Seven years later, ASUS attempts to launch a $199 laptop again

Almost seven years ago, ASUS tried to launch the $199 Eee PC Linux laptop that ended up costing above $300, and since then the Eee brand shifted its focus to the more premium market before quietly fading away. That's why we're slightly surprised to see ASUS launching the EeeBook X205 -- not to be confused with ASUS' dual-screen concept device -- at IFA today. It's an 11.6-inch Windows 8.1 laptop that'll cost just $199 (or €199; both including tax). If all goes well, this will be another very affordable option alongside the leaked HP Stream 14 of the same price and operating system, and it'll even be cheaper than ASUS' own Chromebooks.

The X205 weighs only 980 grams and packs a quad-core Intel Atom T3735 Bay Trail processor, 2GB of RAM, a 1,366 x 768 LED backlit screen, a VGA webcam, a microSDXC slot and a micro-HDMI socket. The machine -- available in black, white, gold or red -- boasts a full-size keyboard along with a large trackpad, and its 38Wh battery claims to offer up to 12 hours of web-browsing time. In terms of storage, you can choose either 32GB or 64GB of flash memory, in addition to a generous amount of free cloud storage space: 15GB of Microsoft OneDrive for life, plus 100GB of OneDrive and 500GB of ASUS WebStorage for two years.

There's no word on the exact launch date for the X205, but we've been told that it'll become available some time between late Q3 and early Q4 this year. Let's see if HP can beat that, and more importantly, here's hoping both companies can deliver on their promises.

We've now had a chance to spend a few minutes with the EeeBook X205 and, if we're honest, it's akin to stepping into a parallel world where tablets never went mainstream. Those who remember toiling away with a netbook will be surprised at how thin and light the device is, thanks in part to Intel's power-sipping Bay Trail CPU.

Despite sitting in a similar class to small Windows 8 tablets, there's no touchscreen here, so all of your computing will be done through the keyboard and mouse. As impressive as the size of the EeeBook's keyboard is, the feel is very spongy, despite more travel than on its predecessor. The same problem carries over to the clickpad, which is sufficiently sluggish that you keep pawing at the screen in the hope of it responding to your commands. Given that, from what little we've seen, performance also leaves something to be desired, but I guess there's a reason that you'll be able to pick this up for just $199.

How to Upgrade the RAM (Memory) on a Laptop

Got a sluggish or aging laptop that could use a speed boost? One of the most cost-effective upgrades to make your computer run faster is to simply add more RAM. In about the time it takes to read this step-by-step tutorial, you can upgrade your computer’s memory and performance.

1. Find Out If Your Computer Needs More RAM

Low memory is often the cause of bottlenecks on a computer, and can lead to not just slow performance but also stability problems. If you’re a power user–multitasking across several intensive programs or keeping 30 or so browser tabs open at once–more memory will likely help your system run more smoothly.

You can check your laptop’s memory usage in Windows Task Manager: With your typical applications open, hit Win+S to search for “task manager” (in Windows 7, hit the Windows key and type “task manager” in the search field). Then, in Task Manager’s performance tab, see how much memory is being used out of the total available. You’ll also see how many physical memory slots are in use and, thus, how many are available for adding more memory.

You’ll get an even more detailed view by clicking on the “Open Resource Monitor” option at the bottom of the Task Manager window and navigating to the Memory tab. Note the screens will look slightly different under Windows 7 (shots below come from Windows 8.1).

 

Need more memory!

2. Find the Right Kind of Memory

Once you’ve decided to upgrade the RAM, the hardest part is finding the correct memory for your system. Memory supplier Crucial offers handy tools to help you select the right memory. You can download a system scanner and let it find the upgrades available or simply choose your system from the Crucial Advisor tool.

Depending on your system, Crucial’s Advisor tool might ask you for specifics you might not be sure about–for example, whether you have a dual core processor or a quad core one. You can find these details in Windows’ System Information window: Use Win+S to search for “msinfo32″ and look for the appropriate line (e.g., look at the processor line to see how many cores it has.)

Crucial’s tools will tell you how many memory banks (or slots) you have and the memory chips you can buy for your system. 

 

For better performance, memory should be added in pairs. If your laptop has two memory banks, for example, and one of them is taken up by a 4GB chip, get a matching 4GB chip for the other, empty slot.

