When you open up the XPS 13 Plus, three things will immediately strike you as… unusual. Those design choices make the XPS 13 Plus stand out so much visually, but they also make for an unconventional experience. Not necessarily a bad one, but certainly one that fights years of laptop design muscle memory.  First is …

Jul 2022 Even though it costs $200 more than its immediate predecessor, I still think the new M2 version of Apple’s MacBook Air is a great default starting place when you begin your laptop search. In the 14 years since the MacBook Air line launched, I’ve often described it as “the most universally useful laptop you can buy.” That’s because the …

Apple offers MacBooks from $999 all the way up to $3,499, and that’s just the default configurations without optional upgrades, which can add thousands more. With the new M2 chip, we’re now firmly in the second generation of Apple Silicon, and the new M2 MacBook Air is already a favorite, even if it’s more expensive than its predecessor.  The MacBook …

This story is part of Amazon Prime Day, CNET’s guide to everything you need to know and how to find the best deals. I’ve always thought 3D printing is a hobby more people should get into. And we’ve attempted to move the needle on that by highlighting great printers for beginners, 3D printing tips and advice on materials.  Anycubic is …

If Apple isn’t going to make a 17-inch MacBook Pro, then someone else is going to have to. That’s what I always think when I see one of Dell’s big-screen XPS 17 laptops.  The oldest XPS 17 review of mine I could find dates back to 2011, although I’ve been covering this particular product line (or its identically named antecedents) …

Having unboxed and set up many MacBooks over the past 15 years, there’s one settings choice that drives me absolutely crazy. So if you’re buying a new MacBook or want to make your current one a little more useful, you should try clicking a few boxes in the System Preferences menu that always make these machines much more useful.  This …

Apple’s MacBook laptops boast formidable specs, but the most popular model, the 13-inch MacBook Air, has one one unfortunate quirk: a flat-looking 720-pixel webcam with lots of noise and a lack of depth-sensing technology.  Over the past couple of years, Apple has been slowly swapping out these old low-res webcams with newer full HD models. Now the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook …

Now that I’ve had some more time to spend with Microsoft’s latest PC, the Surface Laptop Go 2, it’s become one of my go-to travel laptops for quick trips to the coffee shop. It also acquitted itself well on a cross-country flight, even when the person in front of me insisted on leaning their seat all the way back.  But …

“What a strange-looking MacBook.” That was my first thought when I first saw the 13-inch MacBook Pro with the new M2 chip at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino during WWDC 2022.  There wasn’t anything particularly strange about it — it looked like the last several models of 13-inch Apple laptops, both Pro and Air. But in the Apple Silicon era, I’ve …

This story is part of WWDC 2022, CNET’s complete coverage from and about Apple’s annual developers conference. Apple’s new M2-powered MacBook Air adds a lot of new features, but it also brings back my least favorite: The laptop’s starting price is over $1,000. For much of its life, the MacBook Air sat at a comfortable $999, but in 2018 a redesign …