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 CES 2025 announcements include a new trio of Acer Predator gaming laptops that are packed with high-end specs. While they all come in at different price points and with different features, they all will be packed with NVIDIA RTX-50 series GPUs.
The baddest of the bunch is the Predator Helios 18 AI. As the name suggests, this notebook features a massive 18-inch 4K Mini LED display with a standard refresh rate of 120Hz. But a new dual-mode display feature will let users switch to FHD resolution at 240Hz as well. The brightness metrics are decent, at up to 1000 nits.
Acer
The Helios 18 AI is available with up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor and up to the NVIDIA GeForce 5090 GPU. It also includes a dedicated NPU for AI tasks, which allows for "premium graphical gaming and AI experiences." To the latter point, this laptop ships with more than 150 optimized AI apps, including many popular LLMs and image generators.
Users can soup this beast up with up to 192GB of RAM and up to 6TB of PCIe storage. The cooling tools have also been improved, as the laptop feature's Acer's proprietary 6th-gen AeroBlade metal fans, which boost airflow by around 20 percent when compared to plastic fans. Purchasers also get
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I knew I had found my favorite computer of CES 2025 early last December, long before I had a chance to see what most other PC makers were cooking up. It comes from ASUS and it's the new Zenbook A14, a system that the company had joked about calling the Zenbook Air.
To be fair, the name would have been fitting: the notebook weighs less than 2.2 pounds (or 1kg), a half a pound lighter than Apple's most svelte MacBook Air. In almost every respect, the ZenBook A14 outclasses Apple's ultraportable, with specs like a 14-inch OLED screen and up to 32 hours of battery life. The only catch is that it runs on Qualcomm's Snapdragon X and X Elite chips, which limits compatibility with older Windows apps (along with some devices).
What's most remarkable about the Zenbook A14, though, is that it simply feels great to hold. The light weight is a big part of that, but its also covered in ASUS's unique Ceraluminum material, which feels markedly different than a typical metal case. ASUS has deployed Ceraluminum across its premium lineup for years, but this is one of the first times we've seen it on practically every surface of a laptop (the top lid, keyboard desk and bottom).
The Zenbook A14 also features plenty of thoughtful design elements. It's easy to open up one-handed, thanks to a refined hinge that counter-acts the laptop's tiny frame. It also has a surprising amount of ports, including one USB Type A connection, two USB C ports, HDMI 2.1 and a headphone jack. That's all connectivity we'll never see on a MacBook Air.
In my short time with the Zenbook A14, its keyboard and trackpad also felt relatively comfortable. ASUS says the keys offer 1.3mm of travel, and while they c
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 Lenovo's Legion gaming laptops are getting a big refresh thanks to CES 2025. The new series of notebooks includes what's probably the star of the show, the 10th-generation Legion Pro 7i. It supports up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU thanks in part to a cooling system that enables up to 250W thermal design power (TDP). It also uses an AI engine to dynamically adjust CPU and GPU wattage for optimal performance.
It'll also support up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor to pair with that high-powered NVIDIA graphics card. Lenovo's Legion Coldfront Vapor cooling helps it support that high-end hardware. On top of that, you'll get up to 64GB of 6400Mhz DDR5 (2 X 32GB) RAM and a built-in LA1 LA3 AI chip. All of that is a recipe for souped-up gaming on the go — or really just about anything you need to do, anywhere at any time.
The laptop has up to a 16-inch WQXGA (2560 x 1600, 16:10) OLED display. The screen supports up to a 240Hz frame rate and has a 1ms response time. It can reach 500 nits of brightness. The Legion Pro 7i has two USB-C ports (one of which is Thunderbolt 4), three USB-A ports and HDMI 2.1. With all that high-end hardware inside, it's quite the beefy machine, with a starting weight of around 6 lbs.
It launches in March. But all that horsepower doesn't come cheap: Lenovo says the Legion Pro 7i has an expected starting price of $2,399 — and you can safely bet that RTX 5090 variants will fetch a premium on top of that.