3. Open the Panel to Locate Your Memory Banks

With your additional memory in hand, it’s time to upgrade your laptop memory, a pretty straightforward process.

First, turn off your laptop and unplug the power adapter. Then open the panel on the bottom of your laptop covering the memory banks. (Depending on your system, you might have to unscrew the whole back of the laptop to access the memory and other components.)

 

3. Ground Yourself to Avoid Electrostatic Discharge

Before you touch any component in your PC, though, touch any metal surface inside the computer (e.g., the back of the hard drive or a metal connector for another component). This will discharge any potentially damaging static electricity from your body.

MORE: How to Disable Automatic Restart in Windows 8.1, Windows 8 or Windows 7

4. Remove Any Memory in the Upper Slot

Chances are any installed memory will be taking the upper slot, so you’ll need to remove it and put it in the other bank so you have space for your added memory. 

To remove the memory module, push apart the clips holding it in place. The memory module should pop up at an angle. 

Then, holding the memory module by its edges–without touching the gold connectors at the bottom, lift the module out.

5. Install the Old Memory Module in the Lower Slot

Next, insert the module into the bottom slot at a 45-degree angle, with the gold edge facing down (the same way it was installed in the upper slot). Use even pressure with your fingers at the top of the module to push it into place. When you hear a click and feel the memory module snap into place, firmly push the module back until it is installed flat and level, with the clips holding it securely.

 

 5. Repeat the Installation with the New Memory Module in the Upper Slot

Take the new memory module, with the gold edge facing down, and repeat the process in the top slot: Insert the module at an angle, and push down and back until it clicks into place.

 

That’s it! Power up your laptop and head back to the System Information window or Task Manager to verify your new memory has been added. Enjoy your upgraded memory!

Lenovo built a ludicrously heavy, 17-inch, touchscreen gaming laptop

Gaming laptops have always been huge boat anchors with questionable design decisions and plenty of power underneath the hood. In recent years, however, companies like Alienware and Razer have attempted to put the gaming laptop on a bit of a diet, slimming things down and muting the design language a bit.



Lenovo, on the other hand, is taking things in a different direction. The company's new Y70 Touch gaming laptop (the "Y" might as well stand for YOLO) weighs in at a whopping 7.5 pounds, and Lenovo claims that makes it "thinner and lighter" than most laptops in its class. That indeed might be the case, because the Y70 Touch eschews the piddly 13- and 14-inch screens found on Alienware and Razer's latest laptops. Instead, it packs a 17-inch display, which used to be table stakes in gaming laptops until people realized that it was more beneficial to actually be able to transport their computers.

However, the Y70 Touch does have a nice trick — as you might have guessed, that screen is fully touch-compatible. While most games won't take advantage of this feature, it does add a nice layer of utility to the machine. Lenovo didn't publish baseline specs, but you can max the machine out with a Core i7 processor, Nvidia GTX graphics, up to 16GB of RAM, and either a 1TB hard drive or 256GB of solid-state storage. Battery life is expectedly average: up to five hours, but we're guessing that isn't under a heavy gaming load.

As for its style, well... that's always a matter of taste. However, we've definitely seen more ostentatious-looking machines in our time. The Y70 Touch will be available in October starting at $1,299 — but we don't know exactly what you'll get for that price.

What to do when your laptop's touchpad stops working

The built-in touchpad in Raji Yusuff Oluwagbenga's laptop no longer works, making Windows nearly impossible to use. Here's how to (hopefully) fix the problem.



Have you ever tried to use a Windows PC without a mouse, touchpad, or other pointing device? It's all but impossible. So when your laptop's touchpad stops responding to your fingers, you've got a problem.

If the problem just started, reboot your computer and see if that fixes it. (Yes, I know that's painfully obvious, but we all sometimes overlook the obvious.) If that doesn't work, try these solutions.

First, make sure you haven't accidentally disabled the touchpad. In all likelihood, there's a key combination that will toggle the touchpad on and off. It usually involves holding down the Fn key (which is probably near the lower-left corner of the keyboard) while pressing another key.

But what other key should you press? It's probably one of the function keys (F1 through F12), although it might be something else. Examine the keyboard, paying particular attention to the little icons (usually blue) on some of the keys. Look for an icon that might suggest the touchpad.

Unfortunately, not all touchpad icons are easy to figure out. I never would have guessed the one on my Lenovo X220. I found it by googling the model name and number plus disable touchpad. If you can't guess the icon, I suggest you do the same.

