Each new generation of Surface devices typically includes a Surface Pro and Surface Laptop, as well as a later variant that includes 5G technology. That shoe has finally dropped, as Microsoft announced the Surface Laptop 5G on Tuesday. Here, Microsoft had a choice: Add 5G to the consumer version of the Surface Laptop, and its Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite; or add 5G to the business version of the Surface Laptop instead with an Intel Core Ultra Series 2 (Lunar Lake) chip inside. Microsoft chose the latter, and it will be available on Aug. 26. The fact that Microsoft chose Intel over Qualcomm is a little surprising, if only because Qualcomm manufactures 5G radios as well as PC chipsets. Intel sells what it calls the Intel 5G Solution 5000, which was co-developed with Mediatek and is based on its modem. On the other hand, Intel has typically worked closely with laptop makers as part of its Evo program, co-engineering solutions that combine its own silicon with the engineering talents of its customers. Microsoft said that it had redesigned both the laminate used on the laptop as well as the antenna design of the laptop itself. It moved the antennas higher on the laptop for better connectivity, and field-tested the design in over 50 countries with more than 100 mobile operators. The device is designed to switch seamlessly between 5G and Wi-Fi, Microsoft said. Visually, it appears that the top of the Laptop’s keyboard tray might be colored differently than the rest of the chassis, based upon a small photo of the Surface Laptop 5G Microsoft published. With the Surface Laptop 5G, customers can either use a nanoSIM for connectivity, or use an eSIM instead. Technically, the Surface Laptop 5G won’t be its own device; 5G will only be available on “different SKUs [models] of the Surface Laptop for Business,” Microsoft says, and specifically the 13.8-inch model. Still, that gives customers several options to choose from: Surface Laptops with 13.8-inch and 15-inch displays, and a 13-inch Surface Pro; plus a smaller 13-inch Surface Laptop and 12-inch Surface Pro. Business customers can buy the larger Surface Laptop and Pro devices with the Core Ultra chips inside. Microsoft does make a 12-inch Surface Pro for Business, but with the same Snapdragon X Plus used by the consumer version. Read...

Opinion: As a business we used to have a lot of ghosting too. Here’s a great way to handle it. Read...

Saviynt and AWS collaborate to embed AI-driven identity security in Amazon Q Business, enhancing enterprise security and compliance in regulated sectors. Read...

Judge rules that the estate of the late tech tycoon, who died when his boat sank last year, must pay out. Read...

The owners have cited economic struggles as one of the reasons behind its demise. Read...

The rollout of paid parking to more Tauranga city centre streets will cause “huge problems”, say critics, and one business owner is “gutted”. Read...

The company said it was `exploring options` for its Higgins, Brian Perry Civil and Fletcher Construction Major Projects business units. Read...

“I guess it`s an indication of how tough the airline business is at the moment.” Read...

