Adidas’s site and app will soon get “Buy with Prime” Amazon fulfillment, allowing Prime members to receive free shipping and streamlined returns when ordering directly from the three-stripe brand.

Beginning in the spring, paying US-based Amazon Prime subscribers will see Prime-eligible items for sale on adidas.com and through the Adidas app. By logging into their Amazon account during checkout, those items will be fulfilled by Amazon. In addition to faster free shipping, Prime members who make purchases this way will be able to view and track the purchase through their Amazon account.

If you do the bulk of your shopping on Amazon then Buy with Prime may be a handy way to centralize your purchase history into one easy-to-find location, or at least make your subscription fee go a little further on the websites of other brands.

While Adidas is joining thousands of other companies registered in the direct-to-consumer Buy with Prime program, it seems to be a notable score for Amazon when it comes to brand clout. Other notable brands linked up with the program include Belkin, Steve Madden, Laura Mercier, Izod, MrBeast, and more.

The Dell XPS 13 was once the best thin-and-light Windows laptop you could get, with amazing build quality, good battery life, and decent port selection (and eventually, a serviceable webcam). But it peaked in 2020 and it’s been slipping since. It got OLED screen options that tanked the battery life. Then there was a baffling redesign that made the keyboard, trackpad, and port selection worse, paired with power-hungry 12th Gen Intel chips, so it still had bad battery life, and it ran too hot.

The new Intel Lunar Lake model fixes some of those issues, but improved performance and a beautiful OLED screen can’t make up for the flawed design. With a spongy keyboard, awkward function row, and paltry ports, this laptop is incredibly frustrating to use — a sad sendoff for the once-admired XPS name.

The Dell XPS 13 (model 9350), released in late 2024, is the x86 counterpart to the Snapdragon X Elite version we tested last summer. It starts at $1,399 for an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V CPU (Lunar Lake), 16GB of RAM, user-replaceable 512GB NVMe SSD, and a 13.4-inch non-touch 1920 x 1200 IPS display with up to 120Hz refresh rate. My $1,699 review unit has a 60Hz 4K tandem OLED touchscreen …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Nvidia’s RTX 5090 and 5080 desktop GPUs sort of launched last month, but on the laptop front, we’re still awaiting the avalanche of 50-series notebooks to come crashing in, starting with these hefty new mid-rangers from Acer.

The (deep breath) Predator Helios Neo 16 AI and Predator Helios Neo 18 AI can be configured with up to Intel’s Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and RTX 5070 Ti GPUs. They each feature a boatload of ports and will start at $1,899.99 for the 16-inch and $2,199.99 for the 18-inch. The 16 launches in the US in April (other countries in May), and the 18 launches in May (other countries in June).

Both laptops feature RGB logos on their lids, four-zone keyboard lighting, and up to 64GB of RAM and 2TB of storage. Also in the high-end configs is a 240Hz 2560 x 1600 OLED for the 16-inch model and 250Hz Mini LED of the same resolution for the 18-inch. Both sizes of laptop feature 90Wh batteries and Wi-Fi 6E support. Each model comes standard with enough ports to keep you free and clear of dongle town. There’s one Thunderbolt 4 port, one USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, three USB-A ports, one HDMI 2.1, a 3.5mm headphone / mic combo jack, and even an ethernet port. Oddly, for such large and thick laptops, they’ve got microSD card slots instead of full-size. That seems like the only thing “micro” about these laptops weighing as much as 7.28 pounds.

But the bigger thing to be aware of is that the RTX 5070 Ti GPUs, Core Ultra 9 CPUs, and OLED / Mini LED screens are all optional. At the starting configurations for both sizes you’re getting a more modest Core Ultra 7 255HX and RTX 5070. That doesn’t sound terrible, but the base-model displays are just 1920 x 1200.

We reached out to Acer about the cost of the higher-end Predator Helios Neo configurations, but did not hear back before publication.

Steam’s early access program helps small to medium-sized developers get an idea off the ground, but not every game actually does. Now, Valve has a notice designed to warn Steam users when they visit an early access game’s store page if it’s been a minute since the last update. If the dev’s lofty goals for a 1.0 release were a little too lofty, then it’s probably time to do some due diligence before spending money on what may be abandonware.

Valve hasn’t formally announced the feature, but both Eurogamer and PC Gamer point it out as first highlighted by SteamDB. One example where you can see this warning in action is the store listing for Cavern Kings, which flags that its developers have not updated the game in over eight years.

That’s probably long enough to safely say the game is abandoned (though the developer has since worked on another title). On the other hand, Pirate Software’s Heartbound currently has a warning for not being updated in 13 months. And the recent “mostly negative” user reviews track with that. But the developer just posted an update note in January to explain the hiatus, and also dropped a patch days ago on February 1st. So, this may not be a fully fleshed-out or foolproof feature just yet.

A popular Bloodborne framerate mod is no longer available thanks to a DMCA takedown request from Sony. Australia-based Twitch streamer Lance McDonald first developed the mod back in 2020 before making it available to download in 2021. Lance announced today in a post on X that Sony Interactive Entertainment asked them to remove download links for the patch.

The hack’s sole purpose was to get Bloodborne running at a smoother 60 fps with improved frame pacing. FromSoftware originally released Bloodborne back in 2015 for the PlayStation 4, and the game has always been locked at 30 fps with occasional stuttering from inconsistent pacing (the 30 frames within each second were not always on-screen for equal amounts of time). The beloved game’s graphical limitations have persisted even on the PS4 Pro and while playing it via backwards compatibility on the PlayStation 5.