If that doesn't fix the problem, check the touchpad settings. Go to the Start menu or the Windows 8 search charm and type mouse settings. Select Change mouse settings (there are other options that are very similar, so pick the one with that exact wording).

Once in the dialog box, click the tab that seems to be for your touchpad (the name varies from model to model). Make sure that everything is enabled. If there are setting buttons, make sure that everything is on.

If that doesn't help, you may need a new driver. Go to your laptop manufacturer's web site and search for your model number and the words touchpad driver. See if there's a driver you can download and install.

If none of these suggestions work, you've got a hardware problem. Assuming you're not ready to try this sort of repair yourself, you have two options: You can send the laptop to a shop for repairs, or you can buy a small, wireless mouse and use that in its place.

Laptop Reviews - Toshiba Satellite Radius P55W-B5224

Toshiba’s new Satellite Radius “2-in-1″ convertible laptop may not revolutionize the category, but if you’re looking for a large-screen laptop that can convert to a full slate, you could do worse than the Radius P55W-B5224, provided you don’t need bleeding-edge performance.

At first blush the Radius looks like any other widescreen 15.6-inch laptop, complete with spacious trackpad and an island-style keyboard. There’s even a numeric keypad, though the compressed keys make it a little difficult to use for rapid-fire input. The spacious screen features 10-point touchability, and as you push it back you find it rotates a full 360 degrees around. This lets you use the laptop in presentation mode (aka “the inverted V”) or as a slate, with the keyboard face down on the underside of the device. If you’ve seen the Lenovo Yoga, you get the picture here—except the Radius has a considerably bigger display.

The jury remains out on whether people enjoy using a tablet like this, and the oversized screen presents more of a challenge than you might expect. At 4.8 pounds the Radius far outweighs standard tablet devices, and setting your device with the keyboard face down on the table (or your crotch) feels disconcerting and seems as if it will eventually damage the thing. That said, while the P55W’s sheer size makes it a bit awkward to hold as a slate, it’s actually comparably light and, at 21mm thick, quite slim, too. Largely composed of brushed aluminum, it features slim plastic bumpers around the edges that should help with some of the natural jostling a convertible like this is going to be subjected to.

In regular use, the P55W works without complaint. The keyboard, touchpad, and touchscreen are all accurate and responsive, and the audio quality is crisp and loud, courtesy of Harman/Kardon speakers. On the other hand, the screen, at 1,920 x 1,080 pixels, is quite dim, and its generally slow graphics don’t do it any additional favors. In fact, on the whole the P55W underperforms for its specs. Despite a relatively high-end 2.6GHz Core i7 and 8GB of RAM, the laptop pulled benchmark scores that weren’t much better than what you see on Atom-based tablets. You can chalk some of this up to a slow 1TB hard disk, but whatever the cause, the lagginess is noticeable even when you aren’t pushing the system through a tough battery of benchmarks.

The P55W offers a trio of USB 3.0 ports, HDMI, and an SD card reader, all about par for the tablet category. However, battery life that stretches beyond 6.5 hours is virtually unheard of for a laptop with a screen of this size, and considering Toshiba has managed to keep the weight under five pounds, that’s a real testament to some fine power engineering. Unforunately the relatively low weight and long battery life come at the expense of power, which might be a dealbreaker if you’re trying to use this for something besides showing off while you’re mainlining Netflix.

Alienware 18 Gaming Laptop Review: A PC-Killer With Nvidia SLI Graphics

When it comes to gaming laptops. Alienware (actually owned by Dell) is synonymous with the ultra-premium end of the market. It’s not just other-worldly design, illumination and hot air exhausts bigger that rival those on fighter jets that set its laptops apart from most of the competition either.

Your average Alienware gaming laptop sports PC-killing specifications too that churn out ludicrous framerates at 1080p. The model I’m looking at today is the Alienware 18 with a model number P19E001. It’s a monstrous machine with a huge 18.4in display and resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 (1080p).

Many ultrabooks and macbooks sport higher resolutions, however no laptop (and few PCs too for that matter) would be able to play games at maximum settings smoothly as you approach the resolution known as 4K.

This has a resolution of 3,840 x 2,160 -  a huge step up from a 1080p screen in terms of pixel count.This is a key factor as the screen still looks sharp but you’ll have the advantage of using the Alienware’s awesome specification to achieve playable framerates in today’s demanding games.

