TechLife Australia

GEAR OF THE YEAR

THE BEST LAPTOPS

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BEST ULTRABOOK DELL XPS 13 (2018) From $2,099 | dell.com.au

Moving the webcam position, adding facial login and a four-mic array, giving Intel’s chips more headroom to perform even better and adding a 4K screen have all evolved the XPS into an even more formidable flagship laptop. In directly addressing the concerns of users, the Dell XPS 13 laptop is refined further than ever before. With all of the improvemen­ts made to the XPS 13 for this year, the rest of the laptop world had a lofty benchmark to measure itself against.

BEST BUDGET LAPTOP HP 250 G6 $539 | hp.com/au

HP’s 250 G6 laptops are available in a variety of specs, but we reckon this Core i3-6006U model strikes the best balance between price and performanc­e – although if you can stretch to the $690 Core i5-7200U model, that’s a worthy upgrade, especially if you plan on doing multimedia work like image or video editing. You still get all the basics with this i3 model though, including a serviceabl­e 15.6-inch LCD, 500GB HDD, 4GB of RAM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a built-in webcam. Ably does the basics, but not a lot more.

BEST BUDGET GAMING LAPTOP ACER NITRO 5 (NH.Q3XSA.001-C77) From $1,499 | acer.com.au

While there are a handful of laptops in the budget space that offer great gaming solutions for those who are tight on cash, the Acer Nitro 5 is this year’s budget-laptop to beat. Whether it’s the entry level offering that doubles the RAM allocation to 16GB and throws in an additional 16GB of Intel Optane system memory, or it’s the $1,799 option offering a Nvidia GTX 1060 GPU, the Acer Nitro 5 is really showing up the competitio­n in the budget gaming space.

BEST PREMIUM LAPTOP GIGABYTE AERO 15X From $3,399 | www.gigabyte.com /au

The Gigabyte Aero 15X is an excellent gaming laptop with proper media work chops as well, with a sleek premium package that should impress users in both realms. With a great battery life, balanced performanc­e and affordable price, the tightrope the Aero 15X walks is an alluring one. If you’re looking for the most affordable Max-Q GTX 1070 gaming laptop, you’ve found it – and it plays just as well as the pricier ones (plus, we’ve seen it discounted by more than $500 a few times).

BEST PREMIUM GAMING LAPTOP AORUS X7 $4,199 | aorus.com

Aorus is the premium gaming subsidiary of Gigabyte. Both the X5 and X7 units are decent value for their powerful components, but the latter gets an overclocka­ble Intel Core i7-8850H CPU, a 17.3-inch FHD 144Hz display with G-Sync, a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 GPU, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB PCIe connected SSD and a 1TB HDD.

BEST CHROMEBOOK ASUS CHROMEBOOK FLIP $899 | asus.com/au

Although Chromebook­s are still a little bit foreign to Australian shores, the Chromebook Flip from Asus is the unit to beat. It’s definitely worthy of its premium stature with a gorgeous screen, tactile keyboard and a classy design that’s equally as comfortabl­e to use in tablet mode or as a traditiona­l laptop, even outdoing most of the competitio­n in either of those two categories. If you’re willing to drop a few more dollars on a premium 2-in-1, the Chromebook Flip is the go.

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