Lance’s mod has received its share of testing and praise from the “Soulsbourne” community that covet FromSoftware games but wish their technical and graphical chops were more cutting-edge. This includes being spotlighted by creators like Digital Foundry, who interviewed McDonald about his hack back in 2020, used his mod to make a 4K / 60 fps representation on PS5 using AI upscaling, and recently published a Bloodborne PS4 emulation video that really juices up the performance and has an extra-spicy video thumbnail aimed squarely at Sony.

For years, the most rabid of Bloodborne fans have been quick to jump at any Bloodborne-related news as a potential clue to an upcoming, long-awaited remake. And in this case, it only takes a short scroll of McDonald’s replies on his post to see people speculating that this takedown means Sony must be nearing some kind of announcement in time for the 10-year anniversary of Bloodborne’s release. Or, perhaps, Sony is just taking a page from Nintendo’s playbook.

After announcing some new experimental features for YouTube Premium subscribers earlier this month — and that multiple experiments can be tested at once — the company has added one it promised was on the way: the ability to watch videos at 4x speed, as reported by Android Police. I’m personally a 1.5x to 2x sicko when it comes to YouTube videos and podcasts, but 4x is an absolutely blistering speed that’s more apt for skipping past the cruft than consuming info at a faster clip.

The faster playback is just one of a few experiments you can currently try (with some OS and time restrictions):

• 4x playback speed (iOS and Android only, until February 26th)
• Shorts Smart Downloads (iOS only, until February 19th)
• Shorts Picture-in-Picture (iOS only, until February 19th)
• High Quality Audio for 256kbps sound (iOS and Android only, until February 22nd)
• Jump Ahead Web (for web browsers, until February 5th)

In similar just-get-to-the-point-already fashion, Jump Ahead gives web users a button to automatically skip to “the content they care about faster” instead of carefully scrubbing through a video. But let’s be honest, this will probably be a button to jump past all the intros and other bloat.

The faster playback speed and Jump Ahead features seem the most useful — if you’re already a YouTube Premium subscriber who doesn’t have to sit through ads, the next frontier is skipping through all the cruft. Though higher quality audio is always welcome. And a picture-in-picture mode for Shorts could be convenient, but as was mentioned on a recent Vergecast, why would you want YouTube to automatically fill your phone’s storage with tons of Shorts videos?

The next generation of Nvidia GPUs is almost here.

Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs are just around the corner, with the first releases — the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 — dropping on January 30th. The RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 will follow that with their own releases in February, but some are already getting a sneak peek at the GPUs’ software benefits through DLSS 4.

Tom Warren’s Verge review of the $1,999 RTX 5090 indicates it’s expectedly a powerhouse, but not quite the generational leap that the RTX 4090 was over its own predecessor. That didn’t stop The Verge’s Sean Hollister from being impressed with the two-slot RTX 5090 Founders Edition GPU when he stuffed it into his aging small-form-factor PC.

Along with the 50-series GPUs comes DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, a software trick that may be just as big a story as the hardware itself. This latest version of DLSS uses AI to predictively generate frames, making it possible to run games at higher resolutions without taking the same framerate hit they would without DLSS 4 turned on. Gamers who are already trying DLSS 4 out in Cyberpunk 2077 using RTX 40-series GPUs report seeing huge improvements already.

We’ll be keeping up with all the news about Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs right here at The Verge.

You may have to wait until January 30th to buy Nvidia’s new RTX 5090 graphics card, but owners of last-gen Nvidia 40-series GPUs can already download and install DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation software via the Nvidia app. And if you want a compatible, graphically-intense game to test DLSS 4 out, Cyberpunk 2077’s newly-launched patch 2.21 adds support for it.

Here’s the important info from CD Projekt Red’s changelog for patch 2.21 about DLSS 4:

Added support for DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation for GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards, which boosts FPS by using AI to generate up to three times per traditionally rendered frame – enabled with GeForce RTX 50 Series on January 30th. DLSS 4 also introduces faster single Frame Generation with reduced memory usage for RTX 50 and 40 Series. Additionally, you can now choose between the CNN model or the new Transformer model for DLSS Ray Reconstruction, DLSS Super Resolution, and DLAA on all GeForce RTX graphics cards today. The new Transformer model enhances stability, lighting, and detail in motion.

People on the Cyberpunk 2077 subreddit are already trying out DLSS 4’s improved single Frame Generation on their 40-series cards and sharing their results. One user posted a variety of screenshots with comparison sliders that show a side-by-side between the older Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model and the new Transformer model in DLSS 4 with full path tracing on their RTX 4070 Super at QHD resolution. It may not be night-and-day differences when frozen in screenshots, but looking closely reveals improvements like better clothing textures and cleaned up facial details, all without taking any significant hit to framerates.

The real star of the DLSS 4 show may be incredibly high framerates via Multi Frame Generation on the new 50-series cards, but getting graphical improvements for free on older cards is an impressive flex of Nvidia’s new tech. It’s not every day you can download better performance.

But just as 50-series early adopters will have to wait for more developers to implement Multi Frame Generation beyond the approximate 75 titles at launch, 40-series users may also have to be patient to see more DLSS 4-compatible updates.

