The ROG Zephyrus G14 has been a fan-favorite 14-inch gaming laptop these past few years, even with many recent competitors in the space. Lenovo’s new Legion Slim 5 14, though, has one major advantage of the G14. Its screen.
The Legion Slim 5 14, now in its eighth generation, is receiving a major upgrade in its display, moving from a standard IPS to a 120Hz OLED. This more advanced panel technology can, of course, produce unbeatable contrast, thanks to the individually-lit pixels. At a max of 400 nits, the HDR performance in games should look rather nice too.
Now, if you’ve been keeping up, you might know that the latest version of the ROG Zephyrus G14 did get an upgrade to mini-LED as an option. This was big news, bringing stellar HDR performance to a laptop this small (and affordable). And while the Legion Slim 5 doesn’t get quite as bright, its upper hand is in its price and availability.
The mini-LED version of the G14 only comes in the top-of-the-line configuration with the RTX 4090. That one sells for as much as $3,300. Yikes. The much more common configurations, such as those that sell for under $2,000, all come with standard IPS displays.
The Legion Slim 5’s premium panel, though, comes standard. That’s right — even the starting configuration of the laptop, which costs just $1,440, still serves up its 14.5-inch, 2800 x 1600 resolution, OLED panel. That’s a killer deal, and it’s in line with Lenovo’s other recent offerings to bring OLED panels to more affordable laptops.
In case you’re curious, other similar laptops like the Razer Blade 14 and Alienware x14 don’t even offer upgrades to mini-LED or OLED as an option.
Of course, there’s more to a laptop than just its screen, so I’m not saying the Legion Slim 5 outdoes all its competitors as a whole. First off, I haven’t tested the machine’s performance yet myself since it’s only just been announced.
But even just looking at the spec sheet, you can see the Legion Slim 5 isn’t nearly as “slim” as something like the ROG G14. It’s 0.82 inches thick and 4.19 pounds, whereas the G14 is 0.77 inches thick and just 3.79 pounds. The Legion Slim 5 comes with up to an AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS processor, 64GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage, but it doesn’t range up to as high of graphics options, maxing out at just the RTX 4060.
We’ll have to see how the comparison plays out once we can test them side-by-side, but when it comes to displays, there’s no question that the Legion Slim 5 14 Gen 8 seems to be at the top of the pack.
Lenovo says the Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 is expected to be available for purchase starting in September 2023.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.