Under the hood

Current pricing starts at $2,099, which offers anIntel INTC -0.44% Core i7 processor, 8GB of memory and two Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M graphics cards in SLI. Our model is slightly older, and sports two GeForce GTX 780M’s but the latest models offer dual AMD Radeon R9 M290X or Nvidia GeForce GTX 880M graphics cards with prices topping $5,000 in some places with crazy specifications to match.

The rest of the specification on the model here stands at 16GB of RAM and an Intel Core i7-4930MX processor, which has a maximum clock speed of 3.9GHz and has four physical CPU cores backed up by Hyper-Threading, giving it eight threads in total – more than enough for today’s games.

There’s a 500GB Samsung SM841 mSATA SSD  and to give you some extra storage space there’s a 750GB Western Digital WDC -0.03% Black hard disk inside too, with space for a second 2.5in drive – either a hard disk or SSD. With such a large screen, it’s likely you’d be watching movies on it at some point and as well as a Gigabit Ethernet port for hooking straight up to a router, there’s a speedy Intel dual Band 802.11ac WiFi adapter which will handle HD streaming services such as Netflix NFLX -0.16% with bandwidth to spare. Or, of course, you could use the built-in Blu-ray and DVD drive.

Ergonomics

The keyboard is large with the full complement of numpad keys and even a row of macro keys that can be programmed using Alienware’s on screen display software. The keys are individually back-lit and both these, the touch pad and the external case illuminations can be cycled through many different colors.  You can even assign different colors to different areas of the keyboard and there are a number of presets that change the color according to themes, some of which gradually scroll across the keys or indicate battery level for example.

Even the touchpad is back-lit – it’s bizarre when you first use it but the pad itself is a joy to use and the backlight only makes things easier on low light. the buttons offer good resistance without being stiff too and the keyboard is very responsive. However, the main issue I found is that because the laptop is so high – well over 5cm/2in, that the sharp, angular edges of the front of the palm wrest can dig into your wrists. You’d need a pretty low-lying desk for this not to be a problem too and having the laptop sitting on your lap probably isn’t a great solution either. It gets very warm, you’ll risk blocking one of the numerous air intakes plus the laptop itself weighs in at nearly 6kg – three times your average 15in model.

With all that volume to fill with hardware, there’s plenty of space for speakers and the 2.1-channel set includes a subwoofer too. However, these still fall well short of even a modest desktop set, especially with bass. Inside is a mass of hardware, with some extensive cooling systems to deal with the heat from the two graphics processors and the Core i7 CPU. As a result, when you’re just web browsing or watching videos, the Alienware 18 is remarkably quiet. Fire up a game or put the CPU under heavy load, though, and the fans kick into action and we’d certainly recommend using headphones to cut out the noise.

Build quality and screen

I’ve been very impressed with the build quality of this laptop. It’s exceptionally solid-feeling and it’s the first laptop I’ve come across (and I’ve tested a few other Alienwares in my time too) that has little flex or bend in the screen. Even if you push down in the middle from the outside there’s no distortion. I can easily see this product lasting many years of knocks and scrapes – something its smaller, thinner contemporaries will likely struggle to match.

The screen itself isn’t spectacularly bright, but the contrast is respectable and at full brightness it’s perfectly visible outside in bright conditions. Colours are well above average too and there was no noticeable merging of blacks in dark scenes in games and movies either. As I’ve already mentioned, this isn’t on-par with an Apple AAPL +0.28% Retina display resolution-wise, but its 1080p screen means that its two graphics cards are able to handle all current games at maximum settings.

Performance

Plugged into the mains, the Alienware 18 runs at full speed, tapping into the power of both 780M GPUs. However, as soon as you unplug the power cable, the whole system goes into power saving mode. This sees frame rates plummet in games and sadly there’s nothing you can do to prevent this. I tried delving into the depths of Windows’ power management and also Alienware’s own Command Center program where you can access various power saving features but none would force the laptop to run at maximum speed without mains power.

This is a bit of a shame but in reality, the battery will likely be depleted in less than an hour anyway. PC Mark 8′s battery test put general battery life at just under two hours. This is a fairly heavy power test, which I ran on Window’s balanced power saving setting, so if you switched off WiFi, ran the graphics off the integrated Intel HD graphics and lowered the screen brightness, you’d likely see more than this.

