It's a great value for a very premium-feeling product. The price on this tablet/keyboard combo has actually dropped recently, down to $799 (£635 or $AU1,070), and that includes a very impressive AMOLED display.
#Best laptop for djing 2016 pro#
There's no new Surface Pro from Microsoft this year, so my tablet-style hybrid of choice is this slim Samsung model, which beats the Surface Pro on price by including its keyboard cover in the box, rather than forcing you to buy it separately. The Folio G1 is a little bit thicker and uses Core M instead of Core i-series processors, but it's still very slim and attractive, offers a 4K touchscreen option, and even has a 180-degree hinge for lying flat on a table. The Spectre, while impressively thin, lacks a touchscreen and has very limited configuration options.
#Best laptop for djing 2016 professional#
HP has been pushing its 10mm-thick Spectre 13-inch laptop as a high-end flagship, but I prefer this model from HP's professional line. This is my current pick for the best laptop-style hybrid. This professional version of the Yoga is also one of the only laptops available with an OLED display, which makes it more expensive, but it also looks stunning. The ThinkPad version of the Yoga has always been my favorite of Lenovo's many Yoga products, because the keyboard retracts into the body when you fold it into its tablet mode (technically, rather than the keys retracting, the keyboard tray rises up flush with the keyboard, but let's not split hairs). I just wish it had a couple of extra USB ports for the Rift/Vive and accessories (a point that I acknowledge runs counter to my USB-C claims above), but that's the only real flaw I can find. It's got an OLED screen, which is amazing to play games on, an excellent keyboard, and an Nvidia GeForce 1060 GPU, which is powerful enough to run all the big VR headsets. Then Alienware comes up with a new version of its 13-inch gaming laptop that pretty much runs the table on my wish list. I've always wanted a really good smaller gaming laptop, but previous attempts just didn't cut it: poor performance, lackluster screens, high prices. Yes, having only USB-C ports take some adjustment, but check back in a couple of years and almost every laptop will be USB-C only. The real reason it's still king of the premium laptops is that nearly every part of it has been updated, from the thinner, lighter design to the brighter screen, to the larger touchpad, which is twice the size of the older model's. The Touch Bar is actually the least important part of the new MacBook Pro. It's also worth mentioning that Microsoft's Surface Pro 4 is still my favorite tablet based-hybrid, but it wasn't updated in 2016, so it's not included here. I've expanded my personal picks for 2016 from the usual five slots to six, because I've included both of the systems Apple updated this year, the 12-inch MacBook and the new MacBook Pro. It's that overall sum-of-its-parts "feel" that makes for a computer you'd feel comfortable potentially spending thousands on.
Yes, they were among the fastest and longest-running, with the most forward-looking designs - but much more importantly, I chose them because they hit that perfect balance of price, performance, features and design.
The laptops collected here are my personal favorites for the year. We saw the first systems with OLED displays (something you really have to see in person to appreciate) gaming laptops that could handle VR hardware without being as hefty as a big-city phone book and a race to create ever-thinner systems, even dipping below the 10mm mark. While 2016 may not have had a lot of highlights for many people, it was at least a good year for laptops.