TL;DR: Save 92% on Windows 11 Pro keys for a very limited time—only the first 100 people will get this price. Gamers have recently discovered a goldmine in a simple PC upgrade: moving from Windows 10 to 11. Yeah, those annoying upgrade reminders had a point. Currently just $14.97, Windows 11 Pro packs a suite of serious PC gaming upgrades that can squeeze even more power out of your PC, old or new. The biggest win for gamers is DirectX 12 Ultimate support. This lets you take full advantage of modern GPU features like ray tracing, variable rate shading, and mesh shaders, unlocking visual effects that rival reality in the latest titles. Combined with Auto HDR and improved graphics optimization, Windows 11 Pro helps your hardware deliver the best possible experience. Beyond graphics, Windows 11 Pro gives gamers more tools to optimize system performance. Features like Hyper-V virtualization and Windows Sandbox allow you to test mods or beta builds in isolated environments without risking your main OS. And with BitLocker device encryption, you can secure your gaming rig against malware and ransomware, a growing concern for players who mod or run unofficial tools. Upgrade to Windows 11 Pro while keys are just $14.97—selling out fast (reg. $199). Microsoft Windows 11 ProSee Deal StackSocial prices subject to change. Read...

The Switch 2 is better in every way with more power, better controls and expanded platform features. But it’s a revision rather than a revolution. Read...

TL;DR: Save 84% on this refurbished Lenovo Chromebook and get free shipping while supplies last. When you just need a laptop that works—no bells, no whistles, no stress—this is it. Now you can get a Chromebook for only $75 with free shipping, making it a smart pick for anyone in need of an ultra-affordable device, a reliable backup computer, or something for their kiddo. At this price, you won’t feel nervous about tossing it in your backpack for a flight or giving it to your child with perpetually sticky fingers. The compact design is built for the basics: web browsing, emails, video calls, and streaming—and it runs Chrome OS for hassle-free setup and all-day battery life. The Lenovo Chromebook features an 11.6-inch anti-glare touchscreen for easy navigation, along with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage for day-to-day tasks and files. Because this is a refurbished grade “B” refurbished model, expect minor cosmetic wear (like light scuffs or small dents), but fully functional performance. That also means you don’t have to worry about adding more scuffs yourself—it’s a laptop that’s built for whatever you have in mind. Don’t miss this refurbished Chromebook deal, just $74.99 with free shipping before they sell out (reg. $475.99). Lenovo 11.6? 2-in-1 Chromebook 300e 2nd Gen (2018) 4GB RAM 32GB SSD (Refurbished)See Deal StackSocial prices subject to change. Read...

Roku streaming sticks are known for their easy of use; just plug the player in your TV’s rear HDMI port, connect the USB power cable, and start binging. But as plug-and-play as Roku devices can be, adjusting a few key settings will make your streaming experience less choppy.  For example, your video image might skip and stutter without one particular setting enabled, while your audio might get funky unless a couple of other options are set property. You can also tweak how the home screen looks, as well as keep “sponsored” screensavers at bay.  Read on for the eight most important Roku settings to check first, starting with…  Show or hide the recommendation row  When you first land on the home screen after booting up your Roku, you’ll see a row of menu items just above the grid of streaming apps. This auto-generated “Top Picks For You” row features streaming titles Roku thinks you might like; some will be from your installed streaming apps, and some won’t.  Now, you might like having that top row of suggestions at the top of the home screen, especially if you’re just randomly browsing. But if you find the “Top Picks For You” row to be bothersome, you can hide it.  See that “recommended” row at the top of the apps grid? There’s an easy way to hide it.Ben Patterson/Foundry Just navigate to Settings > Home Screen > Recommendation rows, and then select Hide.  Change the size of the home screen tiles  Now that you’ve dealt with the recommendation row, let’s tackle the main grid of apps. Besides being able to rearrange the apps, you can also change the size of the tiles themselves.   If you make the tiles larger, you’ll get a clearer view of your apps, but you’ll only be able to get three rows of tiles on the home screen at a time. Make the apps smaller, and the tiles might be tougher to read, but you’ll get four rows of apps.  You can make your Roku app tiles smaller or larger, depending on your preference.Ben Patterson/Foundry To make your selection, go to Settings > Home Screen > Tile size, then pick Smaller or Larger.  Turn off sponsored wallpapers  Roku offers a wide selection of wallpapers to decorate your screen while you browse, and occasionally, some of them will advertise TV shows, movies, events, or even brands. If you don’t want your Roku home screen covered with paid wallpapers, you can easily hide them.  Don’t want to deal with sponsored wallpapers? It’s an easy fix.Ben Patterson/Foundry Head for Settings > Theme > Sponsored wallpapers, and select Off.  Turn off personalized ads  Roku streaming players and TVs are inexpensive for a reason: The company sells information about the viewing habits of its users to advertisers.   