Why it took TWO YEARS to Build a Laptop Test Lab 

I clicked because linus was holding it with one hand in the thumbnail and I thought he might drop it in the video

the ones that can burn your thighs off are the worst

9:50 The Arc joke with Gary never gets old

Y'all will probably think of this, but I don't like to assume anything... Please test fan noise levels with and without a charger plugged in. I have an HP laptop that is quiet enough while on battery power, but it gets SUPER loud when it's plugged in, even at idle with no programs open.

Time for me to quit. Nah but for real though this gives me some good ideas to improve!

Linus in a lab? Uh oh

10:35 here’s something that would be really neat to include (and Notebookcheck does when they’re making laptop content instead of complaining about PS5 equivalents): coil whine. A lot of Thinkpads I’ve seen have no coil whine out-of-the-box, but as soon as you put a load, it gets coil whine that persists throughout the lifetime of the laptop; alternatively I’ve seen laptop docks make coil whine worse (possibly from a dock w/ really bad coil whine) Maybe once the device goes through all the performance testing, have a test on coil whine during idle (load coil whine does occur more often but isn’t as big of an issue because the fans would be spinning)

It was very cool to see our PAM mentioned for the power analysis side of their testing! I can't wait to see the results

Linus Feeling Like Inspector Gadget.

$5300 for a max spec Titan 18 HX laptop. It's literally the most high end thing you can buy and I'm sure it will be just right for one type of person lol.

I really hope you develop an endurance test for laptop hinges as well. I had the worst experience ever with an MSI Raider where the hinges would utterly wreck the plastic chassis and break the laptop. I lost count of the number of times I had to RMA my laptop only for it to break again a few months later, and sponsored video or not that experience has put me off MSI laptops for life!

More Lab videos please!!

Flippin love the labs updates

didn't think I'd enjoy this video as much as I did, the lab is super interesting and the team behind it looks passionate and robust. you don't notice the quality of ltt's testing until you watch other channels and get somewhat vague answers. thank's ltt!

I love the Gary Arc timeline

When I saw Linus hold the laptop with one hand without dropping it I almost thought it was a fake video

Nice. Just slapped my laptop and now it's blinking. Damn slaptop.

9:07 who did the Pokemon drawings lol there lookin good!

Something you guys should add to the testing suite is audio (driver) performance. For example dell laptops such as the xps line post-process the crap out of your audio with their almost impossible to remove "waves maxxaudio" software, which makes any headphones/iems sound distorted, even if you're using an external DAC/AMP. This isn't something you can just check on a spec sheet but if you buy a laptop to work on audio this is important information. Actually maybe just add a full laptop bloatware test suite.

Nice setup. I love the quiet room, looking forward to seeing what whacky videos Dennis can cook up with it.

i did some signs for a company that does environmental testing various ways like defense aerospace space ect and they had tons of these giant chambers and its so weird being inside with the door closed. noise is just dead inside. It was awesome

Hope the Labs guys love getting feedback cause HOLY this video already has a ton of suggestions. Good luck with this, guys! Looking forward to this, especially seeing the transparency with every single test!

Love what LTT is doing with the labs. We do need media teams who thoroughly test devices in a repeatable manner. I also really enjoy these behind the scenes type of videos that go over these processes.

Please keep doing what your doing looking forward to the lab in full force thanks for the updates and keep working hard guys

I checked the website and i really like it, good work, i hope you achieve your vision in terms of equipement and methodology and test a lot of products!!

You guys are next level stuff, as always. I trust you for like a decade since I started watching you, keep it up! You do good for this industry

I'm so excited for labs. It's going to be such an amazing service to the community. Massive props to you all! Keep up the good work!

Cool, Labs is starting to take off. Love to see it.

Huge improvement in transparency and the metodology, mostly appreciated!

Very exciting to see this come together!

I appreciate the hard work on ltt labs

Can we get a battery test consisting of eight chrome tabs and a Word doc?

There's no doubt that labs is one of the best things that has happened to the tech space, yes there is still a ton of work to do but even with what they currently have the amount of data that will be EASILY available to consumers is great. Keep the good work guys, you are AWESOME.

Amazing soo cool to see your guys new process

No link in the description to the labs website.... :P

Absolutely love Labs updates! Am wondering if it's possible to get more detail on any of the specific setups. There's so much cool tech in there and I'm sure also so many cool stories from the folks developing it that I would absolutely _love_ to hear each of the different Labs techs geek out about their particular niche for longer ❤

I'm so happy the labs are really coming together these days. I remember the first mentions of it on the wan show. Cool to see it doing its thing.

I hope the batterylife testing can be expanded one bit more. The near minimum power and max power are good but maybe something that is more balanced like having a web-browser open, a youtube video in the background and some other app open would be a decent middle ground for "typical use". Other than that, its already sounding pretty good. Look forward the the flir camera being implemented and everything else. Will be a great place to gauge hard specs of a laptop

LINUS holded the laptop in one hand and didnt drop , he is EVOLVING

Really appreciate you all doing this for the consumers 🙏

Just checked out the labs website, it looks absolutely sick, love this stuff

I work in a textile laboratory and I see many similarities to my work. Such climate chambers as shown in your video are usually intended for simulating extreme environmental conditions. Instead of these, we use a room which is permanently brought to a standard climate, this could be, for example, 20°C and 50% humidity. This way, several products could be tested in parallel. The climate chamber could thus be transferred to another use. Such a “climate room” in our company consists of a heating or air conditioning system and a humidifier or dehumidifier and many climate sensors which communicate with each other.

