If you’re in the market for a new gaming laptop, Razer is running a variety of discounts on both the Razer Blade 16 and 18—the one to buy depends on the size of your budget and your desk. The price reduction varies but is right around 14 percent off for most models, with some versions excluded from the sale.

Our reviewer Luke Larsen gave high marks to the 2025 revamp of the Razer Blade 16 (8/10, WIRED Recommends), largely thanks to its extremely thin footprint and excellent keyboard. Razer does a great job with little details, like the spacious glass touchpad that’s nice and responsive, the excellent fit and finish on the machined aluminum body, and the thin bezels that help the screen stand out. There’s a reason the Razer Blade 16 recently moved to the top of our favorite gaming laptop list.

The display varies depending on the version you choose. The 16-inch version that we reviewed has a 240-Hz OLED screen that we really liked. with excellent contrast and color saturation, with a fast response time that made a big difference at those sky-high frame rates. The larger Razer Blade has an IPS display instead of an OLED panel, but with a higher 3,840 x 2,400 resolution and the same 240-Hz refresh rate.

So what’s the catch? In my opinion, the laptops that are discounted are a little awkward. For the Razer Blade 16, only the RTX 5060 and RTX 5070 versions are marked down, and both feature just 8 GB of VRAM. We haven’t had a chance to test out the mobile versions of these chips, but on the desktop end I found that little memory was a limiting factor for performance, especially at 1440p or higher. Mobile GPUs are always a compromise, but you won’t have the opportunity to upgrade, so it’s important to get this right on the first try. Of the two, I’d go with the RTX 5070 version, which also makes the bump to 32 GB of RAM for $400 overall.

Despite a higher price, I think the Razer Blade 18 sale is more appealing. While the RTX 5070 Ti model is marked down, I’d be very pleased if I had $4,000 or more to spend on a laptop with a mobile RTX 5090. You’ll save $700 on the basic configuration of that model, which includes a 2-TB SSD and 32 GB of memory. Even though the screen isn’t as nice, the performance should be top-tier, as long as you have a big enough backpack.

Setting up and migrating to Dashlane from another password manager is simple, and you’ll use a secret key to encrypt your passwords, much like BitWarden’s setup process. In practice, Dashlane is very similar to the others on this list. Dashlane offers a 30-day free trial, so you can test it out before committing.

After signing up, download the app for Android and iOS, and grab the browser extensions for Firefox, Chrome, and Edge.

Best for Bundled Services

You might know Nord better for its VPN service, but the company also offers a password manager, NordPass, and a pretty nice online storage system, NordLocker. A part of the appeal of NordPass comes in bundling it with the company’s other services for some compelling deals. As a password manager, NordPass offers everything you need. It uses a zero-knowledge setup in which all data is encrypted on your device before it’s uploaded to the company’s servers. Unlike most services here, NordPass uses XChaCha20 for encryption. It would require a deep dive into cryptography to get into the differences, but the short story is that it’s just as secure and maybe slightly faster than the AES-256 encryption used by other services.

There’s a personal information storage feature to keep your address, phone number, and other personal data safe and secure, but easy to access. NordPass also offers an emergency access feature, which allows you to grant another NordPass user emergency access to your vault. It works just like the same feature in 1Password, allowing trusted friends or family to access your account if you cannot.

Other nice features include support for two-factor authentication to sign in to your account, as well as security tools to evaluate the strength of your passwords and alert you if any of your data is compromised. Note that NordPass Premium is theoretically $3 a month, but there are always sales that bring that much lower.

The downside, and my one gripe about all Nord services, is that there is no monthly plan. As noted above, the best deal comes in combining NordPass, NordVPN, and NordLocker for a bundled deal. A free version of NordPass is available, but it’s restricted to only a single device.

After signing up, download the app for Android and iOS, and grab the browser extensions for Firefox, Chrome, and Edge.

Best DIY Options (Self-Hosted)

Want to retain more control over your data in the cloud? Sync your password vault yourself. The services below do not store any of your data on their servers. This means attackers have nothing to target. Instead of storing your passwords, these services use a local vault to store your data, and then you can sync that vault using a file-syncing service like Dropbox, NextCloud, or Edward Snowden’s recommended service, SpiderOak. There are two services to keep track of in this scenario, making it a little more complex. But if you’re already using a file-syncing file service, this can be a good option.

You can also properly host your own vault with network-attached storage or a local server.

Courtesy of Enpass

Enpass does not store any data on its servers. Syncing is handled through third-party services. Enpass doesn’t do the syncing, but it does offer apps on every platform. That means once you have syncing set up, it works just like any other service. And you don’t have to worry about Enpass being hacked, because your data isn’t on its servers. Enpass supports syncing through Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud, Box, Nextcloud, or any service using WebDAV. Alas, SpiderOak is not currently supported. You can also synchronize your data over a local WLAN or Wi-Fi network.

