Monday, January 4

Big RAM laptops are abundant as Lenovo does its Skylake refresh

We've long cried out for laptops with lots of RAM, so that they can handle workloads as varied as hosting development virtual machines or running Chrome, and with Skylakes it looks as if they are arriving in abundance. The updated thin and light X1 range bump RAM up to 16GB, and in the rest of the business laptop range, there are now plenty of options that go even further than that.

When we reviewed it earlier this year, we felt the T450s was a solid corporate workhorse. Although a little larger than the X1s, it took more memory (up to 12GB), and sported much easier end-user servicing. Its Skylake successor will be available from February with prices starting at $1,059 and it provides more of the same: an Ultrabook built for business. It's still a fairly thin 3lb laptop, but now takes up to 24GB RAM, with optional discrete Nvidia GeForce 930M graphics, up to 512GB PCIe SSD, and a 2560×1440 screen.

At 0.74 inches, it's slightly thicker than the X1 range, but this extra width provides for a full size Ethernet port, full size HDMI, mini-DisplayPort and an optional smartcard reader. Lenovo says that servicing has also been improved: there are 5 captive screws that provide quick access to storage, memory, WWAN and Wi-Fi, and the batteries. Though this means that the machine has shed the VGA port that was included on the T450s, the options and accessibility mean that it packages a lot of power into a small system, without giving up serviceability.

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