Roku isn’t alone in this practice; Amazon, Google, and plenty of smart TV manufacturers do the same thing. But while your viewing history is anonymized before being sent to third parties, you’re nonetheless sacrificing some privacy in exchange for Roku’s ultra-low prices.  One privacy-protecting measure you can take is to set Roku to give you a non-persistent device identifier. Doing so means giving advertisers a much less clear view of your streaming habits, although Roku notes that you’ll still see the same number of ads, and they won’t be as tailored to your interests.  You can boost your privacy by disabling “personalized” ads on your Roku.Ben Patterson/Foundry To turn off personalized ads, select Settings > Advertising, then uncheck the Personalize ads option.  Turn off auto-playing videos  Speaking of ads, you’ll occasionally run into video ads that start playing automatically as you browse the Roku interface. These video ads can be tough to ignore, and they can also eat up your bandwidth.  Luckily, there’s an easy way to keep auto-playing videos from getting in your face.  Go to Settings > Accessibility > Auto-play video, and select the Off option.  Auto-adjust display refresh rate  Ever notice the streaming image on your TV to be stuttering? That can happen if there’s a mismatch between the frame rate of the source content and the frame rate that your Roku device is sending to your TV.   The good news is that there’s an easy fix for frame rate problems. You can—and should—set your Roku device to detect the frame rate of a given streaming title, allowing it to automatically match the content’s frame rate.  Navigate to Advanced display settings > Auto-adjust display refresh rate, and make sure it’s set to On.  Set display type automatically  You don’t want to your Roku player capping its video quality at HD for a 4K smart TV; by the same token, you don’t want your Roku stick sending Dolby Vision HDR images to a set that can only handle garden-variety HDR.   Rather than looking up the technical details of your TV or sleuthing out the quality of your HDMI connection, you can simply have your Roku player do the work for you.   Head for Settings > Display type, and ensure it’s set to Automatic.  Double-check your audio settings  Just as you can encounter video hiccups when streaming from your Roku, you may find your audio output sounds funky as well.   This feature is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best streaming media players. Under the hood, your TV might offer only certain audio decoders, such as Dolby Digital and DTS. If your Roku player sends the wrong audio signal to your set, you’ll hear some very strange noises coming from your speakers.  Once again, you can let your Roku player do the heavy lifting for you. Go to Settings > Audio > Preferred streaming format, and make sure it’s set to Auto, then go to the nearby Digital output format setting and choose Auto once more. Read...

The M3 iPad Air is easily one of our favorite tablets, and it’s going to get a lot better this fall once iPadOS 26 arrives. And now it has an all-time-low discount over at Amazon—you can now get the M3 iPad Air for $499, a savings of $100, matching the best price we’ve ever seen. The tablet features a gorgeous, super-light design built around an 11-inch Liquid Retina display with super slim bezels that’ll be great for iPadOS 26’s new multitasking. There’s 128GB of storage space available for all those apps you want to install and use, which isn’t a ton, and you’re going to have to pay quite a bit for storage upgrades, but you’ll still save $100 on other storage capacities if you want more. This iPad is ready for Apple Intelligence. You can already make use of all those cool features that are already available, as well as any that are coming with iPadOS 26. You’ll also get great battery life, a Center Stage camera, and a fantastic processor. All this adds up to the M3 iPad Air M3 being a fantastic tablet that’s about to get even better with iPadOS 26. And now that it’s only $499 at Amazon, it’s a great deal. Get this 11-inch iPad Air for $100 offBuy now at Amazon Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Good PCIe 4.0, host memory buffer performance Relatively affordable Beefier heat spreader, screwdriver, and mounting screw included Cons Slower-than-average random operations Pricier than some of its ilk Our Verdict Though not a standout performer, the Orico IG740-Pro is fast enough, decently affordable, and ships with some nice-to-have extras. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Oirco IG740-Pro SSD Retailer Price Orico $70.99 View Deal $79.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket I’ve long tracked and tested Orico’s drive enclosures to good effect, but this is my first encounter with an SSD from company. It proved to be a more-than-capable NVMe drive, and as affordable as the competition. All in all, it’s a welcome addition to the market. Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best SSDs for comparison. What are the Orico IG740-Pro’s features? The IG740-Pro is a PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe M.2, 2280 (22mm wide, 80mm long) SSD. The controller is a Maxio MAP1602A and the NAND is 232–layer 3D TLC. Orico warrantees the IG740-Pro for the usual five years, and the usual 600TBW per 1TB of capacity. If you write more than 600TB within the five years, the drive could go read-only. Most vendors rate their SSDs’ TBW (terabytes that can be written) far more conservatively than they’re actually capable of lasting. It’s a liability thing. Orico thoughtfully includes a slightly beefier heat spreader with a thermal compound strip, as well as a screwdriver and even a retaining screw for installing the drive should you need them. These are very nice touches — the screw especially, as they are small and can be easy to lose. How much is the Orico IG740-Pro? The Orico IG740 Pro is available in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities for $71, $135, and $240, respectively. That’s roughly on par for a host memory buffer TLC SSD. How fast is the Orico IG740-Pro? The IG740-Pro is hardly a barn burner, but it’s not half-bad considering the price. That’s my laid-back way of saying it’s more than fast enough, but not near the top of the heap. It was the 5th fastest PCIe 4.0 host memory buffer drive overall, but 29th among all the NVMe SSDs we’ve tested. I stacked the IG740-Pro up against some pretty heady PCIe 4.0/HMB competition in the charts by way of the WD Black SN7100, Teamgroup MP44Q, and the uber-affordable Kingston NV3. You can see its CrystalDiskMark sequential performance numbers directly below. It largely held its own. Orico thoughtfully includes a slightly beefier heat spreader with a thermal compound strip, as well as a screwdriver and even a retaining screw… The Orico IG740-Pro did quite well in CrystalDiskMark 8’s sequential throughput tests. Host memory buffer SSDs tend to have significantly slower random operations, but the Orico IG740-Pro was particularly far off the pace. It’s not the optimal drive for running your operating system (which performs myriad small file ops). Host memory buffer SSDs tend to have significantly slower random operations, but the Orico IG740-Pro was particularly far off the pace. It’s not the optimal drive for running your operating system with its myriad small file ops. Two minutes, nine seconds is a good aggregate time for the Orico IG740-Pro, if not the fastest we’ve seen from an HMB design. Note that host memory buffer drives tend to do very well in our real-world transfers. Two minutes, nine seconds ifsa good aggregate time for the Orico IG740-Pro. The Orico IG740-Pro slowed from around 3GBps to 2GBps around the 75 percent point in the 450GB write, hence it lagged slightly behind the competition. The Orico IG740-Pro slowed from around 3GBps to 2GBps around the 75% point in the 450GB write. Note that the drop to 2GBps was not the drive writing natively. When that occurs (well beyond 450GB — which you’ll likely never see) the write rate actually hovers between 500MBps and 750MBps. The image below was a second consecutive 450GB write without giving the IG740-Pro time to reconstitute secondary cache. When the IG740-Pro writes natively the rate actually hovers between 500MBps and 750MBps. Note also that the Teamgroup MP44Q is a QLC (Quad-Level Cell/4-bit) drive, so when you exceed its secondary cache, the write rate drops off a cliff to around 100MBps. Should you buy the Orico IG740 Pro? While the Orico IG740’s performance performance is strictly median for its class, in truth all NVMe SSDs are really, really fast. Call this another “pick’-em based on what drives are cheaper at the moment.” A solid effort from Orico. How we test Our storage tests currently utilize Windows 11 (22H2) 64-bit running on a Z790 (PCIe 5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 modules (64GB of memory total). Intel integrated graphics are used. The 48GB transfer tests utilize an ImDisk RAM disk taking up 58GB of the 64GB total memory. The 450GB file is transferred from a Samsung 990 Pro 2TB, which also contains the operating system. Each test is performed on a newly formatted and TRIM’d drive so the results are optimal. Note that as any drive fills up, performance will decrease due to less NAND for secondary caching, and other factors. The performance numbers shown apply only to the drive we were shipped as well as the capacity tested. SSD performance can vary by capacity due to more or fewer chips to read/write across and the amount of NAND available for secondary caching (writing TLC/QLC as SLC). Vendors also occasionally swap components. If you ever notice a large discrepancy between the performance you experience and that which we report (systems being roughly equal), by all means — let us know. Read...

If you’ve been thinking about picking up a new laptop, this one’s worth a serious look. The HP OmniBook X Flip is a slick 16-inch 2-in-1 that does it all—work, play, doodling, browsing, you name it. The best part? It’s currently on sale for $750 at Best Buy (was $1,100) for a massive savings of $350. Not bad for a machine packed with this much power. Inside, it’s rocking an AMD Ryzen AI 7 chip, a beefy 24GB of RAM, and a roomy 1TB of SSD storage. It should be fast, responsive, and you’ve got plenty of storage for everything from big work files to your personal photo album. Plus, the 16-inch 1920×1200 touchscreen display is bright at 400 nits, and the 2-in-1 design means you can flip the screen around and use it like a tablet, which is great for note-taking or sketching.  This is also one of those new Copilot+ PCs that Microsoft has been pushing hard over the past year, so it’s geared up to handle all the latest AI tools and Windows 11 features. Copilot+ laptops tend to be on the pricier side, but this one’s now relatively affordable. All of this for under $800? That’s a steal! If you want a laptop that looks good and runs fast, scoop this one up while the deal’s still live. Save $350 on the HP OmniBook X Flip 2-in-1 laptopBuy now from Best Buy Read...

