Shadowing Practice: World's Cheapest vs Most Expensive Laptop! - Learn English Speaking with Video
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This is world's cheapest laptop all the way to the most expensive.
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So let's see what improves as you spend more money.
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And does expensive necessarily mean better?
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So at just $70, we have the Coda 1.1.
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Pretty basic unboxing experience.
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It just comes presented in some foam inserts.
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But even then, how is this possible for that price?
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This is a full laptop.
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It's thin, it's light, it's got a smooth matte finish.
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And like, it's not even badly built.
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The hinge is smooth, the body doesn't creak.
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This $70 laptop comes with 12 months of Microsoft apps included worth $60.
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The delivery was free.
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Oh my god.
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The trackpad's probably a 5 out of 10.
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It's a little bit small and rough, but it does respond to multi-touch gestures.
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This keyboard though, this I would give a 6 to.
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The keys have nice travel, which gives that satisfying typewriter-like experience.
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Only downside is the plastic around the keys does flex a little bit as you press.
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Now, for every laptop, we're also going to run Cinebench, which gets the computer to render this incredibly realistic, difficult scenario to see how powerful the processor is.
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So in this case, our dual-core 1.1 gigahertz Intel Celeron is really struggling.
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This is like watching paint dry, which leads us to a pretty lowly score of 308 points.
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To be fair, though, you really don't need much power to run things like Microsoft Word.
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And this is plenty.
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And then, to test the graphics, GTA V.
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This is quite funny.
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The laptop's 64 gigabytes of internal memory is not even enough to hold the game.
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So running it off this, which costs about three times as much as the laptop.
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Another fun fact, this laptop actually doesn't have the graphics power to even be able to open GTA 5 in full screen.
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So we actually have to go into the app config file
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and tweak the settings so that it only opens in this windowed mode, and then we full screen it.
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Oh my gosh, it's running at like four frames per second.
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So we're running this at 800 by 600 resolution.
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That's like a smartphone resolution from 12 years ago.
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Hardest thing to process here is the loading times of everything.
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I'm waiting for this game to load for about 10 minutes.
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Oh my god, we're in!
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But it does look like a mobile game in a best case scenario.
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I'll move my finger across the trackpad, and like a full two seconds later the laptop follows.
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Feels kind of ironic trying to sprint in this condition.
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Okay, so we've jumped online and I clicked Quick Join into a real other person's race.
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Although the irony of quick is not lost on me.
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I'm so sorry Mona1968.
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It's actually just occurred to me how much lag is going to be introduced into this session from my end.
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It's a bit old to be playing game.
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So yeah, 1968 on GTA 5.
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My mum's age.
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Hey, off we go!
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Oh, look how their car's just jumping!
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There is so much lag happening right now.
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Probably mostly on my end.
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I've just gone through a building.
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That shouldn't have happened.
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I just got absolutely whooped by a 55-year-old.
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So how much more does $500 get you?
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This is the Lenovo V15 G2.
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And first impressions, the unboxing is surprisingly similar.
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It's still a plain cardboard box, which just like last time comes with a laptop embedded between two pieces of foam and then a charger.
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But in terms of the actual machine itself, big difference.
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The webcam's gone from a slightly laggy, pretty grainy 720p image on the Coda, to a slightly higher quality, but still 720p webcam.
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But it does have a light that shows you when a program is accessing it, and even a manual shutter that you can use to physically cover it up during your private moments.
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There's more ports on the sides, including a full-on ethernet for wired internet, a Kensington lock port, which lets you physically restrain your laptop to your office table, for example.
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And also a USB 3.2 port, which if I try and transfer across the same file on both of these laptops, On the Coda, I drop that onto the desktop.
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It took about five seconds.
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Drag the same file across. That just happened instantly.
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There was no loading bar.
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I guess it makes sense.
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Theoretically, USB 3.2 is 10 times faster than USB 2.0.
