The heart of this machine is an Intel Core i7-6200U processor, which includes the very latest 14nm Skylake technology and Intel HD 520 graphics, which should combine to make light work of most workloads, as well as some gaming. All this while consuming less power than ever – although the real-world results of these improvements are only likely to be a few per cent of extra performance and battery life over last year’s Yoga 3 in normal use.You can also spec up the Yoga 700 with an Nvidia GeForce GT 940M. Although a pretty modest graphics chip, it will double the performance of the Intel graphics and turn this laptop from one that’s capable of playing older games at low resolution and 30fps to one that can play older games at a high frame rate. It will just about be able to play the latest games, too, if you keep the resolution down.
Whip off the bottom of this laptop and you can see the 2.5in SATA drive. Lenovo has only made this laptop available with SSDs, but there's nothing to stop you from adding a hard drive if storage capacity is a priority over speed, or you could upgrade to a larger SSD – Lenovo only offers up to 256GB – or add a combined SSD and HDD.You can also access the single SO-DIMM memory slot, again giving you the option of a future upgrade from the 8GB (DDR3 1,600MHz) that comes with all the available models.The Razer Blade Stealth is a spin-off variant of the company’s core gaming laptop lineup. However, Razer has slimmed down the form factor significantly – we’re talking a thickness of 0.52-inches and a weight of only 1.25kg.
Not surprisingly, the notebook felt incredibly lightweight in the hand, and looked chic and elegant on the tabletop.The Razer Blade Stealth ships with a 12.5-inch IGZO touchscreen. It comes in two core variants – one has a QHD panel, while the other boasts an even higher resolution 4K/UHD panel.I got a look at the 4K version, and the display was superbly sharp. Colours appeared bright and vivid, and detail was excellent.Following a quick play around with the operating system – Windows 10, naturally – I found the Intel Core i7-6500U dual-core processor (clocked to 2.5GHz) to offer nippy performance. There’s also 8GB of dual-channel LPDDR3-1866MHz RAM to boot.Of course, I couldn’t try out Razer’s latest gaming fare without actually playing a game, so I tested out the Blade Stealth with Star Wars: Battlefront.
I cranked up all of the graphics settings to Ultra – the maximum available – at a QHD resolution, and the frame rate was fine. There was no stuttering at all, even in outside environments.By this point, you may be wondering why I haven’t mentioned a built-in dedicated GPU. After all, that’s a must-have on any respectable gaming laptop, right? Not here.The Razer Core is a dedicated graphics enclosure that sits alongside the laptop and hosts a desktop-grade graphics card of your choice – so long as it’s either Nvidia or AMD.Instead of the Blade Stealth powering gaming graphics, the notebook simply hooks up to the Core via a Thunderbolt connection.Plugging the Blade Stealth into the Core via a single connection was simple, offering a superb perk – the Core has a host of ports on the rear, meaning you don’t need to clog up your laptop’s sides with cables.
Both the Blade Stealth and Razer Core are Chroma enabled. That’s Razer shorthand for integrated lighting tech, with 16.8 million colours. It’s also worth noting that the Blade Stealth features the world’s first individually backlit keyboard.Naturally, this synchronised glowing makes the Blade Stealth and Razer Core pairing look sufficiently fearsome on any surface.I didn’t get an opportunity to test out the laptop's battery life – wait for the full review – but Razer tells me it will offer a minimum of six hours, although better longevity is being targeted.We love the Dell XPS 13 – we gave it our coveted Recommended Award and it even won Laptop of the Year at the TrustedReviews Awards 2015. It's so good that, despite being a "consumer" laptop, business people wanted to buy it. In response, Dell has made the Latitude 7370 – an XPS 13 with tweaked design and features for big business announced at CES 2016.
The basics are the same. It's a 13-inch laptop in a very small body – a 13-inch laptop in a 12-inch frame as Dell likes to put it. It weighs less than 1kg, benefits from great battery life and is available with either Full HD or Quad HD screens. Nothing new here.The differences start with the design. Black is the word; there are no fancy sliver bits here. Its all soft-touch black plastic save for the carbon-fibre lid. That's fine with me, though – it looks great and the ultra-thin bezel continues to dazzle.The keyboard has a wonderfully defined feel but it's also whisper quiet, and the touchpad is large and smooth. The screen, meanwhile, is anti-glare. In fact, I was stunned by the lack of reflections in the brief time I had with it. It's a rare pleasure these days.The core hardware is much the same but for the addition of TPM security and Intel vPro, which is all part of the big-business integration.
