Surface Pro 9 Liberty Special Edition lets artistry bloom on your 2-in-1 tablet

The first Microsoft Surface tablets started a new trend in computing. Although there were already tablet PCs back then, they were really just laptops that could bend or twist to become slates you could draw on with a pen. The 2-in-1 form factor with a detachable keyboard liberated people from being weighed down by what they didn’t need or use at that time, while the kickstand mechanism, though not exactly perfect, started a new trend in mobile devices and accessories. The Surface is celebrating its tenth birthday this year, and its iconic design has grown over time like a blooming flower. As if the mark that occasion perfectly, the company is launching a Special Edition of the device with engravings and patterns that turn the Surface Pro 9 into a beautiful centerpiece when not in use.

Designer: Liberty

Although many still look the part of hardened workstations and geeky powerhouses, a few laptops today have started paying as much attention to their looks as to their specs. For all the criticisms it received for its early performance, the Surface line of devices brought some of that design focus to tablets, something that is admittedly surprising for a tech company such as Microsoft, especially after its failure with Zune and Lumia. The basic design hasn’t changed drastically in its ten years, but Microsoft has, to its credit, continued to refine and perfect it every year.

The Surface’s tenth anniversary almost coincides with another major turning point in Microsoft’s history. Windows 11 was technically launched last year, but it only came into full swing starting this year. The new Windows release also brought with it a new visual metaphor, one of a blooming flower that symbolizes the collaboration of engineering and design, the merging of natural and digital elements, and the attention to aesthetics that Windows isn’t really famous for. What better way, then, to celebrate the convergence of these milestones than with a Surface Pro 9 that fills its surface with flowers, pun intended.

Made in collaboration with London-based studio Liberty, popular for its flora designs, this Special Edition isn’t just some skin slapped on the back of a Surface Pro 9. The repeating patterns of rhododendron flowers, the official flower of Washington State that Microsoft calls home, are laser engraved to give it a longer-lasting effect. It is akin to engraving fine jewelry, which is what this tablet wants to be. A specially-printed Liberty Keyboard brings those same patterns to your fingertips, almost literally, which also acts as a beautiful cover for the device when folded.

Whichever side it’s lying on, this Surface Pro 9 Liberty Special Edition is designed to look stylish and pretty, almost good enough to be a decorative piece on your coffee table or desk. It is an attempt to humanize these otherwise cold devices, but one that will cost you $1,800. Of course, there are plenty of skins available for the Surface Pro 9, but those might fade and will definitely peel over time like a wilting flower way past its prime.

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Incredibly customizable tablet PC with detachable kickstand and very intriguing stylus design

Tablet PCs have evolved a great deal over the years. So much so that professional-level tablets with stylus are now available in small, medium and large sizes, catering to all user types. Posing another exquisite option to the curious, Sebastian Medrano Casas has designed a multi-touch capable and customizable pen tablet inspired by Bush Color and Copoc Official. The Labl – Pen Tablet is modeled in solid works and has nine shades to go on, which are downloadable for free.

Creative tablets with their own exquisite pen stylus include of range of choices and offer creative opportunities. The line-up of such tablets is a great way to start off, especially if you’re into sketching, creating and photo activities. These tablets provide a great pen experience to make sure there is nothing simpler for creatives to work on; for most the experience with the stylus and these tablets is as natural as working on paper or canvas.

Designer: Sebastian Medrano Casas

To that accord, Labl doesn’t have much to say, but the renders here speak volumes about the creativity, possibility, and customization likely with this tablet engineered with innards to run Photoshop amicably in a very personalized form factor. Delivered in 9 plastic textures, the designer offers for free download, the tablet with pen allows every user to achieve a personalized tablet in a choice of their preferred hue. Sebastian is an industrial designer with a focus on 3D artistry, and the Labl – pen tablet is an intriguing representation of the designer’s capabilities and a tablet’s productive feasibility.

With the color options, typical nuances like the customizable layout, attachable/detachable kickstand, and a very interesting stylus design; the Labl – pen tablet is very close to a kid’s tablet intrinsically, but from how we understand, it is a very prolific device for the workaholics with productivity features most sought out by serious creative enthusiasts. What’s even more interesting: if you have the bent, is that it wouldn’t cost you a fortune to get started with the Labl. Just download the plastic textures and go ahead customizing your tablet!

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The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold is proof that a foldable tablet/laptop is a better idea than a foldable phone

“The single biggest challenge is the screen itself”, says Kevin Beck, Senior Story Technologist at Lenovo (although I’m not entirely sure what that title means). Beck’s statement is rather revealing, as it’s a complete affirmation of the fact that a folding laptop/tablet is a MUCH better idea than a folding phone. Phones are used/opened hundreds of times each day, compounding to thousands of times in just two weeks alone. Laptops/tablets, on the other hand, are ‘opened’ much less often, which translates to a dramatic decrease in the stress taken by a folding display. Moreover, laptops and tablets can usually afford to be thicker than phones, which gives you a lot of leeway to build a better hinge that can withstand friction, and constant folding, and is therefore built to last for years.

