PC Advisor - January 2017

GET FREE SOFTWARE IN OUR ONLINE DOWNLOADS ZONE

EXPERT ADVICE YOU CAN TRUST

BEST VALUE LAPTOPS The new generation is powerful and portable Full HD screens All-day battery Windows 10

FROM IDG

15

LAPTOP NS IO T A D N E M RECOM IDE INS

NEW GOOGLE’S NEW GADGETS

LATESTS PHONE & D E T S E T RATED

e Appl 7 ne iPho

e Googl L Pixel X

Why you’ll want a Daydream View, Google Home and more

REVIEWED

AMAZON ECHO

Sony XZ ia Xper

NOW THERE’S A DIGITAL ASSISTANT FOR EVERY ROOM OF YOUR HOME

JANUARY 2017

ISSUE 258

Specialists in business-class Internet connectivity, SIP and Voice over IP Hummingbird [Colibri Thalassinus] A hummingbird’s heart beats at over a 1,000 times a minute and its wings will beat about 70 times per second

COPPERSTREAM® • Copper Ethernet GEA/EFM Leased Lines • 2Mb to 35Mb • Auto failover (optional) • From £125 per month • Free connection*

FIBRESTREAM® • Fibre Ethernet Leased Lines • 10Mb to 1Gb • Auto failover (optional) • From £300 per month • Free connection*

VSTREAM®

Our FibreStream® Internet connections transmit data at up to one Gigabit per second

• Fibre Broadband (VDSL) • Up to 76Mb • Auto failover (optional) • From £21 per month • Free connection and router on most services*

DUALSTREAM®SF

Whatever your budget, we have a

fast, resilient broadband solution

to suit your business needs.

• SDSLM and VStream® • 2Mb voice and up to 76Mb data • Auto failover • From £99 per month

Sales 0800 319 6010 • Partner Services 0800 319 6500 Innovative • Flexible • Reliable • Supportive

WINNER WINNE

HIGHLY HIGH FINALIST COMMENDED FINALIST

Service Provider of the Year

Provider ovider of the Year

2010 2011 2012 Internet rnet Service

HIGHLY HIGH

WINNER WINNE R COMMENDED

2013 2013 2014

Best Channel SME Ho Hosted ed Bestt Channel Best Bes ISP Soluon ISP

IFC Spitfire Ad.indd 2

Best ISP

www.spitfire.co.uk *Subject to terms and conditions

23/08/2016 10:02

WELCOME Editor Jim Martin Group Managing Editor Marie Brewis Art Director Mandie Johnson Production Editor Rob Woodcock Multimedia Editor Dominik Tomaszewski Consumer Tech Editor Chris Martin Engagement Editor Ashleigh Allsopp Staff Writer Lewis Painter Staff Writer Christopher Minasians Staff Writer Henry Burrell Staff Writer Miriam Harris Associate Online Editor David Price Associate Editor Karen Haslam Associate Editor Neil Bennett Forum Editor Peter Thomas Editorial Director Matt Egan

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

JIM MARTIN

Gadgets galore Google, Apple and Amazon announce new products

Contributors Martyn Casserly, Brad Chacos, Jason Evangelho, Mark Hachman, Benny Har-Even, Michael Kan, Woody Leonhard, Gordon Mah Ung, Josh Norem, Ian Paul, Jon Ribeiro, Thomas Ryan, Peter Sayer, JD Sartain, Agam Shah, Patrick Thibodeau, Jon Thompson, Derek Walter, Andrew Williams, Leah Yamshon

Advertising Account Director Jonathan Busse Senior Account Manager Gemma Rollason Campaign Support Manager Chris Brown

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Marketing Marketing Manager Ash Patel Head of Marketing Design James Walker Subscriptions Customer Services


Online Online Development Manager Adrian Black [email protected] Web Developer Victor Chong Junior Developer John Copsey Web Developer Dominik Koscielak

Accounts Financial Director Chris Norman Credit Controller Dawnette Gordon Management Accountant Parit Shah


Publishing Publishing Director Simon Jary Managing Director Kit Gould

[email protected] [email protected]

Subscribe online: tinyurl.com/subscribepca Subscribe by phone: 0844 844 0232

Subscribe to digital editions: pcadvisor.co.uk/magazines Subscription enquiries: [email protected]

CWO

DD

12 issues

£37.99

£35.88

Six issues

£24.99

£19.99

Europe (12 issues)

£100

£100

Rest of world (12 issues)

£125

£125

I

t’s been quite a month for product launches, and this issue of PC Advisor is packed with everything you need to know about them. From Google’s new virtual reality headset to its voiceactivated assistant, you’ll find all the details in our feature on page 76. But while Google’s Home speaker is yet to launch, Amazon’s Echo (and Echo Dot) are already on sale. It’s one of the most exciting new gadgets in years and thanks to lessons learned during the time it has been on sale in the US, the UK version is a much more polished and useful system. What can it do? Just turn to page 48 to find out. You’ll also find reviews of Apple’s iPhone 7 (page 29), Google’s Pixel XL (page 77) and Sony’s new Xperia XZ and X Compact (pages 32 and 34). Again, there’s something for everyone here: if you can’t afford or don’t want a flagship phone, check out the best budget phones to buy on page 130. Things haven’t quite gone to plan for Samsung with the Note 7 (page 10). It initially recalled the first batch of phones and replaced them because some batteries were catching fire or exploding, but further problems with batteries in replacement handsets have led it to pull the Note 7 off the shelves and completely discontinue the phone. As well as new phones, we’ve hand-picked four of the best-value laptops you can buy for around £550. At this mid-price you can expect many fewer compromises than a true budget laptop, and the models from Lenovo, Acer, Asus and MSI are all great buys. To find the best for you, turn to page 64. The MSI is an entry-level gaming laptop, but there’s no denying you get more for your money with a PC. In fact, upgrading your PC’s graphics card can be an inexpensive way to boost performance and avoid having to buy a whole new machine. We explain how to do this on page 112 and how the latest generation of monitors can make games look even better (page 101). We also dissect a graphics card on page 88, so you can see how they work. Finally, don’t miss our beginner’s guide to Windows’ PowerShell on page 106. Invest a little time in this powerful tool and you’ll discover that the command line can still be useful in 2016.

What do you think of this issue of PC Advisor? We welcome feedback – email Jim Martin at [email protected] and include the issue number in the subject heading

PC Advisor is published by IDG UK IDG UK, 101 Euston Road, London NW1 2RA. Tel: 020 7756 2800 Printer: Wyndeham Press Group Ltd 01621 877 777 Distribution: Seymour Distribution Ltd 020 7429 4000 No material may be reproduced in whole or part without written permission. While every care is taken, the publisher cannot be held legally responsible for any errors in articles, listings or advertisements. All material copyright IDG UK 2016

ISSUE 259 ON SALE 7 DECEMBER 2016 January 2017 www.pcadvisor.co.uk 3

003 Welcome 258.indd 3

27/10/2016 16:04

CONTENTS

NEWS & ANALYSIS 6

FEATURES & GROUP TESTS

COVER FEATURE

Latest technology news

14 New Windows 10 preview 15 BBC’s micro:bit computer 16 Intel’s revenue soars 17 Nadella talks LinkedIn 18 Hackers create IoT botnets 19 Boosting data transfer

REGULARS & OFFERS 3 Welcome 20 Subscribe 119 Software downloads zone 146 Outbox

64 64 GROUP TEST: Best value laptops 76 G oogle’s big launch 88 H ow graphics cards work

REVIEWS

GET FREE SOFTWARE PAGE 119

Subscribe to PC Advisor and

SAVE 50% SEE PAGE 20

22 25 27 29 32 34 36 39 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 55 56 57 58 60 62

96 Why you should try Linux 101 G -Sync vs FreeSync 104 Meet Pixel

TEST CENTRE

huwi HiBook Pro C Chuwi Hi10 Jumper EZBook Air Apple iPhone 7 Sony Xperia XZ Sony Xperia X Compact Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 Xiaomi Redmi Pro Huawei Nova IMO S Amazon Fire HD 8 Amazon Echo Apple Watch Series 2 Synology RT1900ac Yi 4K Action Cam Devolo WiFi ac Repeater Griffin Survivor Omnicharge DJI Osmo Mobile Bitdefender Total Security 2017 Battlefield 1

BUDGET LAPTOPS 66 68 70 72

Acer S 13 S5-371 Asus ZenBook UX310UA Lenovo Yoga 11 710 MSI GL62-6QC 065UK

25

6 50 34 4 www.pcadvisor.co.uk January 2017

004_005 Contents 258.indd 4

27/10/2016 16:13

CONTENTS GOOGLE’S BIG LAUNCH

76

HOW GRAPHICS CARDS WORK

88 6 REASONS TO TRY LINUX

MEET PIXEL

G-SYNC VS FREESYNC

96

101 119

64

HOW TO

TEST

ON THE COVER

CENTRE

106

TOP 5 CHARTS: BUYER’S GUIDE 121 122 123 124 125 126 128 129 130 131 132 134 135 136 137

76

48

Best laptops Budget laptops Ultraportable laptops Chromebooks Gaming laptops Gaming PCs All-in-one PCs Smartphones Budget smartphones Phablets Best tablets Smartwatches Activity trackers Budget printers/Printers Wireless routers/ Powerline adaptors 138 NAS drives/External hard drives 139 SSDs/Smart thermostats 140 Budget graphics cards/ Graphics cards 141 4K flat-panel TVs/ 4K flat-panel displays 142 e-book readers/Media streamers 143 Games console/ Budget portable speakers 144 Budget headphones/Headphones 145 Power banks/Desktop chargers

106 Master Windows’ PowerShell 111 Shut down a PC at a set time 112 Install a graphics card 115 Know when your SSD will die 116 Work smarter in Excel

29, 32, 77

116

004_005 Contents 258.indd 5

104

January 2017 www.pcadvisor.co.uk 5

27/10/2016 16:14

NEWS Keep up to date with PC Advisor news: pcadvisor.co.uk/news

twitter.com/pcadvisor

facebook.com/pcadvisor

Microsoft announces slew of new products at Windows event

youtube.com/pcadvisor

CHRIS MARTIN

Brad Chacos reveals everything, from Windows 10 Creators Update to the Surface Mouse and keyboards Microsoft’s recent big event included plenty of new Surface hardware, but nevertheless, it’s easy to see why the company called this a Windows event rather than a Surface shindig. Windows and devices chief Terry Myerson (pictured) kicked things off with a tantalising glimpse of the features that will debut with the new Windows 10 Creators Update, scheduled to release in the spring. The rest of the event was dedicated to new Surface gear designed specifically to marry powerful, thoughtful hardware with the best of those new software features.

Windows 10 Creators Update As we said, the freshly revealed Windows 10 Creators Update, scheduled to arrive in early 2017, kicked off the show. The update is built around three key pillars: the creation and manipulation of 3D content, sharing your Xbox Live gaming experiences and easily communicating with others.

Surface Studio Microsoft’s first-ever desktop PC is the paragon for all those Windows ideals. The Surface Studio all-in-one mixes stunning physical design and impressive internal hardware, focused on creating the best

experience possible for professionals and content creators. From an ultra-slim 4500x3000-pixel screen with ‘True Scale’ 1:1 image recreation, to the ability to lay at a 20-degree angle for natural positioning while sketching, to the sixth-generation (Skylake) Core i7 CPU and Nvidia GPU powering it all, the Surface Studio is laser-focused on helping you get things done. (And showing Surface Studio

off Windows in the best possible.) Prices start at $3,000 – at the time of writing no UK price had been announced.

Surface Dial The Surface Studio’s content-friendly design and Windows 10’s new content creation tools are amplified by the Surface Dial, a radical puck that can control Microsoft’s new PC. It’s primarily designed to work in conjunction with Microsoft’s Surface Pen. Priced at $100, the UK price has not yet been revealed. The Surface Dial doesn’t have any buttons. Instead, using it reveals an interface wheel customised for specific applications, with selections occurring as you twist the device back and forth. You may cycle through tool-tip brushes in an image-editing app, for instance, or rewind and fast-forward through written notes in Office. A virtual version of the Dial appears even if you don’t place the puck directly onscreen, letting you zoom, scroll and adjust various options such as screen brightness and volume. Support will be baked right into Windows 10, and the accessory will be compatible with the Surface Pro 3, Pro 4 and Surface Book.

6 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news January 2017

006_008 News 258.indd 6

27/10/2016 15:08

007 BT AD 258.indd 7

24/10/2016 14:02

News

Surface Book i7

files onto these contacts to immediately share items, or click the contact to interact in a specific app such as Skype or Xbox Live.

Live PC game streaming

Surface Book i7 Handily enough, Microsoft also revealed a newer, more powerful version of the Surface Book, the aptly named Surface Book i7. It comes with a sixth-generation Skylake Intel Core i7 processor and an Nvidia GTX 965M GPU to deliver twice the power of the most potent original Surface Book. The Redmond-based firm has also boosted the Book i7’s battery life to a claimed 15 hours, despite the additional firepower, thanks to a redesigned cooling system and, well, more batteries. Microsoft revealed that prices will start at $2,400, with UK cost to be announced.

Paint 3D The Windows 10 Creators Update adds Paint 3D, a Windows Store app designed from the ground up to create 3D images even out of 2D pictures. The program includes numerous tools for editing three-dimensional images, and also integrates with a new Windows 10 3D-scanning app dubbed Windows Capture 3D, which allows you to digitize real-world objects. Microsoft also plans to introduce a ‘community’ hub on Remix3D.com for shared 3D images, plus it’ll let you drag your creations out of Minecraft. Office Paint 3D

apps will also support 3D images after the Windows 10 Creators Update rolls out. You have to wonder how many nonprofessionals are interested in 3D image creation, but there’s no doubting that Paint 3D looks mighty nifty – and like a perfect match for the Surface Studio and Surface Dial’s capabilities.

Windows Holographic VR headsets You’ll be able to view those 3D creations through Microsoft’s own HoloLens, or via an onslaught of Windows Holographiccompatible VR headsets reportedly coming from Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus and Acer. “These headsets will be the first and only to ship with inside-out, six-degree-offreedom sensors,” Microsoft’s Terry Myerson revealed. “Unlike every other VR headset on the market today, this means there will be zero need for a separate room. Zero need for a complicated setup.”

My People Microsoft wants to make your friends the centre of your Windows experience with My People, a feature that borrows from Android and iOS. In the Creators Update, five important contacts will appear as profile images in your taskbar. You’ll be able to drop

Microsoft is muscling in on Twitch. The Windows 10 Creators Update adds the ability to easily start broadcasting your Xbox Live games via the OS’s Game DVR toolbar, sending notifications out to your friends to let them know when you’re online. Once they hop into your stream they’ll be able to chat with you, as with every other streaming service out there. The service is powered by Microsoft’s recent Beam acquisition and looks simple to use. It’s easy to envision Windows 10 Game DVR livestreaming becoming popular on consoles, but the firm faces an uphill battle on PCs, where Twitch and tools such as Nvidia Shadowplay and OBS already enjoy massive user bases.

Custom tournaments and fancy audio The firm is tying console and PC users closer together with custom tournaments powered by Xbox Live’s Arena platform. Next year, you’ll be able to create your own custom gaming tournaments, controlling everything from the games, to the rules, to the players and the start times. Previously, Area tournaments were only created by Microsoft and its official partners. The Xbox One S, which is itself powered by Windows 10, is adding support for bitstreaming Blu-ray audio passthrough and Dolby Atmos. Soon, those 4K videos and games will sound glorious.

Surface Mouse and keyboards The niche Surface Dial isn’t the only Studio peripheral Microsoft announced, though none of the others made it onto the stage. The firm quietly launched a Surface Mouse and a pair of desktop Surface keyboards to complement its premium all-in-one PC. All three match the grey aesthetic of Microsoft first-ever desktop PC. The Studio includes a Surface Mouse and basic Surface Keyboard, however.

Live PC game streaming


006_008 News 258.indd 8

27/10/2016 15:08

NEW next generation Cloud Servers

UK data centres, UK support

Enterprise features • Load balancing • VPN • External firewall

Flexible

Set up in seconds • Easy to use control panel

Pay as you use pricing

Cloud Servers from:

£15.00 per month ex VAT charged at 20%

Call 0808 1686 777 or visit fasthosts.co.uk/cloud-servers SERVERS • WEB HOSTING • DOMAIN NAMES • EXCHANGE EMAIL

011 Fasthost AD.indd 13 GB145780100001_fasthosts_Ad_0516_210x297+5_46L.indd 1

29/09/2016 11:45 14.04.16 13:42

News

Samsung kills off the Galaxy Note 7 to end the exploding battery debacle Samsung’s problems worsen after reports of replacement Note 7s catching fire. John Ribeiro reports

A sign at Singapore’s Changi Airport advising against using a Note 7 on planes Samsung has announced that it has stopped production of its Galaxy Note 7. The phone had been plagued with battery problems, which caused fires and even explosions. The company confirmed it is stopping production, a day after it had advised carriers and retail partners worldwide not to sell or exchange replacement Note 7s. Phone providers, including Vodafone, EE and Three, had already announced that they would stop offering exchanges after reports of fires and explosions involving replacement handsets. These included a report of a Note 7 catching fire on a Southwest Airlines flight. Samsung had offered to give customers the replacement phones as part of a recall of around one million Note 7 smartphones. Other countries, including the US and Canada, had announced similar recalls. It became evident that matters were getting more difficult for the tech giant

when it was widely reported that Samsung was considering temporarily halting production of the replacement Note 7s. A recent statement from the firm said it was, “temporarily adjusting the Galaxy Note 7 production schedule in order to take further steps to ensure quality and safety matters”. Samsung has not disclosed which product line will replace the Note 7. It appears that customers will be able to get a refund or a Galaxy S7 or S7 edge. “Samsung is doing what’s needed here by containing the damage to the Note 7 before consumer fear spreads to other Samsung

products. Killing such an otherwisepromising product line is painful but perhaps necessary for the long-term health of the company,” explained Bryan Ma, vice president for devices research at IDC. The firm still has its flagship smartphones, the S7 and S7 edge, that users can turn to, said Ma, who added that if people are willing to switch from Android to iOS, it could well benefit Apple. “Users that want to stick to Android have plenty of other Android flagships to choose from, be it from LG, HTC, Sony, Huawei or even Google’s recently launched Pixels.”

It became evident that matters were getting more difficult for the tech giant when it was widely reported it was considering temporarily halting production of the replacement Note 7s


010_011 News 258.indd 10

27/10/2016 14:54

News

Report: Google to sell its own Android Wear watch in early 2017 The ‘Made by Google’ push is set to continue with smartwatches, writes Derek Walter Google is just getting started when it comes to selling its own hardware. A report from the usually accurate Evan Blass points to a pair of Google-built watches that will come early next year. We’ve heard this before, but we have a lot more context now after attending the recent ‘Made by Google’ hardware event, where the company showed off the Pixel, Daydream View headset, Chromecast Ultra, Google Wifi and Google Home (see page 76).

The tenor of the gathering and the new shift by Google told us this wasn’t a one-off event. The firm has installed Rick Osterloh, the former head of Motorola’s mobile division, as the new senior vice president of hardware. There’s a dedicated Made by Google site (madeby.google.com) that shows off all the gear, further solidifying the idea that hardware will be a major part of its strategy going forward. Nearly every speaker at the event talked about the company’s services and its desire to build a ‘personal Google’ for every user require a deep integration between hardware and software. Given all of this, a watch makes perfect sense, particularly if it’s high-end and offers the deep software integration we’ve heard so much about. Android Wear has a lot of catching up to do with the Apple Watch, though. For Google to compete, it needs to build a device that targets the same type of features that Apple is banking on to drive customers to the Series 2 watch (see page 50): a much brighter screen, GPS tracking,

Google watches and waterproofing. Those, combined with a lot of software innovation related to fitness tracking, make the Apple Watch an ideal companion for the health-conscious. Other smartwatchmakers have hit the pause button this year, likely given the delay in Android Wear 2.0. It looks like a reboot of sorts is wisely on the way.

was nowhere to be found at the ‘Made by Google’ event. And the rumour mill has gone dark. It’s all rather odd. The search giant desperately needs a new, Googley tablet. There aren’t many compelling Android tablets out there. Plus, a new Pixel tablet would give the firm the chance to get the new Google Assistant out into more hands and further drive people into its new hardware ecosystem. It’s certainly one of the rumours that we’ll want to watch as 2016 wraps up and we turn towards the new year.

A new tablet? There were rumours earlier this year that a Huawei-built tablet was coming. But it

For Google to compete, it needs to build a watch that targets the same type of features that Apple is banking on to drive customers to its new Series 2 watch

010_011 News 258.indd 11

IMAGE: ANDROID POLICE

Something new to wear

January 2017 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news 11

27/10/2016 14:54

News

The Nintendo Switch is a radical, Nvidia-powered console/handheld Brad Chacos reveals the latest on Nintendo’s upcoming console

Nintendo has finally pulled back the curtain on its long-rumoured NX gaming console, and well, it’s not named the NX. And it’s not really a console – but it is, kind of? Nintendo’s new device is interesting. The Nintendo Switch blends together traditional consoles and portable gaming handhelds by pairing a Sony PSP-like slate with the Nintendo Switch Dock. When you’re at home, the handheld slides into the dock and you play games on your TV, just as you would with any other console. The Switch appears to double down on Nintendo’s dual strengths of portable design and damned fun games. And while AMD

Nintendo will offer an optional traditional Switch Pro Controller…


012_013 News 258.indd 12

27/10/2016 15:23

News

…but it’s another, more box-like Joy-Con Grip controller that helps Nintendo’s console live up to its name

If you want to take your games on the road, the Joy-Con controllers on both sides of the Grip slide off. You can then slip them onto the edges of the slate and yank it out of the dock. Now the Nintendo Switch is a gaming handheld, not a console

You can pull those Joy-Con controllers off the edges and prop the Switch upright thanks to a stand on the back, using them as wireless gamepads instead

won over the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Wii U with its PC-like chips, the Switch turns to Nvidia’s mobile Tegra chips – which also drive the superb Nvidia Shield console – for its power, buoyed by custom software and hardware-accelerated video playback That helps Nintendo avoid a graphical arms race with the beefed-up, 4K-ready

You can also use the two Joy-Cons as separate controllers in simple multiplayer games, allowing two people to easily leap into a quick game of Mario Kart or NBA Live Microsoft Xbox Scorpio and Sony PlayStation 4 Pro, but is that portable focus enough to make Nintendo’s new console relevant? You could buy only Nintendo games on the comparatively underpowered Wii U as well, and it’s been a major flop. More questions abound. How much will the Nintendo Switch cost? Do both

controllers come with the system? Will the handheld get a graphical boost from the dock? Will third-party developers earnestly support the Nintendo Switch after abandoning the company’s last console? Is the tablet’s screen touch-sensitive? We’ll have all the answers to these and more, the closer we draw to its March 2017 launch. J

012_013 News 258.indd 13


27/10/2016 15:23

NEWSANALYSIS

New Windows 10 preview adds an iPhone Live Photos rival, Windows Ink improvements Oh, and it includes a Ubuntu update, too. (It’s still weird writing that). Brad Chacos reports he relentless march of Windows 10 Insider previews continues with the release of build 14951 for PCs and Windows Phones. This latest glimpse at the future of the operating system reveals several interesting tweaks, including a Microsoftian rival to the iPhone’s Live Photos. If you install Windows Insider build 14951 on a Surface Book, Surface Pro 4, Surface Pro 3 or Surface 3, its revamped Camera app can “extend your still captures with a snippet of video,” writes Windows Insider boss Dona Sarkar. After you’ve enabled ‘Capture living images’ in the Camera app’s settings, the feature kicks in automatically whenever the subject of your picture’s moving when you click the Capture button. Speaking of which, those capture buttons receive a higher-contrast makeover in this preview build, and you can dive into Camera’s settings directly from inside the app. (Camera interface tweaks abound in this build.) You’ll also be able to set a timer from the Camera dashboard and use the spacebar to capture images on PCs. Windows Insider build 14951 also adds new Windows Ink improvements for manipulating those images after they’re taken. Windows 10’s native Photos app picked up Ink support via a new Draw button, and it records your scribbling steps so you can share your marked-up pictures as videos if you’d like. The build also introduces Windows Ink ‘Stencils’, starting with a new protractor tool (pictured) that, according to Sarkar, “combines functions of both protractor and compass into one – now you can draw an arc or a complete circle of an arbitrary size with little effort”. Windows Ink’s ruler now displays the numerical value of angles, as well. The recent Windows 10 preview build introduced advanced customisation for precision touchpad gestures, and this fresh release builds upon them with volume control options and the ability to tie touchpad gestures to the keyboard shortcuts of your choosing.

T

Ink will allow you to add comments to your photos

Windows 10 ink protractor The Windows Subsystem for Linux has been updated from Ubuntu 14.04 to Ubuntu 16.04, as well. For a full list of tweaks, improvements, and known issues

in Windows 10 Insider build 14951 – these releases always pack in a lot – make sure you read Microsoft’s announcement post at tinyurl.com/zr8mpk3. J

After you’ve enabled ‘Capture living images’ in the Camera app’s settings, the feature kicks in whenever the subject of your picture’s moving when you click the Capture button


014_015 Analysis 258.indd 14

27/10/2016 15:32

NEWSANALYSIS

BBC eyes worldwide expansion for tiny educational computer The Micro:bit Educational Foundation and the Raspberry Pi Foundation both support the teaching of coding worldwide, but using very different computers, writes By Peter Sayer new educational foundation hopes to introduce children worldwide to coding, using a tiny single-board computer that has changed the way coding is taught in schools across the country. You’ll have heard of the Raspberry Pi, a £29 computer the size of a credit card that, with the addition of a monitor, keyboard and mouse, can stand in for a desktop machine. But this isn’t about that. It’s about the UK’s other single-board educational computer, the micro:bit. This is smaller and cheaper than the Raspberry Pi, and it has a built-in keyboard and display, albeit consisting of just two buttons and 25 red LEDs arranged in a five-by-five grid. It was developed for the BBC, which gave a million of them to schools. Whereas the Raspberry Pi resembles a low-powered, low-priced PC, the micro:bit is more like an embedded computer, encouraging children to develop their own takes on the Internet of Things. The tiny computer has already found favour in Iceland, Norway, Singapore, and the US, and now the BBC and its partners in the project have created the Micro:bit Educational Foundation to promote its use in other countries. The broadcaster will continue to support micro:bit users in the UK, but the independent foundation “will also work to enthuse and support young people on a global scale as well,” wrote the BBC’s head of learning, Sinead Rocks. It will also have support from ARM, Microsoft, Nominet, Samsung Electronics and the Institution of Engineering and Technology.

