisplayPort 2.1 mode with HDR [5080789]
• [RTX 50 series notebook] Resume from Modern Standy can result in black screen [5204385]
• [RTX 50 series] SteamVR may display random V-SYNC micro-stutters when using multiple displays [5152246]
• [RTX 50 series] Lower idle GPU clock speeds after updating to GRD 576.02 [5232414]

Lenovo is a safe recommendation for anyone seeking a powerful and capable gaming laptop.

The flagship Lenovo Legion Pro 7i has never tried to be the sleekest or most luxurious laptop. Still, for several years now, it has offered an excellent blend of performance, reliability, and features.

Now, a new generation of Intel and NVIDIA hardware has lined up for the first time in a few years, giving companies the perfect opportunity to reimagine their PC offerings. Lenovo took advantage with a redesign for its hero device.

I have the brand-new Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10) in my office. As the person who reviewed the last couple generations of the Legion Pro 7i for Windows Central, here are my first impressions of Lenovo's most powerful laptop yet.

What do I need to know about this laptop?

The new Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10) is the top of the Legion family (at least until Lenovo possibly updates the Legion 9i), packing the most powerful hardware available.

Inside, you'll find the latest Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) chipsets; more specifically, the Legion Pro 7i is powered by the highest-end Core Ultra 9 275HX, the 24-core monster that sits above the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H I reviewed.

That processor is joined by the latest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs, up to the flagship RTX 5090 with a whopping 24GB of VRAM. Supporting that is upgradeable DDR5 RAM and plenty of SSD storage, with Lenovo even planning to offer a lightning-fast PCIe Gen5 option at some point.

It's a potent combination of hardware surrounded by a redesigned, CNC-milled aluminum chassis. Some familiar elements, including the excellent TrueStrike keyboard, are present, but Lenovo redesigned the thermal shelf and venting to improve airflow, leading to a very different silhouette for the Legion Pro 7i.

Open the metal lid, and you'll be greeted by another massive upgrade: the IPS LCD of old is gone, replaced by a top-of-the-line QHD+ OLED panel with a 240Hz refresh rate and 0.5ms response time.

The new Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10) is a true year-over-year upgrade, and the configuration that I was sent to review can be yours for $3,599.99 at Lenovo. Yeah, that makes the Legion Pro 7i a significant purchase, but you will get one of the most powerful 16-inch laptops you can buy.

Unboxing the brand-new Legion Pro 7i

Unboxing the new Lenovo Legion Pro 7i was immediately familiar, harkening back to the days of reviewing Gen 8 and Gen 9. Yeah, Lenovo didn't redesign the packaging this time around, but it didn't really have to.

It's a simple, easy unboxing experience that lets you get straight to the laptop without fuss. You won't find any extras in here, with the box containing just the Legion Pro 7i and the new, truly massive charging adapter.

The 330W charging brick of previous years was already substantial, but Lenovo jumped to 400W with the Legion Pro 7i, the biggest adapter I've seen so far.

This enables the new 250W TDP peak that the Legion Pro 7i can sustain, with the GPU able to boost up to 175W. It's still in the early days for my review, but the performance gains are real.

What did Lenovo change with the new Legion Pro 7i?

I already explained how what's powering the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i has changed in the tenth generation, but there's a lot more happening here. I still had Gen 9 to directly compare, so here's a rundown of what Lenovo changed.

For one, the Legion Pro 7i is a bit larger in every dimension. It's around 3% thicker, less than 1% wider, and around 5% longer. These are small differences, but the new Legion Pro 7i does feel a lot more substantial because of how it's designed. The display is now sitting flush with the rear thermal shelf.

Despite the roomier chassis, the new Legion Pro 7i is actually around 8% lighter than last year's model. This still isn't what I'd describe as "portable," but the Legion Pro 7i generally looks and feels more refined now, with a less industrial design.

Lenovo's "Coldfront" thermal management solution is responsible for many of these design changes. Lenovo eliminated the rear-mounted ports and redesigned all the ventilation to allow for substantially more airflow through the system.

In my early testing, it does make a difference, but I already really miss the rear-mounted ports.

We lost one of the four USB Type-A ports, but we still get HDMI 2.1, gigabit Ethernet, 3.5mm audio, and USB Type-C. We also finally get a Thunderbolt 4 port with DisplayPort 2.1 and 140W Power Delivery 3.0.

The keyboard has been updated with a cleaner font, the "Legion" logo on the lid is now RGB-lit, and we now get RGB lighting lining the rear-facing ventilation.

These are all subtle refinements, but I do think the new Legion Pro 7i looks much nicer overall.

Just how powerful is the latest Legion Pro 7i?

You'll have to wait for my full review for an in-depth breakdown of this laptop's performance capabilities, but I can provide some quick gameplay numbers from my initial testing.

First, I'm comparing the new Legion Pro 7i with its Core Ultra 9 275HX and RTX 5080 to: the $2,700 Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 9) I reviewed with an Intel Core i9-14900HX and RTX 4080, the $4,500 Razer Blade 16 (2025) I reviewed with an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and RTX 4090, and the $4,500 ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 18 (2025) my colleague is reviewing now with a Core Ultra 9 275HX and RTX 5090.

All four laptops have 240Hz displays, 32GB of RAM, and 2TB of SSD storage.

I played Forza Horizon 5 on its Extreme preset and Gears 5 on its Ultra preset. Both games were set to the maximum 1600p resolution and 240Hz refresh rate, with all NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FidelityFX features disabled.

In FH5, last year's Legion Pro 7i played at 131 frames-per-second (FPS), the Razer Blade 16 played at 144 FPS, the new Legion Pro 7i played at 158 FPS, and the ROG Strix SCAR 18 played at 163 FPS. That's a 21% year-over-year improvement, and only 3% slower than the RTX 5090-equipped ASUS that costs $900 more.

In Gears 5, the results were similar. Last year's Legion Pro 7i played at 119 FPS, the Blade 16 played at 127 FPS, and the new Legion Pro 7i and ROG Strix SCAR 18 played at 134 FPS. That's a 13% year-over-year improvement, and keeps up with what should be a far more powerful laptop.

Should I buy the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10)?

Apart from moving away from rear-mounted ports, I like every change Lenovo made with the redesigned Legion Pro 7i. Performance and thermals were excellent in my early testing, and the new OLED display looked marvelous.

I'm confident at this point that I'm going to love the Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10), but the latest Intel and NVIDIA hardware does lead to an unfortunate side effect: this laptop is a lot more expensive than the last generation.

The new Legion Pro 7i is priced right in line with the most expensive gaming laptops now, when in previous years, this laptop actually felt like a solid deal among premium options.

My time with these new gaming laptops has convinced me of one thing: my colleague was right, the mobile RTX 5090 GPU is a terrible value. The Legion Pro 7i and its RTX 5080 easily keeps up with the ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 18 (2025) that costs $4,499.99 at Best Buy, a bigger laptop with a more powerful (on paper) GPU.

For those who want peak performance and the absolute best Intel and NVIDIA hardware, the Legion Pro 7i seems set to retain its place at the top of my list of recommendations. Still, I'll spend much more time with this laptop before delivering my final verdict.

In the meantime, you can purchase the first Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10) configuration at Lenovo for $3,599.99.

The ASUS VivoBook Pro 16 is one of ASUS' laptop offerings for both creators and gamers.

It features a beefy CPU and GPU for studio-grade graphics and video work.

Plus, its dedicated "MUX" switch is designed to squeeze out as much power from the GPU as possible for gaming, paired with super-fast DDR5 RAM, and two M.2 SSD slots that are expandable alongside upgradable storage.

It's a workhorse of a laptop, designed for professional creative use or gaming. I've been using the ASUS VivoBook Pro 16 for a handful of weeks now, and this is my full review.