Meet the ThinkPad X1 Fold from Lenovo, a laptop-tablet hybrid that celebrates its foldability. In a world where MacBooks don’t look like books, we’ve got ourselves a ThinkPad that opens like one! Now in its second iteration, the ‘next gen’ Thinkpad X1 Fold sports a slimmer design with thinner bezels and a much larger screen with a 16-inch diagonal (as compared to the 13.3-inch one on the previous ThinkPad X1 Fold from 2020). The tablet folds right down the center, sort of like a book, giving you a slim device that’s easy to carry and versatile enough to be used in a variety of formats. You can use it as a tablet in conjunction with a stylus, or fold it in an L-shaped format and use it as you would a laptop… albeit with a touchscreen keyboard underneath your fingertips. If you want a more analog experience, there’s a mechanical keyboard attachment too that wirelessly connects to your X1 Fold, and a stand that you can prop your device onto, turning it into sort of a desktop-style experience.

Designer: Lenovo

On paper, the ThinkPad X1 Fold boasts some rather commendable specs. It sports a 12th Gen Intel Core™ i7 processor on the inside, with the ability to go up to 32GB LPDDR5 memory and 1TB storage. The 16.3-inch OLED display has a 4:3 resolution when completely open, bringing it to 3:2 when folded in half (that’s 15:10, which is just about comparable to the 16:9 aspect ratio found on regular laptops). The X1 Fold can be used solo or configured with an optional magnetic-attach pen utilizing Wacom protocol for a true tablet-esque experience. For laptop-lovers who need a tactile keyboard, the ThinkPad X1 Fold offers an optional full-size backlit ThinkPad keyboard, with TrackPoint and
large haptic touchpad.

The beauty of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold lies in its versatility. The company touts that the device can be used in 5 different modes – the clamshell laptop mode, landscape ‘desktop’ mode with the keyboard, portrait desktop mode with the keyboard (a unique template that Lenovo claims really excited early users), book mode, and finally tablet mode with either the touchscreen input or the stylus. “Productivity, collaboration, content consumption, reading, writing, editing, and so on are all a breeze in whichever mode one feels most comfortable with”, Lenovo says. “The modes are managed by an intuitive Mode Switcher interface”

The hybrid folding tablet comes with a camera array that’s placed on the shorter edge of the bezel (sort of like on the iPad). This means it faces you when you’re using it in laptop mode. Multiple microphones placed along the sides of the bezel help with orientation and spatial awareness, allowing the X1 Fold to be used in a variety of ways.

The one largest drawback with a 16-inch folding tablet is the battery life, given that it’s powering such a massive display. The ThinkPad X1 Fold comes with a 48Wh battery on the inside that is intelligently managed by the tablet’s chip to optimize performance based on usage. When left idle, the X1 Fold’s display automatically dims to save battery, and when you walk away from the device, the screen automatically shuts off, saving power. It even auto-wakes when you return, so you can pick up right where you left off.

With all those impressive specs and abilities, the ThinkPad X1 Fold won’t come cheap. It begins shipping in November with a starting price of $2499. Higher specs will cost you more, and the keyboard, stand, and stylus are sold as optional accessories.

The price, however high it may be, is a factor of exactly how impressive and innovative this little gizmo is. Folding displays aren’t quite mainstream yet, and folding laptop/tablets are practically inexistent as a category barring a few models. The ThinkPad X1 Fold hopes to pave the way to a future where such devices are much more commonplace, resulting in a robust supply chain and eventually… eventually, a lower price tag!

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Top 5 Sketching Apps on Android for Product Designers

Android tablets come in a variety of sizes and prices, making them easily accessible to a wide range of people. Although they have been in the market for years, only a notable few have reached iPad Pro status, especially when it comes to being an important part of creatives’ workflows. There are, of course, some Android tablets, like Samsung’s top-end line, that come with all the bells and whistles you’d need for working on the go, but navigating Google Play Store for noteworthy, not to mention safe, apps can sometimes be a daunting prospect. Product designers on Google’s side of the fence need not fret, though, as we have here five of the best apps that can let you exercise your creative juices anywhere you have your tablet or even phone with you.

Infinite Design and Painter

Designers don’t always think within confined spaces when brainstorming or sketching out ideas. Although most are used to the boundaries imposed by physical paper, many probably wished they had an infinite canvas to explore ideas with. That’s impossible to pull off in the physical realm, of course, but there’s little reason you can’t do so with apps.

This infinite canvas is the cornerstone of Infinite Studio’s twin apps, Infinite Designer and Infinite Painter. As their names imply, each caters to specific audiences and needs. Both, however, have some features in common, like that infinite canvas, as well as a configurable user interface you can move around to fit your workflow. Both apps are also free to use with in-app purchases to unlock some functions.

