Microsoft’s AI Manager Mustafa Suleyman recently unveiled in a social media post a new feature called “Scripted Mode” in Copilot Labs for turning written scripts into text-to-speech. Copilot Labs is an experimental platform where you can try out Microsoft’s newest AI features that are still in development. You asked, we shipped! Scripted mode just dropped for audio generation in Copilot Labs (c/o our new MAI-Voice-1 model).Scripted mode: reads your input verbatimEmotive: riffs a bit for max dramaStory: performs multiple voices/charactersTry out all 3 ?? https://t.co/9hL81LTFwF pic.twitter.com/rOVZKGbDjX— Mustafa Suleyman (@mustafasuleyman) September 10, 2025 Specifically, the feature is part of Copilot Audio Expressions, which is the actual tool that turns text into spoken audio. Previously, Copilot Audio Expressions only had two modes: Story Mode (which weaves together multiple vocal styles and characters for a storytelling experience) and Emotive Mode (which uses a single, distinct voice that matches a particular mood with some improvisation). With Scripted Mode, Copilot Audio Expressions can now take text and read it aloud with a fast and direct take, making sure to read the content verbatim without any riffing or creative changes. You can still select which voice and style to use for the reading. Copilot Audio Expressions is still only available in English, but Microsoft is exploring ways to support more languages. Read...

Greetings from Maryland, where I’m currently visiting family and using one of the best impulse buys I’ve made in recent memory. I’m taking about those cheap portable monitors that go on sale for about $50 on Amazon, available under a variety of unrecognizable brand names. The one I got is made by BIGASUO (a name I can’t stop saying), but you can find seemingly identical models from the likes of FANGOR and MNN. They all serve the same basic purpose as a travel-friendly way to add an extra screen to your laptop, and they all have the same basic features: 15.6-inch 1080p display USB-C or Mini HDMI input Built-in speakers Audio jack for headphones or external speakers A detachable folio stand Some variants, such as this one by the unfortunately named Dopesplay, have actual built-in kickstands instead of folio cases that double as makeshift stands, but otherwise appear identical. Are these monitors great quality-wise? Of course not. But they’re cheap, light, and versatile. They’re also refreshingly free from a lot of modern tech baggage. I’ve had a great time finding ways to use mine. Allow me to convince you why you should get one of these, too. This column first appeared in Advisorator, Jared’s weekly tech advice newsletter. Sign up to get tech advice like this every Tuesday. How does a portable monitor work? These portable screens work a little differently than full-sized monitors, mainly because they don’t have regular HDMI, DisplayPort, or VGA inputs. To connect these monitors, you have a couple options: USB-C to USB-C data cable. This provides power and video to the portable monitor through a single cable, but requires your computer to support video output through a USB-C port. (Modern Macs can do this, and many recent Windows laptops are catching up.) Mini HDMI to HDMI. For computers with HDMI outputs, you can send video to the portable monitor via Mini HDMI, but you’ll need a separate USB-C cable to power the monitor as well. A single USB-C data cable can provide video and power, or you can use the Mini HDMI and USB-C power ports instead.Jared Newman / Foundry Note that these travel-friendly displays don’t have built-in batteries, so they must draw power from either your laptop or an outlet. The lack of a battery makes the monitor lighter, but if you’re using the USB-C to USB-C connector, you’ll likely want to keep your laptop plugged into its own power source for lengthy computing sessions. My BIGASUO monitor included all the necessary cables, but they’re on the short side. To lengthen the connection distance, you’ll either need an HDMI extender or a USB-C to USB-C cable with 10 Gbps transfer speeds. (A basic USB-C charging cable won’t suffice for video connections.) What is a portable monitor good for? The most obvious use for a portable monitor is the main one: while using a laptop on the go, you can attach the portable monitor, prop it up with a stand, and have two screens instead of one. If you’ve never used a dual monitor setup before, this can be a revelation in itself. It’s nice being able to reference a document on one screen while writing on the other, or use one screen just for things like email and Slack while freeing up the main screen for more important tasks. I’ve also managed to prop up my BIGASUO monitor in portrait mode, which can be a bit precarious at times but does make my mobile workspace a bit more compact. (You can rotate the monitor orientation in system settings on both Windows PC and Mac.) Beyond the dual-screen setup, I’ve also experimented with: Turning a phone into a computer: Paired with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, your phone can become a makeshift portable desktop. Samsung’s Galaxy phones are especially well-suited with Samsung DeX, which launches a desktop-like environment when the phone connects to an external display. (You can even use the phone screen as a touchpad.) Plugging a separate USB-C charging cable into the monitor will send a charge back to the phone so you don’t waste battery life. A Samsung Galaxy Fold7 running DeX mode on the monitor, with the phone as a touchpad.Jared Newman / Foundry An extra (or alternate) desktop display: You don’t have to use a portable monitor on the road. I’ve been plugging mine into my desktop gaming PC in the basement while my son occupies the TV with the PlayStation 5. (We have plans to play Fortnite together this way but haven’t gotten around to it yet.) A bigger portable video screen: I’ve connected the portable monitor to my Steam Deck for a bigger view of the action, and I can envision plugging it into a phone or tablet to watch movies in bed or on a plane. A portable monitor just works In the past, I’ve written about using a tablet as an external monitor—and that’s still a viable option. Portable monitors are larger than most tablets, though, and they’re also less finnicky to set up. Not to get overly philosophical here, but portable monitors also remind me why I get excited about technology to begin with. Unlike so many other tech products today, a portable monitor is a no-fuss device that just works when you plug it in, asking nothing of you in exchange. There’s no pairing process, no login procedure, and no privacy policy to accept. I often hear folks pining for a dumb alternative to modern smart TVs—if you ask me, that idea is alive and well in portable monitors. But the biggest endorsement I can offer is this: my wife, after borrowing my portable monitor a couple days ago, now wants one of her own. This column first appeared in Advisorator, Jared’s weekly tech advice newsletter. Sign up to get tech advice like this every Tuesday. Read...