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I like this trackpad.
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It's made of a noticeably smoother material.
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And if you listen to the click sounds that the Coda makes compared to this, the Lenovo does feel more refined and put together.
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7 out of 10.
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The keys are also smoother.
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They're very cushioned and there's no flexing of the body at all when you hit them, which is great for typing quietly, but does lose a little bit of that satisfying, chaotic typing energy that the coder has.
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So I'd keep my rating at a 6 overall.
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Oh, we haven't talked about speakers yet.
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Both laptops have bottom firing speakers, which does sound like a strange idea, but it's actually done with a lot of mid-price machines like this to try and bounce the sound into your face,
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as opposed to just blindly shooting up into the ceiling.
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But the sound quality is way up.
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This is the $70 Coda.
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I'mma break your neck.
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Well, the point is you can tell that these are low power speakers that are not moving a lot of air.
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But for $500, much better.
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It lacks a little bit of sharpness, but it's good enough.
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The screen's gone from an 11.6 inch to a 15.6 inch, which is about two times the area.
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Although I would say the contrast is slightly worse.
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And the viewing angles kind of suck because this is a TN panel, which is the most basic form of modern LCD.
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But where I am noticing the biggest improvement with this $500 laptop is the performance.
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Everything takes so long to happen on the Coder.
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Even pulling up the Bing homepage is a big ask, although it might just not want to, I can see why.
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But everything here is happening many times faster, fast enough that it doesn't feel like a burden.
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And that's because for starters, the storage has gone up from 64 gigabytes of simple flash memory to 256 gigabytes of fast M.2 SSD.
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There's a better wifi chip and better antenna, which is making such a difference that we're stuck at 40 megabits per second here, but we're at 200 on the Lenovo.
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Even though we're the same distance from the same network, is the benefit of being compatible with Wi-Fi 6, which this one isn't.
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The process has been upgraded from a 1.1 gigahertz dual core
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to a 2.6 gigahertz AMD Ryzen 3 quad core with actually eight threads, meaning that it can handle even more workflows,
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leading to an astronomical CPU bump on Cinebench all the way from 308 points to 4,942.
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That's actually wild.
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Suspending seven times more does actually get you a lot more than seven times the performance.
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16 times in this case.
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And of course, this upgraded chip also has upgraded graphics baked into it.
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So if we pull up GTA 5 again, so much better.
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It actually looks like a proper PC game now.
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I don't love the lack of contrast on this screen.
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It does look quite washed out.
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But it is thankfully running at at least 30 frames per second, which is smooth enough that you can kind of just not think about it.
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Let's see if we can find Mona 1968 again.
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Let's give us something to moan about.
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Now that I'm back with some proper equipment.
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It's been a long time since I've played proper PC games.
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But you know what? it is pretty cool that for $500 you can play GTA 5 on quite easily medium settings.
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Meaning that from the next laptop onwards we're going to be going even past the technical max limit of this game.
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But let's see for ourselves.
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This is where things get properly exciting, the $1200 MSI Katana.
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You can definitely tell the weight of the package has gone up, but I'm quite surprised to see that the quality of the presentation is kind of the same.
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There's a much larger power supply to keep something of this caliber juiced up in the laptop.
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It does beg I'll beg the obvious question, the $500 laptop is already at the point where there's very little wrong with it.
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So what on earth do you get for two and a half times the price of that?
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Okay, the webpage of this laptop is actually hilarious.
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The new Katana GF76 is built with the same exquisite craftsmanship used to forge a blade.
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What do I do with that knowledge?
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The sub to the channel would be.. fruity.
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Anyways, aside from the blade-like properties, the first thing I'm noticing is that it is even bigger.
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There's no beating around the bush.
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This is one of the chonkiest laptops I've ever laid my hands on.
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And it's kind of great because, you know, there's so much space to rest your hands on.
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But I wouldn't necessarily say that the build quality is any higher.