The BBC, commissioned the micro:bit single-board computer for a new educational program that began in 2015 The Raspberry Pi Foundation, founded in 2009, has a similar mission. For ARM, at least, the story has come full circle. The company was spun out of Acorn Computers, which created the microcomputer used in the BBC’s first educational computing initiative, in 1982. After developing several generations of the BBC Microcomputer, Acorn began designing its own processor, then known as the Acorn RISC Machine. Now a distant relative of that processor, the 32-bit ARM Cortex M0, powers

IMAGE: BBC

A

the micro:bit. It runs at 16MHz, stores code in 16kb of RAM, and communicates via a Micro-USB port, a Bluetooth Low Energy module, and three input-output ports that can carry analogue or digital signals. The original BBC Micro, in contrast, had an eight-bit Motorola 6502 processor, 16- or 32KB of RAM, an analogue input, and network, video, audio, and printer ports. Its 32KB of ROM contained a BASIC interpreter, and external storage was on audio cassette. J

The micro:bit is smaller and cheaper than the Pi, and it has a built-in keyboard and display, albeit consisting of just two buttons and 25 red LEDs arranged in a five-by-five grid



27/10/2016 15:32

News: Analysis

Intel’s revenue soars with help from PC group… …but the company shifts its holiday forecast downward, reveals Mark Hachman hough Intel’s PC group, data centre and Internet of Things (IoT) businesses helped drive the firm to record revenue in its third quarter of 2016, all eyes seemed focused on one number: the company’s fourth-quarter forecast, which isn’t great. Intel achieved a 9 percent year-over-year increase in profits, up to $3.4 billion, and a 9 percent increase in revenue as well, to a record high of $15.8bn. Unfortunately, its projections for fourthquarter revenues are slightly down: $15.7bn, with some $500 million either way in terms of wiggle room. Traditionally, Intel sees its highest revenue in the fourth quarter, so the numbers provide an indication of how the holiday tech sales season is expected to go. In all, it was the sort of topsy-turvy earnings report not usually associated with Intel:. The Client Computing Group, which oversees Intel’s PC processors, reported 5 percent growth, which was higher than expected. That flies in the face of continued predictions that the PC market is in decline. Intel also reported that revenue from its enterprise businesses – usually a strong, stable sector – hadn’t quite met expectations.

T

The PC stands out Intel executive Stacy Smith, in his final quarter as Intel’s chief financial officer, commented on the Client Computing Group’s surprise growth to $8.9bn:

“Everything went right: they had phenomenal growth, they had unit costs coming down, they were making prudent disinvestment decisions.” Smith added, “When you add all that up, they become a real cash and profit driver for the company.” Intel executives didn’t talk much about the company’s products, let alone specifics. The firm’s next frontier is 3D XPoint though, which executives hope could one day replace the flash memory technology used in today’s SSDs, and update computer memory as well. Intel executives said that samples were being given to customers, who will begin qualifying the next-generation memory

The blue represents wires, the yellow a selector and the green a single bit of data in Intel and Micron’s 3D XPoint pervasive memory technology at the end of this quarter. (Qualification is a testing process to ensure a number of things, including the viability of the technology and its compatibility with customers’ existing products.) Brian Krzanich, Intel’s chief executive, said that sales of the products would begin in 2017 and increase throughout the year. As Intel ramps up production, 3D XPoint’s costs should decrease, he added. J

Seagate unveils the world’s largest tiny hard drive Seagate pushes the 2.5in drive needle all the way to 5TB. Gordon Mah Ung reports raditional hard drives might take a back seat to SSD’s when it comes to sex appeal, but when it comes to space on the cheap, Seagate’s BarraCuda line will turn heads. The firm recently announced two new drives: one of which is the largest-capacity 2.5in drive. The BarraCuda ST5000 pushes the capacity limit from the previous 4- to 5TB, and will be priced around $85 (£TBC). Seagate says the drive uses the company’s 1TB-per-platter design that it unveiled at CES in January 2016. The same drive is also available in 4- and 3TB models. All are 5400rpm drives with 128MB of cache and a two-year warranty. Power consumption is rated at 2.1W under load and 1.1W while idle.

T

Before you consider putting one of these in your laptop, note that the 5-, 4- and 3TB BarraCuda drives are 15mm thick. While they might squeeze into some larger gaming laptops, their primary target is superthin all-in-ones that can’t accommodate full-size 3.5in desktop drives. Seagate also announced a new 5400rpm BarraCuda ST2000LM015 drive that conforms to the smaller 7mm standard used by many laptops. Unfortunately, that drive doesn’t move the ball any further down the field, maxing out at 2TB. That’s one area where hard drive makers seem to be losing

to SSD makers, which don’t have to contend with as many mechanical limitations. Samsung, in fact, holds the record for the largest consumer SATA drive with its 4TB 850 Evo SSD that fits into a 7mm case. Of course, when it comes to value, there’s no question: Samsung’s EVO 850 4TB SSD is about £1,400. The 7mm 2TB BarraCuda is around £60, Seagate officials say. Although some people argue that hard drives are dead, for those who want to get the most capacity for the least amount of cash they’re still very much alive. J



27/10/2016 16:25

News: Analysis

Microsoft’s Nadella takes on privacy fears about LinkedIn and Cortana Microsoft’s growing role as a data aggregator gets attention at Gartner conference. By Patrick Thibodeau icrosoft CEO Satya Nadella (pictured) faced sharp questions from Gartner analysts recently about the privacy-invading implications of its $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn, and its all-knowing virtual assistant, Cortana. Helen Huntley, one of the Gartner analysts questioning Nadella, was pointed about the fears. Cortana, she said, “knows everything about me when I’m working. She knows what files I’m looking at, she knows what I’m downloading, she knows when I’m working, when I’m not working”. Cortana is “big brother intersected... with productivity,” she added. Nadella countered this with his own question: “How does one build trust in technology?” He called it one of the “most pressing issues of our time”. Cortana will operate on ‘four pillars’, which include keeping data secure, as well transparency, meaning that users will “know exactly what Cortana knows”, Nadella revealed. There is also an ability to turn off data access. The fourth pillar is to be compliant with regulations, he added. Microsoft’s CEO was appearing via video link from the firm’s Redmond headquarters. He was scheduled to appear in person, but a back injury kept him from flying. “When you turn 49 don’t act 19 in the gym,” he warned, to the amusement of an audience consisting mostly of people in their middle years. With LinkedIn, Huntley, who was asking questions in tandem with fellow analyst Chris Howard, was pointed once again: “What are you going to do to our data?” “We are just custodians of that data,” Nadella explained. The only data the

M

company has access to is when users allow it for the purpose of adding value to it, he said. He gave the example that someone can be much more prepared for a meeting if their calendar includes LinkedIn profile links of attendees. A user’s news feed can also be shaped to include information about meeting participants. “Those are natural points of integration,” he explained. This ability to integrate with LinkedIn, said Nadella, “will not be exclusive of Microsoft but available to everyone”. Allowing integration will help make LinkedIn grow. The CEO also defended Microsoft as an open company. “Windows is the most open platform there is,” he argued. But asked how the firm will work with competitors on platforms such as Azure, Nadella turned philosophical. That knowledge

“comes maybe with middle age” – a point at which one becomes “comfortable with what I would say are complex relationships”. A gentle laugh rolled through the audience. In response to questions about how Artificial Intelligence will interact with users, he talked about Microsoft’s pursuit of AI, but not the specifics. “There is still a dark side,” said Howard, of AI. “There is a risk of an over-mediated life.” But, as he did with privacy, Nadella worked to calm concerns and argued that AI will augment human capability, not replace it. “It looks like they have a vision for the future,” said one attendee, Steve Edmonson, a CIO with a Chicago governmental organisation. But with respect to AI, Microsoft’s CEO didn’t talk about “where that is really headed.” J



27/10/2016 15:48

GERD ALTMANN/PIXABAY

News: Analysis

Hackers create more IoT botnets with Mirai source code The number of IoT devices infected with the Mirai malware has reached 493,000, reveals Michael Kan alware that can build botnets out of IoT products has gone on to infect twice as many devices after its source code was publicly released. The total number of IoT devices infected with the Mirai malware has reached 493,000, up from 213,000 bots before the source code was disclosed around 1 October, according to internet backbone provider Level 3 Communications. “The true number of actual bots may be higher,” Level 3 said in a recent post. Hackers have been taking advantage of the Mirai malware’s source code, following its role in launching a massive DDOS (distributed denial-of-service) attack that took down the website of cybersecurity reporter Brian Krebs. Unlike other botnets that rely on PCs, however, Mirai works by infecting internetconnected devices such as cameras and DVRs that come with weak default usernames and passwords.

M

Since Mirai’s source code was released, hackers have been developing new variants of the malware, according to Level 3. It has identified four additional command-andcontrol servers associated with Mirai activity coming online soon. About half of the infected bots Level 3 has observed resided in either the US or Brazil. More than 80 percent of them were DVR devices. Many of the DDOS attacks are used against game servers and residential IP addresses, Level 3 said. “We have observed several attacks using more than 100Gb/s” of traffic, it said. “Large armies of bots participated in attacks, with several using over 100,000 bots against the same victim.”

A few vendors that produce devices vulnerable to Mirai are encouraging their customers to take steps to mitigate the risk. Sierra Wireless, for instance, has issued a bulletin, advising users to reboot one of their products and change the default password. However, it’s unclear if other vendors are taking any steps to do the same. Security firm Flashpoint has identified Chinese company Hangzhou Xiongmai Technology as another maker of DVR products susceptible to the Mirai malware. Potentially, half a million devices from the company are vulnerable partly due to their unchangeable default passwords, according to Flashpoint. But Xiongmai has not commented on this. J

Unlike other botnets that rely on PCs, however, Mirai works by infecting internet-connected devices such as cameras and DVRs that come with weak default usernames and passwords



27/10/2016 15:55

News: Analysis

Tech supergroups formed to push PC data transfers to blazing-fast speeds Two newly formed consortia propose specifications to bring unprecedented boosts to data transfers inside and outside of computers. Agam Shah reports omputational workloads are growing, and processors, memory, and storage are getting faster at a blazing pace. Emerging technologies could leave computers choking for bandwidth. The potential chokepoint worries companies including Google, IBM, Samsung and Dell, which are moving to remedy the problem. New specifications from two new consortia will bring data unprecedented boosts in data transfer speeds to computers as early as next year. OpenCAPI Consortium’s connector specification will bring significant bandwidth improvements inside computers. OpenCAPI, announced Friday, will link storage, memory, GPUs and CPUs, much like PCI-Express 3.0, but will be 10 times faster with data speeds of 150GB/s (gigabytes per second). Memory, storage and GPUs will keep getting faster, and OpenCAPI will keep computers ready for those technologies, Brad McCredie, an IBM fellow, said recently. Graphics processors are now handling demanding applications such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence and complex scientific calculations. Also in the wings are superfast technologies, including 3D XPoint, a new type of storage and memory technology that can be 10 times faster than SSDs and 10 times denser than DRAM. Servers and supercomputers will be the first to get OpenCAPI slots and could trickle down to PCs in a few years. The first OpenCAPI ports will be on IBM’s Power9 servers, which are due next year. Google and Rackspace are also putting the OpenCAPI port on their Zaius Power9 server. AMD, a member of OpenCAPI Consortium, is making its Radeon GPUs compatible with OpenCAPI ports on Power9 servers. But don’t expect OpenCAPI immediately in mainstream PCs or servers, most of which run on x86 chips from Intel and AMD. AMD, for now, isn’t targeting OpenCAPI at desktops and won’t be putting the ports in x86 servers, a spokesman said. Intel isn’t a member of OpenCAPI, which is a big disadvantage for the group. There are no major issues that should stop the company from becoming a member, though it would have to make changes to its I/O technologies.

C

OpenCAPI is promising, but computers will need many changes to take advantage. Motherboards will need to implement specific OpenCAPI slots on motherboards, and components will need fit in the slot. That could add to the cost of making components, most of which are made for PCI-Express. OpenCAPI is an offshoot of the CAPI port developed by IBM, which is already used in its Power servers. In the future, there may be bridge products to ensure components made for the PCI-Express plug into the OpenCAPI slot, McCredie said. A second consortium, called Gen-Z, announced a new protocol focused on increasing data transfer speeds mostly between computers, but also inside of them when needed. The protocol, announced earlier this week, will initially be targeted at servers but could bring fundamental changes to the way computers are built. The consortium boasts big names including Samsung, Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, AMD, ARM and Micron. Right now, computers come with memory, storage, and processors in one box. But the specification from Gen-Z, which is focused heavily on memory and storage, could potentially decouple all of those units into separate boxes, establishing a peer-to-peer connection between all of them. Gen-Z is also focused on making it easier to add new types of nonvolatile memory such as 3D XPoint, which can be used as memory, storage or both. Many new types of memory technologies under research are also seen as DRAM and SSD replacements. Larger pools of storage, memory and processing technologies can be crammed in the dedicated boxes, and Gen-Z could be particularly useful for server installations. Gen-Z is designed to link large pools of memory and storage with processors like CPUs and GPUs in a data centre, revealed Robert Hormuth, vice president and server chief technology officer at Dell EMC. Having memory, storage and processing in discrete boxes will be beneficial for applications like the SAP HANA relational database, which is dedicated to in-memory processing. Most servers max out at 48TB of DRAM, but a decoupled memory unit will give SAP HANA more RAM to operate.

But there are challenges. The decoupled units need to handshake in real-time and work together on protocol support and load balancing. Those functions have been perfected in today’s servers with integrated memory and storage. To achieve that real-time goal, Gen-Z has developed a high-performance fabric that “provides a peer to peer interconnect that easily accesses large volumes of data while lowering costs and avoiding today’s bottlenecks,” according to the consortium. The data transfer rate can scale to 112GT/s (gigatransfers per second) between servers. For comparison, the upcoming PCI-Express 4.0 will have a transfer rate of 16GT/s per lane inside computers, and data transfers in computers are usually faster. Gen-Z is generally a point-to-point connector for storage and memory at the rack level, but it can be used inside server racks. It’s not intended to replace existing memory or storage buses in servers, Hormuth said. OpenCAPI and Gen-Z claim their protocols are open for every hardware maker to adopt. However, there will be challenges in pushing these interconnects to servers. For one, the server market is dominated by x86 chips from Intel, which isn’t a member of either of the new consortia. Without support from Intel, the new protocols and interconnects could struggle. Intel sells its own networking and fabric technology called OmniPath, and also sells silicon photonics modules, which use light and lasers to speed up data transfers and connect servers at the rack level. J



27/10/2016 15:55

Subscribe to PC Advisor

R O S I V D A C P O T E B I SUBSCR GET FREE ONLINE D SOFTWARE IN OUR OWNLOAD S ZONE

UR TWARE IN ONE F O S E E R F ZO GET WNLOADS ONLINE DO

EXPERT ADV YOU CAN TR ICE UST

E EXPERT ADVICST U YOU CAN TR

WINDOWS 10 ANNIVERSAR

FROM ID G

Y UPDATE

G FROM ID

Why you ne ed to upgrade t ot best-ever W he indows

GET FR ONRLEIVNIEWEE SOFTWAR E DOW NLOADE IN OUR S ZONE

+

POCKET STOR

AGE Fastest ever portable SSD s

n have a c e n o y n a w Ho rnet superfast inte ROUTERS FASTEST-EVDERRATED TESTED AN E:D: Password Td Se TEst Te

managers

a Never forget in a g password a

+

LATEST GRAPHICS CAR

FROM

DS

AMD vs Nv idia

RX 480 and Powerful, p GTX 1060 ortable REVIEWElaDptops that a

PLUS

offers gaming an power on a budget

: Mi Band 2 reviewtness

CALL NOW 0844 844 0232 & quote P258

020_021 Subs Spread 258.indd 20

BEST EVER L APTOPS also table re ts

idia’s new 10 THINGS Nv graphics Y TO KNOW A OU NEEcDard NOVEMBE AMD’S NEW BOUSpTeedy GTX 1070 R 20 16 THE FIRST V ZEN CPU d VR R-CAP

ap fi The best chean buy c tracker you

EXPERT YOU CANADVICE TRUST

OC TO BE R

ABLE LAISSPUETO256 P

20 16

ISS GUEig25a5

byte’s P an Nvidia 57x packs GT X 107 0 HOW TO T SMART URN ANY PHONE IN A WI-FI HOTSPO TO T

+

16 LAP TO RECOOMMMMEND P REC DATATIOIONNS S INSIDE

BEST VPN SERVICES Watc global T h & leave V trace on no line DECEM

13 TESTED

BER 2 0 16

ISSUE 257

25/10/2016 10:20

IDG

Subscribe to PC Advisor

Pay just £2.99 an issue.

Get a 6-month subscription to PC Advisor for £19.99 or pick up 12 issues for just £35.88, saving 50% on the cover price

Enjoy these benefits from the next issue: ONLY £2.99 an issue (normal price £5.99) Save over 50% on the shop price Software download zone for subscribers PRIORITY delivery direct to your door each month

EXPERT YOU CANADVICE TRUST

TOPS FROM

N

13 ESTED

6

7

IDG

Every issue of PC Advisor is packed with the latest news, reviews and features, plus comprehensive, impartial buying advice and easy-to-understand tutorials to help you to get the most from your laptop, PC and tech gadgets. Every subscriber will also have access to the Subscriber Download Zone. Here you will find programs in a wide variety of software categories and on platforms such as Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and mobile.

T&C’s: The above offer is a Direct Debit offer only. If you would prefer to pay by cheque or credit card it will cost £24.99 for a six-month subscription and £37.99 for 12 months. Your subscription will start with the next available issue. Offer expires 6 December 2016. For overseas rates please call +44 1795 414 609 and quote reference P258. To subscribe online visit tinyurl.com/subscribepca. For email enquiries write to: [email protected].

020_021 Subs Spread 258.indd 21

25/10/2016 10:20

DVDRW. J Andrew Williams

REVIEWS TABLET

£172 inc VAT

Chuwi HiBook Pro

Contact n

en.chuwi.com

Specifications

10.1in (2560x1600, 298ppi) 16:10 IPS display; dualboots Windows 10 Home 64-bit and Android 5.1 Lollipop; 1.44- to 1.84GHz Intel Atom X5 (Cherry Trail) Z8300 quad-core 64-bit processor; Intel HD graphics; 4GB DDR3L RAM; 64GB storage; microSD support up to 64GB; 2Mp front camera; 5Mp rear camera; 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi; Bluetooth 4.0; USB-C; Micro-USB; Micro-HDMI; 3.5mm headphone jack; mic; dual speakers; 8000mAh battery with 3A quick-charging technology over USB-C; 262x167.5x8.5mm; 550g

Build: Features: Value: Performance:

Chuwi has a range of Windows tablets under £200 that can be docked to a magnetic keyboard to turn them into budget laptops. The HiBook Pro is very similar to the Hi10 Pro we review on page 25. It’s around £30 more expensive, but comes with a higher-capacity battery, a Quad-HD screen and a 5- rather than 2Mp rear camera. The two are very similar in size and weight. A key difference is that the Hi10 Pro supports an active electronic stylus (sold separately). You’d also struggle to tell the difference between this HiBook Pro and the standard HiBook, with the only real difference being the larger-capacity battery (8000mAh versus 6000mAh) and higherresolution screen (the standard HiBook has a 1920x1200 display). All three feature the Intel Atom X5 Z8300 quad-core 64-bit processor, 4GB of DDR3L RAM and 64GB of storage, with microSD support for expansion. In terms of performance there is very little to

separate these Chuwi laptops, so your choice will likely come down to whether you want the higherresolution screen and whether you need a stylus. All three tablets also dual-boot Android, opening up a world of software you can’t get on Windows, though the two HiBooks run standard Android 5.1 Lollipop and the Hi10 Pro runs a custom version with the Remix 2.0 UI. We prefer

Price Chuwi tablets are sold in the UK via grey-market importers such as GearBest. You can buy this Chuwi HiBook Pro for £172, the Chuwi Hi10 Pro for £146, and the standard Chuwi HiBook for £154. The optional keyboard dock, which we thoroughly recommend, costs an additional £29. If you are buying from China, note that you may be asked to pay import duty (around £30) upon its

With a slim grey metal build and chamfered edges, the Pro looks more expensive than it is, and it feels well made with no rough edges or creaking parts vanilla Android, given the option – and we’d also like to see a newer version of Android given that we’re now up to Android 7.0 Nougat. Still, some Android is better than no Android, and you’re probably more likely to use the Chuwi as a Windows 10 device in any case.

arrival to the UK, though GearBest (gearbest.com) offers free shipping if you’re prepared to wait a couple of weeks for your tablet to arrive.

Design You might be paying under £200 for this tablet, but you wouldn’t

22 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews January 2017

022_024 Chuwi HiBook Pro 258.indd 22

26/10/2016 15:05

REVIEWS know it to look at it. With a slim grey metal build and chamfered edges, the HiBook Pro certainly looks more expensive than it is, and it feels well made with no rough edges or creaking parts. The only giveaways to its budget price are flaws of all Chuwi tablets: chunky screen bezels, a magnetism for fingerprints and legends on the rear for the various ports and core specifications. We’ll start with the screen, since this is the key difference between the HiBook and HiBook Pro. It’s a 10.1in, 2560x1600 panel with a 16:10 aspect ratio that is well-suited to watching video. The standard model has the same size screen, but a lower resolution of 1920x1200 pixels. The HiBook Pro’s screen is much sharper than that of the HiBook, but with more pixels crammed in to the same area you’ll find text and icons are significantly smaller. You’ll more than likely want to increase their size in Windows’ settings. Chuwi uses IPS technology, which offers bright, realistic colours and strong viewing angles. The latter is aided by the use of a fully laminated OGS screen, which puts very close together the touch panel and screen glass. The display isn’t the brightest we’ve seen, and you may struggle to use it in direct sunlight – especially with greasy finger smears all over its surface. For most usage scenarios, though, it is bright enough. The HiBook Pro is a little larger and heavier than the HiBook thanks to its higher-capacity 8000mAh battery, but it’s actually thinner at 8.5mm rather than 8.8mm. When used as a tablet the HiBook Pro weighs 550g, but docked to the keyboard the weight doubles to just over a (still easily portable) kilo. We recommend purchasing the keyboard if you will be using the HiBook Pro for productivity tasks. It docks to the tablet with a sturdy magnetic hinge that can prop up the Chuwi at a comfortable angle, and we like the fact it doesn’t need to be separately charged. It’s a US keyboard, but it has reasonably large, well-spaced keys and is comfortable to type on, given its size. It’s fairly quiet in use, and makes typing on a tablet much quicker and easier. Usefully, the keyboard adds two full-size USB ports to the tablet. The HiBook Pro has a good complement

of ports, but none of which are full-size USB, which means you will otherwise need an adaptor to plug in a USB mouse or hard drive. Connections are found on the Chuwi’s left edge. There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack that sits just above a Micro-HDMI port and a mic, then Micro-USB, USB-C and a microSD card slot. The HiBook and HiBook Pro support up to 64GB via microSD, while the Hi10 Pro can accommodate 128GB. Both also support 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. There’s no GPS, NFC or a cellular connection. You’ll need to use the USB-C rather than Micro-USB connection for charging the Chuwi’s battery, which supports a fast 3A charge. This means you can fill the Chuwi in three- to four hours when using a compatible fast charger. Although it has a larger battery than the Hi10 Pro and HiBook, the HiBook Pro also has a more power-hungry screen. Expect between six- and eight hours use from all three of these tablets, give and take a little depending on your usage. As with the other models in the range, stereo speakers are found low down on the left- and right edges of the Chuwi, which means they are poorly placed when used in tablet mode and can easily be muffled by your hands. That’s not great, given that they aren’t especially loud and can be rather tinny to begin with. Still it’s a minor criticism of a tablet that has a lot to offer. In common with the standard HiBook there is a 5Mp camera at the rear and 2Mp at the front (the Hi10

Pro has a 2Mp camera front and rear). It will suffice for video calls, but we can’t imagine you having much use for the rear camera even given its higher megapixel rating. Every tablet in Chuwi’s range has the same core hardware setup, and it matches that of other cheap Windows laptops such as the Jumper EZBook Air. You get an Intel Atom X5 Cherry Trail chip – the Z8300 – a quad-core processor clocked at 1.44GHz but able to boost to 1.84GHz when required. This is paired with 4GB of DDR3L RAM and 64GB of flash (eMMC) storage. You’d therefore expect very similar performance between models, and that is largely what you get. This HiBook Pro didn’t perform as well as its brothers in our graphics tests merely because we use the onscreen versions of GFXBench and it has a much higherresolution screen. This may well have been behind its slightly lower performance in our other tests, too.

Performance We run PCMark 8 Home, Geekbench 4 and GFXBench to get an idea on performance. The Chuwi HiBook Pro reported 940 points in PCMark8, which is around 100 points lower than the HiBook and Hi10 Pro. A proper budget laptop might record double this score, such as the £300 Asus X55LA, which recorded 2028 points. Tablets typically don’t score as highly as laptops, of course, and the more expensive Asus Transformer T100HA scored only

January 2017 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews 23


26/10/2016 15:05


Reviews

1338 points in this test. The HiBook Pro also gave a lower performance in Geekbench 4, scoring 2076 points against the 2144 of the Hi10 Pro. (We benchmarked the HiBook using Geekbench 3, which is not comparable with Geekbench 4.) As a guide, Geekbench 4 uses a baseline score of 4000 points set by the Intel Core i7-6600U, meaning the Atom chip inside the Chuwi tablets is roughly half as fast. That might sound disappointing, but it’s in real-world situations where performance can be more accurately assessed. The HiBook Pro is more than capable for productivity tasks such as working in Word and Excel, for browsing the web, for typing up emails, for browsing social media and for watching video. You wouldn’t expect to be able to do much in the way of multitasking on this tablet, but lag was never an issue in our tests. One thing you won’t want to use the Chuwi HiBook Pro for is gaming, or at least not intensive gaming. Its Quad-HD screen slowed it down significantly in our graphics tests, meaning that it scored just 10fps in T-Rex and 4fps in Manhattan. We’ve seen sub-£100 phones do a better job of those tests. To be fair, when running GFXBench’s offscreen tests the Chuwi HiBook Pro fared much better, and we recorded 22fps in T-Rex and 9fps in Manhattan.

Geekbench 4

GFXBench Manhattan

GFXBench T-Rex

PCMark 8

Software It might be called the HiBook Pro, but this Chuwi runs Windows 10 Home 64-bit, which it dual-boots with Android. Unfortunately it’s old Android Lollipop (version 5.1 – we’re now up to 7.0 Nougat), which reinforces the feeling that it’s there as something of an afterthought. You’ll more than likely use the Chuwi HiBook Pro running Windows 10, which is much more up to date and better suited to productivity tasks. However, we like the fact that you can also use Android if you wish to, since there are a great many more apps available in Google Play then there are in the Windows Store. When you boot up the tablet you are asked whether you want to boot into Android or Windows, and you can use either the volume button on the tablet or arrow keys on the keyboard to make your choice, then press the power button or Enter key to select. If you don’t make a choice

the tablet will boot into the last operating system you used. If you have already booted the HiBook Pro you can switch from Android to Windows by pulling down the notification bar and tapping Switch to Windows, or from Windows to Android by double-clicking the desktop shortcut. Note that it must reboot to enter the other operating system, so it isn’t a two-second affair and you should save any work in progress before doing so. The tablet’s 64GB of storage is split between the two operating systems, with the Chuwi reporting 44.1GB available to Windows and 9.72GB to Android. The maths doesn’t quite add up there, but the Android partition doesn’t appear to account for the OS itself, so we

suspect the split is actually 50GB to Windows and 16GB to Android. Of the 44.1GB assigned to Windows only around 18GB was free after installing our benchmarks, and around 9.7GB to Android. At least when using Windows you will likely want to make use of the microSD slot, attach a USB hard drive or use cloud storage before too long.