This review was made possible thanks to a review sample provided by ASUS. The company had no input and did not see the contents of this review prior to publication.

ASUS VivoBook Pro 16: Price and availability

The ASUS VivoBook Pro 16 starts at around $1,499 and is available from retailers such as Amazon and Best Buy.

The laptop comes with an Intel Core i9-13900H and NVIDIA RTX 4060 Laptop GPU under the hood, paired with either 16GB or 32GB DDR5 RAM and 1TB SSD storage.

Depending on the laptop model, you can also get a 3K OLED display version, though our model comes with a 1080p 120Hz display.

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VivoBook Pro 16: Design and display

Let's start with the display, which is very impressive. Our model has a 1080p panel, which, at 16 inches, isn't the sharpest in the world, but it's more than fine for the kind of work or gaming you might want to do on a laptop like this.

The display is IPS and 16 inches across, with a 1920x1200 resolution and a 16:10 aspect ratio. I really love that the aspect ratio is slightly taller than 16:9, as I often find that ratio to be somewhat claustrophobic, even at 16 inches.

It's also 120Hz capable, which is a necessary addition for gamers. I believe all laptop displays in 2025 should be 120Hz, so it's good to see here, even for creative use. The panel also supports Windows' dynamic refresh feature, which will automatically switch between 60Hz and 120Hz on the fly, depending on what's on screen.

For creative use, the display is rated for a 100% Adobe color gamut and, in our test, also reached 100% sRGB. ASUS says the display is also Pantone-validated, so this is a laptop to consider for those who work with colors and need the most accurate color representation.

The only downside is that the display doesn't get exceptionally bright, measuring around 299 nits in our brightness test. That's more than acceptable for indoor viewing, but you'll struggle to see the display if you are outside in the sunlight or a bright environment. Most laptops these days are hitting at least 400 nits.

The laptop's screen-to-body ratio is around 87%, which means the bezels around the display are nice and thin. This leads nicely to the design aspect of the laptop, which I think looks suitable for a gaming laptop.

This laptop's design is best described as "gaming conservative." It hints of being a gaming laptop, but that becomes more obvious as you open the laptop. When closed, the device looks clean, minimalistic, and professional on a desk.

The only notable thing on the lid is the logo, which is placed on a small bump in the lid's design. This is a minor nitpick, but I do hate how much text is here. Why have they included hashtags? It just needed to say "ASUS" or "ASUS VivoBook." Nothing more.

Opening the laptop, we see a little more of that gamer aesthetic. The enter key on the keyboard is underlined with a gamer-y design, and the escape key is bright orange. For some reason, there's also more text and small shapes along the top of the keyboard deck. The text up here says, "Own the universe."

I can't say I outright dislike the design, but it is interesting. I definitely don't like all the text plastered over the laptop, and I also don't appreciate the 5 (yes, five) stickers placed below the keyboard deck. The gamer aesthetic is most notable when looking at the sides and bottom of the laptop, complete with angled fan vents and bottom.

I think it's fair to say that the design of this laptop is an acquired taste and probably won't be everyone's favorite. The chassis is made of aluminum, which is cold to the touch and feels premium in the hand. But the laptop is also quite heavy and thick, weighing in at 4.2 lbs and measuring 0.79 in thickness. The overall size of the laptop is 35.53 x 25.20 cm. So, it's not a lightweight travel buddy kind of laptop.

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VivoBook Pro 16: Ports and features

Moving on to those all-important ports, we have quite a lot here to mess with. On the left side, we have one USB-A port, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a full-sized SD card reader, which is always lovely to see on a creator-focused laptop. On the right side, we have two USB-C ports, another USB-A port, an HDMI 2.1 port, an ethernet jack, and a barrel-style charge port.

This laptop has more ports than you'll probably need, which is necessary for a creator and gaming-focused laptop. The two USB-C ports are capable of Thunderbolt 4 40Gbps, and the USB-A ports are 3.2 rated for fast data transfer speeds.

Above the display is a 1080p webcam, which is fine for video calls. I probably wouldn't rely on it for streaming and content creation, as it gets pretty noisy in low-light environments. But in daytime video calls, it's more than acceptable. The camera includes a physical privacy shutter, too, which is always a nice addition.

The laptop's design and display hinges also allow it to lay completely flat, up to 180 degrees when open. This can be handy when sharing your screen with a group at a table, but I never needed to use it during my review of this laptop.

Also included with the VivoBook Pro 16 are Harman Kardon-tuned speakers, which sound fine. These aren't the worst 16-inch laptop speakers I've ever heard, but they're also not the best. There's a little bit of bass, but the overall listening experience is still relatively light. You'll be best served using headphones for a truly immersive and high-quality listening experience.

ASUS advertises this laptop as having a built-in MUX Switch, which is supposed to help increase GPU performance by disabling the onboard integrated graphics chip provided by the CPU. By default, most laptops with a dedicated GPU are configured to switch between the integrated GPU and dedicated GPU when intensive GPU tasks start up. However, this can sometimes result in a slight performance loss or the app of your choice not using the dedicated GPU at all.

The MUX switch allows you to bypass the automated process and tell the laptop to use the dedicated GPU exclusively. This comes at the cost of battery life, but it does mean everything, including the Windows interface, will use the dedicated GPU to render visuals instead of the integrated one. I found that Windows feels much snappier when the MUX switch is set to the dedicated GPU.

Storage upgradability on the ASUS VivoBook Pro 16 is also a thing here. The laptop has two M.2 SSD slots for expandable storage up to 2TB, with the first M.2 slot taken up by the storage drive that comes with the laptop. Modifying the storage does require taking the bottom off by undoing several screws, but it's a super easy job.

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VivoBook Pro 16: Keyboard and trackpad

Starting with the good stuff, the keyboard is excellent. It's a full-sized keyboard deck with a number pad on the right for all your number-entering or macro needs. The keyboard has three backlight levels and a function row along the top with your usual media and device controls.

The overall typing experience is also very good. I was surprised by how nice the keyboard is, offering tactile feedback with a key travel of 1.5mm. I really enjoy typing on this keyboard, and the typing sound is quiet yet responsive.

The trackpad is a different story. I didn't enjoy my time using it, mostly because I ran into a few issues that are likely driver-related. We'll start with the positives, which are that it's nice and large. It's a classic dive-board design, meaning it's not haptic, and you need to press towards the lower portion of the trackpad for that satisfying "click" feedback.

The problem I had with the trackpad was that it sometimes stutters and fails to register clicks. I tried to change every setting I could to fix this, but every so often, I'd be swiping through a web page or moving my cursor across the screen, and it would just freeze for a second before catching back up.

It also doesn't register clicks, which is super frustrating. Quite often, I found myself clicking on things twice because the first click didn't register. I can't tell if this is a hardware or software defect; perhaps mine is an anomaly. But it's something to be aware of if you order one.

Back to the positives, the fingerprint reader is pretty good. It's nice and fast and secure, just like most other Windows Hello fingerprint readers. I wish we also had Face Unlock at this price, but a fingerprint reader is better than nothing.

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VivoBook Pro 16: Performance

Unsurprisingly, the VivoBook Pro 16 is a performance beast. That Intel Core i9-13900HX, paired with 32GB RAM and an NVIDIA RTX 4060 GPU, means this laptop can handle pretty much any gaming or creative task with few issues. In benchmarks, the laptop doesn't disappoint.

The GPU really shines here, enabling the VivoBook Pro 16 to be a laptop aimed at creatives and gamers. Paired with DLSS, this laptop can also achieve great performance in most video games, running at 1080p with high graphics settings. For example, in CyberPunk 2077, with DLSS enabled, I achieved around 55 fps on the highest settings.

