Latest news with #LukeLarsen
WIRED
16-05-2025
- WIRED
The Surface Pro 12 Is Not Nearly as Great as It Could Have Been
One of my favorite features of the Surface Pro 11th Edition was the ability to use the keyboard when not physically connected to the device, which was handy in various situations. The Surface Pro 12 loses this feature. The keyboard no longer has a dedicated slot to store the Surface Slim Pen, though it can still magnetize (and wirelessly charge) to the back of the tablet. A few other downgrades to the Surface Pro 12: It has a 1080p front-facing webcam rather than a 1440p webcam, and slower ports. There are only two USB-C ports, and they're USB-C 3.2 instead of USB4. Perhaps the most disappointing feature, however, is the lack of repairability. The Surface Pro 11th Edition made strides in this area, letting you access the internals easily and upgrade the storage via the microSD card slot, even earning an 8/10 iFixit score. The Surface Pro 12 undoes this trend, instead opting for a sealed-up chassis and soldered components. This is likely because it's fanless, but having a microSD slot would have at least helped. Apples and Oranges Photograph: Luke Larsen Maybe it's not fair to only compare the Surface Pro 12 to the larger model. After all, it still compares favorably to the iPad Pro 11-inch, which is significantly more expensive. We should also keep in mind the comparison to the Surface Go 4, which came out in 2023. The cheaper 10.5-inch model seems to be defunct, meaning the Surface Pro 12 takes its place in many ways. While the Surface Go 4 had a much lower starting price, those configurations were quite underpowered, starting with just 8 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage. When you line up the configurations, there's only a $30 difference between the Surface Go 4 and the Surface Pro 12 at launch. Because Microsoft needs to ensure that its Surface devices are Copilot+ PCs, those lower-tier configurations have been cut. There's a lot to like about the device on its own. You won't find a slicker 2-in-1, outside perhaps the iPad Pro 11-inch. The design is impeccable, and the keyboard and touchpad feel great to use. The palm rests are plastic and no longer Alcantara fabric, though they feel comfortable and rigid. Compared to the iPad, it's still quite affordable, even with the additional $70 power supply. But here's what it comes down to: As long as the Surface Pro 11th Edition is sold for $799 at Best Buy or another retailer, you should buy that instead. It has faster performance, a higher-refresh-rate screen, more ports, and a better webcam, and it is far more serviceable. And yes, that one comes with the power supply included. The 12-inch does have it beat in portability, but until we see the pricing situation change, the larger sibling is the one to buy.
WIRED
11-05-2025
- WIRED
Samsung's Odyssey 3D Gaming Monitor Is a Promising Glimpse Into the Return of 3D
The setup is fairly simple, though it requires a few things to get started. First off, you need the Reality Hub app launcher to actually play games in 3D. It's too bad it requires a separate app, but the software at least will scan your game libraries and display any supported games. Beyond that, you'll need to plug in the attached USB-A cable, along with whatever you're using for the display itself. I hooked it up to a gaming laptop, and it worked fine. Photograph: Luke Larsen You'll find the ports on the monitor around the back, which offer the bare minimum, including two HDMI ports, DisplayPort, and two USB-A downstream ports. No headphone jack and no USB-C. On the right of the port array, you'll find the power button, which also serves as the controls for the OSD (on-screen display). The menu is fine, though I was annoyed by how many clicks it took to get to brightness or volume controls. It comes with a pair of 5-watt speakers, which are decent but not anything special. They have 'directional sound,' giving sound effects some added immersion. However, in my test period, the audio was clearer and fuller with the 3D spatial speakers of the Acer monitor. Quality Where It Counts You'll buy this monitor for its 3D capabilities, but in reality, you'll use it in standard 2D far more often. That's why Samsung was smart to ensure it didn't compromise on the quality of the display. While I do hope an OLED is introduced in the future, the Odyssey 3D uses a high-quality 4K IPS panel with a 165-Hz refresh rate to make sure that gaming in 2D is still an enjoyable experience. Color coverage is solid (100 percent sRGB, 83 percent AdobeRGB), and color accuracy is excellent. I measured it at 0.83 with my colorimeter, comparable to OLED panels. In SDR, this is also a brighter panel than most OLEDs, reaching 487 nits of max brightness. It won't be nearly as impressive in HDR, but as it turns out, 3D games aren't supported in HDR anyway. Suffice to say, it's a solid 4K gaming monitor on its own—if only it weren't for the exorbitant price.