Verdict Chuwi’s tablets are not the fastest Windows machines you can buy, but they make excellent portable computers if you’re on a budget. With its Quad-HD screen and fast USB-C charging, the HiBook Pro is a very good cheap option. We recommend you also buy the optional keyboard. J Marie Brewis



26/10/2016 15:08


Reviews

TABLET

£128 inc VAT

Chuwi Hi10 Pro

Contact n

en.chuwi.com

Specifications

10.1in full-HD (1920x1200, 16:10, 350nits brightness) IPS touchscreen; Windows 10 Home 64-bit, Android 5.1 Lollipop-based Remix OS; 1.44GHz Intel Atom X5 (Cherry Trail) Z8300 quadcore; Intel HD Graphics; 4GB RAM; 64GB flash storage; microSD card support up to 128GB; USBC; Micro-USB; Micro-HDMI; 2Mp/2Mp front and rear cameras; 802.11b/g/n; Bluetooth 4.0; 3.5mm headphone jack; 6500mAh battery; 261.8x167.3x8.5mm; 562g Keyboard: 267x174x18mm; 545g Stylus: 256 levels of pressure sensitivity; 110mAh battery; 139x9x9mm; 15g


The Chuwi Hi10 Pro is a cheap tablet that dual-boots Windows 10 and Android Lollipop and to which you can add a stylus and keyboard to turn it into a cheap portable laptop. But is it any good?

Price You won’t find a Windows 10 tablet much cheaper than this, with the Chuwi Hi10 Pro currently costing £128 at GearBest (gearbest.com). The optional keyboard dock (a recommended purchase) is an extra £29, also from Gearbest, while the HiPen H2 stylus can be bought from Geekbuying (geekbuying.com) for £11.16. That’s a total price of £169, but note that you could be asked to pay import duty upon its arrival to the UK that would take the total price closer to £200. Buying products from China typically returns huge savings, but you should always take into account the risks. Products can take several weeks to arrive, depending on which shipping option you select, and if they are faulty you’ll have the hassle of returning them at your cost and dealing with customer services in a non-EU country with different legislation.

Design You might be paying less than £200, but you wouldn’t think it to look at Chuwi’s range of Windows

10 hybrids. In common with its brothers, the Hi10 Pro has a full metal build with chamfered edges that is reasonably stylish and feels built to last. There are some giveaways of its budget roots, for example some rather thick screen bezels, a display that attracts fingerprints and some unsightly legends on the rear, but on the whole build quality is good. The display, bar the fingerprint issue, is among the highlights, an IPS panel with a full-HD resolution of 1920x1200 pixels. It’s clear and bright enough in all but the sunniest conditions, and its 16:10 aspect ratio is well suited to media. Colours are realistic and viewing angles are good; perhaps more importantly, at 10.1in on the diagonal it makes for a very portable laptop. The Hi10 Pro measures 261.8x167.3x8.5mm and weighs 562g, making it easy to slip into a bag and carry wherever you want. Adding the keyboard roughly doubles the weight, but it’s still an easily portable package. This tablet-laptop hybrid is the Pro version of the older Chuwi

Hi10. We haven’t reviewed that device, but from what we can understand this is a thinner version that swaps full-size USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports for a faster-charging and reversible USB-C port. Both tablets also feature Micro-USB and Micro-HDMI ports, though only the USB-C port will charge the Hi10 Pro (you’d be better off using this port for charging since it supports 3A even if you had the choice). As a result of the slimmer build (8.5- versus 9.5mm) an insignificant 100mAh has been knocked off the battery, which is not enough to make a huge impact on runtime. Whereas you could get around eight hours from the Hi10, according to Chuwi, the Pro can still offer a good seven hours-plus, which should get you through the working day. The Pro version also adds the HiPen H2 stylus support. Despite the Pro moniker it’s running Windows 10 Home rather than Pro, though this version of the Hi10 does also boot into Android. It’s geriatric Android 5.1 Lollipop, customised with the colourful Remix 2.0 UI, but we like the fact it opens

The Hi10 Pro’s screen is clear and bright enough in all but the sunniest conditions, and its 16:10 aspect ratio is well suited to media January 2017 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews 25

025_026 Chuwi Hi10 Pro 258.indd 25

26/10/2016 15:12


Reviews

the door to a range of third-party software options that are otherwise not available in Windows 10. Chuwi supplied to us the compatible keyboard and stylus, which are otherwise paid-for optional extras. The HiPen H2 is an active electronic stylus, which means it won’t work with tablets that don’t support it and must be turned on for the Hi10 Pro to recognise it, though it is quick to charge via the Micro-USB port at one end and easy to click on and off. We like the thin nib, which makes handwriting more accurate and legible, while Chuwi says it’s also good for drawing artwork onscreen if you have the talent. If you use the Edge browser or OneNote app built into Windows 10, you’ll appreciate the stylus for taking advantage of Edge’s ability to annotate web pages and for making quick handwritten notes in OneNote if nothing else. The stylus supports 256 levels of pressure sensitivity, though we were possibly pushing a little too hard since its rubber tracks were visible on the panel when we switched off the display. The keyboard is of greater use to us, a magnetic docking version that is powered by a connection on the tablet, meaning you don’t need to remember to keep it topped up. The hinge is very sturdy, and does a good job keeping the Hi10 Pro propped up at a comfortable angle in laptop mode, without allowing it to tip back so far that the Chuwi becomes unstable. The keyboard also adds two full-size USB ports to the tablet, which will come in handy if you want to plug in a USB drive or mouse, though the one-piece trackpad built into this keyboard is an improvement over that of the Chuwi Hi12 and nowhere near as erratic. This is a US keyboard, which is annoying for UK users, but it’s comfortable to type on with reasonably large and well spaced keys. It makes tapping out emails and documents much easier than using the onscreen keyboard, and as such we’d highly recommend it as an additional purchase for the Hi10 Pro. The only real problem we found with the build is the stereo speakers, which are low down on either side of the tablet and easily muffled by the hand when used as a tablet rather than a laptop. They’re also not as

Geekbench 4

GFXBench Manhattan

GFXBench T-Rex

PCMark 8

loud as we’d like, and rather tinny at full volume. But there’s nothing to stop you plugging in a pair of headphones via the 3.5mm jack. You also get 2Mp cameras at the front and rear of the tablet. You might use the front camera for Skype video chats, but you’re unlikely to want to take any photos with the rear camera.

Performance In common with all the budget Chinese Windows 10 tablet/laptops we’ve reviewed, the Chuwi Hi10 Pro runs the 1.44GHz Intel Atom X5 (Cherry Trail) Z8300 chip with 4GB of LPDDR3 RAM and 64GB of flash storage. There’s also support for up to 128GB via microSD, which may come in handy given that some of that built-in storage is shared with the Android partition and very little is going spare. Of the 58.2GB available to Windows 10, 49.5GB had been consumed once we had installed our benchmarks. It’s not the most powerful hardware combination, and won’t

make for a gaming laptop, but for web browsing, social media and emails it’s an ideal selection that won’t place a massive strain on the battery. As you would expect performance is in line with those other laptops, with 2144 points scored in Geekbench 4 and 1041 in PCMark 8. We were unable to install our GFXBench graphics benchmark on the Hi10 Pro, but would expect it to achieve similar performance to the Chuwi HiBook.

Verdict The Chuwi Hi10 Pro is an excellent value Windows 10 laptop-tablet hybrid with the addition of Android (albeit old Android) and a pleasing build for the money. We take issue with its fingerprint-prone screen and tinny, poorly placed speakers, but in all other respects this is a very decent device for the money. It’s not a fast device, and we wouldn’t recommend it to gamers, but it’s fast enough for most daily Windows tasks. J Marie Brewis


025_026 Chuwi Hi10 Pro 258.indd 26

26/10/2016 15:13


Reviews

LAPTOP

£230 inc VAT

Jumper EZBook Air

Contact n

geekbuying.com

Specifications

11.6in full-HD (1920x1080) 16:9 screen; Windows 10 64-bit; 1.44GHz Intel Atom X5 (Cherry Trail) Z8300 quad-core processor; Intel HD graphics; 4GB DDR3L RAM; 128GB flash storage; 0.3Mp front camera; USB-C; dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi; Bluetooth 4.0; built-in stereo speakers and mic; 3.5mm headphone jack; 8,000mAh lithium-polymer battery; 294x200x14.9mm; 960g Jumper is a new name to PC Advisor, but the EZBook Air follows the EZBook 1 and EZBook 2 as the company’s third super-budget Windows 10 laptop. Here we find out what it’s capable of.

Price

Build: Features: Value:

Jumper is a Chinese brand that is sold in the UK via grey-market importers such as Geekbuying. It charges £230 with free shipping to the UK for the EZBook Air, although you may also have to pay import duty when it arrives.

Performance:

Design As soon as you take the EZBook Air out the box you’ll fell like you’ve seen this laptop somewhere before. It’s not a complete Apple MacBook clone, but it’s pitched somewhere between the 11in MacBook Air and 12in MacBook. Some of the more obvious hints toward the latter

include a single USB-C port and the Champagne Gold colour scheme. But this laptop is a very different beast to those in Apple’s stable, just a fraction of the price and running Windows 10 Home 64-bit rather than macOS Sierra. As a budget imitator there are some clear differences in its build, from the thicker screen bezels to the plastic parts used for heat dissipation found at the rear. (And as we’ll come to later, it’s nowhere near as fast.) So build quality isn’t quite up to Apple’s standards, but the EZBook Air is a very long way from awful for a Windows 10 laptop at this price. This laptop is incredibly thin and light, weighing in at under a kilo and measuring just 4mm at its thinnest place. And while the aforementioned chunky bezels and grey rubber bumpers around the screen and on the laptop’s underside spoil the effect somewhat,

its primarily aluminium shell, fanless design and full-HD screen take it up a notch from some of the cheap and nasty-looking Windows 10 laptops we’ve seen. We’re not massively keen on the sickly gold colouring, but neither were we fans of Apple’s gold MacBook and recognise that others may appreciate it. And we have to say it does look good set against the black Scrabble-tile keyboard nestled under the screen. With only an 11.6in screen fitted to the EZBook Air the keyboard was never going to be the roomiest of designs, but Jumper has done a good job with the space available to it. While there’s no room for a separate numberpad the keys are all adequately sized (roughly 15mm in diameter) and spaced. These floating keys are comfortable to type with and reasonably quiet, while the one-piece touchpad below is large and easy to use without accidentally knocking it with a stray wrist. Our only real complaints concern the fact this is a US-layout keyboard, and that the touchpad doesn’t support gestures. The display is about as small as you’ll find on a Windows 10 laptop, but this is no bad thing for portability, which is probably the EZBook Air’s strongest suit. It’s also a decent screen, full-HD (1920x1080 pixels) in resolution and with good colour reproduction and contrast. A 0.3Mp basic webcam sits above the display, which will suffice for video calls. There’s little else of note around the Air’s Spartan chassis,


027_028 Jumper EZBook Air 258.indd 27

26/10/2016 15:15


Reviews

but that in itself is interesting. When Apple removed all the ports save for a USB-C input/output from its 12in MacBook Air we couldn’t understand the logic: Apple’s all about the design, but at the expense of usability? Why make it difficult for people to attach a USB hard drive or mouse, or an HDMI display? Jumper has done exactly the same with its EZBook Air, and all you’ll find here is a 3.5mm headphone jack (thankfully not a Lightning connector) and a single USB-C port. However, in the box it supplies a handy USB-C to full-size USB adaptor, which will allow you to hook up your hard drive, disc drive or mouse (one at a time, mind). We should point out that it’s possible to buy reasonably cheap adaptors that let you add extra USB and HDMI ports, such as a ChoeTech USB-C Adaptor (£31), although still frustrating that you need to. With no ethernet port the Jumper has to connect to the web over Wi-Fi, but it’s well covered here with support for dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n/ac. There’s also support for Bluetooth 4.0. Although they aren’t visible from the outside, we’ve been told there are stereo speakers inside. The volume is pretty decent, although some distortion is present at the top end.

Performance In common with some of the cheap Windows 10 tablet-laptop hybrids from Chuwi we’ve reviewed of late,

processing power is handled by the Intel Atom X5 (Cherry Trail) Z8300 quad-core processor, which is paired with 4GB of DDR3L RAM and integrates Intel HD graphics. It’s not the most powerful combination, but for a cheap Windows 10 laptop that is required only for browsing the web, tapping out emails and writing the odd Microsoft Word document, it’s up to the job. It also means there’s nothing inside pushing this fanless laptop to break into a sweat. In our benchmarks the EZBook Air performed in line with the Chuwi Hi12 and Chuwi HiBook, recording 1052 points in PCMark 8 Home against their 1010- and 1058

comparison to the dual-core Intel Core i3-4030U, which recorded 2060 points in Geekbench 4. The EZBook Air has 128GB of flash storage, of which just over 100GB is available. There is no microSD slot for expansion, and if you want to plug in a portable drive you will need to either buy a USB-C-connected drive or use the supplied adaptor. Something the Jumper does very well at is runtime, and with some not especially powerful hardware inside its 8000mAh lithium-polymer battery can last a full working day away from the mains. With the USB-C input able

For a cheap Windows 10 laptop that is required only for browsing the web, tapping out emails and writing the odd Word document, it’s up to the job points respectively. It fared better in the GFXBench graphics test, recording 26fps in T-Rex and 13fps in Manhattan where the HiBook was capable of 23- and 11fps respectively. We ran the two Chuwi hybrids through Geekbench 3, but this has since been updated to version 4.0 and the results are not comparable. In Geekbench 4, the EZBook Air recorded 729 points single-core and 2050 points multi-core, with the latter roughly half the 4000-point baseline set by the more powerful Intel Core i7-6600U. This score would be closer in

to accept 3A of power it’s reasonably fast to charge, but it’s a shame you can’t attach any other peripherals while the laptop is charging.

Verdict For £230, the Jumper EZBook Air is a bargain if you’re looking for a cheap Windows 10 laptop. While it isn’t powerful enough for playing intensive games or much in the way of multitasking, it is easily portable and has good battery life. For casual use it’s a good buy, provided you can live with the poor connectivity. J Marie Brewis


027_028 Jumper EZBook Air 258.indd 28

26/10/2016 15:15


Reviews

SMARTPHONE

From £599 inc VAT Contact n

apple.com/uk

Specifications

4.7in (1334x720, 326ppi) IPS touchscreen; iOS 10; 2.33GHz Apple A10 Fusion quad-core processor; 2GB RAM 32/128GB/256GB storage; 12Mp main camera, quad-LED flash, support for 4K video at 30fps; 7Mp front camera; 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi with MIMO; Bluetooth 4.2; 4G LTE Cat 6; Nano-SIM; A-GPS with GLONASS; NFC; 1960mAh non-removable battery; 67.1x138.3x7.1mm; 138g


Apple iPhone 7 Launching a phone that looks exactly like the last two is perhaps not the best way to get buyers excited, but Apple has made a few significant upgrades to the iPhone 7 which should appeal. But is it enough? Let’s find out.

Price If things got off to a bad start with design – or the lack of change in design, rather – then it doesn’t get any better if you look at the iPhone 7’s price. It starts at £599, which is the base 32GB model, then there’s a big jump to 128GB (£699) and the capacious 256MB version which is another £100, making £799 – all from Apple’s online shop. These are higher than the iPhone 6s prices were, but don’t forget that storage is doubled in each model. It’s great that the 16GB base model has finally been ditched, and 32GB is a very usable amount for most people. But don’t forget that it’s not easy to add to this. Unlike most Android phones, the iPhone offers no microSD card slot. Clearly this is a flagship phone, so no-one should be shocked by the prices and few people will buy it outright anyway. Apple offers its upgrade program which lets you get a new phone every year, but even the 32GB model costs £33.45 per month and that doesn’t include a SIM plan. Plus, it’s basically a rental agreement: you hand back the phone when you get your upgrade in a year’s time. Buy it on contract and you’ll pay over £40 per month, usually with a small upfront fee. Again, that’s the base 32GB model.

Design With the iPhone 6 and 6s before it, little is left to say about the iPhone 7’s design. Its rounded edges feel great – the glass screen curves to meet the aluminium body perfectly – and it’s thin yet solid in the hand. If you really know your iPhones, you’ll also notice the lack of antenna lines running across the back. They haven’t gone completely – they now just run around the top and bottom edges and on our silver test phone, they’re hardly noticeable at all. Dimensions and weight are the same, or as near as makes no

difference. Most iPhone 6/6s cases will fit the iPhone 7. The camera bump is different (it’s now part of the chassis itself) and there are now four LEDs crammed into the circle next to the lens. The news this year is that there’s no headphone jack. Well, not in the traditional sense. Now you plug your EarPods into the Lightning port instead, or you can use the Lightning-to-3.5mm minijack if you prefer to use normal headphones. Is it a problem? Not really, until you want to use headphones and charge the phone at the same time. You can either buy another adaptor, which costs £35 and gives you two Lightning ports. There are two new colours to choose, both of which replace Space Grey. Black (shown below) is the most similar – it’s just black instead of grey. Jet Black is the eye-catching one, the aluminium chassis is polished until it’s perfectly glossy and doesn’t even feel like metal any more. It’s the high-maintenance choice, though. Touch it and the finish is immediately marred by your fingerprints; move it across a table and it will inevitably pick up tiny scratches. It’s slightly pointless using a case that will hide or at least mask the reflective finish, and bear in mind that there’s no 32GB Jet Black model, so £699 is the cheapest option here. Home button One other subtle design change is the solid home button. It doesn’t move, but is instead more like a touchpad, recognising a tap or a touch. To make it feel like you’re pressing it, there’s new haptic feedback and it’s amazingly convincing. In fact, the bigger ‘Taptic Engine’ is put to good use with haptics throughout iOS 10. When you swipe to delete an email you feel the slightest ‘click’

and when you roll the number dials to set a time or date, it really feels like you’re manipulating a click wheel. The new home button makes one less place for water to ingress, but it does present a drawback: it doesn’t work if you’re wearing gloves or if you push it with a fingernail. Minor issues, granted. Waterproofing The iPhone 7 is rated to IP67, which means you can take it 1m underwater for 30 minutes. That’s a first for an Apple product, and it isn’t simply for the accident-prone. While it will undoubtedly survive being dropped in the bath, it opens up new uses such as underwater photos and video. No need to buy a GoPro, then. It’s interesting that, while you could say that the iPhone 7 is late to the pool party, Sony’s latest Xperia range isn’t water-resistant. That really is a step backwards. Screen Given the flagship pricing, you might think the 1334x750-pixel screen is


029_031 Apple iPhone 7 258.indd 29

26/10/2016 15:19

DVDRW. J Marie Brewis

Reviews

Geekbench 3

earpiece speaker is now a proper loudspeaker and means the iPhone 7 has left- and right speakers when held in landscape mode. This is ideal for watching videos and playing games in this orientation. Apps such as Magic Piano also benefit from the new setup. It’s louder than previous iPhones, too, although it’s still not a substitute for a decent Bluetooth speaker.

Performance

GFXBench Manhattan

GFXBench T-Rex

JetStream

a disappointment. Far from it. Yes, it is the same resolution Apple has always used for the 4.7in iPhone and yes, you can buy phones with 2560x1440 resolutions for less, but this all misses the point: 326 pixels per inch is plenty. It was plenty when the iPhone 4 came out, and it’s plenty today. It would make more sense to criticise the technology, since IPS LCD is – in many people’s opinion – inferior to AMOLED. But the

iPhone 7’s screen has a bigger colour gamut than the 6s, and it’s also brighter. Side by side the differences are easy to see, and this is certainly one of the best IPS screens you’ll find on a phone. Speakers We’d previously thought that the space freed up by taking away the headphone jack would be used for a second speaker, but Apple has done a better job than that. The

Another improvement is the A10 Fusion processor. The iPhone 7 is the first Apple phone to get a quad-core CPU. Like many Android phones, it uses two low-power cores when you’re doing undemanding tasks such as creating a new calendar appointment, but when you load up a graphically intensive game, it switches to a pair of much more powerful cores to give you the best performance. In general use, the iPhone 7 feels no faster than the 6s. But both are exceptionally slick devices, so it’s hardly a criticism. Plus, a faster processor means Apple’s new handset will be able to handle future iOS releases better than its predecessors and developers can use the full power to make games look even better. We have to resort to benchmarks to see if Apple’s ‘40 percent faster’ claims are true. It depends on which benchmark you use, of course, but overall, yes, the iPhone 7 is around 40 percent quicker. When it comes to games, the ‘7 is also fantastically quick. It manages to max out the GFXBench Manhattan test at 60fps, just as it does with the older T-Rex test. As a comparison, Huawei’s P9 manages just 19fps in Manhattan. Battery life is meant to be better than the 6s, but in our testing we simply haven’t seen it. Having perhaps been spoiled by the excellent battery life of the 6s Plus, moving to the iPhone 7 is a bit of a shock. In line with our colleagues over at Macworld, we’ve not yet been able to make it through 24 hours without needing the charger. If you use your phone, as we do, constantly throughout the day, you’ll be lucky to make it to 10pm without the battery percentage dropping into low single digits. A small power bank is an essential accessory if you’re out and about all day.



26/10/2016 15:20

Reviews

Cameras One of the iPhone 7’s biggest upgrades is its cameras. Although it might sound like marketing hype, the main camera has been completely upgraded. The sensor is new, as is the lens. It may have the same resolution as the 6s – 12Mp – but this is valuable and noticeable improvement. How so? Well, the sensor supports a wider colour gamut (as does the screen) and the lens has an aperture of f/1.8. That lets in 50 percent more light than the f/2.2 lens on the 6s. Plus, this is the first time that Apple has put optical stabilisation in the smaller iPhone, which markedly improves sharpness in low light photos. Add to this the new image processor and you can expect very, very, good-looking photos from the iPhone 7. In fact, it’s one of the best cameras we’ve ever seen on a smartphone and it’s up there with the Samsung Galaxy S7. Sharpness is very good across the lens, and colours are – as we’ve come to expect from Apple – accurately rendered. Focus is fast thanks to those ‘focus pixels’ (otherwise known as phase detection pixels) and the camera app defaults to auto HDR so will take several photos and combine them if there’s high contrast in the scene. We found in our testing that the camera almost always got white balance spot on, and exposures were also generally very good. Even in low light, there’s very little noise, while in bright light, artefacts are much reduced compared to the 6s. Here are a few samples (resized down to 2Mp but otherwise untouched):

Even the True Tone flash has been improved. There are now four LEDs, and it’s said to be 50 percent brighter. It works well and means skin tones looks natural in low light photos, but there’s still the same ‘spotlight’ effect which means your subject is well lit in the centre, but the edges are dark. Video, similarly, is excellent. The stabilisation gives footage that cinematic feel that was previously only available on Plus models, and can be shot in 1080p60 or 4K (at 30fps). The biggest annoyance is that, as in older versions of iOS, you still can’t change the video resolution in the app itself. Nor can you easily switch between 1080p at 120fps and 720p at 240fps for the slo-mo mode. Only the former setting is a pain, because you might prefer to shoot at 60fps during the day, and then switch to 30fps at night when 60fps becomes too fast and the image is way too dark. Moving to the selfie camera, this has also been upgraded from 5- to 7Mp. In combination with the new image processor, photos now have more detail and fewer artefacts.

Software iOS 10 is the latest version of Apple’s iPhone (and iPad) operating system, and is by far the best yet. Messages has had a massive upgrade, and there are genuinely useful new features such as Memories in Photos which aggregates photos and videos from an event or a period of time and automatically makes a short, shareable video. Siri will be more useful as app developers integrate the digital assistant into their apps, and the

new interactive widgets on the lock screen are brilliant. You can read our full iOS 10 review for a lot more detail, but it’s worth mentioning a couple of the unwelcome changes. The first is that Control Centre now has multiple screens. In itself this isn’t a problem and means there’s relatively quick access to HomeKit device controls. However, the music / playback controls are no longer on the first screen, so it now takes longer to get to them and pause or skip tracks. Another one, which is easy to get used to, is the fact that you no longer swipe to unlock. In iOS 10 you have to press the home button. To be fair, you could do this in iOS 9 on a device with Touch ID, but now it’s the only way. To avoid blasting past all your notifications when pressing the home button, you can simply pick up the iPhone 7 to make the screen come on. This ‘Raise to wake’ feature isn’t exclusive to the new phone, but it’s certainly welcome.

Verdict The iPhone 7 is an evolution of the 6s, so if you were expecting a revolution you’ll probably be slightly disappointed. However, aside from the underwhelming battery life, it is an excellent phone. It’s waterproof, has fantastic cameras and performance, and the new stereo speakers sound great. There’s now 32GB of storage as a minimum, which helps to mitigate the higher prices. If you have an iPhone 6s, it’s hard to justify upgrading (even for some people with a 6) but if you’re out of contract and want a small phone, it’s the best Apple has made yet. J Jim Martin January 2017 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews 31


26/10/2016 15:20


Reviews

SMARTPHONE

£539 inc VAT Contact n

sony.co.uk

Specifications

5.2in (1920x1080, 424ppi) full-HD display; Android Marshmallow 6.0.1; Qualcomm MSM8996 Snapdragon 820; Adreno 530; 3GB RAM 32/64GB storage; 23Mp main camera, LED flash; 13Mp front camera; 802.11ac; USB-C; Bluetooth 4.2; 4G LTE Cat 6; Nano-SIM; A-GPS with GLONASS; NFC; 2900mAh non-removable lithium-ion battery; 146x72x8.1mm; 161g


Sony Xperia XZ The Xperia XZ is Sony’s latest flagship smartphone and comes with impressive technology, especially in the camera department.

Design The phone has a 5.2in display and a metal body that is noticeably curvier than previous Xperia smartphones, making it more comfortable to hold. Although you can definitely see lines where materials meet (the small strip at the bottom on the rear seems unnecessary), the phone feels nicer in the hand compared to last year’s Xperia Z5. It’s a shame to see that Sony hasn’t cut down on the bezels, so the XZ is big for a phone with a 5.2in screen. It’s mainly at the top and bottom where there’s a lot of empty space, although we appreciate that it does offer front-facing stereo speakers. The rear of the Xperia XZ is made from what Sony calls “high purity alkaleido metal”, which gives the phone a shiny finish, though it is a little slippery to hold. While the shine is understated, when the back catches the light it lights up with a gorgeous hue. We’re fans of the three colour options: Forest Blue, Mineral Black and Platinum, with Forest Blue winning our top pick. It’s nice to see a company veer away from the standard silver, grey and gold variants. It’s hard not to compare the new device with the Z5, which is both thinner and lighter (7.3mm and 154g). Sadly, the XZ is measures 8.1mm and weighs 161g, so it’s not the most slender of flagships. Unlike most of Sony’s other recent X series phones, the XZ is waterproof. We’re glad the firm has included this feature, especially with Apple adding it to the iPhone 7 (page 29). It’s IP68 rated, so can be fully submerged up to a depth of 1.5m for up to 30 minutes. Despite the rating, Sony’s small print says not to submerge it completely under water and not to expose it to salt water, chlorinated water or drinks.

