Let’s admit it: the design of laptops hasn’t changed much over the years. And that’s OK.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some real innovation happening. I’m not talking about just fruitless experimentation either, (though there will always be some of that too). This year was full of meaningful innovation happening in the world of laptops that make them better, more powerful, and more fun products to use — and these are the ones that really stand out.
Want to see the rest? Check out our full list of the most innovative tech products of 2022!
The ROG Flow Z13 shouldn’t be possible. By category, it’s a 2-in-1 gaming laptop — that is, a Surface Pro with some RGB lighting and a discrete GPU inside. It’s the first of its kind, but as a concept, I wasn’t sure I understood the premise. A gaming device this compact is going to be seriously held back by how small it is. But once I got the thing in my hands, I realized how genius the design really was.
Yes, it’s pretty — thin bezels, a comfortable keyboard, and the neat “window” on the lid that gives you a glowing view of the internals. It’s also a true engineering marvel, given how thin it is — just 0.47 inches thick, or 0.69 inches with the detachable keyboard connected. The RTX 3050 Ti inside doesn’t make this a gaming powerhouse necessarily — but that was never the point. You can play honest-to-goodness PC games on a 2-in-1 this small. That’s the point.
But my favorite thing about the design is the way it moves the heat away from your hands. Every gaming laptop struggles to keep your palms and fingers from overheating while you’re playing, and the ROG Flow Z13 sidesteps that completely since all those hot components are behind the screen. It’s really smart. In that way, it’s doing something no other gaming laptop really can, building a case for why 2-in-1 tablets might be a great form factor for PC gaming devices after all.
The ROG Flow Z13 also uses the proprietary Asus PCIe port to connect to the XG Mobile external graphics enclosure. Buying the two together makes for quite an expensive purchase, but you can pump the graphics potential on this little machine and transform it into a do-it-all desktop dock. It’s pretty incredible, and exactly the type of innovation I want to see more of.
The Dell XPS 13 Plus was designed to be a forward-thinking laptop. It does away with plenty of conventions in favor of an adventurous new path. Headphone jack? Gone. Trackpad? Invisible. Even the function row of the keyboard has been replaced with glowing capacitive touch buttons. It’s daring, which means it’s a design that could have ended in unmitigated disaster.
And while it requires the mindset of an early adopter to fully appreciate, Dell does a good job of justifying most of its decisions. The lack of a headphone jack is due to the edge-to-edge keyboard and single sheet of glass used for the palm rests. The capacitive touch buttons, on the other hand, allow Dell to move the keyboard closer to the display, giving more room for the larger palm rests and haptic trackpad.
It certainly prioritizes being ultramodern and sleek above usability in some cases, meaning it’s not the right choice for everyone. But innovative? You bet it is.
You might look at the Asus Zenbook Fold 17 and think, “Really? Who needs this?” That’s the question I had when I first saw the device. A 17-inch 2-in-1 Windows tablet with a foldable screen sounds neat, but I had my doubts about how useful it’d actually be.
While thereare certainly some kinks to work out still, opening up the large 17-inch display and propping it up with the included kickstand makes for an incredible screen to work on, especially since the wireless keyboard is so comfortable. It’s still a niche concept, but the use case for such a device is actually there, and that’s exciting for the future of this technology.
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.