Best 2 in 1 Laptop Computers
Microsoft Surface Book features the 6th Gen Intel Core i5 processor, NVIDIA GeForce GPU with 8GB memory and a 128GB solid state drive. Enter your model number to make sure this fits.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"- It's solid, even when you're holding the tablet, when connected to the keyboard, it will not get loss of feel it’s about to disconnect. - Unlike many laptops, you will never see any key outlines of oily imprints on the screen when you close it. - The keyboard layout is one of the best as it private a deep click, creating a satisfying feedback. - Two USB 3.0 ports. - Nvidia graphic chip will be able to run some basic gaming. - Dark scenes in videos are deep and consistent in quality, even when the brightness on the computer is turned up. - Backlit keyboard is a beautiful light display that illuminates the symbol on each key. - High power I-core and GTX 965M graphics card make this a beast with higher end programs. - 6-10 hours of battery life (this is also a Con) of the normal day browsing the web, jumping between apps, writing an email, social media. - The webcam is enough to have meetings on it as well has a built-in facial recognition for signing into Windows without a password (Yes, it does work just as it promises). - No key function to control the screen brightness as sometimes the auto-adjusting light sensor isn’t entirely accurate. The battery life can be as low as 6 hours and as high as 13, given on how much power you use it for, but I believe this system is built for specific people. Specific people who are illustrators, Media professionals, designers, office presenters (PowerPoint), and video / photo editors will enjoy the concept this system. The detachable design makes it excellent for business collaboration and is built for those who need to show others what they’re doing."
"I'm happy with the purchase and I would recommend it (unless you want your decision to make financial sense, because it doesn't). Pros: Unbelievable screen. Touch and pen work really well. Great finishing and quality. Fast performance and no preinstalled software apart from a couple that are meant to show the capabilities of the surface book. Great battery life (base part). Cons: Wireless performance is OK but 2 years older laptops with Intel 802.11ac Wi-Fi cards perform better. You'll have to install loads of updates when you first receive it, not really a con but it took me a few hours. Long charging time. Not very easy to open the lid when its closed."
"What is clear, though, is that all of those who are disappointed were first-day buyers so I'd look at the one star reviews as a cautionary tale about the perils of being an early adopter. I was a bit lucky, in that I live in Australia and the release was delayed until Microsoft's new flagship store opened in Sydney a couple of weeks ago. The service was excellent and it means my experience is of a Surface Book with the latest Windows 10 updates, which seems to make all the difference. It eliminates the inner dialogue where I try and work out which device will involve the fewest compromises for any given task and it means I can now leave my tablet at home when I have my sBook with me. So, for me, this is what makes the sBook a five star product - the overall experience and massively expanded utility over my old laptop. The specs are far less important, other than being more than adequate to run all my professional software, from Adobe Creative Suite 6 to Autodesk 3DS Max and Maxon Cinema 4D. It is also very capable when it come sot my realtime music software and I can't wait for an opportunity to use it on stage, in front of an audience. EDIT/UPDATE: Many of the problems other users were reporting kicked in for me after a month or so and took until about April for Microsoft to finally fix them all through firmware and software updates."
