Porsche Design, the merchandise wing of legendary sportscar maker Porsche, launches an interesting-looking premium notebook-- the Ultra One, a 15.6-inch number featuring an ultra-slim design complete with fanless cooling.

The Ultra One comes inside a magnesium chassis measuring 359 x 249 x 13.8mm, making it thinner than a good number of 13-inch notebooks. The minimalist stylings are, perhaps obviously, very reminiscent of Apple MacBooks, if with something of a twist. Instead of the sides, all the ports (including x2 USB-A, x2 USB-C, x1 HDMI, 3.5mm audio jack and microSD slot) reside in a special hinge block, allowing customers to neatly hide cables when in use.

Apple quietly releases the 16-inch MacBook Pro-- a laptop the iPhone maker designs as nothing less than "the world's best pro notebook," featuring a brighter 16-inch Retina Display and a keyboard with a "refined scissor mechanism."

Aimed primarily at professional customers such as developers, photographers and artists, the new MacBook Pro carries up to 9th gen Intel Core i9 (octa-core) processors together with up to 64GB RAM, 8T SSD and dual graphics in the shape of Intel UHD Graphics 630 and a choice of AMD Radeon Pro 5000M series GPU with up to 8GB GDDR6 VRAM. The result is a machine better able for GPU-intensive tasks, particularly in the highest-end configurations.

Dynabook-- aka the post-rebranding former Toshiba Client Solutions group-- launches a pair of interesting-looking laptops with the T8 and T9, both being 16.1-inch machines with an integrated Blu-ray/DVD burner.

Available in Stylish Blue or Satin Gold, the laptops are built in thick plastic and feature a 16.1-inch 1920 x 1080 resolution IPS display. Beneath the display is a pair of Onkyo speakers complete with DTS software enhancement adding Dynamic Wide Sound capability. Inside the machines are an  Intel quad-core Core i7-8565U processor with UHD 620 Graphics, 8/16GB DDR4-2400 memory (T8 and T9 models, respectively), 256GB M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD, 1TB 5400 RPM HDD and a Blu-ray drive compatible with BD XL discs.

Back in January 2019 Alieware launched the Area-51m, a gaming laptop featuring upgradeable internals, a first from the Dell-owned company in 20 years. Now said upgrade kits are actually available, at least for the GPU.

The upgrade kits allow customers to replace the included graphics card with either an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 or 2080, the same GPUs found in the highest-end Area-51m model. As such, they are aimed at buyers of the less powerful versions of the laptop. Each kit consists of the GPU in the proprietary Dell Graphics Form Factor (DGFF), together with a CryoTech 2.0 cooling system and a matching power supply. Installation by Dell technician is also included.

MSI launches a 15-inch addition to the Modern laptop range-- the Modern 15, designed for less demanding lifestyle tasks and entertainment applications featuring up to the latest 10th gen Intel Core i7 processors.

As well as a 14nm Comet Lake processor, the Modern 15 offers NVMe SSD storage (with x2 slots available) and the option of discrete Nvidia GeForce MX250 graphics with 2GB GDDR5 memory. The design looks fairly premium, with an aluminium and sandblasted black-coated chassis, thin bezels offering up to 90% screen to body ratio, 1080p IPS display and a backlit keyboard with 1.5mm key travel.

The global tablet market sees a return to growth in Q3 2019, IDC reports-- shipments total 37.6 million units, a 1.9% Y-o-Y increase, with Apple maintaining leadership of the market while Amazon beats Samsung to 2nd place.

The new iPad leads Apple tablet shipments to grow by 21.8% Y-o-Y in Q3 2019. It also brings a 31.4% share of the market, up from 26.3% in Q3 2018. The latest device includes the Smart Connector, and combined with the iPad OS Apple is the largest player in detachable/hybrid space, as well as a greater threat to the traditional PC market.

The Canalys Channels Forum in Barcelona sees Lenovo announce a Q2 2020 release for the Foldable PC, a device featuring a 13-inch flexible display making part of the premium ThinkPad X1 range.

First announced back in May 2019, the yet unnamed device is an actual "full-fledged laptop with a foldable screen," and not a tablet or hybid. As The Register reports Lenovo says the hardware is essentially finished, but it is dependent on Microsoft on the software side of things. As such, the device will probably run on Windows 10X, the "expression" of Windows 10 designed for foldable device.

The Google 2019 hardware lineup includes a more affordable take on the premium Chromebook-- the Pixelbook Go, a slim and light (at less than 1kg) Chrome OS-powered notebook featuring a 13.3-inch touchscreen.

Available in "Just Black" and "Not Pink," the Pixelbook Go carries a range of specifications inside a magnesium casing. Internals include anything from an entry-level Intel Core m3 processor with 8GB RAM and 64GB storage to Core i5 versions with more RAM and storage and a Core i7 version featuring 16GB RAM, 256GB storage and a 4K resolution display.