Buy the machine you actually need

Notebooks by profession and by budget, smartphones, the parts inside a desktop, and the network they all sit on — explained in plain language, with the trade-offs stated rather than glossed over.

Work out your spec → Read the guides

Gadgets

Where do you actually buy Apple products now?

"Apple Store" means three different things depending on how someone asks the question — a physical mall location, the web storefront at apple.com, or the app on an iPhone. All three carry the same…

News & industry

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News & industry

Alienware Area-51m R2

Characteristics: 10th Gen Intel Core i9, NVIDIA GeForce RTX, 17.3" FHD or 4K, up to 64GB RAM, multiple SSD options. Description: This…

Smartphones

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Notebooks

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Desktops & components

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Free · runs in your browser

The laptop spec adviser

Say what you do with a machine, how long you keep one and how much you carry it. It returns the spec that fits — processor class, memory, storage, screen and battery — with the reasoning for each line and a guide to read next.

Work out your spec →
  • A spec plate you can take to a shop or a spec sheet
  • Storage sized from how much you actually shoot or store
  • Every line says why, not just what
  • Runs in your browser — nothing is sent or stored

Corrections & suggestions

Spec moved on since we wrote it?

Hardware dates faster than almost anything else we could write about: a recommendation that was right last year can be wrong now. If a guide here is out of date, or there is a machine or a use case we have not covered, tell the editorial team.

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Most questions are answered within two working days.