Infinite Designer works with vector shapes and lines to create forms that you can tweak with fine precision. It has some features created specifically for designers, like text tools and perspective guides. Infinite Painter, on the other hand, is designed for those with more artistic inclinations, especially those that need to create their own brushes for painting textures.

Designer: Akash Kumar

Designer: Peter Sakievich

Concepts

Just like Infinite Design, this app’s name clearly screams “concept design.” What started out as an iOS-exclusive eventually made its way to both Windows and Android, giving designers a new and powerful tool to give a visual form to their thoughts. And just like Infinite Canvas, Concept’s key feature revolves around its infinite canvas.

Concepts‘ drawing tools mostly revolve around vector shapes as well, but it has a larger set of brushes that would make artists also feel at home. Ever since day one, the app’s designer focus has been a selling point. Concepts’ implementation of its color wheel as a COPIC wheel is definitely still a unique feature.

Concepts does have a rather unusual pricing scheme that might put off some Android users. It’s free to use with a number of features that can each be unlocked with separate in-app purchases. However, there’s also a monthly or annual subscription option that delivers even more, which can be handy for those really knee-deep in using this app.

Designer: Yael Arama

Designer: Rafael Alvarez

Sketchbook

Just like Adobe, Autodesk doesn’t need much introduction among designers and digital creatives, especially those who depend on CAD software for their living. At one point in time, its Sketchbook was even regarded as the de facto drawing app on mobile devices in the absence of Photoshop. Sketchbook is now its own company, but it didn’t lose any of its capabilities. In fact, it might have gotten more.

All of Sketchbook’s features are now available to all users, absolutely free of charge. Those include dozens of brushes that each can be customized to fit a designer’s needs. Symmetry tools, rules, and guides help give some structure to sketches, and blending modes let artists exploit a large number of layers as much as the device can support.

One of Sketchbook’s key strengths has always been its simplicity and cleanliness, with the UI quickly getting out of the way once you put the tip of the stylus to the screen. Even the tool icons are designed to look clean and minimal, helping to reduce the cognitive burden when using the app.

Designer: Robert Kiss

Designer: Sketchbook

Clip Studio Paint

With Photoshop landing on iPads just a year or so ago, the chances of it arriving on Android are slim to none. While there are a few that have tried to fill in the gaps, Android sadly doesn’t have a household name like Procreate, at least not yet. Fortunately, designers have plenty of other options available, especially when they need painting tools more than photo editing ones.

Clip Studio Paint is actually one of Photoshop’s biggest competitors in the digital illustration space, and it is now available on all the major platforms, including on Android phones and tablets. It is actually one of the go-to solutions of illustrators and comics artists because of its wide array of tools specifically designed for those use cases. These same tools are, of course, also useful in sketching design concepts or preparing final illustrations for presentation.

The one catch to Clip Studio Paint’s powerful arsenal is its rather confusing pricing scheme. Although there’s a free trial available, further use of the app requires a subscription that differs according to platform or type (PRO vs. EX). New owners of Samsung’s Galaxy phones and tablets, however, do get some special treatment with a 6-month free trial unavailable to other brands.

Designer: Andre Pelaes David

Designer: Prentis Rollins

Krita (Beta)

Almost all the apps above except Sketchbook come with a price, whether hidden or explicit. Free apps get a lot of flak because many of them are cheap in price and quality. That’s not to say there are no exceptions, and Krita is definitely one of them.

On desktops, Krita has become a strong contender in rivaling Photoshop for artists and designers. It has a strong set of tools for digital art creation, including an animation feature. Krita is also “free as in speech,” in other words, open source, with a thriving community of artists and developers making it grow at an astoundingly fast pace.

Although already well-established on Windows, Mac, and Linux, Krita is a newcomer to Android. It’s still available only in a beta release, but it is quite usable in its current state. More impressively, Krita on Android nearly has all the same features and capabilities as the desktop version, something that Adobe has yet to deliver for Photoshop on iPads.

Designer: Chou-Tac

Designer: caseyclan

Bonus: Noteshelf

Sketching and creating concept art is really only one part of the design process. A lot of it also happens with words and other media. Some designers still keep a physical notebook around even if they do a lot of their work on computers and tablets. If you want to go all out on digital, though, Noteshelf offers a decent analogue to your analog notebook.

With Noteshelf, you can add your sketches and PDF documents to your notes for a particular concept you’ve been working on. You can handwrite your notes as well and even record audio while doing so. Noteshelf will sync the two and will replay your handwriting stroke by stroke as you play the audio recording. All of that for $4.99, no hidden costs included.

Designer: alexa

Designer: kate

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Top 5 Sketching Apps on iPads for Product Designers

All product designs, big or small, great or dismal, start with a sketch. OK, technically, they start with the germ of an idea, but these ideas need to be given visual form sooner or later. Many designers are partial to using paper and pen or pencil at the start but eventually bring their ideas to the digital realm sooner or later. With the advent of powerful mobile devices like the iPad and the Apple Pencil, it has never been easier to put those concepts directly on the screen when inspiration strikes. Navigating the app landscape, however, can be a bit of a doozy, so here are the five best apps for your iPad or iPad Pro to bring those creative ideas to life, at least digitally.