Welcome to The Full Nerd newsletter—your weekly dose of hardware talk from the enthusiasts at PCWorld. Missed the burning topics on our YouTube show or fresh news from across the web? You’re in the right place. Want this newsletter to come directly to your inbox? Sign up on our website! It turns out a lot of people don’t understand passkeys.  I learned this after last week’s show, when people on our Discord server began chatting about our recap of best practices for online security.  Our group brought up plenty of technical points, being the awesome nerds they are. But as the conversation unfolded, misconceptions cropped up about passkeys and how they work. That surprised me—as did learning more than one of my colleagues doesn’t quite get them, either. I ended up following up on the topic this week, in one of my longest-ever responses during a Q&A segment. I spent a lot of time preparing the breakdown, which covers a very simple overview of asymmetrical public-private encryption keys (aka public-key encryption), then dives into nuances of what passkeys do and don’t protect against. This deeper look got me thinking. Typically, more tech knowledge simplifies problems. You can figure out solutions faster and more efficiently. The familiarity helps you know which details to prioritize and which to disregard. This instance is a rare occurrence of the opposite—where familiarity breeds a demand for perfection. One common criticism of passkeys is their inability to mitigate all security weaknesses. For example: Passkeys don’t protect against session hijacking. Another is the perceived lack of universal use. “Passkeys lock you into a single ecosystem” can be found in multiple comments in Discord, Reddit, and forum discussions. I find these arguments specious, to be honest. Session hijacking is outside the realm of authentication. And the restrictions around passkey portability are part of the original design, balanced by the ability to generate multiple passkeys for a single account. I get where they come from, though. People with technical knowledge have lived in a world with passwords for so long—and they know the ins and outs of the security weaknesses—that it’s hard to think outside that space. We’re all tired of the constant breaches, password rotations, and time spent minimizing damage to our daily lives. A perfect solution would be really nice. A password + 2FA via a security key is as good as a passkey, but let’s be realistic about how many people use hardware keys.YubiKey But let’s not miss the forest for the trees. Many people do not use secure passwords. Fewer still use two-factor authentication. And yet even a slimmer portion bother with third-party password managers. Why? Good password security takes effort. Two-factor authentication adds an extra layer to the complexity. Passkeys eliminate much of that mental overhead. They require no memorization, hook into the ecosystems most users are already committed to, and lean on understandable systems (e.g., using a fingerprint to approve passkey use). And users won’t need to cycle their credentials whenever a breach happens.  Can passkey implementation be improved? Absolutely. Do you need to change your system of password + 2FA if you already have an established system you trust? Not at all. Should that stop the recommendation of passkeys by the tech savvy to others, particularly everyday users? Hard no. I believe that when we look at tech, we need to be evaluating products, services, and standards on how well they achieve their intended function—not just how well they execute it. Sometimes, making this call will require us to see the world in ways completely opposite from our viewpoint. In this episode of The Full Nerd In this episode of The Full Nerd, Alaina Yee, Brad Chacos, Will Smith, and Michael Crider chat about the possible reason behind Windows 11’s recent SSD issues, tech products that disappoint us (and why), and more. I also slipped in that, uh, thorough overview of passkeys during the Q&A segment. We also learned that Will just “doesn’t like to feel.” (Is this the natural result of earning more life experience?) Despite the lack of positivity on feelings, he spread delight when telling us about a Twitch streamer who plays games on unexpected makeshift controllers. Pomegranates. How to play Overwatch with bananas?Willis Lai / Foundry Missed our live show? Subscribe now to The Full Nerd Network YouTube channel, and activate notifications. We also answer viewer questions in real-time! Don’t miss out on our NEW shows, too—you can catch episodes of Dual Boot Diaries and The Full Nerd: Extra Edition now! And if you need more hardware talk during the rest of the week, come join our Discord community—it’s full of cool, laid-back nerds. This week’s scintillating nerd news Here’s how I know I had holiday brain last week: I forgot to mention Will & Adam’s livestream of building in Teenage Engineering’s nifty transparent plastic case! Good thing I realized my error, because this week’s boatload of news almost flooded it right out of my brain. By the way, I’m really crossing my fingers on the first-gen Lenovo Go dropping in price this fall. Please please please. ????????R?? Wait, I can fix my lack of skill with free software? I’m all ears about this Mouse Pointer Crosshair tool, Microsoft, especially since I’m already a PowerToys fan. (I’m pretty sure I won’t get to use this in games, but a gal can dream.) Wide handheld is wide: My PCWorld colleague Mike Crider nails the standout feature for this custom handheld gaming PC. I can see why he wants one. I still have clickwheel iPods. Hmmmm: Digital preservationists are performing such important work. It’s not just about nostalgia—having tangible, interactive evidence of what came before keeps our history so much alive. I love this Pinball coding goof: Technically, developer Dave Plummer didn’t make a true mistake, since we never can predict what changes will make our projects suddenly act wonky. But this Windows NT-era game accidentally running for a time at 5,000 fps on multicore processors is pretty great. How much can we trust encrypted messaging? If this accusation against Meta about WhatsApp’s security is true, the answer appears to be ‘not as much as we believe.’ (Remember folks, never share things in writing if you want to be sure they can’t come back to haunt you.) Please alert my coworkers that I’m not weird: At least, not for thinking 64GB of memory is a reasonable upgrade. If the base is now 32GB, doubling it isn’t that much of a stretch. Google says the open web is in “rapid decline”: Anyone else find this concerning? (Also, hmm, just whose focus on AI could be causing this?) Lenovo I’ve wanted the Legion Go 2 for ages: OK, I didn’t want the actual Legion Go 2, which only just got announced. But I have waited with fortitude for a successor to the affordable 8-inch Windows 8 tablets of yore. And while I’d love an OLED screen and 32GB of DDR5 RAM, what I’m truly eager for is the first-gen Go dropping below $500 on Black Friday. (Fingers crossed.) Windows license resellers might get slapped down: A lawsuit in the UK could have ramifications for those cheap licenses some DIY builders like to use. Uh oh. Passkeys could’ve possibly stopped this disastrous phish: Malicious JavaScript code popped up in a set of trusted packages with more than two billion downloads per week—and it happened because the maintainer of the code had his credentials (including 2FA code) successfully phished. A security key could have helped stop the attack—but so too a passkey, were it an option. Anthropic got hit with a $1.5 billion fine for stealing: I’m glad for copyright law, because using pirated works to train AI was appalling. (Hiss.) Just $5 for this incredible thrift store find: In this week’s installment of, “We love thrift stores,” someone found a RTX 3060 12GB card for just $5. And it works. (Redditor satviktyagi’s comment in this thread is perfection, by the by.) I’m a simple person. You put sparkly effects in Portal, I play it again: I wouldn’t say I’m in the “farm-to-table frames” camp (i.e, Team Raw Raster Performance), but I don’t yet stan Nvidia’s RTX features. But seeing the Portal screenshot with remix particles caught my attention. It’s shiny. (Sparkly.) Catch you all next week—I’ll be eagerly awaiting the arrival of my Lemokey X0 gaming keypad upgrades. PC gamers need to work their marketing campaign, for real. I would have switched ages ago if the slogan had been “Bend games to your will.” Though I guess “Console players suck” does redirect attention from needing customized gear to land headshots. ~Alaina This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and executive editor of hardware at PCWorld. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Terrific performance Synapse utility app is fantastic Smartly designed, comfortable keyboard Thunderbolt 5 Light and quiet (for a gaming notebook, anyway) Cons Battery life is abysmal Windows doesn’t accommodate dual-mode screen well Boot sequence could be more responsive Ports could and should be labeled Our Verdict Razer’s Blade 18 outperforms basically everything else out there, with an exception or two. This relatively quiet gaming notebook does suffer from the short battery life of its rivals, and the default 4K screen is so good that the cool dual-resolution mode will probably go underused. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Razer Blade 18 (2025) Retailer Price Razer $4599.99 View Deal Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Razer’s Blade 18 is the limo you take to the airport: probably way too much laptop for your daily needs, sure. But why not simply enjoy it? Someone who buys an 18-inch laptop simply wants the best and biggest laptop around, a desktop replacement capable of playing any game at maximum frame rates. That’s fine for most people. Smart buyers, however, will consider the Blade 18 since its aesthetics have a purpose. For 2025, the laptop brings several notable updates: Intel’s latest Arrow Lake architecture, Nvidia GeForce GPUs up to the RTX 5090, and a new dual-mode screen that combines a 4K creator-class display with a high-resolution esports monitor. Fantastic performance, smart design, even weight that won’t burn out your biceps. There’s very little I didn’t like about the Razer Blade 18. Overall, the Razer Blade 18 excels where performance matters most, combining thoughtful design and powerhouse hardware, though its battery life and minor quirks remind you this is a premium desktop replacement, not a portable workhorse. Razer Blade 18: Configuration options Razer’s 2025 update of the Razer Blade 18 steps up to Intel’s Arrow Lake Core Ultra 9 275HX, whose mobile performance impressed me. But there’s also Razer’s first use of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5000 lineup, memory that jumps to 64GB, and up to 4 TB of storage. Razer has returned to using a dual-mode screen, first seen on the 2023 version of the Blade 16. That model offered a less robust version of what’s in the 2025 Blade 18. During the day, you can edit on its 4K, 240Hz display. By evening, switch to a 1080p, 480Hz mode for esports gaming. Razer’s RGB logo adorns the back of the Razer Blade 18.Mark Hachman / Foundry Razer used to sell its Blade laptops on Amazon as well as its own site. At the moment, however, most models have been pulled from Amazon. The only place to buy the Blade 18 appears to be Razer’s website. If the Blade 18 is simply too much, Razer also ships the Blade 16 and Blade 14, though the components step down a bit. A larger notebook allows for more cooling, which means more power can go through the CPU and GPU. Both the Blade 16 and Blade 18 offer an RTX 5090 option, but the Blade 18 supports 175W of GPU power versus 160W on the Blade 16. That usually translates to higher performance. At Razer, your choices are limited: every version ships with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX. Otherwise, you can downgrade the GPU from an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 with 24GB of VRAM to an RTX 5080 (16GB VRAM) or to a 5070 Ti option. The way Razer phrases it seems like simply dropping down to an RTX 5080 will save you $1,100, period. But Razer ties your GPU selection to other RAM and storage options, so that there are essentially four versions of the Blade 18 to choose from: Razer Blade 18 with RTX 5090, 4 TB (2TB + 2TB) SSD, 64GB RAM: $4,599.99 (as tested) Razer Blade 18 with RTX 5090, 2TB SSD, and 32GB RAM: $4,199.99 Razer Blade 18 with RTX 5080, 1TB SSD, 32GB RAM: $3,499.99 Razer Blade 18 with RTX 5070 TI, 1 TB SSD, 32GB RAM: $2,999.99 Razer also tosses in some “gifts” — at press time, Borderlands 4, Battlefield 6, and a month’s worth of Game Pass Ultimate PC — with the purchase of the Blade 18, as well. Mark Hachman / Foundry Razer Blade 18: Specifications Display: 18-Inch dual-mode IPS display: 3840×2400, 240Hz; 1920×1200, 440Hz (non-touch) Processor: Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX (5.4GHz turbo, 24 cores/24 threads) Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, 12GB GDDR7 VRAM/RTX 5080, 16GB GDDR7 VRAM/RTX 5090 (150W + 25W dynamic boost), 24GB GDDR7 VRAM (5090 as tested) NPU: No Memory: 32GB-64GB DDR5-5600 (64GB as tested) Storage: 1TB-2TB M.2. NVMe PCI 4.0; 4TB (both M.2. slots filled) (4TB as tested) Ports: Thunderbolt 5 (DP 2.1, 100W charging), Thunderbolt 4 (DP 2.1, 100W charging), HDMI 2.1, RJ45 (2.5Gbps Ethernet), UHS-II SD, 3.5mm headphone jack Security: Windows Hello (camera) Camera: 1440p, 30 Hz (user facing) Battery: 99Wh Wireless: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Operating system: Windows 11 Home 24H2 Dimensions: 15.74 x 10.84 x 0.86-1.1in. Weight: 7.06 pounds Color: Anodized black Price: $$2,999.99 – $4,599.99 ($4,599.99 as tested) Razer Blade 18: Out of the box Most ultra-premium gaming laptops that I’ve seen tend to prioritize the internal components over the external chassis: throw in a bit of RGB bling and spend the rest of your engineering talent worrying about keeping the components cool. Take the rival Maingear Ultima 18: it’s just a big black slab. Stick it on its end, and you can imagine a tribe of apes worshiping it while “Also sprach Zarathustra” plays. Razer’s Blade 18 is different. Instead of extending the laptop’s underside the length of the laptop, there’s a “bump” that protrudes from the underside, housing the cooling module. A small cutout “exposes” some of the components behind a clear Mylar plastic window, lit by user-adjustable RGB lighting. Mark Hachman / Foundry Add to that the existing RGB-lit Razer logo that’s already mounted on the top/rear of the laptop itself, and that’s a healthy dose of RGB right there. Fortunately, it’s out of sight, and at least the vapor chamber lighting can be disabled, if necessary. All this isn’t totally unique; the Alienware 16 Area 51 includes a similar cooling bump and light-up logo. But it’s still an interesting twist that attracts the eye. (Note to Razer: if you’re going to leave the logo lighting on at all times, an Ambilight mode might be a neat addition.) Unlike other gaming laptops I’ve tried, the Blade 18 doesn’t feel ungainly. At 7.06 pounds, it’s surprisingly manageable. The chassis is made from CNC-milled aluminum and features a fingerprint-resistant coating. (That’s technically true. Fingerprints might not stick, but the chassis will pick up oil and dust, and I had to spend a few minutes polishing the chassis for photos.) You’ll find a couple of fun quirks right off the bat: the first is the dual-mode display, which we’ll talk about in a bit. The second is the keyboard, which not only offers a number of adjustable RGB lighting effects, but also assigns two RGB LEDs to selected keys. Put another way, when you hit the SHIFT key, the RGB lighting will illuminate only the “%,” “^,” and “&” keys, not the numbers themselves. Notice how when the SHIFT button is depressed, only the punctuation lights up, not the numbers. And yes, the chassis attracts fingerprints.Mark