WIRED
20-04-2025
- WIRED
The Framework Laptop 13 Proves Upgradable Laptops Are the Future
The Ryzen AI 7 350 is on par with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus or Intel Core Ultra 7 256V, give or take. It's slightly behind in single-core performance, as measured by Cinebench R24, and a half-step ahead in multi-core. These processors aren't known for being a powerhouse. Rather, the focus is all on efficiency. Here's where the AMD chip is solidly in last place. Battery life on the Framework Laptop 13 is improved from prior models, but it's not as long as what you get on a Snapdragon X or Core Ultra Series 2 PC. The light battery test I ran on the Laptop 13 lasted roughly 11 hours, looping a local video at max display brightness. That's eight to 10 hours behind some of the competition, showing how much Intel, Qualcomm, and Apple have raised the bar in the past year. For my typical workload, real-time battery life sank to around 7 and a half hours. That's around the same as on the original Framework Laptop 13 I tested in 2021. If battery life is your main concern, it may be worth waiting to see if Framework introduces an Intel Core Ultra Series 2 Mainboard. Peripheral Woes There are some aspects of the laptop you'll always be stuck with, namely, the chassis. Laptop designs that take full advantage of the more efficient chips in the future should result in thinner laptops without losing performance. We're already seeing this in effect with thinner gaming laptops than ever. Photograph: Luke Larsen But it's also worth noting that some of the other components are somewhat outdated as they are right now. The webcam is a good example. In 2021, when this laptop was first designed, 2-MP webcams at 1080p were a good resolution to expect. Many PCs are moving to 1440p or higher, like the recent M4 MacBook Air. Apple has been upgrading the webcam from 720p in 2020 to 1080p in 2022, and now to 12-MP in 2025. The MacBook Air today costs the same as the MacBook Air from 2020. The lower-resolution screen in the starting configuration is outdated compared to the competition as well. My unit has a higher-resolution 2,880 x 1,920 IPS panel with a 120-Hz refresh rate, which is more than sharp, fast, and color-accurate enough. The matte finish is great for deflecting glare. But that's in a configuration that costs over $1,500. For that price, many laptops offer even sharper OLED panels with significantly higher contrast, and maybe even a touchscreen. The good news is that there's a strong chance Framework will offer newer components to reflect the current standard. The company sells webcam modules, speaker upgrades, and display kits for older machines, and there's no reason to expect there won't be newer versions soon. But those upgrades will cost extra, and once again, you're putting your faith in Framework to deliver. Fortunately, the Framework Laptop 13 is still a great starting place, and it'll be many more years before it feels truly outdated. Today, it's more than just a practical answer to the problem of electronic waste. It's a truly one-of-a-kind laptop.