Features Although the Xperia XZ comes a year on from the Z5, much of the specifications are similar to the older device. For starters, the screen

is still 5.2in and Full HD, which is the same as 2014’s Xperia Z2. It’s strange that Sony has made a 4K smartphone but not jumped to Quad HD. While the screen is perfectly good (extremely bright, crisp and vibrant), it’s nothing to get excited about, though the resolution does have an advantage when it comes to battery life. We would have liked to see a similar edge-to-edge design as seen on the Xperia XA, which costs less than half the price. When it comes to the engine room, it’s good to see the high-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor running the show. What’s not so good is the 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, which is the same as 2015’s Xperia Z3+. You can, however, increase the storage to a whopping 256GB via the microSD card slot. Much of this is adequate, expected even, from a high-end smartphone, but not enough to get consumers’ blood pumping. We’d have liked to see a Quad HD screen and more RAM, though there are some areas that don’t need changing. The fingerprint scanner, for example, is hidden within the power button and is one of the best we’ve seen. Other

specifications, such as dual-band 11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS and NFC, are all good to see, too. Sony phones are always a good choice for music lovers and not just because of the firm’s Walkman app. iPhone 7 haters will be pleased to hear there is a headphone jack and the XZ supports 24-bit/192kHz audio playback, is compatible with the firm’s LDAC technology and has front-facing stereo speakers. Following the general trend, Sony has opted for the new reversible USB-C port for the XZ. It has a 2900mAh battery with ‘Qnovo Adaptive Charging’ technology, which the firm claims will help to extend the battery life of the smartphone, and fast charging. As mentioned earlier, the Full HD screen means that the phone doesn’t use as much power than some rivals. During testing, we found the XZ to be a top-notch performer and most users will get a couple of days from their handset without using Stamina mode.

Cameras Sony is well known for fitting advanced camera technology into its flagship phones and the Xperia ZX is no different. On the surface,

The lack of customisation means you get a Nexuslike experience with the notification menu and recent apps displayed as Google designed them


032_033 Sony Xperia XZ 258.indd 32

26/10/2016 17:38

Reviews

it’s the same as the Z5, with a 23Mp sensor, f/2.0 aperture, 24mm lens, phase detection autofocus and an LED flash. We like that Sony continues to offer a dedicated camera/shutter button on the side, but what’s new here is triple image sensing technology. This consists of three sensors: an imaging sensor for movement, a laser autofocus sensor for measuring distance and an RGBC‑IR sensor for accurate colour reproduction. It might not be a huge upgrade from the Z5, but ensures you take accurate, in‑focus shots extremely quickly. As we’ve come to expect from Sony, the image quality is very high, though It’s worth noting that the camera will shoot in 8Mp 16:9 by default, so you’ll need to head into the setting if you want the full 23Mp at 4:3. You can see the difference in our examples below. The XZ also shoots 4K video at 30fps, though there’s no optical image stabilisation, which is a shame. A bigger upgrade is found at the front with a 13Mp camera that has a 22mm wide‑angle lens.

Software The Xperia XZ runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow, which is slightly surprising considering that Android N is available. Although the phone will be updated to Nougat, we don’t know exactly when. The user interface is closer to stock Android than before, although you get Sony’s widgets and apps – most of which we think are valuable additions. The lack of customisation

8Mp at 16:9

means you get a Nexus‑like experience with the notification menu and recent apps displayed as Google has designed them. It’s nice that you can rearrange the quick settings and Google Now is a swipe away from the main home screen which is also beneficial. Sony has made a few tweaks though, including its own lockscreen, settings menu and an extra panel in the app draw for suggested and recommended apps. As with previous Xperia phones, PlayStation users can benefit from PS Remote Play, which allows you to play games from the console on the phone. There are some preinstalled apps, such as Facebook, Spotify, Lookout and Amazon Shopping, but you can uninstall these – along with some of Sony’s such as Xperia Lounge, Lifelog and PlayStation. New features include Xperia Tips provides ‘non‑intrusive, contextual tips to enhance your experience’ and while this will be useful for beginners we found them annoying. The XZ also has a ‘smart cleaner’ which, like the Nextbit Robin, will deactivate apps you don’t use.

Geekbench 4

Verdict

JetStream

GFXBench Manhattan

GFXBench T-Rex

Sony’s Xperia XZ is an attractive phone in design if you can get on with the angular style and while it’s cheaper than rivals such as the iPhone 7 and Google Pixel, you can get better value with some older phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S7. While the hardware is decent, it’s very similar to the cheaper Xperia Z5. J Chris Martin

23Mp at 4:3


032_033 Sony Xperia XZ 258.indd 33

26/10/2016 17:38


Reviews

SMARTPHONE


sony.co.uk

Specifications

4.6in (1280x720) IPS LCD touchscreen; Android Marshmallow 6.0.1; Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 hexa-core processor; Adreno 510 graphics; 3GB RAM; 32GB storage with microSD up to 256GB; 23Mp main camera, LED flash; 5Mp front camera; 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi; Bluetooth 4.2; 4G LTE; Nano-SIM; GPS; NFC; 2700mAh nonremovable battery; 129x65x9.5mm; 135g

Sony Xperia X Compact The best smartphones of 2016 are generally huge. The 5.5in screen size of phones such as the Apple iPhone 7 Plus or the OnePlus 3 are becoming the norm, where just a few years ago, we thought the 3.5in iPhone 4 was huge. Times change, but Sony has been keeping happy those of us who prefer a smartphone to be small and usable with one hand; compact. The Sony Xperia X Compact is the latest of the company’s sub-5in handsets, but its sits in a confusing line up of devices. Alongside it are the Xperia XZ (page 32), Xperia X and Xperia XA. Those phones are, respectively, high-end, upper mid-range and lower mid-range. So where does the Xperia X Compact fit in? We break down why the world needs an Xperia X Compact, and, more importantly, if it’s you who needs one.

Design


While not immediately obvious, the Xperia X Compact is quite a departure in design from last year’s Sony Xperia Z5 Compact. Sony has taken the 4.6in screen phone and updated it – or has it? The Z5 Compact had a stylish frosted glass rear panel and rounded metal edges that gave it a premium look and feel, and it’s one we expected with its £429 price tag. The attention to detail was great, down to the metal rim around the side-edge fingerprint sensor. A year on, the Xperia X Compact retails for £379, £50 less, while the Z5 Compact is available for just £349. As well as in the specs, which we will get onto, the design and build quality has taken a hit. Thankfully, the clever fingerprint scanner is present, and works excellently, but there’s no thoughtful metallic finishes. Gone are the glass and metal. Instead, the X Compact has a completely glossy plastic body, with only the top and bottom flat edges retaining a sniff of the glass. Unfortunately, the body on our ‘Mist Blue’ review unit was smeary with prints in seconds and also picked up hairline scratches very easily. They are hard to see, but more than anything the blue colour of the phone is an acquired taste. Some will think it kitsch and retro, others will definitely not. We

recommend either looking at one in store, or opting for the black or white models. It’s a shame, as this all makes the phone feel distinctly blocky, and it is; it’s 9.5mm thick. Another popular sub-5in phone is the iPhone SE, which is 7.6mm. It doesn’t sound much, but it’s noticeable. Very few smartphones are nearly 1cm thick these days. Overall the X Compact measures 129x65x9.5mm and weighs 135g. The rear has a camera and flash, with the two speaker grills at the top and bottom of the front face of the device, making video viewing volumes surprisingly decent. Despite this though, it’s still a pleasure to use, particularly onehanded, a rarity after smartphones got stretched to nearly 6in. Even with our smaller hands, it’s easy to unlock and reply to messages, swipe down the notification tray or play games with one hand. Along the right edge below the fingerprint scanner is the volume rocker and also a dedicated camera button (a long-time welcome Sony addition). The 3.5mm headphone jack is on the top edge, while the Compact welcomes USB-C connectivity to the bottom edge. On the left edge is the SIM and microSD tray that still, infuriatingly, shuts down the phone if you take it out. This doesn’t happen on any other phone and it’s frustrating if you want to swap out a memory card or change SIM. Despite these points, it doesn’t really matter that it’s a tad chunky

when it’s this conveniently small. It’s just a shame it’s not as premium as Sony is capable of.

Features Along with the design compromises, the specs are a clue to its lowered price from last year’s model. The Z5 Compact has a high-end Snapdragon 810 processor with 2GB RAM, whereas the X Compact has the decidedly mid-range Snapdragon 650. It does bump the RAM to a respectable 3GB though, which we’ll explore in our benchmarking of the phone. We benchmarked the X Compact against phones we feel it is competing against in the market currently. Annoyingly for Sony, that means it’s up against the Xperia X and Xperia XZ, while Apple’s iPhone SE represents a similar sized phone. As you can see in the results (opposite), not only does the X Compact beat the Xperia X on one test, it also runs the Xperia XZ (which has superior processor) very close, too. This muddies the waters even more in Sony’s range considering the Compact is, in some respects, as good a performer as the flagship XZ. Of course, real-life use may prove otherwise. This helps us to decipher Sony’s odd product line. While not overtly clear, we see the X Compact as the smaller version of the Xperia X. All that’s changed from the big brother/ little brother aesthetic of the old Z range is that both versions now have mid-range processors. This means


034_035 Sony Xperia X Compact 258.indd 34

26/10/2016 17:44

Reviews

the Xperia XZ, released at the same time as the X Compact, is now the high-end option. The XA falls in at the lowest end of the range. It’s a confusing line-up for consumers, and enough to put a lot of people off. It’s frustrating also because we very much want to recommend the Compact as in previous years, but Sony is making it harder for us to do so given it now has an inferior processor to the flagship Xperia XZ. It’s odd that the Xperia X even exists, now just six months after its launch. With the confusing product line out of the way, the X Compact performs very well. The display is an IPS LCD with 319ppi and a resolution of 1280x720. It looks pin-sharp, perhaps due to its smaller size, but we have no complaints on its quality for a phone of this price and specs. Video streaming load times are good, and apps look vibrant. The screen brightness is excellent too, and didn’t seem to massively affect the battery life. Sony has a good track record for battery life, though it doesn’t claim the magical two days of use like it has before. Having said that with heavy use using the phone daily for a week, we regularly went through a whole working day and well past lunch the following day before reaching for the charger. Sony still impresses in this regard, which is admirable given the 2700mAh battery. As ever, Sony boasts of the 23Mp camera sensor in the phone, though it tends to make less of its Carl Zeiss affiliation these days. As we found with the Xperia X, the software and processing isn’t as good as the sensor. This means you get adequate smartphone pictures, but nothing out of the ordinary. Landscapes come out sharp and bright but close up photos, particularly in lower light, are a tad grainy. It’s a shame that unlike the XZ, the X Compact is not waterproof, This means we can’t recommend it as highly as we might have, despite it being a good handset.

too far from stock Android, but you definitely notice the tweaks. While the app tray and notifications menu are normal, the icons for basic apps such as texts and phone are different, while the Sony software onboard won’t be to everyone’s tastes. The speed of the phone in day-to-day use was never an issue. Some apps you can uninstall, like the PlayStation app, but others like News and What’s New?, a media suggestion app, feel obtuse and unneeded, and you can only disable them, not uninstall. Having said that, we still prefer using Sony phones to the highly altered EMUI OS that Huawei use with Android and even in some instances it works better than Samsung’s TouchWiz. The only thing you may find is that you make typing errors, particularly if you have big hands. Even with smaller hands, we found that using two thumbs to type quick texts actually saw us making a fair few errors. Perhaps we are used to bigger phones, but Sony ships the X Compact with the SwiftKey keyboard as default. We found it better to switch to using Google Keyboard, which is also preinstalled. Daily operation of the phone could be fiddly if you’re used to a bigger screen, so again, we’d suggest trying one out in store if you are unsure.

Geekbench 4

GFXBench Manhattan

GFXBench T-Rex

JetStream

Verdict The Sony Xperia X Compact is an odd little smartphone. On the one hand its build quality, lack of waterproofing and lack of a standout feature make it harder to recommend compared to the older Xperia Z5 Compact. However, if you want a sub-5in Android smartphone

with excellent battery life it’s the best current option out there. For all its flaws, we also kept coming back to the phone largely due to its sheer portability. Just don’t buy the blue one. J Henry Burrell Image taken using the X Compact’s 23Mp main camera

Software Like many other Android devices at the moment, the X Compact runs Marshmallow 6.0.1, and it runs it very well. Although Sony has said it will receive an upgrade to Nougat 7.0, we don’t know when this will be. Sony’s Android overlay is not January 2017 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews 35

034_035 Sony Xperia X Compact 258.indd 35

27/10/2016 14:24


Reviews

SMARTPHONE


gearbest.com

Specifications

5.5in full-HD (1920x1080, 401ppi) 2.5D display; MIUI 8 (based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow); 2.1GHz Helio X20 deca-core processor; Mali T880 GPU; 3GB RAM (2GB model available); 64GB storage (16GB model available); microSD support up to 128GB; 4G FDD-LTE 850/900/ 1800/2100/2600MHz; DualSIM dual-standby; fingerprint scanner; Dualband 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi; Bluetooth 4.2; GPS; A-GPS; GLONASS; USB OTG; 13Mp camera with dual-tone flash; 5Mp front camera; 4100mAh battery; 151x76x8.4mm; 175g


Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 The Redmi Note 4 is the latest mid-range phablet from Xiaomi, and it certainly looks like a fantastic upgrade over the Note 3. Of course, looks can sometimes be deceiving.

Price As ever with Xiaomi phones, the Redmi Note 4 is not officially available in the UK. You can buy it through third-party sites such as Gearbest (gearbest.com), where the 3GB RAM, 64GB storage model we reviewed currently costs £192. A 2GB RAM, 16GB storage version is cheaper, currently £133 from Gearbest. Something UK users should watch out for is that Xiaomi phones do not support 800MHz 4G, which is the only 4G band supported by O2 and piggybacking networks such as Giffgaff.

Design At 151x76x8.4mm, the new Note 4 is roughly the same size as the Redmi Note 3 and a little tubbier at 175g (vs 164g), but much has changed. The design is significantly more attractive, now with a full metal build that feels much less cheap. Whereas the Note 3 features plastic parts at the top and bottom to improve signal, the Redmi Note 4 is all metal with those increasingly familiar white stripes top and bottom to ensure you can still get reception. It’s also flatter at the back, with chamfered edges and less rounded corners, yet feels every bit as good in the hand. Something else gone from the rear is the speaker grille, and you’ll now find two rows of six drilled holes on the phone’s bottom edge, one either side of the now centrally mounted Micro-USB port. This is the same design as is used by the Redmi Pro (albeit with USB-C rather than Micro-USB), but don’t be fooled: it looks nicer, and sound is less likely to be muffled, but there’s still just a mono speaker lying below. Things look different at the front too, and while you still get the three standard-Android touch buttons below the screen (as before the fingerprint scanner is rear-mounted below the camera) and the bezels are the same size, the new layout above the screen and 2.5D curved glass make it so much easier on

the eye. The earpiece, front camera and proximity sensor are now symmetrical: dot, dash, dot rather than long dash, short dash, dot as seen on the Redmi Note 3. It’s a little thing, but it makes more difference than you might expect to the phone’s overall aesthetic appeal. On the top edge, the headphone jack, IR blaster and mic have also switched places, but you’ll pleased to learn the volume rocker, power switch and SIM tray remain where you would expect to find them. Overall these changes make a massive improvement to the look and feel of the Redmi Note 4, resulting in a phone that would look more at home in the flagship Mi family. This is something we also saw in the excellent Redmi Pro, which many people have been comparing to this Note 4. We can certainly see the similarities, especially given the very good 5.5in full-HD IPS panel that adorns the front of each device, offering strong clarity and colour reproduction. The 2.5D glass laid on top makes

a huge subconscious difference to your perception of the phone, too: running your finger over a smooth surface rather than a raised lip just feels so much more natural. There are some significant differences between the two, though – and not least the £65 price hike. The Redmi Pro features a dual-lens camera, and moves the fingerprint scanner to a physical home button at the front. It is also fitted with USB-C and the deca-core Helio X25 in place of the Note 4’s Micro-USB and Helio X20.

Performance The core specifications of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 are excellent for a sub-£200 phone. Moving on from the octa-core Helio X10 chip found in the Redmi Note 3 here there’s a deca-core 2.1GHz Helio X20. (The Redmi Pro is also a deca-core phone, but fitted with the Helio X25.) This is paired with Mali T880 graphics, 3GB of RAM and – just as 32GB is beginning to become the norm – a colossal 64GB of storage, which is

We like the camera app, which is very simple and easy to use. It’s easy to apply real-time filters and select modes including HDR and Beautify


036_038 Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 258.indd 36

26/10/2016 17:50

Reviews

Geekbench 3

Manhattan test with both recording 15fps. The Redmi Note 3 trails behind here with 8fps. Our final benchmark is JetStream, which looks at JavaScript performance when browsing the web. The Note 4 is on par with the Redmi Pro, scoring a slightly lower 23.265 points against its 24.719 points. Unfortunately we do not have test results for the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3. The battery capacity has been upgraded to 4100mAh in comparison to the Note 3’s 4000mAh. We found we could get two days of use from the Redmi Note 4, but as always the runtime will depend on exactly what you do with the phone.

GFXBench Manhattan

GFXBench T-Rex

Connectivity

JetStream

double the Note 3’s maximum of 32GB. You can add to this too, with support for microSD up to 128GB (though you do so at the expense of dual-SIM functionality – more on this later). To be fair, there is also a version of the Redmi Note 4 that comes with 16GB of storage and 2GB of RAM, but at this price we’d recommend the 64GB model. It’s impossible for us to accurately compare performance with the Redmi Note 3, because when we reviewed the earlier Xiaomi we were testing the 2GB RAM, 16GB model rather than the 3GB RAM, 32GB storage option. The amount of storage shouldn’t affect our benchmarks, but it’s impossible for us to say how much the extra gigabyte of RAM would. It’s interesting, then, to find that the Redmi Note 3 scored significantly higher in Geekbench 3 than did the Redmi Note 4, with 4597 points against the newer phone’s 3009. The roles were reversed in AnTuTu 3D though, and more in line with what we would

expect, with the Redmi Note 4 turning in 85,518 points against the Redmi Note 3’s 46,924 points. This is higher even than the Redmi Pro, which managed 79,487 points. Why did the Note 4 score so much lower in Geekbench 3? Who knows, and to some extent it goes to show just how reliable are processing performance benchmarks. Real-world performance is therefore more important than that of synthetic benchmarks, and here we should say that in our use of the Note 4 at no point did we find it slow. It may not be as fast as phones higher up Xiaomi’s range but it will do everything most users will require of it and more. Getting back to the benchmarks, and we also ran the GFXBench graphics test. As we would expect the Redmi Note 4 outperformed the Redmi Note 3, with 31fps in T-Rex against the Note 3’s 22fps. This is also higher than the 25fps of the Redmi Pro, though it matches that phone on the more intensive

The Redmi Note 4 doesn’t support NFC, but all other connectivity bases are covered with dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS and GLONASS, USB OTG and a fingerprint scanner at the rear. We also like the fact this is a 4G dual-SIM dual-standby phone, but you must choose between microSD support and a second SIM since they share the same slot. And as we noted earlier, the Redmi Note 4 does not support the 800MHz 4G band used by O2 in the UK, so O2 (and Giffgaff) customers will need to make do with 3G or look elsewhere.

Cameras In common with its predecessor the Redmi Note 4 has a 13Mp, f/2.0 camera with dual-tone flash at the



26/10/2016 17:50


Reviews

rear and a 5Mp selfie camera at the front. (A Snapdragon version of the Redmi Note 3 has a 16Mp camera, but we tested the MediaTek version.) When viewed at full-size our test images were soft on detail and show a fair amount of blurring, but the colours are realistic and HDR mode improves things no end. You can see a couple of our test shots in Auto and HDR mode above. We like the camera app in MIUI 8.0, which is very simple and easy to use. It’s easy to apply real-time filters and select modes including HDR, Panorama and Beautify.

Software Our Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 ran MIUI 7.0 out of the box but with an upgrade to MIUI 8.0.9 available (based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow). We recommend you install this, since it adds the ability to password- or fingerprint-protect notes, a new energy saving mode, enhanced video-editing tools plus some photo features that let you add doodles and stickers and quickly share your snaps, the new and supposedly easier-on-the-eyes Mi Lanting font, improved QR scanner and calculator apps, an enhanced multi-tasking menu, brighter colours and new lock screen wallpapers. MIUI 8.0 is a great take on the standard Android operating system, but it won’t be familiar to those who haven’t used a Xiaomi phone before. Settings are found under different sections to standard Android, there’s no app tray which results in an iOS-esque experience, the dropdown notification bar has also been tweaked and, more importantly, there are no Google apps. Xiaomi has its own app alternatives for many of the standard Google apps you’d expect to find on an Android phone, but some of these are Chinese (they can be uninstalled or tucked away in a folder), and if you’ve ever used an Android phone before you’ll probably prefer to use Google apps to seamlessly sync your data. It’s easy to install the Play Store, and you simply create a Mi account and search for Google Play in the Mi App Store. Everything here is Chinese, but if you tap on the first option with the Google Play icon it will download the Play Store and any ;associated services that are required to run it.

Auto

HDR Having done so you may find it takes half an hour or so for the Google account to register on the phone, so you may not be able to immediately download apps from Google Play. In our impatience we found it easier to sideload the apps we use for benchmarking, but to do so you’ll first need to enable the installation of apps from unknown sources in the privacy settings. One thing we highly recommend for UK users is to download the Google Keyboard, since the Chinese characters on the standard keyboard can be confusing and much of the time you’ll be relying on guess work to find they button you want. A software feature that’s particularly useful given the size of the screen is One-handed mode. This lets you perform a simple gesture to shrink down the display to 4.5-, 4- or 3.5in. A Quick Ball can also be

put anywhere you like onscreen that when tapped gives options to return to the home screen, open the recent apps menu, lock the screen, take a screenshot or go back.

Verdict The Redmi Note 4 isn’t a huge upgrade over the Redmi Note 3 in terms of core hardware, with simply a greater amount of storage and a faster processor, but the design changes are a huge improvement over its predecessor. If you don’t care about looks and can make do with less storage then the cheaper Redmi Note 3 may well meet your needs. The Redmi Note 4 remains a great buy, but the omission of Google Play support may put off some users. O2 and Giffgaff customers should also note the lack of support for 800MHz 4G. J Marie Brewis



27/10/2016 14:27


Reviews

SMARTPHONE


gearbest.com

Specifications

5.5in full-HD (1920x1080, 401ppi) 2.5D OLED display; Android 6.0 Marshmallow with MIUI 8.0; 1.55GHz Helio X25 deca-core (2x Cortex-A72, 8x Cortex-A53) processor; Mali T880 GPU; 3GB RAM; 64GB storage, 128GB microSD support; 4G FDD-LTE 850/900/1800/ 2100/2600MHz, dual-SIM dual-standby; dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi; Bluetooth 4.2; GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS; IR blaster; fingerprint scanner; accelerometer; USB-C; Dual Camera: 13Mp Sony IMX 258 plus 5Mp Samsung camera for capturing depth, two-tone flash; 3.7Mp front camera; 4050mAh non-removable battery; 151.5x76.2x8.2mm; 174g Build: Features: Value: Performance:

Xiaomi Redmi Pro Xiaomi’s Redmi Pro is a beast, the first phone we’ve seen to feature 10 processor cores, plus 3GB of RAM and a colossal 64GB of storage. Add to that a fancy Dual Camera, a 5.5in OLED display, a large-capacity battery and USB-C and the Redmi Pro offers staggering value at £256.

Price Xiaomi doesn’t officially sell its phones in the UK, which means if you want one you will need to buy it through a third-party importer. Several such sites offer this service, but our go-to for Xiaomi phones is Gearbest (gearbest.com). It lists the 64GB Xiaomi Redmi Pro reviewed here for £256 (though note that prices can fluctuate daily). This includes free shipping to the UK, unless you opt for an express service, but you will have to pay import duty if requested by Customs upon its entry to the UK.

Design The Xiaomi Redmi Pro is a very well-designed phone that mixes a brushed metal rear and high-quality chamfered edges with a white plastic screen surround and a 2.5D Arc screen. It’s a high-gloss, premium design that feels reassuringly solid, with fantastic attention to detail. There’s a bit of space above and below the screen, and the latter is where you’ll find the fingerprint sensor built into a ceramic home button, but the left and right slim bezels help make this large-screen phone feel less cumbersome when used in one hand. It is a big handset nevertheless, at 151.5x76.2x8.2mm and 174g. With a large 5.5in screen this is what we refer to as a ‘phablet’ rather than a standard smartphone, and as such it may not be suited to the tiniest of hands. However, one of the things we like about the MIUI interface is the ability to downsize the visible display area (to 4.5-, 4or 3.5in) and put everything within easy reach. There’s also a Quick Ball setting that allows you to place anywhere you like onscreen options to return to the home screen, open the multi-tasking window, lock the screen or take a screenshot. The screen is by no means an annoyance, though. A display

of this size is perfectly suited to multimedia, and its full-HD resolution ensures everything onscreen is crystal clear. Xiaomi has fitted an OLED panel, which doesn’t require a power-draining backlight and therefore tends to be uniformly bright and able to offer excellent contrast. OLED also produces near-infallible viewing angles and vivid colour reproduction that is more than worthy of the colourful new MIUI 8.0 interface.

Performance The Redmi Pro is the first phone we’ve reviewed to come with a deca-core processor. The 1.55GHz Helio X25 integrates two Cortex-A72 cores and eight Cortex-A53 cores, as well as the Mali T880 GPU. This is paired with 3GB of RAM, which is generous but just half that of some phones such as the OnePlus 3. In real-world use running MIUI 8.0, the Redmi Pro is fast, with no lag when launching apps or switching between home screens. It also gave a very good showing in our benchmarks. We use AnTuTu and Geekbench to measure general processing performance and here the Redmi Pro fared well. Its 79,487 points scored in AnTuTu is very good, and a little ahead of the Xiaomi Mi Max’s 74,156. Geekbench has been updated to version 4, which makes it hard to compare performance with the majority of phones we’ve benchmarked using Geekbench 3. Geekbench 4 scores are calculated using a baseline score of 4000, which has been set using an Intel Core i7-6600U. Higher-than4000-point scores are better, and double the score indicates double the performance.

With that in mind, the Redmi Pro’s multi-core score of 4539 points is very good and sits somewhere in between the Huawei P9 (4735 points) and OnePlus 3 (4015 points). The Galaxy Note 7, S7 and S7 edge are faster still, recording 5228-, 5213- and 5203- points respectively, but the Redmi Pro is faster than last year’s Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+, S6 edge and Note 5 (3972-, 3948and 3920 points respectively). We also recorded 1764 points singlecore, which sits between the Note 7 (1786 points) and Galaxy S7 edge (1744 points). Our next test is GFXBench 3.0, which measures onscreen graphics performance. The Xiaomi Redmi Pro turned in a respectable and easily playable 25fps in T-Rex and 15fps in Manhattan. That’s not up there with the flagships, but it wipes the floor with many a mid-range Android. JetStream is used to measure JavaScript web browsing performance, and here the Redmi Pro recorded 24.719. That’s not bad, but also not brilliant, and just a touch above the likes of the Xiaomi Redmi 3S. Usually we would also measure battery life using the Geekbench 3 battery benchmark, but the test has been removed from Geekbench 4 so it’s temporarily back to the drawing board for that one. However, the Xiaomi Redmi Pro has a 4050mAh non-removable battery that in our


039_041 Xiaomi Redmi Pro 258.indd 39

26/10/2016 14:39


Reviews

experience should be good for a couple of days, but your mileage may vary depending on your usage.