In our Geekbench 6 test, the laptop earned a multi-core score of around 12483. In the 3DMark test, the VivoBook Pro 16 pulled an impressive 15644 in the Fire Strike test. SSD read and write speeds are also good, coming in at 3,485 MBps for write and 4,340 MBps for read in CrystalDiskMark.

Battery life is fine for a laptop of this caliber. In our battery rundown test, it earned a respectable 6.5 hours, which isn't bad for a gaming laptop with a beefy GPU inside. I got about 4 hours in real-world usage before needing to plug in.

Outside of benchmarks, the laptop is mostly snappy, and I have had no problem with performance most of the time. The only issue I did run into was random stutters that would appear occasionally. Sometimes, whatever I was doing on the laptop would freeze for just a second before catching up again.

I think this might be related to my stuttering trackpad issue mentioned above, but no matter what I tried to do to fix it, it just wouldn't go away. I tried changing power profiles and reinstalling Windows, and nothing fixed it. Hopefully, it's just a software bug that will be fixed in a future driver update.

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VivoBook Pro 16: Should you buy it?

✅ You should buy this if ...

• You're looking for a laptop that's capable of creative workflows and video gaming.
• You need a workhorse with a powerful GPU.
• You want a laptop that blurs the line between professional and gamer aesthetic.

❌You should not buy this if ...

• You don't like the gamer aesthetic.
• You want a small and light laptop for travel.
• You want good battery life.

Overall, the VivoBook Pro 16 is an interesting choice on the market. On the one hand, it's incredibly powerful and will get the job done with no sweat. On the other hand, its design is polarizing, and I can't tell if ASUS wants it to appeal to gamers or professionals. They've found themselves in the middle, and I fear that results in it not appealing to anyone.

I'm sure some people like this design, but there's so much text and stickers on this laptop right out of the box, some of which can't even be removed. It's quite noisy, which is fine for gamers but less for creative professionals.

The keyboard feels excellent to type on, but I did have some issues with the trackpad. The sound system is also good enough, though I suspect you'll probably want to use headphones for the best immersive gaming experiences.

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The Razer Blade 16 is ending years of languid iteration with a full redesign that aims to return Razer's flagship laptop to its throne.

The bloated chassis of the Razer Blade 16 (2024) I reviewed last year has been massively trimmed down to deliver the thinnest Razer Blade 16 ever, but still packs the deepest and most comfortable keyboard Razer has ever put in a laptop.

Intel has been left behind, with Razer relying on AMD for the very first time in its hero device, while the latest generation of NVIDIA GPUs helps usher in the new era with promised advancements in performance, efficiency, and AI.

The combination of all these improvements and the lack of any notable downgrades over the previous generation make the Razer Blade 16 a standout ultra-premium option yet again, but a recommendation isn't quite so clear-cut.

That meticulously crafted unibody design still demands a heavy price, and the Blade 16 still isn't close to being the most powerful gaming laptop you can get — even if you're looking to spend less.

This review was made possible thanks to a review sample provided by Razer. Razer had no input nor saw the contents of this review prior to publication.

Razer Blade 16 review: Cheat sheet

• What is it? A high-end gaming laptop that aims to balance premium design, portability, and performance.
• Who is it for? Those who aren't concerned about cost, and simply want the most luxurious gaming laptop you can buy.
• How much does it cost? The Razer Blade 16 (2025) starts from $2,999.99 at Razer. With every upgrade, the Razer Blade 16 will cost you $4,899.99 at Razer.
• What did I like? The thinner and lighter redesign, the dramatically improved keyboard, and the consistent sustained performance.
• What did I not like? The price tag, and the lack of meaningful performance gains year-over-year.

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Razer Blade 16 review: Pricing and specifications

The Razer Blade has never been known for providing great value, and the Blade 16 does nothing to alter that reputation.

This flagship gaming laptop still rests at the pinnacle of luxury, so you'll have to pay a lot just to get through the door — and give up an arm or leg for every upgrade you stack on top.

The Razer Blade 16 (2025) starts from $2,999.99 at Razer, or $2,999.99 at Amazon, and that's equipped with an AMD Ryzen AI 9 365, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of SSD storage.

There are a handful of optional upgrades for the CPU, GPU, memory, and storage, with the fully maxed out Razer Blade 16 (2025) racking up a cost of $4,899.99 at Razer, or $4,899.99 at Amazon, which nets you a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, RTX 5090, 64GB of RAM, and 4TB of SSD storage.

My Razer Blade 16 (2025) review sample is configured with the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, RTX 5090, 32GB of RAM, and 2TB of SSD storage which would cost you $4,499.99 at Razer.

It can't really be claimed that the Razer Blade 16 is a good deal, but the quality of hardware does reflect the price tag attached to it. Those who prioritize raw performance above all else, though, can get much more in far less expensive hardware (albeit hardware that will be thicker, heavier, and less premium).

If you'd like to purchase the optional extended and upgraded 3-year warranty (known as RazerCare), that will run you between $370 and $500 depending on if you want day-one accidental damage coverage.

In the box, you'll find the Razer Blade 16 (2025) and Razer's proprietary 280W DC charger.

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Razer Blade 16 review: Design and build quality

Razer Blade gaming laptops have been known for their anodized, matte black, CNC-milled unibody aluminum chassis for years, but the iconic design has grown stale over the past few generations thanks to iterative tweaks.

With the brand-new Razer Blade 16 (2025), the company finally went back to the drawing board, massively streamlining the design while retaining the iconic aesthetics.

I was immediately impressed by the redesign when I first went hands-on, and I haven't stopped being impressed since. Incontestable refinement, rather than gaudiness, helps this laptop stand out.

What exactly has changed, though? There are plenty of more subtle improvements, but Razer mostly trimmed the excess fat to craft the sleekest, thinnest Razer Blade laptop ever.

To be precise, the new Blade 16 is 14.9-17.4mm thin, approximately 21-32% thinner than last year. It also weighs 4.71lbs, a weight reduction of around 13%.

Razer softened the edges to make the Blade 16 more comfortable, too, and the redesigned thermal shelf provides the illusion of being even slimmer while also enabling excellent performance within the tighter confines.

Razer didn't drop a single port when making the transition, either. You still get a total of five USB ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, and a full-sized SD card slot, perfectly divided on each side.

Sure, you no longer get true Thunderbolt 4 thanks to the move to AMD instead of Intel, but the new USB4 ports are compatible with the vast majority of Thunderbolt accessories, and still support 100W Power Delivery and DisplayPort 1.4 output.

This is a fantastic redesign, once again establishing the Blade 16 as the ultimate luxury gaming laptop, and it's great that Razer didn't cut out ports or added touches like the LED Razer logo to achieve it.

There is still one major area for improvement, though, and that's the display. Despite Razer's obvious commitment to industry-leading hardware design, the Blade 16's screen is still glossy plastic, surrounded by raised plastic bezels. Most other premium, design-focused laptops use seamless, laminated glass for their screens, so I'd like to see Razer make the jump, too.

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Razer Blade 16 review: Display quality

As I just mentioned, the display is the one area where Razer didn't alter much of anything. It's the same glossy, plastic, non-touch 16-inch display with the taller 16:10 aspect ratio, with the same impressive OLED panel behind it.

You're looking at a QHD+ resolution paired with a 240Hz refresh rate and a 0.2ms response time, a great set of specs that looks perfectly sharp at this screen size — and the Razer Blade 16 actually has the power to make use of that speed, too.

Being an OLED panel, the Blade 16 offers a dynamic visual experience, making full use of the vibrant colors and inky blacks to make all your video games and movies look their absolute best.

Performance is excellent, too, with no hint of ghosting, stuttering, or latency. Once you play games on a display of this caliber, it's nearly impossible to be satisfied with anything less.