Hey, PCWorld readers! Windows 11 has a bunch of hidden features that I consider unrealized gems — utilities and tools that aren’t widely used, but when Windows users do discover them, most are duly impressed by what they find. One such gem is the Windows 11 Voice typing tool (a voice-to-text dictation tool). I’d known about it previously, but I only really realized its potential when I got a bad case of RSI in my mouse hand and thought I’d have a go at dictating an article sans keyboard to give it a rest. My impression after a few minutes of voice typing was that it’s surprisingly accurate, despite me giving it no training. I was outputting my laptop’s display to an external monitor at the time and wasn’t even directly speaking into the microphone, yet the tool managed to reproduce what I was saying with near-perfect accuracy in Notepad. I was also impressed by the fact it supports 36 different languages and multiple variants of some of the more widely spoken ones. Editing was a little hard at first, but after I memorized a few commands, I found I could insert punctuation without much fuss. Sign up for PCWorld’s Try This newsletter to get fast, handy tips like this delivered straight to your inbox twice a week! Here’s how to use it… Type Windows + H to open the Voice typing tool — it comes pre-installed with Windows 11 and is active by default. Also open the text app or program you’d like to use it with. For this demonstration I used the Notepad app, but it also works with Microsoft Word. Now dictate the words you’d like to be typed. You can find a list of commands and punctuation commands on the Microsoft Support website. Click on the microphone icon in the Voice typing box to stop. The Windows 11 Voice typing tool lets you dictate speech to text. Dominic Bayley / Foundry Take care, until next time! And, if you like this tip and want more like it, be sure to sign up to the PCWorld Try This newsletter. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Excellent CPU performance Cooling readily keeps up with the internals Fast display Supports USB-C charging at 100W Cons Bulky and plasticky Speakers are grating at full volume So-so battery life for gaming laptops Our Verdict The Asus ROG Strix G16 isn’t the ultimate gaming laptop, but it delivers exceptional performance for its hardware, rivaling last-gen RTX 4080 systems. It’s not the sleekest, but it’s well-built and more affordable than Lenovo’s class leader. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Asus ROG Strix G16 Retailer Price $2,299 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket The Asus ROG Strix G16 (G614) is a solid gaming laptop entering the mid-to-high range of the market, as it’s capped at an RTX 5070 Ti. It may not have the most elegant build, combining mostly plastics with an aluminum lid, and its IPS display isn’t quite as jaw-dropping as OLED rivals, but the Asus ROG Strix G16 puts up powerful performance for the money, proving itself a worthy rival to the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10, even if it can’t quite dethrone that beast. With a starting price of $1,599 and options up to $2,499, there’s a good bit of room to configure a system that suits your needs without going overboard. But as tested here at the height of the range, it’s one heck of a performer. Asus ROG Strix G16: Specs and features Model number: G614 CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D Memory: 32GB DDR5-5600 Graphics/GPU: Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti 12GB VRAM, (140-Watt TGP) Display: 16-inch, 2560×1600 IPS, 240Hz, 500 nits, 100 percent DCI-P3, G-Sync, Dolby Vision HDR Storage: 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSD Webcam: 1080p + IR  Connectivity: 2x USB4 (1x 100W PD support), 2x USB-A 10Gbps, 1x HDMI 2.1 FRL, 1x GbE, 1x 3.5mm combo audio Networking: WiFi 6E 2×2, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: Windows Hello facial recognition Battery capacity: 90 watt-hours Dimensions: 13.94 x 10.39 x 1.2 inches Weight: 5.22 pounds MSRP: $2,499 as-tested ($1,599 base) The Asus ROG Strix G16 comes in several configurations. A few come from Asus directly while some are exclusive to Walmart and Best Buy and have different displays from Asus’s direct offerings. All of them are built around AMD CPUs and RTX 50-series GPUs. Support for Wi-Fi 6E, dual SSD slots, 1TB of included PCIe Gen 4 storage, 90Wh batteries, and 280W chargers are all common among them.  The base model is a Walmart-exclusive, starts at $1,599, and includes an AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX CPU with 16GB of memory, and an RTX 5060 GPU. The display here is a 1200p IPS panel with a 165Hz refresh rate, 300 nits of brightness, and 100 percent sRGB color gamut. Best Buy has two more models using the same display. These both come with an earlier AMD Ryzen 9 8940HX CPU. A $1,699 model includes an RTX 5070 and a $1,999 model bumps to an RTX 5070 Ti.  