Geekbench 4

Connectivity As with any foreign phone you buy for UK use you should ensure the Xiaomi Redmi Pro will be supported by your network. In common with all Xiaomi phones the Redmi Pro supports two of the three 4G bands used in the UK: 3 (1800MHz) and 7 (2600MHz), but not 20 (800MHz). In essence what this means for UK users is that any customers of networks that rely solely on 800MHz for 4G connectivity won’t be able to receive anything faster than 3G. O2 is the primary network to rely on 800MHz 4G, but others such as Giffgaff that use its network will also be affected. The Xiaomi Redmi Pro is a dual‑ SIM phone that operates in dual‑ standby fashion. It utilises a hybrid SIM tray, which allows you to either add two SIMs (perhaps you want one for work and one for leisure) or one SIM and a microSD card up to 128GB in capacity. Our review sample came with a generous 64GB of storage, but if you take a lot of photos and video, then you may appreciate the extra storage space. It’s frustrating that the phone can’t be both dual‑ SIM and storage‑expandable, but you can always swap in a second SIM or microSD card as required. In other respects the Xiaomi Redmi Pro covers most connectivity bases, but a notable omission is NFC, which is required for Android Pay. There’s the latest dual‑band 802.11ac Wi‑Fi and Bluetooth 4.2, as well as GPS and GLONASS. And there’s even an IR blaster, which these days is becoming something of a luxury. A fingerprint scanner is built into the ceramic Home button, and there’s a reversible USB‑C port at the phone’s base, located in between what looks like twin speakers but is actually a mono speaker hidden behind a dual grille. Sound quality is reasonable nevertheless, and a vast improvement over phones that place the speaker at the rear where it may be muffled by the palm of your hand or fire sound directly into a surface.

Cameras The Redmi Pro features something we’re increasingly seeing in flagships: a Dual Camera. This combines a 13Mp Sony IMX 258

GFXBench Manhattan

GFXBench T-Rex

JetStream

sensor with a 5Mp Samsung sensor that is used purely to capture depth information. This lets you to create a bokeh effect, altering the focus in specific parts of the image. A dual‑tone flash sits in between the two cameras, while at the front

there’s a separate 5Mp camera for selfies (actually 3.7Mp but software‑boosted). The camera app is very good, and allows you to apply real‑time filters or select from various modes including HDR, Panorama, Manual,



26/10/2016 14:39

Reviews

Beautify and Scene among others. In auto mode you simply tap to focus, then press the shutter to capture the shot. You then get options to share, edit or delete, with various editing options allowing you to apply a different filter, crop and rotate, tweak the image sharpening, brightness, contrast, saturation and vignette, add a sticker or doodle on the photo. The selfie camera features similar options, and will display onscreen how old it thinks you look in each pose. It’s interesting to see how much this age can jump up and down as you switch between the various filters. (Interesting, but not always welcome.) On the whole we were pleased with our test images. As usual, we took shots of the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel in both Auto and HDR modes, shown respectively to the right, and found realistic colours and good reproduction of detail. We also experimented with tweaking the focus of a shot after taking an image, which was easy enough to achieve (provided you remember to put the camera in stereo mode), but you really need to compose the shot with this feature in mind.

Auto mode

Software Out of the box our Redmi Pro review sample ran Android 6.0 Marshmallow with MIUI 7.3, however an update to brand-new MIUI 8.0.3 was available. Some new features in MIUI 8.0 include the ability to password- or fingerprint-protect notes, a new energy saving mode, enhanced video-editing tools plus some photo features that allow you to add doodles and stickers and quickly share your snaps, the new and supposedly easier-on-the-eyes Mi Lanting font, improved QR scanner and calculator apps, an enhanced multi-tasking menu, brighter colours and new lock screen wallpapers. MIUI 8.0 is a great take on the standard Android operating system, but it won’t be familiar to those who haven’t used a Xiaomi phone before. Settings are found under different sections to standard Android, there’s no app tray, which results in an iOS-esque experience, the drop-down notification bar has been tweaked and, more importantly, there are no Google apps.

HDR mode Xiaomi has its own app alternatives for many of the standard Google apps you’d expect to find on an Android phone, but some of these are Chinese (they can be uninstalled or tucked away in a folder), and if you’ve ever used an Android phone before you’ll probably prefer to use Google apps to seamlessly sync your data. It’s easy enough to install the Play Store, and you simply create a Mi account and search for Google Play in the Mi App Store. Everything here is Chinese, but if you tap on the first option with the Google Play icon it will download the Play Store and any associated services that are required to run it. Having done so you may find it takes half an hour or so for the Google account to register on the phone, so you may not be able to immediately download apps from Google Play. In our impatience we

found it easier to sideload the apps we use for benchmarking, but to do so you’ll first need to enable the installation of apps from unknown sources in the privacy settings. One thing we highly recommend for UK users is to download the Google Keyboard, since the Chinese characters on the standard keyboard can be confusing and much of the time you’ll be relying on guess work to find they button you want.

Verdict The Xiaomi Redmi Pro offers unbeatable value for money at around £250, undercutting every flagship yet offering much the same performance and many comparable features. Due to the lack of Google Play and a number of Chinese preinstalled apps we’d recommend Xiaomi phones only to seasoned Android users, though. J Marie Brewis January 2017 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews 41


26/10/2016 14:39


Reviews

SMARTPHONE

€399 (£TBC) Contact n

consumer.huawei.com/uk

Specifications

5in (1920x1080) IPS display; Android Marshmallow 6.0.1; 2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 octa-core processor; Adreno 506; 3GB RAM; 32GB storage; 12Mp main camera, dual LED flash; 8Mp front-facing camera; 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi; Bluetooth 4.1; 4G LTE; Nano-SIM; GPS; 3020mAh battery; 141.2x69.1x7.1mm; 146g


Huawei Nova Huawei has gone from strength to strength in the UK, with recent releases, including the flagship Huawei P9, proving popular – but it isn’t done yet. Here we look at its latest offering: the Nova.

Design Sporting 2.5D glass and a curvy body this doesn’t look or feel like a mid-range smartphone. The display meets the aluminium unibody perfectly, providing users with a seamless design that allows for smooth swipes from the edge. This isn’t a large phone, measuring 141.2x69.1x7.1mm and weighing 146g. It has incredibly thin bezels and since it doesn’t have any physical buttons, the display takes up a larger portion of the front. The Nova’s brushed metal finish on the side and sandblasted rear feels great in the hand. On the back users will find a circular fingerprint scanner similar to that found on the Honor 8, and it is a step away from the square-shaped reader used on the Huawei P9. In terms of colours, the Huawei is available to buy in Apple-esque shades of ‘Mystic’ silver, ‘Titanium’ grey and ‘Prestige’ gold.

Performance:

Features The crisp and vibrant 5in full-HD (1920x1080) IPS display performs well in low-light conditions due to the inclusion of a blue light filter. It’s similar to Apple’s Night Shift functionality and, while it does a good job, it’s a little less subtle than Apple’s offering with a noticeably orange tint. We would also like to be able to automatically turn it on at sunset and off at sunrise, because manually toggling it on and off on a daily basis isn’t ideal. In terms of power, the Nova has a 2GHz octa-core Snapdragon 625 processor, coupled with 3GB of RAM. During testing, we didn’t experience any lag when swiping between menus, scrolling through Facebook or browsing the web. That’s not to say we didn’t have any issues with performance. While it’s fine for basic tasks, the limitations of the built-in tech become clear when playing games, especially more graphically intense

titles such as Assassin’s Creed Pirates. It handles standard 3D platformer titles such as Crossy Road without any problems, though. While the Snapdragon 625 provides a snappy user experience, it’s not the only reason Huawei decided to use it: the firm says it offers users 30 percent longer battery life than the Snapdragon 615. This, coupled with a substantial 3020mAh non-removable battery, easily lasts a full day. It’s charged, like most other Huawei-branded smartphones, via USB-C. With regards to storage, you get 32GB out of the box, which is expandable thanks to Huawei’s ‘Hybrid slot’, which offers either microSD (up to 256GB) and Nano- or dual-SIM capabilities, depending on your requirements.

Performance As with all the phones we review at PC Advisor, we put the Nova through various tests. The first of these was Geekbench 4, which measures a smartphone’s general performance. This benchmark has recently been updated though, which makes it hard to compare performance with the majority of phones we’ve tested using Geekbench 3.

What we can compare it to, however, is the Xiaomi Redmi Pro (page 39). The Huawei Nova scored a slightly disappointing 842 in single-core and 3048 in multi-core: the Redmi Pro recorded 1764 and 4539 respectively. It’s a similar story with Sony’s latest smartphone, the Sony Xperia XZ (page 32), which scored 1582 and 3807 respectively. Huawei’s processor is enough to get by, but it’s not the top of the pile by a long shot. Our next test is GFXBench, which tests a smartphone’s graphics performance. The Nova scored 23fps in T-Rex and 10fps in Manhattan. In this respect, the Huawei is just behind the mid-range Redmi Pro, which recorded 35- and 15fps respectively, but has been blown out of the water by the similarly priced OnePlus 3, which scored 59and 46fps respectively. Finally, we test JetStream in Chrome to ensure a fair test (it doesn’t have to run in Chrome). Android smartphones are generally slower than iOS devices when browsing, as the iPhone 7 (page 29) scored a whopping 160.2. With this giving you some idea of what a highend smartphone can offer, the Nova scored 30.2, putting it in the same

The crisp and vibrant 5in full-HD (1920x1080) IPS display performs well in low-light conditions due to the inclusion of a blue light filter


042_043 Huawei Nova 258.indd 42

26/10/2016 15:38

Reviews

Geekbench 4

GFXBench Manhattan

GFXBench T-Rex

JetStream

league as the Sony Xperia XA (26.5) and the Nextbit Robin (29.7).

Cameras The Nova’s cameras are decent for a mid-range smartphone. The rear-facing offering is a 12Mp snapper with 1.25µm pixels and an aperture of f/2.2. As you can see from our examples (see below) photos are good, as long as you have got sufficient light. The picture of St Pancras Hotel was taken on a dull and rainy day (see bottom right). Colour reproduction is decent, although could be improved in places, but the amount of detail is impressive. You can see individual bricks on the hotel walls, and can even read the street sign. There’s no motion blur either, despite people walking along the street below. The front-facing camera isn’t to be sniffed at either – an 8Mp camera

with f/2.0 and similarly decent results in low-light conditions. While there’s no dedicated front-facing flash like on other Huawei smartphones, those that need more light can simply use the Nova’s display as a flash. Note that doing so may leave you with an extremely white, reflective face. The quality is decent though, and will suffice for the likes of Skype and Snapchat. In terms of video recording, the mid-range Nova surprisingly offers 4K at 30fps – Huawei opted against including it in its P9 and P9 Plus handsets. The quality isn’t mind-blowing, though. We’d recommend sticking to 1080p as this takes in more colour, making videos lighter and much smaller in size.

Software The Nova comes with Android 6.0 Marshmallow complete with Huawei’s own Emotion UI (EMUI

for short) overlay. While some aren’t fans of skins that redesign Google’s OS, we like it from the timeline-style notification centre to the circular icons used throughout the operating system, although it does take some getting used to.

Verdict The Nova is an underwhelming phone: the processor isn’t as quick as similarly-priced handsets, the graphical capabilities aren’t great and the quality of lowlight photography is less than expected. What we do like is the design: it’s sleek, gorgeous and extremely comfortable to use. It definitely doesn’t look like a sub-£350 smartphone. However, with companies such as OnePlus dominating the mid-range scene with high-end internals, it’s hard to recommend this distinctly average Huawei. J Lewis Painter


042_043 Huawei Nova 258.indd 43

26/10/2016 15:39


Reviews

SMARTPHONE


imomobile.co.uk

Specifications

5in 1280x720 HD IPS display; Android Marshmallow 6.0; 1GHz MediaTek MT6735P quad‑core processor; 1.5GB RAM; 16GB storage with microSD up to 32GB; 8Mp main camera, dual LED flash; 5Mp front‑facing camera, single LED flash; 802.11 b/g/n Wi‑Fi; Bluetooth 4.0; 4G LTE; Nano‑SIM; GPS; 1950mAh battery; 143.6x72x9mm; 150g

Build: Features:

IMO S While there are many excellent high‑end smartphones on the market, making buying decisions tricky, purchasing a budget handset is also not an easy choice. There are many mid‑to‑low range devices vying for our attention and there are some that stand out in the way that they successfully balance value and performance. Virgin Media has teamed up with a subsidiary of its own parent company, Verve Connect, a young brand called IMO, which stands for ‘in my opinion’. The opinion seems to be that the UK market needs another affordable smartphone.

Price The IMO S is available for free on a contract with Virgin Media, and can be bought outright for £99 from Amazon. At the time of writing, Virgin advertises the IMO S for £8.50 per month, which is slightly misleading. It’s available at this price, but the contract gives you 250 minutes only, unlimited texts and 250MB data. If you want a more realistic plan of 5000 minutes, unlimited texts and 3GB data costs £16.50, which is still good value.

Value:

Design

Performance:

The IMO S has the look and feel you’d expect for an affordable piece of tech; it’s weighty, a few shades of black and grey, and a tad sturdier than you’d expect. It measures 143.6x72x9mm, and while the iPhone 6s is 7.1mm thick, the extra 1.9mm, coupled with the stubby design of the IMO S, makes it feel infinitely less refined, though it does cost £400 less. It’s much more akin to phones in the same price range, such as the Moto E, which is 8.6mm thick. The 5in screen of the IMO S is surrounded by a normal‑sized bezel, with grey edges and a plastic back that snaps on and off the phone to reveal the SIM slot and removable battery. The menu, home and back keys are capacitive buttons under the screen on the lower bezel, with the back key on the right like on Samsung phones, and unlike most Android devices. So far, so normal. We were struck with just how simple the IMO S is; black, 5in screen, plain back, central camera on the rear,

headphone jack on the top, micro USB. If you described the typical modern smartphone to someone who’d never seen one before, this is probably what they would imagine. There’s a front‑facing camera with (surprisingly) a flash, and a rear camera with one too, as you’d hope for on a smartphone in 2016, and it’s good to see on a sub‑£100 handset. In the same way, the right edge houses the power/lock button and the volume rocker, while the bottom edge has the microphone, speaker and Micro‑USB port. Weirdly, the bottom edge has two speaker grills, but only one has a speaker behind it. If you snap the rear casing off, you’ll see one grill is just a dummy. This is odd, and we’re not sure if this means IMO is trying to make it look like the phone has two speakers or if it has just settled for the flaw somewhere in the manufacturing process. Either way, it’s messy and misleading, even if we are nit‑ picking. It’s not that the IMO S is a badly designed phone, but when you play it this safe it’s hard to get excited about it. Granted, phones such as the Moto E is similarly plain, but the brand affiliation

those handsets carry counts for something, leaving the IMO S a purely functional addition to the low end of the smartphone world. The IMO S has a 5in HD IPS display and the company boasts “178‑degree viewing angles”. In fairness to the device, the screen is sharper than we expected from the specification sheet, and when you zoom into text, the pixellation is pleasingly minimal. This equates to a resolution of 1280x720 and coupled with the Android Marshmallow 6.0 operating system, apps display in much the same way they do on high‑end devices. In terms of day‑to‑day use though, the display falls down slightly. On more than one occasion the touchscreen was unresponsive to taps, even though scrolling wasn’t a problem. Selecting different icons reminded us of problems with the old‑style resistive displays of early touchscreen devices that really did require pressure, and there shouldn’t be problems like this on a modern capacitive display. There’s no anti‑smudge coating on the screen either, so it’s incredible how much fingerprints show up on it.

The screen is sharper than we expected from the specification sheet, and when you zoom into text, the pixellation is pleasingly minimal


044_045 IMO S 258.indd 44

26/10/2016 14:27

Reviews

Image taken using the IMO’s main 8Mp camera

Performance The IMO S shows its weaknesses further when you look at its specs. It has just 1.5GB RAM coupled with a low-end MediaTek MT6735P processor. In normal use, for low-end tasks such as texting or web browsing, or using basic apps, including Facebook Messenger, BBC News and Twitter, it is fine. However, wade into video playback or media intensive apps such as Snapchat and the response times slow somewhat. You also won’t be able to fit too many apps on the phone, as it has just 16GB of storage, which equates to 10.59GB available to the user. It has a microSD slot for expandable memory, but only up to an additional 32GB will work. If, however, you’re looking for a budget phone, chances are that excellent performance isn’t at the top of your wish list. The IMO S is fine for everyday tasks, but if you’re after lightning quick speeds you should be considering a smartphone closer to the accepted ‘mid-range’ such as the lower tier Samsung Galaxy A3 and J3.

but then again so do many more expensive smartphones. For the price you’re paying, there can be no real complaints. There’s also a front-facing 5Mp camera for what will be grainy, but acceptable, video calls and selfies, though quality wasn’t great, making it all the more strange that there’s a front-facing flash, something rarely seen on even the most expensive smartphones.

Software The IMO S runs Android Marshmallow 6.0 as near to the stock Android experience. This is a good thing for budget smartphones, as often the best way to attempt to replicate the positive experience of a high-end device is to mirror its software on cheaper hardware. At the moment many Android phones don’t come with Nougat 7.0, so it’s no surprising that the IMO S has version 6.0. It barely changes the stock Android experience, with the notification menu and app tray as they appear on

Google’s Nexus phones. Google apps are well integrated, and there’s full access to the Play Store for apps, games, music and more.

Verdict As far as affordable smartphones go, the IMO S gets it right by running close to stock Android, letting you enjoy a wealth of apps and content for as little as £8.50 per month. In terms of performance, it is perfectly acceptable for the price you pay – just be warned that it is underpowered, and the SIM-free price of £99 is a little steep. If you really want to spend £100 or less on a smartphone, you should consider the Vodafone Smart Prime 7 or Motorola Moto E, as they are better performers and cost around of £80 each. J Henry Burrell

Cameras The cameras on the IMO S won’t set the photography world on fire either. The main camera is 8Mp with dual LED flash. As you can see above, it handles landscapes adequately, with decent detail when not zoomed in, and it’ll serve you well for casual snapping and photo sharing on social media. Close-ups show that the lens tends to struggle slightly with focus, January 2017 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews 45

044_045 IMO S 258.indd 45

27/10/2016 14:33


Reviews

TABLET


amazon.co.uk

Specifications

8in (1280x800, 189ppi) HD IPS touchscreen; Fire OS Bellini; 1.3GHz quad-core processor; 1.5GB RAM; 16/32GB storage (microSD up to 200GB); 2Mp main camera, support for 720p HD recording; VGA frontfacing camera; 802.11n dual-band Wi-Fi; Bluetooth; 4750mAh non-removable battery; 214x128x9.2mm; 314g

Amazon Fire HD 8 Amazon has wisely decided that it should not try and compete with the best high-end tablets, but instead make affordable devices that are windows to all its best online content. The updated Amazon Fire HD 8 tries to perfect a combination of function and value, but whether or not you’ll agree it does depends on whether you are willing to invest in an Amazon Prime membership.

Price Predictably, you can buy the new, updated Fire HD 8 direct from Amazon. It is well priced for the specs, starting at £89 with 16GB of storage, double the previous generation. There’s also a 32GB model that costs £109. These two options display adverts on the lock screen for games, books, films and music from Amazon. If you don’t want ads (we didn’t) they will cheekily charge you £10 extra for the pleasure. Still, we think £99 for a 16GB tablet is a great deal.

Design Build: Features: Value: Performance:

The updated Fire HD 8 has a different design from its predecessor, which had a black bezel and glossy black back panel. The new tablet again has an 8in screen with black surrounding bezels but this time a matte plastic rear casing in four colour options: black, blue, tangerine and magenta. We’d say that the black version is preferable, simply because it doesn’t give away the tablet’s cheapness. Our blue review sample, while not horrendous in appearance, did keep reminding us it only cost ninety quid. Then again, if you like bright colours or you’re buying for a child, the colours are appealing. The unit as a whole measures 214x128x9.2mm, a form you will barely notice in a backpack or handbag. While the plastic back is not premium in any way, the device is surprisingly sturdy. There’s barely any give or flex in the plastic, giving the tablet a reassuring heft. The front has no physical buttons, all of which are reserved for its top edge. It needs only three; a lock/power button on the top right next to the Micro-USB port and microphone, and a volume rocker on the top left next to the headphone jack.

On the rear is a 2Mp camera, while the front is a very low-res VGA lens for video calling and (very grainy) selfies. There is also a welcome microSD card slot on the top-right edge of the Fire HD 8 that supports up to an additional 200GB of storage – excellent to see on such an affordable device. The two speakers, one at the top and one at the bottom edge of the left edge as you hold it portrait give away the preferable landscape orientation that Amazon has in mind. It starts to give away the fact Amazon is expecting you to watch Amazon Prime videos on the Fire HD 8.

Display A device called the Fire HD 8 obviously has an HD screen, with a resolution of 1280x800 and 189ppi. Also promised is HD video playback, which thankfully holds true and looks excellent. We streamed some episodes of Mr Robot using our Amazon Prime account, and the picture was razor sharp – but we had to have the screen brightness pretty much on maximum. You’ll find you’ll need to do so for most use cases on the Fire HD 8, as otherwise the screen looks quite murky. Although video playback is in HD, text and icons display slightly

pixellated. This doesn’t detract from readability, but the Fire reserves its best display capabilities for HD content direct from Amazon Prime. In our use, even streaming videos from YouTube were normally slightly grainy compared to our experience on more high-end tablets. However, this wasn’t too noticeable and as with much of the experience of the HD 8, we were reminded that this costs £90 – but this ends up being a positive reflection rather than a nagging disappointment. At this price point, there is always compromise, and with the Fire HD 8 there is an acceptable level of it. At its heart this is a streaming device. Amazon preloads it with apps for Kindle, Amazon Video, Amazon Appstore, Amazon Games, Amazon Music… you get the idea. While a decent enough web browsing tool, the Fire HD 8 is intended as a portal to Amazon content. An Amazon Prime membership is therefore not just preferable; it’s pretty much essential. Without one, you’re locked into the Amazon ecosystem without the key to unlock anything. The specs of the device reflect that it’s best used for media streaming or low-requirement games. The processor is a 1.3GHz quad-core with 1.5GB RAM –


046_047 Amazon HD 8 258.indd 46

26/10/2016 14:30

Reviews

basically enough for the types of content you have access to. The tablet is generally responsive, but its quickest when dealing with Amazon’s own apps. Stray into apps like Facebook or the Silk browser and things chug a little slower. We used the trial month of Amazon Prime that is promoted when you set up the tablet, and found that it was a breeze to boot up loads of films and TV programmes, sync all of our existing Kindle books and hook it up to our (non-Amazon) email account. The Fire HD 8 is a pure media consumption device. The 2Mp camera will not win you any prizes, and the awful front-facing VGA camera is barely good enough for video calls – it does work, though this is more dependent on a decent Wi-Fi connection than anything else. While it is capable of recording video in 720p HD, the previous generation of Fire HD 8 had a 5Mp camera, which hints at some of the corners cut to keep the new version under £100. We also enjoyed the ability to download Prime content direct to the device. Our review unit had 16GB, which isn’t bad, though the attraction is to stick a microSD card in it. Then you can download a plethora of video, music, books and more to the device for offline playback. Video in particular looks great if you choose to download in 720p HD, but you can also choose from two lower quality picture files to save storage space. The two speaker grills give surprisingly crisp, clear audio, but their position is slightly annoying – either end of either the top or bottom edge when held horizontally. As with most tablets, we’d recommend a decent pair of headphones (none are included) to best watch films or TV. All that capability is packed into a device that weighs 314g, just a sliver over the weight of Apple’s 299g iPad mini 4. Amazon cites 12 hours of battery life with regular use, which we found accurate in extended use. Be aware that it takes the Fire six hours to fully charge. You’ll have to plug it in overnight if you’re nearly out of juice.

Software As the tablet runs Amazon’s own Fire OS, you don’t have access to

the full wealth of content available to users of Apple’s iOS or Google’s Play Store. This isn’t to say that the Amazon Appstore is limited, it just takes us back to the necessity of an Amazon Prime membership should you wish to justify purchasing the Fire HD 8. However, if you really didn’t want to buy into Prime but like the price, apps available to you from the Amazon Appstore such as Facebook, BBC iPlayer and even Sky Go or Netflix mean that you can still use the HD 8 as a basic internet device with third-party streaming services. But given the prominence of Amazon’s services in the interface and the ease at which it allows you to access them with a subscription, we’d still recommend pairing the HD 8 with Prime. It’s worth noting that Google apps are not available from the Appstore. This means it’s hard to recommend the Fire HD 8 as a work or productivity tool (although the Evernote app is available) because you can’t sync existing Google calendars, Google Drive and, importantly for casual users, YouTube. You can still access it through Amazon’s Silk browser, but the browser is a bit clunky and unrefined, and highlights again that the Fire HD 8 is best when simply streaming via Amazon apps. Nor can you download popular apps such as Microsoft Word. However, if you want a tablet that allows easy streaming of your favourite TV shows with the bonus of access to social media, Skype and online banking, the HD 8 is well worth considering. One handy feature is Amazon’s Fire for Kids app. Should you wish to entertain your children with the tablet, you can set up a separate profile for them to use. This lets you set parental controls, limit what content they can access and even set time limits to prevent square eyes. It cleverly time limits games and videos but leaves unlimited time for reading, helping you to encourage the right balance of learning through a tablet they might want to regularly get their hands on.

This and other features, such as a kids camera mode and a Bed Time feature that encourages routine, make the Fire HD 8 a good choice for a parent who wants access to their own Prime subscription with the ability to mould their child’s use of the tablet around different, web-safe preferences. One thing to note is that Amazon cheekily (or maddeningly, depending on your point of view) doesn’t let you give your child access to specific Amazon Prime content without first signing up to Fire for Kids Unlimited. It starts from £1.99 per month, but given you already may spend £79.99 per year on Prime membership, it’s pretty annoying. It does highlight how often Amazon’s adverts and extra payment options encroach unpleasantly on the user experience.

Verdict The Amazon Fire HD 8 ticks a lot of the right boxes. It’s affordable, well built and plays back video to an exceptionally high standard. But we’ll say it again – you need Amazon Prime to fully enjoy it. It’s not that it is a complete necessity, but the prominence in the operating system of Amazon’s own apps and services means without a Prime membership it’s a frustrating user experience. This caveat aside, it’s an incredibly priced media consumption tablet that exemplifies Amazon’s place in the low-end market, which makes it an attractive and interestingly unique option. J Henry Burrell


046_047 Amazon HD 8 258.indd 47

26/10/2016 14:30


Reviews

DIGITAL HOME


amazon.co.uk

Specifications

Wireless: 802.11n dual-band with MIMO, Bluetooth A2DP and AVRCP; 2.5in woofer and 2in tweeter; 235x83.5x83.5mm; 1064g; 1-year warranty

Amazon Echo The Echo was launched in the US in June 2015, and we’ve had to wait an agonising 15 months to get it in the UK. I say agonising because ever since learning about what the Echo can do, I’ve wanted to get one and see if it’s as good as it sounds.