Flip and touch full HD screen, Intel Core processor, aluminum metal body, 4GB RAM, 64GB flash storage, and long battery life make this the ideal Chromebook for those who love the cloud and being on the go. The flexible 360 degree hinge and 12.5” Full-HD touchscreen lets you use the C302 in tablet or laptop mode.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"One place that does frustrate me in the tablet mode is that ChromeOS has a number of UI features that don't lend themselves to touch interaction. Pros: - Internals are very performant and well-spec'd for the entry-level price point of this Chromebook. - The physical case is solid and of a production quality you'd expect in machine 3-5x the price of this machine. - Beautiful, bright IPS Screen with full 1080p resolution. - User interfaces that are tight, responsive, and comparable to Apple grade quality. - Backlit keyboard rocks. - Battery life is pretty amazing at 10-11hrs. Cons: - 4Gb RAM cap... Stock ChromeOS Usage. Out of the box, the Asus C302CA is a powerhouse for stock ChromeOS usage. For more advanced usages, there are now a number of cloud-based development toolkits and graphics tools available to make a stock ChromeOS system a capable web development environment. I've fiddled with some web-based games, but the graphics capabilities while decent for this form factor, you won't be playing any intense games in stock ChromeOS mode. Where ChromeOS really shines and what I think is going to be a very significant deal-maker for these devices in the coming year is the inclusion of the Google Play Store and the ability to run Android applications in the ChromeOS environment. As the owner of an Android phone, I really like this feature since I can load apps onto the Chromebook that I regularly use already, apps I've paid for are available on this device, and the Play Store accurately recognizes the C302CA as a "tablet" form factor and will suggest the tablet alternative of many apps. When I grab my daughter's Acer R11 or borrow a coworker's Chromebook, all I need do is login with my Google account and within seconds I've got the same user experience I get anywhere else in the GoogSpace... Pros: - Clean and secure operating system that is very lean and gets the most out of the systems modest specs. - With the combination of web-based productivity tools and development apps/services, this Chromebook can provide a breadth of very viable usage scenarios without bogging the system down with locally install applications. - Android Apps and Google Play Store are real game changers for the ChromeOS landscape... Venture at your own risk/responsibility...]. So, this is where this little Chromebook REALLY shines... As I mentioned in the intro, I'm a software engineer and while I love the liberation and simplicity of the ChromeOS experience, there are still times where I want some more classic applications like you'd find on MacOS, Linux, or Windows. This gives us several ways to get a more fully-featured desktop experience: a) Chroot/Crouton Linux Desktop Installation. b) Chroot/Crouton/Xiwi Embedded Application Launcher. c) Dual Booting into Linux Desktop. The first two options are very similar and only differ in the way in which you interact with the Linux environment, while the third option is quite literally installing a full installation of Linux onto the machine and booting directly into it instead of ChromeOS. Without going into too much detail (seriously, google or wikipedia 'chroot' if you want the bloody details), a "chroot" is a parallel installation of an operating system in it's own isolated "container" in the ChromeOS operating system. It's neat because it let's you run both ChromeOS -and- a Linux Desktop OS like Ubuntu at the same time (!!!). The chroot installation is actually sharing number of resources with the ChromeOS operating system, making it still very resource conservative. Once installed, you just need to press Ctrl-Alt-Shift-FwdArrow and you'll be in a running Linux desktop... -BackArrow to hop back over to ChromeOS. In addition to this first full-desktop chroot approach, Crouton offers another installation method that lets you run Linux in a "headless" mode where there is no desktop environment, rather the Linux OS forwards the application windows to the ChromeOS desktop. This is accomplished by installing the "xiwi" packages into the Linux chroot and adding a ChromeOS extension that exposes the ChromeOS desktop interface to the Linux chroot. When all is said and done, you can setup an application launcher which will bootstrap and app on the Linux chroot and then open it in a window on the ChromeOS desktop. Iv'e used this method to install VS Code, Arduino IDE, and a 3D printer host application in this "embedded mode" and it's very functional and comfortable to have everything in the ChromeOS experience and just consume the resources needed to run the application and nothing else. It's worth noting that there is a performance hit with this approach, namely that the forwarding of the application window to ChromeOS comes at the cost of losing accelerated graphics rendering for the Linux apps. Finally, there's the most performant but also most disconnected from ChromeOS approach of installing a full Linux OS in a separate partition on the machine's system drive or microSD drive. This installation has a lot of pep in it... Apps start very fast, graphics are much more responsive and capable when not being shared with ChromeOS and there are a number of ways you can tweak the UI/UX to your own liking. Having a zippy 128GB microSD card to mount for system storage on the Linux side is convenient too because you can also mount it from a chroot Linus installation on the ChromeOS side so you can share files and config across the various installation types. As a stand-alone, stock ChromeOS device, the C302CA performs as well as Chromebooks in the $800-$1000 price range and provides more than enough options as just a web-application and Android app platform. When adding that "secret sauce" this machine goes from being a basic ChromeOS device to a fully-featured development platform... for only about $450-$500. d) A Bluetooth Mouse - While this unarguably has one of the best trackpads in Chromebook Land, there are still times you just need the precision of a mouse... ChromeOS supports Bluetooth 4.0 and LE devices and there are a lot of nice, slim-style mice out there similar to Apple's Magic Mouse that are BT and don't require a USB dongle."
