Category Computing

With Black Friday often come some of the best laptop deals of the year, and that’s certainly the case at Lenovo right now. The workstation-class ThinkPad P16 laptop is marked down a massive $5,470 today, bringing its price down from nearly $10,000 to a much more reasonable Black Friday price of $4,469. This laptop is absolutely loaded with specs, surpassing most of the best laptops and even many of the best desktop computers. Free shipping is included with this deal, which isn’t likely to last long, so click over to Lenovo now to save while you can.

Why you should buy the Lenovo ThinkPad P16 mobile workstation

Lenovo has been making quality computers for decades and currently finds itself considered among the best laptop brands. Its ThinkPad lineup is one of its most versatile, offering laptops at a range of price points for different needs. The ThinkPad P16 mobile workstation is going to sit on the upper end of those needs, as it’s packed with specs. It has an Intel i9 processor and a whopping 128GB of RAM, as well as 4TB of internal solid state storage capacity. These are the kind of specs you should be looking for if you’re trying to fit into the workflows of architectures, visual effects, and other professional-level environments that aim to push everyday laptops beyond their limits.

And while the ThinkPad P16 may seem like more than most people need, it’s something you should consider if you’re looking to go long stretches between laptop purchases. Its high-end specs make it much more future-proof, and keep it relevant with lower level computing tasks for a much longer period of time. It’s entirely capable as a super powerful everyday laptop, as it gets great battery life relative to its specs, and it has a 16-inch 4K display. It isn’t overly-sized for all of the power it has to accommodate, allowing it to travel well to both the coffee shop and by airplane. You’ll find plenty daily necessities with this workstation, as including Windows 11 Pro 64 pre-installed.

While the Lenovo ThinkPad P16 mobile workstation would regularly cost almost $10,000, you can take it home with this Black Friday deal for $4,469. Total savings come to $5,470, and free shipping is included.

Editors’ Recommendations

This is it. One of the first great Walmart “early access” Black Friday deals has landed and we’re here to witness it in real time. It’s the Acer Nitro 27-inch ED270U, a curved monitor for gaming, and it went on sale at noon Eastern Time on November 8th as part of an official Walmart Black Friday deal. That means that this is the good price and you can buy now. The Acer Nitro 27-inch ED270U is usually $259, but with this deal it is just $145, saving you $114. So, tap the button below to grab yours now, while supplies last, or keep reading to see our take.

Why you should buy the Acer Nitro 27-inch ED270U

It is easy enough to call this the first of the great gaming monitor deals of the holiday season and call it a day, but why is that so? Stats first, this is a premium monitor in that it has a fantastic WQHD (2560 x 1440p) resolution and quick 170Hz refresh rate. These factors, along with the 1ms response time of the monitor’s pixels, contribute highly to what we look for in a gaming monitor. They mean that you will be able to scrutinize tiny details in the game world as well as perceive that same game world’s reactions to your movements in incredibly fast order.

You’ll also want to consider the Acer Nitro 27-inch ED270U’s form factor. When we talked about choosing a monitor, we mentioned how curved monitors (like the Acer Nitro 27-inch ED270U) are becoming increasingly common, but were previously on the “fancy” side. If you aren’t super familiar with them yet, a curved monitor can help immerse you in your game (we recommend single player games at first to get used to it) and reduce issues like glare. That’s not to mention getting more screen on less desk space.

To try out the curved Acer Nitro 27-inch ED270U at its early Black Friday price, just tap the button below. You’ll find the Acer Nitro 27-inch ED270U for just $145, which is $114 down from the usual $259. If that’s not good enough, or you just want more options, check out these other early Black Friday monitor deals and see if you find something you like more.

Editors’ Recommendations

In a market that’s centered around all of the best graphics cards, it can be deceptively hard to buy a GPU. For those of us who don’t need “the best” and just want “good enough,” it’s a tricky process. Sometimes spending a few more dollars gets you something that’s considerably better, and other times, spending $100 less means a GPU with significantly better value.

