Welcome to some of our coverage around the RTX50 series launch. I am here with none other than Steve from Gamers Nexus and um we thought today we were kind of discussing what laptops Steve uses and that he doesn’t love some of his laptops and I thought well guess what we actually review and recommend laptops and uh it might be fun to come on and actually talk to Steve about maybe there’s a better laptop out there for him. There is. There is definitely a better laptop. Yeah. Um, I use two types of We like never talk about this stuff on our channels. It’s kind of fun. But we use two types of laptops when we’re traveling. There’s uh the video editing machines, which we’ve got pretty well handled right now. And I’m not typically the one using those, but I do bring one just in case. And then there’s the one that I really just need battery life and word processing. And that’s for writing scripts or emails or whatever. So, I always bring two. And um and funnily enough guys, we’re the same actually here. So we we bring two as well. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this is one of our two editing laptops. And the uh Yep. One of the places that for the longest time we’ve been really pretty good with is trade show coverage where it’s it’s we’ve got a super efficient pipeline for it. I love trade shows. It’s fast-paced. And a lot of that on the technology side is we’ve got to be able to rip stuff from SSDs super fast. So or from SD cards to the SSD. So right performance needs to be good. And then uh render performance needs to be really good. And so that I think is a 3080 Ti laptop. And then this one’s a 4090 laptop. Yeah. Um so this one here, guys, this is the standard strict scar. Um this is the 16in. We actually use the 18in to do a lot of our videos. It’s Taylor’s laptop that he does most of his editing on. So, we know this one very well. Um, Yep. And I I want to hear about some of more of the the, you know, the problems that you’re facing before we choose a, you know, the right one for you. Um, so I’ll put that to the side. Yeah. So, then on the sort of quoteunquote personal laptop side in terms of what do I use for actual for my job? Um, this is what I have been using. One of one of them. So, the razor blade looks like the 16 is it? I think so. Uh, and uh, so I bought this as looks like a very thin version of the 16. Maybe it’s an older model. Yeah, I mean it definitely runs hot. Like I think if I were to benchmark it, it probably is throttling. Um, and uh, but what I was going for is I need uh, I needed something a little smaller, but I still at this point when I bought that, I thought I still wanted a GPU in it, like a real GPU. Yeah. And then I realized, okay, if I’ve got an editing machine with me, I don’t need like a midstep. I need just a fullon sort of lowerend but high battery life laptop. So, and I am not some background information. I’m not a heavy laptop user. I get like maybe a hundred hours a year on a laptop and um and all of those are at trade shows. Mhm. And so anyway, they don’t get a ton of use, which means I tend to make them last for like 5 years at a time. So, I bought this XPS 14. Yeah. And uh I really don’t like it. So, I’m probably It’s still in the return window. It might go back. Uh but uh you send it back with the stickers. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was a special the special uh promo sticker. Gotcha. Can’t keep that. They won’t refund me. Got to give back the $5 sticker. Um so, yeah, that’s what I’m using for that. So, the the goals I can use your help with is like I I do not have time to go research a ton of laptops. Yeah. Um, and I really want one that uh I’ve got I’m very picky about keyboards. We can talk about that. But focus on a battery life where I can get on a plane. My longest flights I do regularly are 14 hours to Taipei. So, I’ve got to be able to use the laptop for as much of that as possible, but then if I have to plug in on the plane, I want a charger that’s 65 watts or lower. Anymore the plane won’t charge it. Okay. So, those are like the very unique requirements. I discovered that the other day when I was when I was flying here, actually, um, so the good news for Steve is there’s actually you don’t need to have two different laptops anymore. There is one laptop that has a good keyboard. And I’m smiling here cuz I think you know where this is going. It has a good keyboard. It has a very fast SD card reader to trans transfer off. It’s got very fast um SSD. It’s only 14 in or 14.4 and it’s got a very very power efficient processor. So, starts with an A. It It might the brand might start with an A. Um, and you’re going to get lots of long battery life, no heat or fan noise. It can edit really really well. And this is the 16-in version of it. Um, I didn’t bring the 14. He’s he’s done. I thought it was very important that when coming to Gamers Nexus, we’re very responsible here. We’ll take it to e-waste. Yeah. I thought it was very important that the first laptop I recommended be a Mac. Um, funny enough, I get so much anxiety trying to use Mac OS. Like I I can’t do it. It’s too It’s too different for me. Yeah. So, look, putting that aside, and by the way, I did comment about we’re following a similar use case to Steve. Um, funnily enough, just for my viewers here, we’re in a bit of a different mode now. Just recently, I forgot to mention this, that we do have more video editors on site kind of around the world. So, what we’re doing is I’m now actually bringing a MacBook Pro 14 with me. I had a huge stuff up and I want to be transparent with the viewers here because this might affect you as well. Big problem with the Apples. All of my models