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00:00Hey, how's it going? Dave2D here. So CES is rolling right now and all of the players in
00:08the laptop game have kind of shown their cards. We've seen a whole bunch of devices from the
00:11different companies. Some of them are really good devices, some of them are honestly quite
00:16poor. I'm going to go through some of the different brands, talk about the more prominent
00:19good and bad devices. So first we're going to go with Dell slash Alienware. They've updated
00:24their XPS 13 and now it comes in this silver and white color and the webcam's been moved
00:28up to the top of the bezel instead of the bottom. It's got a small processor bump, but
00:32no major tweaks. It's mostly an aesthetic change, which is honestly quite nice. The
00:36XPS 15 did not get updated. That's a bit of a bummer. I feel like that old design's been
00:41around for over three years at this point. I feel like it's really due for an overhaul.
00:44They could be waiting for a new Intel CPU or more likely a new GPU from Nvidia. So obviously
00:50not like an RTX card, but maybe the like GTX 2050 or GTX 1160, whatever they're going to
00:56call it, but it could be possible they're waiting for something at that end to stick
01:00into that new chassis. But no XPS 15, which is honestly quite disappointing. The gaming
01:06laptops from Dell, the G5, G7 have both been refreshed. They're now running RTX 20 series
01:10cards and we're seeing a completely different design aesthetic. I feel like Dell is doing
01:14that kind of yearly refresh on the design front, which is nice to see. M15 and M17 from
01:20Alienware, I really like what they did on the M15. The 17 inch version just looks like
01:25it has more surface areas. We're probably going to see better thermals. Like the whole
01:28design aesthetic of the new M15, M17 looks so much nicer to me than the traditional Alienware
01:3415 and 17 from previous generations. Now their last big thing is the Alienware Area 51M.
01:41This is a beast of a laptop. It's a big device obviously, but the thing that makes it really
01:45unique is that everything is upgradable. The RAM, the CPU and the GPU are all user upgradable.
01:50It's using desktop CPU, so you can take like the i9-9900K, like that big boy desktop chip,
01:56plop it into this laptop. And the GPUs are also user upgradable, so they're running Nvidia
02:00RTX cards, but Dell has made them modular, so you can swap them out in the future to
02:04upgrade the GPU in this particular laptop, which is pretty cool. It's obviously not for
02:08everyone, but if you're looking for a really powerful portable gaming device that does
02:12have upgradability, that is now an option. Razer, they have the upgraded Razer Blade
02:1715. It now supports RTX GPUs up to the 2080 Max-Q, and the webcam up at the top has been
02:23updated to support Windows Hello, so you can now log into your device with just facial
02:27recognition. Razer Blade Stealth didn't have any update. I was kind of hoping it would
02:31have the kind of rumored MX250, but the Stealth remains unchanged. I also want to talk about
02:36their new monitor. So it's the Razer Raptor, and that thing looks awesome. Now it's a $700
02:43display. It's super expensive, and truthfully, most gaming displays don't really differentiate
02:48between each other. Like once you're at that 27-inch, 144, or higher refresh, and it's
02:53got one millisecond response time, they all look and feel and play very similar to one
02:57another, but this display looks really clean. And the one thing that I would say would separate
03:01this from the rest of the pack is the cable management in the back. So Razer has these
03:05custom cables that flow from the inputs of the monitors and through these channels to
03:09just keep it really clean. Now once you're out of the channels, you still have to connect
03:12your regular cables to it, but it does look really clean. As for whether or not it's worth
03:16that price premium, because it's like $200, maybe even $300 more than kind of competing
03:21products, it really is up to you. I think it looks cool, and I think it's actually one
03:25of the best looking gaming displays on the market. Asus had a couple really cool devices.
03:29I made a video on them previously. I'll link that below if you haven't seen it yet.
03:33MSI did an RTX refresh on basically all of their devices. The GS65 is going to be super
03:38popular again, running up to an RTX 2080 Max-Q. But they also have a GS75, which has
03:43a 17-inch screen, so if you're looking for something that's a little bit bigger, but
03:46still retains that whole thin and light gaming laptop idea, that is now an option.
03:51Acer, they did another update to their Swift 7, the thinnest laptop in the world.
03:55It's super thin. I get that they're going for that crown of like the thinnest laptop title,
04:00but there's this diminishing return when it comes to thin laptops, to the point where the
04:04keyboard's difficult to use. I've said this in my review of the device, it's not for everyone,
04:09and I really feel like that's a device that just... I don't know who's buying that thing,
04:12I'll be honest. They also have a new Chromebook that's running AMD hardware, so an AMD CPU and
04:17a Radeon GPU, which is great, and it's $280. It's relatively inexpensive, and it seems quite
04:22powerful for what that device is. It's pretty solid. They also have a Triton 900, which feels
04:27like a bit of a miss to me. It's got these easel hinges, which looks cool in photos and videos,
04:32but the reality is, this is a device that doesn't require that hinge. There's very little utility
04:38for the power that this thing has. It's obviously a gaming device, but very rarely are you using
04:43the screen in a manner that you're going to want to flip it around and just have all this
04:47functionality on the screen, and that screen is a 4K, 60Hz panel. It's G-Sync enabled, but again,
04:53the hardware in here supports really high frame rates, and you're putting a 60 frames per second
04:57screen on there. I don't know. It's not my top pick. The Triton 500, however, looks really nice.
05:03It's blue. It's not crazy expensive. 15-inch screen. It's kind of like that mid to premium
05:08tier segment for gaming laptops, and I think it's going to be a big seller for them. Gigabyte also
05:13updated their Aero 15 to support the new NVIDIA RTX GPUs, but unlike all the other devices out
05:18there, they do have this one kind of feature that they slipped in. It now supports this Azure AI,
05:23something they've done with Microsoft, to basically allow the computer to learn your usage to
05:30undervolt and overvolt the CPU and or GPU. So when you're not using it much, or if you're using the
05:35GPU more heavily, it'll drop the voltage on the CPU and bump up the voltage on the GPU, which
05:40sounds really neat when it comes to optimizing performance, but I definitely want to check that
05:43out in a more thorough review. Some outliers. So Samsung has their new Odyssey laptop. This is their
05:49third time they've done this Odyssey gaming laptop, and the previous two generations have been just
05:54trash. Expensive, poor performance, and honestly quite ugly. This latest one, I feel like Samsung
06:00doesn't get it, at least not for the North American market. I do not see why anyone would purchase
06:04that. It's not priced yet, but the design aesthetic on the Odyssey is just bleh. It's not for me.
06:09The last device is the Huawei MateBook 13. So here's a device that starts at a thousand dollars.
06:14It's going to compete quite nicely with any of the 13-inch Ultrabook devices, particularly the
06:18MacBooks. Like the MacBook Air is a significantly worse value than this, but if you're comfortable
06:23purchasing from a Chinese brand, I think that MateBook 13 is looking pretty solid. It's just
06:29overall well-built, good performance for the money. Okay, those are the devices that I think
06:35are of interest this year from CES, the laptops at least. Hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thumbs
06:39if you liked it, subs if you loved it. See you guys next time.