Enlarge / LG UltraGear 17G90Q. (credit: LG )

LG has carved out a small space for itself among mainstream users seeking an attractive, slim design. But now LG wants to push laptops toward gamers, and it has the RGB and high refresh rate to prove it, alongside an interesting choice in components.

A couple of months after a Bluetooth SIG filing made it appear that LG is working on its first Chromebook , LG has announced the UltraGear 17G90Q today as its first gaming laptop. The brand is launching right into it with some extreme, gaming-ready specs, starting with a 17-inch IPS screen that has a 300 Hz refresh rate and 1 ms gray-to-gray response time.

Graphics are handled by an RTX 3080 Max-Q. The RTX 3080 is the most powerful mobile GPU Nvidia offers; although, the Max-Q variant suggests it may be slightly less powerful than a fully specced mobile RTX 3080. LG didn't get specific about the 17G90Q GPU's clock speed or total graphics power, but Nvidia says the RTX 3080 can be configured to boost to 1,245-1,710 MHz.

Razer Book. (credit: Razer)

Windows 11 arrived yesterday, giving PC makers everywhere an excuse to refresh their lineups. Razer announced new SKUs for its ultraportable Razer Book laptop and Razer Blade 15 Advanced gaming laptop today, and both are preloaded with Microsoft’s latest operating system. Of course, the new PCs also come with some fresh specs to consider.

New Razer Book

Razer's peripherals are also said to be Windows 11-ready. (credit: Razer)

Razer’s roots are in PC gaming, but the Razer Book is the three-headed snake’s attempt at a more mainstream, portable PC. The clamshell’s silver aluminum unibody chassis starts at just 2.9 pounds and 0.6 inches of thickness, making it competitive with ultraportables like Dell’s XPS 13.

Today’s announcement lowers the Razer Book’s starting price to $1,000 . That gets you a quad-core i5-1135G7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of SSD storage, and a 1920x1200 resolution screen with a 60 Hz refresh rate. Razer also announced more powerful versions with a quad-core i7-1165G7, 16GB of RAM, 512GB ( $1,500 ) or 1TB of storage, and a 3840x1200 screen ( $1,800 ).

Enlarge / Not even the GPU shortage can kill gaming. (credit: Getty )

If you thought heightened interest in gaming-focused monitors, desktops, and laptops would falter as the pandemic eased, you might want to hold onto your RGB gaming chair: the International Data Corporation (IDC) is predicting four more years of increased demand, with each segment growing faster than its parent market.

This week, the global researcher shared the latest numbers from its Worldwide Quarterly Gaming Tracker and predicted that gaming monitor shipments will surge, growing from 14.2 million screens in 2020 to 26.4 million in 2025 for a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.2 percent.

As the pandemic brought a scarcity across gaming hardware, from graphics cards to CPUs and even the latest consoles, gaming monitors were among the few pieces of serious hardware in stock for gamers. And with lockdowns mandated across the globe, many people were simply seeking something to do.

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  There's apparently an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3000-series GPU inside of this laptop, and it's apparently launching on or after January 26. [credit: Nvidia ]

If you've been wondering when gaming laptops would begin a more serious push to 1440p panels, this week's CES reveals from Nvidia are aimed directly at you. Behold: a generational jump in the company's laptop-minded GPUs, this time with Ampere architecture and RTX 3000-series branding.

Three GPU models have been announced in all, and they're named after the GeForce RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060. They are slated to roll out in "70+" laptop models starting January 26. Nvidia has listed "top OEMs" like Acer, Alienware, ASUS, Gigabyte, HP, Lenovo, MSI, and Razer with upcoming RTX 3000-series laptops, along with "local OEMs and system builders."

Naming convention double-check

Nvidia's sales pitch positions the RTX 3060 laptop variant as "faster than laptops featuring the RTX 2080 Super," though this model may land more specifically in 1080p systems. The two higher-end models are frequently referred to as part of 1440p systems, a resolution that has long been left in the gaming-laptop cold (and will arguably benefit hugely from Nvidia's proprietary DLSS upscaling solution). While Nvidia's latest promotional materials mention a bang-for-the-buck upgrade compared to the last generation of laptop GPUs, we're still waiting to see OEMs roll out specific prices and specs for their late-January models. (Also, we're wondering if those laptops will sell out too quickly for average humans to get them .)

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  Here's the new Razer Blade Pro 17 gaming laptop. [credit: Razer ]

Razer on Thursday announced a new version of its Razer Blade Pro 17 gaming laptop. Like its predecessor, the device is aimed squarely at gamers and content creators looking for a powerful yet relatively thin 17-inch notebook.

This year’s Blade Pro 17 comes in three main variants. The lower two feature 17.3-inch 1080p displays and either an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q or higher-tier RTX 2080 Super Max-Q GPU. The top-end model features a sharper 4K panel with greater brightness (400 nits versus 300) and support for the more vibrant Adobe RGB color space, as it did with last year’s iteration. It now features an RTX 2080 Super Max-Q graphics card as well.

Of note here is that the 1080p models feature a super-fast 300Hz refresh rate, up from the 240Hz option in last year’s lineup. (The 4K display is 120Hz.) This has been a growing trend among gaming laptops in recent months—Razer, for one, already introduced a 300Hz option with its latest Blade 15 notebook . As display research site BlurBusters has noted , even if a gaming laptop is only capable of actually reaching 300fps in older or less-demanding titles like CS:GO or Overwatch , having an ultra-high refresh rate can still help reduce motion blur and make mouse and Web-browsing effects appear more fluid.

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  The immediate takeaway on 10th-gen Comet Lake H-series: 45W TDP, four/six/eight cores with hyperthreading, very high turbo clockrates. [credit: Intel Corporation ]

Yesterday, Intel announced the launch of its newest laptop CPUs, the tenth generation Comet Lake H-series. If you're not up on all the minutiae of CPU naming schemes, H-series parts (for both Intel and AMD) are specialty high performance parts with much higher thermal design power than the standard U-series, and without on-die integrated graphics.

Pay careful attention to the word "fastest"

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  When Intel says "fastest" here, it's still referring to turbo clock speed. We highly recommend reading the fine print. [credit: Intel Corporation ]

The big news Intel is pushing on the tenth series Comet Lake H-series is their high turbo clockrate. All of the i7 SKUs, as well as the lone i9, are capable of breaking 5GHz on the high end of their turbo clock rate.

Most consumers would define the "fastest" processor in terms of real performance—time to complete benchmarks, frames per second achieved in AAA gaming titles, and so forth. Intel talks a lot about the "fastest" processor, but seems careful to hide their definitions away in the fine print.