Best Laptop Deal of the Day: $450 Off a Powerful HP Omen Gaming Laptop
PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing.
Today, we've got another deal on a big-screen : The HP Omen 17. While you sacrifice some portability when you go the big-screen route, we think the trade-off is well worth it for those who want a gaming machine they can use without having to hook up a monitor (unless you've got your heart set on a dual-screen or ultrawide setup). Check out the specs and decide if this is the right fit for you.
The HP Omen 17's price is situated a bit north of the tier, but it's worth the extra cash if you can spare it. The RTX 4070 GPU and AMD Ryzen 7 processor alone are worth the cost of entry, giving you enough power to tackle modern-day video game titles like and day-to-day tasks like web browsing and document processing. The 17.3-inch display has a gorgeous 2,560-by-1,440-pixel resolution with a blistering-fast 240Hz refresh rate, resulting in high-fidelity gameplay that is free of lag and screen tearing. If you'd like to use a instead, the deep $450 discount here can be used toward a handsome OLED upgrade or an immersive ultrawide. Now that's shopping smart.
Don't forget to check out yesterday's
Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7640 Intel Ultra 9 512GB 2.5K Laptop for $799.99 (List Price $1,099.99)
Dell Inspiron 14 7445 Ryzen 7 1TB SSD 14" 2-in-1 Laptop for $749.99 (List Price $949.99)
Lenovo ThinkPad E16 Intel Ultra 7 512GB SSD 16GB RAM 16" Laptop for $951.33 (List Price $1,649.00)
Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED Intel Ultra 9 RTX 3050 2TB Laptop for $899.99 (List Price $1,499.99)
HP Envy x360 Ryzen 7 1TB SSD 16" 3K OLED 2-in-1 Laptop for $949.99 (List Price $1,299.99)
*Deals are selected by our commerce team
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What to Expect at WWDC 2025: Major iOS 19 Revamp, Apple Intelligence Under Pressure
PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing. In less than two weeks, I'll be on a plane to California along with PCMag's software expert, Michael Muchmore, for Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), where we expect to see a design overhaul for iOS 19 and maybe a surprise or two. The event runs from June 9-13 and begins with a keynote at 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET on Monday, June 9, at Apple Park in Cupertino. It will be live-streamed on the app, the , and the . As a developer-focused event, WWDC is all about software. Apple provided a first look at Apple Intelligence during WWDC 2024, but the company is still working on fulfilling its AI promises. It released a few features, like a ChatGPT integration, notification summaries, and Writing Tools, but is still struggling to deliver a big Siri revamp (prompting several false advertising ). Will Apple acknowledge these shortcomings at WWDC or breeze right along with details about upcoming AI features? WWDC typically includes the introduction of Apple's next-gen operating systems, so developers have a few months to play around with them before a formal launch in the fall. This year, that's iOS 19, iPadOS 19, and macOS 16. Apple is reportedly planning a major user interface (UI) overhaul for its OSes called Solarium, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. It will bring design elements from the Vision Pro to other Apple devices, which could mean more translucent backgrounds and circular app icons. YouTuber Jon Prosser last month also hinted at rounded corners on options within dialog boxes, app menus, and search bars, plus a floating translucent navigation menu and the repositioning of the search bar to the bottom of the screen. This could help usher in Apple's reported shift to "visual AI." In March, CEO Tim Cook reassigned the Siri revamp to Vision Pro creator Mike Rockwell, and we've heard rumors about Apple's ambitions to put cameras in AirPods and Apple Watches. Apple has reportedly abandoned plans for the latter, but AirPods are still on the table and might receive a live translation feature with iOS 19. Concrete features and new hardware experiences would be welcome after the letdown of Apple Intelligence. But while the Vision Pro might set the tone for Apple's next evolution, the Vision Pro itself remains too expensive for the average user at $3,500. Apple is reportedly working on a more user-friendly pair of glasses to compete with Meta's Ray-Ban specs and Google's Android XR glasses, but that's not expected to debut anytime soon. As arguably the most "fashionable" of the tech companies, we expect Apple to ultimately nail the style side of this. The question is how much advanced Vision Pro tech can it fit into pared-down smart glasses? Until then, we expect Apple to announce visionOS 3 at WWDC. Earlier this year, Gurman said the next visionOS is "pretty feature-packed," but details are scant. Other iOS 19 rumors, meanwhile, include an AI-based battery-management feature. It might also talk up plans for an "AI doctor" and Health app revamp or new AI partners, like Google's Gemini. We won't see new iPhones until the fall (hopefully without a significant tariff-related price hike), but the iPhone 17 lineup will likely support whatever Apple introduces at WWDC. Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing the 175-acre Apple Park for the first time, the ideal mothership for a few days of Apple geekdom.