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It's about the same.
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The trackpad's still on the smaller side.
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I have no idea why when they have this much room for it.
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It's good quality, but I'm not loving the amount of force you need to put in to click it.
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But I am enjoying this keyboard.
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It's backlit for starters, which is an actual game changer if you're planning on using it in bed at night.
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Though it is kind of evil looking, so don't know how I feel about that.
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And then the majority of the keys, they are still a little bit on the soft side.
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They don't have a huge amount of travel, which is less fun for typing.
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But it means you can be more responsive when you're gaming.
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And they've at least made sure that the spacebar and the enter key do feel distinct and satisfying.
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I could do this for quite a long time.
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Very fun.
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8 out of 10.
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But $1,200 is well within what I would call the luxury price range.
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So at this point, it's not just about how good the fundamentals are.
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It's also the other niceties.
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For example, it leans a lot more into gaming-specific features.
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So you've got this entire MSI suite, which lets you do literally any kind of fiddling you could possibly think of.
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There's gaming mode, Wi-Fi analysis, hardware diagnosis, everything.
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You get high-res audio, still coming from two downwards-facing speakers, but those now have two watts of power each instead of 1.5.
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So this is the base of the last laptop.
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Again, very inoffensive sound.
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There's nothing wrong with it.
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And this is $1,200.
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It's definitely punchier, and I can also tell more spatial separation, potentially just because there's more distance between the two speakers.
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But doesn't it feel like a whole tier above?
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I would say though, general browsing around on the internet feels way quicker.
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And if we run one of these speed tests, you will probably be able to see why.
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So again, same connection to the same network, but this has faster download speed by about 50 megabits per second, almost double the upload speed.
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But the biggest improvement you're getting between these two price points is the latency.
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It's gone all the way from 102 milliseconds to just 27.
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And when you've got general internet speeds as fast as this, the latency actually becomes the bigger determining factor in the overall experience.
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Oh yeah, also the screen, huge leap.
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I mean to start with, just like the rest of the laptop, it's bigger at 17.3 inches.
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Which might sound like a subtle difference versus 15.6, but in total that's about 25% more screen area.
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Which I'd actually say is very much the difference between this feeling like a laptop experience, tidying me over until I get home to my proper rig, and feeling like you're at your main workstation.
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Like, this is the place where the job gets done.
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But also, this is an IPS panel, which compared to this TN panel is brighter, has more poppy colors and better contrast, and has a 144Hz refresh rate versus 60Hz.
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It'll be tough for you to experience it just through the camera, but trust me, all the scrolling and the browsing feels next level responsive.
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And definitely like you're getting treated as opposed to it just being purely functional.
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But I think the thing you'll be most surprised by is the power difference.
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So in terms of CPU now, we have a 12th gen Intel i7.
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And it's actually kind of wild.
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It's got 14 cores and 20 threads.
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And if we run the same Cinebench benchmark, that's 14,744.
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Or in other words, full on three times improvement, which yet again, it's more than the difference in price.
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But this is what I'm here for, the graphics.
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This is the single biggest jump with this laptop
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because we've moved from integrated graphics at $500 to a dedicated RTX 3060 graphics card now, which as far as the general population's laptops are concerned,
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easily puts this in the top 5%.
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should be a night and day improvement.
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It's loaded in about a third of the time than the last one.
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And the cool bit is that this is powerful enough that this isn't even running just normal GTA.
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This is GTA plus an additional set of graphics mods called the ENB series, which adds on additional effects like depth of fields and motion blur and better water.
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This is the biggest jump so far.
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Textures are super high resolution.
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Now this graphics card also supports real time ray tracing, which is why the lighting looks so ridiculously realistic.
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I can't even picture what the next laptop's gonna look like.
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And you can see the lighting in real time on these cars going past.
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So if $1,200 is already the luxury premium experience, what on earth does a $7,000 laptop even do?
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Time for the mothership, the MSI Titan.
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All of a sudden, the presentation has taken not just a step, but a leap forward.
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The box is super premium and dense.
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The laptop is the first thing you see, and it comes packing.
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You get a little dragon, for some reason you get a 128GB USB stick, which is pretty cool because it's got separate ends for both USB-C and USB-A,
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and it's actually double the storage that the entire first laptop came with.
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The thing even comes with a proper mouse inside, and then a power supply rivaling the volume of the first laptop.
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The Titan itself.
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My god, what has this thing been eating?
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So, to answer the question, at $7,000, you get everything.
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Every cutting-edge feature that a laptop could possibly offer, everything that you don't need but you really, really want, it's here.
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So, for example, this is not just a standard membrane keyboard like the rest of the laptops have.
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Or in other words, one big plastic sheet with pressure pads underneath each key.
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This is a mechanical keyboard.
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Every single key is its own moving part, with its own mechanism to make each press just feel that extra bit crispy and purposeful.
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I didn't know this until I just used it, but as far as laptop keyboards go, this is what a 10 feels like.
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Plus, the LED system makes it look like a unicorn just vomited all over it, and I'm not complaining about that.
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There are lights everywhere on this thing.
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There's the keyboard, there's the logo, these two strips over here, the engine?
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What even is this?
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And the control that you get over them is absolutely nuts.
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I mean, look at this software.
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Just for the logo alone, I can pick every colour it cycles through, the speed it cycles, how it cycles, and here at the bottom, I've got individual control over every single one of these zones.
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And the keyboard is even more insane.
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You can literally customise how each individual key reacts to being pressed.
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This is kind of a fun exercise.
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So this is how the speakers sounded on the original $70 laptop.
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This uses this as a point of reference of where we've come from.
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This is what the Titan sounds like.
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This is a world of difference.
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I mean, technically, that's not a huge surprise.
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This laptop is 100 times the price of this laptop.
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And it has a quad speaker system with two separate woofers just to handle bass.
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It's only just fully occurring to me how ridiculously bright this screen is.
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It's got the same 144Hz refresh rate as the last one.
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But instead of it being a full HD IPS panel, it's an ultra HD mini LED panel.
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It's based on similar LCD tech as before, but instead of having like one main backlight that shines onto it,
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you have thousands of tiny LEDs that give you basically extreme levels of color fidelity and contrast.
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Or in other words, it's two times the brightness and four times the resolution.
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I mean, I could just keep going on and on.
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It's got even more extreme Wi-Fi, to the point where your router is going to be the bottleneck.
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Even faster USB ports, to the point where whatever you're transferring from will be the limiting factor.
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A proper cooling system, four fans, six exhausts and eight pipes.
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But the thing that I'm most interested in is what this means for performance and gaming.
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So this is running the Intel Core i9 13980HX processor, which is probably the most gobbledygook naming I've ever heard from a tech company.
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But basically means 24 cores, 32 threads, a technical max of 5.6 gigahertz without even overclocking, and 29,604 points on Cinebench.
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More than doubling the already high ceiling of the last laptop.
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And the RTX 4090 graphics is an even bigger jump.
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It's going to mean we can take Grand Theft Auto to a whole other level.
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Oh my goodness.
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So you know how with the last laptop we had a graphics mod on GTA.
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Right now, we're running 11 separate graphics mods at the same time.
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And this looks absolutely ridiculous.
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This is probably the most advanced graphics I've ever seen on a video game.
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There are mods for everything right now.
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Lighting, textures, bloom, ray tracing.
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I don't know.
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Even stuff like the density of vegetation.
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Goodness me.
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Look at the reflections of the entire city on the water.
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I will say the fans are going absolutely out of control.
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Completely worth it though for this.
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One thing that I find absolutely hilarious though is that for all the things this laptop does, look at the quality of the webcam.
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Why MSI?
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Why?
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Now, if you ever find yourself spending large sums of money online like I have here, please do yourself a favor and install PayPal Honey, because it helps you avoid paying any more than you need to.
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Like for this MSI Katana laptop, I was going to buy it for the full $1400 that it was meant to be, but in one second Honey was just like, nope, you can get it cheaper here.
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And then And then when there isn't a cheaper website, you just tap the Honey button in your browser, and it'll automatically search through currently available coupon codes for the website you're on,
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and just apply the one that saves you the most money.
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And on average, when it finds a coupon code, it's saving you 18% on sites that you're already shopping on.
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It doesn't make sense to not be using this.
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So just add it to your browser now for free at joinhoney.com slash boss.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 260 sentences and 3285 words to shadow. The speech runs for 16:06. The speaker talks fast, about 204 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. Only 80% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
- laptop /ˈlæp.tɑp/ (noun) — A laptop computer.
- graphics /ˈɡɹæfɪks/ (noun) — The making of architectural or design drawings.
- keyboard /ˈki.bɔɹd/ (noun) — A set of keys laid out in a gridlike pattern, used for typing on a typewriter, computer, etc.
- smooth /smuːð/ (adjective) — Having a texture that lacks friction. Not rough.
- contrast /kənˈt(ʃ)ɹæst/ (noun) — The degree of this difference.
- thread /ˈθɹɛd/ (noun) — A cord formed by spinning or twisting together textile fibers or filaments into one or more continuous strands, typically used in needlework.
- upgrade /əpˈɡɹeɪd/ (verb) — To improve, usually applied to technology, generally by complete replacement of one or more components.
- satisfy /ˈsætɪsfaɪ/ (verb) — To be enough (for)
- mod /mɑd/ (noun) — An unconventionally modern style of fashionable dress originating in England in the 1960s, characterized by ankle-length black trenchcoats and sunglasses.
- necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/ (adverb) — Inevitably; of necessity.
- dragon /ˈdɹæɡən/ (noun) — In European mythologies, a gigantic beast, typically reptilian with leathery bat-like wings, lion-like claws, scaly skin and a lizard-like body, often a…
- luxury /ˈlʌk.ʃə.ɹi/ (noun) — Very wealthy and comfortable surroundings; the state of being that they create.
- premium /ˈpɹiː.miː.əm/ (noun) — A prize or award.
- versus /ˈvɝsəs/ — Against; in opposition to.
- chip /t͡ʃɪp/ (noun) — A small piece broken from a larger piece of solid material.
Phrasal verbs you will hear
- come with (verb) — To join and come along.
- look at (verb) — To observe or watch.
- come from (verb) — To have as one's origin, birthplace or nationality.
- pull up /ˌpʊl ˈʌp/ (verb) — To lift upwards or vertically.
- run at (verb) — To charge at (someone); to advance on (someone) as though to attack; to conduct a surprise attack on (someone).
- add on (verb) — To incorporate (something extra, often an amount of money) into something else (often a bill).
- do with (verb) — Only used in to do with
- get over (verb) — To overcome.
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 65 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, we're, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: smooth /smuːð/, thread /ˈθɹɛd/, thin /ˈθɪn/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: contrast /kənˈt(ʃ)ɹæst/, luxury /ˈlʌk.ʃə.ɹi/, presentation /ˌpɹɛzn̩ˈteɪʃn̩/, refresh /ɹɪˈfɹɛʃ/, wash /wɑʃ/
- Long words — get the stress right: necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, hilarious /hɪˈlɛə.ɹi.əs/, ridiculously /ɹɪˈdɪk.jə.ləs.li/, ridiculous /ɹɪˈdɪk.jə.ləs/, potentially /pəˈtɛnʃ(ə)li/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like laptop, graphics, keyboard.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | we've jumped · I've just gone · haven't talked |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | them, which is · inch, which is · panel, which is |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is not lost · be introduced · has been upgraded |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.