AI-Generated Summary
At CES 2024 in Las Vegas, a plethora of new laptops and cutting-edge laptop technology were unveiled, with Lenovo taking the spotlight for its innovative and practical designs. Notable highlights include the Lenovo ThinkBook 14 Gen 6, which expands its display from 14 to 16.7 inches with a rolling screen, and the lightweight Yoga Slim 9i, featuring a hidden webcam behind its 98% screen-to-body ratio display. Lenovo also introduced the ThinkPad X93 and X94, offering a revamped trackpad experience. Other key launches included the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16s, a slim gaming laptop, and the sleek MSI Titan 18HX Dragon Edition with top-tier specs. Gigabyteโs Aero 16 made a comeback with a redesigned and efficient build, while ASUS impressed with its Strix Scar 16 & 18 gaming laptops and the Flow Z13, a powerful portable gaming tablet. Lastly, the ASUS XG Mobile external GPU stood out for its potential to enhance laptop performance. Exciting innovations, but detailed reviews are needed to validate their promises. For more information, visit justjosh.tech.
๐ Full Transcript
all right I’m back from CES the massive Tech Conference in Las Vegas where a ton of new laptops were announced I’ve actually got two Roundup videos that I’m going to do for you all today I’m going to walk you through the most promising new laptops and laptop Tech that I saw then tomorrow or the next day I’m going to be back with an absolute rant there were just so many disappointing confusing and outright misleading announcements that we have to talk about anyway with that said let’s talk about the best so here are the top 10 laptops and laptop Tech that I saw starting with Lenovo overall I felt they had the most promising new products that were actually worth buying and they mentioned AI the least so that was helpful the thinkbook plus Gen 6 gets our award for the most Innovative laptop at CES at the touch of a button this laptop basically converts from a 14-in one to a 16.7 in one its screen rolls up to enlarge the display it comes with a Luna Lake processor and up to 32 gig of memory essentially it sacrifices a little weight and portability for more screen real estate I thought a device like this would just end up toppling over but it was actually very stable in fact there was really no visible negatives with this technology I noticed no unusual markings on the screen when it was rolled out and it just genuinely looked like one larger display that being said I will obviously have to get this one in for review especially to see how long that motor lasts next up is the yoga slim 9i this is a super lightweight and compact 14-in laptop I think it’s the smallest 14-in laptop I’ve ever seen it has has a screen to body ratio of 98% and it doesn’t even have a webcam at top the display it’s actually behind the screen so again props to Lenovo for introducing a useful Innovation once again we’re going to have to get this laptop in for a review to see if this approach actually affects the webcams quality rounding out Lenovo I felt the ThinkPad x94 and 15 were both worth making this list now that’s for one specific reason it’s trackpad these are the first think pads to ditch the red track Point many ThinkPad traditionalists are going to be out protesting this in the streets and I totally get it but for others who don’t use a tracko the trackpad experience of think pads has been subpar to fit in the track points buttons their trackpads are significantly smaller these new X9 think pads promise to give buyers that all round premium ThinkPad experience which we love without a subpar trackpad in fact these are one of the first Lenovo laptops that I can think of to come standard with a more accurate haptic trackpad next up is the ACA Predator Helios Neo 16s ASA really stole our hearts when it came to gaming laptops in 2024 they won our best 18-in gaming laptop award and our best budget gaming laptop award plus their Predator Helios neo4 was one of my personal favorites and I recommended it a lot this year ASA are releasing a new 16 and 18-in Predator Helios as well as a brand new type of gaming laptop the Helios Neo 16s this one is essentially a slim gaming laptop similar to asus’s airus g16 it initially will launch with with an aake HX processor and an RTX 55070 given how much value and quality that ACA delivered in 2024 in the gaming space that is I think this new laptop is definitely one to watch all right if there was a coolest looking laptop of Cs 2025 it had to go to MSI titan 18hx dragon Edition North Smith it also gets the award for the most ridiculous name just look at this thing it looks striking and it isn’t just paint on the laptop’s lid the design is actually textured on and as to be expected the Titan promises the best of everything 4K fast refresh rate mini LED display up to 96 G of memory up to Enid’s RTX 590 Thunderbolt 5 Wi-Fi 7 2.5 gig ethernet you guys get the picture I do have questions though about why it has Intel’s AOL Lake HX processor rather than