Of  course, games are where the money is at and the Alienware 18 certainly didn’t disappoint.   In Battlefield 4, it was slightly slower than desktop graphics cards such as AMD’s R9 290X and Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 780, although with a minimum frame rate of 57fps, there’s clearly a huge amount of headroom for future games or connecting a higher resolution monitor.

Crysis 3 loved the Alienware 18′s SLI configuration and it was noticeably faster than AMD’s R9 290X and Nvidia’s GTX 780. Again, there’s plenty of scope here for playing games at higher resolutions on a PC monitor if you’re considering the Alienware as a desktop PC replacement.

The Unigine Valley benchmark is one you can run at home (download it here) to compare your PC or laptop to the Alienware 18. Once again, it topped the graphs with a score of 4,185, but this  dropped to just 848 when using the battery – an indication of just what a hit games will see.

Finally, Cinebench R15 is a rendering program that stresses all of a CPU’s cores/threads. The Alienware 18 has eight threads, so it wasn’t surprising to see it better the desktop Intel Core i5-4690K, which only has four and it also beat AMD’s FX-8350, which has eight. Perhaps more impressively, it came fairly close to matching the powerful desktop Core i7-4790K, proving that the Alienware can certainly keep up with some of the fastest CPUs available.

Conclusion

If there’s one thing I made my mind up about the Alienware 18 it’s that it isn’t a laptop for gaming on the move. This is a desktop replacement – a PC killer and in that role it excels. You’d hope so given you could buy a half-decent second user car for this money. However, it’s certainly easier to lug it around than it is your average PC. Fancy a round of Battlefield 4 in Starbucks or at the airport? So long as you have mains power, then you’ll be fine, although again, the noise and heat from this high-end gaming machine are very noticeable.

This is a huge amount of money to pay for a laptop too and a similarly-performing PC could be had for a third of the price. Perhaps where the Alienware 18 is most at home is literally that – in the home. Chuck our your gaming PC, connect the laptop to your favorite mouse, keyboard and monitor and you’ve got a powerful gaming machine that takes up a lot less space than your average PC and can be neatly tucked away when not in use. It demands a premium price tag but the build quality, awesome specification and funky features are aspects you simply won’t find on your average $1,500 gaming laptop.

Toshiba Satellite P50t-B Y3110 review: The first 4K laptop

The only constant in technology is change. The race to be the fastest has somewhat settled down and now the focus is on other attributes. Smartphones and laptops are now competing against each other in the display resolution race. We've already seen 2K smartphones and HD+ laptops, and the next flagpole is 4K.


Toshiba has overtaken others with the launch of its 4K (Ultra HD) laptop Satellite P50t-B Y3110. It has not just demonstrated it but has also made it commercially available. It's commendable that the Japanese giant has made the device available in the Indian market soon after its international launch. Is Satellite P50t-B Y3110 a revolutionary laptop? We try to find out in our review. 

Build & design
Toshiba Satellite P50t-B Y3110 looks premium with its brushed aluminium chassis that sports a satin gold colour. The device looks and feels larger than life with its big 15.6-inch panel and wide form factor. It's also not lightweight at 2.35Kg. 

The lid sports a silver Toshiba logo exuding a minimalist feel. Opening it reveals the display and keyboard panels.

 

The keyboard panel also sports the same brushed aluminium finish and houses a frameless tile keyboard that sits between the big speaker grill and a palm rest section that features the trackpad. The LED-lit, circular Power button sits at the top right corner, located on the speaker grill. The stereo speakers are from Harman Kardon Speakers and boast of DTS Sound technology. 

The backlit keyboard also features 10-key numeric keypad efficiently utilising the bigger panel real estate. The trackpad is located slightly towards the left but we have to say that it is one of the best trackpads we've used on a Windows device. It still lags behind the MacBook trackpads though. There's a dedicated key to disable the trackpad in case you want to rest your palms while watching a movie.

 

Just below the front edge, you'll find an SD-card reader. The front edge meanwhile, sports LED indicators for Power, connectivity and disk use. The left edge houses two USB 3.0 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port and an optical drive(DVD writer). 

The right edge also houses two USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port capable of 4K video output, and audio out and microphone ports. 


4K display
Toshiba Satellite P50t's headline feature is its 15.6-inch 4K display. At this time it's the only laptop available in the market to sport a Ultra HD display, with a resolution of 3840x2160p, about four times more than full-HD. 

