Ask Paul: August 30 (Premium)

Happy Friday! We're heading into a long holiday weekend here in the U.S. so this one is coming together a little more quickly than usual.
Meteor shower
christianwilson asks:

I have a question regarding that Meteor Lake laptop that was so bad you decided not to review it. I was curious why you decided not to write the review. I think there can be benefit to fairly reviewing a bad laptop, assuming it is done in a tasteful manner, but I could also understand not wanting to put the time and effort into writing the review when there are so many others of higher quality that warrant your attention. Just curious about your philosophy on how you choose which devices to review. Thanks!

I don't have a formal policy or whatever. And I have internally debated the right way to handle such a thing. But it doesn't come up frequently. And this year has introduced additional challenges that contributed to the decision I've referenced recently.

In general, PC makers offer me PCs to review, and I agree to do so or not based on my schedule, how many PCs may or may not be in the queue already, the expected interest in the device (mine and/or readers), and probably other factors. But even in a slower year, I don't just say yes to everything.

This year has been an outlier. It's not just busier than usual, in terms of PCs offered for review, it is dramatically busier. I haven't tallied it, and would have to go back and look at last year, at least, for a rough comparable. But I've easily been offered almost three times as many PCs as is usually the case. It's overwhelming, and with my self-imposed schedule demanding that I spend at least three weeks with each PC, it's impossible to review everything I've been offered in a timely manner. (Adding to this, I also have a keyboard, an external display, and some earbuds in for review, and I've barely mentioned any of that, or not at all in some cases.)

From a broader perspective, things are changing. Windows on Arm finally became viable this year with Snapdragon X and so I feel obligated to push that to the front of my queue. But Intel and AMD are racing to catch up, too, and that makes for some interesting dynamics. The Meteor Lake-based PCs that are the most common this year are already orphaned for a new Intel architecture. That's unprecedented, but it also adds a weird wrinkle to reviews because these PCs, though selling in big numbers relative to the rest of the market, are one-offs and temporary, and may not be as well-supported going forward. Worse, they're terrible in some ways. This has gotten better over time, but I've identified major efficiency issues and battery life deficiencies common in Meteor Lake-based laptops, and that's with the beefier H-series versions. Some of the year-over-year comparables are terrible. But again, maybe temporary too.

This summer, I almost halted my review of a Meteor Lake laptop because it had major reliability issues in addition to the usual efficiency/battery...