Likewise, two USB-C ports and a Thunderbolt port provide ample connectivity. And if the default selection isn't enough, Thunderbolt docking stations will expand that to plentiful proportions, such as supporting up to three 4K screens.What's not to like here? Take a great product, tweak it for business users and the result is that you have a winner. There's nothing hugely complicated about the Dell Latitude 7370 given that it's based on an existing product. Nevertheless, I'm glad Dell's done it.
We’re in the midst of a foldable frenzy. Companies are bending over backwards (sorry) to emulate the foldable laptop/tablet hybrid design, used perhaps most recognisably used by Lenovo on its range of Yoga convertible laptops.There are several examples of the 360 degree hinge on the premium end of the laptop spectrum, but what about the budget ranges? Can you trust the design, let alone the performance, in a foldable hybrid that cost you less than £300?
Well Asus reckons it can convince you that the answer is ‘yes’ with its Transformer Book Flip TP200SA. It’s an 11.6-inch foldable two-in-one with some nice extras, such as a USB Type-C port, to try to set it apart from the competition.However, with a somewhat underwhelming Intel Celeron dual-core processor, will design flourishes and added extras be enough to detract from what's likely to be disappointing performance?The 360 degree hinge is all the rage at the moment. It offers an alternative to the detachable screen setup found on other convertables, like the Surface Pro 4, and is a nice way of adding several different usage modes to the hybrid.The TP200SA might not have the impressive ‘watchband’ hinge made of more than 800 parts that can be found on the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro and Yoga 900, but it does exactly the same thing as its higher-end counterparts. Asus’ hinge is far from a marvel of modern engineering but it doesn’t need to be – it works. In the end, it makes you wonder why, with the amount of effort that goes into designing and producing a hinge with more than 800 parts, companies bother.
You can get the TP200SA in two colours, Dark Blue and Crystal Silver. My review model came in the latter. The laptop is covered in a metallic finish which Asus says has a scratch resistant texture. It’s nothing amazing but it does go some way towards making the laptop feel slightly more premium than its price would imply. The bottom of the case is plastic but this doesn’t really take much away from the design.Also, everything is rounded on this thing. Every edge and contour has been smoothed off which gives the device a kind of quaint feeling, as if it were made for kids who might cut themselves on anything more defined. It’s not exactly a bad thing, but when combined with the device's fairly small size it does sort of feel like a kid's laptop.Still, overall the TP200SA feels pretty sturdy and actually seems tougher than some high-end laptops I’ve used. The screen doesn’t flex or bend when you use it, although it does wobble a bit when typing, and there’s no rattling to be heard from any of the design features. The company says it has ‘carefully trimmed every last gram of excess weight’ from the TP200SA, and at 1.2 kg it certainly feels lightweight for a laptop, while still retaining that robust feeling.
It is a little on the heavy side for prolonged use as a tablet but at 18.5mm thick, the TP200SA is still impressively slim. For comparison, the HP Pavilion x2 is 19.8mm thick and the similar-priced Acer Aspire Switch 11 is a fairly hefty 25mm. All these foldable laptops feel somewhat cumbersome in tablet mode and although the TP200SA is no different, it feels more natural to hold than its larger equivalents.Asus does however seem to have succumbed to an irritating trend among many companies who seem to have a proclivity for surrounding their screens with the largest bezel they can. I’m not sure what it’s going to take for them to understand that it’s just not cool anymore.
The thing about laptops this size is that the keyboard is inevitably going to suffer. Packing full size keys into a 12-inch device isn’t easy but Asus has managed it quite well. It definitely feels a little cramped, but the keys have a decent travel to them and they don’t rattle around too much. It’s not going to be the best keyboard you’ve ever used, but at this price point it’s pretty good.The trackpad was surprisingly responsive too. Unlike a lot of laptops at this level, the pad made it easy to perform basic tasks. When using two fingers to scroll for example, a task which seems to baffle many low-end devices of a similar sort, it worked better than some higher-end laptop trackpads I’ve used.The pad is also pretty big. Asus says it has made it 46% bigger than ‘other brands’. Which laptops they’re comparing the TP200SA with isn’t clear but I can certainly say that the size is more than adequate.