amd’s fire range HX 3D anyway next up is gigabytes Aro 16 a favorite from yester year the aror range is one of those hybrid devices that I personally love similar to a MacBook Pro 16 or Asus Pro p16 it promises to give you a blend of performance and portability with premium Creature Comforts unfortunately the last couple of erors just really sucked they were extremely thin with inefficient Intel Raptor Lake processors and they just ended up feeling like a stov top well this year gigabyte have completely redesigned the a 16 and it includes a more efficient processor it is essentially a new laptop look there wasn’t much information on the a 16 at the conference but I think it is an interesting device that is going to offer a really solid alternative for people who just don’t want a Mac or can’t afford one or those who don’t like the downsides of the pro P6 meaning it’s somewhat dim 60 HZ display all right next up is asus’s strick scar 16 and 18 redesigned high-powered gaming laptops were all the rage at CES this year no surprises with the launch of nvidia’s RTX 50 Series many of these laptops just were hard to differentiate I’d say out of all of them the St scar 16 and 18 were probably the ones that most stood out we know the priv versions of these laptops really well Taylor uses the sky1 18 every day to edit our videos and the 6 inin version won our best gaming laptop Award of 2023 these new 2025 variants are redesigned and really give you everything a gamer would want high performance components upgradeable memory that’s easy to access a promised Improvement to its cooling solution plenty of ports Thunderbolt 5 Wi-Fi 7 a bright fast refresh rate mini eled display and cool looking gamer Aesthetics next up is the Asus flow z13 out of all the processors announced at CES I think one of the most interesting ones is AMD stricks Halo it is essentially an APU combining a very high performing AMD zen5 CPU with a ton of rdna 3.5 GPU cores if there was a competing processor to Apple’s M Series this is probably about it and FYI it’s not just Gamers who will love laptops with this chip it’s also programmers and data scientists as you guys get a powerful GPU and access to lots of memory these processors let their GPU cores access up to 75% of total memory asus’s flow z13 is one of the first laptops with this new processor if you can even call it that it’s essentially a high-powered gaming tablet I certainly do not think gaming on a tablet is going to offer as good a gaming experience as a traditional laptop but it does pack down into a very portable form factor and a lot of buyers are going to value that moving along to the xmg Evo 14 this this is a portable 14-in laptop with most of the standard features that you expect from such a device but what makes it stand out is that it has an AMD Zen 5 St Point processor paired with upgradeable memory and a large 80w hour battery and that is rare and it is going to be enough for many people to want to buy it these laptops can also be found sold by other manufacturers including tuxedo for Linux users and Aftershock for those in oceaner finally our award for the most useful laptop Tech of CES 2025 goes to asus’s XG mobile it’s basically an external Graphics module that contains one of nvidia’s brand new 50 Series laptop gpus look we’ve seen external Graphics enclosures before for desktop graphics cards these certainly did a great job of turning a laptop into a significantly more powerful machine they even made your laptop run caller and quieter by shifting a major heat generating component outside the device that being said all have been held back by a couple of key issues the gpu’s performance was Li limited due to slower data transfer speeds and slower laptop processors when compared to desktops because of this the price you paid for a desktop GPU to shove into one of these enclosures just didn’t really make sense well the XG mobile is kind of changing this in two key ways firstly it’s using laptop gpus so it should be cheaper and secondly it’s using Thunderbolt 5 now we don’t expect it to be on par with an internal GPU as data still needs to be repackaged to a thunderbolt transmission rather than native pcie but we do expect it to be an improvement we think this are going to be an awesome way to turn your thin and light laptop into a gaming or content creation Powerhouse we will absolutely be getting this one in for review so definitely get subscribed with a notification Bell on for that now if you’re looking to buy any of these new 2025 laptops we’ve added the ones that are already available for sale to a special new list on our website at just josh. Tech I’ll also link it down below well that’s all I got for you I absolutely chomping at the bit to make our next video in that one I’m going to talk about all the absolute worst things of CES because they really were some big turds make sure you’re subscribed with I think I’ve already said that guys so let’s just end till next time go do something awesome with your day and I will catch you later