CES 2021 Preview: Laptops, Chromebooks, and Gaming PCs

This story is part of THESE, where our editors will bring you the latest news and the hottest gadgets from fully virtual CES 2021.

Many of us have radically changed the way we work in 2020, leaving the office behind and working mostly from home. The idea of ​​having a work computer in the office and a personal computer at home has also gone out the window, and now we are looking for our devices to do more and serve in multiple roles, further blurring the line between mainstream computers. and professionals.

But due to the long development cycle of new laptops, desktops and tablets, no PC manufacturer could realistically take these colossal changes and design them into new products in time for CES 2021. But, what ‘they can do is change the narrative and focus on new or updated products more suited to current reality.

In other words, expect to see a lot of business laptops at CES 2021.

All the work, no play

A year ago at CES 2020 we saw a lot of prototypes, experimental designs, and new gaming PCs – lots of consumer-focused products. This year it will be a little harder.

Instead of first-gen folding screens and colorful gaming rigs, a lot of the focus will be on laptops with better webcams, better microphones, better security features. Basically what your company’s IT department is looking for in a new work laptop. It might not be that flashy, but it’s what a lot of people need right now.

For example, if we learned anything in 2020, it’s that most laptops have really bad webcams. Spend enough hours a day in Zoom meetings and it is starting to get very important. Models with improved hardware, or at least improved software to digitally polish the camera image, will receive a strong marketing push. Physical webcam shutters will continue to gain in popularity.

Not so much for 5G, which was just starting to filter through laptop ads this time around last year. With home Wi-Fi replacing many workers’ need for reliable travel connections, I doubt we’ll see 5G antennas built into every laptop; instead, it will only be an option on a handful of high-end enterprise systems.

A very Chromebook year

The other great thing we learned in 2020 is that Chromebooks can solve most of our laptop problems. Need a low cost, high reliability laptop for a remote learning kid? Chromebook! Need a computer for parents or grandparents that you won’t have to troubleshoot? Chromebook!

Especially with so many families needing a separate device for each household member, especially one per student, Chromebooks saved the day in 2020.

Chromebooks have been part of the mix at every recent CES, but this year I guess we’ll see them pushed to the fore, especially given the uncertainty surrounding COVID vaccine deployments and the mobile target for any kind of. back to normal”.

Every PC maker wants to break out of the $ 250 Chromebook market, so look for slightly improved models. Frankly, a $ 500 Chromebook can deliver a much more premium experience in terms of design, materials, and performance than a $ 500 Windows laptop, so that’s my ChromeOS focus right now.

For PC games, a year of rebuilding

We are in the midst of a great and new era of video games. Unfortunately for fans of PC gaming hardware, all of this excitement is wrapped around the next-gen consoles, the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X.

This new round, which occurs every seven years or so, puts Sealed Living Room Boxes at the top of the game pile, for now. After all, $ 500 (or $ 300 for the smaller Xbox Series S) gets you ray tracing, HDR lighting, and other high-end GPU tricks, previously only available on gaming PCs a lot. more expensive.

But the clock is already ticking on PS5 and XBX. The hardware inside is set in amber, ages slowly, and is doomed to fall behind PC gaming hardware every year. That said, I wouldn’t expect too much, and the official CES topic page for games looks pretty dull right now.

There is at least one big jump expected. At least according to educated speculation, we’ll see laptop-ready versions of Nvidia’s 3000 series graphics cards. This will lead to more powerful gaming laptops – maybe even some that can make Cyberpunk 2077 look great …