Procreate

You might presume that the venerable Photoshop would be at the very top of the list, but clearly, it isn’t. It wasn’t until later that Adobe finally realized the large market for Photoshop on iPads, but by then, others had already tried to fill its large shoes. Of the many apps that tried to capitalize on its absence, there is perhaps none more popular than Procreate.

Technically, Procreate could be considered as a painting app, but just like Photoshop, it has become a sort of jack-of-all-trades when it comes to digital content creation. It has all the tools you’d need in visualizing your design concepts from start to finish, fleshing out details as you go on the go. It’s easy enough to simply just sketching with the dozens of brushes available, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Procreate can help you animate your designs, a handy tool for products that have interactive moving elements. It even has a unique 3D Model Painting feature that can make your concepts pop out of the screen, figuratively, of course. Along with the iPad’s portability, Procreate gives designers the digital equivalent of an art studio whenever and where ever they need to work on their latest ideas, all for a flat fee of $9.99.

Designer: Ivan Belikov

Designer: Georgie

Concepts

As the very name suggests, Concepts is an app that was specifically designed to support designers in creating concept designs and illustrations. Unlike Photoshop and Procreate, Concepts works with vector lines, similar to Adobe Illustrator, though you probably won’t even feel it because of how fluid and natural sketching feels like. What it does mean, however, is that you have very fine control over each and every line or curve, and those lines remain smooth and crisp whether you zoom in or out and at any resolution.

Concepts’ defining feature, however, is its infinite canvas, designed to adapt to the way designers work and think. Rather than constraining them to pages with fixed sizes, designers can explore ideas and sketch them out as far as they can. The canvas size will adjust to their needs, not the other way around.

The app’s tools are designed to closely mimic their real-world counterparts, offering a toolset that’s familiar to designers. Even its color wheel resembles the popular COPIC format, a clear indication that this app was made with designers in mind right from the start. Concepts is available for free, but certain features require in-app purchases. Alternatively, there is also a subscription option that also unlocks more features that you won’t be able to buy.

Designer: Jonny Gallardo

Designer: CYNIC

Sketchbook

Autodesk is a name that has been near and dear to many designers’ hearts, particularly those in the industrial design fields, for its AutoCAD products. The company, however, also once had its own sketching app, and Sketchbook was, in fact, one of the very first of its kind to embrace mobile devices. Sketchbook has now struck off on its own, but it still brings with it all the features that made it a household name in the digital art market for a while.

Admittedly, Sketchbook might not be as feature-rich as Procreate or Photoshop, but what it lacks in features it makes up for in agility and speed. By no means does it mean that it doesn’t have a decent set of features, and the app is quite capable of translating your ideas into images on a digital canvas. It boasts of hundreds of brushes right off the bat, and each one can be customized to your needs and tastes.

One of the key strengths of Sketchbook is its ease of use and minimalist interface. The user interface gets out of the way, and you can even work all the way without seeing a single button or slider. Best of all, it’s completely free with no hidden purchases, so what you see is really what you get, and it is available on all major platforms, so you won’t miss a beat when switching between your iPad and your Mac.

Designer: Sketchbook

Designer: Michael DiTullo

Affinity Designer

With a name like Affinity Designer, you’re pretty much sure that the app is designed for designers. Its expressed intent is to be a professional tool for creating concept art, designs, and even branding imagery, pretty much all the things designers will need in their work process, especially when it comes time to create a more refined version of a sketch for the final presentation.

Like Concepts, Affinity Designer uses vector lines to create shapes and curves, giving the designer more control over how something looks without degrading the quality of a line. It does, however, also offer typical raster-based paintbrushes when you need more pixel-precise control, particularly when trying to paint textures or recreate more organic materials. The app boasts an unlimited number of layers and 1,000,000x zoom, though you’ll technically still be limited by how much memory your iPad has left.

One of Designer’s most unique features is the ability to have multiple instances of the same object across your work, so that editing one will instantly update the rest. It also presents your artboards in a Pinterest-like gallery that should be familiar to many designers. Affinity Designers has a flat price of $9.99 and has no further in-app purchases or subscription fees.

Designer: Denny Lambo

Designer: Yaron David

Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop is, of course, the granddaddy of digital art and graphic design software, and its absence on Apple’s tablets was acutely felt for years. Sure, the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil didn’t arrive until 2018, but the likes of Procreate have already been making do with what’s available for almost a decade. In the meantime, Adobe chose to bring several watered-down experiences to iPhones and iPads, focusing on very specific use cases only, biding its time for Photoshop’s full entry into the mobile space.

That has finally happened, somewhat, which is also why Photoshop isn’t placed that high on this list. This new version, first revealed in 2019, is supposed to be the same Photoshop on the desktop, but one that is being ported to the iPad in bits and pieces. Functionality still isn’t on par with what most Photoshop users will be familiar with, and it will take a lot more time for things to settle down. It does have some of the basics, but the focus seems to be more on being able to access your Photoshop files from Creative Cloud from an iPad rather than on a completely independent mobile workflow.