Google is announcing a variety of classroom and accessibility-focused ChromeOS features today, and one of the standouts is being able to control your computer with your head and facial expressions. The feature — aimed at those with motor impairments — was first announced in early December, but it’s now rolling out to more users with compatible Chromebooks (Google recommends 8GB of RAM or more).

This isn’t Google’s first foray into the face-as-a-cursor space. It previously made an open-source AI accessibility tool for Windows games called Project Gameface, which was also announced for Android. Here’s a sample video from Google of the tech in action, demoed by software engineer Amanda Lin Dietz who helped develop it.

Additionally, Google is also teasing a boatload of new Chromebooks for 2025, with over 20 new devices in its standard Chromebook and Chromebook Plus lines coming this year. That estimate may be a bit of a stretch, since Google seems to be counting the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus that launched back in October, but it does also count the just-announced 14-inch Lenovo Chromebook Plus 2-in-1 and more to come.

Along with laptops aimed at educators and students, Google’s got a new batch of classroom-focused ChromeOS features called Class Tools. These allow teachers to have real-time control of their students’ screens. Once a pairing code is shared, educators will be able to send students direct content on their Chromebook screens, flip on live captions or translations for them, remotely view their screens, and share a student’s work with the whole class.

Image: Google

In addition to these collaborative tools, Google Classroom is also getting an integration with Figma’s FigJam, allowing teachers to assign online whiteboards to students for brainstorming and group work. Maybe the combination of FigJam with the teacher’s ability to snoop on students’ screens will reveal who’s really doing all the work for the group.

I added controllers to a 13-inch gaming tablet and I don’t regret it.

Read the full story at The Verge.

Leica has a new camera for pros who shoot both video and stills. The $5,295 Leica SL3-S, which launches today, is a full-frame mirrorless hybrid camera optimized for fast-action stills and 6K video. Like the SL3 it’s based on, the SL3-S has a compact body and 3.2-inch tilting touchscreen display. But where the SL3 with its 60mp sensor is mainly for still photography, the SL3-S is optimized for speed: its 24mp sensor can shoot video at 6K with 12-bit raw footage, and it can capture stills at up to 30fps with continuously tracking autofocus.

Image: Leica Camera

The SL3-S’s newfound video chops mean it supports open-gate 6K (5952 x 3968 resolution) recording of its full 3:2 sensor at up to 30fps, or up to 60fps in 4K, and it can record directly to an SSD via USB-C connection. While it doesn’t have an especially high-resolution sensor for stills, it makes up for that with speed and focusing ability. The SL3-S has 779 phase-detect autofocus points, more than double the SL3’s 315 points. It also has improved object detection and tracking focus, and it shoots fast enough to enable 48- and 96-megapixel high-res multi-shot composites without a tripod.

Otherwise, the SL3-S shares a lot with the SL3 — utilizing the same body design with dual card slots (one UHS-II SD and one CFExpress Type B), tilting touchscreen, color-coded menu system (red for photo / yellow for video), and that quirky light-up power button. (Seriously, why is the power button not a nice physical switch like every other camera?) It’s a similar approach to the one Leica took with its last-generation SL2 and SL2-S, with the SL3-S once again looking identical to its pricier counterpart, aside from some blacked-out Leica lettering.

The SL line is aimed at pros who need their fancy German camera to be more of an all-around workhorse, with high-res video recording and autofocus, instead of a slower-paced, specialized tool for photography like a Leica M rangefinder. So it makes sense that Leica is baking its Content Credentials into the SL3-S, utilizing Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative for image verification like it first did on the M11-P. Strangely, this feature isn’t available in the standard SL3, which launched in March 2024, and won’t be added via firmware upgrade. Leica spokesperson Nathan Kellum-Pathe told The Verge that the SL3 lacks the necessary hardware and that while software-based content authentication is possible, it “does not meet Leica’s standard for encryption of this important data.”

If you have Leica money, but not infinite Leica money, the SL3-S feels like the better value for all but the pickiest pixel peepers.

The new CPUs, GPUs, and laptops announced at CES this week set the tone for Windows computers in the year to come — and so far, 2025 is looking pretty promising. There are a bunch of new notebooks I’m excited to test out when they come around, many of which are gaming-focused since the launch of Nvidia’s RTX 50-series cards is ushering in an onslaught of graphics-heavy refreshes and upgrades.

There are many new laptops coming from Dell, Alienware, Asus, Acer, Lenovo, MSI, and Razer. Many may just boil down to chip bumps and slight refreshes, but there are some that are betting big on new ideas, thinness, raw power, and over-the-top accouterments. Here are the ones I’m most excited for.

Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6

I’ve already written and said a lot about Lenovo’s concept-turned-buyable-product that is the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6. It’s the coolest laptop we saw. It’s our outright best in show for CES 2025. And it’s also possible when it comes time to review one later in the year that the challenges of Lenovo trying to graft software functionality for its rollable display onto Windows may be a bridge too far.

But the...

Read the full story at The Verge.

The PC handheld space continues to grow, and the biggest of all is Acer’s new Nitro Blaze 11. As soon as I saw it announced at CES, I knew I had to try and get it in my hands, at least for the sheer curiosity of “Will this thing even fit in my hands?” The answer is yes — though kind of just barely.