Hachman / Foundry One of the few things I didn’t like about this laptop is that the relatively uninspired boot sequence. Hit the power button, and the Blade just sits there — or seems to. While there’s a small green light on the front of the keyboard tray that lights green during the boot sequence, the rest of the laptop seemingly doesn’t respond. Only after the Windows boot sequence appears on the screen does the laptop respond with a “ripple” of RGB lighting across the keyboard, a visual signal that you’re ready to go. The power cord might be a bit polarizing, too. I’ve used Maingear laptops and bemoaned the jiggly, rear-mounted power cord. Razer uses a side-mounted power cord (connected to a 400W charger) and it’s quite stiff to work it in and out of the charging port. Some of you might like that (how often do you remove a gaming laptop’s power cord, anyway?) but I found it slightly annoying. Note that while this laptop does include a Thunderbolt 5 port, that port doesn’t support the full 240W charging spec — just 100W instead. Of course, even TB5 couldn’t supply the nearly 400W that the Blade 18 demands under full load. The fan noise on the Razer Blade 18 certainly does get loud under load, as expected from a gaming notebook. It’s not overwhelming, just a bit unpleasant. There’s minimal coil whine, but it’s there. Razer says that it’s expanded the vapor chamber to its largest ever, combining triple fan blades and 0.075mm exhaust fins to generate 280W across the package. Our thermal tests (more in the performance section, below) detected no thermal throttling under prolonged CPU and GPU testing. That’s the result Razer was designing for. I like to put my laptops on my desk’s keyboard drawer, and the Blade 18 is a bit too big for that. You’ll need a flat desk, or risk the laptop supporting itself on its cooling bump. That’s probably fine, but still. (I did all my testing on a flat surface.) One note on the ports, which are listed above: this is the first laptop I’ve seen with both a Thunderbolt 5 and a Thunderbolt 4 port on it, neither of which are labeled. The TB5 port is on the right, and the TB4 port is on the left. The left side of the Razer Blade 18 includes a Thunderbolt 5 port, which is unlabeled, as well as the HDMI and USB port.Mark Hachman / Foundry I found myself repeatedly returning to the hyper-detailed Razer Synapse application, which contains controls for adjusting the lighting, laptop performance, and display. Razer includes several performance profiles, (Balanced, Silent, Performance, and Turbo), which I bounced in and out of depending on the application. Unfortunately, the “Silent” mode wasn’t entirely silent, even when simply writing this review, and I would have liked it to shut down the fan entirely. Synapse also failed to launch the “Razer” module for adjusting the performance when I rebooted the laptop without an internet connection. Turning on the Wi-Fi reinstated the module and the performance settings, which were still there after turning off the Wi-Fi. I don’t know if it was a glitch or not, but I wasn’t impressed. That’s one of the few things I didn’t like about Synapse, which is about as well-thought-out as utility software goes these days. I’m a little surprised that Razer shipped the laptop with Windows 11 Home, not Pro, but PCWorld’s software store features some killer Windows 11 Pro deals — at press time, a Windows 11 Pro license is just $13. On this side, there’s a Thunderbolt 4 port as well as Ethernet, more USB-A, and the power port and 3.5mm jack.Mark Hachman / Foundry Razer Blade 18: Display A major change for the 2025 Blade 18 is the display. Previous models offered either a QHD+ mini LED panel (2560×1600) at 300Hz or a 4K screen at 300Hz, both stretched to 18 inches diagonally. That’s the traditional way of buying a laptop; you choose one or the other. With the 2025 version of the Razer Blade 18, you get a dual-mode display — both for the price of one, basically. The price, if there is one, is that there’s no touchscreen. You can use the incredibly handy Razer Synapse application to switch between display modes.Mark Hachman / Foundry Specifically, the Blade 18 offers a 3840×2400 240Hz display, switchable to a 1920×1200, 440Hz option after rebooting the laptop. The idea is that creators will spend all day designing using the 4K option, then swap to the super-high-refresh-rate option for after-hours fun. In reality, I actually never wanted to switch to the 1200p mode, since playing games at 4K+ resolutions at 240Hz is pretty damn cool all by itself. Since the Consumer Electronics Association considers 4K to be 3840×2160, you’re getting a bit better than a 4K screen just to begin with. Ditto for the 1080p-ish 1200p mode, too. The drawback is that both share the same IPS panel, which some might consider a downgrade compared to the miniLED panel of yesteryear. The Razer Blade 18 (2024)’s miniLED panel boasted 2,000 “dimming zones” that can be turned off and on to approximate the elite contrast of an OLED panel. IPS doesn’t really offer the same visual contrast. Another issue is that Windows didn’t automatically adjust the scaling when switching from 4K to 1200p resolution. The scaling became enormous, and in some applications, I couldn’t access menu items at the bottom of the window without connecting to an external display. Windows, unfortunately, thought that the new resolution was a minimum, so that the only adjustment to be made would be to make the text and windows even larger. The Razer Blade 18 color gamut, as measured under the 4K (left) and 1080p) settings (right). That only seemed to happen with the laptop display, however, under Windows. The games I tried adjusted for the new settings. And when connected to an external display the text on that display rendered normally. Still, if you’re going to buy a laptop with a premium display, it should work correctly. Otherwise, the color gamut on the Blade 18’s display wasn’t quite as good as a creator-class notebook, but it put out a hefty 532 nits of luminance whether it was in the 4K or 1080p mode. That’s enough for working outside, though the abysmal battery life of this laptop will mean that you won’t be working long before you hunt down a power outlet. Razer Blade 18: Keyboard and trackpad Razer’s purchasing department obviously bought the Blade 18’s trackpad at the warehouse store, with an enormous touchpad that’s nearly 6-inches wide and 3.75-inches long, reaching nearly from the edge of the keyboard tray to the spacebar. Unfortunately, only about half was easily clickable, with an additional quarter or so clickable after applying substantial pressure. That gives the trackpad a bit of a vestigial feel. After all, Razer would be happy to sell you one of its branded mice. Mark Hachman / Foundry The keyboard, however, is far better. The Blade 18’s keys depress with 1.5mm of key travel, which is about where I like it. Keep in mind that I typically use a business keyboard, where 1.25mm of key travel is common — I welcomed the additional travel distance. If you’re looking for a truly mechanical keyboard with far more key travel, however, something like the Alienware X16 R2 might be more your style. Each key is configurable via the Synapse key to configure it for a keypress, macro, mouse movement, or more, and there are even four dedicated “memory keys” to store specific configurations. Using the Synapse application, you can adjust each key’s function in eight different ways! As mentioned above, many of the keys have dual RGB LEDs inside them, all configurable from the Synapse application. Depress the SHIFT key, and specific keys light up; that goes for the function (FN) keys as well as the NUMLOCK keys. That’s hella cool, and I was unreasonably happy that Razer included that function. The Razer Blade 18 in a darkened room.Mark Hachman / Foundry When playing a game, the WASD (and R and C) keys light up by default (or at least by a setting that I didn’t recall tweaking). Given that I’m a left-handed gamer and use the keypad