"I saw this C302 was announced at CES and was immediately drawn to it since it has the Intel Core m3 processor. I got several random reboots when I first ran Android apps on the beta channel. I've decided to power wash and run the beta channel without Android apps enabled for awhile. UPDATE 1/14/17: I re-enabled the Play Store in the beta channel and the Chromebook has been flawless. I learned that it's important to pick your battles and decide which Android apps can truly work better than their Chrome counterparts. For instance, the Android YouTube app doesn't work well at all because it's very inconvenient to get videos into full-screen mode. UPDATE 2/21/17: The Google Play Store became standard in the Stable channel a few weeks ago. I do still keep mine in Beta channel because I enjoy receiving updates a bit early and the Chromebook remains reliable with no bugs that I can observe. UPDATE 8/19/17: Just wanted to mention that this Chromebook DOES support downloading the full Microsoft Office apps from the Play Store. While the Chromebook Pro does have a nice high-resolution 3:2 screen and the S-Pen (which is truly a gimmick anyway), it has half the storage, shorter battery life, and no backlit keyboard."
Acer Chromebook R11 CB5-132T-C1LK comes with these high level specs: Intel Celeron N3150 Quad-Core Processor 1.6GHz with Intel Burst Technology up to 2.08GHz, Chrome, 11.6" HD Widescreen LED-backlit Display (1366x768 resolution; 16:9 aspect ratio), Multi-touch screen, supporting 10 finger touch, Intel HD Graphics, 4GB DDR3L Memory, 32GB internal storage, Secure Digital (SD) card reader, 802.11ac WiFi featuring MIMO technology (Dual-Band 2.4GHz and 5GHz), Bluetooth 4.0, Built-In HD Webcam, 1 - USB 3.0 Port, 1 - USB 2.0 Port, 1 - HDMI Port, 3-cell Li-ion Battery (3220 mAh), Up to 10-hours Battery Life, 2.76 lbs. Operating System - Chrome OS™,Graphics : Intel® HD Graphics,DDR3L Shared graphics memory, Connectivity : 802.11a/b/g/n/ac wireless LAN.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"-360 degree rotation: LOVE the ability to watch movies in tent mode, turn it into a (slightly heavy, thick) tablet. I was super worried that touching the keyboard when it was in tablet mode would cause it to switch back to laptop mode, but it looks like once you move the screen back past like 180 degrees, it goes into full touchscreen. I feel like I have a tablet and super mobile laptop rolled into one. The bad: - speakers are a little tinny (though the volume is AWESOME) and it's not possible to customize the equalizer on the Chrome OS right now :(. - though it's a super light laptop, the chromebook is a little heavy as a tablet, not super practical for holding, but if it's resting on something, it's golden. I mean, if you want a true tablet, buy a true tablet--this did honestly keep me from investing in a kindle as I was planning to."
"Since you have access to Android apps on the Google Play Store, you don't have to rely solely on the Chrome browser to access apps. I searched for top android apps for chromebooks on the web, and found which apps work better than Chrome pages."
"My trusty Windows 7 laptop was on its last leg and I opted to try something new. It’s a tablet and a laptop and now most of the Android apps work on Chrome."
"It's fast, secure, easy to use (even as a tech geek, it's nice knowing something's just going to work). I'm a writer, and this has easily become my main computer for both work and play (Google Docs easily replaces Word, and Android apps make it much better for gaming than I originally expected)."
"While I like the product overall, the lack of a command or windows button means that if you use a remote desktop app to access a mac or windows pc, you can't actually use a lot of keyboard-shortcuts easily, or you might run into a problem with them all together."