There’s also the fact that it’s the most expensive option in this bunch if you don’t have an Adobe subscription yet, something that’s absolutely necessary to use the app beyond its free trial period. There’s, of course, some hope that Adobe will pick up the slack, but with its new focus on making Photoshop work flawlessly on Apple M1 Macs, iPads might have again been pushed to the background for a while.

Designer: Erica Horne

Designer: Paola

Bonus: Good Notes

All of these apps empower designers to put pencil to paper digitally, so to speak. They let them sketch their ideas on a nearly infinite canvas, anywhere the Muse beckons, with all the conveniences (and sometimes drawbacks) of a digital workflow. Sketching and making beautiful designs, however, isn’t all that a designer does, of course. A large part of the process involves writing down notes or annotating drawings, which is where this bonus app comes in.

GoodNotes is regarded to be one of the best note-taking apps for the iPad, recreating much of the look and feel of traditional paper notebooks but without physical limitations. While it places a heavy emphasis on the pen-driven experience, it allows you to insert almost any kind of digital content into a note, from a typed text to an image. It does also have basic drawing features, so you can even just use it for sketching out your ideas as a rough draft before moving them to the more specialized apps listed above.

Designer: thalamustudy

The post Top 5 Sketching Apps on iPads for Product Designers first appeared on Yanko Design.

ASUS Zenbook 17’s single screen design revives the foldable laptop fantasy in a big way




Foldable devices are the big thing in mobile these days, but the concept isn’t limited to smartphones and tablets only. There have been a few that envisioned laptops that are all screens that can then unfold to become an even bigger screen. That idea, however, hasn’t completely caught on in the PC world, but ASUS is taking another whack at it with a foldable laptop that’s big both in size as well as ambition.

Designer: ASUS

ASUS is hardly the first company to try and sell a foldable laptop, and this is hardly its first attempt at a non-conventional laptop form. Lenovo beat it to the punch with the ThinkPad X1 Fold in 2020, albeit in a smaller 13.3-inch unfolded size. ASUS also presented its Project Precog concept back in 2018, but that had two screens more like the Microsoft Surface Neo that never came to be.

The ASUS Zenbook 17 Fold OLED is not only a mouthful but also big. When unfolded, it becomes a rather sizeable 17.3-inch monitor. When folded, you get the equivalent of two 12.5-inch screens, almost like a regular 13-inch laptop. ASUS went out of its way to give the device a premium finish, like a magnesium alloy body, a built-in faux leather kickstand, and an almost prismatic black logo on dark blue glass, but there’s no escaping the fact that it’s a chunky slab of metal and fragile flexible glass. That, in turn, will have consequences for ergonomics as well as the reliability of this foldable laptop.

The use cases that ASUS presents for the Zenbook 17 Fold are almost endless. You can use it as a large all-in-one PC, or you can use it as a laptop, either with the on-screen virtual keyboard or a Bluetooth keyboard that’s specially designed to sit on the lower half of the screen. You can use it like a book, with the screen barely folded in two, or as a tablet lying flat on a table. Unfortunately, ASUS wasn’t able to follow Samsung’s lead in getting support for a stylus.

These scenarios, however, rely heavily on the software that will be running on the ASUS Zenbook 17 Fold OLED, namely, Microsoft Windows 11. That operating system, however, has proven not to be that friendly to tablets, and perhaps even less so to tablets that fold into laptops. ASUS doesn’t seem to be too worried that software will be the albatross around this futuristic device’s neck and will reportedly make it available in the next quarter.

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The best 2-in-1 laptops for 2024

We’re still waiting for the perfect hybrid PC that can work as well as a tablet as it does as a laptop. As we enter 2024, it seems like many companies have also given up on that ideal — but Microsoft, Apple and Samsung still have some options to consider. And we’re still seeing OS tweaks to make iOS and Android more usable for larger displays. If you’re on the hunt for your next computer and are dead-set on it being a 2-in-1, we’ve collected our current top picks here plus all of the things you should know before making a purchase.

Factors to consider before buying a 2-in-1 laptop

When you’re shopping for a 2-in-1, there are some basic criteria to keep in mind. First, look at the spec sheet to see how heavy the tablet is (alone, and with the keyboard). Most modern hybrids weigh less than 2 pounds, with the 1.94-pound Surface Pro 9 being one of the heaviest around. The iPad Pro 12.9 (2022) and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S9+ are both slightly lighter. If the overall weight of the tablet and its keyboard come close to 3 pounds, you’ll be better off getting an ultraportable laptop.

You’ll also want to opt for an 11-inch or 12-inch screen instead of a smaller 10-inch model. Bigger displays will make multitasking easier, plus their companion keyboards will be much better spaced. Also, try to get at least 6GB of RAM if you can for better performance.