Fortunately, there are a few GPUs that are just all-around good picks right now. If you want to get the most GPU power for the least possible money, check out the AMD Radeon RX 6600.

AMD Radeon RX 6600

On the whole, AMD is often cheaper than Nvidia, and that applies both to last-gen and current-gen cards. It has a few noteworthy cards in the $180 to $320 range, not to mention the $500 RX 7800 XT, which is one of the best-value graphics cards in this generation. However, if you want to get the cheapest GPU possible while still retaining decent performance, I recommend the RX 6600.

The RX 6600 belongs to AMD’s RDNA 2 lineup, and it has two slightly more powerful siblings — the RX 6600 XT and the RX 6650 XT. However, due to their similar performance, you might as well go for the cheapest one when you’re on a tighter budget. The RX 6600 can be found for as little as

, and at that price, it’s a good deal.

What kind of performance can you expect from this card? You should be able to play most titles at 1080p without needing to compromise on the settings too much. In our own testing, the RX 6600 was able to tackle Red Dead Redemption 2 and maintain 59 frames per second (fps) on average — and that’s at ultra settings. We’ve also tried it in Fortnite, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Battlefield V, and Civilization VI, and it averaged between 71 fps and 138 fps. Read AMD Radeon RX 6600 review to learn more.

While I recommend this GPU, it’s not a straightforward choice, because AMD has a slew of RX 6000 cards that are in a similar price range and offer slightly better performance. There’s the RX 6600 XT, RX 6650 XT, and the current-gen RX 7600. The latter can be found for around

, and if your budget can stretch that far, it’s money well spent.

When we benchmarked the RX 7600, we found that it averaged 66.3 fps across our 1080p test suite, while the RX 6600 scored 50.9 fps. If you want a steady 60 fps in modern games at 1080p, the RX 7600 is a more straightforward pick; if you don’t mind dropping down to medium settings, go for the RX 6600.

What about Nvidia and Intel?

If you’re not that into AMD, but still want a cheap GPU, there are a couple of options from Intel and Nvidia that are worth considering: the Intel Arc A750 and the Nvidia RTX 4060.

One thing to be mindful of when buying Intel Arc cards is compatibility. As you can read in our in-depth review of the Arc A750 and the Arc A770, while these GPUs are compatible with older processors, they benefit from the ability to enable Resizable BAR. That means you’ll need a 10th-gen Intel processor or an AMD Ryzen 3000 or newer. Without Resizable BAR, the performance of Arc A750 drops by a large margin.

With that disclaimer out of the way, the Arc A750 is a surprisingly solid GPU for 1080p gameplay, averaging 80 fps at 1080p ultra across our entire test suite. It’s also viable for 1440p, hitting 62 fps on average, while the Arc A770 scored 68 fps.

If you want to try out Intel in your next PC build, the cheapest version of the Arc A750 costs

and comes from Sparkle. Intel’s own version is slightly pricier at $230.

Moving on to Nvidia, as you can read in our review of the RTX 4060, this card comes with a few caveats, but it still has an edge over the competition in that it has access to Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS 3) frame generation. While not supported in all too many games, DLSS 3 can help an RTX 4070 outperform an RTX 4090, and it has a similar effect on the RTX 4060. It’s an artificial boost that opens the door to high-end gaming on a tight budget, which is why the RTX 4060 makes sense despite the price tag.

Without the DLSS 3 crutch, the RTX 4060 still performs well enough to handle 1080p gaming with ease. It averaged 78.2 fps in our 1080p test suite at ultra settings. As for DLSS 3, it really does make a difference on a GPU of this caliber — while the 4060 hits 82 fps on average without DLSS 3 in Cyberpunk 2077, it managed a whopping 136 fps with frame generation enabled.

The RTX 4060 starts at around

.

Do you really need a GPU?