TechHive Editors Choice At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Local AI and storage—no subscription required Dual-lens 4K pan/tilt cameras offer wide and zoom coverage Power-over-Ethernet simplifies camera placement Can be expanded with up to 16 cameras and 16TB storage Cons Installation requires drilling and pulling ethernet cable Works only with Eufy’s own PoE cameras No HomeKit or third-party camera support Our Verdict The Eufy S4 Max NVR is a serious system for users who want smart features without giving up privacy or flexibility. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Eufy PoE NVR Security System S4 Max Retailer Price $1,299.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Most home security systems force you to choose between smart features and local control. the Eufy PoE NVR Security System S4 Max gives you both. As its name indicates, this is a PoE (Power over Ethernet), NVR (Network Video Recorder) system with a built-in AI agent that runs on its own local hardware—there’s no cloud storage and no subscription fees required to unlock key features. Specifications Eufy markets this system as an all-in-one solution for robust yet easy-to-set-up home security. The bundle features local AI, local storage, and support for high-powered 4K cameras.. The bundle includes four of Eufy’s PoE Cam S4 triple-lens cameras. Each of these has a fixed-position camera with a single wide-angle lens (122-degree field of view) that’s fused to the dual-lens, pan/tilt/zoom camera beneath it. The Eufy PoE NVR Security System S4 Max consists of four tri-lens security cameras and an NVR with a 2TB hard drive for local storage and AI processing.Eufy The upper camera has a 16MP image sensor that captures video in 4K resolution (3840 x 2160 pixels), while the lower PTZ camera has twin 2K lenses (each with resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels). The lower camera can rotate a full 360 degrees and tilt up to 70 degrees, with automatic tracking to follow and zoom in on a person moving within its field of view. Together, they form what Eufy calls a “Tri-Cam” system, engineered to eliminate blind spots. The cameras are built for outdoor use, with an IP65 weather rating that protects against dust, rain, and water jets (we’ll tell you everything you need to know about IP codes). For nighttime coverage, the PoE Cam S4 uses starlight color night vision and HDR processing to capture detailed, color-rich footage, even in low light. Black-and-white Infrared night vision is also available. When motion is detected, the built-in spotlight can activate to enhance visibility—useful for identifying people or license plates—while flashing red and blue warning lights provide a visible deterrent. The S4 Max’s NVR includes 2TB of local storage (expandable to 16TB) and built-in AI that handles detection and tracking without relying on the cloud.  Michael Ansaldo/Foundry Eufy’s NVR hub hosts a 3.5-inch 2TB hard drive for local storage. That should be plenty for most users, but you can replace that drive with one that has up to 16TB of capacity. And since the NVR can support up to eight camera channels out of the box (it can be expanded to handle up to 16 channels), you might find yourself needing to do just that down the road. Note that the four bundled cameras will consume two channels each, because each one is sending two video independent streams. Since the system uses PoE, the cameras will be hardwired to the NVR, with that one cable handling both data and power. This makes deployment much simpler because you don’t need to worry about having a power outlet near where you want to mount each camera. The system’s intelligence comes from Eufy’s on-device AI, which runs entirely on the NVR. There’s no round-trip to the cloud and no delay waiting for AI to kick in. The system can recognize people, vehicles, pets, and even unfamiliar faces (once you’ve helped it identify friends, families, neighbors, and anyone else who might make frequent appearances). You can set custom detection zones and choose which types of activity trigger alerts. That layered design powers Eufy’s advanced tracking features. When the upper wide-angle lens detects a subject, the lower PTZ lens automatically locks on and follows it, reframing as needed to keep the person centered in view, even from as far as 164 feet away. In group scenarios, the camera can adjust zoom and framing to keep multiple people in view, switching back to single-subject tracking when others leave the frame. The four dual-lens cameras work in sync, delivering coverage equivalent to an eight-camera setup. Thanks to Eufy’s Live Cross-Cam Tracking feature, when one camera reaches its tracking limit, another can automatically pick up the subject, allowing continuous monitoring across zones. Recorded video is searchable by keyword, making it easy to locate specific events without scrubbing through hours of footage. The NVR supports up to eight PoE cameras out of the box—expandable to sixteen—and uses a single ethernet cable