Regarding endurance, do you verify that Optimus is enabled and that the GPU is disblabled? I think the power profile you people choose does but I just want to make sure 🙃. Also, I'd personnaly would like to know the power consumption of that laptop during the test. I feel that knowing power consumption (mean, max, min, standard deviation etc...) better allows me to identify ideal power limits for custom power profiles.

can't wait to see more added on lttlabs, its gonna be such an awesome resource. well done to the whole team. 👏 (one suggestion after looking through the photos gallery of "In the Box" section, many dark areas are looking crushed and can't see details. Would be great to see products captured in a shooting tent/light box with even soft lighting/non distracting background to help capture photos.)

Thank you for building this insane testing factory!

How is the labs website not linked in the description??

Can you add Linux compatibility for software on labs. Example: Steelseries Apex 5 It needs custom software to setup macros, however it only works on macos and windows. Would be nice if you made them finally port over the software to linux! Also if you can include information such as USB passthrough. My current setup current relies on that

i enjoy watching videos about the progression and growth of anything LTT more than product/topic videos

I love seeing things progress and the reasons why you made this or that choice. Interesting to see the sound chamber not fully done haha. I hope y'all do a video about it just like the Electronic chamber. I really enjoyed Gamers Nexus video on their sound chamber it'll be cool to see if y'all reach similar sound levels. It'll be good to know if I'm using both of y'all for reviews.

3 laptop videos back to back

9:20 Press F for poor Gary. 669th comment. Nice!

This is one of the most exciting projects on RU-vid, it is so great to see how much passion everyone clearly has for accuracy and ethics. Genuinely tempted to get the floatplane subscription haha

this will be so important going forward. good stuff ltt

Are you guys going to make an llt labs channel and do quick shorts on each item with links to the place where all data is. So someone searching youtube for a device can find it thru RU-vid search?

Is it possible to test battery degradation?

Heck yes!!! you guys are awesome!!

It's mindblowing to me how everything on the website is so detailed and thoroughly tested, with super polished visuals and clarity. And all of the information is free, this is actually very useful

Happy this is progressing, but the amount of sponsor moments (internal + MSI) in this is insane

I am disappointed that you didn't do a bulletproof test, or what size bullet leaves what size hole? or how many laptops of the model being tested can stop a .50cal bullet?

Nice to see an update from the lab, as it's been a while. 🙂

you guyes are good.. at testing i trust. 100%

The title and thumbnail made me think this was going to be an apology video for supposedly not testing laptops very well

Do you plan on having something like a brand trustworthiness rating? If a brand's claims about a product are accurate they get a good score and if the opposite is true they get a bad score.

You guys have really done an excellent job turning your RU-vid channel into various things over the years, I love the latest iteration: it’s like a tech documentary channel mixed with reality TV of “small tech company turns into big tech company“

Gary's devotion to arc really makes me want to try one.

Anyone else find the choice to make this video a lengthy ad spot for MSI a bit out of touch? It doesn't really shout independent reviewer.

Your review of the different snapdragon processes used the laptop uptime for how power efficient the processor was. But there’s so many other factors like battery size, LCD power efficient, resolution, etc. that effect those results

You know what might be out of scope but pretty cool to use the data creating a partpicker type dealio where you take your best value for your money components throw them into a configurator that can recommend changes based on performance and as youre consistently updating labs info and adding to the archive and creating an API that grabs part vaules from different vendors.

Very cool. Time to bookmark the lab site.

That intro has a strong Brian David Gilbert feel to it.

I hope you give meta scores too. I don't care about the colour curve details of laptop, just tell me if i can use it near a window without wanting to gouge my eyes out.

If you are to ever update your testing methodology further into the future, it would be lovely to have which revision of methods were used, in case you don't retest all previous devices.

This exhaustive approach ensures consumers get the most accurate information when making a buying decision. Super impressed by the scale and detail of your evaluation procedure.

MSI made the right choice sponsoring this video, people roast their laptops for years now haha, if they are doing this... I guess they learned their lesson, are making better products and are standing by it

I know the money involved is insane, but it blows my mind that nobody has really done something like this to this scale before. Most reviews for things like laptops, even from specific people whose opinions are worth a damn, are more of a vibe check than a rigorous data driven conclusion. I have no reason currently to think this will change, but the only way this can work in the long run is if the good will and trust LTT have accrued over the years will continue. Acting in good faith isn't hard to do yet many companies and individuals struggle with it nowadays. All in all, I'm excited to see more informative videos stem from these results, and appreciate the explanations and transparency about your testing methodology.

before you replace the amazon foams from the noise chamber, it would be interesting to see what difference you had after replacing it with something else. Maybe a small blog post about the before and after results of some audio recordings?