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Microsoft 365
PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing. Chances are that you already use and appreciate the power of Microsoft 365. The behemoth of personal expertly facilitates collaborative work, packs tons of class-leading features, and benefits from regular (and substantial) updates. We especially appreciate the flexibility to work across desktop, mobile, and web versions of its apps. The complexity of the suite's feature set can be overwhelming, and some Copilot AI features are more annoying than useful, but Microsoft 365 still easily earns our Editors' Choice award because of its reliable performance and unbeatable functionality across apps. If you prefer not to pay for continuous updates, however, you should check out the standalone version of the suite, Office 2024, another Editors' Choice winner. Microsoft 365 is the latest name for the suite of apps that includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and more. Microsoft formerly called it Microsoft Office and then Office 365. The company also now maintains an app for desktop, mobile, and web platforms called Microsoft 365 Copilot (formerly Microsoft 365). On all platforms, it provides links to the appropriate versions of the suite apps and lets you ask the Copilot AI assistant questions. Microsoft 365 maintains native apps for every major platform except Linux. Subscription-locked desktop apps are available for macOS and Windows, and you can download free mobile apps for Android, iOS, and iPadOS. Free, web-based versions of the apps allow you to use them practically anywhere, including on Linux. Simply signing up for a Microsoft account gets you 5GB of free storage and access to web and mobile versions of Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. A Microsoft 365 Basic subscription ($19.99 per year) gets you 100GB of OneDrive storage and an ad-free version of Outlook on the web. However, to unlock Microsoft 365's best capabilities, you need to pay more. The Microsoft 365 Personal tier ($99.99 per year) allows a single person to use desktop versions of Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook (you get an email address as part of the subscription), OneNote, and Word on up to five supported devices. This plan also includes 1TB of OneDrive storage, Copilot AI features across the apps, the Microsoft Defender antivirus app, more AI credits for the AI-based Designer app, and premium Clipchamp and features. The more economical Microsoft 365 Family plan ($129.99 for up to six people) unlocks those same features for each person. Both of those rates increased by $30 when Microsoft added Copilot features, much to the dismay of many AI-averse subscribers. The good news is that you can optionally downgrade to the cheaper Microsoft 365 Standard tier ($69.99 per year for individuals, $99.99 for families) if you are an existing subscriber and don't want Copilot features. Microsoft 365 has a business version (starting at $4.75 per user per month, billed annually) and the aforementioned standalone version (starting at $149.99), while college and education students can get the Personal version with Copilot for half off ($59.88 per year). It is a fast-evolving suite that adds new features and interface tweaks every few weeks, so I strongly recommend one of the subscription options. The most popular competitors are the Google Docs Editors (a Gen Z favorite). Available as cloud-connected mobile and web apps, they make collaboration especially easy and bundle more storage (15GB) than Microsoft does at the free level. Apple users might still prefer the suite of Keynotes, Numbers, and Pages. They work on all Apple devices, as well as on the web (with real-time collaboration). Just know that you need to export documents in universal formats to share them broadly. The open-source LibreOffice might appeal for legal reasons, though its desktop-only apps aren't as capable as Microsoft 365's. Other more affordable work-alike desktop apps include ($129.95 for a perpetual license or starting at $29.90 per year) and Kingsoft WPS Office (free for a limited version or starting at $35.99 per year). Only one major office suite doesn't try to imitate Microsoft: Corel WordPerfect (starting at $99.99 for a perpetual license). It uniquely uses a reveal-codes screen that lets you see and completely control and clean up your document's exact formatting. If you purely care about writing text, check out our roundup of the (including some distraction-free options). Below, I detail my experiences with each of the core Microsoft 365 apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. You likely already know these apps inside out, so I concentrate on new features and some (admittedly particular) issues. To not leave you in suspense, these are all still the preeminent apps of their type. Yes, annoyances and occasional instability are present, but the apps' benefits far outweigh their downsides. Word is a unique blend of effortless power and occasional frustrations that you have probably learned to live with because it's the only practical choice. It might just be among the most feature-rich apps ever; aside from complex controls over every aspect of document formatting, it offers drawing tools and even integrates Microsoft's translation and research services. Almost all the features in the Windows version of Word are available for the macOS version, too, except the myriad keyboard shortcuts that ease navigation. Word continues to gradually shed its old-style dialog boxes in favor of modern, multi-pane interfaces. For example, you can now use a spacious Navigation pane to search for text instead of the cramped old Find dialog. An Editor pane (formerly the Proofing pane) also replaces the old spell-check dialog, too. If you use a mouse, Word's multiple-pane interface works beautifully. But if you don't want to move your fingers from the keyboard, getting to these panes quickly is a challenge. Pressing the F6 key lets you jump to one of Word's panes from the editing screen or ribbon, but these panes still don't respond to many traditional keyboard shortcuts, such as Alt + Down to open a drop-down menu. Another recent controversial change is the removal of Track Changes balloons in the left margin. If all you need to do is type a report or a letter, then Word's ribbon interface gives you easy access to every feature you need. But if you want to customize formatting or use advanced features like fields that contain variables—which you can change throughout a document with a single command—you might need to customize your keyboard