have 1 TB of storage. It’s just not enough. So, now I’m using this external storage drive and it is driving me up the wall. So that is a problem clearly of one of problem of of apples. So what I thought we could do is I bought and this was a lot to take on the plane but I brought a sampling of some of what I thought were really representative great laptops right now. There is one missing that I wanted to bring but given that we already how many laptops have we bought here? We’ve got got some you have like three or four down there for testing and another four here. There’s the MacBook which is now in the bin. Yeah. Now the the smaller stuff smaller laptops. So that’s where more recently when I started using like 13 14-inch notebooks up until the last couple years, I hated that kind of laptop and I would have never bought one. But um man, it’s in terms of like not making a big scene on a plane getting my laptop out. It’s like it’s so much nicer to not be that guy. It is. So and I really if I’m just typing in Google Docs, you know, it’s fine. So So let’s talk. So you’ve got So we’re going to focus on these ones. And I think funnily enough, these are where most of the innovation right now have actually happened in the laptop space. Big innovation. So Steve’s one here, they haven’t upgraded yet. And it’s not Dell’s fault. The just chips haven’t come out yet, but this is still called uh Media Lake called Ultra Media Lake series 1, which just wasn’t a great processor. It it promised to be the the you know, Intel’s new architecture, Dream, yada yada yada, and it just kind of failed. It really didn’t do that well. Now what we have here is we have an AMD stricks Halo uh device which is by far I think the best processor you can get in a small window like I would prefer to move to AMD for this particular machine. The only reason on the editing ones we use Intel is for quicks sync so which I don’t need on this machine. Then what we have here is this is a Luna Lake laptop which is Intel’s best thin and light and basically this is going to give you very very good performance for your basic office tasks. Not much performance for anything else, but has phenomenal battery life. U there’s really no heat or fan noise you’re going to feel from that one. This you won’t feel heat or fan noise just by the nature of the device. It’s a tablet and we’ll cover the form factor more in a second. This is a Qualcomm laptop. Now there is also a version of this available with Intel Core Ultra Luna Lake. Then we have here this is a brand new ThinkPad. This is their new line that all of these are current gen by the way and all of them are new but this is their new model. They haven’t released a range of ThinkPads for a while. This is the X series, so very very new. Okay, so we’ll go through each of these. You know, I I think people who’ve watched my channel will know that I really didn’t like uh the Dell XPS14. I compared it to what Disney did to Star Wars, and we all know how well that went. Um yeah, there’s a few reasons I bought that. One was I realized I needed it two or three days before a trip. Yeah. And I could get here by then. Uh so that was the biggest one. But the second two reasons were um looking at just some quick battery life testing online for something on a 60 watt charger. It seemed to it both had a sub65 watt charger which I needed and it also had the best battery life I saw on the quick charts I looked at. So those were really the only two things. Like I said definitely not attached to it. I didn’t I this was um this was an abnormal purchase for me because I was in such a rush that I didn’t research it a ton and I basically just glanced at some charts and made a decision. So, we’re going to we’re going to fix that today and obviously it’s got the haptic um touch the function row which that’s where I was going with this. I you know normally I research stuff this stuff a lot. It was kind of interesting to buy from a full consumer perspective where I was making the decision based on I’m going to look at a few charts and just pull the trigger because I got to I got to move now, right? Like I’m flying soon. Uh I didn’t know I had the touch bar until it got in. I looked at I was like what the what is this? Like and then you got to hit function to get the F keys which I use all the time. Uh for whatever reason they put the power button up here. Yep. where backspace is. Yeah. So, that’s great. And um yeah, there’s like also I’m sure I could turn this off in BIOS, but the whole turn on when you open the screen thing drives me crazy. So, um anyway, that’s where we are with this one. I hate it. Yeah. And I think the other thing that I don’t I don’t think you’ve mentioned yet is this is actually a pretty it’s it’s not the heaviest device, but it is kind of heavy for a 14.5 in. You can get a lot lighter now, which might be more convenient for you. Weight doesn’t matter to me on that, so that’ll be easier. Yeah, you say that, but then when you use these small ones, Phil this in comparison, tell me what you prefer to hold. I honestly, so I am still so function focused that to me if the weight means more heat sink that works properly. This doesn’t need one. I’ll still go for it doesn’t need as much of one cuz it’s more efficient, right? So, all of these laptops have a processor that’s a generation newer than this one and it made a big difference. The jump was quite dramatic. Let’s go with the battery life. So, in terms of battery life, what you’ll find, um, these two, unfortunately, all three of these actually do have somewhat small batteries. So, they’re around the 50Wh hour mark. And what you can find in smaller laptops like the Zenbook