Thanks, we need this.

I love Linus's new quest on this whole: "why %@cking a huge tech channel up is actually easy" by showing how hard behind the scenes is lmao ❤

its crazy how you but a pc, and a year later its only dropped like 200 dollars in value, yet 10 minutes after you buy a laptop, its value is already down like 500 😭😭

I just strated my RU-vid.. I saw your channel..very amazing one !! Great job !!

Hey LTT, Great video! I can definitely see myself using the info on your new website to make future buying decisions, a great win for the community! I saw that you were building a sound chamber, which is a great benchmark given that that mic is really sensitive. Having said that though, I think making use of a Binaural Microphone for the test chamber makes more sense here since your ears are not in the center of the screen and the noise can actually be a little deceptive I think if captured by a single mic. Basically a binaural microphone are microphones within a mall of human ears so you have a head with anatomically correct ears and you have two very sensitive and specialised mics in the "ear" canals so you can perceive the audio as you would percieve it like you were there. I could see myself listening to noise clips from these mics to determine whether I find the noise acceptable or not. Because sometimes it is not really the dB level but more the pitch of the noise for example, which I reckon is determined by the shape of the fan(ducts). Being able to listen to short snippets of the noise would be a huge benefit for me. Moreover, I think it would then also be useful to make sort of "standard environments" like an office space or perhaps a small room that really captures the acoustics that will be faced by a lot of people, because measuring the noise coming from a device in a soundproof room is one thing, but it is another to actually measure it in a more or less standard environment where the acoustics of the room play a role in the amount of annoyance you will get from the device noise. Because I reckon that if the exhausts are directed in a certain way the reflection could become important for the user, say a small room vs a roomy office space. I totally understand that this all would require some more investments, but I think getting at least the binaural microphone would give a more accurate measure and would benefit the community probably more. In any case thank you all for being so awesome and good luck with finishing the lab! ❤

For the endurance test, why a youtube playback? Video decoding is usually hardware accelerated, so you are not really testing the efficiency of either the CPU or GPU. Wouldn't a lightweight game benchmark (like CSGO?) on a loop be more representative of a more typical use-case?

Have to disagree with not changing performance mode for benchmarks. If you're getting a gaming laptop, you're not just going to leave in Balanced mode. Maybe for consumer laptops that's fine, but for more high-end machines, you should also include benchmarks with performance mode because plenty of people who watch your videos will know how to go into software and switch these.

This is good work, definitely a step up.

For Desktop replacements you could add a folding@home test.

Video playback should be 1080p in the endurance test. No one watches at 720p just to save battery these days. If you're aiming at realistic use, 1080p is it.

Glad you guys have done this, because laptops have gotten a little more complicated than what they used to be, even just a few short years ago. Between deceptive naming and voltages/clock speeds degrading performance far below expected base specs, it's easy to buy a system that's an objectively bad value.

PLEASE dont forget to test the screen hinges. They broke on my last three laptops. But thanks for your videos and i am looking forward to the tests.

"How LTT Labs Tests Laptops" is a better tittle. Thanks DeArrow guy! :D

I kinda don't agree with debloating the system before testing. Real world users wouldn't do that and so like Gamers Nexus has always been concerned about, is you'll be providing data that an average user wouldn't get. You guys should absolutely test out of box performance.

15 minute MSI ad disguised as talking about testing laptops.

Thanks for posting this video

The only battery test is 720p video playback? That‘s awful. It uses specific hardware on the chip so it doesn‘t measure the CPU power usage at all really, and if one CPU doesn‘t have hardware for the specific format used and another does, it makes it totally useless for evaluating general endurance. I know this kinda testing is hard to do in little time, but that test is just not it.

0:56 You should not remove anything. Test it as shipped. If the manifacturer decides to worsen the performance / experience for a quick buck, they should get their reward for it with a worse score.

Such an awesome update, thank you for informing us how your tests go and even include our input there! 9:09 ==> Please check the temperature of the bottom of the laptop, so one knows how hot it would be on your laps. Thanks for yet another great video and thanks for such awesome testing environment!

Such an amazing independent testing resource. Everyone involved should be proud of the work they have done. The best consumer is an educated one!

That's all well and good, but what's the point? Some manufacturers do not hesitate to change certain components (screen, battery, etc.) without informing consumers and without changing the model number of the computer (or other device). Sometimes these changes occur after a few months, sometimes they depend on the region where the device is sold, and sometimes they are based on component availability. So in the end, you test a computer model, and later we find ourselves buying this same model but which was manufactured with different components than the one you tested...

The video GamersNexus never wanted to come out.

I like all the super controlled and indepth testing, but i feel itd also be super helpful to test it in day to day life. Idk how feasable this is, but if theres someone in the office who daily drives a laptop, to go through and use the different laptops day to day and talk about them. Like other youtubers do with phones. Its not gonna be 100% accurate, but itd be nice to hear how someone who daily drives laptops feels about these machines.

Greatly appreciate you and your teams effort to help us figure out what is worth our hard earned money. I don’t have allot of time researching everything so your help is greatly appreciated. Your honesty is the number one reason why I started following you years ago. Thanks again 🙌