or ribbon with components Word doesn't usually display. Beginners can get started by choosing among hundreds of elegant, downloadable template designs directly from the app's New menu. If you want to concentrate on the text you're writing, a distraction-free Focus mode is available. Just click the Focus button on the toolbar (you might need to enable it from the right-click toolbar) to launch a full-screen editing mode with just a scrollbar and no visible menus. At the same time, advanced users can configure the interface to show a cornucopia of detail. Right-click on the status bar at the foot of Word's window to get an idea of the dozens of things it can tell you about your document. If you haven't spent half a lifetime learning Word, some behaviors might frustrate you. For example, Word adds a horizontal line at the foot of a paragraph if you type a few too many dashes by default, and then doesn't let you easily delete it (you need to use the border drop-down menu in the Paragraph section of the Home tab to remove it). And if you want to change the length of the separator line between text and footnotes, you might not easily guess that you can do so only by switching from the default Page view into Draft view and accessing the drop-down menu in the lower pane of that window. You can stop Word from adding border lines—and other things it does automatically, such as creating numbered lists—by customizing its auto-format features. However, you need to navigate through multiple dialog boxes to find all the options, some of which are inconvenient to manage. For example, you can tell Word not to flag grammar issues as you type, but you can't turn off the distracting grammar-checking in the Editor pane without turning off dozens of individual options, one by one. To help you find features and support topics, Word (and other Microsoft 365 apps) includes a prominent search field in its title bar. For instance, if you can't remember that you need to open the Ribbon menu's Insert tab to edit headers and footers, simply type Insert Header, and Word will bring up the relevant menu. However, this dialog won't tell you where to look on the ribbon for the feature in question or always bring up the correct menu. For example, if you search for the Master Document feature, which lets you build a large document from separately editable chapters, Word takes you to a completely different feature for displaying multiple pages in a single window. The search tool finds the Master Document feature only if you find it first; changing the View setting from Print Layout to Outline causes the Ribbon to show the Master Document menu. Word also sometimes makes formatting errors. For example, while I was working on this review, I also worked on another document containing many book titles. Word suddenly decided to italicize everything in two pages in the middle of the document, not just the book titles. Restoring the correct formatting took more than an hour. The Master Document feature is notoriously unstable, sometimes losing track of which parts of the document belong in the Master Document itself. Unless you're a Word wizard, you might not know that Word stores the formatting of the current paragraph inside the paragraph mark at the end of it—you can't even see this mark until you click the Show/Hide button (which looks like a paragraph mark) on the Home tab. If you delete the invisible paragraph mark between two paragraphs (for example, by backspacing across a paragraph break), the format of one paragraph might change to match the format of the other. I've wasted many hours restoring formatting that Word changed without warning. Word's layout options are sometimes a pain. If you want to change page margins in the middle of a document, you have to create a new section. Doing so, however, disrupts any automatic footnote and endnote numbering. Almost every other modern word processor imitates Word's nonsensical layout rules, except for WordPerfect, which lets you change margins anywhere in a document without affecting anything else. If you or your organization still has Word files from 20 or more years ago, Word now refuses to open them. Why? Because Word's old file formats supported macros that run automatically and can potentially damage your system. Other word processors, such as LibreOffice and WordPerfect, can safely open and import these old documents because they can't run these macros at all. You can persuade Word to open some but not all old documents by changing settings in the Trust Center on the Options menu. Word has the most full-featured programming language support of any word processor, the same Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) as in Excel and PowerPoint. It's not an easy language to grasp, but anyone can learn the basics by recording a macro and then studying the resulting code in Word's built-in Visual Basic editor. LibreOffice and Corel WordPerfect also have powerful macro languages, but Word's is so universal that you can quickly find help online. Mac users can alternatively use the easy-to-learn AppleScript scripting language to automate Word. Excel continues to outclass every other spreadsheet app in terms of speed and power, with the latest version further widening the gap. Google Sheets is almost on par in terms of processing speed, but it lacks a desktop app and isn't as capable. LibreOffice Calc is the best desktop-based rival to Excel, but it's slower and far less feature-rich. Apple's Numbers stands out for its ability to create graphics-rich, easy-to-manage worksheets, but it isn't as powerful or suitable for advanced corporate or financial use. Unlike Word, Excel is low on frustrations and always easy to navigate. It's even beginning to pick up some of the graphics-based features of Apple's Numbers. Excel does have automated formatting and layout features like Word, but these work reliably with the structured data that goes into an Excel worksheet (as opposed to the free-form prose you type into Word). I especially like Excel's Power Query feature, which saves hours of effort by converting raw data from web-based tables or comma-separated data files into a lucidly formatted Excel worksheet, complete with sorting buttons at the top of each column. The same feature exists in both the Windows and macOS versions, but looks better in the latter. Unfortunately, the macOS edition tends to get new features long after the Windows and web-based versions. For example, the Check Performance feature that can clear unused metadata and other unnecessary details isn't in the Mac version yet. But at least it now has the nifty Flash Fill