The rest of the configurations come directly from Asus and bump up to a 1600p, 240Hz panel with a 500-nit brightness level, G-Sync, 100 percent DCI-P3 coverage, and Dolby Vision support. They also get 32GB of memory. The first of these models is $2,199 and includes an RTX 5070. For $2,399, the GPU gets a further upgrade to an RTX 5070 Ti, but all else remains the same. Finally, at $2,499, we reach the configuration tested here. This bumps up CPU, swapping to an AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D. These varied configuration and retailer options provide an interesting mix that should allow gamers to select their priorities. Walmart offers the cheapest entry point, while Best Buy’s options favor value on the GPU side, letting you land an RTX 5070 Ti for $400 less than Asus’s configuration. Meanwhile Asus’s configurations offer a higher-grade display for those who plan to do a lot of gaming directly on the laptop.  The ROG Strix G16 doesn’t just game—it competes, balances, and delivers where it counts. It’s not trying to win a beauty pageant; it’s here to dominate the leaderboard. Asus ROG Strix G16: Design and build quality IDG / Mark Knapp The Asus ROG Strix G16 isn’t subtle about being a gaming laptop. From its textured and striped exhaust tail, the large grilles on both the sides and back, various branding on just about every surface, a completely over-engineered base plate (done up to look a bit like a motherboard with a CPU socket), and all the RGB lighting, it just about shouts “gamer.” The RGB even extends a bit beyond the typical keyboard backlight. A lightstrip stretches across the front edge of the laptop to cast a colorful glow in front of the Asus ROG Strix G16. The system is bulky, measuring over an inch thick, but it’s almost surprisingly light for its size. It weighs 5.22 pounds, which still isn’t light but is kind of light for a 16-inch gaming laptop. A lot of that weight and size is coming from the cooling system. The Asus ROG Strix G16 has ventilation wrapping around the back half of the base, completely spanning the rear and covering a portion of each side. There are even two little vents on a little hinge shelf above the keyboard. Asus uses a triple-fan arrangement to cool the internals, though one of these is quite small. With such wide ventilation, the system doesn’t have to go shrill during heavy gaming. It produces a light breeze sound that’s not unpleasant to hear even at an arm’s length With all that’s packed in, the Asus ROG Strix G16 ends up sturdy, with little flex to the base even though it’s all made out of ABS and polycarbonate. Only the display lid gets a touch of the premium with an aluminum cover. The ABS plastic on the bottom of the system feels rough and a little cheap, but still tough. There’s just enough flex from the display that it bends a little when opening or closing it with a hand on the corner, but a little lip at the top provides a more balanced point for opening and closing.  The Asus ROG Strix G16 comes with a beefy 280-watt power brick for charging, and it adds almost another 1.5 pounds to the package. On the bright side, 100-Watt USB-C charging is also supported if you want to use a smaller charger on the go.  Asus ROG Strix G16: Keyboard, trackpad IDG / Mark Knapp Physically, the keyboard is a joy to type on. It has a satisfying, soft bottom out that makes for comfy typing. I was comfortably able to type at over 110 words per minute without feeling like I was rushing in Monkeytype, and managed a fair degree of accuracy.  It has a couple of downsides, though. Asus prioritized full-sized arrow keys, and it shrank the right shift key considerably in the process. I find myself regularly hitting the up arrow when I mean to hit shift, and instead of getting a capital letter, I start messing up a whole paragraph. As helpful as the RGB keyboard lighting is for seeing key legends in the dark, the slightly dark key legends when backlighting is off can make it a little hard to see the keyboard even in a well lit room.  Once in the course of my testing, in the middle of using it, the keyboard suddenly stopped working entirely. The trackpad still worked, but neither keys nor keyboard shortcuts worked. After plugging the system in and letting it restart, the keyboard resumed proper functioning, but it was an odd and upsetting experience nonetheless. I’ve never known a computer not to have the odd hiccup now and then, though, and as this wasn’t a recurring issue, I didn’t raise too much concern.  For gaming, the keyboard deck gets a little warm, but the palm area doesn’t, and the WASD keys are comfortable to rest on. Only the area around the number row and above heats up, as that’s where most of the heatsink sits. The Asus ROG Strix G16’s trackpad is reasonably spacious, pleasingly smooth, and offers a satisfying, soft physical click. t could be wider, but after experiencing frequent palm rejection issues on the Razer Blade 16’s ultra-wide trackpad, I’m not mad at Asus for keeping it modest.  The trackpad has a special function seen on a number of other Asus laptops. With a long-press  near one corner, it can turn into a number pad with illuminated characters and math function keys. It’s an interesting feature to have, but the beauty of a number pad is how muscle memory allows for touch typing, and this setup doesn’t really facilitate that quite as well.  