It might feel like Apple has been producing its own silicon for a long time now, but it's really only been a few short years. It's been less than two years since we got the M1 Ultra and with the new M3 Max, we've already surpassed its power in a portable form factor.
The Creator Z17HX Studio is MSI’s attempt to give photographers and video editors the fit and finish of an Apple laptop, the color accuracy of a studio-grade computer display, and the performance that comes with the newest Intel and NVIDIA hardware. The good news is that MSI delivers surprisingly well on all of these promises; the bad news is that it had to make one huge compromise along the way.
HP's ZBook lineup -- which encompasses the lightweight ZBook Firefly, the affordable ZBook Power, the powerful ZBook Fury, and the best-of-all-worlds ZBook Studio brands -- doesn't attract a lot of attention. As a mobile workstation-class device, the ZBook Studio is not as flashy as most gaming laptops or as affordable as most "creator" laptops, but in many ways, it's better than both.
When Razer announced the "mid-2021" Blade 15 Advanced back in May, it seemed like a standard refresh. The company swapped out the 10th-Gen Intel CPUs in the "early-2021" model for 11th-Gen processors and added a new anti-fingerprint coating to the chassis. No big deal, right? Wrong -- that 11th-Gen processor has allowed Razer to upgrade just about everything under the hood of the latest Advanced model, leading to a huge performance uplift.
The Razer Blade 14 released just a few short weeks ago is aimed squarely at gamers. The headline on the Razer website is "the world's most powerful 14-inch gaming laptop." But don't be fooled by the glowing green logo and the RGB-backlit keyboard: with its AMD CPU, NVIDIA GPU, and color-accurate QHD display, the Blade 14 is an ideal choice for photo and video editors who are looking for a PC that's portable and powerful.
When Dell decided to bring back the XPS 17, I was skeptical. Most 17-inch laptops fail to give you enough performance to justify the drop in portability; what you end up with is either too big, not powerful enough, or both. That's what makes the XPS 17 so special. This is a 17-inch laptop built with creative professionals in mind.
Only 7 months after releasing the first Razer Blade 15 Studio Edition, the PC maker turned around and released an update. Aesthetically, it's almost identical to its predecessor; but under the hood, you're getting even more horsepower... and that's saying something.
I like the Microsoft Surface Book 3. In fact, I like it a lot. The build quality is great, and the design is both useful and pretty much unique right now. But it's also flawed... critically flawed by the selfsame design that makes it a unique product, which is why I can't recommend it to most working photographers.
The new 13-inch MacBook Pro is a confusing proposition from Apple. We called it a "half update" in our first impressions, and I stand by that. But it's also an important update that gives photographers and video editors a lot more performance bang for their buck—as long as they're willing to spend $1,800 or more. Let's dive in.
In a single sentence, photographer and reviewer Jaron Schneider summed up the problem with Apple's new MacBook Pro: it's basically Apple's 5D Mark IV. Too much time and build-up meant insanely high expectations, and Apple didn't come close to matching them even if they did release a good product.