Last week’s Consumer Electronics Show had everything in technology you could imagine, ranging from experimental to practical. On the more practical side of things was a whole new slate of laptops unveiled by the usual suspects of Windows laptop manufacturers.
We might not always look to laptops for the most innovation, but sometimes the most exciting kind of technology is the kind that you’ll actually buy and use in your daily life. So here they are—the five best laptops from CES 2016.
5. Lenovo Yoga 900S Hybrid
I might not be in love with some of the color and design choices on the new Yoga 900s Hybrid, but it’s hard to not be impressed by how light and thin it is. According to Lenovo it’s the lightest hybrid on the market at just around two pounds. Of course, the hinge can flex to 360 degrees—and also has a pretty fantastic QuadHD display attached to it. The Yoga line just keeps getting better and better over time—and though we’ll have to try this one out, the 900s Hybrid is already looking like one of the very best.
4. Dell Latitude 13 7000
When it comes to laptops, there was definitely a focus on business machines this year at CES. One of the best was the Dell Latitude 13 7000, which is an enterprise version of the company’s popular XPS laptop and was the winner of our best laptop of 2015 award. It features the same incredible InfiniteEdge display and the high-spec internals to boot—companies looking for a go-to, high performance Windows 10 machine should look no further.
3. Samsung Book 9
Samsung is known for copying every one of Apple’s steps—and the Notebook 9 is no different. However, what Samsung has done here is take the whole “thin and light” laptop mentality and really run with it. Not only is the Notebook 9 incredibly thin, it also packs a punch, maxing out with an Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage. The only real disappointment is the 1080p display, which will have a hard time comparing to laptops like the MacBook Pro or Dell XPS. At the right price though (which is currently TBD), the Notebook 9 could be one of the big laptop standouts of 2016.
2. HP Spectre x360
This thing truly has it all—it’s slim, beautiful, and even claims a 9.5 hours battery. But the standout feature on the Spectre x360 has to be the spectacular 15-inch, 4K OLED display. OLED is destined to be the next big thing in laptop displays—and wow, is it a game-changer. Colors are saturated and vibrant, black are deep and dark. This high-powered Ultrabook will no doubt cost you for the new technology once the price is announced, but you can also be sure that you’re getting the absolute top-of-the-line laptop on the market.
1. Razer Blade Stealth Ultrabook
Razer has been trying to build the ultimate gaming Ultrabook for the last few years, but 2016 might be the year it’s actually succeeded. The Blade Stealth is everything you’d expect to see in a new ultrabook-type machine from Apple or Dell—it’s slim, fast, and fairly inexpensive. The kicker though is that the Blade Stealth also works with an integrated graphics card that can supplemented by an exterior graphics card called Razer Core, which will deliver those desktop-level graphics that it was never able to power by a laptop before.