I brought this Intel Evo laptop to 3 Thanksgiving dinners to see if it could handle the holiday hustle

Happy Holidays, y’all! If you’re like me, ‘tis the season for a lot of travel. I’m always bouncing from gathering to gathering when I’m visiting family, and my accompanying laptop is never up to the challenge of keeping up with my busy holiday schedule. But this time, I brought my Lenovo Intel Evo Core i7 laptop with me for Thanksgiving — a super-speedy, charge-holding beast of a machine. If you’re in the market for a powerhouse laptop, here’s how I found the Lenovo Intel Evo super handy for the holiday travel circuit:

Speed showdown

I know my mom’s house isn’t the only sufferer of “too-many-people-on-the-network”-itis around the holidays. Every year we pack the house for holiday festivities and her Wi-Fi network gets bogged down thanks to everyone’s phones, laptops, and tablets — always a recipe disaster once the online shopping starts. This year, I came out unscathed (dare I say the winner?) thanks to my Intel’s Wi-Fi 6 technology. A crowded network meant laggy internet and missed deals for others, but not me. The instant wake feature from the Intel Evo meant that I was ahead of the pack from the get-go: while other laptops were waking up from their turkey naps, mine started up in an instant.

Credit: Intel

Gamer friendly

By nature of being a nightowl, I always have some alone time when I visit my family. Late night is my favorite time to fire up some computer games and enjoy true, blissful downtime. While I consider myself a casual gamer, I do play a very graphics/processing heavy game that has proven to be a struggle for my computers of yore. These issues are a thing of the past for me now — the graphics of my games look incredible thanks to Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics, and the 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i7 processor runs so smoothly, game lag isn’t something I have to worry about.

Credit: Intel

Juice that goes the distance

This thing packs some serious battery power, meaning I don’t have to be tethered to cords and wires — a true saving grace as I bounced between three family gatherings. We had the Lenovo Intel Evo Core i7 laptop in the kitchen sans charger for a few hours on Thanksgiving morning while we flipped through recipes and played music to get us in the holiday spirit. From there, I took it to my future in-laws’ house to easily show them some photos I downloaded earlier in the week. That evening, my mom and I were able to do a little online shopping while sitting on her porch (I learned how to deal-hunt from the best!), and I was still able to finish off the night reading in bed — all off a single full-battery charge. And when you do need a recharge, Intel Evo laptops can charge up to fifty percent in under 20 minutes.

Credit: Intel