instead, that’s actually a little insulting. However, there’s a full 10-digit number pad to the right, an important concession to lefty gamers who use that instead of WASD keys. Razer Blade 18: Webcam, microphone speakers The Razer Blade 18’s webcam is passable. Supposedly it allows for 1440p video captures at 30 Hz, but I suspect that it’s using some of that additional resolution to crop in and “zoom” in on your face using Windows Studio Effects. In any event, the image is somewhat soft, and my face looked a bit too ruddy under artificial light and too washed out under natural lighting. This isn’t necessarily a plug for PCWorld’s recommendations of the best webcams, though if you can afford a $4,000 gaming laptop, what’s an additional $50 or so? What Razer is primarily concerned with, however, is the laptop speakers, especially when playing back movies and playing games. Razer’s speakers are passable, and a bit bass-heavy; that’s not surprising for a laptop with four woofers and a pair of tweeters, all enhanced via THX. Nothing stood out in my mind as something I’d prefer listening to, and that was while the laptop’s fans were set to “Silent.” Mark Hachman / Foundry Typically, gameplay on a gaming laptop is accompanied by roaring fans. While Razer’s Blade 18 doesn’t overwhelm you with noise, the fans are loud enough to drown out the small nuances. A game like Expedition 33, for example, demands headphones to ensure you hear the full range of the score. Put another way, the typical Blade 18 customer will be using headphones anyway. The noise filtering on the two dual- array microphones, though, is nearly perfection — some of the best I’ve (not) heard, ever. I usually hold up my phone and move it behind my head and off to the side, playing back rock music and then some white noise at a loud volume. The Razer Blade 18 filtered it all out — every bit — perfectly. I couldn’t really find any built-in controls for this, so it must have done it by default. Just be sure and adjust the Windows settings for the mic (System > Sound > Properties > Test mode for microphone audio processing) to the Communications drop-down setting, or else your voice will sound somewhat hollow. Razer Blade 18: Is it a Copilot+ PC? No. As we segue into our performance testing, it’s worth pointing out that most of the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 processor family does include an NPU with the requisite 40 TOPS requirement to earn the Copilot+ designation. The Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX does not. But the 275HX does include an NPU with 36 total TOPS. And Nvidia’s 5090 GPU — basically the most powerful mobile GPU on the planet at the moment — will absolutely chew through AI tasks while just falling short of earning Microsoft’s AI badge of honor. Crazy! Razer Blade 18: Performance Spend $4,500 on an 18-inch notebook, and you probably have one requirement: that it play any game you’d like, at full resolution. We can’t say this with certainty, but the Blade 18 will certainly get you almost all of the way there. Note: in the performance tests below, frame generation and upscaling are off. Some gamers call these “fake frames.” The results here are “farm-to-table” frames, rendered directly by the notebook itself. You can turn on these upscaling features for additional performance, though some people notice a small drop in visual quality as a result. In almost all cases, the laptop is good enough to deliver more than playable framerates without any AI enhancements. In the high-end “Turbo” mode, the Blade 18 pulls close to its rated 400W at full load.Mark Hachman / Foundry For a laptop like this, you want to take the best gaming laptops out there, lock them in a room, and don’t let them out until one survives. The only fair thing to do is to put the $4,599 Razer Blade 18 up against other industry heavyweights. We chose the $3,599 Maingear Ultima 18, the $5,099 MSI Raider A18 HX A9W, the $4,199 MSI Stealth 18AI Studio A1V, the $3,700 Gigabyte Aorus 17X, and the $3,349 Alienware 16 Area-51 AW30. All of these except for the last two include 18-inch displays, which gives the chassis more than enough room for sizeable cooling options. We plugged in last year’s $3,549.99 Alienware m18 R2 with a Core i9 14900HX and an RTX 4090; how does that compare with 2025’s newest CPU and GPU? We also added Razer’s own 16-inch, which offers a different CPU but a similar RTX 5090 GPU (at 175W) and at a very comparable $4,499 price. I tested the Razer Blade 18 in both of its “4K” and “1080p” configurations, because I wasn’t sure if the performance would differ. As it turned out, they do not. But it’s a question I didn’t know the answer to with certainty, so it was worth investigating. Likewise, I tested the Razer Blade 18 in both its default “Performance” configuration as well as the top-end “Turbo” mode. Turbo kicks the power consumption up a notch, from a peak of 380W to 392W — close to the rated 400W charger limit. In some cases, performance increases. I tested using this setting as well, and the “Turbo” results are designated using the black outline around the red bar indicating the Razer Blade 18’s score. We can generate a general level of CPU performance using the Cinebench benchmark, which pushes all of the laptop’s CPU threads to their utmost to render a scene. Mark Hachman / Foundry On the desktop, AMD’s Ryzen AI processors have bested Intel’s Arrow Lake architecture. In mobile, it’s much closer, and the Ryzen 9 9955HX3D squeaks by a tiny margin, even above the “Turbo” setting. We’ve used older Cinebench benchmarks in the past; the R2024 test takes longer and works the system harder. In general, however, all of these 18-inch (and even one 16-inch) notebooks are very close where synthetic CPU performance is concerned. Handbrake takes this approach and extends it. This is an open-source conversion tool, originally designed to allow you to shrink down movies to store on a tablet for use on a long airplane flight. It asks the CPU to run at its fastest speeds for a long duration — this test could take over an hour to run on a Celeron a decade ago, but this now requires just minutes to complete (6.78 minutes, for the Razer Blade 18) to convert an entire 90-ish minute movie. We measure the time in seconds it takes Handbrake to complete the job. Mark Hachman / Foundry The one test we were not able to run was UL’s PCMark 10, which according to UL’s support staff has a known issue with Nvidia’s latest GPU driver and the RTX 5090. That’s disappointing, as PCMark still uses a representative swathe of applications, from web browsing to video chats to light gaming and CAD work, and generates a score. While I’d like to include these numbers to provide a complete picture, I think I can safely say that the Razer Blade 18 will handle all of your office tasks with ease. We can move on, then, to the GPU performance. We’ve used the UL 3DMark test to evaluate synthetic 3D performance, specifically the Time Spy test for compatibility’s sake. You’d expect the RTX 5090 inside the Razer Blade 18 to perform well, and it does. Mark Hachman / Foundry Gaming, of course, is a big reason why you’re buying this laptop. We use a representative series of three games as a benchmark across generations of laptops and desktops. Shadow of the Tomb Raider, published by Square Enix, doesn’t feel especially old, yet it was released in 2018. We push the graphics quality to its highest setting and turn off frame-generation, ray tracing, and various effects. You can see the massive generational jump from gaming notebooks that use CPUs and GPUs just a generation old and what the latest laptops like the Razer Blade 18 can achieve. For reference, most gamers may tolerate 30 frames per second in some games, but 60 fps is usually considered the minimum, with 90 fps preferred. All of our gaming benchmarks are expressed in frames per second (fps), and you’ll have no issue here. Remember, this laptop has a dual-mode screen. But while I ran these benchmarks on the 4K as well as the 