- Hey guys, this is Austin.
We've taken a look at a lot of laptops this year,
but these are my absolute favorites.
And huge shout out to Intel for sponsoring this roundup.
Starting out with, we have the HP Spectre Folio.
Now we very recently took a look at this
and it is hands down one of the most unique
laptops I've seen all year long.
First of all, we have the design.
So it's made out of a hybrid of a magnesium chassis
paired with leather that's wrapped all the way around,
and it looks and feels incredibly premium.
Unlike a lot of laptops, this does have a standard hinge
so you can use it just like a standard notebook,
or if you want you can pop out the magnetically
attached screen and use it here either in
the Tent Mode where you can use the touch pad,
or if you want to go completely flat
you have a nice little folio.
Like many of the other laptops
in this roundup, it is powered
by an Intel Core i7 eighth-generation processor.
In this case it's the 8500Y which means
that not only is it completely fanless
so it's thin and light, but importantly it still
does have the power to run full fledged Windows apps.
What's really cool about this is that it's
an always connected PC with an Intel modem that is built in.
So with an always connected LTE setup,
what this means is that you don't have to go around and
hunt for sketchy public wifi or anything like that.
It makes a big difference to the way that you use the PC.
And I do feel like this is going to be
something we're seeing a lot more in the next couple years.
The biggest problem with the Spectre Folio is price.
With the maxed out version, with the Core i7
as well as the LTE modem, it is a full 1500 dollars.
But if you want one of the most unique
and coolest laptops that you can buy right now,
the Spectre Folio definitely fits the bill.
If you're looking for something
a little bit more traditional,
the ASUS ZenBbook S is definitely one of my favorites.
The ZenBook also has an interesting design.
So this is what ASUS calls ErgoLift.
As you can see, when you open up the screen,
it gives a little bit of a lift to the keyboard.
Now this has implications for things such as the cooling,
but importantly, paired with the awesome keyboard,
this is once of my favorite typing experiences of the year.
It is so comfy to type on this guy for long periods.
This really is the sweet spot for a thin and light laptop.
You have the portability, but you also have the power
with that eighth-gen Core i7 8550U,
and on top of that you have a pair of Thunderbolt 3 ports,
which means that even though
it's super thin and it's super light,
you can get some proper work done on this guy.
It's not perfect, especially when you outfit it
with the 4K touchscreen, battery life is only decent,
but when you put the entire package together,
this is hands-down one of my favorite
ultra-portable laptops of the year.
Another option is the brand-new Razer Blade Stealth.
Now, we're still well into premium laptop territory here,
but for such a thin and light form factor,
we're getting a lot more performance
than you'd usually expect.
Inside, of course you'll find
the eighth-gen Core i7 processor,
but it's also backed up by an NVIDIA MX150 GPU.
Now it's not completely unheard of,
but this is a pretty unique combination
in such a thin and light laptop,
which can not only play some decent games,
maybe not on ultra settings,
but importantly also has the great build quality
and the great battery life to back it up.
It also has a great screen and speakers,
the touchpad's awesome, and the keyboard is really solid.
The important thing here is,
while it does have the power to do some gaming,
importantly you're not sacrificing anything
as an everyday laptop.
Now if we really wanna get overkill with things,
we have the ASUS G703, which I sadly don't have here,
because they asked for it back.
But this is hands-down the craziest laptop
we've ever looked at.
With a $5000 price tag, overclocked Core i9 processor,
GTX 1080, full desktop class GPU, 64 gigs of RAM,
it's got a full 1.3 terabytes of RAID SSDs,
I mean this thing is literally like a nerd's dream.
As long as you're a very buff nerd
who can pick up the very hefty, (laughs),
I can't say it.
It is not remotely practical in any way, but come on!
This is my favorite laptops of the year.
How can I not include the most ridiculous, overkill thing
that we've taken a look at,
well, pretty much ever on the laptop side.
Next up we have everyone's favorite laptop,
the crowd favorite known as the Apple MacBook Pro.
So, this is slightly cheating,
since this was actually brand-new in 2016,
however, it did get a big spec bump this year.
With a six-core Intel Core i9 inside,
this is a properly powerful system.
Now, no, it may not be quite as powerful
as that G703, but this is also something
that can be picked up and carried by normal human people,
a very important trait of a laptop.
It's still got some of the best build quality in the game,
and the basics are pretty much all here,
with the slight exception of the keyboard
which is just so-so.
When you put it all together,
this is one incredibly expensive machine
because we do so much stuff that is specific to MacOS,
specifically with Final Cut,
it means that this is actually
one of my most used laptops this year,
even though it might not necessarily be my favorite.
If we switch over to a slightly more reasonable price range,
we have this, the VivoBook F510UA.
For just about $500, this is easily
one of the best laptops in the game right now.
So one of the important things that you should probably keep
in mind, is that this is a standard hard drive configuration
for $500, but for only about $30,
you can very easily upgrade it with an SSD,
and I definitely recommend it.
It makes a huge difference,
and it really nicely rounds out the rest of the package.
With the VivoBook, even though it is a fairly cheap laptop,
you're not really giving up a lot,
and I think that's very, very important at this price range.
So you've got an eighth-gen i5 processor,
a pretty impressive 1080p IPS panel,
you got a good keyboard, good touchpad, plenty of ports,
there's really very little that's wrong with this laptop,
and that is super, super impressive at the price.
Okay.
So I am really, really cheating with this one,
but my next choice is the Microsoft Surface Go.
Yeah, you could say this is a tablet,
but the way I use it, as a tiny,
awesome little Windows laptop.
Even the base $400 version is built well,
and you've got a decent amount of performance thanks
to the Pentium Gold processor,
nothing too crazy, but it is enough for a 10 inch laptop.
On top of that, you've got a lot
of the nice Surface features,
including the fully adjustable kickstand,
as well as the keyboard.
Now, yes, if you take off the keyboard, it's um, a tablet,
so this doesn't really quite qualify as a laptop,
but I mean, you should buy the keyboard.
You should put it on.
It should live like this.
And then it's eligible to be in my video.
Look, okay, I get it, it's not really a laptop.
But I mean, the way I use this thing is just like a laptop.
It's got a touchpad, a keyboard, and I dunno.
I actually really like the Surface Go.
I think it makes a lot of sense,
and especially because it has things like, I dunno,
a USB-C port, something that some of the other Surfaces
could maybe take note on,
this really is one of my favorite cheap-budget devices
right now, especially when you consider just how portable
and small and cool it is.
Can you tell I really like the Surface Go?
Say you wanna game on a budget?
Well, boy have I got the deal for you?
The Acer Aspire 5.
This is a laptop we actually took a look at
very early in the year,
and yet it has absolutely held up all year long,
and that is for good reason.
This is easily my favorite recommendation
if you wanna get into a low-end gaming laptop.
At $600, the spec list is impressive.
You have a Core i5, eight gigs of RAM, MX150 graphics,
a 256 gig SSD, you even got nice things
like a solid touchpad and a backlit keyboard.
The only real downside here is the screen,
which while it is 1080, is unfortunately not IPS.
But, if you can look past that,
and at $600 you kind of should,
this is a very impressive gaming laptop.
Considering it shares a similar MX150 graphics setup
compared to that Razer Blade Stealth,
you should be able to game at pretty decent settings,
again, not Ultra, but for $600,
if you wanna get into an entry-level gaming laptop,
the Acer Aspire 5 is still
one of my absolute favorite things
I've taken a look at this year.