I brought a Steam Deck OLED with me for a quick size and feel comparison. One of the first things I noticed is that it’s much more precarious to pick up the Blaze 11 the way I’m used to grabbing the Steam Deck: by gripping it on the top and bottom edges. My fingers just barely stretch far enough for this position. Once in hand, the 2.3-pound Blaze 11 actually feels lighter than you’d expect, making it not too unwieldy if you do most of your “portable” gaming at home on the couch like I do. (Playing it in bed may be a hazard to your face.)

While the Blaze 11 isn’t as heavy as I feared, the Steam Deck OLED’s 1.41 pounds feel like a featherweight in comparison. The Deck also feels a little more solidly built. Acer’s handheld isn’t flimsy, but it did seem cheaper.

But credit where credit’s due: playing games on such a big screen in your hands is a treat, and the kickstand felt solid for propping it up in tablet mode with detached controllers, which the Steam Deck can’t do. Acer also gets points for using Hall effect sticks and triggers.

We’ll have to wait and see how this jumbo $1,099 handheld fares when it launches in Q2 2025, as the competition heats up with the impending arrival of the Lenovo Legion Go S and the constantly leaking Nintendo Switch 2. In the meantime, here are a bunch of pictures of the Blaze 11 and the Steam Deck OLED.

Update, January 9th: Added information from Acer about the bottom pins and top-mounted sliding switch of the Blaze 11 to their respective image captions.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Nintendo isn’t officially at CES, but it might have stolen the show anyway: accessories-maker Genki brought a 3D-printed mockup of what it says is Nintendo’s Switch successor, and we got to hold it and take some high-resolution pictures.

Based on the mockup of what we’ll call the Switch 2, Nintendo’s next console appears to be wider than the original, with slightly larger Joy-Con controllers that seem like they’ll be more comfortable to hold. Compared to a Steam Deck OLED, the Switch 2 mockup still feels noticeably smaller, in part because the Joy-Cons are not as pronounced and ergonomic as the Deck’s grips. But the mockup still feels closer in size to Valve’s handheld than the original Switch.

As previous rumors have indicated, the Switch 2’s Joy-Cons will attach to the console via magnets instead of a sliding rail, Genki cofounder and CEO Eddie Tsai tells The Verge. To detach a Joy-Con from the Switch 2, you press a big button at the top of the backside of each controller, Tsai says, and that button apparently pushes out a pin that nudges against the chassis of the console, disconnecting the magnets.

You can remove the Joy-Cons with brute force if you really wanted to, according to Tsai, but he says, overall, they feel secure for regular use and that the big release button detaches the Joy-Cons with ease. Tsai declined to share where he’d learned details of the new console.

Tsai also tells The Verge that housed within the mounting channel of the Joy-Cons is an optical sensor, and by using another attachment the new Joy-Cons may offer mouse-like functionality. It sounds a bit like what Lenovo does with its Legion Go handheld.

Nintendo has promised that it will announce the Switch’s successor before April 2025, and as that deadline creeps closer, there have been waves of leaks and rumors about the new hardware. In December, YouTube channel SwitchUp posted a video showing a 3D-printed, non-functional Switch 2 mockup provided by a Chinese case manufacturer. That mockup basically looked like the current Switch but bigger, and it revealed a few other potential changes like a new USB-C port on the top of the device and a mysterious new square button under the Home button on the right Joy-Con.

Days later, accessories-maker Dbrand announced its “Killswitch 2” case, and CEO Adam Ijaz told The Verge that it was designed based on “actual dimensions” based on a “3D scan of the real hardware.” Ijaz also said that it was his “understanding” that the console’s Joy-Cons are magnetically attached. And Dbrand’s imagery showed that the new square button had a “C” printed on it, though Ijaz didn’t know what it was. Days after that, our colleague Sean Hollister spoke with a Redditor who shared apparent photos of the Switch 2’s dock and the inside of what appears to be a Switch 2 Joy-Con.

With that April 2025 deadline inching closer every day, it seems like it won’t be long until Nintendo officially, finally reveals the Switch 2. But until that happens, at least we have these pictures to look at.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Asus’ new featherweight laptop is aiming to be the latest Windows rival to the Apple MacBook Air. The Asus Zenbook A14 is a new thin and light productivity machine announced at CES 2025 sporting a Qualcomm Snapdragon X processor for a claimed battery life of up to 32 hours and a weight of just 2.18 pounds — just over half a pound lighter than the current M3 MacBook Air. The A14’s ultralight magnesium alloy chassis is decked out in Asus’ “Ceraluminum” ceramic coating to keep its weight down and give the laptop a matte, stone-like finish.

Asus is undercutting Apple’s M3 Air in price as well as weight. The Zenbook A14 with a new base-model eight-core Snapdragon X will start at $1,099.99 in gray when it launches in mid-January with 32GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, and a 14-inch OLED display capable of 1920 x 1200 resolution running at 60Hz with 600 nits of peak brightness. Later in March, Asus will launch an even cheaper $899.99 model in beige that’s a little heavier at 2.4 pounds, with a slightly higher-end eight-core Snapdragon X Plus chip but only 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage — exclusively sold at Best Buy.

The A14 has a 70Wh battery, compared to the smaller 52.6Wh cell in the MacBook Air. And it offers a decent selection of ports, with two USB 4 Type-C for charging / data, one USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, a 3.5mm combo headphone / mic jack, and a full-size HDMI 2.1 port. The A14 can connect to up to three external monitors with its lid open, compared to the M3 MacBook Air’s two monitors while its lid is closed (though, keep in mind, one of those monitors will have to provide power to the Zenbook over USB-C).