Finally, while some 2-in-1s offer built-in LTE or 5G connectivity, not everyone will want to pay the premium for it. An integrated cellular radio makes checking emails or replying to messages on the go far more convenient. But it also often costs more, and that’s not counting what you’ll pay for data. And, as for 5G — you can hold off on it unless you live within range of a mmWave beacon. Coverage is still spotty and existing nationwide networks use the slower sub-6 technology that’s barely faster than LTE. For now, tethering a PC to your phone is still the best way to get online.

These machines still have their limits, of course. Since they’re smaller than proper laptops, they tend to have less-powerful processors. Keyboards are often less sturdy, with condensed layouts and shallower travel. Plus, they’re almost always tablets first, leaving you to buy a keyboard case separately. (And those ain’t cheap!) So, you can’t always assume the advertised price is what you’ll actually spend on the 2-in-1 you want.

See Also:

Sometimes, getting a third-party keyboard might be just as good, and they’re often cheaper than first-party offerings. If you’re looking to save some money, Logitech’s Slim Folio is an affordable option, and if you don’t need your keyboard to attach to your tablet, Logitech’s K780 Multi-Device wireless keyboard is also a good pick.

While we’ve typically made sure to include a budget 2-in-1 in previous years, this time there isn’t a great choice. We would usually pick a Surface Go, but the latest model is still too expensive. Other alternatives, like cheaper Android tablets, are underpowered and don’t offer a great multitasking interface. If you want something around $500 that’s thin, lightweight and long-lasting, you’re better off this year looking at a conventional laptop (like those on our best budget PCs list).

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/best-2-in-1-laptops-173038508.html?src=rss

The best laptops and tablets to give as holiday gifts in 2022

If you’re thinking of getting a laptop or tablet as a gift, you’ve got a wealth of options. Thanks to the latest round of hardware from Intel, Apple, AMD and NVIDIA, all of our portable devices have gotten faster and more efficient. Even the cheapest iPad can be a decent productivity machine, while gaming laptops can almost match the power of their desktop siblings. And now that Windows 11 has proven very stable over the past year, it's a perfect time to give someone a nifty PC upgrade.

Dell XPS 13

Dell XPS 13
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget

Not to sound like a broken record, but the XPS 13 is still one of the best Windows ultraportables you can buy. This year, Dell also streamlined its design to be even slimmer and lighter than before. The result is a laptop that’s easy to carry all day, and a joy to behold thanks to its incredibly thin screen bezels. It’s been upgraded to lower-wattage Intel 12th-gen processors, which is a boon for battery life without sacrificing much performance. The XPS 13 can also be configured with an OLED screen, an ideal gift for someone who could use a bright and color accurate display. If you’re looking for better performance and even more striking design, Dell’s new XPS 13 Plus is also a great gift option. For most users, though, the standard XPS 13 will still be a fantastic laptop.

Shop XPS 13 models at Dell

Apple MacBook Air (M2, 2022)

Apple MacBook Air M2
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget

Apple’s successor to the miraculous M1 MacBook Air is even more impressive, thanks to its thinner design, larger 13.6-inch screen, and a rocking quad-speaker setup. If you were feeling a bit bored by Apple’s older design, this is the upgrade you’ve been waiting for. While it’s still fan-less, the M2 MacBook Air remains one of the fastest ultraportables around. It’ll handle all of your productivity tasks, and even a bit of media creation, without breaking a sweat. And if you’re looking for more of a deal, Apple’s M1 MacBook Air is still a very compelling laptop, especially when it goes on sale.

Buy MacBook Air M2 at Amazon - $1,199

Apple iPad

Apple iPad
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget

Apple’s newest iPad has basically a stripped down iPad Air: It has a new flat-edged design, a faster processor and a more convenient front-facing camera. Starting at $449, it’s a great deal more expensive than the previous model, but all of the upgrades also make it far more future proof. And if you pair the iPad with Apple’s new Magic Keyboard Folio, it can even tackle basic typing, email and productivity work. If you can’t stomach the higher price (or the $250 keyboard accessory), last year’s $329 model is a fantastic deal. It’s fast enough for most users, and it also has a few keyboard accessories for writers.

Buy iPad (9th gen) at Amazon - $329Buy iPad (10th gen) at Amazon - $449

Amazon Fire HD 10

Amazon Fire HD 10
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget

Amazon's Fire tablets are basically just video-first Android slates, but they also prove you don’t have to pay a ton to buy a useful tablet for someone. Last year’s Fire HD 10 is a bit faster than before, has 50 percent more memory and features a slightly brighter screen. And, as a bonus, there's a Bluetooth keyboard accessory that can turn it into a cheap productivity tablet. But its core selling point is the same as always: it can tackle most tablet tasks easily, and it won’t cost too much. (There are also kid-centric Fire tablets worth considering, which come with a more durable case and two years worth of free replacements.)