If you’re trying to build a PC while spending as little as possible, and you’re not a hardcore gamer, one way to save a couple hundred dollars is to not get a graphics card at all.

Integrated graphics often get a bad rep, and rightfully so, but we’ve come a long way in the past few years. In particular, one option that’s viable for daily use (including some gaming) is AMD’s Ryzen 5600G processor, or rather, accelerated processing unit (APU). This is a separate category of processors that combine the CPU and the GPU within a single chip. This integration gives the 5600G more GPU power than most iGPUs.

I’m not going to lie to you — the Ryzen 5600G is no gaming beast. However, as long as you’re content with medium settings and you’re mostly playing older games and indies, it’ll do. It’s also a solid option for day-to-day tasks, be it work or casual browsing. Most of all, it’s highly affordable — it’s priced at around

right now. There’s also the Ryzen 7 5700G, with more cores and slightly better performance. It’s priced at

.

One good way to make the most of this APU is to ensure that you’re using some of the best RAM available in your price range. This is because the Ryzen 5600G doesn’t have its own dedicated video memory (VRAM), which a discrete GPU would normally have. To make up for that, it uses a portion of your system’s RAM to store textures and other graphics-related data. The faster your RAM, the better the performance.

No matter the GPU or APU you pick, don’t be afraid to dip into the previous generation when assembling a budget PC. Some of those options are still pretty excellent and, following several discounts, now offer far more agreeable prices than some of their current-gen counterparts.

Editors’ Recommendations

There isn’t just one way to turn on your keyboard lights. It can vary wildly among laptop and peripheral manufacturers and even among different laptop lines from the same brand.

To bring a bit of clarity to the situation, we’ve gathered together seven possible ways to turn your keyboard backlighting on or off. Read on to find the best method for your laptop or desktop keyboard.

Press the dedicated button for keyboard backlighting

Some keyboards, like the Logitech G Pro desktop keyboard, will actually have a dedicated button that you can press to toggle the keyboard light on or off. In the case of the Logitech G Pro, you’ll want to look for a button stamped with a sun icon with rays in the upper-right corner of the keyboard.

Press the Increase Brightness button

If you have a MacBook, certain models allow you to turn on the backlighting by pressing the Increase brightness key, which looks like half of the sun with three rays. Press it until you get the desired level of keyboard light brightness. To turn it off, press the Decrease brightness key, which looks like a half-circle outlined in dots (instead of the rays) until the light turns off.

Using the Increase/decrease brightness buttons should work for certain models of Macs that run macOS Sonoma, Ventura, High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, or Monterey.

Press the assigned Function key

For many Windows laptops, you might need to press a Function key (F1 to F12) to turn on your keyboard’s backlighting. If this is the case, which Function key it is will likely depend on the brand and model of your laptop.

For example, Dell notebook PCs have at least three possible key options: F6, F10, or the right-arrow key. In some cases, F5 is also possible. From these options, you should be able to tell which one controls the backlighting by seeing which one has the Illumination icon (which looks like a half-sun with rays) stamped on it. If you don’t see this icon at all, your Dell PC doesn’t have keyboard backlighting. But if you do see the icon, press the Function key that has it. (You may need to press it in conjunction with the Fn key.) Pressing that key combination – Fn + the function key – should allow you to cycle through various brightness level options for your Dell PC’s keyboard, so keep pressing it until you reach your desired brightness level or until you turn it off.

HP notebook computers work similarly to Dell laptops: You’ll need to press an assigned Function key (which could be F5, F4, or F11) with or without pressing the Fn key as well. You may need to press it multiple times to adjust the brightness or turn it off. There should also be a backlight icon stamped on the assigned Function key for your HP notebook that looks like a row of three dots with rays coming out of the first dot.

The main thing, though, is that if you don’t know the keyboard shortcut or Function key assigned to your keyboard’s backlighting feature, you should look it up in your PC’s manufacturer’s support site or manual to find out.