per camera for both power and data.Michael Ansaldo/Foundry While the system is managed primarily through the Eufy app or web interface, it also supports voice control via Alexa and Google Assistant. There is no support for Apple HomeKit Secure Video, however, so users in that ecosystem will find integration more limited. Setup and performance Installation isn’t difficult, but it’s more involved than setting up battery-powered Wi-Fi cameras. The S4 Max is built to be installed outdoors and hardwired to your router, so you’ll be drilling into walls or soffits to mount the cameras with the provided hardware, and drilling larger holes and inserting weatherproof pass-through them that you’ll pull your ethernet cables through. The job requires more planning, tools, and time than the typical battery-powered, Wi-Fi camera does. First, you’ll need to connect the NVR to your router, plug in the included mouse for system control, and then hook up a monitor via the NVR’s HDMI port. From there, you’ll choose your camera locations, mount the camera brackets and mount the cameras to them, and then drill nearby holes in your walls, insert weatherproof grommets (something like this would work) into the holes on the interior and exterior sides of the wall, and feed the ethernet cables through them. You’ll connect the other end of the cables to the NVR). Once you’re finished with the labor, configuring the system to work is as easy as you’d expect. The NVR automatically detects the connected cameras, and you can access the system through a monitor, the Eufy app, or via Eufy’s web portal. The Eufy Security app lets you customize detection by type—human, vehicle, pet, or general motion—and choose how and when you’re notified, with options for thumbnails, alert tones, and recording intervals. Michael Ansaldo/Foundry Once everything’s in place, the S4 Max gets to work quietly and capably. Live Cross Cam Tracking allows the cameras to hand off moving subjects between zones with minimal delay. When the system spots something it flags as a threat, it reacts quickly, sending alerts within seconds. Video quality is consistently sharp, delivering clear, detailed footage even in low-light conditions. The system handles faces, license plates, and movement well, and the built-in search tools make it easy to locate events using natural language like “man in a red hat.” In my testing, the app was stable and responsive. Live view loaded quickly, object recognition was accurate, and playback was smooth. You can tailor how each camera responds to activity independently, including defining activity zones, choosing which types of events trigger alerts, and customizing how long the on-camera spotlight stays active. You can also schedule when cameras are active or mute notifications by time of day. Each camera’s behavior can be fine-tuned individually, which gives you more control over how the system works in different areas of your property. Should you buy the Eufy PoE NVR Security System S4 Max? At $1,299, Eufy’s high-end NVR system isn’t exactly a casual purchase but it delivers solid value for anyone serious about home or small business security. You’re paying for local control, advanced detection, and a system that doesn’t nickel-and-dime you with subscription fees. If you’re comfortable with the installation requirements and want a system that stays local, customizable, and expandable, the S4 Max is a easy to recommend. If you like Eufy’s local storage and AI features, but would prefer wireless, battery-powered cameras, consider the $550 EufyCam S3 Pro Kit. We recently reviewed a two-camera system with a Eufy HomeBase 3 for local AI processing and storage costs. It also earned a TechHive Editors’ Choice award. This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best home security cameras. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Quiet operation Strong anti-glare display Great battery life Clean, lightweight design Charging on both sides Cons Middling specs and performance for the price Nebulous pricing Mics pick up too much Our Verdict The HP EliteBook X G1i is a solid laptop offering modest performance, strong battery life, and an easy-viewing display, but the premium for all the business features severely limits its audience, and HP’s chaotic pricing doesn’t help. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: HP EliteBook X G1i Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Following the AMD-powered HP EliteBook X G1a, HP has introduced a new business laptop for workers who crave a bit of class and efficiency from a thin-and-light laptop. The HP EliteBook X G1i trims more than half a pound from the G1a and opts for low-power Intel Lunar Lake hardware, giving it less power but more portability. This model is still pricey, with all the markups of a business laptop and some really wonky pricing from HP, but it might be a good choice if you really need the enterprise features and want a machine that’s easily going to last all day. HP EliteBook X G1i: Specs and features Model number: B85MSUT#ABA CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 268V Memory: 32GB LPDDR5x-8533 Graphics/GPU: Intel Arc Graphics 140V Display: 14-inch 1920×1200 IPS, Anti-glare Storage: 512GB PCIe Gen4 SSD Webcam: 5MP + IR Connectivity: 2x Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C with Power Delivery and DisplayPort 2.1 Alternate Mode, 1x USB-C 10Gbps with Power Delivery and DisplayPort 1.4 Alternate Mode, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x USB-A 5Gbps, 1x 3.5mm combo audio Networking: WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: Windows Hello fingerprint and facial recognition Battery capacity: 68 watt-hours Dimensions:12.36 x 8.66 x 0.72 inches Weight: 2.72 pounds measured MSRP: $2,283 as-tested ($2,399 base) The HP EliteBook X G1i has a base price of $2,399 for a configuration with an Intel Core Ultra 5 226V chip, 16GB of memory, and 512GB of storage. Our test unit isn’t available as a pre-configured system from HP, but the closest match offers the same Intel Core Ultra 7 268V, 32GB of memory, and 1TB of storage (instead of our unit’s 512GB) for $2,869. CDW does have our test configuration for $2,283.  Confusingly, despite being brand new, the HP EliteBook X G1i lineup saw huge discounts to the listed MSRP right away, cutting anywhere from 33 percent to 61 percent off the prices of pre-configured models. This lowered the base model to $1,599 (or a version that lengthens the warranty and Wolf Pro Security subscription for even less at $1,499), and the unit closest to our test model to $1,999. HP also offers pre-configured models with 5G modems and customization options with alternate displays, including higher resolutions, 120Hz (VRR) panels, privacy protection, and non-touch options. HP’s custom configurations come with a lower base specification than pre-configured models and a higher starting price of $2,680. What it lacks in raw performance it largely makes up for in efficiency, easily running all day. HP EliteBook X G1i: Design and build quality IDG / Mark Knapp The HP EliteBook X G1i embodies cleanliness. It uses smooth, tight curves all around its design to make for a tidy package. Nothing stands out, but nothing looks overly plain. Simple, but elegant. The dark blue color scheme also has a neat effect: when viewing the laptop at an angle (like you would when using it), the trackpad and keyboard reflect light differently than the chassis, making them appear to shift to a subtly lighter shade of blue.  The display has fairly thin bezels, though the top one is on the thick side. That space also houses the camera, which has a physical privacy shutter. The shutter is unfortunately situated right where a cutaway in the chassis guides you to open the laptop from. In my case, this has meant my thumb frequently touches the camera and shutter. Over time, all that finger grease will add up. And Windows Hello facial recognition isn’t as quick to unlock if I have to reactivate the camera every time.  The chassis isn’t super thin, measuring 0.72 inches at its thickest point, but it’s still pretty lightweight at 2.72 pounds. That’s likely thanks in part to the magnesium used in the casing, which has just a faint roughness to its texture. The laptop feels sturdy, with minimal flex in the keyboard deck or display, though the hinge does wiggle for a couple seconds after repositioning the screen.  The laptop sits on one wide rubber foot at the back edge and two small feet at the front. These keep it reasonably secure. When the display is open, its back edge ends up folding down low enough to touch the desk underneath it. This doesn’t raise the laptop much, but it does block off the exhaust. In this case, the wide foot smartly prevents the hot exhaust from heading right back into the intake fans. Instead, exhaust will head up over the hinge or out the sides of the channel created there.  HP has a simple keyboard here. It’s compact and backlit. Even with its space constraints, it gets Page Up and Page Down keys squished in with the arrow keys, and HP has included Home (on the F12 key) and dedicated End, Insert, and Delete keys in the top right corner of the keyboard.  On either side of the keyboard, two grilles actually house a pair of speakers, and those combine with a second pair of speakers inside slots along the front edge of the laptop. It’s not only surprising to see up-firing speakers on a laptop these days but also a surprise to see so many speakers on what’s plainly a productivity machine. To power the HP EliteBook X G1i, you get a small 65W charger that weighs under half a pound. This comes in three parts — AC cable, USB-C cable, and the transformer — providing some flexibility and the ability to replace parts if any break. HP EliteBook X G1i: Keyboard, trackpad IDG / Mark Knapp The keyboard feels decent and is easy to see with its white backlighting. It doesn’t have much contour to the keycaps, which can make it a little hard to keep centered on each key, but the stabilization is solid. The keys also have a decent resistance to them, which helps somewhat with tactility, though they don’t bottom out with a very noticeable feeling. That can make it more difficult to hit the same key multiple times while typing quickly. I found my accuracy quickly and consistently sank if I tried going much faster than about 110 words per minute. Meanwhile, I could reach 98 percent accuracy while typing at 108 words per minute in Monkeytype.  