Price There are two versions of the Echo available in the UK. The main one (pictured) costs £149 from Amazon and comes in black or white. There’s also the Echo Dot, which is £49 from Amazon. This also comes in black and white and differs from the Echo only in that it doesn’t have the same high-quality speaker inside it, which also makes it considerably smaller.

Design


The Echo is 235mm tall (around 9in) and has two buttons on top. One mutes the microphone to prevent Alexa hearing you, and the other is an action button that has various uses including stopping timers or alarms and putting the device into Wi-Fi setup mode. Around the top is a light ring that tells you when Alexa is working, the volume level and if there’s an issue with Wi-Fi or internet connectivity. There’s also a volume ring for turning it up or down, but you can do this by asking Alexa to “turn it up” or saying, “Alexa, volume 5”. Inside are two speakers, a 2.5in woofer and a separate tweeter. Sound quality is decent, particularly when Alexa is speaking, but it’s far from the best-sounding speaker for music at higher volumes and there are better speakers at this price. However, if you’re going to use it in the kitchen or a bedroom, the volume and quality are fine. You can also use it as a Bluetooth speaker and play music from your phone.

Setup Install the Alexa app on your iPhone, Android device or Amazon Fire tablet, pop in your Amazon account and password, since it uses this for various things, including keeping a history of what you’ve asked Alexa to do, as well as to make orders by voice and to get an update on those orders. Like most Wi-Fi gadgets, it scans and asks which network to connect

to and after you’ve selected your router and connected, you’re good to go. There’s no voice training: anyone can speak to Alexa. (The Voice Training option previously seen in the US version of the app is absent from the UK version, so if you have a particularly thick accent that Alexa doesn’t understand there’s nothing you can do about it, but everyone that tested the Echo has been understood without any issues.) At this point you can start using Alexa to do things such as setting alarms, timers and even telling jokes, but a little more configuration (such as setting your location in the app) will give you things such as local weather forecasts and news briefings. In fact, you can even customise which news outlets provide your updates. Sky News updates, for example, are pre-recorded headlines such as those you’d hear on the radio. Try and listen to the Guardian app’s headlines though, and Alexa has to read the RSS feed, which doesn’t work nearly as well. Newspaper headlines tend to be nuanced and don’t work well with text-tospeech engines. As good as Alexa is, the lack of human intelligence means the intonation isn’t there, and headlines can often be hard

to understand. Similarly, if you say “Alexa, good morning” you’ll get a greeting and a fact of the day. Sometimes it’s wordy and difficult to understand. Incidentally, if you or someone in your household is called Alexa, you can change the ‘wake word’ in the app to Amazon or Echo. Unfortunately, you can’t change it to any word you like. The basic stuff is great, but where things get really exciting is when you add Skills to Alexa. Skills are in essence apps that you ‘enable’ in the Alexa app. As with app stores you can browse what’s available in different categories, or search for what you’re after. They’re all free, at least those that are available now. As we have a Nest thermostat and a couple of LIFX smart lights, we went for those first and was ecstatic to see they were there and ready to add. Within two minutes, we’d linked my LIFX account and was able to say, “Alexa, turn on the lights in the lounge”. Sure enough, the bulbs lit up immediately. The Echo is the first device that’s able to bring together different types of IoT gadgets from different manufacturers using different standards, and that’s what makes it so great. Apple’s HomeKit is a


048_049 Amazon Echo 258.indd 48

26/10/2016 14:34

Reviews

good idea, but it forces you to buy HomeKit-compatible devices. But manufacturers can easily make their existing products work with Alexa, so we hope that Alexa’s Skills will expand rapidly now that the Echo has launched. If you happen to own kit that works with the Echo then you’ll be far happier than if you’ve bought a thermostat, smart lights or other gadgets which aren’t yet supported. For example, we also have some Chinese smart light bulbs – there’s no support for these. Nor are Sengled bulbs, or the Heat Genius smart thermostat. Generally, if you have the most popular kit, such as Philips Hue bulbs, you’ll find support. More obscure products tend to be missing. There are a few exceptions, of course. Tile is one of the most popular Bluetooth trackers, but the Echo doesn’t work with it. But it does support TrackR, so you can link your account and ask Alexa to find your wallet, keys or whatever you’ve attached the tracker to. There are other Skills, such as National Rail, which can give you train times and whether there are any delays. Once the Skill is enabled, you can set up your usual commute by voice with Alexa and then ask, “Alexa, is my train delayed this morning?” or “Alexa, when is the next train to Charing Cross?” The ability to use natural language means you generally won’t have to learn set phrases to make things work. However, some skills do require this, or at least mention the ‘app’ when making the request. We installed Cat Facts – one of the Skills we found while browsing – and this forces you to say “Alexa, ask Cat Facts to give me a cat fact”. You can’t just say “Alexa, give me a cat fact”. Music is one of Alexa’s specialities. As well as playing tracks you’ve uploaded to your Amazon account, it can also play from Prime Music or Spotify (assuming you have a subscription to such services). If you request a track and it isn’t in your personal library, Alexa will try Prime Music. (Amazon has just announced its new Music Unlimited subscription in the US, which is a standalone service to rival Spotify – it’s coming to the UK later this year.) You can say all the things you’d expect to be able to, such as “Alexa,

Skills shuffle my music”, or “Alexa, play some jazz” as well as asking for particular songs, albums or artists. If you’ve set up playlists, you can also ask Alexa to play those, too. TuneIn is one of the built-in skills, and lets you listen to most popular UK radio stations. All you need to do is ask Alexa to “play Radio 2 in TuneIn”. You can do the same with podcasts, but you always have to add “in TuneIn” otherwise it gets confused and does nothing. There are other apps which have similar functions, so you can enable Radio Player and say “Alexa, launch Radio Player” and then “play LBC” or whichever is your favourite station.

Limitations Alexa is a capable assistant, but it does have limitations. Although you can link your calendar, you can’t hook up your email or a phone for text messages. Therefore, Alexa cannot read out incoming emails or messages. Notifications are pretty much non-existent, too. Alexa can’t even tell you that you’ve got a new email. Hopefully Amazon is working on this, but one reason for the absence could be down to the fact that the Echo doesn’t know whether you’re around or not. Reading out notifications when you’re mowing the lawn or aren’t even at home is pointless, but this could be fixed by allowing Alexa to use your phone’s GPS location and then confirming you’re nearby by saying something like “I have a new notification, do you want to me to read it?” and then waiting for a response. Another slight issue is that Alexa will occasionally respond

when children speak to it. We found it doesn’t generally recognise kids’ voices for whatever reason, but it can be annoying when it does, especially if your kids are attempting to make Alexa play their favourite song. In fact, there are no profiles so Alexa treats all commands equally, no matter who is issuing them. So you can’t restrict her to only responding to you. If a visitor arrives, they can say “Alexa, play Roar by Katy Perry” and it will oblige even if you despise the track. Alexa can’t take multiple commands, so you have to make each request individually. This slows things down, and doesn’t feel natural. It would be nice to be able to say “Alexa, turn the lights on in the lounge, set the heating to 20 degrees and give me my flash briefing” but you have to do each in turn, waiting for the previous request to complete. One other gripe: there’s not yet support in the UK for IFTTT (If this then that). It’s there in the US, but until it arrives this side of the pond you won’t be able to control devices that are IFTTT compatible but don’t yet work with Alexa directly. Plus, of course, you can’t use all your other IFTTT recipes to do things which aren’t hardware based.

Verdict The Echo is one of the most exciting gadgets in years and has huge potential. Being able to control smart home gadgets by asking while you’re doing something else, is not only brilliant fun but is also genuinely useful. J Jim Martin January 2017 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews 49

048_049 Amazon Echo 258.indd 49

26/10/2016 14:34


Reviews

SMARTWATCH

£369 inc VAT

Apple Watch Series 2

Contact n

apple.com/uk

Specifications

38mm, 340x272 AMOLED display; iOS 10; 4GB storage; 273mAh battery; 18-hour battery life; 38.6x33.3mm; 28.2g 42mm, 390x312 AMOLED display; iOS 10; 4GB storage; 273mAh battery; 18-hour battery life; 42.5x36.4mm; 34.2g


It’s been a while coming. The constantly evolving iPhone and iPad line-up has taught us to expect Apple products to be updated on a yearly basis, but the original Apple Watch was on the market for 16 months before its successor was released. And here it is: the Apple Watch Series 2, which attempts the classic second-generation tech product trick of correcting everything that went wrong with the original, retaining everything that went right, and expanding its appeal from early adopters to the elusive mainstream.

Design Depending on the model, colour finish and watch strap you plump for, you may not be able to tell the difference between the Series 2 and the original Apple Watch. There are new colour options and straps, but the exterior chassis design is in essence the same – just slightly thicker (a barely noticeable 11.4mm versus 10.5mm). Most of this extra thickness seems to have gone into the screen, on which more soon. It’s a strong and attractive design, in our opinion, albeit one that divided opinion at launch and continues to do so. Many people prefer the traditional aesthetics of a round watch face (such as the Guess Connect semi-smartwatch), although a rounded-corner rectangle is more practical for text display purposes. The minimalist design includes just two discreet hardware controls: a small rotatable dial that can also be pressed (the Digital Crown), and

the Side Button. These are both on the same side of the device. We found that the Digital Crown got a bit sticky over 16 months of sweaty and often fitness-focused everyday wear – of late we often tap it and accidentally activate Siri, which is supposed to respond to a long-press. It’s too early to say whether the Series 2’s improved waterproofing will make it more resistant to this kind of thing, but we hope so. There are new straps from Hermès, and we were impressed by the looks and design of the new ceramic Apple Watch Edition (shown opposite). This will set you back a cool £1,249 for the 38mm version, but on the plus side you do get what can only be described as a ‘solid block of unicorn horn’ on your wrist. The off-white sport band that comes with it might not feel ‘premium’ enough to reflect the price of the watch, but aesthetically it’s a decent fit for the overall look of the ceramic Apple Watch Edition. Given the different straps and material available for the Apple Watch Series 1 and 2, there’s something for everyone: which is important when you’re talking about something as personal as a watch. It still comes in a 38- or 42mm version, this size referring to the height of the body rather than a diagonal measure of the screen.

Waterproofing Whereas the original Watch was water-resistant to a depth of 1m for 30 minutes, the Apple Watch Series 2 has a water-resistance rating of

50m under ISO standard 22810:2010. In other words, we’ve gone from wearing it in the shower to wearing it swimming, and to celebrate this Apple has added two swimming options to the Workout app. This improved water resistance is achieved by the use of stronger glue and more gaskets, along with a clever new feature that ‘spits’ water out of the speaker cavity after the watch makes it back to dry land. A new Water Lock mode stops the touchscreen being activated underwater. It’s accessed by pressing the ‘drop’ icon in Control Centre, but will be turned on automatically when you start one of those swimming routines in Workout. After you get out of the water, you’ll need to rotate the Digital Crown. This turns off Water Lock and plays a noise from the speakers in such a way that the vibration ejects liquid from the speaker cavity.

GPS Fitness tracking was a huge aspect of the first-generation Apple Watch’s appeal, but it was stymied in this to a certain extent by its lack of GPS: this meant that runs could be tracked only by approximation. Well, that gap has now been filled and the Series 2 has built-in GPS, so it can be considered a genuine standalone fitness tracker. This means you can go for a run or cycle ride and extract accurate data from your workouts. We’ve observed noticeably improved accuracy when tracking runs with the Series 2. Doing


050_051 Apple Watch Series 2 258.indd 50

26/10/2016 17:21

Reviews

circuits round a track that Google Maps reckons is a kilometre in circumference, the Series 2 gave successive reports of 940-, 960- and 960m – and these were done at deliberately inconsistent speeds, a trick which always used to stump the first-generation watch and its stride estimation. The route to and from the track, which the map puts at about 1.5km, was reported as 1.54km on the way there and 1.53km on the way back, again recorded at different speeds. It’s certainly consistent. For comparison with the first-generation, GPS-free Apple Watch, we went out again the next night and did three more laps. This time the Series 2 was even more consistent – 960-, 960- and 960m – while the original Watch, which had received a respectable amount of stride-learning training, reported 880-, 900- and 910m – consistent in its own right, but clearly tending to under-report the distance. If you didn’t train the first-generation with an iPhone it would be far less accurate than that; if you spent more time training it, you could probably improve things a little, but not by much. Having GPS has a secondary benefit, and this is the ability to track runs on a map. If you open an Apple Watch 2-tracked workout from within the Activity app, you’ll see a little map thumbnail at the bottom; tap this and you’ll be shown a fullscreen map of the route you took. Also on the fitness front, the Apple Watch comes with a good range of preinstalled apps: Activity, which tracks calories burned, exercise minutes and hours in which you’ve stood up for at least a minute; Workout, which tailors fitness tracking to a range of specific sporting activities; the self-explanatory Heart Rate; and Breathe, which helps with mindfulness and may assist with relaxation although your mileage may vary.

Display The Apple Watch Series 2 has an AMOLED display that is twice as bright as the screen on the original watch, according to Apple – and sure enough, it’s a lot easier to make out what’s on the screen in sunny conditions. In fact, subjectively the screen

feels sharper, although the screen resolution is actually unchanged. Be warned that in direct sunlight, you may still find yourself struggling to clearly see what’s on the display – this is the nature of the technology. Every model of the Series 2 is protected by sapphire glass, which is stronger than the Ion-X glass used on 2015’s Apple Watch Sport model (the other models of the first-generation Apple Watch had sapphire glass). All Series 2 watches have a sapphire glass, making it a more durable option in the long run.

Performance The processors in the Apple Watch Series 1 and Series 2 have been upgraded to the S1P and S2 CPUs respectively. Both are dual-core and offer 50 percent faster speeds over the S1 (the single-core processor found in the 2015 Apple Watch). The GPU that handles the visual display on the Apple Watch has also received a boost: it’s twice as fast as its predecessor. This healthy boost in speed is a pleasing addition, but we feel watchOS 3 greatly contributes to the user experience being noticeably quicker: our first-generation Watch, updated to feature watchOS 3, has also got speedier. It’s available on all Apple watches as a free upgrade, but comes out of the box in the Series 1 and 2 models.

Battery life While the specifications quoted opposite peg them at the same ‘up to 18 hours’ figure for battery life, our tests show that the Series 2 has a better battery life than the original Apple Watch. We started with a short-term comparison test. We took a Series 2 and a first-generation Watch off their chargers at noon; eight hours later, using both devices for the same tasks throughout the afternoon and early evening, the Series 2 was on 86 percent and the first-generation on 69 percent. That’s a big gap to have opened up so quickly, although bear in mind this is after the latter going through 16 months of battery wear, so a comparison between box-fresh samples would be closer. The Series 2 can manage two days of use between charges comfortably, something that we struggled to achieve with the

original Watch even when it was brand new. If you missed a night’s charging with the first-generation (perhaps you were staying away overnight and forgot to pack the charger), you had to grit your teeth, power down for the night and use the watch as little as possible and it would generally give up the ghost late on the second day, preferably after you’d closed your Activity rings and kept the streak going. In a new test, we charged the Series 2 overnight and took it off the charger at 7am as usual. At the end of the second day – with no particular care taken to nurse the battery – the Series 2 was on 22 percent. The third morning, at 7am, it was on 14 percent, and it finally ran out of charge just after 1pm on the third day. That’s unprecedented in our experience with Apple wearables, and is a good effort by the standards of any fully fledged smartwatch with a colour screen. Is the S2 a more power-efficient chip than the S1? Maybe – and remember it has a brighter screen to power, too. Impressive stuff.

Verdict If you’re into fitness tracking with a sprinkling of notifications and superb integration with the iPhone, this is a near-perfect option. The Apple Watch Series 2 is a great wearable, and the only one we’ve seen that feels like it has any chance at all of taking wearables into the mainstream. J David Price


050_051 Apple Watch Series 2 258.indd 51

26/10/2016 17:21


Reviews

WIRELESS ROUTER


synology.com

Specifications

802.11a/b/g/n/ac 1900ac router; dual-band 3x3 MIMO; Dual-core 1GHz; 256MB DDR3 RAM; 3x external antennas; 4x Gigabit Ethernet; 1x USB 3.0, 1x SD card; 206x160x66mm; 510g

Synology RT1900ac For technology enthusiasts, the name Synology is synonymous with Network Attached Storage. The company has offered a string of well regarded NAS drives for many years. What it’s not known for, however, is routers, but with the RT1900ac it’s clearly looking to change that. One of the strengths of Synology’s NAS drives has always been its software, so that’s one area we hope is carried over into this new arena. As its name suggests, the Synology router offers a maximum theoretical throughput of 1900Mb/s – 1300Mb/s at 802.11ac 5GHz, and up to 600Mb/s at 802.11n 2GHz. Of course, real-world speeds are much lower than this, but for an AC1900 router the Synology is one of the less expensive in its class. But is it a performance bargain?

Price


You can buy the RT1900ac for £129. It’s by no means the cheapest 802.11ac router – try the TP-Link Archer C7 for under £80 – but the RT1900ac isn’t your average router, as we’ll see. Just remember that it doesn’t have a built-in modem, so it won’t connect directly to a phone line for ADSL broadband.

Design Taking the Synology out of the box, the first thing we noticed is that it’s small, which is a pleasant change. So many routers these days are excessively large and will be conspicuous in many homes, but Synology’s RT1900ac is pleasingly compact. At the rear there are the standard four Ethernet connections and a single WAN socket for hooking up to your modem – this doesn’t have one built in, so you’ll need to supply your own. The router supplied by your ISP will normally do. On the right of the Synology there’s a single USB 3.0 port and an SD card slot providing on-board storage for media playback over the network. On the other side there’s a button for enabling WPS, so you can connect to devices such as Wi-Fi enabled printers without having to mess around with passwords and there’s also a switch for turning Wi-Fi on or off, without having to delve into the interface.

There are three small antennas at the rear – a modest number these days, reflecting its specification as a 3x3 MIMO dual-band router. In standard mode, it offers up to one single SSID to the user and automatically assigns a device to a band, but you can separate them out if you wish, which is what we did for testing.

Interface Setting up on the Synology proved straightforward, and when you log in you’re rewarded with an interface called the Synology Router Manager (SRM). In essence this is a mini-OS for your router contained within a browser. It’s clean, simple looking but powerful, with many features. It’s also very easy to use. The status page on the router displays graphs that let you see your upload and download activity and from here you can perform the regular functions you’d expect, such as port forwarding and setting up your SSIDs. These can be separated out into 2.4- and 5GHz, which we did for testing, or combined into one

SSD with the router automatically assigning devices to the most suitable frequency depending on their capabilities. There are parental controls built in that let you set a safe search level providing filtering of web content. You can also set network access times on a per device basis, so you can apply these filters to your children’s devices without it affecting yours. You can also easily ban devices from the network. From the same interface you can enable ‘Beamforming’, an 802.11ac feature that will direct Wi-Fi signals directly from the router to where a device is located, enhancing signal strength and performance, but only to compatible devices over 5GHz. We also appreciated small touches such as being able to turn off the LEDs should you not wish to be distracted by the many (too many) lights on the front. The real power of the SRM is that it enables you to download apps or ‘packages’ – in essence small programs that run directly on the router. These include a

You can also set network access times on a per device basis, so you can apply these filters to your children’s devices without it affecting yours


052_053 Synology RT1900ac 258.indd 52

26/10/2016 14:49

Reviews

Download Station, so you can download P2P files directly to the device and a DLNA compatible Media Server package, so you can store content on USB or SD card and play it over the network without even having to attach an external hard disk or NAS drive. A USB drive connected to the router will appear as a ‘Synologyrouter’ network share in Windows and you can even set privileges for access to files and folders over the network. It all works very well. Other packages available enable you to turn your router into a DNS server, a VPN server or use it to access files remotely using Cloud station. We were impressed by the Synology’s SRM software and it all ran smoothly thanks to the ARM cortex A9 processor that powers the router. We would expect functionality to be further enhanced over time, and during our testing there were two firmware updates made available.

Package centre

Performance Initially, we were disappointed by the performance results from the Synology, but fortunately after a firmware update things seemed to sort themselves out and we achieved much better results. We tested with the network tool Jperf to drive as much traffic as we could through the network using 10 streams at once with a 512Kb buffer. Our first test was from a laptop acting as the server to a desktop PC equipped with a 4x4 MIMO radio in the form of the Asus PCE-AC88. With this set up at 5GHz we saw a maximum average of 680Mb/s, faster than the TP-Link Archer VR2600 and second only to the very expensive, and large, Linksys EA9500, which hit 729Mb/s. At 2.4GHz, the performance was less impressive at just 124Mb/s. With the PC switched to the be server and moving around with a laptop as the client we tested both with the integrated 2x2 Wi-Fi and a D-Link DWA-192 3x3 MIMO USB adaptor, in order to maximise performance. With the latter at 5GHz achieved 534MB/s, compared to 317Mb/s from the integrated chip. This is less, however, than we’ve seen from other routers to the 2x2 integrated chip. Surprisingly, when we moved upstairs we saw an improved

Notification centre performance – 259Mb/s at 2.4GHz and 408MHz at 5GHz. However, when we tested with the D-Link the performance dropped to unexpectedly poor levels. This was indicative of slightly inconsistent performance we saw from the Synology over our testing time. Most of the time it was very fast, but on occasion it would slow up unexpectedly – and we did find that the 5GHz network would drop out occasionally, so we’d have to manually switch to 2.4GHz to get back online. These were, however, untypical and most of the time the Synology proved a speedy network tool. Running LAN Speed Test, we saw a decent 161Mb/s to a USB 3.0 drive connected to the router.

performance and occasional 5GHz dropouts. That aside, performance is very good, which is impressive considering its compact size. It doesn’t feature cutting-edge technology such as MU-MIMO, but that’s still a work in progress and there are still very few phones and other Wi-Fi devices that can take advantage of it. Its reasonable price also works in its favour. But if you want to share files across the network, and even access them remotely, without forking out on a NAS, then the Synology RT1900ac will do the job. J Benny Har-Even

Verdict The Synology RT1900ac is a very good router marred slightly by occasionally inconsistent January 2017 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews 53

052_053 Synology RT1900ac 258.indd 53

26/10/2016 14:49


Reviews

ACTION CAMERA

£229 inc VAT

Yi 4K Action Camera

Contact n

gearbest.com

Specifications

2.9in (640x260) LCD touchscreen; compatible with iOS and Android devices; records 4K/30fps (60Mb/s), 1080p/120fps, 720p/240fps video and 12Mp photos using a 155-degree wide-angle lens with F2.8 aperture; built-in speaker; 360-degree omni-directional dual microphones; microSD cards up to 128GB; SDXC card; rechargeable 1400mAh lithium-ion battery, shoots up to 120 minutes on a single charge; 65x21x42m; 95g


If you are after an action camera but don’t want a GoPro, then the Yi 4K Action Camera is a good alternative with a nice design, touchscreen and plenty of features.

Design The Yi 4K is a small action cam that certainly doesn’t look or feel cheap. Our review model came in ‘Night Black’, but it’s also available in Pearl White and Rose Gold. We’ve seen numerous Chinese products over the years that have been baffling to use. That’s not the case here though, as the instruction manual is helpful and intuitive to use with the software menus. We found these easy to navigate thanks to the 2.19in (640x360) touchscreen, which is covered by Gorilla Glass for extra protection. There’s just one button on the top of the camera, which you’ll use to take photos or start/stop video recording. On the bottom is a standard tripod mount and is where you’ll access the battery. It’s slightly annoying that the battery must be removed to access the microSD card slot, but this is a minor quibble. It’s worth noting that you don’t get any accessories in the box, just the camera, which is a shame. It’s also not waterproof, so you’ll need to purchase a case.

comes to the accompanying app things fall down a bit. For example, we had issues simply setting it up with a smartphone, and the app is unnecessarily complicated to use. One of the reasons you may want an action camera is so that you can get a fisheye view and the Yi 4K provides exactly this. If, however, you don’t want any distortion, you can straighten your image digitally. The wide‑angle lens has a 155‑degree view and the camera offers a fixed aperture of f/2.8. The headline shooting mode is 4K (3840x2160), which is limited to 30fps but can record continuously for longer than any other at a whopping 120 minutes – you’ll need a reasonably large memory card to facilitate this and a fully charged battery (1400mAh). Of course, you don’t have to shoot in 4K and there are good reasons not to, including the amount of storage space it takes up. The Yi 4K can also shoot in 2.5K, 1440p, 1080p, all the way down to 480p at 240fps. The highest resolution that supports 60fps is 1920x1440. Aside from all the different resolutions and framerates,

you can choose shooting modes including timer, burst, time lapse and slow motion. You can also take still images as low as 5Mp, although most will use 12Mp (4000x3000). We’re pleased with the test footage from the camera which exhibits excellent levels of detail, even without using the higher resolutions on offer and still images are nice and sharp. However, there are few things missing that may be a deal‑breaker for some. It can’t, for example, shoot in 24fps, which provides a cinematic feel and the field of view is fixed, so you can’t swap between wide, medium and narrow as you can with a GoPro.

Verdict The Yi 4K Action Camera is an accomplished device with a good design, handy touchscreen and provides excellent quality photos and video. However, it doesn’t come with any accessories in the box and is missing features such as 24fps and different field of view modes. J Chris Martin

Performance As we mentioned earlier, the touchscreen means it’s quick and easy to switch between the different shooting modes and adjust settings such as the resolution – this uses a 12Mp Sony IMX377 Image Sensor. Although the Yi camera is easy to operate, it’s not completely user‑friendly. It has Bluetooth and dual‑band Wi‑Fi, but when it

For video clips, go to tinyurl.com/zLjgy97


054_055 Yi 4K/Devolo 258.indd 54

26/10/2016 17:28

Reviews

WIRELESS REPEATER


devolo.co.uk

Specifications

Wi-Fi: 802.11ac/n/g/b dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz; Claimed speed: up to 1200Mb/s; 1x gigabit Ethernet port; 91x59x38mm


Devolo WiFi ac Repeater Routers are getting better and better when it comes to Wi-Fi coverage and speed, but it’s unlikely you’re going to want to shell out hundreds of pounds on a super router like the Linksys EA9500 if you can buy a Wi-Fi repeater for £50 or less. And that’s the aim of the Devolo WiFi ac Repeater.

How it works Here’s the thing about Wi-Fi repeaters, or at least those currently on sale: only one Wi-Fi device can ‘talk’ at one time. It might seem that your router is able to stream YouTube or Netflix to several devices in your home at the same time, but in reality, it’s sending data to each device in turn, and until both router and devices support MU-MIMO, that’s the way it will remain. Wi-Fi repeaters are also limited in this respect. Because they have to receive the signal from your router, then retransmit it on the same frequency, they start with – at best – a 50 percent loss of speed. Powerline network adaptors don’t have this limitation because they use your home’s mains wiring to take the signal from your router’s wired network ports to another room. Powerline kits that also include Wi-Fi create a new Wi-Fi network at that point: they’re not retransmitting a Wi-Fi signal from your router.

