If there's one thing laptops could do better, it's last longer. Battery life remains a sore subject for many, and it's still considered inadvisable to head off to a mission-critical outing without lugging along a power brick.

A new breed of laptop aims to change that, by altering one of the most defining things about your PC, the processor. The Asus NovaGo is one of a handful of new systems to swap out the usual Intel (or sometimes AMD) CPUs in favor of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, the same chip found in smartphones such as last year's Samsung Galaxy S8. Other models coming soon include the HP Envy x2 ($538.88 at Amazon.com) and the Lenovo Miix 630.

Why do that? The promise is that these laptops and two-in-one hybrids will offer the same Windows 10 ($92.99 at Amazon.com) you're used to, but add 20-plus hours of battery life, plus a phone-like always on LTE connection. They also claim 30 days of standby time, which means you can close the lid and leave them sitting in a corner for weeks and still have battery power when you return. We're still testing battery life, but this system's "instant on" capabilities work as advertised. It boots up rapidly and resumes from sleep in a flash.