The trackpad is a good size, not terribly wide but reasonably tall. Its glass surface is smooth and feels great to swipe around on. And it clicks with a short travel and gentle thunk when it actuates.  HP EliteBook X G1i: Display, audio IDG / Mark Knapp You won’t get the most splendid display from the HP EliteBook X G1i, but you’ll get a very high-utility one. It’s only offering a 1200p resolution, which is fine but not impressive on a laptop these days. It also doesn’t get the fast refresh rate we’re seeing frequently. What the HP EliteBook X G1i has is a respectably colorful display able to hit 99 percent of the sRGB color space, strong contrast and brightness for an LCD at 1680:1 and 524.7 nits, and a wonderful anti-glare coating that makes it easy to see the display even with it set to lower brightness levels. The coating did a great job hiding the glare even from a brightly lit window.  The screen offers touch functionality, which can be useful. It might have felt smoother with a faster refresh rate, but it’s still acceptably responsive. And I enjoy the feel of my fingers gliding across the screen. The anti-glare coating also helps reduce visible smudges from skin oils. The HP EliteBook X G1i features a quad-speaker setup and can pump out a good deal of volume. Going much beyond 50 percent volume, the speakers can get too loud for comfort when listening at arm’s length. The speakers deliver surprisingly depth, hitting bass notes you can’t always count on from a laptop, and the sound is fairly clean. With the speakers cranked to full volume, they’re a bit too crisp, but without noticeable distortion. HP EliteBook X G1i: Webcam, microphone, biometrics The webcam on the HP EliteBook X G1i is decent, capturing sharp footage from its 5MP sensor. But it still requires good conditions to look its best. With overhead lighting, the camera likely will still struggle some. You’ll want some bright light source (like a window) shining onto you to avoid noise in the visuals.  The webcam comes paired with IR emitters, giving it Windows Hello facial recognition abilities. There are also a handful of presence-sensing options that can dim or lock the display if you’re not looking at the screen or sitting in front of the laptop. If you prefer fingerprint recognition, that’s also available with a scanner integrated into the power button. Either method offers quick and convenient way to sign in. The microphone array leaves room for improvement. It captures my voice with a decent fullness, but it really struggles with background noise. There’s a lot of room echo that makes me sound further off than I should, and the mics will pick up any extra noises in the room, like fans, air filters, or air conditioners. I was shocked at the poor performance here considering how effective the mics in the HP OmniBook X Flip 14 were at cancelling out just about any noise that wasn’t my voice. HP EliteBook X G1i: Connectivity IDG / Mark Knapp HP hasn’t done a ton for connectivity, but it’s done enough. You’ll get two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the left side and a USB-C 10Gbps port on the right, with all three ports supporting DisplayPort output and charging, giving you some rare flexibility for which side you charge on. The left edge also includes HDMI 2.1 and a 3.5mm audio combo jack. The right side rounds it all out with a 5Gbps USB-A port and, depending on the configuration, a SIM card slot.  When you want to tap into wireless connections, the system offers Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 connections. Both have been fast to connect and reconnect in my testing, and the Wi-Fi managed solid reception and throughput.  HP EliteBook X G1i: Performance The HP EliteBook X G1i is predictably a modest performer. The kind of low-power chips that you’ll often find in thin-and-light systems like this don’t tend to have the most muscle for heavy workloads, but the Intel Core Ultra 7 268V and other chips in this lineup tend to have very strong single-core performance and can zip through light tasks well while conserving energy. The 32GB of memory is a welcome feature for multitasking, though at upwards of $2,000, I’d have been more impressed with 64GB of memory on board as HP packed into the AMD-powered $2,750 HP Elitebook X G1a. The HP EliteBook X G1i also has an interesting rival in its flipping counterpart, the $2,899 HP EliteBook X Flip G1i, which offers almost all the same specs but in a more flexible design. There’s also stiff competition like the $2,336 Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 Gen 10 Aura Edition, which comes very similarly equipped and priced. And if you don’t need all the professional, enterprise tech that comes with a system like this, the HP EliteBook X G1i has to face down much more affordable options like the $1,749 Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition, which also boasts similar internals but a more stylish exterior.  