Laptops have a new look for the new decade. CES 2020 introduced us to a handful of new foldable laptops. And yes, while laptops already fold, many of these concepts feature bending screens or dual-screen devices held together with a hinge. We really should’ve seen this coming, given the rise of folding phones in 2019.
Nintendo's Switch has proved to be the portable-console hybrid gamers were waiting for, but what if you're a PC gamer instead? That's just what Dell is looking at with Alienware Concept UFO, a prototype vision of a portable games console for CES 2020 that previews one potential avenue for the company's future hardware.
CES 2020 is clearly the year for foldables, with Dell bringing two clamshell concepts that it believes will preview the future of notebooks and tablets. The Dell Concept Duet and the Dell Concept Ori aren't, it's worth noting right from the start, intended for production in their current form. Instead, they're Dell's vision of what a dual-screen or a foldable screen device might look like in the not-too-distant future.
Different companies have different ideas about how to bridge the divide between mobile and PCs. Some turn smartphones into desktops while others try to create one OS that runs on all the devices. The trend these days is to simply allow users to access their phones from their computers without having to pick up the device at all. That's what Dell's Mobile Connect has always promised and now it is extending that promise by giving iPhone owners the ability to use their apps right on their Dell Windows computers.
With CES 2020 on the horizon, it seems that Dell has decided to get out ahead of the pack with some of its announcements. Today the company announced a new XPS 13 model that seems to target aesthetics and screen size more than anything else. Going hand-in-hand with the new XPS 13 is a Linux-based developer edition of the machine that may be a little more flexible for those looking to create software.
Dell and Alienware have a new range of monitors for CES 2020, a quartet of displays promising features like 4K resolution, USB-C connectivity, and 240 Hz refresh rates. While Dell is pitching its new monitors as perfect for business desks, there are plenty of reasons why regular consumers might want to take a look too.
Laptops promise the freedom to take your computing with you but the price you have to pay is in performance. There are powerful laptops, of course, but you are mostly stuck with what you bought, save for upgrading storage or RAM. Laptop CPUs are impossible to upgrade but GPUs may soon be set free if these GPU upgrade kits for the Alienware Area-51m becomes a catchy trend on other laptops and brands.
There has been a great emphasis placed on capturing great content, usually from smartphone cameras but also from DSLRs or even compacts. Taking those photos and videos for posterity is one thing. Turning them into professional edits is quite another. Usually, that is done on a computer with a monitor that might not always be configured with the best or even correct colors. It is for these wizards of visual content that Dell is launching the UltraSharp 27 4K PremierColor Monitor, the first of its kind to sport its own colorimeter inside.
The trend in computers, even among desktop users, has been to shrink the PC and even make it disappear. For desktops, that has usually meant either a mediocre box that sits visibly on your desktop or an all-in-one PC that locks you to a specific configuration or at least a specific screen. Dell, however, may have something a bit ingenious in mind. Its new OptiPlex 7070 is described as a zero-footprint computer and it accomplishes that by hiding its parts inside a monitor stand that can hold any monitor in the market.
Today Dell and Alienware revealed the Alienware 55 OLED Gaming Monitor, the first 55-inch OLED Gaming Monitor in the world, per Dell. This device has fast IPS (in-plane switching) tech, 120Hz variable refresh rate, and 0.5ms (gray-to-gray) response time. Up front it's all gaming business, around back it sports Alienware's newest industrial design ethos in full effect - it's simple, yet bold, and it rolls with AMD Radeon FreeSync technology under its hood.
This morning Dell's Alienware brand revealed a desktop machine called Alienware Aurora R9. This desktop is made to be a gaming machine, offering a wide variety of options in processors, storage, and memory, and comes stacked with a wholly unique industrial design. This is a bold design whose color options should give you some idea of how intense the designers at that brand have gotten: Lunar Light OR Dark Side of the Moon.
Back at Computex 2019, NVIDIA announced the RTX Studio program. The basic premise was to team up with OEMs to release a series of Studio-branded laptops aimed squarely at creators and artists who could leverage the capabilities of an RTX graphics card. Fast forward to today, as SIGGRAPH 2019 is getting underway, and NVIDIA is announcing a 10 new RTX Studio laptops, bringing the grand total of available models up to 27.