8:45
All Specs
Last April, we awarded the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED XB an Editors Choice laurel as a top laptop for creative professionals. The Aero 15 OLED XC is a modest refresh with Nvidia s new GeForce RTX 30 Series ( Ampere ) graphics silicon, which nets you an extra 5 or 10 frames per second (fps) when playing games after work. It s also $500 cheaper ($2,199 in our test configuration), which makes it a screaming bargain the last time we raved about a high-end creative notebook with a 4K OLED display, it was the $4,491 HP ZBook Create G7. Its webcam focuses on your neck and chin instead of your face, but otherwise this Gigabyte is a slam-dunk Editors Choice winner that will thrill any digital content creator.
7:19
All Specs
As powerful as it is compact, the Asus ROG Flow X13 (starts at $2,999; $3,299 as tested) is a 2-in-1 convertible gaming laptop that stands just 0.62 inch tall, weighs 2.9 pounds, and still manages to deliver a reasonably comfortable gaming experience at a 1080p resolution on many titles. This is an impressive (if not wholly groundbreaking) achievement, thanks mostly to the efficiency inside of the AMD Ryzen 9 CPU (one of AMD s new Ryzen 5000 series Zen 3 chips) and Nvidia s GeForce GTX 1650 GPU. But it gets even better: You can pair the ROG Flow X13 with a special, desktop-class GeForce RTX 3080 in a not-too-heavy external graphics enclosure (or eGPU, dubbed the Asus XG Mobile ), offering an even smoother gaming experience at higher resolutions. The XG Mobile can act as a dock on your desk, and, at 2.2 pounds, is even reasonable to lug along at times. On the whole, the ROG Flow and its eGPU make for a unique one-two punch among gaming laptops.
8:50
All Specs
Asus new TUF Dash F15 has 2021 off to a good start for watchers of mobile gaming hardware. For $1,699 as tested (models start at $1,099), this 15.6-inch gaming laptop performs on par with systems from last year that were much higher-priced. Its pairing of Intel Core i7 Tiger Lake-H silicon the company s newest mobile CPUs for power laptops and a brand-new 8GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 mobile GPU produced triple-digit frame rates in our testing, with its 240Hz-refresh-rate screen more than keeping pace. It also isn t lacking for practicality with its quiet fans, comfortable keyboard, and lengthy-for-its-class battery life. Its most glaring omission is a webcam, though its gaming performance is not necessarily better than that of last-generation laptops. Still, the TUF Dash F15 is still a respectable pick, especially in its lesser-priced Best Buy configurations.
A host of improvements (including Intel's new Xe Max dedicated GPU) make the latest Dell Inspiron 15 7000 2-in-1 Black Edition a decent choice for digital artists, but it can’t compete on value, performance, or features with the best 15-inch convertible laptops.