IDG / Mark Knapp As expected, the HP EliteBook X G1i offers respectable though not mind-blowing overall performance. PCMark 10 is a holistic test of a laptop’s ability to perform common office tasks, and it takes CPU, GPU, and storage performance into account. The HP EliteBook X G1i manages the test well, though has a notable shortcoming in the App Startup portion of the test. This is a shortcoming we see in the other two HP laptops as well, but both of Lenovo’s systems excel there, suggesting HP may be using lower-tier SSDs than Lenovo — a good reminder that capacity is only one factor to consider in a drive.  IDG / Mark Knapp As we can see, it wasn’t raw CPU performance that helped Lenovo get ahead in PCMark. Turning to Cinebench, which hits the CPU with a heavy rendering task, we can see the HP EliteBook X G1i perform very close to the Lenovo systems in single- and multicore performance, even coming out ahead in many cases, especially for single-core runs. Still there’s a wide gulf between the HP EliteBook X G1i and its AMD counterpart, showing a trend we’ve seen much this generation: AMD has a big multi-core performance advantage in its laptop CPUs. IDG / Mark Knapp Handbrake provides another demonstration of CPU performance, as we task the systems with a large encoding task shrinking down an entire movie. This not only hits the CPU hard but also takes enough time to really bring heat into the equation. The HP EliteBook X G1i isn’t incredibly fast, taking over 20 minutes to complete the task (gaming laptops can often complete it in half the time), but it sustained its speeds well and came out ahead of its flipping counterpart as well as Lenovo’s options, though it only beat the Yoga 9i by one second. We can see again that Intel’s performance here lags behind AMD’s as the HP EliteBook X G1a beats all the others by at least 5 minutes. IDG / Mark Knapp Graphics performance is where the recent Intel chips regain some ground on AMD, tending to make more of their Intel Arc graphics than AMD can with its integrated Radeon solutions. That’s the case here with the HP EliteBook X G1i offering respectable performance in 3DMark’s Time Spy test. This doesn’t make the HP EliteBook X G1i a very strong machine for graphics, as this performance still pales in comparison to even low-end discrete graphics like the RTX 4050, but it also doesn’t come with the extreme power draw that discrete graphics does. This graphics test is in keeping with the rest of the results, too, seeing the HP EliteBook X G1i narrowly lead the flipping model and the ThinkPad though slightly lagging behind the Yoga 9i.  HP EliteBook X G1i: Battery life The HP EliteBook X G1i has a solid combination of factors working for it when it comes to battery life. The Intel chip powering it may not be super fast, but it’s speedy enough for most everyday options and it’s very efficient. Then there’s the display, which doesn’t appear to take too much power to run. This let the HP EliteBook X G1i run for almost 21 hours in our offline video playback test, which loops a 4K video while the display is set between 250 and 260 nits.  IDG / Mark Knapp That’s a big advantage over the AMD version. That model fell shy of 11 hours and was in keeping with the kind of efficiency we’ve seen from other recent AMD laptops. Lenovo shows there’s still some room for improvement though. Its ThinkPad ran for over 24 hours. But perhaps more impressive is that the Yoga 9i, which had a number of performance wins, also beat the HP EliteBook X G1i on longevity by running almost a whole 3 hours longer.  While you can’t exactly count on video playback to tell you how long a laptop will work in everyday use, the HP EliteBook X G1i held up well when put to office tasks, browsing the web, researching, and writing up articles. In this use, it was regularly on pace to last for over 12 hours. And since the anti-glare display makes it easy to see the screen even when it’s set to lower brightness levels, it’s very possible to conserve even more power. HP EliteBook X G1i: Conclusion The HP EliteBook X G1i has potential. It’s not very powerful, but it has the horsepower it needs to tackle most people’s workdays and a little extra legroom for some more demanding tasks. What it lacks in raw performance it largely makes up for in efficiency, easily running all day. Paired with an easy-on-the-eyes display that you can run even at very dim levels and still see clearly, and you’ve got a machine that’s properly prepared for productivity. But the price stands in its way. Unless you really need HP’s business features like Wolf Pro Security, the extra cost just isn’t worth it, especially with consumer laptops like the Yoga 9i beating it in almost every way. Read...