It's one of the best looking displays we've ever seen with extremely vibrant colours, and excellent brightness levels. Text and graphics look sharp and crisp. At times it feels the clarity is equivalent to printed paper. The display is Technicolor-certified for colour accuracy. Thanks to the IPS panel, viewing angles are very wide.

 

The touch-enabled display offers 10-finger touch support, an anti-finger print coating and palm rejection, that make for a great touch experience. But we feel the laptop is too big to use as a handy touch device. 

While the display has the same resolution as offered by 4K TVs, getting good 4K content is difficult at this time. There are very few movie titles available in 4K and streaming 4K videos on youTube is a pain unless you have a 16Mbps+ broadband connection. 

We tried streaming a 4K video on Netflix and found the quality to be excellent. Having experienced the same video in full-HD, we can say the level of detail was much more. 

More than content consumption, we feel that 4K display is well suited for professionals for editing 4K videos and high-resolution pictures. 

Having said that, the Windows 8 Modern UI is not the best thing to look at on a 4K screen. We experienced scaling issues with some Modern UI apps and fonts, and you may end up switching to a lower resolution if you use them regularly. 

Software
Our review unit came with 64-bit Windows 8.1 and we updated it to Update 1, the latest version of the OS that features power and search buttons, ability to pin Modern UI apps to the taskbar, and boot directly to desktop, among others. 

Windows 8.1 Update 1 offers a better desktop experience and streamlines Modern/ Windows 8 apps with desktop apps. 

Toshiba also bundles additional software with the laptop, including CyberLink MediaShow 6, Chroma Tune, a video player, and customised system apps in addition to Skype, and Amazon Kindle among others. These apps can be easily uninstalled if you don't require them. 

Performance
In terms of hardware specifications, the Satellite P50t is a beast. It comes with top of the line hardware including a 2.5GHz 4th Gen Intel i7-4710HQ processor, AMD Radeon R9 M265X graphics and 16GB RAM. It comes with a 1TB hybrid hard drive out of which 8GB solid state storage is dedicated to the system for boosting performance and a speedy boot. Given the large size of 4K files, the 1TB hard disk is more of a necessity than a luxury. 

With so much power under the hood, you'll never encounter any delay or stutter while performing tasks like web browsing, casual gaming, multimedia consumption, using apps like office suites, and imaging editors. Thanks to the powerful graphics processor, 4K videos render without a hitch and rich 3D games run super smooth.

 

While we don't endorse benchmarks, Toshiba Satellite P50t scored 3801 in PCMark8 (Creative Accelerated) and 2365 in PCMark 8 (Home conventional) tests, and 1094 in Novabench. The notebook scored 5213 in Cloudgate 1.1 and 11,750 in Icestorm 1.2 tests of 3DMark. These scores are higher compared to some high-end Ultrabooks available in the market. 

The most disappointing aspect of the Satellite P50t is its battery life. Perhaps the 4K display is responsible for this. In our tests, the laptop lasted about 2.5-3 hours while using Microsoft Word, a picture editor, a music streaming service and playing some YouTube videos, keeping the screen at full brightness. In our video look test, it lasted about 2 hours. 

The laptop sports an HD front webcam with a stereo microphone, which is good for video chats. The Harmon Kardon speakers offer high quality sound output that doesn't distort at high volume levels. However, the speakers are not very loud. 

Overall, the laptop offers high-end performance but the subpar battery life disappoints. 

Verdict
At a price of Rs 86,000, the Toshiba Satellite P50t-B Y3110 seems to be a good deal, bringing together a 4K display, high-end specifications, and a premium design. More than content consumption, the real use case for the device is in content creation. 

If you're a multimedia professional and deal with high-resolution files, then it's the best device to edit on the go, without the need to connect a secondary screen. 

However, the below-average battery life is a big dampener. It won't even last a Delhi-Mumbai flight and you'll always need to lug a charger with you.

 

For 4K media consumption, we'd recommend buying a 4K TV. 

If you're not finicky about a 4K screen (there are not many reasons to be) and just want a high-resolution display-equipped laptop, the MacBook Pro with Retina display is your best bet. It offers a much better battery backup with its jaw-dropping pixel rich display. It's worth pointing out that a large number of multimedia professionals use Macs and they won't need to switch to an alien ecosystem if they have already invested in it.