Asus ROG Strix G16: Display, audio IDG / Mark Knapp The Asus ROG Strix G16’s display is good overall. It has a lot going for it. For one, it delivered 480 nits of brightness in my testing, and that combines with a strong anti-glare coating that makes it easy to see in almost any conditions. The 2560×1600 resolution is respectably sharp, and it runs at a super-smooth 240Hz with only minor ghosting. It’s also wonderfully colorful, fully covering the DCI-P3 color space. Color accuracy wasn’t on point, though. The display also exhibits some annoying dimming behavior, slowing ramping the brightness up or down depending on the screen content. It doesn’t show up much while gaming or watching movies, but while browsing the web, where the brightness of content can change suddenly, it becomes distracting. The two down-firing speakers provide respectable, clear audio for voices, making for a good way to listen to instructional/educational videos or have voice calls. They pump out plenty of volume, but it’s a bit harsh at max volume. Dialed back, the speakers still provide ample volume and decent fullness without the same harshness. There’s even a bit of bass. Asus suggests they’re capable of Dolby Atmos audio and can play into virtual 5.1.2-channel surround sound, but that is extremely generous for speakers that barely manage basic stereo. Asus ROG Strix G16: Webcam, microphone, biometrics The webcam on the Asus ROG Strix G16 is decent. It can get a little grainy in dimmer environments, but it does an impressive job with exposure. It manages to get most of the picture clear without overexposing. It’s not a master though, in extra-dim rooms with one strong light, it can run into overexposure in its effort to get the rest of the picture lit up, but even then it looks acceptable.  The microphones are solid. They pick up my voice loud and clear without too much room echo. They also do a good job cutting down on background noise. Even with a box fan running in a window nearby and construction outside, my voice remained clear without awkward compression or clipped words, and the fan itself was inaudible while the construction was reduced to subtle clinking.  Unfortunately, you’ll be relying on a password, PIN, or security key to log onto the Asus ROG Strix G16. It doesn’t feature any facial or fingerprint recognition technology.  Asus ROG Strix G16: Connectivity IDG / Mark Knapp Like most big gaming laptops, the Asus ROG Strix G16 provides a good smattering of ports. You’ll find two USB4 Type-C ports on the left side, and one of those supports 100W power delivery for charging without the G16’s beefy power brick (though don’t expect full performance while plugged in this way). There’s also a 3.5mm headset jack, HDMI 2.1 port, and Gigabit Ethernet port over there along with the main DC barrel jack. The right side of the laptop includes two USB-A 10Gbps ports. An extra USB-A port or SD/microSD card slot would have been nice to see. Unfortunately, Asus’s cooling design takes up the entire rear of the laptops and half of each side, so all of the ports are lined up along the front half of either side. I find this awkward when  plugging in multiple devices, especially if you plan to game that way, as you’ll have USB dongles/cables sticking out right where you’d likely want a mouse.  Wireless connections have been dependable. The system supports Wi-Fi 6E, letting you get a quick and stable connection or even step up to the 6GHz band for extra throughput. Tested on a normal Wi-Fi 6 network with fiber internet, the Asus ROG Strix G16 made the most of the speeds.  Asus ROG Strix G16: Performance The Asus ROG Strix G16 is no slouch. Of course it couldn’t be for the price it demands, but it’s making its components work for it. We haven’t tested a lot of systems recently that have closely matching components, but prior generation heavyweights like the Gigabyte Aorus 16X, Alienware m16 R2, and Alienware x16 R2 show what kind of performance gains this latest generation of hardware can deliver. And the RTX 5080-equipped Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 offers a look at how the Asus ROG Strix G16 stacks up to a laptop in the next tier up. While that Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 was $3,599 as tested, there is an RTX 5070 Ti configuration that goes for $2,849, making it more competitive with the Strix G16.  IDG / Mark Knapp The Asus ROG Strix G16 immediately proves its competency in everyday tasks with a high score in PCMark 10, a holistic test that tasks the system with launching apps, web browsing, making spreadsheets, editing photos and video, and rendering 3D graphics. With a fast processor, GPU, and storage, the Asus ROG Strix G16 performs exceptionally, beating out all three 2024 systems and nearly keeping up with the pricier Lenovo Legion.  