Use the Touch Bar

Certain MacBook models may have you adjust your keyboard lighting via the Touch Bar instead. To do so, tap the Arrow icon on the Touch Bar to expand its Control Strip. To turn on backlighting, tap the Increase brightness button. To turn it off, tap and hold the Decrease brightness button, which looks like a half-circle outlined in dots, not rays.

These instructions should work for MacBooks with Touch Bars that run MacOS Sonoma, Ventura, Monterey, and Big Sur.

Adjust it in Control Center or Windows Mobility Center

Depending on the manufacturer and model of your device, you might be able to turn on and adjust the keyboard light via your PC’s control panel menu.

For certain MacBooks, that means opening Control Center, selecting Keyboard brightness, and then dragging its corresponding slider. This should work for some MacBook models that also run MacOS Monterey or Big Sur.

For some Windows 10 PCs, this means you’ll need to access the Windows Mobility Center, which resides in the Control Panel. To access it, select Control Panel > Hardware and sound > Windows Mobility Center. In the Windows Mobility Center, look for the Keyboard brightness (or Keyboard backlighting) setting, select its corresponding slider, and pull that slider over to the right.

Use the keyboard’s recommended software, if available

Some keyboards have their own specific software or app that can be used to control and customize the settings of your laptop or desktop keyboard. A great example of this is the app used for Razer’s laptops and peripherals: Synapse. The Synapse app can be used to customize the lighting effects of your Razer gaming laptop’s keyboard or your Razer desktop gaming keyboard. And this can include increasing or decreasing the brightness of your keyboard light or adjusting the settings so that the light stays on or off in sleep mode.

Most of the best gaming keyboards have some kind of back-end software that can let you adjust the RGB lighting of individual keys or turn any or all of them on or off at will.

Enable keyboard backlighting in the BIOS

In some cases, if your laptop has the right keyboard light buttons and they still don’t work the way they’re supposed to, it’s possible that you may need to check your device’s BIOS settings and make sure that they’re configured correctly, or your BIOS may need to be updated to the latest version. When doing either of these things, be sure to follow your device manufacturer’s instructions on how to do it carefully. Look up those specific instructions first. Some manufacturers like HP or Dell have posted detailed instructions online on how to check for these issues and/or correct them.

Frequently asked questions

Why won’t my keyboard backlighting turn on?

There are a number of reasons why your keyboard backlighting won’t turn on. Here are a few you may want to consider:

• Your device may not actually offer a backlit keyboard. Not all laptops or desktop keyboards have keyboard lights. Check with your device’s manufacturer to confirm that the model of your device is supposed to have backlighting. If it is, confirm that you’re using the right keyboard shortcuts, buttons, or settings to turn it on.
• Some laptops like MacBooks use light sensors for backlighting in low-light situations. It’s important to know where they are on your device and to make sure you’re not blocking them.
• Is the backlight not working or is the brightness level set too low? If the brightness level of the backlight is set too low, then the light is probably working but you’re just having trouble seeing it. See if you can increase the brightness level using our suggestions above so you can see the light better.
• You may need to update the BIOS to the latest version, or its settings aren’t configured correctly. If you decide to update the BIOS to the latest version or reconfigure its settings, be sure to follow your device manufacturer’s specific instructions for doing so.

Does keyboard backlighting drain the battery?

Yes, keyboard backlighting can contribute to the drain, as it does need power to function. If you’re concerned about conserving battery power, you can turn off the backlighting or adjust your keyboard lighting settings so that the light automatically turns off when the computer goes to sleep or the display is off.

How do I change the keyboard backlighting color?

First, make sure that your keyboard has the ability to change backlighting colors. If so, you’ll need to consult your device manufacturer’s specific instructions on how to change the backlighting color. Usually, these instructions will involve you opening a manufacturer-recommended desktop app like the HP OMEN Command Center or Razer’s Synapse app and then customizing your lighting settings within that app to add colors to your backlight.