S14, which is an Asus one, I don’t have it here, but it’s competitive to this. It has a larger one. I think it’s 70 W hours. Editors, please correct me on screen, but but it will do probably 20 hours of video playback. These are probably going to tap out more like 14, 15. Okay, so all of these are around the same. Um, the AMD one here, I can’t remember this. We’ll put it on screen, but I think these are definitely going to give you the longest. But I would say, Steve, coming from what you’ve come from, all of these are going to be a step up. Okay. And the difference between Media Lake and and Luna Lake here is very substantial in terms of power efficiency. Um, same with the Qualcomm one. Now, you said you really like having the dedicated page up, down keys, etc., right? So, this is the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. This is the highest end Lenovo laptop for business that’s exists. So you can see they’ve got the dedicated page up down keys. You got a fingerprint reader in the right location. Home and end. I like I like home and end. This is like there’s going to be people I hope I really hope there’s people watching who are like why would you need those? Cuz it’s allow me to enlighten you. Yeah. If you push so there’s like people who write a lot. Control left arrow right arrow. Try it. Like go type something right. type by sentence, do control left arrow and you will be amazed. And then try control backspace and control delete. And so one of the other things I use a lot is home and end because you can just jump to the start and end of paragraphs so fast. Uh and that’s one of the it’s this is why I hate shopping for laptops. It’s like I don’t have time to go look at everyone’s keyboard in addition to all the specs. Yeah. So so that I like the keyboard already. So I like the keyboard of that one. So what I think is now I would say as well this one here this is the Microsoft Surface this has a very good keyboard as well very comfortable this is a Qualcomm laptop so that means as I said there is an inter version available some specialist applications either won’t run or won’t run well um in fact Amazon has recently put a warning on the product saying that they’re getting a lot of returns because of that um and you know I think it for the right user in fact a very close friend of mine just recently purchased one my recommendation because there are good uses for this kind of laptop. But for general office task, things like that, it does do pretty well. But I thought that was interesting to show you just because it is the Qualcomm chip, right? Um I don’t think Photoshop works on it. I sometimes use Photoshop on these. I don’t remember how well it works is what I would say. I don’t recall when we first got this guys. I can just speak to Premier Pro, not Photoshop, but Premiier Pro took a long time to come out. when it did come out, it was a version back from the version on Intel laptops. I can’t We’ll put again Photoshop will answer that on screen. Um, but moral of the story is some of the specialist software is just not getting the same focus as it is on the Intel laptop and that’s probably going to carry across to things like Photoshop. What what I will say then if you want an AMD chip, Stricks Halo is by far the best. Unfortunately, right now it is only available in this device, which clearly we’ve talked about this before. You know, this is going to be tough to get on your lap because of just the nature of If they would make a laptop out of this, I’d already be instantly interested. Even if the rip the screen remains the same size just like cuz um for me I can’t I don’t know if I can do this. This got a bit of give the flex. Yeah, it’s got a little bit of give. And it’s funny enough, it’s much better than it used to be. Wow. Okay. Um but the good news is Steve, it’s got RGB on the back. Opens up to show the components. I take it all back. Yeah. I’m uh I’ll buy it for the RGB. I’m in. Yeah. No, I do like um there’s things about the rest of it, the design I like. I always look at um cooling. So, laptops are so woefully undercooled. I don’t know why they they do this, but they just the paracity is really bad and the ventilation. This is awful. This is just like But it looks good. It’s a Yeah, that’s the problem I have with it. It’s a decoration. So, it’s Yeah. I don’t know. It’s kind of like when case companies put RGB fans on the front of the case and glass in front of it. Like what they’ve done is added an ornament, not a fan. So, but yeah, there’s the specs I like. And uh I actually really don’t mind the the screen thickness or anything, but not going to be able to work with this keyboard, unfortunately. And just so um you know, I it’s funny this I’ve got two things to say this. One is that I talk about this a lot on the channel. Laptops designed to be sold, not to be used. And this the prettiness of the cooling solution here is a good example. It’s going to look great on a store shelf or in B-roll shots because it looks so pretty, but it doesn’t mean it’s as functional as what Steve’s looking for in terms of cooling. You know, we’ve talked a bit about Stricks Halo being probably one of the best chips around right now. Just a quick recap for anyone who’s unfamiliar. It gives you CPU performance similar to a MacBook Pro M4 with an M4 Pro chip, which is a very high performing chip. It also gives you um GPU performance similar to an RTX 4060 at decent wattage. um what it has that’s very special particular for data scientists it can go up to well at least this device can up to 128 gig of memory of which you can assign 75% to become VRAM for the GPU. So for data scientists you can do bigger models than