laptop News - Page 2 of 38 - CNX Software

April 17, 2026April 17, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Intel Core Series 3 “Wildcat Lake” processor family launched for entry-level laptops and Edge AI systems

After several leaks, the Intel Core Series 3 “Wildcat Lake” entry-level processor family is now official. Intel describes it as the first “hybrid AI-ready Core Series processor”. As expected, the “Computer & CPU tile” comes with up to six cores (2x P cores + 4x LPE cores), up to 2-core Intel Xe 3 graphics, up to 40 TOPS of combined AI performance, and LPDDR5x/DDR5 memory interfaces. The “Platform controller tile” integrates six PCIe Gen4 lanes, two Thunderbolt 4 interfaces, two USB 3.2 and eight USB 2.0 interfaces, as well as WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0 connectivity. The Computer & GPU tile is manufactured using an Intel 18A process, while the Platform controller tile is manufactured with another “External” process (TSMC?). Single-channel memory is confirmed, and it looks like eMMC flash will be replaced with UFS 3.0 memory for edge systems with soldered-on memory, although many systems will make use of […]

April 13, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Linux 7.0 Release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 7.0 on LKML: The last week of the release continued the same “lots of small fixes” trend, but it all really does seem pretty benign, so I’ve tagged the final 7.0 and pushed it out. I suspect it’s a lot of AI tool use that will keep finding corner cases for us for a while, so this may be the “new normal” at least for a while. Only time will tell. Anyway, this last week was a little bit of everything: networking (core and drivers), arch fixes, tooling and selftests, and various random fixes all over the place. Let’s keep testing, and obviously tomorrow the merge window for 7.1 opens. I already have four dozen pull requests pending – thank you to all the early people. Linus This follows the Linux 6.19 release about two months ago, which brought us PCIe link encryption and […]

April 8, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

ASUS Zenbook A16 – A $1699 Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme CoPilot+ laptop

ASUS Zenbook A16 is one of the first Copilot+ PCs/laptops based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme 18-core Armv9 SoC and is now available for $1,699 on BestBuy or $1,999 on the ASUS website. The laptop features a 16-inch “3K” OLED with touchscreen, 48GB of RAM, a 1TB NVMe SSD, HDMI 2.1 video output, WiFi 7 and Bluetooth connectivity, and a few Thunderbolt and USB ports. ASUS Zenbook A16 (UX3607) specifications: SoC – Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme (X2E-96-100) CPU – 18x Armv9 cores with 12 Prime cores up to 5.0 GHz (single/dual core) / 4.4 GHz (multicore), and 6 Efficiency cores up to 3.6 GHz GPU – Adreno X2-90 @ 1.85 GHz with support for DirectX 12.2 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.4, OpenCL 3.0 VPU Encode: HEVC, AVC: Dual 8K UHD @ 30 FPS, AV1: 8K UHD @ 15 FPS, UHD @ 60 FPS Decode: AV1, HEVC, AVC: Dual 8K @ 60 […]

March 5, 2026March 5, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Checking out the actual AMD Ryzen SoC used on CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 laptop

I’ve just completed the review of the CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16, a laptop based on an AMD Ryzen 5 6600H SoC. All software testing on Windows 11 Pro and Ubuntu 25.10 confirmed that the laptop was based on an AMD Ryzen 5 6600H SoC, but I was asked to confirm that the actual CPU on the motherboard was indeed the advertised chip, for reasons I’ll explain below. Let’s do that right now. I had already done a teardown of the laptop, but since the AMD Ryzen processor was covered by copper pipes for cooling, I could not read the markings on the chip. So earlier today, I removed the bottom cover of the laptop again and loosened the three screws holding the pipes on top of the CPU, so I could check the markings on the processor. It’s an AMD Ryzen 5, a good sign, but there’s nothing that […]

March 1, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 review – Part 3: Ubuntu 25.10 on a mid-range AMD Ryzen 5 6600H laptop

CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 Ubuntu 25.10 Linux review

We’ve already checked CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 hardware in the first part of the review, before testing the AMD Ryzen 5 6600H laptop with Windows 11 Pro, and today I’ll report my experience using the CoreBook Air Plus 16 laptop with Linux using Ubuntu 25.10 distribution. The Ubuntu review will include system information, benchmarks, YouTube 4K and 8K video playback, feature testing, storage and WiFi 6 performance, and measurement of fan noise and power consumption/battery life. Ubuntu 26.04 vs Ubuntu 25.10 installation The initial plan was to install Ubuntu 26.04 (daily image) on the laptop in dual boot configuration with Windows 11 Pro. So I resized the Windows partition in Disk Management to leave a 125GB partition for Ubuntu. I downloaded a daily Ubuntu 26.04 ISO (February 28, 2026), and created a startup disk on my Ubuntu 24.04 laptop using an 8GB USB flash drive. I plugged the USB […]

February 21, 2026March 5, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 review – Part 2: An AMD Ryzen 5 6600H-powered, mid-range laptop tested with Windows 11 Pro

CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 laptop review Windows 11

I’ve already checked out the hardware of the CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 laptop in the first part of the review, so today, I’ll report my experience using the AMD Ryzen 5 6600H laptop with the pre-installed Windows 11 Pro operating system. We’ll start with a software overview and a test of key features, followed by benchmarking, evaluation of WiFi 6 performance, and measurement of fan noise, power consumption, and battery life. Software Overview and Features Testing The CoreBook Air Plus 16 ships with Windows 11 Pro 64-bit 24H2 operating system, upgraded to the 25H2 version after running Windows updates. The System->About window confirms we have a CoreBook Air Plus laptop powered by a 3.3 GHz (base frequency) AMD Ryzen 5 6600H processor with Radeon graphics paired with 16GB of RAM and 447GB of storage. None of the mini PCs and laptops we’ve reviewed in the past come with Microsoft […]

February 20, 2026February 20, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

MediaTek MT7902 wireless chipset finally gets a Linux driver

MediaTek MT7902 wireless modules are used in many Windows laptops, but so far, a Linux driver has been missing. This is about to change, as Mediatek has finally committed a patchset for MT7902 to the mainline Linux mailing list. This is personal. I bought an ASUS Vivobook 16 in August 2023, and Ubuntu 22.04 worked pretty well out of the box, except for support for the Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth module, detected as “Network controller: MEDIATEK Corp. Device 7902” with lscpi but without working drivers. Since then, I’ve been using the laptop connected to the USB dock with Ethernet support when at home, or using USB tethering with my phone when on the road. I initially thought it might just be a matter of time before the driver is ported to Linux, but it took well over two years. I was far from being alone in my ordeal, and you […]

February 12, 2026March 5, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 laptop review – Part 1: Specs, unboxing, teardown, and first boot

It’s been a while since we’ve tested a laptop, but CHUWI sent us their latest CoreBook AirPlay 16 laptop for review. It’s powered by a mid-range AMD Ryzen 5 6600H hexa-core processor, paired with 16GB of LPDDR5 and a 512GB NVMe SSD, and features a 16-inch display with 1920 × 1200 resolution. I’ll start the CoreBook Air Plus 16 review by listing the specifications, going through an unboxing and a teardown to check out the hardware, and finally boot it to the pre-installed Windows 11 Pro. We’ll then test it in more detail with Windows 11 Pro and Ubuntu 24.04 or 26.04 (Snapshot 4) in the next parts of the review. CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 specifications SoC – AMD Ryzen 5 6600H CPU – 6-core/12-thread Zen 3+ “Rembrandt” processor at up to 3.3 GHz / 4.5GHz (Turbo) GPU – AMD Radeon 660M clocked at up to 1,900 MHz with […]