Maingear has been a big name in custom PCs for over 20 years and has earned a sterling reputation for its high-end PCs, especially for gaming, and strong customer support. While its flagship MG-1 line, ranging from just over $1,100 to the $4,000 machine I tested, has plenty of features for hardcore gamers to drool over, the MG-1 can also be an outstanding option for creatives.
When Asus launched the updated ProArt Station PD5 earlier this fall, it looked poised to deliver a powerful, accessible machine to creative professionals. Unfortunately, despite lofty and worthwhile goals, the ProArt Station PD5 is not quite the impressive machine I had hoped for.
The Creator Z17HX Studio is MSI’s attempt to give photographers and video editors the fit and finish of an Apple laptop, the color accuracy of a studio-grade computer display, and the performance that comes with the newest Intel and NVIDIA hardware. The good news is that MSI delivers surprisingly well on all of these promises; the bad news is that it had to make one huge compromise along the way.
Apple’s Mac mini has always been positioned as the company’s affordable desktop machine, an alternative to the low-end iMac for those that don’t need or want the iMac’s display. It’s a machine that has sometimes seemed to languish while other Mac models got performance upgrades. That has changed.
The term laptop is often used quite liberally by those designing computers for gamers, and that idea is perfectly encapsulated with the MSI Titan GT77. This won't fit comfortably in basically any lap, but that's the price you pay for power.
Ever since Apple moved to the M1 chip, we’ve consistently lauded the performance improvements we’ve seen. It feels like with each iteration we say “most powerful” or “surprising” in some way, but those are still perhaps the best words to underscore just how impressive the M1 Ultra in the new Mac Studio is. Because it is impressive.
HP's ZBook lineup -- which encompasses the lightweight ZBook Firefly, the affordable ZBook Power, the powerful ZBook Fury, and the best-of-all-worlds ZBook Studio brands -- doesn't attract a lot of attention. As a mobile workstation-class device, the ZBook Studio is not as flashy as most gaming laptops or as affordable as most "creator" laptops, but in many ways, it's better than both.
When Razer announced the "mid-2021" Blade 15 Advanced back in May, it seemed like a standard refresh. The company swapped out the 10th-Gen Intel CPUs in the "early-2021" model for 11th-Gen processors and added a new anti-fingerprint coating to the chassis. No big deal, right? Wrong -- that 11th-Gen processor has allowed Razer to upgrade just about everything under the hood of the latest Advanced model, leading to a huge performance uplift.
The Razer Blade 14 released just a few short weeks ago is aimed squarely at gamers. The headline on the Razer website is "the world's most powerful 14-inch gaming laptop." But don't be fooled by the glowing green logo and the RGB-backlit keyboard: with its AMD CPU, NVIDIA GPU, and color-accurate QHD display, the Blade 14 is an ideal choice for photo and video editors who are looking for a PC that's portable and powerful.
When Apple debuted the M1 system on a chip (SOC), it released three computers equipped with the same CPU/GPU/RAM combo: the M1 MacBook Air, the M1 MacBook Pro, and the M1 Mac mini. It might seem like this makes for three redundant options, but after reviewing the MacBook Pro and spending a month with the new Mac mini, I can confidently say that the Mac mini is the best choice for the majority of photographers. To explain why, I need to turn to economics.
I like the Microsoft Surface Book 3. In fact, I like it a lot. The build quality is great, and the design is both useful and pretty much unique right now. But it's also flawed... critically flawed by the selfsame design that makes it a unique product, which is why I can't recommend it to most working photographers.
The new 13-inch MacBook Pro is a confusing proposition from Apple. We called it a "half update" in our first impressions, and I stand by that. But it's also an important update that gives photographers and video editors a lot more performance bang for their buck—as long as they're willing to spend $1,800 or more. Let's dive in.
In a single sentence, photographer and reviewer Jaron Schneider summed up the problem with Apple's new MacBook Pro: it's basically Apple's 5D Mark IV. Too much time and build-up meant insanely high expectations, and Apple didn't come close to matching them even if they did release a good product.