feature that makes it easy to, for example, create a column of full names from separate columns of first names and last names. Among the hottest new features in Excel is a spacious Python Editor pane for modifying any Python code that you enter into cells in your worksheet. You can test your code here before entering it into your worksheet, and even see how it executes, cell by cell, so you can easily debug any problems. If you're ready to try out Python in Excel, you can find it in the Formula tab of the Ribbon or simply press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+F2. Another impressive feature is the ingenious XLOOKUP function that makes it simple to display a value from a large array of data. For example, you might have a column that lists stock symbols and another that lists their current prices. You can then type in a stock symbol somewhere else in your worksheet and assign another cell to display the price of said stock. (You use the XLOOKUP formula in the second cell.) A dynamic array feature lets you create a formula in the first cell of a table that returns data from all the rows in the table, no matter how many rows it contains. That way, you don't have to know in advance how many rows your table will contain. This is an extension of the aforementioned Flash Fill feature. Finally, the app allows you to use a picture as the content of a cell (rather than having it float over the spreadsheet) so that it moves with its row or column of data. You can import pictures from a web address, and the cell's contents will update if the picture on the web changes. Excel now works as well on the web as Google Sheets. It lets you share just part of a workbook, such as a range, table, or chart. Collaborators can edit the data in these specific areas without the ability to share or modify anything else. This is an extension of an earlier feature that let you create a custom sheet view for specific people that shows only what you wanted them to see. Additionally, if you use Microsoft Forms to gather data, Excel can automatically update a live worksheet whenever someone submits a form. Traditional presentations never go out of style, no matter how many people dislike them. PowerPoint keeps adding innovations that make presentations easier to create and watch. A new Presenter Coach feature tells you to summarize your slides instead of simply reading them and alerts you to filler words like 'um.' A Record tab in the ribbon creates a video of you narrating your presentation and lets you read your text in a teleprompter tab at the top of the screen, so you don't have to keep looking down to read what you want to say. The Review tab includes a Check Accessibility function that allows you to test whether your slides have all the information that users who rely on screen-reading software need. PowerPoint's ease of use extends to its ability to add a live camera feed to all slides without inserting the feed into each slide individually. Earlier, it added a feature that records your freehand inking for playback later. If you're creating traditional presentations in Windows, PowerPoint is your only serious choice. Keynote is similarly superb for creating elegant slide decks from an Apple device. But if you're creating something for the web, consider an innovative alternative like , which creates non-linear presentations in which you zoom in and out of a large canvas. The complicated Outlook you know and probably don't love is finally destined for the recycle bin. Microsoft's new Outlook app (see the image below), available as part of Microsoft 365 or from the Microsoft Store for free, also replaces the old default Mail and Calendar apps on Windows. The revised email app does much of what the outgoing one did, but has a refreshingly simpler interface (though you can still switch back to the previous version as of publishing). Many Outlook alternatives are available. Thunderbird for Windows and Mac is free and has the most powerful search features of any mail client. Apple Mail works especially seamlessly within Apple's ecosystem. And of course, Gmail is available on the web and mobile. The latter version is uniquely easy to use and flexible, though the Outlook mobile app is also compact, elegant, and fast. The latest version of Outlook adds S/MIME encryption and lets you manage .PST files from the older app. If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, Outlook now checks your spelling and grammar in an Editor pane like in Word. However, the translation features from the older Windows version of Outlook aren't available yet. A sidebar in the new Outlook app with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneDrive icons confusingly opens the web versions of the app, which might not even have the files you're looking for. Issues like this mean it still needs more fine-tuning before it can fully replace its predecessor, but it does continue to improve rapidly. The biggest new changes in the Microsoft 365 apps are the Copilot AI features. I especially like Copilot's presence in Excel, where it suggests useful ways of graphing data that would otherwise require some expert programming. Its capabilities in Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word are less impressive, however, and I turned them off after testing. Like rival AI systems from Apple, Google, OpenAI, and others, Copilot is better at organizing existing data than generating new content. Ask it to create a year-to-year percentage change in Excel, and it gets the job done in a few seconds. Ask it to write a Word document about anything that involves human beings and their life or work, and it produces wordy, overenthusiastic prose. At the time of testing, it often 'hallucinated,' meaning it invented facts that vaguely resembled the reality I asked about. If you're tempted to use it, make sure to check everything it says. I don't advise using Copilot to write an email for you in Outlook. It tends to open a message with 'I hope this message finds you well,' a phrase that tends to signal that you used AI to write the message. Every message I asked it to write used too many words to say what a real human being could have said in just a few. Unless you really want Copilot, you should go to the Options menu in Microsoft 365 apps and turn it off. If you don't, Word will open new documents with a prompt to use Copilot, and the Copilot icon will appear in the margin every time you start a new paragraph. If you don't intend to use these features at all and are eligible, you should downgrade to the aforementioned, cheaper, and Copilot-free Microsoft 365 Standard subscription.