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The Zenbook A14 is the highlight of Asus's new 2025 Zenbook lineup, which it unveiled at CES 2025 this week, not just because of its insane battery life but also because it weighs just 2.5 pounds.
Asus claims that makes it the world's lightest Copilot PC - and there's no doubt that it pushes the boundaries of what a portable AI-capable laptop can be. We've already got our hands on one and you can read our initial thoughts and more about it here.
But it's not the only powerful, lightweight laptop announced by Asus at CES this week. Alongside the Zenbook A14 the company also announced five new 14-inch Zenbooks, each weighing a mere 2.82 pounds — that's just a smidgen heavier than the Zenbook A14 and, in our view, no less portable!
Five new powerful Zenbook 14s
The new Zenbook 14 lineup includes three models powered by Intel Core Ultra Series 2 chips and two powered by AMD's new Ryzen AI 300 Series chips.
While in 2024 Asus had to specify which of its 14-inch Zenbooks featured OLED displays by adding the suffix "OLED" to their names, the 2025 models dropped the moniker altogether. Why? Because they all now come with glorious 14-inch 100 percent DCI-P3 OLED panels.
The top pick of the Zenbook 14s are two models featuring Intel Core Ultra 9 285H processors with Intel Arc graphics and 32 GB of LPDDR5X on-board RAM (models UX3405CA-PS99T and UX3405CA-U9321TB). These models also boast 2880×1800 OLED displays with 120H
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 Lenovo came to CES 2025 to prove that there's still room in its ThinkPad family for fresh designs. It may seem sacrilegious to ditch the carbon fiber frames and Trackpoint nubs found in classic ThinkPads, but that's exactly what the new ThinkPad X9 line does.
Lenovo may not admit it outright, but the goal with these new models is to entice younger buyers who might not have a ton of nostalgia for the company's 30-year-old laptop line. That said, the X9 line (which will be available in both 14- and 15-inch variants) still delivers the same military-grade durability (MIL-SPEC 810H) you'd expect from a typical ThinkPad while boasting an even sleeker and more minimalist appearance.
The lid of the X9 line is made from a smooth sheet of aluminum with the only defining characteristic (aside from the ThinkPad logo) being the long communication bar that houses the laptop's microphones and cameras. On the inside, Lenovo's streamlined aesthetic reveals the complete absence of a Trackpoint nub, a redesigned keyboard with new keycaps and an even larger haptic touchpad than what you'd get from the X9's siblings.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
So even th
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I knew I had found my favorite computer of CES 2025 early last December, long before I had a chance to see what most other PC makers were cooking up. That was the Zenbook A14, a system that ASUS had joked about calling the Zenbook Air. That name would have been fitting: It weighs less than 2.2 pounds (or 1kg), half a pound lighter than Apple's smallest MacBook Air. In almost every respect, the ZenBook A14 outclasses Apple's ultraportable, with specs like a 14-inch OLED screen and up to 32 hours of battery life. The only downside is that it's running Qualcomm's Snapdragon X and X Elite chips, which limits compatibility with older Windows apps (along with some devices).
What's most remarkable about the Zenbook A14, though, is that it simply feels great to hold. The light weight is a big part of that, but its also covered in ASUS's unique Ceraluminum material, which feels markedly different than a typical metal case. ASUS has deployed Ceraluminum across its premium lineup for years, but this is one of the first times we've seen it on practically every surface of a laptop (the top lid, keyboard desk and bottom).
The Zenbook A14 also features plenty of thoughtful design elements. It's easy to open up one-handed, thanks to a refined hinge that counter-acts the laptop's tiny frame. It also has a surprising amount of ports, including one USB Type A connection, two USB C ports, HDMI 2.1 and a headphone jack. That's all connectivity we'll never see on a MacBook Air.
In my short time with the Zenbook A14, its keyboard and trackpad also felt relatively comfortable. ASUS says the keys offer 1.3mm of travel, and while they could always be deeper, they seemed fine for casual typing. The laptop also sports a 1080p IR camera, speakers with Dolby Atmos support and Wi-Fi 7. Basically, it has everything we'd want in a premium laptop in 2025.
The
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