It all sounds pretty compelling on paper, but while Windows on Arm proved its competence in 2024 through Snapdragon X’s balance of performance and battery life, there can still be compatibility headaches in some unsupported apps and games. And frankly, while our benchmarks of Snapdragon X Plus and X Elite processors were competitive in some ways with Apple’s M3 MacBook Air, I’m skeptical a new lower-end version can really hang against it — let alone an anticipated M4 model.

I had a very brief moment to get my hands on the Zenbook A14 at an early preview event in December, and I can attest to how surprisingly light Asus’ new laptop is. You can pick it up from a corner with just two or three fingers with ease, but it doesn’t feel flimsy or cheap. The matte finish and sad beige aesthetic may not be to everyone’s liking, and I wager most people might think a MacBook Air’s exposed aluminum feels fancier, but Asus put some of its build quality where it counts. For example, the A14’s hinge can be opened with just one finger, while far too many Windows laptops out there require both hands to pry open their lids.

There have been plenty of claimed “MacBook killers” and past Windows laptops aiming for Apple’s crown as the go-to pick for the average user, but few stack up as the complete packages like those offered by Apple. Maybe pairing a Snapdragon X’s excellent battery life with some nice extras like OLED screens and solid build at affordable-ish prices might bring something special to the table — though we’ll have to see about performance.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

I can confidently say Lenovo’s ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 stole the show for me at CES. I knew it the second I hit a button on the keyboard and saw the concept-turned-real laptop extend its rollable OLED display upward — motors whirring motors and a dumb smile forming on my face.

Compared to the many new laptops, desktops, gadgets, and handhelds Lenovo is announcing at CES, the ThinkBook may be completely ridiculous in a lot of ways — and it’ll start at a whopping $3,499 when it launches sometime in Q1 2025. But damn it, I love its quirkiness and the fact that you can soon buy something so utterly unique for mundane tasks like working on extra-tall spreadsheets.

The ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 has a flexible OLED display with small motors built into its hinge to unfurl the screen and roll it back down. It starts out looking like a fairly unassuming 14-inch productivity laptop, albeit with a slightly square-ish aspect ratio and a resolution of 2000 x 1600. But hitting a dedicated key or raising your hand to the webcam activates the motors and makes the display climb to a tall 16.7 inches, with an extended resolution of 2000 x 2350. It took roughly 10 seconds for the ThinkBook’s screen to extend or contract, and while its motors aren’t egregiously loud, they’re noisy enough to draw attention in a quiet environment. That, and the fact that your laptop just freakin’ grew out of nowhere.

The extra screen real estate in 16.7-inch mode is enough to fit two 16 x 9 windows stacked on top of each other. Going back to 14-inch mode tucks the bottom portion of the screen into the laptop chassis, where it hides below the keyboard deck and displays black pixels to not waste power. Reps from Lenovo, including Samuel Shang of Lenovo research, who worked on the ThinkBook’s development team, said the nested location of the screen and small size of the motors in the hinge allowed for ample battery capacity — which seems to track since the laptop’s 66Wh battery is pretty typical for a laptop of this size. Shang and Lenovo product marketing’s Drupad Kandhi said the ThinkBook was thoroughly tested and rated for at least 30,000 closings and openings of its lid hinge and 20,000 rolls both up and down.

Watching the screen go up and down just didn’t get old in our short time testing it. By default, the ThinkBook plays a bright and colorful abstract animation of a flexible material coiling or unrolling while the screen rolls down or up. It’s a cute graphic that’s reminiscent of rolling homemade dough through a pasta machine, but you can thankfully turn it off and watch the display grow or shrink with your current window or app onscreen. I suspect part of the animation’s purpose is to distract from the little curls visible in the display, which are more obvious when it’s moving and there’s something darker onscreen like The Verge’s homepage.

The flexible OLED in the ThinkBook Plus is one of Samsung Display’s IT foldable panels. Like the creases in folding phones, the ThinkBook’s screen has plenty of smaller creases along its lower half that you don’t really notice when using it — but look closely or stare at the screen from steeper angles, and they’re clear as day. You can see them in some of my photos, but I must concede that my bounced flash really illuminates the creases and makes them look more pronounced than they are with the naked eye.

I went into this demo expecting anxious company reps wanting me to treat their precious creation like a fragile heirloom and feared that just looking at this thing the wrong way would break it. But much to the contrary, they seemed surprisingly confident in letting me tinker with it. I jammed the ThinkBook into a backpack just like I would any laptop I’m commuting with, and I also closed the lid while the display was still extended — putting it in a ridiculous-looking overbite position — and all was fine.

As for the ThinkBook’s conventional laptop stuff, it’s a fairly table stakes thin and light productivity machine — but not one with a bounty of ports. It can be configured with up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 Series 2 processor, 1TB SSD, and 32GB of DDR5x dual-channel RAM. It’s got just two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a 3.5mm headphone jack, so be prepared to live the dongle life if you need USB-A or a card reader.