IDG / Mark Knapp A lot of that performance can be chalked up to the CPU. The AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D in here is a veritable beast. It manages to complete our handbrake encoding task in 9 minutes, stepping up considerably from even heavy hitters like the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H. It couldn’t quite match the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10’s Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, but the AMD CPU also has 8 fewer CPU cores, so the fact it comes as close as it does is still impressive. IDG / Mark Knapp Unsurprisingly, we see similar performance in Cinebench, with the Asus ROG Strix G16 slightly tailing the Lenovo Legion as both put up simply excellent performance numbers. And it’s not just multi-core performance. The Asus ROG Strix G16’s CPU has excellent single-core performance as well, again beating all of the other systems except the Lenovo Legion, which it narrowly trails. Since all 16 cores in this AMD CPU are performance cores and they prove so capable, it’s understandable how the AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D is coming close to the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX (which offers an 8P+16E arrangement) despite having considerably fewer cores overall. IDG / Mark Knapp The Asus ROG Strix G16 also puts up excellent gaming performance. In 3DMark’s demanding Port Royal test, which employs a lot of ray-traced effects, the Asus ROG Strix G16 shows how much the RTX 5070 Ti steps up from the RTX 4070, even coming close to the RTX 4080’s performance. The RTX 5080 in the Lenovo Legion still distances itself in this test, though. The cooling in the Asus ROG Strix G16 also helps it maintain its performance. In 3DMark’s Steel Nomad Stress Test, which runs the benchmark sequence 20 times in a row, the Asus ROG Strix G16 maintained 97.7 percent consistent results.  IDG / Mark Knapp The results we saw in Port Royal line up closely with the Asus ROG Strix G16’s performance in Metro Exodus. The Asus ROG Strix G16 is capable of running the game smoothly even in its Extreme settings preset, again outpacing the weaker two systems, almost keeping up with the RTX 4080-equipped Alienware x16 R2, but still lagging behind the RTX 5080-equipped Legion.  IDG / Mark Knapp Shadow of the Tomb Raider’s benchmark shows that the GPU was the impediment for the Port Royal and Metro Exodus tests. This game is less demanding on the GPU, particularly as it doesn’t rely on ray tracing. And in this case, the CPU gets to help out more, letting the Asus ROG Strix G16 rocket ahead of the Alienware x16 R2 and come much closer to the Lenovo Legion than in the other tests.  That CPU performance can let the Asus ROG Strix G16 get in close to the RTX 5080-equipped Lenovo Legion in other cases as well. Running Cyberpunk 2077 with the Ultra preset (no ray tracing) at 1080p, the Asus ROG Strix G16 pulls of 137 FPS average to the Legion’s 151 FPS. That actually lets the Asus ROG Strix G16 beat the RTX 5090-equipped Razer Blade 16 due to that system being CPU-bound in that test.  Bumping up to 1440p or the monitor’s native 1600p sees more load shift to the GPU, and in those conditions the Asus ROG Strix G16 falls back a bit further from the likes of the Lenovo Legion and Razer Blade 16. It still performs well, but you’ll want to stick with 1080p/1200p if you plan to take advantage of the built-in monitor’s 240Hz refresh rate.  Asus ROG Strix G16: Battery life Gaming laptops are getting better at running on battery power, but they’re generally still not great. The Asus ROG Strix G16 fell just a few minutes shy of a six hour runtime in our local 4K video playback test, and that’s with the dGPU disabled, all keyboard lighting off, Airplane mode, and the screen set between 250 and 260 nits (and self-limited to 60Hz). Real-world use takes that even lower, with the laptop generally giving me 3-4 hours of everyday use. It’s still competitive for most gaming laptops, though the Razer Blade 16 recently impressed with over 10 hours in our testing.   The Asus ROG Strix G16 even tries to help conserve power. The system will pop-up a notification if an app is keeping the dGPU active while on battery power — useful! But that notification will take you to Armoury Crate, and from there, the “Stop all” button for ending those tasks that were using the dGPU doesn’t always do its job. Also, the system isn’t set up ideally for battery life. Nvidia Optimus was not enabled by default, and the “Optimized” setting in Armoury Crate was not active. It’s still possible for the “Standard” mode to turn off the dGPU on battery power, but there’s no guarantee it will, unlike the Optimized mode.  Asus ROG Strix G16: Conclusion The Asus ROG Strix G16 is a hit. It offers excellent performance, especially as configured, with its CPU helping make the most of the RTX 5070 Ti inside. This smart balance avoids CPU-bound scenarios at 1080p, giving it a leg up on plenty of its competition. The performance combines with an overall good package that benefits from a sturdy design, quality display, respectable speakers, and satisfactory connectivity. It’s a worthy rival to the Lenovo Legion 7i Pro 16 Gen 10. It’s a bit thicker, but lighter than Lenovo’s system, and it comes at a small discount for a comparable configuration from Lenovo. Read...