The Razer Blade 16 may be a gaming laptop at its core, but Razer also aims it at creators and hardcore professionals who may need a color accurate display they can trust.

Fortunately, Razer delivers here with Calman Verified factory calibration for 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, as well as a variety of professional-tailored color profiles and even the option to build your own custom preset.

This laptop's display doesn't exceed expectations when it comes to brightness, but it crosses the 400nits threshold that I consider to be the minimum for an OLED-equipped laptop, and it gets dim enough for use in the darkest of environments.

White balance is remarkably consistent and even across brightness levels, too, making the Blade 16 a potentially invaluable tool for on-the-go creative work. A matte or at least properly anti-reflective glass screen would be great to see in the next Blade 16 laptop, but this is a fantastic display regardless.

It does use Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) for dimming, though, which means the display flickers at a high rate to simulate lower brightness levels. The Razer Blade 16's OLED display does seem to flicker at higher rates than average, at least, so only those who are particularly sensitive should be affected.

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Razer Blade 16 review: Performance and thermals

The Razer Blade 16 didn't just receive a redesign for 2025, it also switched from Intel to AMD Ryzen AI processors, a first for Razer and a major shift in general.

While AMD Ryzen AI is less powerful in some metrics than the previous Intel 14th Gen CPUs, it's more efficient and enables enhanced AI features and Copilot+ PC status thanks to its powerful integrated Neural Processing Unit (NPU).

The Blade 16 also marks the arrival of the long-awaited NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series of mobile GPUs, which promise improved performance, greater efficiency, and — of course — superior AI capabilities with features like DLSS 4.

That makes this Razer's first true AI PC, but how does it perform? In general, it feels excellent, as you'd expect with such powerful hardware under the hood.

I will say that AMD Ryzen AI isn't quite as snappy with waking from sleep as Intel or Qualcomm systems, but the Blade 16 feels just as smooth and responsive as the best Windows laptops.

Looking at the numbers tells a slightly more complicated story, though.

If you only looked at the numbers above, you may be confused. How is the new Razer Blade 16 supposed to be an upgrade when it's so clearly slower than last year's model?

While true in some ways, that fails to tell the whole story. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 isn't a substantial upgrade over its predecessor in raw performance, but is more efficient and more capable with AI features.

The AMD Ryzen AI chipsets are slower on paper than the Intel processors Razer used previously, but are significantly more efficient and run considerably cooler, on top of also enabling new AI features. Intel simply doesn't offer an equivalent right now.

No, the Razer Blade 16 (2025) isn't notably more performant than its predecessor, but that wasn't Razer's goal. The new Blade 16 is drastically slimmer, yet runs cooler and achieves the same (sometimes better) performance.

I ran this laptop through 3DMark's Time Spy benchmark 25 consecutive times, and the new Blade 16 achieved a 98.1% frame rate stability. When it comes to sustained performance, the new Blade 16 comfortably outpaces last year's version.

The fans are still loud but hum at a comfortably low frequency, and the Blade 16 never grew too warm to comfortably touch. It's a genuine improvement over last year, despite the size reduction.

Sustained performance matters, and the Razer Blade 16 (2025) also handles modern PC games incredibly well, even without relying on the RTX 50-series' new DLSS features.

• Forza Horizon 5 — 144 FPS (Extreme preset, 1600p resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, v-sync enabled, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution/Frame Generation/Reflex Low Latency disabled) | 211 FPS (Max settings, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution set to “Auto,” NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation/Reflex Low Latency enabled)
• Gears 5 — 127 FPS (Ultra preset, 1600p resolution, uncapped framerate, v-sync enabled)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 — 87 FPS (Extreme preset, 1600p resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, v-sync enabled, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution/Frame Generation disabled) | 96 FPS (NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution set to “Quality”)
• Cyberpunk 2077 — 69 FPS (Ray Tracing: Ultra preset, 1600p resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, v-sync enabled, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution set to “Auto,” NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation/Ray Reconstruction disabled, NVIDIA DLSS Reflex Low Latency enabled)

In Forza Horizon 5, the 2025 Blade 16 performed 11% better without using DLSS Super Resolution like the 2024 model. In Gears 5, I saw a 14% framerate improvement with identical settings. Cyberpunk 2077 is the only game that performed worse on the new laptop (4% worse, to be exact), and the slower AMD Ryzen AI chipset is likely to blame there.

I'm not convinced NVIDIA's DLSS 4 features are enough to justify a new generation of GPUs, but the Razer Blade 16 doesn't need them to perform well. Of course, it'll never be quite as powerful as other gaming laptops willing to pack on the grams and millimeters in exchange for better cooling.

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Razer Blade 16 review: Software and AI experience

The Razer Blade 16 (2025) runs a clean build of Windows 11, with only minor additions from Razer.

By minor, I mean you'll find AMD and NVIDIA's software, Razer Synapse 4, and the dedicated Razer Chroma application. Razer doesn't even preinstall its own Cortex launcher and optimizer, which surprised me.

This laptop feels pretty stable and NVIDIA is regularly releasing new drivers for the RTX 50-series, but I did experience some small bugs. The laptop refused to remember my preference for the function row lock, for example.

I love seeing a distinct lack of bloatware, but the Razer Blade 16 is also devoid of any meaningful effort to take advantage of its "AI PC" status. Copilot+ PCs still add little of real value — and indeed many of the meager features are only just now reaching Intel and AMD systems.

Razer's AI investments are in their early days, too, and either way aren't reliant on the Blade 16's AI-centric hardware. You don't even get a proximity sensor for Human Presence Detection (HPD) features; the new Blade 16 is an AI PC in name only out of the box.

Still, you can easily find plenty of third-party apps and features that can take advantage of that AMD Ryzen AI NPU, and the Blade 16 will in theory become more intelligent over time as Razer, Microsoft, and everyone else develops their AI ecosystems.

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Razer Blade 16 review: Battery experience

I had high hopes that the Razer Blade 16's transition to more efficient AMD Ryzen AI and RTX 50-series components would also lead to greater endurance from its massive 90Whr battery, but that's sadly not the case.

The Razer Blade 16 (2025) drained 24% of its battery in both of Procyon's one-hour battery tests, which loops a generic Microsoft Office workload or an HD video at 200nits display brightness and 50% volume.

Running a Windows Battery Report actually returned worse endurance versus last year's model, not even breaking the 4-hour mark. You can disable the NVIDIA GPU and other features to squeeze respectable life out of this laptop, but on default settings it simply doesn't last.

The bigger issue, though, is how much performance you lose when off the charger. In my testing, the Blade 16 lost 51% and 32% of its single and multicore performance, and 44% of its GPU performance, and that was on the highest possible performance profile.

That's a massive downgrade in performance, and it doesn't even translate to better battery life. Most egregious is the loss of single-core performance, which is actually noticeable in general computing.

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Razer Blade 16 review: Keyboard and touchpad

One of my most prominent complaints about the previous Razer Blade laptops was the shallow, lackluster keyboard that I wouldn't accept on any laptop, let alone a device built for gaming.

With the Blade 16 redesign, Razer heard our prayers and baked in an all-new keyboard, too. New, more durable switches with 50% more travel and an improved layout (including additional macro keys that you can customize) makes this the best keyboard on a Blade laptop, period.

HP and Lenovo still have Razer beat with some of their laptop keyboards, but the Blade 16 can finally play with the big dogs thanks to deeper, more tactile key actions. It's everything I want from a great keyboard.

Razer also takes full advantage of its best-in-class per-key RGB lighting (seriously, no one comes close here) with some awesome quality-of-life features. Hold down the "Fn" key, and all the shortcuts usable with it will be highlighted.

Now, dual-function keys also feature dual LEDs, meaning holding down the "Shift" key will switch the backlighting to the secondary symbols or functions. It's subtle enough that it could only be done in a super high-end laptop, but I like it.