1080p, high-refresh-rate settings, I saw no difference. Mark Hachman / Foundry Here we see that, well, there are games and settings that will push the Blade 18 to its limits. Deep Silver’s 2019 game, Metro: Exodus, certainly does. Here, we use the game’s “Extreme” settings, which does leave ray tracing off, but turns on other effects to give the game a more dynamic look. While all of our test laptops can play this game, there’s a definite spread between the most powerful devices on the top of this chart, and those below. Mark Hachman / Foundry It’s hard to believe that Cyberpunk: 2077 is almost five years old, too. This game has been a phenomenal benchmark, with a wide variety of available settings. This is a game which would like you to turn on ray tracing. For this test, I do — both the 1080p Ultra settings are tested, as well as the “Ray Tracing Overdrive” setting which really asks everything of the laptop. Remember, we turn off upscaling and frame generation to help generate consistent scores. But after turning on frame generation and upscaling, Cyberpunk delivered 130 fps (minimum 118 fps) on the Ray Tracing Overdrive setting at the native settings of the panel, 3840×2400. In other words, you can push Cyberpunk, at maximum settings, to deliver playable frame rates at the native panel resolution. (At 1080p, the result was 269 fps.) All of this subsample of tests dialed up the laptop to its maximum Turbo settings. Mark Hachman / Foundry Although Razer doesn’t market its Blade 18 as an AI workstation, the fact that it includes an RTX 5090 GPU with a hefty 24GB of VRAM automatically qualifies it for AI use. I recently reviewed the Framework Desktop, which includes AMD’s “Strix Halo” Ryzen AI Max chip, with gobs of memory. That allows it to load large AI LLM and image models, which gives it a leg up in terms of AI capabilities. It’s also much quieter. But the fact remains that most AI apps take full and best advantage of a GPU. These are test workloads, so the models used by UL’s Procyon test are going to be smaller and more outdated than the state of the art. But they’re also standardized. In this context, there’s simply no content between an “AI workstation” and the gobs of GPU compute power than an RTX 5090 can generate: four times the Framework Desktop. The same holds for AI chatbots or LLM text generation, too. Here, I’m much more sympathetic toward AMD’s processors. One of the measures of LLM performance is simply how quickly the response can be generated, in both the time to the first token (or word) and how quickly the entire answer is generated. In my book, speed matters a bit less if you can’t read as quickly as the AI generates its response. The Framework Desktop can allocate up to 96GB of VRAM for AI in our review unit. By comparison, the 5090 GPU in the Blade 18 allows only 24GB. This means the Blade 18 is much faster at calculating AI responses, though you might prefer the quality of results it produces. So there’s a subjective as well as an objective angle to this particular test. The weak spot? Battery life, naturally. For whatever reason, gaming laptops simply don’t last longer than a few hours in terms of battery life unless they’re tweaked. And this is just video playback. Just become accustomed to bringing your charger in case you want to game on the road. And remember, the Thunderbolt port doesn’t supply enough juice to keep the Blade 18 running for long. Mark Hachman / Foundry The chart above ranges from awful to rather good, actually. You might not be impressed with how the Razer Blade 16 performs on all of the gaming benchmarks, but it won’t conk out as quickly as the Razer Blade 18 will, that’s for sure. All told, the Razer Blade 18 delivers 4.9 hours of battery life while playing back video. But it’s a gaming laptop, right? So how long does it last while gaming? On battery, looping the Time Spy gaming benchmark, the laptop’s uptime was just one hour, six minutes. That is really bad. Synapse does come with numerous adjustments and configurations that can be made while on battery, but you’re still trying to draw blood from a stone. Razer Blade 18: Conclusion Of all the gaming laptops we’ve tested, I think that the $3,349 Alienware 16 Area-51 AW30 offers the most bang for your buck, though it’s a smaller 16-inch machine. But aside from the truly abysmal battery life — which, to be fair, is typical of most gaming laptops anyway — the Razer Blade 18 shines. I wondered whether Razer’s goal of a thin, “light” gaming laptop would fall short. A typical 18-inch gaming laptop weighs about eight pounds, while the Blade 18 comes in just above seven pounds. As our performance tests indicate, it certainly doesn’t fall short. My main gripe is that Windows doesn’t smoothly handle shifting between the two screen modes, which means near-constant UI adjustments. The stiff charger and quirky boot sequence add minor annoyances, though Synapse remains an exceptionally well-thought-out piece of software. Overall, the Razer Blade 18 excels where performance is concerned, which certainly is the key metric. But it’s also clear how much thought and care went into the design, and that won me over early on. In all, the Blade 18 easily earns PCWorld’s Editor’s Choice award. Read...

It was nearly four years ago that Spotify touted its next big feature for music lovers: lossless streaming, aka Spotify HiFi.  Finally, Spotify Premium users would get the chance to “upgrade their sound quality” from Spotify’s lossy 320Kbps Ogg Vobis codec to lossless CD-quality audio, with Billie Eilish and Finneas extoling the virtues of lossless Spotify HiFi streaming in a promotional video. The launch date for Spotify HiFi: “later this year,” meaning sometime before the end of 2021. Left unsaid but implied in Spotify’s February 2021 announcement was that Premium subscribers would be charged extra for lossless streaming. How much extra wasn’t clear, but the whole “upgrade” wording sure made it sound like you’d have to pay more for Spotify HiFi, thus helping Spotify inch its way toward profitability. The plan made perfect sense. After all, in early 2021, lossless and high-resolution music streaming was still a niche market occupied by the likes of Deezer, Qobuz, and (most of all) Tidal, with rates as high as $20 a month. (Spotify had already been testing a lossless add-on as early as 2017 at various price points.) So why shouldn’t Spotify charge extra for lossless music streaming too? Three months later, Apple and Amazon came along and ruined everything.  Separately but on the same day, the two companies rolled out their own lossless streaming offerings. Effective immediately, both Apple and Amazon said they would go the lossless way, topping Spotify HiFi with support for not just CD-quality tunes but also high-resolution audio tracks all the way up to 24-bit/192kHz (CD-quality audio is limited to 16-bit/44.1kHz), with spatial audio to boot.  The capper? Apple and Amazon’s paid music streaming subscribers would get all those lossless tunes for no extra charge.  It was a clever move that neatly undercut Spotify’s HiFi ambitions while also blowing up the business models of the niche lossless streamers (all of whom had to drastically overhaul their pricing plans in the ensuing years). All of a sudden, Spotify didn’t want to talk about Spotify HiFi anymore.  It wasn’t until January 2022 that Spotify finally broached the subject of Spotify HiFi again, saying it was “excited to deliver a Spotify HiFi experience to Premium users” but that “we don’t have timing details to share yet.” A month later, Spotify CEO David Ek blamed “licensing” issues for the delay.  Then followed months of stubborn silence, punctuated by rumors and leaks about Spotify HiFi’s fate. There was chatter in late 2022 about a supposed “Spotify Platinum” plan that would offer lossless audio along with “limited-ad” podcasts and other features. By June 2023, the rumored Spotify Platinum plan morphed into a rumored “Supremium” tier with lossless tunes and “expanded” access to audiobooks. Nearly a year later, word had it that “Supremium” had been replaced by a “Music Pro” add-on that packed lossless audio with “advanced mixing tunes.”  