Buy Fire HD 10 at Amazon - $150

Razer Blade 15

Razer Blade 15
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget

You can take all of the praise we've given Razer's Blade 15 over the years and apply it to the latest model. Razer's flagship gaming notebook still has a sleek unibody aluminum case, and it packs in the latest CPUs and GPUs, including NVIDIA's top-end RTX 3080. And thanks to improved screen choices, you can also gift models with fast 1,440p displays, which require less horsepowerpower to run than 4K screens. If portability is a greater concern, take a look at the Razer Blade 14, a sub-four-pound notebook sporting AMD's latest processors.

Buy Razer Blade 15 at Amazon - $3,000

ASUS Zephyrus G14

ASUS Zephyrus G14
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget

ASUS’s excellent Zephyrus G14 gaming laptop is back, and this time it finally has a webcam. (That fixes our one main flaw with the original model.) The G14 remains one of the best 14-inch gaming laptops around, with the power of AMD’s Ryzen 9 6900HS chip and either Radeon 6700S or 6800S graphics. That’s pretty impressive for a computer that starts at just 3.6 pounds. You can choose between 1080p 144Hz or 1,440p 120Hz screens, both of which look fantastic. The G14 can appear flashy, thanks to its optional rear LED panel, but it can also do double duty as an attractive productivity PC. It’s a gaming machine that won’t look out of place in a lecture hall, making it ideal for students who don’t want to draw too much attention while they’re watching Twitch streams during class.

Buy ASUS Zephyrus G14 at Amazon - $1,100

Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2

Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2
Microsoft

We called the Surface Laptop Go 2 “basic, but in a good way” in our review, and that pretty much says it all. It’s a $600 computer with the design language of Microsoft’s excellent Surface Laptop, and some slightly lower-tier specs. We love that it has a better CPU than the first model, faster storage and improved cooling. It’s the ideal computer for a high school student who doesn’t need high-end components, and wants a sturdy computer that can last a day’s worth of classes (and beyond!).

Buy Surface Laptop Go 2 at Amazon - $799

Dell G15 Gaming Laptop

Dell G15 Gaming Laptop
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget

We’ve been huge fans of Dell’s budget G15 gaming laptops for years, and the latest model is no exception. It starts at around $900 and includes a 12th-gen Intel Core i5 chip and NVIDIA’s RTX 3050 graphics. You can scale it all the way up to an i9 CPU and RTX 3070, all the while staying below the price of many comparable gaming machines. The G15 isn’t as sleek as the Razer Blade, but it’s a sturdy and reliable computer that will serve any budding gamer well.

Shop G15 models at Dell

The best laptops and tablets to give as holiday gifts in 2022

If you’re thinking of getting a laptop or tablet as a gift, you’ve got a wealth of options. Thanks to the latest round of hardware from Intel, Apple, AMD and NVIDIA, all of our portable devices have gotten faster and more efficient. Even the cheapest iPad can be a decent productivity machine, while gaming laptops can almost match the power of their desktop siblings. And now that Windows 11 has proven very stable over the past year, it's a perfect time to give someone a nifty PC upgrade.

Dell XPS 13

Dell XPS 13
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget

Not to sound like a broken record, but the XPS 13 is still one of the best Windows ultraportables you can buy. This year, Dell also streamlined its design to be even slimmer and lighter than before. The result is a laptop that’s easy to carry all day, and a joy to behold thanks to its incredibly thin screen bezels. It’s been upgraded to lower-wattage Intel 12th-gen processors, which is a boon for battery life without sacrificing much performance. The XPS 13 can also be configured with an OLED screen, an ideal gift for someone who could use a bright and color accurate display. If you’re looking for better performance and even more striking design, Dell’s new XPS 13 Plus is also a great gift option. For most users, though, the standard XPS 13 will still be a fantastic laptop.

Shop XPS 13 models at Dell

Apple MacBook Air (M2, 2022)

Apple MacBook Air M2
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget

Apple’s successor to the miraculous M1 MacBook Air is even more impressive, thanks to its thinner design, larger 13.6-inch screen, and a rocking quad-speaker setup. If you were feeling a bit bored by Apple’s older design, this is the upgrade you’ve been waiting for. While it’s still fan-less, the M2 MacBook Air remains one of the fastest ultraportables around. It’ll handle all of your productivity tasks, and even a bit of media creation, without breaking a sweat. And if you’re looking for more of a deal, Apple’s M1 MacBook Air is still a very compelling laptop, especially when it goes on sale.

Buy MacBook Air M2 at Amazon - $1,199

Apple iPad

Apple iPad
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget

Apple’s newest iPad has basically a stripped down iPad Air: It has a new flat-edged design, a faster processor and a more convenient front-facing camera. Starting at $449, it’s a great deal more expensive than the previous model, but all of the upgrades also make it far more future proof. And if you pair the iPad with Apple’s new Magic Keyboard Folio, it can even tackle basic typing, email and productivity work. If you can’t stomach the higher price (or the $250 keyboard accessory), last year’s $329 model is a fantastic deal. It’s fast enough for most users, and it also has a few keyboard accessories for writers.

