(PCMag)
If you've ever done online research to buy a PC (or any other technology product, really), you know how long it can take to zero in on exactly what you're looking for.
You'll easily find plenty of lists of the best laptops for various use cases (we currently maintain 37 of them based on the hundreds of laptops we test every year), but what about the best laptop for you? That might be one that handles gaming, but also has a big, brilliant display for photo editing, is light enough to tote every day, delivers at least 10 hours of battery life, and costs less than $1,500. Drilling down to find a PC that fulfills all of those requirements is no easy feat. Maybe you're not even sure if you want a laptop. Could a desktop be a better choice? Which one provides better performance and value? And which sources can you trust to deliver the most accurate and holistic advice?
Try Maggie, our new AI-powered personal shopping assistant.
Here at PCMag, our team has been lab testing and rating PC hardware, consumer electronics, software, and services for more than four decades. Our experts take great pride in their ability to instantly serve up a thoughtful, well-targeted product recommendation based on broad and deep knowledge of their coverage areas. We do it all the time: over dinner with friends, via email from vague acquaintances, in the occasional panicked phone call from a relative, and in plenty of other social situations. If you're lucky enough to know a PCMag reviewer or editor, you've got a lifelong ticket to the best buying advice in the business.
But what if we could use our years of expertise, our huge body of work, and our knack for picking the right technology to deliver personalized recommendations to everyone?
That's why we developed Maggie, our own AI-powered personal shopping assistant. Our custom chatbot is built on proprietary technology, uses a selection of large language models for generative inference, and is trained exclusively on tens of thousands of PCMag reviews, product roundups, and related stories in more than 200 product categories. It also incorporates our testing benchmarks, our sizable editor-curated spec database, and our state-of-the-art pricing engine to serve up exactly what you're looking for. And it's all backed by our hands-on testing and 40+ years of technology journalism experience.
Instead of spending hours searching various sources of varying quality, poring through reviews and comparisons, you can just have a conversation with Maggie to hone in on that perfect laptop—even if it is wildly specific.
Our editors, product development team, and engineers have been training Maggie for several months to deliver the best responses to all types of technology shopping queries. Like with any nascent AI-based tool, it's still learning, and we're continually working to increase the accuracy of responses and improve the overall experience. Now we're at the point where we'd like to hear what you think. Please take Maggie for a spin and let us know your thoughts via the feedback link at the bottom of the chatbot window, with a comment below, or you can email me directly.