All of the features you expect in a password manager are here, including auto-generating passwords, breach-monitoring, biometric login (for devices that support it), auto-filling passwords, and options to store other types of data, like credit cards and identification data. There’s also a password audit feature to highlight any weak or duplicate passwords in your vault. One extra I particularly like is the ability to tag passwords for easier searching. Enpass also makes setting up the syncing through the service of your choice very easy. Enpass added support for passkeys, too.

A report into commercial datacentres’ water usage in England suggests the sector is more efficient and less water-intensive than previously thought, thanks to advances in cooling technologies.

The survey, carried out by UK tech trade body TechUK in collaboration with the Environment Agency, set out to assess the environmental resources consumed by the datacentre industry in England, with a particular focus on water use. 

TechUK gathered data from 73 sites across England, including more than 50 in the Water Resource South East region, and its findings showed that modern cooling systems are less reliant on potable water to keep servers from overheating than perhaps thought.

According to the results, 51% of surveyed sites use waterless cooling systems that require no additional water beyond the standard use of a commercial building. Out of those facilities that do use water, most employ hybrid systems combining air, water and refrigerant-based heat rejection, with only 5% relying entirely on water-based cooling.

These figures are significant because the datacentre industry has often been criticised for a lack of transparency around its environmental footprint. In fact, when compared with broader industrial consumption, datacentres account for only a small fraction of water use. The report notes that 64% of sites consumed levels of water similar to that of a Premier League football club over the course of a year.

One key conclusion is that datacentres have steadily become more water-efficient, largely due to technological innovation. Methods such as liquid cooling and direct-to-chip cooling are reducing or eliminating reliance on potable water. This trend is especially important as the UK government pushes for rapid expansion of datacentre capacity to meet the growing demands of AI-driven computing.

Luisa Cardani, head of the Datacentres Programme at TechUK, said further innovation in cooling is likely to continue. “A lot of the datacentre operators for newer facilities chose to move away from any water use where possible, and move to waterless cooling or hybrid systems,” she said. “That trend has continued because, as more and more data has become available around where there is water scarcity in England, they need to be efficient with their resources.”

The report also makes recommendations for government and industry, including the development of standardised but flexible cooling requirements for AI-ready servers. It calls for early coordination between datacentre developers, local authorities and water suppliers to ensure water demand is aligned with local supply capacity through clear connection agreements.

“Water companies would have this data. So, the question here is whether regulation is necessary,” Cardani added. “As our survey shows, a lot of these companies actually measure how much water they use, which itself is a very good thing, of course. As part of our recommendations, we call for all of the sector to do this.”

Richard Thompson, deputy director for water resources at the Environment Agency, said the report demonstrates that “UK datacentres are utilising a range of cooling technologies and becoming more water conscious”, adding: “It is vital the sector puts sustainability at its heart, and minimises water use in line with evolving standards. We are working with industry and other regulators to raise these to secure the best outcomes for our environment and our water supply for future generations.”

Despite its positive outlook, the report acknowledges its own limitations. The sample size of 73 sites represents only a fraction of the UK’s 477 datacentres, with all data provided voluntarily and without external validation. Most participating sites were located in Greater London and the South East, and the study focused only on large commercial facilities, excluding smaller operators.

According to Peter Judge, senior research analyst at Uptime Intelligence, this lack of transparency is no surprise. “Datacentre operators don’t really naturally give up information,” he said. “They’re operating in a world where they’re focused on their clients. Their clients expect a sort of level of privacy and so forth. Their default position is to not give information unless they absolutely have to. So, I think it will be forced upon them by legislation, rather than them doing it willingly.”

Judge argues that disclosure could ultimately benefit datacentre operators, particularly if they are classified as critical national infrastructure. “A lot of banking services and health services depend critically on datacentres, but you can’t say all datacentres are critical to the functioning of the country, some of them are simply storing personal videos.

“In other words, when legislation happens, it automatically has to demand information from the providers for there to be a benefit to being classified as critical national infrastructure, which might mean that you get exemptions from some of the energy efficiency or water usage demands.”

Uptime has previously criticised the sector for being overly secretive. “Datacentre operators have generally been too complacent, too secretive and when asked about environmental impact, they have been much too inclined to issue little lectures about how datacentres are really important, so we should all stop worrying,” Judge said.

He added that operators should engage more proactively with policymakers: “One of the things that Uptime is talking to operators about is the need to engage proactively with the people that are setting the legislation to try and make sure that the legislation is made with an actual understanding of how the sector works.”

Judge also warned that efficiency gains must be viewed in the context of rapid industry growth. “The industry likes to concentrate on efficiency rather than totals, but totals is how people set policies at the national level,” he said.

“If a big cloud provider improves the efficiency of its datacentres by 10%, but it has expanded the total capacity it’s using 10-fold in that time, it’s basically using 10 times the power, just with a little bit more efficiency.”

The government has already announced significant investment in expanding datacentre capacity across the UK by 2030.