Buy iPad (9th gen) at Amazon - $329Buy iPad (10th gen) at Amazon - $449

Amazon Fire HD 10

Amazon Fire HD 10
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget

Amazon's Fire tablets are basically just video-first Android slates, but they also prove you don’t have to pay a ton to buy a useful tablet for someone. Last year’s Fire HD 10 is a bit faster than before, has 50 percent more memory and features a slightly brighter screen. And, as a bonus, there's a Bluetooth keyboard accessory that can turn it into a cheap productivity tablet. But its core selling point is the same as always: it can tackle most tablet tasks easily, and it won’t cost too much. (There are also kid-centric Fire tablets worth considering, which come with a more durable case and two years worth of free replacements.)

Buy Fire HD 10 at Amazon - $150

Razer Blade 15

Razer Blade 15
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget

You can take all of the praise we've given Razer's Blade 15 over the years and apply it to the latest model. Razer's flagship gaming notebook still has a sleek unibody aluminum case, and it packs in the latest CPUs and GPUs, including NVIDIA's top-end RTX 3080. And thanks to improved screen choices, you can also gift models with fast 1,440p displays, which require less horsepowerpower to run than 4K screens. If portability is a greater concern, take a look at the Razer Blade 14, a sub-four-pound notebook sporting AMD's latest processors.

Buy Razer Blade 15 at Amazon - $3,000

ASUS Zephyrus G14

ASUS Zephyrus G14
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget

ASUS’s excellent Zephyrus G14 gaming laptop is back, and this time it finally has a webcam. (That fixes our one main flaw with the original model.) The G14 remains one of the best 14-inch gaming laptops around, with the power of AMD’s Ryzen 9 6900HS chip and either Radeon 6700S or 6800S graphics. That’s pretty impressive for a computer that starts at just 3.6 pounds. You can choose between 1080p 144Hz or 1,440p 120Hz screens, both of which look fantastic. The G14 can appear flashy, thanks to its optional rear LED panel, but it can also do double duty as an attractive productivity PC. It’s a gaming machine that won’t look out of place in a lecture hall, making it ideal for students who don’t want to draw too much attention while they’re watching Twitch streams during class.

Buy ASUS Zephyrus G14 at Amazon - $1,100

Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2

Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2
Microsoft

We called the Surface Laptop Go 2 “basic, but in a good way” in our review, and that pretty much says it all. It’s a $600 computer with the design language of Microsoft’s excellent Surface Laptop, and some slightly lower-tier specs. We love that it has a better CPU than the first model, faster storage and improved cooling. It’s the ideal computer for a high school student who doesn’t need high-end components, and wants a sturdy computer that can last a day’s worth of classes (and beyond!).

Buy Surface Laptop Go 2 at Amazon - $799

Dell G15 Gaming Laptop

Dell G15 Gaming Laptop
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget

We’ve been huge fans of Dell’s budget G15 gaming laptops for years, and the latest model is no exception. It starts at around $900 and includes a 12th-gen Intel Core i5 chip and NVIDIA’s RTX 3050 graphics. You can scale it all the way up to an i9 CPU and RTX 3070, all the while staying below the price of many comparable gaming machines. The G15 isn’t as sleek as the Razer Blade, but it’s a sturdy and reliable computer that will serve any budding gamer well.

Shop G15 models at Dell

This rollable phablet brings the big screen experience to your pocket without any excessive bulk!

A big rollable screen smartphone/tablet (a phablet to be precise) that’s designed to be the style statement in your pocket without the bulky form factor associated with big-screen mobile devices.

After foldables, the next revolutionary upscaling to the contemporary form factor of smartphones and tablets is going to be the rollable design. The Scroll bendable roll-out phablet designed by Compal Electronics is a perfect example of how smartphones will be an even more of an extension of our personality. The rollable device takes a cue from the hotshot mobile device manufacturers who have already fascinated us with their rollable phone concept designs. The likes of LG, Samsung, TLC and OPPO who are looking beyond the avenue to make scroll-like mobile devices mainstream.

Compal’s rollable phone (or should I say tablet) draws inspiration from the ancient papyrus rolls, enhancing the in-hand experience with readability. The upmarket device does this by enhancing the inherent benefits of the flexible display. Scroll comes with a 10-inch bendable screen that rolls out with the push of a button and retracts back into the opulent tube when not required. The amount of screen real estate that you require (up to 10-inches) is completely at the user’s discretion. A perfect way to carry the digital world in your pocket or bag in style. The company envisions this concept to radically reduce the packaging required, due to this compact shape and design.

Scroll has a secondary display on the outside to beam important notifications, display the interface of media players, or alert the user of incoming calls. The rollable device is targeted for the high-end market since it comes in a plush casing and leather finish. The front-facing camera is placed on the upper edge of this casing so that the user can click selfies. The rear-facing shooter is positioned on the opposite end of the casing, although no specifications of either camera are mentioned by the designer.

Designer: Compal Electronics