Setup Like most of its rivals, the Devolo is very easy to set up. In theory, at least. You plug it in somewhere close to your router and press the WPS button on both devices. On the Devolo, this means holding the button for three- to nine seconds. They automatically pair and you can then turn off the repeater and plug it in further away – ideally half way between the router and the room in which you need a better Wi-Fi signal. The problem comes if your router doesn’t support WPS, or you can’t get the WPS setup to work, as we couldn’t. Pressing the WPS button for one- to two seconds allows it to connect to a phone or tablet, although that didn’t work for us either, and we found it impossible to get to the setup page even after connecting to the repeater’s

own Wi-Fi network on an iPhone running iOS 10. In the end, we resorted to connecting to the repeater using a laptop and could at last browse to http://devolo.wifi (don’t forget the http://) to get to the configuration screen. Here you can choose between repeater and access point mode, although the latter creates its own new network and it’s hard to see why you would want this, having bought a Wi-Fi repeater to increase Wi-Fi coverage. If your router is dual band and has both 2.4- and 5GHz networks, you can choose to repeat one or both of them. You can also opt to repeat with the same network name, or choose a different one. You’ll need the manual to understand the flashing lights, but once set up, the five LEDs show signal strength. Confusingly, you’re aiming to have only three lit up as this is the ‘optimal’ position ;for the repeater.

Performance We set the repeater to rebroadcast the signal from a BT Smart Hub, positioning it around 10m away from

the router in a different room at the back of the house. We then carried out testing a further 20m away to see how the repeater fared. The Smart Hub is a particularly good router, so it wasn’t too surprising that it outperformed the Devolo repeater, even though it was 10m closer. Without the repeater, we saw speeds of 16.8Mb/s over 2.4GHz and 59.4Mb/s in the long-range test position. When we turned on and connected to the repeater, we saw a speed of 14.6Mb/s over 2.4GHz, but our laptop was unable to even see the 5GHz network. Understandably, that was very disappointing.

Verdict By their nature, Wi-Fi repeaters are hobbled on performance. However, they can give you a usable Wi-Fi signal where you previously had none. Should you buy the Devolo WiFi ac Repeater though? It’s hard to justify the £49 price when other repeaters will do a similar job for around half this price. So in short, unless you can find it a lot cheaper, go with something like the TP-Link TL-WA860RE, which can be found for less than £20. J Jim Martin


054_055 Yi 4K/Devolo 258.indd 55

26/10/2016 17:28


Reviews

POWER BANK

£49 inc VAT

Griffin Survivor

Contact n

griffintechnology.com

Specifications

10,500mAh power bank; 5V/2A (10W) Micro-USB input; 5V/2.1A (10.5W) USB output; IP66 water- and dust protection; four-LED power indicator; built-in LED torch; passthrough charging, auto-on/-off; 93x75x25mm; 238g; lifetime guarantee


Griffin’s Survivor portable charger is more expensive than many of its similarly specified competitors, but it’s a tough little power bank and we like it. Our review unit has a 10,500mAh capacity, and should offer at least 7000mAh to your connected devices. We’d expect the Survivor to offer most iPhones around four full charges, and Android phones between two and three full charges. However, with a 10.5W (2.1A) USB output, it’s fast and has enough capacity that you could conceivably connect a tablet instead. Charging is automatic, and you simply plug in your device to begin. Once it’s complete, the Survivor will automatically disconnect from your phone or tablet, which prevents power being wasted. If this doesn’t happen automatically for you, then there’s also a power button on the side, a double-press of which lights the built-in LED torch. This can also be used to activate the power gauge, which uses four LEDs to show you how much power remains in the bank. It’s all pretty straightforward in any case: you just plug in and charge.

The Survivor also has a fast 10W (2A) Micro-USB input for recharging the power bank, and it will allow you to charge both it and a connected device at once (known as passthrough charging). That’s incredibly handy when you want to charge both your phone and power bank on a daily basis, and have only one USB plug. But none of that is what makes the Griffin Survivor special. After all, we’ve seen power banks that support the fastest Quick Charge 3.0 on both their input and output, power banks with additional USB outputs, USB-C outputs – and inputs – and Lightning outputs. The Survivor is fast, but it’s by no means the fastest available and

it’s not going to be a good buy if you have multiple gadgets to charge. What we like most about the Griffin Survivor is its design. This is a compact power bank, rounded on the edges, which fits snugly in the hand at just 93x75x25mm and 238g. Encased in a black grippy rubber coating, it not only feels comfortable to hold but is rugged and tough, and feels as though it’s going to last. And last it will, since Griffin covers it with an extraordinary lifetime warranty. Tested to Military Standard 810G, the Survivor can withstand drops up to 2m and, thanks to a rubber flap that covers its ports when not in use, it is also protected from the elements, such as rain and snow. The Griffin has an IP66 rating, which means you cannot submerge it in water (we’re not sure why you’d want to take a power bank swimming), but it should be just fine in a downpour.

Verdict It might be on the expensive side for a power bank of this capacity, but the Griffin Survivor has a rugged charm. It’s reasonably fast and rainproof, plus there are some nice extras, such as passthrough charging, auto-on/-off and a lifetime guarantee. If it’s not all about value for money, then this may be the power bank for you. J Marie Brewis


056_057 Griffin/Omni 258.indd 56

26/10/2016 17:58

Reviews

POWER BANK

£160 inc VAT

Omnicharge

Contact n

omnicharge.co

Specifications

13,600mAh/49Wh power bank; 120V, 60Hz AC/150V DC or 220V AC/300V DC US/EU two-pin socket type; DC 4.5- to 36V, 1- to 34W universal charging port; 65W max AC output power; 2x 2.4A USB ports, max 4.2A (now updated so a single port can output 4.8A with max total output across two ports also 4.8A); charges in two hours; OLED display; passthrough charging; 135x85x23.5mm; 365g; available in black or white; 1-year limited warranty


The Omnicharge power bank is an Indiegogo project expected to ship in November. We were lucky enough to get our hands on an early press sample, and this is easily one of the best power banks we’ve ever tested.

Price If you pledge support on Indiegogo (tinyurl.com/joct5a8) you’ll save on the product’s RRP when it properly goes on sale, but even so it’s still rather expensive at $159 (RRP $249), plus shipping for the larger Pro model; and $129 (RRP $199), plus shipping for the Standard model we have here. Converted to Sterling, that’s £127.84 for the Pro (RRP £200.20) and £103.72 for the Standard (RRP £160), plus shipping.

Performance:

Performance The Standard model is a 13,600mAh power bank with a maximum 65W output, while the Pro version offers 20,400mAh of power and a 100W output. For the money you’ll pay you could get five or six similar-capacity power banks, but there are several reasons to choose the Omnicharge. The first thing to note is that the Omnicharge has a very high energy efficiency rating of 90 percent, which means you’ll get more full charges out of this power bank than you would any other 13,600mAh power bank. Roughly 12,240mAh will be available to your devices. The Omnicharge removes a lot of the hassle of working out how much power you have left, with an OLED screen that displays a wealth of information. There are no basic LED indicators here. The display reveals to which output you are connected (AC/DC or USB, and you can use the physical buttons to the side to turn on or off either output), plus

how much power is flowing to and from the device – the Omnicharge supports passthrough charging, allowing you to charge both it and connected devices at once. Whereas many power banks profess to use clever technology that works out exactly how much power your device requires and to then deliver the optimal amount, here you can actually see that in action, with the number of Watts output reducing as the battery becomes increasingly full to avoid damage. There’s not only a battery icon that shows you at a glance how much power remains but also a percentage indicator and a Wh countdown. Another countdown timer reveals how much longer the Omnicharge can continue at the current rate, and there’s a temperature gauge (plus built-in safeguards), so you needn’t worry about the power bank overheating. Once the battery has depleted, rather than using a Micro-USB or USB-C connector to refill the device, the Omnicharge has a proper DC input. When connected to the mains with the supplied adaptor, the entire battery can be refilled in just a couple of hours. We also received a DC-to-USB adaptor in the box that lets you fill it up using a standard USB charger. Omnicharge says that this power bank supports universal charging from any source, whether that be an AC adaptor, a solar panel, a laptop charger or even a car’s cigarette lighter socket. That’s also the case with the AC/DC output on the device itself. This is the first power bank we’ve tested to include such a feature, but more examples are increasingly

coming on to the market. It’s a fantastic feature to have, and in essence means you can power practically anything using this power bank. The need to add on an adaptor really spoils the design, though. It’s otherwise a well built power bank, with angular edges and a grippy surface that prevents it slipping from your hands. The Omnicharge is reasonably large for its capacity, but there’s a lot of clever tech inside. And it won’t add too much weight when thrown in a bag. At the front end sits the aforementioned display, with a power button to one side and buttons for turning on or off the USB and AC/DC outlets on the other. The Omnicharge doesn’t support auto-on, so you’ll need to press the power button to begin charging, and unplug your device once its battery is full. On the longer edges you’ll find a DC input and AC/DC outlet on one side, and two USB outputs on the other. These are fast-charging USB ports, and on our sample are rated at 2.4A (12W) each with a maximum combined output of 4.2A (21W), which means both cannot offer the full 2.4A at once. However, it appears that this has now been updated so that a single port can offer up to 4.8A, but when using two at once they will not offer more than 4.8A combined. Should you opt for the Pro model you’ll get one Quick Charge 3.0 USB output and another rated at 3A (15W).

Verdict Charge it from anything and charge anything with it, the Omnicharge is one of the best power banks we’ve ever seen. J Marie Brewis


056_057 Griffin/Omni 258.indd 57

26/10/2016 17:57


Reviews

3-AXIS GIMBAL SYSTEM


dji.com

Specifications

Supports phones between 58- and 85mm wide; iOS and Android app; Bluetooth 4.0; up to 4.5 hours battery life; £38 for replacement battery cost; gimbal 300g, handle 201g

DJI Osmo Mobile Smartphone cameras get better each year and the very best are capable of capturing excellent photos and videos. Some even have optical stabilisation, which gives much less jerky video when panning or walking. But none compares to mounting your phone in a three-axis gimbal such as the DJI Osmo Mobile. Just like the gimbals on its drones (such as the Mavic Pro), the Osmo’s gimbal is able to rotate in three axes and keep your phone pointing in exactly the same direction even while you walk around. It also eliminates shaky hands and – once you’ve got the hang of using it – can produce cinematic shots that people won’t believe were taken on a phone.

Design


The Osmo Mobile works with iPhones and Android phones that are between 58- and 85mm wide. To give that context, the iPhone 6 Plus (and the iPhone 7 Plus) are 80mm wide, so most phones with screens up to 5.7in should fit fine. The limitation to iOS and Android devices is simply because it requires you to use the DJI GO app, which is only available on those platforms. And the need to use the app is down to the fact that this is what you’ll use to record video and photos. Plus, without the app, you can’t use the Osmo’s buttons to start and stop video recording, take a photo or use the trigger to keep the gimbal in a certain orientation (it has other functions, too). Without a phone, the Mobile weighs 501g. It can feel a little heavy for long sessions, but there are various accessories available such as a base for table use (£7) and an extension pole (£43). You’re not limited to using the Osmo upright either. You can hold it horizontally like a torch, or even upside down for a low point of view. It talks to your phone via Bluetooth and can be charged from a USB port, so can be charged on

the move from a USB power bank. The battery lasts up to 4.5 hours and you can buy spares for £38. Build quality is excellent and there’s some adjustment if your phone doesn’t balance well in the mount. A large dial on the rear allows you to quickly clamp and unclamp your phone, and rubber inserts keep it tightly in place. We found we could use an iPhone in its case, though depending on your handset and exact case, you might have to remove it to use the Osmo. Although the handle is in essence the same as the more expensive versions of the Osmo – it even has the same mounting point where a phone would normally be attached as a viewfinder – the Zenmuse M1 gimbal is not removable. One of the benefits of the pricier Osmo models is that you can remove the gimbal (and camera) and upgrade it in the future. In theory you shouldn’t need to do

Holding down the trigger to keep the gimbal in place is great for tracking shots and with practice really makes it look like your phone was on a dolly

this with the Mobile version as you can use your new phone in it when you upgrade. It doesn’t have Wi-Fi either – just Bluetooth.

Performance The DJI GO app will be familiar to anyone who owns one of DJI’s drones, but the interface is much simpler when you connect an Osmo, because it’s really just a camera app. You can dive into the settings to calibrate the gimbal and minutely adjust gimbal roll to ensure the horizon is level, and you can choose how the joystick works, reversing the direction if the default of up-totilt-upwards isn’t intuitive for you. You can also limit the gimbal to moving in only certain directions. Using the app you can also shoot time-lapse video and panorama. With the former, the gimbal will smoothly (and very slowly) move between two points, so it’s best to mount it rather than holding it, and the latter automatically rotates the phone and takes nine photos and stitches them together for a wide, high-resolution image. It’s possible to use your smartphone in portrait mode and take photos (this works well with


058_059 DJI Osmo 258.indd 58

26/10/2016 14:24

Reviews

the panorama feature), and a triple-press of the trigger button puts it into selfie mode, where the rear of the phone faces you – this is because the rear camera tends to take higher-quality images. You can also use the stabilisation to take long-exposure photos, although we didn’t get a chance to try that in our short time with the Mobile. When we used it with an iPhone 7 at a wedding, it produced wonderfully smooth footage. We certainly didn’t see any problems due to Apple’s handset having optical stabilisation of its own. Plus, footage was considerably more stable and cinematic than when simply holding the phone in our hands and trying to be

as smooth as possible. In our experience, optical stabilisation is no substitute for a proper gimbal. Of course, there are other tricks that make the Osmo worth the price (and the hassle of using it compared to just whipping your phone out of your pocket and shooting). One of these is ActiveTrack, a feature Phantom 4 owners will be familiar with. You draw a rectangle around someone (or just their face) and the Osmo will follow them and attempt to keep them centred in the frame. This works well, until you move (or they move) too fast. It’s great if you’re filming someone making a speech, but less so when you’re trying to film children running around.

Another ‘trick’ is to hold down the trigger to keep the gimbal in place. This is great for tracking shots and with practice really makes it look like your phone was on a dolly.

Verdict The Osmo Mobile is perfect if you use your phone to make home videos and want them to look more professional or for vloggers that want to do the same. It performs well and isn’t ridiculously expensive, although if you already have a phone with good optical stabilisation you may not see a massive improvement in some shots. Of course, it’s important to remember that video quality is only as good as your phone’s camera. J Jim Martin


058_059 DJI Osmo 258.indd 59

26/10/2016 14:24


Reviews

SOFTWARE

From £49 inc VAT

Bitdefender Total Security 2017

Contact n

bitdefender.co.uk

Requirements

Windows 7 SP1 (Windows 10 recommended); 1.6GHz CPU (Intel CORE 2 Duo recommended); 1GB of RAM (2GB recommended); 1.5GB free disk space (2GB recommended)

Bitdefender Total Security 2017 is a comprehensive security package for Windows, macOS and Android, all managed from a central web portal. Its core technology regularly scores top marks in independent tests, and it now offers features that will protect users from new and emerging threats.

Price Total Security is the flagship product in the Bitdefender range, and offers five-device protection for £59 (£69 for 10 devices). Unlike comparable suites from other vendors this includes Android and Mac OS cover. If you don’t need such comprehensive coverage, there’s also Bitdefender Advanced Protection for three devices (£49). This offers most of Total Security’s features except anti-theft protection, and is only available on Windows. There’s also Basic Protection for £39 (three devices), which also lacks the file shredder and parental controls. This all compares very favourably to other products. Avast Internet Security weighs in at £139 per year for 10 Windows PCs (Android or Mac OS protection sold separately). Kaspersky Total Security 2017 is currently £63 per year for 10 PCs (again, Windows only).

Features So, what do you get for your money? First, installation is fast and simple. The whole process, including

a signature update and system scan, took around 20 minutes on a five-year-old dual-core laptop currently coming to terms with Windows 10. On Android, you simply install the app from Google Play and sign into your Bitdefender account to activate its defences. For a product with so many features, the interface on both Windows and Android is clean and sleek. The categories you’ll use most (Protection, Privacy and Tools) are all well organised. Clicking a category displays its individual modules and tools. Most users can leave the default AutoPilot protection mode engaged. Website, file and application protection are all enabled, as is the firewall. This mode also ensures that you’re not bothered by intrusive security alerts. These defaults should take care of most things, but to make best use of all the facilities offered, perusing the online manual is highly recommended. For example, deep down in the settings you can choose from one of several pre-scanned security profiles, designed to beef up protection or stop Bitdefender bothering you depending on what you’re doing. Modes include gaming, movies, and public Wi-Fi. You can even have Bitdefender decide which mode to use by detecting your current activities. Credential and credit card management is amply catered for by

creating an encrypted wallet, which can be automatically shared among your other devices. Alternatively, each device can have its own. Each wallet has a master password, which is asked for when you log in. Once entered, form filling and logins are handled automatically. For extra safety while performing financial transactions, there’s also the Safepay browser, which is offered whenever Bitdefender detects you’re on a banking site. This is for when you need a secure connection over which to send sensitive data, and a secure browser running in a safe, isolated environment from which to send it. The software contains many other useful features. The vulnerability scanner, for example, identifies missing Windows updates, weak passwords, and problems with Wi-Fi security. The latter is always a worry, and the scanner can bring peace of mind. Bitdefender’s web protection module places green ticks next to links in search results to indicate that they’re safe. Usefully, these also appear next to links on Facebook to show they’re safe to click. There’s also the ability to set up a secure file vault, containing all the stuff you don’t want anyone to see. The Bitdefender Android app offers all the usual features you’d find in similar products, such as a malware scanner, privacy advisor, anti-theft features and


060_061 Bitdefender Total Security 258.indd 60

26/10/2016 14:42

Reviews

web browsing security. The privacy advisor will warn you if it thinks an app is putting you at risk with its permissions, and gives you the ability to uninstall it. The Android app contains some useful extra touches. You can automatically capture a snapshot of a thief failing to open your phone with the wrong PIN, for example. You can also nominate a second phone from which to send a wipe command to your device. Also included is the ability to assign a PIN to any app as an extra layer of protection and privacy. Bitdefender even suggests which apps should have this measure applied.

Bitdefender Central Activity Dashboard

Performance Overseeing everything is the Bitdefender Central Activity Dashboard. This is a web portal with a clean layout that you can access from anywhere. It gives a simple view of all your devices, alerts, and subscriptions. You can also locate devices, send alerts to locate lost or stolen ones, and lock or wipe them. Alerts can make the device play a loud Klaxon as well as displaying a message. If you enable parental controls on a device, the Dashboard also lets you track your child’s online activity, visited places, interests and social behaviour. It’s not all plain sailing, however. Running the OneClick Optimizer to speed up a Windows system deleted browser cookies along the way, which had the effect of logging out of all websites. Not really what we wanted. Ransomware is the biggest threat facing online life today. Bitdefender has a dedicated ransomware module, though this is inactive by default. Once enabled, the ransomware module automatically protects files in your Documents and Pictures folders, and any other files and folders you care to add. Attempting to edit a protected file results in a pop-up asking if it’s okay for the application to do so. Agreeing adds the application to a whitelist. All other software (including ransomware) believes the protected files and folders to be read only. On Windows, Bitdefender installs a bootable rescue partition so you can scan your computer without Windows (and any malware) running. In testing, however, it couldn’t contact its update server via Wi-Fi

Security profiles prior to a scan, and needed a wired connection. That’s one black mark. The other is that once underway the scanner estimates the time remaining, which would be great if it didn’t dance around the twominute mark for hours. Bitdefender is very proud of the claim that it doesn’t slow the system, and this is true, especially on Android. There’s nothing worse than missing a call because an overzealous antivirus product insisted on laboriously testing the phone app before allowing it to run. Opening a new app for the first time might take a couple of seconds longer than usual, however. Like all antivirus products, there are options for on-demand scanning, and you can also scan individual files and folders by right clicking them. The overall scanning speed is good. We scanned 50GB of data contained within about 31,000 files. This took just over 33 minutes. A second scan to test the product’s

file fingerprinting abilities took just nine minutes. An inbuilt shredder overwrites files with random characters before deleting them, thereby rendering recovery utilities useless. You can drag-and-drop files into the shredder, or right click a file and select it. The shredder is very slow for bulk data, though, taking over three hours to shred the same 50GB of data used in the scan speed test. These criticisms are quibbles more than anything. They do little to detract from an otherwise impressive product. The 10-device, multi-platform licence is generous for the price. You will, however, need to delve into the online manual to get the most from some features.

Verdict Bitdefender has a fine technical reputation. The new release for 2017 delivers the usual top drawer protection and carries plenty of useful features. J Jon Thompson January 2017 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews 61

060_061 Bitdefender Total Security 258.indd 61

26/10/2016 14:42


Reviews

GAME

£40 inc VAT

Battlefield 1

Contact n

battlefield.com/en-gb

Requirements

Windows 7 or later; PlayStation 4; Xbox One

Battlefield 1 takes us back to ‘the war to end all wars’ and the brutality that came with it. There are no drones, high-powered weapons or even that many vehicles in 1918, meaning you have to get up-close and personal with your enemies. The inclusion of bayonets on the end of weapons should tell you all you need to know about just how close range and brutal the fighting was.

Single-player campaign The tales of heroism in Battlefield 1 are told via a series of ‘War Stories’ rather than one long campaign, offering a more focused experience, especially in terms of narrative, when compared to older Battlefield games. These are based on a non-linear format, and can be played in any order without ruining the overall storyline. This is partly due to the fact that each story is a separate campaign and the protagonists aren’t connected in any way apart from the fact that they are all fighting in the same war. Every War Story has a distinct narrative, and presents you with different perspectives and motivations. Take the exploits of the largely unlikable pilot Clyde Blackburn, for example. His character represents the stories that get confused in the chaos of war, and leaves you to interpret his adventure yourself. Was he a reckless thief and gambler or was he trying his best to save his

fellow man and survive the brutality of the first world war? His is one of six stories and is a world away from the post-war account of Luca Vincenzo Cocchiola, an armoured Italian soldier tasked with protecting his twin brother while pushing back approaching enemy forces. Amidst all the action is a sprinkling of heartfelt emotion, and it’s the emotional connection that you build with these characters that makes War Stories such an impressive and integral part of the Battlefield 1 experience. They also introduce you to the first generation of tanks and fighter planes, which were considered advanced warfare at the time. One story – Through the Mud and Blood – takes you through the early days of tank warfare, painting a picture of sheer destruction with a hint of panic whenever the notoriously unreliable machines would break down mid-battle. It’s also where one of the game’s most emotional and hard-hitting scenes takes place with a carrier pigeon, though we won’t spoil that experience for you. Beyond the phenomenal storylines and characters that the War Stories offer, it’s a fantastic training mode for Battlefield 1’s multiplayer mode. Each one has an emphasis on a different skill, whether it’s flying a plane, driving tanks, stealth or surviving an all-out assault, all with helpful hints and tricks that can be carried over to

the online multiplayer. Trying to fly on multiplayer before playing ‘Friends in High Places’ was terrible, but the mission’s tips meant that we could take to the sky and have half a chance of inflicting some kind of damage on the enemy team.

Multiplayer Many fans of the series felt that 2015’s Battlefield Hardline was too similar to Call of Duty, with a lack of decent large-scale maps and relatively tame gameplay, but Battlefield 1 takes the series back to what it does best: open-space combat, this time with First World War weapons, vehicles and terrain, which present their own perks and challenges. Operations is the centrepiece of the multiplayer experience, offering players the ability to join in a large-scale operation with up to 64 players. One team defends while the other tries to take over the various points of interest, and while these games can go on for up to an hour at a time, the ever-changing environment helps keep the experience fresh. A match can span across five different areas in the same region and is akin to playing five separate small games, but with one story and a unified effort from all players involved. The losing team will also get access to airships, attack trains or dreadnoughts as a last ditch attempt to help turn the tide of events, too.


062_063 Battlefield 1 258.indd 62

26/10/2016 14:45

Reviews

Along with Operations you’ll find Battlefield classics Conquest, Domination, Rush and Team Deathmatch, which are largely the same as in previous games. Beyond the thrill of amassing the highest kill count and the best kill/death ratio, there’s a hidden charm in adapting your gameplay to the battle as it progresses. Team players must constantly analyse the needs of their squad, and figure out how best to contribute. Should you be a medic that backs up your support and assault teams or should you snipe from a distance? Should you jump in a plane and wipe out an advancing charge from the air? It’s the variety of options you have that makes Battlefield 1’s online experience so enjoyable and varied. There’s another new addition to the multiplayer roster, too – War Pigeon. While this has the characteristics of a novelty game mode, it’s similar to Capture the Flag. The idea is to capture a pigeon, write your message and release it without it being shot, with a successful release producing an artillery strike on the opposing team. The challenge comes in finding somewhere safe to write the note, which can take a minute or two, depending on whether you’re interrupted at any point. It’s a tense time as your location is made available to all on the map, and you can feel the chaos ensuing around you as you huddle, bleeding, in a corner as your wounded comrades defend you at all costs. Of course, the game mode is only as good as the map it’s based in and Battlefield 1’s maps are smart and frankly gorgeous in unique ways. Take the Argonne Forest, for example: the light mist, detailed textures and layout of the map give it a certain charm, with many calling it one of the best‑looking Battlefield multiplayer maps ever. Peronne is another favourite of ours, depicting a small French town in ruins, with a windmill in the centre, surrounded by unkempt fields – it’s actually tranquil before the death and destruction begins. It’s not just the look of the maps that makes them phenomenal, as the destructive nature of the game can reshape the look of the battlefield in moments. Take the airship, for example – if one is successfully shot down, it’ll

destroy anything beneath it. We’re not talking about people here but entire buildings – even the French palace in Ballroom Blitz can be rendered completely unrecognisable, littered with mangled metal beams, rubble and fire. It’s not exclusive to the airship either, as tanks, grenades and RPGs can all bring down buildings and create craters in the environment – ideal for pushing up on a heavily fortified position. It’s due to this functionality that we have one of our favourite memories of Battlefield 1: we were playing online, running between buildings when we spotted an enemy tank. Of course, we couldn’t take it out with standard ammunition, so we ran into the closest building for cover and to select a more appropriate weapon. “They can’t hit us in here” we thought – oh, how wrong we were. As we watched the entire building collapse on itself with us inside (killing us in the process), we couldn’t help but be impressed by the level of detail. Destructive environments offer new and exciting ways to play, and help to keep both you and your enemies on your toes. While in previous Battlefield games you’d be able to personalise just about every aspect of your gun, Battlefield 1 has limited weapon customisation. You can still get skins via Battlepacks for a different look, but nothing enhances the weapon you have. This is also true for sights, as most weapons will only offer the bog‑standard iron sights that were available during the First World War – snipers obviously excluded. This means that shooting from a distance

can be a challenge, especially when playing with evenly‑skilled players online, and forces you to think tactically about getting closer to the enemy without being spotted. One area where Battlefield 1 blows the competition out of the water is in the graphics and sound effects department. While the game would have been good with average graphics, the combination of a strong story, high quality textures (especially on PC) and intelligent sound effects make it one of the most beautiful and enjoyable games we’ve ever played. From the light mist of Argonne Forest to the dark, decaying wastelands of No Man’s Land, the high production values emphasise the sights and sounds that you experience. From the distinct clatter of empty bullet shells hitting the floor around you, to the rumble of an approaching tank, it’s the small details that make the game so immersive to play.