"I so far have had no issues with this laptop."
Best Traditional Laptop Computers
15.6" Full HD (1920 x 1080) widescreen IPS display, Red Backlit Keyboard.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"All of the gaming laptops from all of these companies are great for this price range, and they all make their compromises in different areas of their laptops to reach that point. Now to my second concern I had, which was heat and cooling. I do plan to use this laptop for gaming, and although I don't plan on doing extremely heavy gaming on it, as I have a PS4, Xbox 360, 2 ps vitas, and a Nintendo Switch, all with plenty of games on them to which are my primary gaming platforms, there are just some games you cannot get on consoles, especially indie games that are offered on Steam, and this is my main use for this laptop, but I did want to see what this thing is capable of, so I purchased The Witcher 3 and Far Cry 4 to really test what it can do. I'll say, between those two games, and above all my other indie games and older, easier to run games that aren't near as taxing on the hardware, The Witcher 3 is the ultimate test to see what a system can do, as it runs it HARD, pushing the CPU and GPU to their limits as is, but it does run the game EXTREMELY well, keep in mind you HAVE to be plugged in to the power supply for these particular heavy running games to perform adequately, as if you try and unplug and run them solely on the battery power, both Witcher 3 and Far Cry 4 will instantly cut down to 9fps and are completely unplayable in that manner, and this is NOT something that can be changed, it is just the way the BIOS is set up. All of my other games, however that are xbox 360-era games, such as dark souls and payday 2, and ALL of my indie games, run a smooth 30-60+ fps in battery only mode. So, while running either The Witcher 3 or Far Cry 4, I noticed that after extended periods of play (1+ hours), on the auto setting and with CoolBoost off, CPU temp was staying around 90 Celsius, and 80 Celsius for the GPU, and there were short spikes that would last a few seconds at a time where the CPU would actually jump up to 97 Celsius, which was enough to concern me, so I tried messing with the settings more, and concluded that if you are going to play any heavy games that tax the hardware this much, I HIGHLY recommend that you turn CoolBoost ON, as once this was on, on the Auto fan setting, playing The Witcher 3 or Far Cry 4 for extended periods, it considerably helped to cut down these max temperatures, where now the CPU max was at 87 Celsius, and the GPU at 78 Celsius max. Now, as for all of my indie games and Xbox 360 era games, this ran considerably cooler, with Dark Souls pushing the CPU to 72 Celsius max, and GPU 61 Celsius max. In summary, I would definitely recommend this laptop for anyone that is looking for something similar to what I was looking for that wants to get the absolute most performance they can for a price point of $1099 and that isn't concerned too much about being bothered by having a laptop that looks like a gaming laptop."
"Pros: -Price/Performance. -GTX 1060 easily pushes 1080p monitor. -Cooling seems to do a good job. -Quality build. -m.2 is PCIe/NVMe compatible. -free 2.5" bay with mounting included. -Matte screen. -Not too bulky. Cons (I gonna really reach here, no reason to complain at this price): -Single USB 3 port. -USB C is NOT thunderbolt 3. -finger prints show easily on metal exterior. The build quality is instantly obvious. The first thing I did after unboxing was create a backup using a USB 3 stick which took ~1 hour. The base has all around the perimeter plastic snaps that require a little effort to unsnap by pulling. I can tell you unless you are a professional photographer/graphics designer who needs precise color that the monitor is impressive for what it is. I notice no difference in speed, if anything this laptop is a bit faster (most likely thanks to the 960 Evo SSD). In a relatively small 3rd bedroom/office my desktop could easily heat the room up to the point of needing to open a window or point a fan into the room to direct cool air in. The Predator Sense app is simple and makes controlling the fans easy. Temps are reasonable in my opinion (Celsius): CPU: 40min/~75gaming. GPU: 60min/70max (GTX 1060 disables when not gaming, so temp is min/max gaming). In conclusion, for ~$1k you get a 7700HQ, GTX 1060, 16GB DDR4, nice matte 1080p screen, quality build, NVMe capability, free 2.5" bay, backlit keyboard."