Dell (DELL) came into CES 2021 with a number of new products ranging from upgraded monitors to new business machines and high-end gaming systems from its Alienware brand. But one of the biggest themes the company focused on was the sustainability of its product line.
Dell has been working to improve sustainability across its products for years. It already uses recycled materials in its laptops and closed-loop plastics in its displays — meaning if you buy a new Dell monitor, it likely has plastics from an old Dell display.
For 2021, though, the company is going a step further by integrating bioplastics into the lids of its new Latitude 5000 series and Precision 3560.
“We're taking byproduct waste from the paper-making process and creating this new biopolymer,” Ed Boyd, senior vice president of Dell’s design group, told Yahoo Finance.
“We've integrated ocean-bound plastics into our packaging, we brought in recycled carbon fiber from the aerospace industry, we've been pulling pollution out of the air and literally creating ink and using it for printing graphics on our packages. So we're doing...a wide array of things,” Boyd explained.
According to Dell, a laptop’s lid is its second heaviest part, which allows the bioplastics, which make up 21% of the lids on the Latitude 5000 and Precision 3560, to have the biggest impact. The company claims that with all of the sustainability measures that have gone into the Latitude 5000 series, the firm will save enough energy to power 5,564 homes for a year.
Working from home and gaming
Of course, Dell’s CES announcements included more than its sustainability efforts. The company also debuted a number of new technologies to benefit the work-from-home crowd. The new 14-inch Latitude 9420 gets a slick webcam with an automatic shutter.
Dubbed ShutterSafe, the shutter will automatically open and close when you log into and out of video chat software. The idea is to ensure you don’t have to rely on a Post-It note to cover your camera when you’re not using it.
“Building that capability, building that intelligence into the systems, so they can really help people get done the stuff they want to do, I think that's been something we've been working on and what...you're seeing this week at CES,” Sam Burd, president of Dell’s client solutions group, told Yahoo Finance.
Then there’s Dell’s Alienware products, which include the new m15 R4 and m17 R4 gaming laptops and the Aurora Ryzen Edition R10 desktop. The m15 and m17, which both start at $2,149 and launch Jan. 26, get Nvidia’s (NVDA) new RTX 3000 series graphics chips, meaning they should offer some impressive gaming performance.
The systems use Intel’s (INTC) 10th-generation processors, rather than the company’s new 11th-generation chips, but do get 32GB of RAM. The m17’s display is also available with a wild 360Hz refresh rate, meaning the on-screen image will update incredibly fast, making for a smoother gaming experience.
The Aurora Ryzen Edition R10 desktop, meanwhile, features AMD’s (AMD) Ryzen 5000 series CPU and your choice of an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card or an Nvidia RTX 3000 card. There’s also the option to add up to 128GB of RAM, which is complete overkill.
“I think the gaming space was growing, but we've seen a big surge with the pandemic and people realizing what was possible,” Burd said, adding that gaming is a “great way to blow off some steam” amid the pandemic.
If you’re one of those people who needs to blow off some steam, the R10 desktop is available today starting at $1,079.
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