The gargantuan, glass Microsoft Precision touchpad makes a return, too, but Razer slightly shrunk it down after complaints that it was too easily touched when typing. It's a solid touchpad, but palm rejection is still not its strong suit, so accidental inputs haven't disappeared.

Large touchpads also make the inconsistent click action of the buttons more noticeable. That, combined with gamers' tendency to disable the touchpad when gaming, makes me wish that this was a large haptic touchpad.

Haptic touchpads provide an even "clicking" action across the entire surface, and when disabled simply become an unmoving glass sheet. Considering the Blade 16 is already ludicrously expensive, I don't think it's unreasonable to want all the premium features, haptic touchpads included.

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Razer Blade 16 review: Other hardware

Many gaming laptops tend to slack on the finer details to focus on performance above all else, but the Blade 16 can't afford to do this — because the people who can afford the Blade 16 won't compromise.

As such, you get an FHD front-facing webcam that's not complete garbage, even if it doesn't exceed expectations. That camera is flanked by dual-array microphones and an IR sensor to enable Windows Hello facial recognition; the former are solid, and the latter is decently quick and reliable.

As I already mentioned, though, you won't find a proximity sensor here for HPD, nor will you find an ambient light sensor for automatic brightness or color temperature adjustment. There's also no privacy shutter, either physical or electronic. At least you get a Microsoft Pluton chip for enhanced security.

For wireless connectivity, the Razer Blade 16 is on the cutting edge with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, and I had zero issues here.

I already mentioned the additional macro keys aligned on one side of the keyboard, with each possessing a standard function and a secondary function you can customize to your heart's content.

Finally, Razer actually added two more speakers to the Blade 16, for a total of six. These speakers support THX Spatial Audio and actually sound pretty great. They're not my absolute favorite I've heard, but they get loud and sound clear and defined at all volume levels, with more low end than your average laptop.

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Razer Blade 16 review: Also consider

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Razer Blade 16 review: Score card

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Razer Blade 16 review: My final thoughts

✅You should buy this if ...

• You want a gaming laptop that balances portability and performance.
• You don't mind paying a lot extra for an ultra-premium experience.
• You want a powerful laptop that also boasts a dedicated NPU for AI.

❌You should not buy this if ...

• You need the absolute best performance you can get for your money.
• You need a laptop that's performant on the charger and long-lasting off.

Razer genuinely improved the Blade 16 by leaps and bounds in a single generation. Of course, there are still changes I'd love to see in future iterations, like a glass display, haptic touchpad, and more of the features we've seen in premium Ultrabooks.

Those aside, though, the new Blade 16 is thinner and lighter than ever, but runs cooler and matches or exceeds the performance of its chunkier predecessor. This laptop finally feels like its hardware matches the exorbitant price tag again.

That said, you really need to want that "luxury design" to justify paying so much, especially if you're just looking for a ridiculously powerful gaming laptop that will rarely be too far from an outlet.

I also wish that battery life when off the charger was better, especially considering just how much performance you lose the moment you become unplugged. There are compromises to be made here, but I do have to admit the Razer Blade 16 (2025) is a beautiful and capable laptop that's much easier to recommend than last year's model.

Sold on this premium laptop and have the funds to acquire it? You can purchase the Razer Blade 16 (2025) from $2,999.99 at Razer right now.

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A new AI gaming feature introduced by NVIDIA for its RTX hardware is off to a terrible start.

NVIDIA launched Project G-Assist earlier this week as part of a larger NVIDIA App update, which also brought some new DLSS overrides, control panel settings, and MFG support for a few select games.

I was somewhat surprised to see such a generally negative reaction immediately after Project G-Assist arrived on PCs, but I chalked some of it up to AI hesitance and NVIDIA's poor track record in the past few months since RTX 5000 GPUs launched.

More than a few Reddit threads quickly filled up with disgruntled gamers looking at the required specs and the AI tool's abilities.

I can confidently say that the experience doesn't get any better once you start using Project G-Assist on a gaming PC.

Before I get into that, let's see what Project G-Assist is and what it's supposed to do according to NVIDIA.

What is NVIDIA Project G-Assist?

As NVIDIA explains in its press release, Project G-Assist is a Small Language Model (SLM) that runs locally on your PC's RTX hardware.

In theory, NVIDIA wants G-Assist to be available anytime you need it, providing "real-time diagnostics and recommendations to alleviate system bottlenecks, improve power efficiency, optimize game settings, overclock your GPU, and much more."

G-Assist is (theoretically) capable of interpreting "natural language instructions," meaning you can give it regular commands (in English only so far) and have it follow them through.

NVIDIA sees it as a full-system gaming assistant, capable of adjusting lighting and fan speeds on compatible hardware while also offering key information about the ingredients of your PC.

It sounds neat, but like most things AI, it's not as impressive once you start using it.

This brings me to the first major sticky spot: system requirements.

Yes, NVIDIA's Project G-Assist requires at least 12GB of VRAM to run.

Remember NVIDIA's CES 2025 keynote where it said VRAM matters less because of AI enhancements? That might still be true when gaming, but even NVIDIA's tools are now excluding 8GB and 10GB RTX GPUs.

With rumors that the RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti will both launch with 8GB VRAM options, NVIDIA's AI future is looking more and more exclusive.

Here's another tidbit from NVIDIA explaining how G-Assist works behind the scenes:

"Under the hood, G-Assist now uses a Llama-based Instruct model with 8 billion parameters, packing language understanding into a tiny fraction of the size of today’s large scale AI models. This allows G-Assist to run locally on GeForce RTX hardware. And with the rapid pace of SLM research, these compact models are becoming more capable and efficient every few months.

"When G-Assist is prompted for help by pressing Alt+G — say, to optimize graphics settings or check GPU temperatures— your GeForce RTX GPU briefly allocates a portion of its horsepower to AI inference. If you’re simultaneously gaming or running another GPU-heavy application, a short dip in render rate or inference completion speed may occur during those few seconds. Once G-Assist finishes its task, the GPU returns to delivering full performance to the game or app."

Project G-Assist sounds like it could be a useful tool if not for the hardware restrictions and, as I came to discover, its disastrous launch state.

NVIDIA Project G-Assist tested at home — it's completely unusable

I'll preface this by saying that there is some evidence of G-Assist working properly for some adopters.

I found at least one user who explained on Reddit how the AI assistant successfully recommended and undervolted their GPU.

My colleague Richard Devine tested G-Assist on his gaming PC with an RTX 5080 Founders Edition card inside. Despite the GPU having 16GB of VRAM and being one of NVIDIA's most powerful options, G-Assist was completely unusable while gaming.

What's the point of a gaming assistant if you can't use it while you're running a game?

👉 Related: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition review

When engaged, G-Assist did nothing more than significantly lower frame rates (often from triple digits to single digits) and, in the worst cases, completely lock up the system.

He surmised that part of the problem might stem from the fact that G-Assist requires the NVIDIA overlay to run, which in itself can harm performance.

Devine attempted to use Project G-Assist with Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Atomfall, and Avowed. In all three cases, frame rates tanked with it enabled.

What's worse, asking G-Assist a question or giving it a command locked up Devine's system while the AI was "working on it" for far too long.

Even asking a simple question like "Is G-Sync enabled?" nearly crashed the games.

It seems that Project G-Assist isn't ready for primetime, and it's clear that G-Assist is going to struggle on any of the lesser RTX cards that nevertheless feature 12GB of VRAM or more.

NVIDIA says that G-Assist can only get better as users employ it, so the rocky start might not tell the full story of G-Assist's future.

It is, however, going to be tough to get much positive feedback when it's unusable in some of the top games.

There is some good news.