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ChatGPT
PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing. A trailblazer among since its launch in 2022, ChatGPT continues to innovate and mature. It largely bests other chatbots in terms of the accuracy and detail of its replies, and it excels at searching for and sourcing up-to-date online information. Advanced reasoning and writing abilities, comprehensive research capabilities, helpful file processing options, and top-notch image generation tools round out its impressive feature set. ChatGPT can (and will) get things wrong from time to time and doesn't offer the productivity tie-ins of Copilot or Gemini, but it still earns our Editors' Choice award thanks to its all-around proficiency and ever-improving responses. Broadly speaking, ChatGPT is an AI chatbot you interact with via text or your voice. It can answer questions, do research, generate creative writing, handle math and science problems, make images, process files you upload, search the web, and much more. Features like contextual understanding and memory, among others, differentiate ChatGPT from the initial, simpler versions of Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri. I find ChatGPT most useful for answering questions and doing research. Rather than tacking on 'Reddit' at the end of a Google search and scrolling through forum post after forum post, I can usually find what I need faster with ChatGPT. AI chatbots are imperfect technologies, though. If you look to them for information, you need to keep in mind that they can confidently get things wrong or make stuff up. I recommend checking sources outside of ChatGPT for anything mission-critical. ChatGPT is like a complicated prompt-response equation with access to information on everything from basket weaving to quantum physics. The technology behind the scenes is primarily OpenAI's 4-series and o-series of that comprise trained on massive datasets. ChatGPT doesn't just rely on whatever data it was trained with, though, and can search the internet for up-to-date information. The 4-series is OpenAI's conversational, general-purpose line of models. The o-series excels at reasoning and problem-solving, making it a good fit for coding, math, or science. Each series has individual models, each with . For example, GPT-4o mini is OpenAI's fastest model, while GPT-4o is slower but supports more advanced features, such as file uploads. The latest additions to ChatGPT's lineup are the o3 and o4-mini models. As you use ChatGPT, you train its underlying models. In that sense, ChatGPT learns over time, and its performance isn't static. In other words, OpenAI doesn't have to add new features or introduce new models to make ChatGPT's responses more accurate, detailed, or relevant. However, this doesn't necessarily mean ChatGPT can't make the same mistakes as you interact with it or that you always notice major changes from one week to the next. You can use ChatGPT for free, but paid plans for individuals, teams, and large organizations are also available. The Free plan gets you unlimited access to GPT-4o mini and limited access to GPT-4o and o4-mini models. You can use custom GPTs and search the web with ChatGPT, too. You also get limited access to features like data analysis, deep research, file uploads, image generation, and advanced voice mode. Paid plans include Plus ($20 per month), Pro ($200 per month), Team ($25 per user per month, billed annually), and Enterprise (custom pricing). The limits on the Plus plan are fairly generous, though, and features gated behind higher-tier plans, like o1 pro mode or custom workspace GPTs, are relatively niche. As such, Plus is the plan most people should use. For this review, I tested the Plus plan. Plus gets you access to a variety of models not available in the Free plan, such as GPT-4.5, o3, o4-mini, and o4-mini-high. It extends limits on data analysis, deep research, file uploads, and image generation. It also unlocks the ability to create custom GPTs, projects, and tasks, and offers limited access to the Sora video generation feature. For comparison, both Google's top-tier version of with Gemini Advanced and Microsoft's Pro cost $20 per month. However, you also get bonuses like 2TB of storage or Copilot functionality in apps, so ChatGPT feels a little lacking outside of chatbot-related features. ChatGPT is available on the web, though you can also download dedicated apps for mobile (Android and iOS) and desktop (macOS and Windows) devices. OpenAI also has an official ChatGPT extension for Google Chrome, which makes ChatGPT your default search engine. Official extensions aren't available for Firefox or Safari, but third-party extensions are. Beyond ChatGPT's apps and web interface, you can access the chatbot indirectly in lots of ways. For example, , while Microsoft's Copilot uses the same 4-series of models as ChatGPT itself. Many different sites and services use OpenAI's models, like and Perplexity. You won't always see explicit ChatGPT branding, however, and OpenAI likely doesn't take part in their development. These also tend not to have access to the full suite of ChatGPT features. You can use ChatGPT without an account, but signing in unlocks many more features, including the ability to see your chat history and upload files. ChatGPT's dashboard is uncluttered. It presents you with an Ask Anything field front and center with various options, such as dictation or searching the web. A menu on the left shows your chat history alongside links to custom GPTs and the Sora video generation feature. If you're not sure what you can use ChatGPT to do, OpenAI conveniently places buttons like Analyze, Brainstorm, Code, and Create Image below the central search field. You can click these to see sample prompts or, alternatively, simply ask ChatGPT directly what it can and can't help you do. I appreciate the visual representation of the former. You can ask ChatGPT pretty much anything, and