you can even on a large uh high-owered Nvidia laptop which maxes out battery life compare like between these two for example. So between the chips Luna Lake is going to be better but Luna Lake can come in many different laptops. These laptops have smaller batteries so we can put a chart on screen. I would say this one isn’t going to do quite as well even with a bigger battery, the Stricks Halo one than the Luna Lake with the smaller. But if you get Luna Lake with a big battery, it’s going to do much better than this one. So I think having a listen to what you’ve said, there is one laptop I think that really comes to mind of what you want. But before we get there, I just want to cover the X9 briefly to check if there’s any things you want here. The big claim to fame of this one is this is a new designed ThinkPad. And what happens with a lot of PC laptop manufacturers is they cheap out on the little things, the creature comfort. So this, if you find with your trackpad, that trackpad that you have in the XPS is a haptic trackpad. These are back to the older mechanical style. You can see all the give as you press down. It’s pretty accurate, but if that’s a problem, that’s going to limit you. Okay, that’s not a problem. So this one, by the way, the X9 has a haptic trackpad. The next one is webcam. The X9 has a fantastic Put a piece of tape on the webcam or disconnect it. So good then. Okay. So, one laptop I know you want an AMD processor and so I’d say there’s one laptop that really sh like shouts out at me that would be a good one, but there’s also another one coming. So, the one that’s coming, if you wanted the Stricks Halo, we are getting in for review. It’s not out yet. An HP Elite Book. Put the name on screen again, guys. That will have the AMD Stricks Halo processor in a laptop chassis with a good keyboard. Okay, so that one is definitely one. It’s not out yet. Um, but I can call you what it is and see what it’s like. But that’s a very good one. The other one that I think I like for you a lot is the ThinkPad. This is the X1 Carbon, but since you said you don’t mind about weight, right? This is a 14-in screen. There’s a slightly bigger ThinkPad called the T14S and the T14. Well, guess what? Both of them come with AMD. Okay? And you get this kind of keyboard layout here. So, you’re going to get the keyboard layout you want. You’re going to get AMD, right? And you should get decent battery life of those ones with the newer AMD processors. All right, guys. So, this is actually future Josh and Steve. We were discussing the laptop recommendations off camera, and we are going to adjust them. As it turns out, T14S when I did go and check the battery life results that we we did for it. We checked it thoroughly. Um, they weren’t that good. Funny enough, the X1 Carbon with Luna Lake actually lasted longer than the Zen 5 processor in that laptop. So, T14S kind of out. T14. They haven’t updated it with gen 6 yet. It’s still on gen 5. That means it’s using the older Intel Media Lake processor and there is no modern AMD processor for it right now for the T14. So, we’re throwing that out. So, we’ve actually chosen as the winner for Steve the X1 Carbon with Luna Lake. It ticks pretty much all these boxes other than having an Intel processor, not an AMD, even though I’ve convinced Steve that this is a very good Intel processor. I mean, yeah. Yeah, I mean the AMD stuff for me was just I like to get the experience of I’ve only used Intel on laptops, right? So having an AMD laptop would be interesting from a review perspective, but uh I care more about battery life. So exactly. And this one particularly for its weight and its form factor, it does have, you know, pretty good battery life for the use case that Steve is talking for the use case that is that Steve is talking about. And I think you really like the form factor, right? It’s quite quite light. And the only real big negative with this one, I would say, is the price, which is very, very high. But in your case, you know, you’re kind of okay with it from what you said. Yeah, I can definitely deal with it. Yeah. All right. So, we’re going to now hand back to in the past Josh and Steve for the close. The time travel portal is closing. Um, look guys, with that said, you know, different type of video. Let us know what you think of my suggestion for Steve. Did I nail it or did I miss something that you know there maybe there’s a better laptop out there for Steve? Um the other thing, you know, big thanks to Steve for flying us out here to do this RTX uh 50 series coverage and the launch. Um make sure you do check out I just here to pick a laptop for me. That’s really what I was doing. The 50 series launch was just highly recommend it. By the way, if you’re shopping for a laptop and you want to just fly a reviewer out and pick one for you, then uh I can recommend uh Josh’s services here. So, there you go. And we even come with the the variety of different laptops. I feel like I’m one of those traveling sales people that comes with a, you know, the wheelie bag with all their goods and I should be selling um you know, handbags or something. On that note, uh make sure to also check out um Steve’s website and Steve, you know, you’ve got an array of products. Um do you want to just give a Sure. store.gamersac.net. The uh mod mat that we’re on here is sold on the store for PC building, things like that. And then we’ve also got dice kits, soldering mats, all that kind of stuff. So, yep. Yeah. And links will be below the video, of course, to Steve’s and our own website. And well, folks, that’s all we got for you. Till next time, go do something awesome with your day and we’ll catch you later.