AMD’s hardware teams have tried to redefine AI inferencing with powerful chips like the Ryzen AI Max and Threadripper. But in software, the company has been largely absent where PCs are concerned. That’s changing, AMD executives say. AMD’s Advancing AI event Thursday focused on enterprise-class GPUs like its Instinct lineup. But it’s a software platform you may not have heard of, called ROCm, that AMD depends upon just as much. AMD is releasing ROCm 7 today, which the company says can boost AI inferencing by three times through the software alone. And it’s finally coming to Windows to battle Nvidia’s CUDA supremacy. Radeon Open Compute (ROCm) is AMD’s open software stack for AI computing, with drivers and tools to run AI workloads. Remember the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 debacle of a few weeks back? Without a software driver, Nvidia’s latest GPU was a lifeless hunk of silicon. Early on, AMD was in the same pickle. Without the limitless coffers of companies like Nvidia, AMD made a choice: it would prioritize big businesses with ROCm and its enterprise GPUs instead of client PCs. Ramine Roane, corporate vice president of the AI solutions group, called that a “sore point:” “We focused ROCm on the cloud GPUs, but it wasn’t always working on the endpoint — so we’re fixing that.” Mark Hachman / Foundry In today’s world, simply shipping the best product isn’t always enough. Capturing customers and partners willing to commit to the product is a necessity. It’s why former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously chanted “Developers developers developers” on stage; when Sony built a Blu-ray drive into the PlayStation, movie studios gave the new video format a critical mass that the rival HD-DVD format didn’t have. Now, AMD’s Roane said that the company belatedly realized that AI developers like Windows, too. “It was a decision to basically not use resources to port the software to Windows, but now we realize that, hey, developers actually really care about that,” he said. ROCm will be supported by PyTorch in preview in the third quarter of 2025, and by ONNX-EP in July, Roane said. Presence is more important than performance All this means is that AMD processors will finally gain a much larger presence in AI applications, which means that if you own a laptop with a Ryzen AI processor, a desktop with a Ryzen AI Max chip, or a desktop with a Radeon GPU inside, it will have more opportunities to tap into AI applications. PyTorch, for example, is a machine-learning library that popular AI models like Hugging Face’s “Transformers” run on top of. It should mean that it will be much easier for AI models to take advantage of Ryzen hardware. ROCm will also be added to “in box” Linux distributions, too: Red Hat (in the second half of 2025), Ubuntu (the same) and SuSE. Roane also helpfully provided some context over what model size each AMD platform should be able to run, from a Ryzen AI 300 notebook on up to a Threadripper platform. Mark Hachman / Foundry …but performance substantially improves, too The AI performance improvements that ROCm 7 adds are substantial: a 3.2X performance improvement in Llama 3.1 70B, 3.4X in Qwen2-72B, and 3.8X in DeepSeek R1. (The “B” stands for the number of parameters, in billions; the higher the parameters, the generally higher the quality of the outputs.) Today, those numbers matter more than they have in the past, as Roane said that inferencing chips are showing steeper growth than processors used for training. (“Training” generates the AI models used in products like ChatGPT or Copilot. “Inferencing” refers to the actual process of using AI. In other words, you might train an AI to know everything about baseball; when you ask it if Babe Ruth was better than Willie Mays, you’re using inferencing.) Mark Hachman / Foundry AMD said that the improved ROCm stack also offered the same training performance, or about three times the previous generation. Finally, AMD said that its own MI355X running the new ROCm software would outperfom an Nvidia B200 by 1.3X on the DeepSeek R1 model, with 8-bit floating-point accuracy. Again, performance matters — in AI, the goal is to push out as many AI tokens as quickly as possible; in games, it’s polygons or pixels instead. Simply offering developers a chance to take advantage of the AMD hardware you already own is a win-win, for you and AMD alike. The one thing that AMD doesn’t have is a consumer-focused application to encourage users to use AI, whether it be LLMs, AI art, or something else. Intel publishes AI Playground, and Nvidia (though it doesn’t own the technology) worked with a third-party developer for its own application, LM Studio. One of the convenient features of AI Playground is that every model available has been quantized, or tuned, for Intel’s hardware. Roane said that similarly-tuned models exist for AMD hardware like the Ryzen AI Max. However, consumers have to go to repositories like Hugging Face and download them themselves. Roane called AI Playground a “good idea.” “No specific plans right now, but it’s definitely a direction we would like to move,” he said, in response to a question from PCWorld.com. Read...