One thing you may not need on your hub is an HDMI-out, as Lenovo told us the ThinkBook is not really designed to be used with external monitors. That’s because Lenovo had to program its extra screen real estate as a second monitor in Windows since Microsoft doesn’t have baked-in support for a setup like this. Even in our short demo, it didn’t take long to see some concerning and potentially deal-breaking software stuff. For example, you can’t snap windows and apps to the bottom portion of the extended screen. Instead, you have to open Lenovo’s built-in software and pin it to that window down there. This could be streamlined if Microsoft adds support for rollable displays in a future Windows update, but I wouldn’t bank on that happening soon.

While I’m super excited to see the ThinkBook Plus actually become a real thing people can buy, I fear the software and OS limitations may hold back its fun potential and make it too fussy. I’m very curious to test it over the long term to see what living the rollable life is like.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Asus has a new version of its Surface Pro-like gaming tablet for CES, and it’s making some sizable changes both inside and out. The Asus ROG Flow Z13 for 2025 is once again a slightly chunky, almost-half-inch-thick, 13-inch tablet with a built-in kickstand, magnetic keyboard cover, a bunch of ports, and a clear window on its rear with RGB lighting to show off its innards.

That fun glass window is now larger, with a direct view of the motherboard, but the biggest change for the ROG Flow Z13 is its switch to integrated graphics. That may seem like a step backward for a gaming-focused tablet since gamers covet dedicated GPUs, but Asus is outfitting it with AMD’s powerful new “Strix Halo” processor. The ROG Flow Z13 can be configured with the Ryzen AI Max 390 for $1,999.99 or the Ryzen AI Max Plus 395 for $2,199.99. The top-end model with the Max Plus 395 has 16 CPU cores and 40 graphics cores, while the base-model Ryzen AI Max Plus 390 (curse these names) has 12 CPU cores and 32 graphics cores. The Z13 utilizes a redesigned stainless steel vapor chamber for cooling these graphics-heavy chips, which are capable of 120W TDP.

All that power in the Z13 is responsible for driving a 13-inch, 2560 x 1600 touchscreen display with a speedy 180Hz refresh rate (up from 165Hz on the last-gen model), which you don’t often find in laptops and tablets of this size. For ports, it’s got two USB 4, one USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, HDMI 2.1, a microSD card slot capable of UHS-II speeds, and a 3.5mm combination headphone / mic jack. It’s also got a 5-megapixel front-facing webcam and 13-megapixel rear-facing camera — so you can flash your RGB as you awkwardly take tablet photos in public. It also has Wi-Fi 7.

The Z13 supports USB-C Power Delivery for charging, but that won’t be powerful enough to allow its full performance under load. Instead, it comes with a 200W power adapter that uses Asus’ proprietary and reversible slim power jack — like on its recent laptops.

Other quality-of-life improvements for the Z13 include a new detachable keyboard with larger keycaps and a more generously sized touchpad. And on its right side, beside the power button and volume rocker, is a new “ScreenXpert” button that summons a Command-Center-like widget that includes multiple-display window management controls, quick access to operating modes like Turbo mode or Silent mode, and other settings like muting your mic. It’s primarily there to help control things while in tablet mode since the keyboard contains shortcuts for most of these functions.

I got a quick glimpse of the new ROG Flow Z13 at a preview event, and Asus sent me a preproduction model right before CES to get a little bit of hands-on time. It’s what I’m writing this post on right now, and boy do I appreciate the updates to this keyboard cover. The 1.7mm key travel and bigger touchpad go a long way toward getting work done. While the Ryzen 395 chip has the potential to be power-hungry, the battery life on the Z13 shows some promise. Asus is only claiming 10 hours of battery life, and I did manage to get through a full eight-plus-hour workday of Chrome tabs, streaming music (though the speakers seem kind of bad at first listen), and writing across multiple virtual desktops the day before flying to CES — with pretty much no issues.

I definitely prefer a proper laptop to a tablet with a kickstand and keyboard cover, but being able to remove the keyboard deck for a little more flexibility and comfort when it’s time to fire up a game is pretty slick. I tried out a little Helldivers 2 on the Flow Z13, and it performed quite well, especially for a tablet. Set to the Z13’s native 2.5K resolution, in-game render scale on Ultra Quality, and texture details on medium, I saw 60fps or just slightly under, and it looked really nice. If I bumped it down from Ultra Quality to Quality scaling, it jumped up to an even smoother 80fps. This was, of course, while the tablet was plugged in and its fans were blasting on Turbo mode. Diving in again while unplugged dropped the Ultra Quality render scale performance down to the 45 to 50fps range since playing on battery limits you to Performance mode instead of Turbo.

This is preproduction hardware, but so far, it’s pretty impressive for integrated graphics. AMD’s new chip might have something special here for thin and light devices, but since it lacks Thunderbolt 5, that means the Flow Z13 can’t use the full GPU bandwidth of Asus’ new XG Mobile eGPU. (Previous models could use the older XG Mobile via its proprietary connector.) But of course, that would make this somewhat portable PC gaming solution a little less portable, and the new XG Mobile costs about as much as the Flow Z13 itself.

But does a gaming tablet make much sense in 2025 when portable PC gaming is being so adequately served by the Steam Deck and a bunch of other dedicated handhelds? We’ll have to see how a production model of the ROG Flow Z13 fares when it launches sometime in February.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Nvidia’s launch of its new RTX 50-series graphics cards is a big moment for a gaming-focused company like MSI. The PC component maker is refreshing most of its laptop line with new Nvidia GPUs, revised designs, and of course, plenty of AI branding fluff. It’s also offering more CPU options from AMD across its dizzying array of models and configurations. But while there’s a plethora of choices here for gamers, they’re best if you’re partial to jumbo-sized laptops, since many of them are big and heavy 18-inchers.