Finally in July 2024, Spotify’s Ek floated the idea of a “deluxe version of Spotify” with “all the benefits” of a standard Premium membership plus “a lot more control, a lot higher quality across the board, and some other things that I’m not ready to talk about yet.” Ek suggested the new “deluxe” Spotify (which has yet to arrive) might cost “something like $5 above the current premium tier.”   Behind the years-long delay, the rumors, and the trial balloons, it seemed like Spotify was casting about for a reason to charge extra for lossless music streaming—an argument that was tough to make given that Apple, Amazon, and others weren’t charging more for lossless tracks. (I’ve reached out to Spotify for comment.)  At last—perhaps for lack of a better idea—Spotify relented, announcing Wednesday that it would offer gratis lossless audio to its existing Premium subscribers, similar to what Apple and Amazon have been doing since mid-2021.  “The wait is finally over,” said Spotify VP Gustav Gyllenhammar in a press release. “We’ve taken time to build this feature in a way that prioritizes quality, ease of use, and clarity at every step, so you always know what’s happening under the hood. With Lossless, our premium users will now have an even better listening experience.”  Spotify Lossless (the “Spotify HiFi” moniker has apparently been banished) still has some drawbacks compared to lossless listening on Apple and Amazon; audio quality on Spotify is capped at 24-bit/44.1kHz, versus full-on 24-bit/192hHz for its competitors (good luck telling the difference, to be fair), and there’s no mention of native spatial audio support.  In any event, Spotify wound up singing Apple’s and Amazon’s tune when it came to lossless audio, folding it into its standard subscription plans for no extra charge. What else could it do? Read...

Microsoft generally releases one major Windows update every year. And now that Windows 10 is riding off into the sunset, all eyes are on the upcoming Windows 11 update, version 25H2. We’ve seen a long list of features, but now the update is available via ISO download. You can install it manually; though it’s not yet available via Windows Update. This version of Windows 11 was already available via the Windows Insiders testing system, and the ISO files are still gated behind it, but Windows Central reports that this should be the “production ready” version of the operating system. That means it’s ready to head out to PC manufacturers for installation on brand new machines. The full version will be available to download for most users in the near future. Windows 11 25H2 isn’t a huge change over the current version, 24H2, which has already implemented many of the changes versus older releases. Changes to the Start Menu are probably the most visible aspect, which now shows more controls and folders by default. Microsoft’s Phone Link software also gets a more central view, there are new widgets on the lock screen, and tweaks have been made to File Explorer and Search, among dozens of smaller changes. That said, Windows updates have been causing some headaches lately, especially if you’re unlucky enough to own a small selection of SSDs. Weeks of investigation found that some drives running pre-production Phison controller firmware could be rendered useless under extremely specific circumstances. Some teething troubles are expected with all operating system updates…but I’ve been checking my backups a little more frequently as of late. Read...

One of the best features you’ll find on locks that support Apple Home Keys is the ability to open the lock simply by tapping your iPhone or Apple Watch against it. Owners of the Ultraloq Bolt NFC have been able to do that since the smart lock launched in June 2025. Now, a software update brings the same convenient feature to Android smartphone users (but apparently not Android smart watch wearers). The Ultraloq Bolt NFC ($200) also has a numeric PIN pad arranged in a semi-circle around a conventional key cylinder, but it doesn’t have a fingerprint reader (you will find that feature on the Bolt Fingerprint Matter smart lock we reviewed in January, but that lock doesn’t support near-field communications). The Ultraloq Bolt NFC can also be opened with an NFC card or, as shown here, with an NFC key fob.Ultraloq The Bolt NFC connects directly to your Wi-Fi network, eliminating the need for a bridge. The Wi-Fi connection allows you to also lock and unlock with the Ultraloq app, of course, but the NFC feature means you don’t need to launch the Ultraloq app, unlock your phone, or even wake it up. Ultraloq also offers two other alternatives to keys and PIN codes: There’s a pair of NFC cards for $9, and a four-pack of much smaller NFC key fobs for $17. The manufacturer says the update to its U-Home app was released on September 5, and that the tap-to-unlock feature should work with 99 percent of NFC-enabled Android smartphones. This news is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart locks. Read...

If you’ve been waiting for the perfect moment to upgrade your gaming laptop, today might be the day you’ve been anticipating. I just spotted a standout deal on a high-performance machine: a Gigabyte Gaming A16 for just $1,050 at Best Buy, down $250 from its original price. Let’s talk specs because this machine is built to impress. It’s powered by a 13th-gen Intel Core i7-13620H processor paired with an amazing 32GB of DDR5 RAM and a spacious 1TB SSD. But what really kicks it up into high gear is the dedicated Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 GPU that just came out earlier this year and unlocks the latest Nvidia gaming features, including DLSS 4, multi frame generation, AI upscaling, and more. That’s an amazing combo that’s perfect for handling your everyday workload, your 3D games, your creative hobbies, and hundreds of Chrome tabs (if you’re like that). And it’ll look good on this laptop’s beautiful 16-inch IPS display with its 1920×1200 resolution and speedy 165Hz refresh rate. That all translates into sharp images, vivid colors, and fluid gameplay visuals with no stuttering or tearing. The Gigabyte Gaming A16 is a bargain for just $1,050 given what it has to offer, so don’t sleep on this deal. Those specs are impressive for the price, and this discount won’t last forever. But if this isn’t the right laptop for you, check out our other favorite gaming laptops worth buying. This RTX 5060 gaming laptop with 32GB RAM is a winner at this priceBuy now from Best Buy Read...

Last week, Microsoft released an important Windows 11 patch known as update KB5065426. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for error reports to start pouring in from users who have been running into all kinds of error codes during installation of the update. With it being a mandatory update, the Windows Update system will periodically keep trying to install the update even if users have declined, reports Windows Latest. That’s obviously a repetitive nuisance if the update won’t properly install for whatever reason. Windows Latest has compiled a list of the various error codes that can crop up during installation of the September update, including 0x800F0991, 0x800F0922, 0x80071A2D, 0x800F081F, 0x80070302, 0x80070306, and 0x8000FFFF. In addition, some users are saying the update takes a lot longer to download than these monthly updates usually take, although that could just be due to the fact that this particular update is larger. Normally, it’s possible to get around Windows update installation problems by circumventing Windows Update altogether and manually installing an update via the Microsoft Update Catalog. However, with update KB5065426, even this method is throwing errors for some. According to Windows Latest, the only workaround for this issue right now is to use the Media Creation Tool or Update Assistant Tool. Read...