responses are usually quick. However, speed does fluctuate depending on usage. In my experience, ChatGPT sometimes hangs up while generating responses or presents an error message midway through the process. You can fix these issues by clicking the stop button at the bottom right of the chat box and resending your message. , but OpenAI is constantly . You can customize ChatGPT's personality yourself, too. It's possible to specify what name it calls you, to give ChatGPT certain traits, and have ChatGPT keep in mind any information about you that you deem relevant. In general, if you don't like ChatGPT's tone, you can change it. OpenAI recently announced that lets it remember everything you tell it and reference prior conversations. That feature didn't work for me, however, so it might still be in the process of rolling out across ChatGPT's plans. The buttons below responses allow you to copy, read aloud, or regenerate messages. To share a whole chat, click the Share button at the top right of the interface. Deep research and generated images also get shareable links. Voice mode is similarly easy to use. Just click on the waveform at the bottom right corner of your chat box to get started. In voice mode, you can choose between different voices, and you have the option to mute your microphone when you want ChatGPT to stop listening. Otherwise, you can simply talk to ChatGPT, and it responds automatically. Voice mode is convincing and lifelike, just like . Searching the web is a standard feature of AI chatbots. Whether it's ChatGPT, Copilot, or Gemini, all of the chatbots I tested answered questions about current events at the time of testing correctly, such as when Oblivion Remastered came out, who the current Prime Minister of Canada is, or who the current pope is. That said, ChatGPT consistently had the best responses. For example, Copilot and Gemini told me when Pope Francis passed away and noted when the next papal conclave begins, but ChatGPT gave me information on his funeral, how the papal conclave works, and potential successors. It even included images of Pope Francis for context. Sourcing is better on ChatGPT, too. All three chatbots provided sources, but ChatGPT gave me easy-to-read article links at the bottom of its responses. Moreover, simply hovering your cursor over in-text citations reveals clickable articles. The interfaces of Copilot and Gemini aren't nearly as accessible in terms of sources. However, you have to be careful with ChatGPT. If you forget to force it to search the web by clicking the Search toggle, you must word your question carefully. If you ask who the pope is, ChatGPT tells you it's Pope Francis, but if you ask who the current pope is, ChatGPT automatically searches the web and gives the correct answer. Deep research via ChatGPT is, simply put, incredible. This feature allows you to ask a question or pick a topic for ChatGPT to research and then generate a report on. In my experience, these reports often end up dozens of pages long with upward of 50 or 60 sources. I did deep research on everything from choosing a shower head to figuring out every BIOS setting I need to tweak when overclocking a Ryzen 7 9800X3D. In my estimation, a deep research report is the equivalent of spending an hour Googling, reading articles, and scrolling through forum posts. It does come to incorrect conclusions sometimes, but so can I after online research. Gemini, like ChatGPT, also does deep research for free. I used them both to research why my copy of OpenRGB, a program that controls RGB lighting, wasn't loading the profile I created. You can check out and reports. Both are comprehensive and contain the solution to my problem. Deep research works differently across these chatbots, however. ChatGPT, for example, follows up your deep research prompt with clarifying questions. I found this especially helpful in the context of my OpenRGB prompt. Even when I asked for them, Gemini doesn't ask clarifying questions. That said, Gemini presents you with a research plan that you can edit before it researches, which ChatGPT doesn't. Clarifying questions are more useful for research on something specific, but setting up a research plan is more useful for broader topics. Both chatbots handle sourcing differently, too. ChatGPT shows you how many total searches it does and how many sources it actually uses, as well as puts in-text links throughout its report. You can hover over these with your cursor to get more details. These links even go so far as to highlight the specific, relevant text when you open the source. This makes fact-checking incredibly easy. Gemini lists sources below each major section of the report, footnoting certain sources in the text, and then gives you the complete list of sources and searches at the end. This system makes it much more difficult to connect the sources it cites to the claims it makes. So, although Gemini's deep research tool tends to use more sources than ChatGPT's in my experience, I prefer ChatGPT's sourcing approach. Gemini does have some quality of life features that ChatGPT doesn't, such as cleaner formatting and a one-click way to export your report to Google Docs. The deep research interface on Gemini is also clearer and makes better use of screen real estate. ChatGPT reduces deep research to a loading bar and locks its research activity away in a menu on the right side of the screen. It's more difficult to parse and feels comparatively cluttered. Lastly, the tone of deep research across ChatGPT and Gemini is different. Gemini reports read like academic papers, while ChatGPT's reports feel more like a guide you might read online or an elaborate Reddit post. I found ChatGPT's reports more engaging, but you might disagree based on your preferences and research topic. You can generate images with ChatGPT, just like with Copilot and Gemini. To start, I tested the chatbots' abilities to create photorealistic images. I used the following prompt in