Here’s the rundown of what MSI is offering for its gaming laptops in 2025, starting from the top. (MSI hasn’t sent us finalized pricing and availability, but we’ll update this post once we have it.)

MSI Titan 18 HX AI

Image: MSI

Toward the top of MSI’s lineup is the new Titan 18 HX AI — the standard one, not the ridiculous Dragon Edition.

MSI’s halo gaming laptop sports an 18-inch Mini LED screen with a resolution of 3840 x 2400 (16:10) and 120Hz refresh. It only comes with an Intel CPU option — specifically, the new Core Ultra 9 275HX — where many other new MSI notebooks now offer AMD alternatives. For the standard-edition Titan’s GPU, you can pick from Nvidia’s new RTX 5080 or flagship 5090. It can be outfitted with up to 96GB of DDR5 RAM and both Gen5 and Gen4 NVMe M.2 SSD slots (the Gen5 slot even has extra cooling by way of a dedicated heat pipe for maximum performance).

The laptop weighs in at 7.94 pounds and has a 99.9Wh battery inside it, which is the largest capacity allowed on a plane. For ports, it’s got two Thunderbolt 5 / USB-C, three USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, HDMI 2.1, gigabit ethernet, and an SD card slot.

As the Titan is the capital-F flagship of MSI’s lineup, it’s once again got a sky-high starting price of around $5,000.

MSI Raider 18 HX AI

But you’ll notice some similar specs are present in cheaper MSI laptops, like the new Raider 18 HX.

The Raider has always been one of MSI’s most powerful laptops, with some of its showiest RGB lighting. For 2025, the Raider has a similar Mini LED screen, GPU options, RAM, ports, battery, and storage with dedicated SSD cooling as the Titan. It looks a bit like the Titan, too, but without the light-up touchpad and an added RGB strip on its front instead. Unlike the Titan, the Raider offers configurations with either the Intel Ultra 9 275HX or AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D.

MSI Vector A18 HX

Image: MSI

If excessive RGB isn’t your thing, the MSI Vector line (in 18-inch, 17-inch, and 16-inch versions) offers a slightly more subtle gray styling with no colorful lights to speak of outside of its per-key RGB keyboards.

The Vector A18 has an 18-inch 2560 x 1600 (16:10) 240Hz IPS display, the choice of RTX 5070 Ti / 5080 GPUs, AMD CPU configurations, 99.9Wh battery, and a plethora of ports like its pricier counterparts (but with slower Thunderbolt 4 instead of Thunderbolt 5). The Vector 16 HX AI and Vector 17 HX AI models may have slightly smaller screens, but they still support 2560 x 1600 resolution and 240Hz. Each of them has new Intel Arrow Lake CPU options, but the 17-inch has more configurations that go up to the RTX 5090 GPU.

MSI Stealth 18 HX AI

While many of the above laptops are thick and heavy, the Stealth line is one of MSI’s most popular due to its slightly smaller and thinner size for those who don’t want to carry around a cinder block of a notebook.

For 2025, MSI offers the Stealth in 16-inch and 18-inch configurations with GPUs ranging from the RTX 5070 Ti to the 5090. The 18-inch model also offers a 4K 120Hz screen or QHD 240Hz model as well as either an Intel Ultra 9 275HX or AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. The 16-inch Stealth only comes with the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 .

MSI Cyborg A17 AI

Image: MSI

But if you want something cheaper and funkier, MSI’s Cyborg is back again with yet another take on its partially seethrough design.

The Cyborg 14 and 15 have designs that look like last year’s models, with their innards only visible on the sides and bottom, but the Cyborg 17 has a new chassis with a smoked translucent top deck, allowing you to look directly into it from above. Unfortunately, it’s also uglier than ever thanks to its weird mix of Venom symbiote-style webbing / tribal tattoo line art / whatever that design is. It has CPU options up to the Intel Core Ultra 7 240H or AMD Ryzen 7 260 and RTX 50-series GPUs.

MSI Crosshair 18 HX AI and MSI Pulse

Lastly, MSI is also updating its economy-class Crosshair and Pulse series gaming laptops, which top out at configurations with just the Nvidia RTX 5070. MSI says the Crosshair will be its cheapest 18-inch laptop.

With the jump to RTX 50-series GPUs, MSI is taking its usual shotgun approach and trying to hit all facets of gamers who prioritize specs. It’s also riding the AI train hard. In addition to adding “AI” to the name of most everything, even its latest Claw handheld, MSI’s laptops will ship with a new chatbot dedicated to controlling your computer. Considering some Windows settings are buried in legacy menu structures that still look like they’re from the XP era, the thought of asking your computer to adjust those settings for you sounds a teeny-tiny bit appealing. But I haven’t had a chance to test it yet, and I fear it won’t work as it should — because, let’s be honest, Windows gonna Windows.

If you didn’t like MSI’s giant spec-heavy laptops before, there’s a good chance its new offerings may not move the needle for you. But if Nvidia’s new GPUs are all they’re cracked up to be, perhaps MSI can impress with raw performance per dollar.