Editors’ Recommendations

Apple just upset everyone, claiming that the 8GB of Unified Memory available in the base MacBook Pro M3 is “probably analogous to 16GB on other systems.”

The MacBook Pro M3 has already come under fire for only including 8GB of Unified Memory in its base configuration, which runs $1,600. MacWorld recently ran a story criticizing the 8GB of memory in the MacBook Pro M3, saying, “If 8GB will be a bottleneck for many today, imagine the performance of that non-upgradeable laptop in a few years’ time.”

Apple’s response is that 8GB on a MacBook Pro M3 is probably closer to 16GB on a Windows laptop. In an interview with Lin YilYi, Apple’s Bob Borchers addressed the 8GB of memory in the MacBook Pro M3:

“Comparing our memory to other systems’ memory actually isn’t equivalent, because of the fact that we have such an efficient use of memory, and we use memory compression, and we have a unified memory architecture. Actually, 8GB on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16GB on other systems. We just happen to be able to use it much more efficiently … I think this is a place where people need to see beyond the specs and actually look at the capabilities.”

Borchers has a point. Due to the fact that the MacBook Pro M3 uses a system-on-a-chip (SoC), it’s able to access memory much more efficiently than a standard Windows laptop. Capacity and speed are two sides of the same coin; if you have faster speeds, you don’t need as much capacity, and vice versa.

In addition, Apple includes a 512GB SSD with the base MacBook Pro M3, which uses two NAND chips. The previous version showed much slower SSD speeds with only a single NAND chip, and due to swap memory being critical in memory-limited situations, the 256GB SSD combined with the 8GB of memory vastly reduced performance. MaxTech’s early testing on the MacBook Pro M2 showed how big of a problem the 8GB of memory combined with the 256GB, single NAND SSD really was.

In real use, that shouldn’t be as big of a problem on the MacBook Pro M3. Unified Memory allows Apple to get away with lower capacity compared to Windows laptops, and the dual-NAND configuration of the SSD keeps things from being too slow when swap memory comes into play. The problem isn’t 8GB of memory, or even that it comes on a $1,600 laptop in 2023. It’s that adding more memory costs so damn much.

You’ll spend an extra $200 for 16GB of memory and an extra $400 for 24GB. Even ignoring the cost of those memory modules — I’ll let you know it’s far less than what Apple’s charging — you can see how big the upcharge really is just from configuration options. In Apple’s mind, each 8GB module of Unified Memory is worth $200. That’s insane.

If you look at a laptop like the Dell XPS 13 Plus, which comes with 16GB of memory for $1,500, you can upgrade it to 32GB for an extra $150. There’s no issue with Apple selling the MacBook Pro M3 with 8GB of memory, even for $1,600. But it shouldn’t cost an extra $200 just to get to 16GB for users who truly do need that extra capacity.

This really isn’t anything new for MacBooks, though, and it doesn’t just apply to memory. If you look at storage options, you’ll need to spend an extra $200 to upgrade the 512GB SSD to a 1TB SSD, and an extra $600 to upgrade the 512GB SSD to a 2TB SSD. Once again, each 512GB chunk of storage is worth $200 in Apple’s mind, despite the fact that the cost for these components isn’t anywhere remotely near that price.

It could go either way — Apple should have the base MacBook Pro M3 with 8GB of Unified Memory sell for a lower price, or it should make the cost of upgrading to 16GB of RAM much cheaper. It doesn’t really matter if you need that memory or not, either. The upgraded model is the one most people should buy, even if they only occasionally go over capacity.

At the very least, that pricing scenario would be a minor annoyance, with Apple nickel and diming people to get the RAM they need (definitely not uncharacteristic of Apple). As it stands now, with the high base price and huge cost of upgrades, it is hard to say the MacBook Pro M3 truly starts at $1,600 when a critical upgrade is locked behind a $200 paywall.

Editors’ Recommendations