Project G-Assist can be quickly uninstalled from the NVIDIA App without harming (at least as far as I can tell) any other functionality.

Just launch the NVIDIA App, click the three stacked dots in the top-right corner of the G-Assist frame, and click Uninstall.

Have you tried G-Assist on your PC? What hardware and games are you running? Were you successful? Let me know in the comments section below!

GOOD NEWS! NVIDIA has cut the price of the RTX 50 series Founders Edition cards. At least, if you're in the UK and EU markets, anyway.

The bad news, of course, is that it's a pretty moot point because they're rarer than a Unicorn dancing the Tango. After the launch debacle where retailers had, in some cases, single digit units in stock, it hasn't yet recovered.

Nevertheless, Founders Editions are now a little cheaper, and as pointed out by Videocardz, likely follows the fall in the Dollar as it relates to exchange rates with the Pound and the Euro.

The new recommended retail prices in the UK are:

• RTX 5070: From £529 (was £539)
• RTX 5080: From £949 (was £979)
• RTX 5090: From £1,889 (was £1,939)

Considering the price of these graphics cards, it's not a huge saving, but money in your pocket rather than Jensen's leather jacket is certainly a move we'll always appreciate. Too often, in the UK and mainland Europe, we get a rough deal compared to our U.S. pals.

You may also notice the RTX 5070 Ti isn't mentioned. There is no Founders Edition version of this card, as such, no discount.

It is hard to get too excited about anything RTX 50 series right now, because months on from their reveal at CES, most people who want one still can't get one.

It's a shame, too. I'm lucky in that I'm able to use our RTX 5080 Founders Edition right now, and it's utterly superb. It has the same sort of wow factor I had when I first touched the RTX 4090, except it actually fits inside my PC properly.

NVIDIA needs to double down and get these things out there. All the new features these graphics cards can utilize are fruitless if nobody can own one.

NVIDIA's RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti graphics cards (GPU) have both officially launched, and you might be wondering which one is better suited for your gaming PC.

While stock availability for both GPUs at the time of writing is essentially non-existent, it doesn't hurt to know exactly which card is right for you should you find something available at a reasonable price.

Let's take a look at how the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti compare in terms of actual real-world pricing as well as how each performs at the common 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions.

NVIDIA RTX 5070 vs. RTX 5070 Ti: Specs

Before taking a look at real-world performance numbers, it's worth noting the raw specs available in the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti.

A higher number is better in almost all cases — excluding TGP and PSU requirements — and it's no surprise that the 5070 Ti comes out ahead of its sibling.

👉 Related: Super, Ti, XT, XTX — Explaining the differences between GPU models

One notable difference involves the onboard VRAM. The RTX 5070 Ti hits 16GB, while the 5070 sits back on 12GB GDDR7.

Thanks to DLSS 4 improvements, NVIDIA says its GPUs no longer require as much VRAM; however, I know some enthusiasts won't want to dip below 16GB in 2025.

Here's how the two GPUs compare.

NVIDIA RTX 5070 vs. RTX 5070 Ti: Price and availability

The biggest obstacle to overcome, at least at the time of writing, is availability for NVIDIA's 50-series GPUs.

The issue isn't exclusive to the XX70 cards; everything that NVIDIA has launched so far, including the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090, is almost impossible to find at a reasonable price.

Sure, you might be able to grab a new NVIDIA GPU from a scalper, but you'll be paying far above an acceptable price.

It gets worse: NVIDIA's MSRP isn't exactly being followed by third-party GPU makers, so if you don't manage to land a Founders Edition card — of which there is none for the RTX 5070 Ti — you can still expect to pay more off the shelf.

A quick look at Newegg's RTX 5070 listings shows prices ranging from the $549.99 MSRP up to $739.99, with plenty of prices in between.

Best Buy's RTX 5070 listings offer a similar price range for various GPUs from third-party makers.

👉 Related: Where to buy NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti

The RTX 5070 Ti naturally costs more than the standard 5070, Newegg's listings range from the $749.99 MSRP up to $999.99.

Again, Best Buy offers roughly the same, with some cards sitting at $749.99 through about $999.99. These prices might be listed, but that doesn't mean they're in stock.

If you can't hold off any longer and need a major upgrade anyway, you might want to check out some pre-built desktop gaming PCs with the RTX 5070 Ti inside.

NVIDIA RTX 5070 vs. RTX 5070 Ti: 1080p, 1440p, and 4K performance

From a general standpoint, the RTX 5070 Ti is the card you want for superior performance. It's a step up from the standard RTX 5070, but how big is the gap?

Our friends at Tom's Hardware did an excellent job of testing both the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti in a number of scenarios, and the results are mostly unsurprising.

I'm starting with rasterization performance to get an idea of the raw power these cards offer.

👉 Related: NVIDIA RTX 5070 review roundup

At 1080p Ultra, the RTX 5070 managed a 105.8 FPS average across 16 games. At 1440p Ultra, the RTX 5070 drops to an 80.4 FPS average across the same 16 titles.

Those are decent numbers, and you have space to lower in-game settings to boost frame rates in some games with which the RTX 5070 struggles.

The RTX 5070 will struggle with 4K Ultra, with the 16-game average dropping to 46.7 FPS.

Still looking at rasterization performance, the RTX 5070 Ti unsurprisingly pulls ahead of the RTX 5070.

In the same tests across 16 games, it managed averages of 124.9 FPS at 1080p Ultra, 100.3 FPS at 1440p Ultra, and 61.2 FPS at 4K Ultra.

It's clear from these results that the RTX 5070 Ti is your only real choice if you have a 4K display, though at 1440p, you can definitely get away with spending less on the RTX 5070.

Rasterization performance is half the equation; how do these cards handle ray tracing?

The RTX 5070 hit a 97.4 FPS average at 1080p Ultra, a 69.8 FPS average at 1440p Ultra, and a 36.4 FPS average at 4K Ultra. Six games were tested to get the averages.

If you're a fan of enabling ray tracing in your games, it's clear that the RTX 5070 Ti will be the better choice at 1440p and 4K, with the RTX 5070 holding fairly strong at 1080p.

Tom's Hardware compiled the results with rasterization and ray tracing to give a better idea of overall performance expected from these cards across 22 games.

Nothing really changes in the overall averages across 22 games, with the RTX 5070 Ti remaining the better choice if you have a 1440p or 4K monitor.

On the other hand, for roughly $150 less than its sibling, the RTX 5070 offers decent 1440p performance and strong 1080p performance.

These numbers come without the addition of DLSS 4, which plays a bigger part than ever in boosting NVIDIA's frame rates.

NVIDIA RTX 5070 vs. RTX 5070 Ti: DLSS 4

DLSS 4 was announced alongside the new NVIDIA RTX 5000 GPUs, and it's the most advanced upscaling tech available for gamers.

It's made up of a few different parts, and GPU compatibility varies.

Enhanced Frame Generation is offered on RTX 40- and 50-series GPUs, while older NVIDIA hardware gets access to Ray Reconstruction, Super Resolution, and Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing (DLAA).

The major addition to DLSS 4, known as Multi Frame Generation (MFG), is exclusive to the latest "Blackwell" GPUs, including the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti, due to their advanced AI Tensor cores.

As the name implies, MFG is capable of generating multiple frames rather than just one, significantly boosting frame rates.

MFG has three modes: 2X (one extra frame is generated), 3X (two extra frames), and 4X (three extra frames). There are currently more than 75 games compatible with MFG, with more on the way.

Because of DLSS 4's reliance on Tensor cores, the RTX 5070 Ti naturally has an advantage with its 280 count (the 5070 has 192).

That equates to about 1,406 TOPS of AI power in the 5070 Ti compared to about 988 TOPS in the standard 5070.

Bottom line? The RTX 5070 Ti will better handle DLSS 4 features, but that doesn't mean the RTX 5070 won't get a solid boost as well.

I still wouldn't buy an RTX 5070 for 4K gaming, but MFG will be able to boost those 1080p and 1440p numbers I laid out above in compatible titles.

NVIDIA RTX 5070 vs. RTX 5070 Ti: Which should you buy?

Choosing between the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti might be easy if you just want to spend the least possible.

The RTX 5070, coming in at roughly $150 less than its Ti sibling, can handle 1080p and 1440p, especially when you add NVIDIA's DLSS 4.

However, the RTX 5070 Ti should be the right choice for anyone who wants a more impressive 1440p experience and the ability to jump up to 4K without sacrificing too many frames

It's roughly $150 more expensive than the 5070, but the added cost for the "Ti" badge isn't for nothing.

👉 Related: Where to buy AMD Radeon RX 9000 GPUs

You can, of course, completely skip NVIDIA's midrange cards and instead check out AMD's Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT competition.

RX 9000 reviews have been quite positive, thanks to a combination of competitive pricing and performance.

The world of PC building is full of esoteric terms, and attempting to navigate brands, models, technologies, and generations can be difficult.

One question I often hear involves NVIDIA graphics cards, or more specifically, the "Ti" and "Super" models.

So what does "Ti" mean in relation to NVIDIA's GeForce RTX GPUs? How does it compare to AMD's own "XT" and "XTX" variants? And which versions are best to buy?

Here's what you need to know before buying your next graphics card.

What does "Ti" mean in NVIDIA GPUs?

The answer to this question isn't too complex.

As you've likely noticed if you're reading this, some of NVIDIA's graphics cards have a "Ti" moniker next to the main number.

In this case, "Ti" stands for "Titanium." No, the cards aren't made of titanium; it's simply a way for NVIDIA to differentiate between models from the same card series.

For example, the latest NVIDIA RTX 5000 cards include the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti. The latter card with the extra "Ti" at the end is the more powerful GPU.

How much one of NVIDIA's Ti GPUs differs from a non-Ti GPU isn't a set number. It's better to view the Ti models as roughly a halfway point between numbered versions.

With the RTX 5070 as a baseline, the RTX 5070 Ti sits somewhere between it and the RTX 5080 we reviewed.

The same applies to older NVIDIA generations. The RTX 4060 is less powerful than the RTX 4060 Ti, and the RTX 3080 is less powerful than the RTX 3080 Ti.

What about NVIDIA's Super GPUs?

To further confuse things, NVIDIA also adds a "Super" moniker to some of its GPUs. It can come with or without the Ti branding.

NVIDIA's Super branding further expands the portfolio while keeping tabs on expected performance.

Here's how the performance tiers shake out when looking at something like the RTX 4070:

• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070: Baseline 70-class performance.
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Super: 70-class performance somewhere between standard and Ti versions.
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti: 70-class performance beyond the Super cards.
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super: The best 70-class performance available.

RTX Ti Super cards are the rarest form of NVIDIA's GPUs from previous generations, and so far there aren't any Super versions for the new "Blackwell" generation.

Does AMD offer Ti versions of its Radeon GPUs?

AMD has a similar naming scheme for its Radeon GPUs as compared to NVIDIA, though it doesn't use "Ti" in its product lineup.

Instead, AMD has "XT" and "XTX" versions of its GPUs to denote higher performance levels.

For example, the new Radeon RX 9000 GPUs recently launched with the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT. The 9070 XT is, of course, the more powerful GPU.

You'll also see "XTX" next to some of AMD's older GPUs. The RX 7900 XTX, for example, is another tier above the RX 7900 XT.

As is the case with NVIDIA, this leaves AMD with room to expand its lineup throughout a GPU generation's lifetime.

👉 Related: Where to buy AMD Radeon RX 9000 GPUs

Which NVIDIA GPUs are best?

Recommending one version of NVIDIA's GPUs for everyone doesn't work. Some might get more than enough power from a standard GPU, while others will want the Ti or Super versions.

For best results, I recommend you first decide on which class of NVIDIA GPU fits your budget and your current (or planned) PC build.

For example, NVIDIA's 90-class GPUs — like the RTX 4090 or RTX 5090 — are the most expensive options and are generally not recommended for the average gamer.

NVIDIA's 80-class GPUs are usually the preferred option for 4K PC gaming enthusiasts, with the 70-class cards coming in close behind. The 60-class is the most affordable.

👉 Related: Where to buy NVIDIA RTX 5000 GPUs

Focusing on the RTX 4070 cards as the example, you technically have four options from which to choose based on your needs.

Generally speaking, the RTX 4070 is best reserved for 1440p gaming, while the RTX 4070 Ti Super is much better suited for 4K gaming.

In the above graphs I pulled from our NVIDIA RTX 4070 Super review, you can see the performance differences between the RTX 4070, 4070 Super, and 4070 Ti. Consider the 4070 Ti Super above those three options.

Pricing will also play a huge role in your final decision. With NVIDIA's MSRP out the window, the best card for you might just be the one that's in your price range.

Pre-built desktop PCs with the RTX 5070 Ti GPU inside might be your best way to get the new hardware. NVIDIA's mid-range 5070 Ti launched on February 20 at 9 AM EST, and, as expected, individual cards sold out almost immediately. It's the same situation I saw with the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 launch, with limited availability and scalpers sucking up a lot of the hardware that did make it to retail outlets.

You're not alone if you didn't manage to snag a standalone RTX 5070 Ti on launch day (or the days following), and I have an alternate solution. Pre-built gaming PCs might not be exactly what you were looking for, but they generally stay in stock longer and offer a better chance of getting the new GPU sooner rather than later.

I found some pre-built RTX 5070 Ti PCs worth sharing on launch day, and I'll keep the list updated as more options become available.

Best RTX 5070 Ti pre-built PCs

Most of these pre-built PCs launched alongside the standalone RTX 5070 Ti GPUs, but some are still listed as "Coming soon." I've been sure to note availability for each PC, and you can click through to check it out even if it's not yet ready to sell.

If you managed to purchase an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 or RTX 5080, which is easier said than done, it's time to install the latest driver from NVIDIA. The Game Ready Driver will help deliver the best gaming experience for multiple titles and also adds support for several new features. DLSS 4, DLSS 4 Overrides, an improved NVIDIA Broadcast, and NVIDIA Smooth Motion all ship with the latest driver from NVIDIA. DLSS 4 with multi frame generation works with Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Hogwarts Legacy, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Star Wars Outlaws following once you install this driver.

Even if you don't care about those specific features or games, you need to install the driver, since it is mandatory for an RTX 5090 or RTX 5080 to work.

Unlike the graphics cards that are very difficult to find in stock, the new NVIDIA driver is easy to locate. You can download the new Game Ready Driver from the NVIDIA app or through GeForce.com.

NVIDIA shared a quick rundown of what ships with the latest driver, including its links to find out more about several features.

• DLSS 4: New AI innovations further enhance image quality, and accelerate performance. And DLSS Multi Frame Generation, in conjunction with the suite of other DLSS technologies, multiplies frame rates by up to 8X on GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs
• DLSS 4 Overrides: Upgrade over 75 games and apps to DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation using a new NVIDIA app feature
• NVIDIA App: RTX Video Super Resolution optimizations and enhancements, new multiple display settings, Advanced Optimus support, and more are introduced in a new NVIDIA app update
• NVIDIA Broadcast: Update the popular app now to add two new AI-powered effects
• RTX Game Updates: Get Game Ready for DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, Ray Reconstruction, RTX Mega Geometry, RTX Hair, and Neural Radiance Cache, in new updates for Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Hogwarts Legacy, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle™, and Star Wars™ Outlaws
• NVIDIA Smooth Motion: A new driver-based AI model delivers smoother gameplay by inferring an additional frame between two rendered frames on GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs
• New Games: Get Game Ready for the release of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II and Marvel's Spider-Man 2, two new titles featuring DLSS technologies
• New G-SYNC Compatible Displays: Another 19 gaming displays are now supported

Is an RTX 5090 or RTX 5080 worth it?

Establishing the worth of a graphics card is always a bit difficult since ultimately it comes down to a person's budget and what they value. The RTX 5090 is the best consumer graphics card on the market. It's more compact than the previous generation, supports new features like DLSS 4 with multi frame generation, and has other improvements such as a power cable that's less prone to melting. The card also has a, quite frankly, ridiculous 575W power draw that requires a 600W cable and a 1000W+ power supply unit. The RTX 5090 is overkill for most people as well, since few systems will push the GPU's limits.

"While NVIDIA's admirable efforts to redesign and slim down its flagship GeForce RTX graphics card have paid off with a performance bump comparable to its MSRP, it's still practically impossible to recommend the RTX 5090 FE to any levelheaded PC gamer," said Ben Wilson in our RTX 5090 review. "Sure, it's technically the best in its category; this stands as the world's best consumer GPU, but the RTX 5080 remains a more sensible high-end pick for anyone who isn't in a professional field working with AI."

The RTX 5080 is easier to recommend, assuming you have a budget of around $1,000 for a graphics card. "In a pure numbers game, the RTX 5080 Founders Edition comes out as the new king of the hill for sane gamers, offering a reasonable high-end without needing to spring for the absurd $1,999 MSRP of an RTX 5090 FE," said Wilson in our RTX 5080 review.

The RTX 5080 is slimmer and lighter than previous generations and supports new tech like DLSS with multi frame generation. If you take advantage of all the features available to the RTX 5080, you should be able to enjoy smooth gameplay at 4K for the best PC games. The only caveat I'd add is that if you already have an RTX 4080 SUPER or RTX 4090, it's likely not worth the upgrade to the RTX 5080.

Where to buy NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080

With many gadgets, I'd just place a block and share some links to help you make a purchase. Unfortunately, buying an RTX 5090 or RTX 5080 is more complicated than that. The launch of the new cards has been called "the worst when it comes to availability." Wait times are expected to be at least three months for most people. I've seen some go as far as to call the release of the cards a "paper launch," though that term does not have a firm definition. Regardless, if you're reading this in the first quarter of 2025, you probably do not have an RTX 5090 or RTX 5080.

If you do want to buy one of the new cards, your best bet may be to purchase a pre-built PC with an RTX 5090 or RTX 5080. We also have a piece that breaks down where you'll be able to buy an RTX 5090 or RTX 5080 when there is stock.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 GPUs from the new "Blackwell" era launched on January 30, and, as predicted, they sold out everywhere immediately. Worse, it could be weeks or months before stock returns to any level, never mind stable. You're not completely out of luck, and I'm not talking about caving in to scalpers and their unrealistic prices.

I completely understand the appeal of these GPUs, especially if you're coming from hardware that's more than a few years old. Those who didn't manage to land a new GPU on launch day might not be able to wait any longer, which is why I've put together this list of pre-built gaming PCs featuring the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080.

I'll keep the listings updated regularly, as I don't doubt that there will be more RTX 5000 pre-built gaming PCs coming to market in the near future. Also, be sure to check out our live blog on where to buy RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 for a lot more information.

Best pre-built gaming PCs with RTX 5090 and RTX 5080

A lot of these pre-built PCs are set to go on sale on January 30, and I'm not expecting to see stock last long. Nevertheless, I'm leaving the links up so you can check in as many times as you want. More options will undoubtedly filter out in the coming days, and I'll keep this list updated. I've noted which GPU is inside each PC to help you shop.

Get your money ready — NVIDIA launched the flagship GeForce RTX 5090 and the sibling GeForce RTX 5080 earlier today at 9 AM ET / 3 PM CET, and finding where to buy these elusive GPUs is proving tricky. I'm here to help you buy the new "Blackwell" cards, but I'm warning you that it won't be easy as the initial stock sold out in minutes, and there continues to be a short supply.

NVIDIA's new GPUs have received a lot of attention since they were announced at CES, and not all of it has been positive. Evidence continues to pile up regarding stock shortages, to the point where some retailers only have single-digit stock. While the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 might not be as tempting for those already on a 40-series card — especially with the $1,999 and $999 Founders Edition MSRPs — demand will be high from any enthusiasts looking to upgrade an older GPU.

I've been keeping a close eye on stock listings in the week leading up to launch, and I've found the best retailers with NVIDIA RTX 5000 GPUs listed and ready to go.

My colleagues and I are here for launch day to provide live prices, ongoing availability, and any other pertinent news that can help you land a new RTX 5090 or RTX 5080 on launch day.

Where to buy RTX 5090 in US: Quick links

• NVIDIA Store: Still listed as "Coming Soon."
• Newegg: Best for ASUS, MSI, ZOTAC, and more
• Best Buy: Founders Edition listed, others "coming soon"
• B&H: ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, etc., available on launch day
• Amazon: A mix of custom cards on launch day

Where to buy RTX 5090 in UK: Quick links

• NVIDIA Store: Best for Founders Edition RTX 5090
• Newegg: So far, no UK listings, but check closer to launch
• Overclockers UK: A mix of RTX 5090 custom cards
• Scan: More RTX 5090 custom cards have listings
• Ebuyer: RTX 5090 listings from ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI
• Amazon: No listings yet, but expect some closer to launch

Fans of NVIDIA's Founders Edition cards — the hardware that board partners tweak and build on to create their own versions — should have the best luck on launch day by shopping at NVIDIA's official website in the US and UK or Best Buy for US shoppers.

A limited supply means you might have the most competition in this area. If you don't manage to snag an FE version of the RTX 5090, there are plenty of custom cards also launching on January 30. Availability will differ depending on the retailer. I've been sure to note which retailers have third-party cards, as well as which brands are on offer.

Where to buy RTX 5080 in US: Quick links

• NVIDIA Store: RTX 5080 Founders Edition on launch day
• Newegg: An assortment from ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte
• Best Buy: RTX 5080 Founders Edition listed
• B&H: RTX 5080 cards from ASUS, Gigabyte, and PNY
• Amazon: Expect RTX 5080 custom cards

Where to buy RTX 5080 in UK: Quick links

• NVIDIA Store: Founders Edition RTX 5080 at launch
• Newegg: No listings yet, but expect custom cards
• Overclockers UK: Custom cards from partners listed
• Scan: Cards from ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, PNY, ZOTAC, and more
• Ebuyer: Cards from ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, PNY listed
• Amazon: No RTX 5080 listings yet, but expect some at launch

As with the RTX 5090, the RTX 5080 is launching with a Founders Edition available at NVIDIA's store as well as at certain third-party retailers.

You can also expect some custom RTX 5080 cards available at third-party retailers. I've included them here, along with the listed brands. I start with US retailers before laying out the UK retailers stocking the RTX 5080.

What to expect at NVIDIA's RTX 50 Series launch

NVIDIA's RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 are both launching on January 30, 2025. If you're hoping to land one of the new GPUs as soon as possible, prepare to temper your expectations. As I wrote in a separate news piece, RTX 5000 stock shortages are rumored to be serious.

In fact, some insiders from system integrators and major retailers are claiming that it'll be the worst-ever launch for NVIDIA GPU availability. Overclockers UK, for example, apparently has only single-digit stock of the RTX 5090, with the RTX 5080 sitting in the hundreds. It's not looking much better in the US, with as few as four (4) RTX 5080s stocked in some stores.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 retailers (US)

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 retailers (UK)

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 retailers (US)

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 retailers (UK)