Lots of gaming laptops go for maximum performance with maximum RGB showiness, but nothing goes harder than MSI’s Titan. The company announced its Titan 18 HX laptop at CES 2025. It’s an 18-inch behemoth with an illuminated touchpad, Intel’s Core Arrow Lake processor, and Nvidia’s new RTX 50-series GPU for a starting price of around $5,000.

But is that really outrageous enough?

It’d be much wilder to also release a fully unhinged Titan adorned with dragon designs and runes inspired by Norse mythology. And that’s exactly what MSI is doing with its Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition Norse Myth. It has the innards of the standard Titan, complete with a new dedicated heat pipe cooler just for its PCIe Gen5 SSD to maximize transfer speeds, and it adds a massive etching of a hand-drawn dragon head to its lid as well as a 3D-printed dragon coin under glass within the palm rest. Now we’re talking.

We’re still awaiting pricing information, but spec-wise, this thing is roaring. It packs an Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX CPU, Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU with 24GB of GDDR7 VRAM, up to 96GB of DDR5 RAM, one slot of Gen5 NVMe M.2 storage, and three extra slots of Gen4 SSD storage.

It has an 18-inch 4K Mini LED screen capable of 3840 x 2400 (16:10) resolution at 120Hz refresh, a six-speaker audio setup (two of which are woofers), Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, Cherry mechanical keyboard switches with per-key RGB illumination, a 99.9Wh battery, and a power adapter capable of delivering 400-freaking-watts.

For I/O, you get two Thunderbolt 5 USB-C ports, three USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, HDMI 2.1, gigabit ethernet, and a full-size SD card slot. This whole fire-breathing magnesium alloy package weighs in at a hefty 3.6 kg / 7.94 lbs, but it’s somehow not as heavy as Alienware’s boat anchor of a new 18-inch Area-51 laptop.

MSI has done Dragon Edition laptops before, but compared to previous incarnations, the new Titan Dragon Edition looks more fierce and actually less garish — just look at this old thing. And true worshippers of Bahamut or Baal (or take your pick) may be able to get their draconic Titans in an accessory bundle with a matching mouse, keychain, and colorful desk pad when it launches in March.

Image: MSI

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Alienware is bringing back its Area-51 computer line, and its new flagship laptops are much showier than the secretive air base they’re named after. The bombastic, UFO-like Area-51 laptops are paired with a range of top-flight specs featuring Intel Arrow Lake CPUs and next-gen Nvidia GPUs — coming in two sizes: big (16-inch) and bigger (18-inch). They’ll start at a pricey $3,199 when select configurations launch by the end of Q1 2025, with an entry-level $1,999 model and other configs coming later.

Unlike last year’s M16 R2, which trimmed down the protruding butt found on many Alienware laptops, the Area-51 has a full-on dump truck for a rear. And this protrusion, where all its ports are located, even lights up with a soft, supple glow of RGB illumination. The Area-51’s RGB light show extends to per-key keyboard illumination, a light-up trackpad, and lit case fans. The light-up fans are visible through the intake holes on the top deck as well as a seethrough Gorilla Glass panel on the underside, also showing off some of the laptop’s innards.

The Area-51 duo will rely on their RGB lighting for their splashiest pops of color, as both sizes of Alienware laptops come in just one chassis color, called liquid teal. The anodized finish is said to take inspiration from the aurora borealis, looking nearly charcoal black in a dimly lit room until its lid or underside shows a slight shimmer of iridescence when the light catches it.

Housed within that aluminum chassis, the Area-51 sports some high-end specs. It can be outfitted with up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, Nvidia’s new 50-series GPUs, up to 64GB of dual-channel DDR5 RAM, and up to 2TB NVMe PCIe Gen5 SSD. Powering all of that in each the 16-inch and 18-inch laptops is a sizable 96Wh battery. Alienware doesn’t list any battery life estimates in the Area-51’s tech specs. We’ve asked how many hours of use people should expect when unplugged and haven’t yet heard back.

The Area-51 duo use a new thermal architecture to keep all this hot hardware cool, and Alienware claims it moves up to 37 percent more airflow while running 15 percent quieter than the older Alienware X16 R2 from 2024. All those specs and improved thermals sound nice on paper, but keep in mind, these new Area-51 models are hefty laptops. Remember that older X16 R2 laptop that Alienware compares them to? The X16 R2 weighs six pounds. At 7.6 pounds, the new 16-inch Area-51 weighs about as much as the average American newborn baby, and the 18-inch is even heavier at nearly 10 pounds.

Tipping the scales like that, the Area-51 laptops don’t feel like just a resurrection of Alienware’s flagship brand name but a throwback to older, basically immobile desktop replacement laptops. That does come with some benefits, like a plethora of rear-mounted ports including HDMI 2.1, 2.5 gigabit ethernet (RJ-45), three USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 5Gbps ports, two Thunderbolt 5 / USB-C ports, and a headphone jack and full-size SD card slot on the side.

The big drawback here is that the displays also feel a little retro, since the laptops use older IPS display tech. Both machines have 2560 x 1600 QHD panels with 3ms response time and up to 300Hz refresh (240Hz on the 16-inch), but there’s no fancy tandem OLED or anything of the sort like Alienware’s parent company Dell put in its upcoming Pro Premium laptop. If you want OLED displays from Alienware, you’ll instead have to check out its gaming monitors — of which, it announced a new 27-inch 4K QD-OLED at CES 2025 as well as some Area-51 and Aurora prebuilt desktops.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge