Manoush Zomorodi tackled tech’s effect on our brains, now she’s looking at our bodies. | Image: Tory WIlliams
Manoush Zamorodi is an accomplished reporter, podcast host, and author. Her new book, Body Electric, takes a comprehensive look at how technology is impacting our physical health. It's a collaboration between NPR and Columbia University Medical Center that picks up where her first title, Bored and Brilliant, left off. That book looked at how technology was hampering our mental health. I highly recommend it to anyone who feels like being constantly attached to a device is sapping their energy and creativity.
Both books grew out of her extensive podcasting work. After heading up WNYC's Note To Self, Zamorodi went on to host NPR's TED Radio H …
Need a new laptop? It’s a tough decision. If you’re like most people, a laptop is one of the most expensive tech purchases you’ll make, and it’s something you’ll use and live with nearly every day for years to come. So there’s a lot riding on this pricey expense.
I’ve tested all kinds of laptops, from cheap Windows computers and Chromebooks to bread-and-butter MacBooks and over-the-top gaming machines. These are the ones I recommend the most and why I think they might be a good fit for you.
Though the MacBook Air is still the easy recommendation for most people, that doesn’t make it the go-to answer for everyone. What if you need more power for video or photo editing, or for crunching large datasets? What if you prefer to run Windows? What if you play lots of games and want to take them with you? Or what if you want something that’s super repairable, or something that’s unusual? We’ve got some recommendations, including a Chromebook or two, a laptop with two screens, the 16-inch MacBook Pro, and the Microsoft Surface Laptop with a Snapdragon X Elite chip.
The best answer for most people
Apple MacBook Air 15 (2026, M5)
Score: 9
Pros
Cons
A little more speed never hurts
Starts with more storage that’s twice as fast
Still one of the best laptops around
Great battery life and speakers
Starting price is $100 more than M4 generation (though you get more storage for it)
The MacBook Neo now exists and costs less than half
CPU: M5 (10-core) / GPU: M5 (8- or 10-core) / RAM:16GB, 24GB, 32GB / Storage: 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB / Display: 13.6-inch or 15.3-inch Liquid Retina display, 2560 x 1664 or 2880 x 1864 , 60Hz, no touch option / Dimensions: 11.97 x 8.46 x 0.44 inches (13-inch) or 13.40 x 9.35 x 0.45 inches (15-inch) / Weight: 2.7 pounds (13-inch) or 3.3 pounds (15-inch)
Just get the latest MacBook Air. It’s been a little same-y for a few years, but it’s still the best for a reason. Every part of it is good to great. It’s incredibly thin. Its keyboard is solid. Its haptic trackpad is excellent. Its speakers are loud and full-sounding (especially on the 15-inch). It’s got a very nice-looking display. Even its webcam is best in class. All that, and it balances a great level of performance with a battery that easily lasts around 13 hours.
Both the 13- and 15-inch models are great for just about everything outside of hardcore gaming, heavy-duty content creation, or 3D modeling. An Air will serve you well for years to come. Many of us at The Verge still use work-issued M1 MacBook Airs from 2020, and they’re holding up great after five-plus years of service. An M5 Air (or M4 if you can still find a deal) could last you the better part of a decade.
CPU: A18 Pro (6-core) / GPU: A18 Pro(5-core) / RAM: 8GB / Storage: 256GB, 512GB / Display: 13-inch Liquid Retina display, 2408 x 1506, 60Hz, no touch option / Dimensions: 11.71 x 8.12 x 0.5 inches / Weight: 2.7 pounds
Enter the MacBook Neo. Most inexpensive laptops are bulky and creaky, with bad keyboards and screens. Like the Air, the Neo nails the basics, just at a lower price. Its build quality is unbeatable for its $600 price (or $100 less for students and teachers). And while its A18 Pro processor is technically a smartphone chip, it’s faster than most Windows laptop chips in single-core performance — making it more than enough for everyday tasks. Its 8GB of RAM and relatively slow storage may feel lean for more intensive users, but the Neo performs great unless you really push it with dozens of Chrome tabs or heavier content creation apps.
CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100 / GPU: Qualcomm Adreno / RAM: 16GB / Storage: 256GB, 512GB / Display: 12-inch (2196 x 1464) 90Hz touschscreen / Dimensions: 10.8 x 7.47 x 0.30 inches / Weight:1.5 pounds
Microsoft’s entry-level Surface Laptop 13-inch and Surface Pro 12-inch are sleek little Windows computers. One is a conventional clamshell and the other a convertible tablet, so you can take your pick from two very well-built devices with metal chassis, great screens, and good keyboards and trackpads. Their Snapdragon X processors are fast enough for everyday tasks and some creative work. But one of their biggest strengths is their extra-long battery life and lengthy standby times. Both the Surface Laptop and Surface Pro can easily tackle a standard workday on a single charge, plus a few more hours, and barely lose any charge overnight, unlike most Windows laptops. Unfortunately, Microsoft recently jacked up its Surface prices due to RAMageddon, so they’re not as competitive with the MacBook Air as they used to be. (This is a problem across the industry; other Windows computers are also getting more expensive.)
Alternatively, if you want something that feels even nicer and runs an Intel chip for wider app and game compatibility, check out the new Dell XPS 14. I’m still working on my review of it, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see how good the XPS is again after I loathed the XPS 13. I’m glad to see Dell resurrected its most notable brand, and it’s actually good — great hardware, a lovely tandem OLED screen, and nice performance from Intel Panther Lake chips. But it starts around $1,900 and climbs much higher with options.
The Asus Zenbook A16 is as impressive as it is beige. It’s meant to be a MacBook Air fighter, and it’s a formidable alternative, with Qualcomm’s powerful X2 Elite Extreme chip inside. At $1,699.99, it isn’t cheap, but you get a massive 48GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, and a huge 16-inch OLED display. (A similarly priced 15-inch MacBook Air comes with 32GB of RAM and just 512GB of storage.) Despite this large, lovely screen, the A16 weighs just 2.87 pounds / 1.3kg — only a smidge more than the much smaller MacBook Neo. It’s the lightest 16-inch laptop around, and it’s even got an SD card slot, which I love. I’ve experienced firsthand how it’s powerful enough for some heavy photo editing under pressure.
For a fairly affordable Chromebook that’s still solid, stick with the tried and true Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 for about $400. It’s got an older 12th-gen Intel processor, 8GB of RAM, and a basic 1080p screen. But it’s one of the cheapest Chromebooks around with the “Plus” designation, meaning it’s one of The Good Ones.
Chromebooks are in a bit of a weird spot now that Googlebooks are on the horizon and we don’t know a lot about them just yet. Our former top pick, the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14, remains an excellent laptop — the best of the best Chromebooks. But in recent times it’s shot up from a fair $650 starting price to $800 to $1,000. Yikes. At this point, only get the Lenovo if it’s on a big sale. Otherwise, just get a MacBook Neo.
Okay, here’s what I’d actually buy myself if I could only own one computer
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025)
Score: 8
Pros
Cons
Balanced performance, battery life, and portability
The laptops I’ve outlined above are all fantastic. They’re also just a liiiiittle boring, because they don’t take into account playing lots of games, which is what first got me into PCs as a kid. That’s why my personal choice for one computer to do it all are the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 and G16. They strike a great balance between work and play, being sleek and travel-friendly and offering good battery life during the workday. But once you sign off, their discrete Nvidia GPUs and lovely OLEDs offer a whole lot of fun for gaming.
The 2025 models of the Zephyrus G14 and G16 are still easy recommendations in 2026, especially if you can find a deal. The 2026 revision is a small update that mostly bumps the chips to Intel Panther Lake, though I’ve got my eye on the new G14 since it’s making the switch from a microSD card slot to full-size SD. Just brace yourself for how expensive it might be. Asus didn’t announce any pricing at CES, and since then all its 2026 models have landed at significantly higher prices than last gen. If you’re shopping for a deal on the 2025 models, I like the entry-level Zephyrus G14 with RTX 5060 GPU (which is thinner than the higher configs) and the G16 with RTX 5070 Ti (a good sweet spot for the larger model).
Now, here’s the MacBook I’d buy for myself if I’m just focusing on creative work
Apple MacBook Pro 14 (2025, M5)
Score: 9
Pros
Cons
Everything good about the M4 model, with just a little more speed
Still a very good value for an all-purpose creative workflow machine
Best-in-class battery life
Just a snoozer of an update
Space black finish can still be a little smudgy
Apple’s price structure may still have you longing for M4 Pro / Max
CPU: M5 (10-core / GPU: M5 (10-core) / RAM: 16GB, 24GB, or 32GB / Storage: 512GB (discontinued), 1TB, 2TB, 4TB / Display: 14.2 Liquid Retina XDR, 3024 x 1964, adaptive refresh up to 120Hz, no touch option / Dimensions: 12.31 x 8.71 x 0.61 / Weight: 3.4 pounds
The base 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 is my personal sweet spot for content creation without spending tons and tons of money. The 14-inch size makes it easily portable, and it’s powerful enough to fit my needs as a part-time pro photographer. It’s also a great starting place for a college student or young professional getting into creative fields.
The pricier M5 Pro / M5 Max models set the high mark for performance across video production, 3D rendering, and pro work. If you’re a full-time creative professional or developer, the upgrades to an M5 Pro or M5 Max are worth it. If that’s you, take your pick of 14- or 16-inch MacBook Pros and get the best one you can comfortably afford. It’s sure to provide you with excellent performance for well over five years. I saw that in my M5 Max MacBook Pro review, where I retested the M1 Pro and M1 Max models and heard firsthand from professional users how well those were still holding up.
Apple MacBook Pro 16 (2026, M5 Max)
Score: 8
Pros
Cons
Still the best
Amazing performance and battery life
Double the starting storage, and it’s blisteringly fast
Still very expensive, with a $400 price increase over the M4 Max (though you get extra storage)
CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX / GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 / RAM: 32GB / Storage: 2TB / Display: 16-inch Mini LED 2560 x 1600, 240Hz display / Dimensions: 13.94 x 10.55 x 0.9 to 1.21 inches / Weight: 6.17 pounds
The Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 and Lenovo Legion Pro 7i are both excellent gaming laptops with Intel Arrow Lake processors and high-end Nvidia RTX graphics. I tested both with RTX 5080 Laptop GPUs, and they proved powerful enough to play the latest games on high settings in 2.5K resolution — even 4K for some slightly older or less-demanding ones.
Both laptops have lots of RGB lighting, great keyboards, and 16-inch displays with high 240Hz refresh rate. The Asus usually had a slight performance edge, but the Legion gets extra points for having an OLED display. Either of them are great options if you want a thicc-boy-style gaming laptop.
Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (16-inch, Intel)
Lenovo’s Legion Pro 7i is a well built gaming laptop with a lovely 2.5K OLED display and a powerful RTX 5080 GPU, enough to handle 4K gaming on an external monitor. Its only major downsides are a lack of face or fingerprint unlocking and Lenovo’s tendency to pre-load some annoying bloatware.
Score: 8
Pros
Cons
Great performance at 2.5K and even at 4K on an external monitor
Beautiful OLED screen
One of the best keyboards in this class of gaming laptops
No face or fingerprint unlock
Numpad makes things slightly cramped, with off-center trackpad
Lenovo’s apps are slightly more invasive with notifications than others
By god, it’s the Asus Zenbook Duo’s music! You can connect a second display to any laptop, but a laptop with two screens is even better. The latest Zenbook Duo is very expensive at $2,700, but you get two 14-inch OLEDs, a great detachable keyboard and trackpad, and an Intel Panther Lake chip that’s great on both performance and battery life. The integrated Intel Arc B390 GPU can even do some respectable 1200p gaming while you have Discord or your work Slack (or both) open on the other screen. The multitasking freedom you get from these two screens (in both landscape and portrait orientations) is a big part of the fun here. Plus, you can flex on everyone else at the coffee shop.
CPU: AMD Ryzen AI 5 340, AI 7 350, AI 9 HX 370 / GPU: Radeon 860M / RAM: 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, 48GB, 96GB / Storage: 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 8TB / Display: 13.5 inch IPS, 2256 x 1504 60Hz or 2880 x 1920 120Hz, no touch option / Dimensions: 11.68 x 9.01 x 0.62 inches / Weight: 2.87 pounds
There is no better laptop for a tinkerer than the user-repairable, user-upgradeable Framework Laptop 13. There’s also the Framework Laptop 16 if you want something bigger with discrete graphics, but it’s not as easy of a recommendation due to its clunky, Erector Set-like build.
Framework has been cooking with its latest releases, and its upcoming Laptop 13 Pro and updates to the Laptop 16 also look promising. But the standard Framework Laptop 13 with AMD Ryzen AI 300-series chips is a great all-rounder. It performs well whether you’re running Windows or your Linux distro of choice. You pay a premium for the flexibility Framework offers, but the potential for upgrades and easy self-service make it a better long-term investment. Plus, they’re the only laptops in production that allow you to choose your own ports and hot-swap them on a whim. It’s just awesome.
Framework Laptop 16 (2025)
Score: 6
Pros
Cons
Fully user-repairable and upgradeable
Sizable boost in gaming performance with RTX 5070
Amazing levels of customization, from ports to keyboard / trackpad alignment
Nice quality high-res, high-refresh LCD
A concerning amount of BSOD crashes during testing
Lid still has lots of flex
Side spacers are still uneven and creaky
Auto brightness is erratic and jumpy
Still feels a little janky, like a Franken-laptop
Original owners need to buy a new display for G-Sync
BONUS: Your Developers Got 20x Faster — Now Watch Your Product Managers' Heads Explode
Clarke Ching is "The Bottleneck Guy" — and he just spotted the bottleneck that AI is about to create in every software organization. It's not in the code. It's inside the heads of the people who decide what gets built. In this conversation, Vasco and Clarke unpack why speeding up developers with AI tools pushes the real constraint upstream — onto product managers, designers, and leaders — and what to do before cognitive overload crushes the people your organization depends on most.
Every Business Has a Bottleneck — Most Are in the Wrong Place
"Every single client I have is a detective puzzle. We're looking for this quiet killer sitting inside their business, siphoning off money. And if you look at them without the idea of going 'where's the bottleneck?' — you mistake the busyness for productivity."
Clarke approaches Theory of Constraints like a detective story, not a physics lecture. Every business has a bottleneck — the narrowest point that chokes throughput. The question isn't whether you have one, it's whether it's in the right place. In software development, Clarke argues, the bottleneck should almost always be the developers. Not because they're slow, but because they're the pacing resource — like the aircraft carrier in a naval fleet that sets the speed for everything else. When developers are the bottleneck, the people upstream (product managers, designers, architects) have time to curate high-quality, high-value inputs. The people downstream (testers, ops) can deliver fast feedback. Everything flows. But when the bottleneck drifts somewhere else — and nobody notices — everyone gets busy, nothing flows, and the organization mistakes that busyness for productivity. Clarke's latest book, The Speed Book, lays out how to find where your bottleneck actually is and move it to where it belongs.
AI Just Moved the Bottleneck — And Nobody's Talking About It
"Just imagine one person trying to feed 100 developers. It's ridiculous. Everyone goes, 'oh, that's just crazy.' But that's kind of going to be what it's like."
Here's the problem: AI coding tools — Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot — are making developers dramatically faster. If a team of 5 developers becomes 20x more productive, that's the equivalent of 100 developers. But you still have one product manager feeding them. The bottleneck hasn't disappeared — it's moved upstream. And when a bottleneck moves to the people who make product decisions, three things happen: they cut corners on requirements (shipping half-baked ideas because the team can turn them around fast), they feed developers busy work just to keep them occupied, and — worst of all — they lose the time needed to push through complexity to find elegance. Clarke references Steve Jobs's insight: Apple kept working past "peak complexity" until they reached "peak simplicity." That's where great products come from. But a product manager juggling work for 100 developers has no time for that journey. Elegance goes out the window.
Why Giving AI to Product People Almost Makes Things Worse
"If you want to wear your dog out so she sleeps, don't take her for long walks. Make the dog think. Brain games exhaust the dog faster than running."
The obvious fix — give product people AI tools too — sounds right but misses the point. AI can handle the easy parts of product work: drafting user stories, generating specs, compiling research. That's the equivalent of taking the dog for a run. But the hard parts — the deep thinking about what to build, why it matters, how features interact — that's brain work. And brain work is exhausting in a way that volume work is not. Clarke works with senior leaders whose biggest challenge is pacing themselves. Heavy cognitive lifting burns through energy fast — your brain consumes 30-40% of your body's glucose when you're thinking hard. When AI handles the easy work, the proportion of your day spent on exhausting brain work jumps from maybe 15-20% to 50% or more. It's like lifting weights for six hours straight. You don't get stronger — you break down. On top of that, product people go from coordinating one stream of work to juggling many simultaneous initiatives. Clarke calls these "idea grenades" — and when you're juggling chainsaws with grenades attached, you start dropping things.
The Real Danger: Going in the Wrong Direction, 100x Faster
"If you change the relative capacities and make some of them much, much faster, the bottleneck's gonna move. My next book, jokingly, is gonna be called 'Who Moved My Bottleneck?'"
There's an amplification effect that makes this worse than a simple throughput problem. An error in a line of code affects one line. An error in a design document ripples into hundreds of lines. An error at the strategic level — building the wrong features entirely — can be a disaster for the company. Now add AI speed to that equation. Overwhelmed product people making rushed decisions don't just slow things down — they point the entire organization in the wrong direction, and AI-powered developers execute that wrong direction at 20x speed. As Clarke puts it: you crash into the mountain, faster. The fundamental Theory of Constraints insight applies: if you speed up a non-bottleneck resource, you don't speed up the system. You just create more work-in-progress, more chaos, and more cognitive load for whoever the real bottleneck is.
Four Experiments to Try Before Cognitive Crush Hits Your Team
"Quality will come from actually slowing down. Money, profits will come from slowing down, building very good products, focusing on why we're building these products, not just how do we keep the AIs working."
Clarke offers four practical experiments for teams navigating this shift:
Get product people working with AI — as a thought partner, not a turbo boost. Teach them to delegate the routine work to AI so they can protect their cognitive energy for the decisions that actually matter. Think of AI as a delegation tool, not a productivity multiplier.
Help product people find their sustainable pace. Like Clarke's gym trainer who said "don't come five days a week or you'll never come back" — the people doing heavy cognitive lifting need to pace themselves. Old-school agile called this sustainable pace. It's never been more relevant.
Don't try to keep developers (or AI) busy all the time. The instinct to maximize utilization is the instinct that creates the problem. With AI, you're renting capacity by the minute, not paying salaries. Use it at the pace of good product thinking, not at maximum throughput. Turn the tap on and off as needed.
Measure what matters: value delivered, not stories completed. If 60-70% of features rarely get used today, imagine what happens when you 20x the feature output without improving the decision quality upstream. More features, more waste — at scale.
About Clarke Ching
Clarke Ching is "The Bottleneck Guy" — a Theory of Constraints and lean expert who wrote Rolling Rocks Downhill, the agile+lean business novel that never mentions agile, and The Bottleneck Rules. Born in New Zealand, he spent 20 years abroad (15 of them in Scotland) before returning home. He's spent decades helping teams find and manage the one constraint that controls everything else. LinkedIn
Welcome to IoT Coffee Talk, where hype comes to die a terrible death. We have a fireside chat about all things #IoT over a cup of coffee or two with some of the industry's leading business minds, thought leaders and technologists in a totally unscripted, organic format.
This week Dimitri, Bill,, and Leonard jump on Web3 for a discussion about:
🎶 🎙️ BAD KARAOKE! 🎸 🥁 "Mean Streets", Van Halen 🐣 Our purpose for being grumpy tech guys and perennially beating up on tech hype. 🐣 Is your customer ready for astronomical tech nonsense? 🐣 Is AI adoption really a problem? 🐣 The mediocrity of marketing-dominant technical knowledge bases. 🐣 The bright side of AI-generated marketing harassment. Not really! 🐣 How to battle AI-driven email slop..... 🐣 Raising the mediocrity floor. Why using AI will not improve anything if everyone uses AI. 🐣 Why AI adoption is the worst purpose and goal. 🐣 The risk that hacking as a service (HaaS) can easily become criminality as a service. 🐣 What is vibe coding and how does it related to your SDLC? 🐣 Why AI seems smart about things you don't know much about. 🐣 AI rehab is poised to be the next opportunity for human therapists! 🐣 What happened to the people telling you to build your own foundation models?
It's a great episode. Grab an extraordinarily expensive latte at your local coffee shop and check out the whole thing. You will get all you need to survive another week in the world of IoT and greater tech!
Tune in! Like! Share! Comment and share your thoughts on IoT Coffee Talk, the greatest weekly assembly of Thinkers 360 and CBT tech and IoT influencers on the planet!!
If you are interested in sponsoring an episode, please contact Stephanie Atkinson at Elevate Communities. Just make a minimally required donation to www.elevatecommunities.org and you can jump on and hang with the gang and amplify your brand on one of the top IoT/Tech podcasts in the known metaverse!!!
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If I asked you to tell me what is related to what, you would not run a vector search in your head — you would build a little graph. That is what makes a Knowledge Graph more powerful than RAG, and you do not need a multi-thousand-dollar graph database to do it. Stop and try it. Picture your three closest co-workers. Now picture what projects they are on, who reports to whom, and which of them sat in the meeting last Tuesday. You did not "search" for any of that. You walked a
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