I recently reviewed the Alienware 16X Aurora (with its Arrow Lake-based processor) and the Alienware 16 Aurora (with its Raptor Lake-based processor), and both were branded as “Series 2” chips—neither were Lunar Lake! That started me down a rabbit hole: What exactly does Intel’s “Series 2” CPU branding mean these days?
Turns out, not a whole lot.
When Intel unveiled simple branding…
MSI’s latest Cubi NUC AI+ 2MG mini PC is as much smart speaker or laptop as it is a small, compact, desktop NUC: It boasts a dedicated hardware Copilot button as well as a dedicated fingerprint reader, and you can talk to it, too.
Starting at $899, MSI’s little mini PC…
The best USB-C hubs add ports to your PC, providing connections to legacy peripherals like mice, keyboards, printers or more. If you follow my advice, you shouldn’t pay that much, either.
I’ve selected the best USB-C hub I’ve tested and put it at the very top of this…
Best SSDs: From SATA to PCIe 5.0, from budget to premium
August 27, 2025
SSDs, or solid state drives, have drastically improved the computing experience over the last decade or so. Thanks to them, once ponderous boot times now border on instantaneous, programs and games are far more responsive, and the frustratingly long waits to load large files are largely a thing of a past.
So… if you’re not yet using an SSD, what are you waiting for? If you already have an…
Working from home has gone from being a growing trend to a full-scale phenomenon. There are many perks to a work-from-home arrangement, to be sure, but there can also be downsides: For example, there’s a good chance you’ll need to supply your own monitor.
Fortunately…
An apparent leak of the planned notebook CPU releases from AMD and Intel have revealed both company’s plans through 2025 and beyond, showing off a complex AMD roadmap that extends in 2027 with the release of “Gator Range” and AMD’s Zen 6 architecture.
The roadmap was…
Dolby Atmos in your living room isn’t as easy as it sounds. Whether you’re dealing with a component A/V system or a soundbar, your speakers must be carefully positioned and calibrated to create that immersive Atmos experience—and if your furniture is in the way, you’ll just need to move it.
But with its new FlexConnect technology, Dolby is looking to make its Atmos audio technology more…
A free VPN allegedly takes screenshots of Chrome users
August 26, 2025
“If the product is free, you are the product.”
You can apply that thinking to pretty much anything supported by advertising or data collection, including tools like Chrome and Gmail. (And you’re not paying to read these words, are you? Food for thought.) But one VPN…
At a Glance
Expert’s Rating
Pros
Simple interface
Browser extension is genuinely useful
Cons
Weak offline protection against malware
Several underwhelming features, including the password manager
Potentially showstopping bugs
Our Verdict
Even when you can…
I review a lot of laptops and I’ve noticed many of them come with a “free trial” of McAfee antivirus preinstalled. I’ve clicked through so many warnings about how my PC will be “at risk” unless I pay up for extended protection, and those McAfee alerts are in a stark red color that’s surely designed to scare me. It’s too much!
It’s not just a problem on budget laptops, either. I…
