INTEL

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon SoCs and Apple’s A series chips are in most mobile devices these days; but for desktops, they’re mostly Intel inside. The second half of 2015 saw the arrival of the 6th-gen Core processor family, and these “Skylake” chips have become ever-present in Windows PCs since. That said, if you want the latest and greatest from chipzilla, it has got to be a CPU from the 7th-gen Core “Kaby Lake” series. Built using an improved 14nm process, Kaby Lake is the first “optimization” example of Intel’s new process-architecture-optimization strategy. A long-standing winner of this Readers’ Choice award, can AMD’s upcoming Ryzen change anything next year? Exciting times ahead for the CPU scene!