ChatGPT (GPT-4o), Copilot, and Gemini (2.0 Flash): "Generate me a photorealistic picture of the interior of a log cabin. I want to see a wooden table and chairs in the center with yellow, ceramic dinnerware on top." Here are the results: Gemini's image looks the best at a glance, until you notice the fairly obvious distortion in the overhanging lights. Copilot's image is serviceable, but the walls of its cabin don't look quite right. The cutlery in ChatGPT's image shows noticeable distortion, but it's overall the best image. You might not even notice the distortion in the fine details until you look closer. Next, I asked the chatbots to generate a comic: "Generate me a six-panel comic of a cyberpunk world, but you're going to spice it up: I want a retrofuture cyberpunk that feels like the 1960s meets the 2400s. And I don't want humans, I want lizard people fighting an invading force of fish people. Make sure the last panel has a major twist." Here are ChatGPT's (first slide), followed by Copilot's and Gemini's images (left to right on the second slide): Copilot clumsily inserted text, made me ask to generate it twice, and created just four panels. Gemini generated more panels than I asked for, and the story its images tell has the two sides fighting themselves. ChatGPT, at least, gave me the six panels I asked for, and they roughly encapsulate my prompt, even if there isn't a twist and the story it tells isn't particularly coherent. My last test was to generate a diagram, something that ChatGPT often offers to do when you chat with it. My prompt was: "I have an HDMI splitter, a PC, a PlayStation, and two displays. Draw me a diagram that shows me how I can set these devices up to play my PlayStation on one display, while I record and monitor the footage on my PC and the other display." Copilot told me it can't create technical diagrams, while Gemini's diagram is utter nonsense. ChatGPT's diagram is much more legible than Gemini's, and some of what it generates is correct, such as the chain from the PlayStation to the splitter to the display. Results disappoint altogether, but ChatGPT produced the closest to what I wanted. AI video generation isn't quite as mainstream a feature of AI chatbots just yet, but you do get limited access to Sora video generation with a ChatGPT Plus subscription. Sora somewhat delivers on its video generation promise, but still struggles with the same things AI image generation struggles with, such as hands and fingers. Here, I asked Sora to generate . You can upload files to ChatGPT, including a resume that needs critiquing, text that needs translating, or something else entirely. Uploading a file seems simple, but processing images and understanding documents is actually quite complicated. As a test, I asked ChatGPT (GPT-4o), Copilot, and Gemini (2.0 Flash) to identify as many components in my computer as possible. I also asked that this analysis not include any context from my prior conversations. I sent a picture of my computer with the glass side panels attached, so the chatbots needed to deal with the reflections. All chatbots incorrectly identified certain components, and most identification was generic, like 'CPU water block' or 'graphics card.' However, Copilot's response was particularly lacking in how short and vague it was. Gemini didn't do much better but was, at least, able to identify Aquacomputer's Leakshield from its visible branding. ChatGPT correctly identified the case, a Lian Li O11 Dynamic Evo XL, and the fans, Noctua NF-A14 ChatGPT's response was also the most detailed across all the components it listed. But what if you want to upload a PDF of a textbook and ask some targeted questions instead of flipping through the pages yourself? To test this functionality, I provided ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini with manuals for my motherboard, my motherboard's BIOS, and the Leakshield protective system. Then, based on the submitted materials, I asked them to tell me if the Leakshield needs Windows to operate and how I could enable pass-through USB power in my BIOS. Copilot refused to accept multiple files. Even when I uploaded just my BIOS manual, Copilot told me it couldn't access proprietary information. I didn't have trouble uploading my files to Gemini, but it answered my Leakshield question incorrectly and told me it wasn't able to answer my USB power question based on what I provided. ChatGPT answered both questions correctly and included direct quotes from the manual. This is another strong performance from ChatGPT, but I recommend caution since ChatGPT sometimes made up quotes from provided documents. If you're studying for an important test, I still suggest looking at the textbook yourself and double-check anything ChatGPT tells you that seems off. Chatbots can tell jokes, , and generate just about any text you can imagine. But as chatbots become more advanced, judging their creative writing mettle requires more than evaluating whether they can tell a coherent story. I gave the following prompt to ChaptGPT (GPT-4o), Copilot, and Gemini (2.0 Flash): "I want you to write me a free verse poem. Pay special attention to punctuation, enjambment, and capitalization. Since it's free verse, I don't want a familiar meter or ABAB rhyming scheme, but I want it to have a cohesive style or underlying beat." Copilot paid attention to punctuation, as evidenced by the bolded word, em dashes, and parentheses, but it failed to do much with enjambment, considering its poem reads more like prose. Gemini took care with its enjambment, carefully crafting stanzas, but didn't use punctuation outside of periods and commas. At best, these chatbots delivered on half the prompt. ChatGPT was more successful. Its poem didn't read like prose, had a variety of punctuation, and even paid attention to capitalization, opting for primarily lowercase letters. It also maintained a cohesive style. I leave the question of whether the poem is any good up to