WIRED
08-04-2025
- WIRED
The Asus ROG Flow Z13 Is a Thin and Cool Portable Gaming PC
It feels even thinner when you're using the device itself. When all you have under your palms is that thin keyboard cover, and you're not seeing how thick the back of the device is, it's kind of magical, especially while gaming. That brings me to another huge advantage of this type of design—the thermals. This thing never got above 70 degrees Celsius internally, even under stress testing in Performance mode. And it stayed fairly quiet. It's especially noticeable when you aren't gaming. The Flow Z13 does a great job of keeping quiet and cool when it should, which can't be said for many gaming laptops. That makes it an even better hybrid work/gaming device. The excellent thermals have the vertical orientation to thank, sucking in tons of air through the intake vents on the back of the tablet, unobstructed by a desk like the bottom of laptops. The exhaust vents, meanwhile, are located right across the top of the tablet, as far away from the keyboard and your hands as physically possible. That's another big change over gaming laptops, which often spew hot air at your mouse hand. A Tough Sell? Photograph: Luke Larsen I don't love the limited configurations for the Flow Z13. Asus sells only expensive configurations with at least 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage, starting at over $2,000. It's a shame there isn't a lower-tier option to get that starting price down. Not everyone needs that much memory and storage. If the starting price were closer to $1,500, I could see it attracting a larger audience. That's especially true since the Flow Z13 isn't necessarily a performance-first machine. I also wish the speakers and webcam were a bit more impressive. They get the job done and are better than what you find on many gaming laptops, but if they could match the Surface Pro, they'd have an even stronger upper hand over even the most premium gaming laptops. And I'd be remiss without mentioning the newly launched Nvidia RTX 50-series Laptop GPUs. It'll be a bit before the lower-tier RTX 5050 and 5060 laptops arrive, but when they do, they may make the comparison to the Flow Z13 less favorable. The price-to-performance comparison with comparable gaming laptops doesn't play out in the Flow Z13's favor. It will never hold a candle to its peers on that spec alone. But that's never been the point. Instead, the Flow Z13 continues to challenge the conventional idea of gaming laptops, and with the 2025 model, it's surprisingly successful.
WIRED
28-03-2025
- WIRED
The Razer Blade 16 Is the Slim Gaming Laptop You're Looking For
The keyboard has gotten a few noteworthy changes. The keys have a 1.5 mm travel distance, giving them a tactile and mechanical feel. The actuation feels heavy, though I like the precision it adds. Razer has also added five macro keys on the right underneath the power button and 'dual-LED' RGB backlighting. That means pressing and holding the Function or Shift keys will light up the secondary function of each key that has one. It's superfluous, yes, but I have to admit it's neat. The expansive, glass touchpad is great as well. I've had problems in the past with misclicks and palm rejection, but that's all been ironed out. Razer used to offer two display options, one of which was a 4K panel, but now there's just one option: an OLED 240-Hz screen with a 2,560 x 1,600-pixel resolution. Interestingly, with the RTX 5090 onboard, this feels like the first display that could produce better frame rates at that high resolution. The OLED panel is fantastic in terms of image quality. It's impressive in terms of color saturation (100 percent sRGB, 94 percent AdobeRGB) and color accuracy (Delta-E of 0.42). At a max of 381 nits, it's not the brightest display in the world, but that's what you get with OLED. The mini-LED displays Razer formerly offered were considerably brighter both in SDR and HDR, but the high contrast and fast response times of OLED make it unbeatable. I haven't tested it myself, but the 2025 version of the ROG Zephyrus G16 claims to hit 500 nits with its OLED panel. Photograph: Luke Larsen My only complaint with the Blade 16's screen is it's extremely glossy. I often found myself increasing the brightness to overcome my own reflection. It can be distracting in the wrong lighting. The six-speaker audio system is decent. It bests most other gaming laptops on the market, even providing some bass to the mix, good enough for watching YouTube videos or even a movie. It's still not competitive with Apple's MacBook Pro. And the 1080p webcam suffices for video calls, but it won't impress your coworkers. Even in decent lighting, I found the image pretty noisy. Multi-Frame Generation My configuration of the Razer Blade 16 has an RTX 5090 Laptop GPU inside, paired with an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. That'll cost you a cool $4,500. You read that right. Part of that sky-high price comes from being forced to opt for 32 GB of RAM and 2 TB of storage. Razer isn't selling a 16 GB model at all anymore. The starting configuration starts at $3,000, with the Ryzen AI 9 365, RTX 5070 Ti, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. The Blade series has never been cheap, but that price is tough to swallow. You can still buy older models, but even those start at $2,400. This is also the first time Razer has exclusively offered only AMD for the CPU on the Blade 16. That feels like a big deal. No one can argue anymore that Intel is the more premium option. It's not as beefy as the 'desktop replacement' chip used in last year's Intel model, but there's plenty of power here for your gaming needs.
