Guides and how-tos

Practical hardware advice: what to buy, how to install it and what the specs actually mean.

• October 11, 2026

  Colour Accuracy Is Unverifiable on 130 of 196 Laptops

  Only 66 of the 196 laptops we track publish a colour gamut figure at all, and a third of those use NTSC, an obsolete unit concentrated at the budget end. Here is what the number means and what to do when there isn't one.

• October 11, 2026

  Gaming Laptops Hide Their Brightness, and Peak at 500 Nits

  Only 93 of 196 laptops publish a brightness figure. Gaming is the worst class at 11 of 37, and not one gaming laptop we track claims more than 500 nits. Budget tops out at 300.

• October 11, 2026

  182 Laptops Publish the Battery Size. 30 Publish How Long It Lasts.

  Capacity is on almost every spec sheet. Runtime is on 30 of 196. And the machine with the biggest battery we track, 99.9Wh, has the shortest published runtime at 5.4 hours.

• October 11, 2026

  Laptop Chargers Run From 20W to 450W, and 65W Is Where the Market Sits

  Only 96 of 196 laptops publish their charger wattage. Of those that do, 52 are 100W or under and could run off USB-C. The other 44 need the brick, and the line falls almost exactly between gaming and everything else.

• October 10, 2026

  Who Makes Laptop Screens? Decoding Every Panel Part Number

  BOE, AUO, Innolux, LG Display, Sharp, Samsung, CSOT, Panda, Tianma and IVO make almost every laptop screen sold. Here is how to decode their part numbers, from 272 panels.

• October 10, 2026

  Best Laptops for Game Development: Only 13% Meet Epic's Own Spec

  Epic recommends 32GB of RAM and 8GB of VRAM for the Unreal editor. Only 13% of the laptops we track clear both bars. Five tiers, cheapest first, with the catch at each one.

• October 10, 2026

  Best Laptops for Rust: 6 in 10 Cannot Run It at All

  Facepunch asks for 12GB of RAM and a GTX 1060 as a minimum, 16GB and an RTX 3060 as a recommendation. About 6 in 10 laptops we track have integrated graphics. Five tiers of the ones that qualify.

• October 10, 2026

  Best Laptops for Monster Hunter Wilds: The Recommended Spec Assumes Frame Generation

  Capcom annotates its recommended spec as 1080p60 on Medium with Frame Generation enabled. On laptops that is a hardware requirement in disguise: 36 of the 180 we track can do it, and 13 can do the multi-frame version.

• October 10, 2026

  Best Laptops for Counter-Strike 2: The GPU Is Not the Problem, the Panel Is

  Valve publishes no recommended spec for CS2, only a minimum, and its GPU floor is "1GB or more". 92% of laptops clear the CPU bar, but more than half are stuck at 60Hz. That is the real tier list.

• October 10, 2026

  Best Laptops for Helldivers 2: The Minimum Spec Asks for an i7, and That Is the Clue

  Arrowhead's minimum CPU is an i7-4790K, unusually high for a floor, and its two tiers disagree about storage. Here is what that means for the laptops you can actually buy.