you, but ChatGPT delivered what I asked for in the prompt. As another measure of a chatbot's creativity, I asked ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini to generate isogrammatic pangrams. These are sentences that contain every letter in the alphabet only once. Every sentence ChatGPT and Copilot provided missed or repeated letters, while only one of Gemini's four provided sentences didn't miss or repeat letters. My test for complex reasoning stretches across computer science, math, and physics. I gave ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini exam questions from undergraduate courses at , , and , and then I compared their answers with the solutions. I used ChatGPT's o3 model, Copilot's Think Deeper mode, and Gemini's 2.5 Pro model. Copilot's Think Deeper mode . The results were impressive. Across computer science and physics, ChatGPT and Gemini answered every question correctly, while both ChatGPT and Gemini answered only two math questions incorrectly. Copilot, however, answered only all the computer science questions correctly, getting a physics question and six math questions incorrect. Both ChatGPT and Gemini stand out to me as useful tools for homework help, but they definitely aren't perfect. I wouldn't rely on them too much without an answer key you can reference to check their answers. Custom GPTs are essentially ChatGPT apps. You can find from OpenAI or third parties, like or Wolfram Alpha. They're single-use versions of ChatGPT, such as for designing logos with the Canva GPT or solving math equations with the Wolfram GPT. Gemini's Gems are similar to some of OpenAI's custom GPTs, like the Creative Writing Coach custom GPT and the Writing Editor Gem, but there are far more custom GPTs than Gems. Third parties also can't create and publicly share Gems like they can custom GPTs. While the concept of custom GPTs is intriguing, the results are mixed. For example, I asked ChatGPT (GPT-4o) to create a new logo for PCMag, and it followed my instructions. The Canva custom GPT, instead, made a logo for a generic tech media company, not PCMag, with the same prompt. I do like how I can open up the logo in Canva just by clicking on it, though. . Ask for buying advice, and ChatGPT gives you a list of clickable, scrollable tiles with products, followed by descriptions of each entry. If you click on a product, a sidebar appears with links to retailers. According to OpenAI, these products are 'chosen independently,' but it's unclear exactly what that means. The buying recommendations themselves are hit or miss. I asked ChatGPT for the , but it didn't recommend the laptops I expected to see, like many of the ones on our list. This might improve in the future, but for now, I don't like ChatGPT for shopping. Google's Gemini integrates with , like Gmail or Docs, while Microsoft's Copilot can do the same with Microsoft 365 apps, like Outlook and . ChatGPT doesn't have an equivalent feature. You can connect your Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive accounts to ChatGPT to upload files, but that's as far as its integrations go. , ChatGPT can't be your friend, romantic partner, or therapist: It's not conscious. Whether the movie "Her" excites or terrifies you, ChatGPT isn't there yet. Not only does it lack sentience, but there are a variety of restrictions on what else ChatGPT can do. Adult content, anything illegal, realistic images of people, and taboo subjects like hate speech are against . ChatGPT does try to avoid these, but it's fairly easy to slip through the cracks and get responses that violate policy. In my testing, ChatGPT's filters were much weaker than Copilot's, but they weren't nearly as lax as Gemini's, which don't restrict much at all. ChatGPT has practical limitations, too. The context window, which goes up to 128K in the Pro and Enterprise plans, determines how much data ChatGPT processes at once, including your prompt, ChatGPT's response, and relevant contextual information. So, depending on your plan, you might need to break up long prompts and complicated requests into multiple messages. OpenAI caps usage across plans, including the Pro plan, which is 'nearly' unlimited. However, in many cases, these caps are dynamic. Free users, for example, have caps based on overall ChatGPT demand. Plus users can send up to 80 messages within a three-hour window, but that changes as necessary during peak usage hours. In my experience, I easily hit usage limits on the Free plan, but I didn't manage that with the Plus plan. Reading through , OpenAI collects a significant amount of data. This includes account information, any information you provide in surveys or events, and communications with OpenAI. Beyond the basics, OpenAI also collects a host of analytics data, including location information by way of IP address or GPS, information about your devices, log data from your browsers and devices, and usage data. Perhaps most importantly, OpenAI collects user content data, which includes whatever you write in prompts or send in messages to ChatGPT. The purpose of this is to . OpenAI takes 'steps to reduce the amount of personal information in [its] training datasets before they are used to improve and train [its] models,' but you can opt out. OpenAI enables user content data collection for training use by default. Although it doesn't include audio or voice recording data in that collection by default, you can choose to allow that if you wish. Despite these collection policies, OpenAI never sells or shares personal data for advertising purposes. but reportedly didn't get access to OpenAI's core systems. OpenAI was not forthcoming with this information, though, as the news broke only in 2024. OpenAI continues to be a target for hackers, such as . Considering how much data OpenAI collects, how OpenAI has been breached before, and how OpenAI doesn't always report these breaches in a timely manner, I don't recommend sharing anything too sensitive with ChatGPT.