One day, you might lose your laptop. It could be stolen or it could be misplaced. But if you’re reading this right now and you still have your laptop with you, the advice is the same either way: be proactive and take steps to protect your machine ahead of time. There’s nothing worse than realizing your laptop is gone and being full of regret, wishing you’d taken those proactive steps when you had the chance. You have that chance right now—don’t put it off until “later” that never comes. Act now to protect your sensitive data and make sure your laptop is more easily recoverable should you lose it. Both Windows 11 and Windows 10 have useful safeguarding features worth using, and Windows can theoretically track your lost laptop (but you’ll need extra hardware for the best tracking experience). Here are the preemptive steps you should take to protect your laptop ASAP. Check if your storage is encrypted First things first, you have to make sure your laptop’s internal storage is securely encrypted. There’s a good chance it already is—disk encryption is enabled by default on many newer Windows laptops—but it might not be. If it isn’t, you’ll want to turn it on. To check if your PC is encrypted, open the Start menu, search for “Device Encryption” or “BitLocker,” then click Device encryption settings or Manage BitLocker, respectively. You’ll see a different option depending on how your PC is encrypted. (Windows is confusing like that. Learn more about BitLocker versus device encryption.) Chris Hoffman / Foundry If Windows says Device Encryption or BitLocker is activated, rest assured your files are safely encrypted and protected from thieves. If your laptop is lost or stolen, no one will be able to access your data—as long as your laptop is locked, sleeping, or shut down when it’s lost. Enable disk encryption if it isn’t on If your laptop’s internal storage isn’t encrypted, that’s a problem. It means anyone who gains physical access to your laptop can snoop or steal your files and private data. You do have private data, don’t you? Modern Windows PCs generally support device encryption, which is activated by default when you sign in with a Microsoft account. If your PC supports Device Encryption but you’re using Windows with a local user account, just sign in with a Microsoft account to activate it. Windows will save your BitLocker recovery key to your Microsoft account online, so you can access your data even if you forget your Microsoft account password. Chris Hoffman / Foundry If you want proper disk encryption but don’t want to sign in with a Microsoft account, you’ll have to pay to upgrade to the Professional edition of Windows 11 (or Windows 10). This will unlock the full BitLocker experience and you’ll be able to encrypt your PC’s internal storage without signing in with a Microsoft account. Back up your files (or at least sync them) With disk encryption set up, a thief won’t be able to gain access to your files… but any files that are only on your laptop will still be lost to you. If you don’t have backups of your files, the only way to recover them is to physically recover your laptop. That’s why it’s critical to maintain backups of your important data at all times, whether via local backups, online cloud backups, or ideally both. Immo Wegmann / Unsplash It’s also a good idea to store your important files on a cloud storage platform, whether that’s Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Apple iCloud, or whatever other file-syncing service you prefer. Cloud storage keeps your files in sync across multiple devices, lessening the risk of outdated backups. Plus, you’ll have convenient online access to all of your files even if you’re unable to recover your laptop. Enable Find My Device (for what it’s worth) Windows has a built-in Find My Device feature and it’s one of the lesser-known Windows features everyone should know about. To turn it on, head to Settings > Privacy & security > Find my device. After it’s enabled, you can head to Microsoft’s Find My Device page in a browser, sign in with your Microsoft account, and remotely locate your laptop. Chris Hoffman / Foundry This sounds great in theory, but there are some drawbacks to it. For starters, Find My Device will only work if your laptop is powered on and has an internet connection. That might be okay if you accidentally left it behind in a café, but not so effective if it was stolen. (This type of remote tracking works better with phones since they’re always partially awake and usually have an active cellular data connection wherever they are.) Still, Find My Device is still worth enabling since you never know. Plus, if you have a laptop with built-in 5G internet, it will be even more recoverable because it could still be tracked even without a Wi-Fi connection. But 5G laptops are uncommon and expensive. Fortunately, there’s an even better way to track your laptop. Keep reading. Add a Bluetooth tracker to your laptop Realistically speaking, the best way to remotely track your laptop is with a small Bluetooth tracker, whether that’s an Apple AirTag, Tile, Chipolo, Samsung Galaxy SmartTag, or whatever else. Throw it into your laptop bag and you’ll be able to track it if your bag is snatched or lost. Jon Martindale / Foundry Alternatively, if you don’t mind sticking something directly onto your laptop, get an adhesive Bluetooth tracker. The pro here is that you can still track your laptop if it’s separated from your bag. The con here is that a bad actor could easily tear it off upon stealing your laptop. I would love it if laptops came with built-in Bluetooth trackers that were compatible with all these networks, but alas. Until laptop makers realize this is a clever idea, your best bet is to use a third-party tracker. Secure your PC with biometric sign-ins Windows has a feature called Windows Hello that forces you to sign in using a personal fingerprint or facial recognition scan. This is a great way to secure your laptop in case of theft, and it’s one of the reasons why I’ll never buy a laptop that lacks biometric hardware. Biometric sign-ins eliminate the threat of shoulder surfing. Since you aren’t typing your PIN or password in a public area, no one can snoop on your PIN or password—thus, they won’t be able to sign in as you after nicking your laptop. And with forced biometric sign-ins, they wouldn’t be able to get in with your PIN or password even if they had it. Chris Hoffman / Foundry To enable this, head to Settings > Accounts > Sign-in options and turn on “For improved security, only allow Windows Hello sign-in for Microsoft accounts on this device (Recommended).” Then, avoid typing your PIN in public. Always use biometrics. Lock your laptop up tight Biometric sign-ins can only protect your laptop when it’s signed out, forcing thieves and snoopers to log back in. For that reason, you should set up your laptop to sleep and lock itself when not in use. Whenever you step away from your laptop, use the Windows key + L keyboard shortcut to lock it. Or simply close the lid. Make this a force of habit so your laptop is never caught out unlocked, which means you should be doing this at home and in offices too. No one should be able to have free access to your laptop when you’re away from it. (I personally use the Windows lock keyboard shortcut every day!) IDG Also consider physically locking your laptop. If you’re in a dorm lounge, a library, a café, or some other non-private place, you can use a Kensington lock to secure your laptop in place—assuming your laptop has a Kensington lock slot. But even if your laptop does have one, you probably don’t have a proper Kensington lock. What then? Well, it’s always safer to slip your laptop into a bag and take it with you—even if you’re just hitting the bathroom—than it is to leave it unguarded where someone could snatch it. If you ever have to leave your laptop out of eyesight, stash it away in a bag with a Bluetooth tracker. Do you care about Windows? Maybe a little too much? So do I! Sign up to The Windows ReadMe for weekly PC tips, retro fun, and experiments straight from the mind of me, Chris Hoffman. Read...