Verdict With Battlefield 1, EA and DICE have proven that sometimes it’s best to take it back to basics. The game puts an emphasis on the individuals and not the war itself, showing that those who fought – on both sides – were just like us. The interjection of statistics and other facts throughout the game are educational, and help players grasp just how devastating it was. A phenomenal single‑player mode, fantastically enjoyable multiplayer and mechanics that’ll keep you on your toes for some time makes Battlefield 1 one of our favourite games, possibly ever. J Lewis Painter


062_063 Battlefield 1 258.indd 63

26/10/2016 14:45

GROUP TEST

Four Of THE Best If you’ve got around £550 to spend on a laptop, Jim Martin and Andrew Williams have four of the best Windows machines you can buy right now

here are so many mid-range laptops that it can be hard to know where to start looking. Do you go for a 2-in-1 that’s basically a tablet with a keyboard, or do you get a ‘proper’ laptop? If you fall into the latter camp, there are some great deals at the moment, and we’ve cherry-picked four of the very best this month. We recommend them all: there’s no dud here that’s not worth your time. But we understand that your budget might be different, so if you see a slightly different model, here’s what to look for before you buy it, and how to choose the right laptop for your needs.

T

Screen Starting with the screen, you firstly need to decide on a size. Most laptops will be 12- to 15in, which will be a happy medium for most, but you can also go smaller or larger if you want something even more portable or if it rarely needs to move at 11- or 17in. Remember that the size of the


064_075 Best Value Laptops GT 258.indd 64

screen will have an impact on elements such as the weight of the laptop and other areas, including the keyboard and even how many ports can be fitted. It’s typical to find a budget laptop with an unexciting resolution of 1366x768, but if you can find higher you’ll be much better off (all four here have full-HD screens). A matt finish is preferable to glossy which reflects lights all too easily, and even yourself when you’re trying to work or watch a film.

Processor As you know, the processor is the beating heart of the computer and which chip sits at the core of a laptop is going to have a large impact on how smoothly it runs. You might well find many with an Intel Celeron or similar and these are to be avoided unless your workload is going to be very light. Think email, word processing and web browsing. You’re better off looking for either an AMD A-series or Intel Core i3 processor if you can – and some of the laptops at

this price even offer a Core i5. The most powerful and efficient chips are currently Intel ‘Skylake’ which are the sixth-generation Core processors. We recommend that you go for the best you can find within your budget, especially if you’re aiming to do demanding tasks such as editing video. Don’t worry too much about clock speed, although higher is better for getting things done quickly. Often manufacturers and retailers will advertise the Turbo speed rather than the regular. We run various benchmarks on every laptop, so make sure you read the full review to get the results and what they mean for daily usage. The processor will also have an impact on battery life, something else that we test, and you can find results and analysis in the individual reviews.

Storage and memory Don’t get confused between storage and memory. The latter is simply space to store programs and files, while the latter is

TEST CENTRE

27/10/2016 09:57

O

GROUP TEST

Photography by Dominik Tomaszewski

temporarily storing information while you’re doing things. In both cases it’s better to have as much as possible. A lot of cheaper laptops will come with a decent 1TB of traditional storage via a hard drive but come with only 4GB or even 2GB of RAM (memory). At around £550 you are likely to find an SSD (solid-state drive) and 8GB of RAM.

Other specifications When buying a laptop make sure it’s got exactly what you need (as well as the best specs possible as outlined here). Depending on what you need it for, you might want an optical drive for playing or burning CDs/DVDs. Also make sure it’s got the right ports such as HDMI, Ethernet and USB – don’t just assume it has them all. Ethernet seems to becoming rarer on smaller laptops now. Try and get the best wireless tech, too, with the latest being 11ac. Better Wi-Fi (assuming your home router is relatively up to date) will help for streaming content such

TEST CENTRE


as music and video over the internet. If you want to watch or listen, also make sure the speakers are decent unless you’re happy to use headphones.

Software All current laptops now come with Windows 10 Home. If you’re tempted by a cheap Chromebook, remember that they are designed for online use.

I can’t find this laptop At the time of writing every one of the laptops listed here is available to buy in the UK. However, the laptop market is extremely volatile, and retailers tend to have limited stock of any particular model, so there’s a

chance it can go out of stock or end of life between the point that we write the review and you hold the magazine in your hands. We were, however, told by each manufacturer that the laptops here will be available to buy for a good while yet. Also remember that laptop makers will make many slight variations/models of the same laptop, with subtly different product codes. These are called SKUs and although the laptop looks the same, the specs are different so one might have a better processor or hard drive. We can’t choose what model we’re sent so when you’re browsing retailers, it might vary. If you want the exact model we tested, we’ve quoted the part number on the table on page 74.

Starting with the screen, you firstly need to decide on a size. Most laptops will be 12- to 15in, which will be a happy medium for most, but you can also go smaller or larger if you want January 2017 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews 65

27/10/2016 09:58

Group test: Best value laptops

ACER S 13 S5-371

£599 inc VAT • acer.co.uk The Acer S 13 is an ultrabook for normal people. By this we mean those who still get a shock when they see the price of a MacBook Air. Like the Asus ZenBook UX310UA this is a more affordable alternative. Aside from some cheaper components and a quirky trackpad, there are no elements that make it less of an option than a more expensive alternative.

Price In the UK, two main versions of the Acer S 13 are available. Our review unit will set you back £599, though you can get it for less if you search online. It has a Core i3 processor and a 128GB SSD. If you are willing to pay more, it’s worth considering the £699 Core i5 version, which comes with a 256GB solid-state drive.

Design The Acer S 13 does its best not to look like a copy of a MacBook or one of the other popular ultrabook lines. It has an embossed ‘ridged’ plastic lid, offset by a silvery hinge that gives it a two-tone style. Its underside is plastic too, and the use of plastic rather than aluminium or glass is one way that Acer has kept down the price. The laptop does have some parts that feel much more like a pricier machine, though. Its keyboard surround, for example, is aluminium, with a brushed finish that’s cut around its edges to reveal the shiny aluminium underneath. It’s lovely. During testing we found that it felt like an ultra-premium machine and it was only when we stopped working that we were reminded that it’s a mid-range laptop. The keyboard has the rigidity that other laptops at this price lack. It’s far stiffer than the Asus ZenBook UX310UA’s, for example. While we tapped away, we felt no compromises had been made when it comes to build quality.



Build Features Value Performance Overall The main reason to want a laptop like this is that it’s so slim and light. It weighs 1.3kg (1326g according to our scales) and is only 15mm thick, the perfect size to use for work trips or if you want a laptop you can carry around all day, every day.

Connectivity It has decent connectivity, too. Acer has done its best to please just about everyone, packing in a wide array of inputs in a slim laptop. The ones occasionally left out of slimmer systems, but found here, are the full-size HDMI socket and SD card slot. These are important if you want this to be your main computer, particularly if you’re a keen photographer. Other connectors include two USB 3.0 ports and a single USB-C 3.1 port. This is the latest laptop socket, gradually being used in more and more smartphones aside from iPhones, which use Apple’s own Lightning connector.

Keyboard and trackpad As we’ve already touched upon, part of the reason the S 13 feels like a high-end laptop is down to the rigid aluminium keyboard surround. The keyboard itself is very nice, too. Its key depth is a little shallow, but the action is satisfying, with just the right mix of crispness and resistance. Its layout is similar to that of a MacBook, particularly in the shape and size of its Control and Function keys. There’s also a blue keyboard backlight, one with two intensity settings to make the light less distracting. The trackpad takes a bit of getting used to, though. It suffers from a common Windows laptop problem in that its button layout feels less intuitive than that of a MacBook’s. Like almost all style laptops, the buttons are built into the pad. The right-mouse button zone takes up half the width and about a third of the pad’s height,

TEST CENTRE

27/10/2016 09:58


and it’s easy to accidentally press it. You can turn off the right button though, giving the Acer S 13 a MacBook-like pad where you press down two fingers to operate the right button. Using this mode you can leapfrog over the button’s problems, and the pad otherwise feels great. Its friction is perfect thanks to what feels like a frosted glass surface, and the click mechanism is solid: not too deep, not too hard to press.

Display The Acer S 13’s screen is another strong point. It’s a 13.3in IPS LCD panel with a matt finish, the kind that’s well-suited to use outdoors or in offices where strip lighting might cause lots of screen reflections in a glossy display. Acer calls it ComfyView. Its resolution is 1920x1080 pixels and looks sharp. Asus offers an even sharper display with its ZenBook UX310UA, which looks great even when you look pretty close to the display. This is a solid all-round performer though, with good colour coverage at the price. It hits 85.7 percent of sRGB, although it has a noticeable blue/green emphasis that you might find less pleasing than a neutral or slightly warm tone. Windows 10 lets you tweak this with its built-in calibration tools, though. The rival ZenBook UX310UA is better for colour and resolution, but the S 13 is the clear winner for contrast and black level, with 1005:1 contrast. You won’t notice the benefit too much in a well-lit room, but in a dim or dark room movies will look punchier here than on the Asus, whose 409:1 contrast leaves blacks looking a bit grey. With a maximum brightness of 345cd/m2, the Acer S 13 also has enough backlight power to handle bright sunlight. A glossy display looks fancier, but this screen is almost unbeatable for pure practicality, and solid image quality.

Performance As we touched upon at the start of this review there are two different versions of the S 13: one with an Intel Core i3 CPU and another with a Core i5. Acer sent us the lower-end model, which uses a Core i3-6100U processor. It has two cores, clocked at 2.3GHz. The main difference between this and the i5-6200U edition is that the Core i3 doesn’t have a turbo boost. This increases the clock speed when more power is needed. Of course, as the Acer S 13 won’t need to use this a lot of the time, and day-to-day performance feels great here even with what sounds like a low-end CPU. In the Geekbench 4 test, it recorded 5535, which is lower than the score of a Core i5-6200U machine, but not dramatically so. Similarly, the PCMark 8 score is 2040: just a bit lower than a rival Core i5. This doesn’t hugely affect gaming performance in most titles as the Core i3 uses an Intel HD 520-variant graphics chipset like most of the other Skylake CPUs. With an integrated chipset like this, it will almost always be the performance bottleneck. Like any laptop with integrated graphics this is not a great gaming machine, but it will handle some older titles. Thief at 720p, low graphics settings runs at 20.4fps, for example. That’s just about playable if your standards aren’t too high, although the framerate drops to a dismal 5.1fps when you increase the resolution to 1080p and turn the visuals up. While gamers will still want a discrete graphics card, you’ll be able to play older console-grade games well enough. Skyrim, for example, runs fine at Low settings (at 1080p), as do Dragon Age: Origins and Dead Space. Stick to older games and you can have a lot of fun. If you want to use the Acer to edit video, for example, then you’ll benefit from the punchier Core i5 Acer S 13. However, its main benefit for a lot of people will be its chunkier solid-sate drive. The version we’re reviewing has a 128GB SSD, which is very easy to fill as soon as you install a few games or data-hungry apps. A 256GB

TEST CENTRE


SSD comes with the Core i5 version, which we find a much better amount of storage for an everyday machine. Unlike some Core i-series laptops, the S 13 is silent a lot of the time too, as the fan only kicks in when needed. It isn’t loud, but it is a little high-pitch, making its tone a bit more obvious in quiet rooms. Heat handling is good and the Acer stays cool with normal use, and the underside warmth caused by gaming dissipates pretty quickly given the light touch cooling system, which seems to rely on passive-cooling heatsinks for the most part.

Audio Over the past year we’ve seen most manufacturers have a crack at making their laptop speakers louder and more powerful. The S 13’s main improvement is volume. Its two drivers, which sit to each side of the laptop’s bottom, can be turned right up, and the preinstalled Dolby Audio app offers a few different modes that tweak the tone and help dramatically increase the perception of ‘loudness’. At maximum volume some audio can cause distortion and the tone at times takes on a hard edge, but you can combat this by making your own Dolby Audio custom setting if it starts to offend your ears. There are bassier, more refined-sounding laptop speakers out there, but we’re largely happy with the Acer’s units. It’s comparable with that of more expensive machines.

Battery life We are impressed by how well the S 13 lasted away from mains power. It has a 4030mAh battery locked into the frame that lasts for almost exactly 10 hours of 720p video playback at 120cd/m2 screen brightness. That’s with the display at around 40 percent power. We’ve used the laptop out and about as our usual work machine a few times and it sailed through a day’s light work, particularly as the matt screen let us keep the brightness very low in most conditions. Acer’s own claims for the laptop vary between 11- and 13 hours. While you’ll only get those sorts of figures with very limited use at very low screen brightness, we can’t imagine too many complaining when its performance is so solid.

Verdict Windows is back with a bang this year. Laptops like the S 13 offer a low-cost alternative to Apple’s machines, with comparable stamina and portability at a little over half the price. Typical of Acer, the look is a little quirky, and we imagine some may prefer the all-aluminium style of the Asus ZenBook range. However, the S 13 combines good keyboard quality, excellent battery life, a good screen and Intel’s Core i-series processors, and that quartet is hard to beat. This is one of the best mid-price ultra-portable laptops around.


27/10/2016 09:58


ASUS ZENBOOK UX310UA

£549 inc VAT • asus.com/uk The Asus ZenBook UX310UA is what happens when a practical everyday laptop and an expensive all-aluminium Ultrabook fall in love. It gets you the pricey look and feel of a portable, stylish machine with the features of a workhorse and a price way below that of a rival MacBook. The model on review here is the cheaper version, with an Intel Core i3 CPU, 1920x1080 screen and 4GB RAM. If you want a Core i5, a 3200x1800 display, 128GB SSD, a 500GB hard drive and 8GB of RAM, then there’s another model for £699.

Design The UX310UA is a return to the roots of the ZenBook range. This is a ‘regular’ laptop, without a touchscreen or a 360-degree hinge. It’s also slightly chunkier than some of our favourite mid-price ZenBooks, because it has space for a hard drive as well as an solidstate drive. There is just an SSD in this particular model: you’ll need to use a Torx screwdriver to remove the bottom panel and install a hard drive. This will void the warranty, but once the 12-month cover is up, you can crack it open and add some storage. It’s not thick or heavy at 19mm and 1.45kg, but simply a little less sharp and wedge-like than the ZenBook UX305. It’s light enough to carry around with you all day, every day. The UX310UA is a looker too, and has an all-aluminium frame that’s a more affordable Windows 10 take on what Apple has made with its slimmer MacBooks. Plus, like other 13in ZenBooks, the lid has a brushed concentric circles design on the lid. There are plain silver and light gold shades to choose between. Both look great. There’s one problem with the build. Apply some firm pressure to the keyboard surround and it flexes a little. It’s more noticeable than in early ZenBooks and is disappointing to see in an otherwise lovely design. But it is much less obvious than in the UX360CA and does not ruin typing or cause any trackpad problems.



Build Features Value Performance Overall

Connectivity In many respects, the Asus is more up to date than a MacBook Air. Unlike previous ZenBooks, the UX310UA has a USB-C 3.1 port. This is the new breed of USB, using a reversible plug rather than one that has to be plugged-in the right way. It’s also a USB 3.1 socket, meaning it’s ready to take on the fast peripherals that we’ll start to see more of in the next 24 months. Right now USB-C is a future-proofing addition, but it’ll become more important over time. There are plenty of the old standards packed in, including a full-size HDMI port, an SD card slot and three regular USBs. One of just a few minor down sides is that only one of the full-size USBs is version 3.0. The other two are the slower USB 2.0. This makes no difference if you’re attaching a keyboard or mouse, but if you use an external SSD drive, you’ll have to make sure you use the USB 3.0 socket on the left side. Note that there’s no Ethernet port.

Display Unlike its more expensive sibling, the FC075T model has ‘only’ a 1920x1080-pixel 13.3in screen. Yet, this matt panel is one of the highlights, because in most respects it outperforms a lot of the similarly priced competition. Asus isn’t specific on the technology, but viewing angles are as good as those found on an IPS display. For a £549 laptop, its sharpness and colour saturation are fantastic. You’ll notice this as soon as Windows 10 boots up: colours

The UX310UA’s all-aluminium frame is a more affordable Windows 10 take on what Apple has made with its slimmer MacBooks TEST CENTRE

27/10/2016 09:59


look deep and rich without appearing overcooked. The Asus Splendid application also lets you tweak the colour temperature, increasing colour pop further or applying a blue light filter to avoid eyestrain if you’re going to read It’s not as bright as the 3200x100 model, hitting only 308cd/m2 on our colorimeter, but it’s bright enough for most environments save for outdoors on the sunniest of sunny days. But then again, few laptops are bright enough for comfortable outdoor use. There are a few small niggles, though. First, this isn’t a pure flat screen, which you tend to see in very fancy laptops or those with touchscreens. What we mean by this is that the display border is raised, but it does knock off a few style points. The lid doesn’t tilt back that far, either. On a desk this doesn’t matter, but if you’re going to want to use this in a confined space it on your knees, the display angle will be slightly severe.

The ZenBook’s screen only needs to be set to around 35 percent brightness to be comfortable to use in a well-lit room These are minor issues, though. The one you should consider is display contrast, which isn’t all that hot. Our colorimeter measured it at 409:1, where some laptops can achieve over 1000:1.

Keyboard and trackpad The UX310UA’s keys have a ‘scissor’ mechanism, which is designed to make them feel a little less wobbly. This is a solid keyboard, with slightly deeper action than most in this category. We like it a lot, despite the visible keyboard flexing that happens is you are a heavy typer. There’s also a backlight, one of the main features missing from the earlier UX-series ZenBooks. Its trackpad is more familiar. It’s large, topped with glass, and has buttons integrated into the pad that take a rough 50/50 split of the very bottom part. If keyboard flex and the use of just one USB 3.0 socket were the first black marks against the UX310UA’s day-to-day experience, the trackpad is perhaps the third. During testing, it occasionally registered taps when we were just trying to move the cursor. Despite using a glass surface, the trackpad isn’t as smooth as we’d like. This is likely because the surface isn’t treated to the same level of glass-frosting as you get in some more expensive machines. We are being tough on the UX310UA here, though. The pad is still large, comfortable, and has a button-click that doesn’t require too much pressure and isn’t loud enough to annoy anyone nearby trying to watch TV. It’s just one of the few parts that doesn’t thoroughly outclass much of the competition.

3D rendering or video encoding. Such a computer is going to be thicker and heavier, and won’t last long away from the mains, though. In Geekbench 4, it scored 5329 for the multi-core test and 2828 for single-core. (The Core i5 version scored 5886 and 3175 respectively.) In PCMark 8, it managed 2315. This ZenBook is not well-suited to demanding games. Even at 720p resolution with low graphics settings applied, our tests wouldn’t run at anything approaching 30fps. Older titles may run okay, but don’t buy this with a view to gaming on it. Like most Intel Core-equipped laptops, the UX310UA has fans rather than relying entirely on passive cooling. It’s noticeable in quiet rooms, but the volume doesn’t ramp up too high when you start challenging the CPU.

Battery life One of the pleasant surprises is that despite the fact it uses a Core i3 rather than a Core M, its battery life is still very solid. Playing back a 720p video on loop at 120cd/m2 brightness, it lasted around eight hours. That provides enough scope to use the UX310UA for a full day’s light work away from the adaptor. The screen is a real benefit here, as it only needs to be set to around 35 percent brightness to be comfortable to use in a well-lit room. This laptop is a fantastic all-rounder for someone looking for a laptop prepared for a whole bunch of different uses. However, for the sake of balance we’re going to end on one slight off-key note: the speakers. It has a pair of Harman Kardon units that fire out from the underside. They are fine, but lack the volume and beefiness of Apple’s MacBook speakers, for example. You can’t have it all, but this latest ZenBook gets pretty close.

Verdict The Asus ZenBook UX310UA is an excellent portable all-rounder. It has the design spark of a laptop worth showing off, matched with an amazing breadth of features and smart pragmatism that sees it pack in more, higher-quality tech than its rivals. This is as close to a perfect £549 laptop as we’ve seen this year. Sure, there are parts that could be improved. There’s some flexing of the shell under pressure, the trackpad surface isn’t as silky smooth as some and the speakers are just so-so. However, stack these up next to the list of strengths and the UX310UA is easy to recommend.

Performance Our review unit has an Intel Core i3-6100U CPU, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB solid-state drive. Running Windows 10 off an SSD makes the UX310UA feel very fast day-today, but the dual-core processor isn’t as powerful as some laptops at this price. It can handle most basic tasks, but bear in mind this isn’t a laptop for serious

TEST CENTRE



27/10/2016 09:59


LENOVO YOGA 11 710

£549 inc VAT • lenovo.com/uk The Lenovo Yoga 11 710 has been designed with a specific purpose. It wants to offer the best, most convenient ultraportable laptop experience you can get without spending a scary amount of money. It has a 360-degree hinge and a touchscreen, making it more useful while you’re out of the office.

Design This is a laptop that’s as small as you’d want to use for real work, rather than the household admin you might do on a Sunday morning. It is, of course, worth mentioning at this point that Lenovo offers a 14in version of the 710 that costs £100 more. It has an Intel Core i5-6200U processor, 8GB of RAM and a full HD screen, but is in every other respect a bigger version of the 11in model on review here. There are, however, great benefits to using the 11in Lenovo, particularly if you spend a lot of time dashing between airports, cafes or meetings with a laptop in your bag. It weighs just 1.06kg, and is slim enough to fit in just about anywhere you’d have space for an iPad in a carry case. The allure of the Yoga 11 710 is that it has this level of portability, and a high-end design, without a price anywhere near £1,000. Like other Yoga models, it has a hinge that flips all the way around, turning it into a thick, heavy tablet. It doesn’t compare too well with an iPad or dedicated Android tablet, but this setup can be useful when a normal tablet isn’t. It’ll let you prop the tablet up in bed, let you read an article easily while you cook, and will keep the screen upright on a tiny table. You’d need a folio case to get the same effect with a normal tablet, and it may well feel a lot flimsier. Each design of hybrid has a distinct appeal and the Lenovo’s 360-degree hinge style leaves you with a device that still feels like a laptop. Others struggle with weight balance because their brains, and at least part of their battery, need to fit in the screen.

Connectivity The Yoga 710 is part of the new band of laptops with limited physical connections, but we’re glad to see it hasn’t ditched traditional



Build Features Value Performance Overall USBs altogether in favour of USB-C ports like some new models. There’s one USB 3.0 socket on the right edge, next to a Micro-HDMI connector. Aside from the headphone jack on the other edge, that’s your lot. Using a single USB in an ultraportable like this is an understandable, if unfortunate, decision, but the lack of a memory card slot is disappointing. It makes the machine harder to get on with for anyone who works with a camera, for example. You could carry around a USB card reader, of course, but that dilutes the convenience of this otherwise extremely nifty little laptop. To a large extent, the Micro-HDMI makes up for the lack of a Thunderbolt port, however, with an increasing number of similarly priced laptops embracing USB-C, the Yoga 11 710 will soon look dated.

Keyboard and trackpad A more pressing worry with a laptop as small as this is whether it’s comfortable to type on, and for the most part, it is. You get a keyboard that feels like the best Lenovo’s IdeaPad laptops have to offer. While keys are predictably shallow, there’s a nice bit of resistance to them, along with well-defined feedback when the keypress actually clicks in. This review was written using the keyboard, and after getting used to the minor quirks in its layout, typing was just as fast and accurate as with our workaday 13.3in laptop. Lenovo has kept the main keys full-size, including the ‘arrow’ buttons, which often suffer from space-saving cuts. Only the left-most row of keys appears significantly trimmed, but we found the positioning and shape of the most important one, the left Shift, just fine. The lingering issue with a smaller laptop like this is that your palms don’t have all that much space to rest because the surround is reduced. This is a legitimate concern because it can mean you position your wrists more awkwardly, leading to that classic cramped feel. Lenovo would not claim the Yoga 11 710 has been designed for use eight hours a day as you’re tethered to a desk, though. It’s more about those times when its small frame is going to be more a benefit than an annoyance.

TEST CENTRE

27/10/2016 09:59


To match the good keyboard, the trackpad feels like that of a top‑end laptop, with a smooth, non‑tacky surface bordered by bevelling in the aluminium surround. It’s a good look. This is a serviceable pad with a nice, meaty click feel that doesn’t need too forceful a press, as some Windows laptops do. We do have some small issues, though. Its click is a little noisy, and while its size is about as large as you could expect for the price, you may find it too small if you play games or try to edit photos on the laptop. For day‑to‑day Windows navigation and browsing it’s fine, though. The button arrangement also requires some getting used to. Like almost every ultraportable pad, the buttons are integrated into the surface, and we found it a little too easy to fire off an unintended right button command. It’s also a little too sensitive in part, causing some unintended clicks (without actually ‘clicking’ the pad) as you scroll across it. This is partly down to the driver, as well as the spacing of the RB sensor, which takes up 50 percent of the pad’s width, and about a quarter of its height. While we’re reasonably happy with the Yoga 11 710’s trackpad, it may not necessarily be a case of love at first tap.

Display Lenovo has, for the most part, come up trumps with the screen, though. It has a few shortcomings, but ultimately uses the right tech for the right results at this price. The Yoga 11 710 uses a 11.6in 1920x1080‑pixel IPS LCD touchscreen with the character of a tablet display. It’s glossy, covered with toughened glass and lacks air gaps in the screen’s construction, so it appears completely black when switched off. That last part may not sound exciting, but it is important, as a glossy screen, it’s prone to reflections, so can’t afford any aspect that might reduce its in‑context contrast. We’ve used the Lenovo Yoga 11 710 outside on a sunny day, and while it’s not as good as a very bright matt‑finish laptop, its clarity is only slightly worse than that of a MacBook Pro. After all, its maximum brightness of 346cd/m2 is bright. The colour performance is, however, mixed. To the eye, it looks good. In daylight, the screen’s contrast appears great and the warm tones are easy on the eye. However, our colorimeter revealed that its actual abilities aren’t that hot. It covers just 61.6 percent of the sRGB colour gamut, and 42.5 percent of Adobe RGB. The Lenovo doesn’t have a technically brilliant screen, but thanks to its use of up‑to‑date screen construction and good calibration (its average DeltaE is 0.14), the impression it leaves is a good one.

Performance The Yoga 11 710 uses the Intel Core M M3‑6Y30 CPU. This is a high‑efficiency ‘premium’ processor, though not one designed to take on gruelling tasks. It’s clocked at 900MHz and has a turbo boost of 1.5GHz. This is a dual‑core CPU with four threads. The same chip is used in the entry‑level version of the 12in MacBook, although Apple clocks its base frequency at 1.1GHz. It’s not a weakling and it certainly isn’t a cheap option. In day‑to‑day use, it will feel about as fast as a Core i‑series chip. However, it’s not designed for prolonged, heavy‑duty activity. If you’re going to be doing more intensive tasks, you’d be better off with the Intel Core i‑series 900, though it can run Photoshop. It scored 1998 in PCMark 8 and 4712 (2416 single) in Geekbench 3. As you’d expect, these are lower than an Intel Core i5 or i7 machine, but are respectable. Its gaming is very poor even compared with the integrated graphics chipset of a latest‑generation Intel Core i5, though. The Lenovo Yoga 11 710 can’t handle games such as 2013’s Thief, at all. Even after dropping the visuals to minimum level and the resolution to 720p, it managed a dismal 8.3fps,

TEST CENTRE


dropping to a slideshow‑like 2.6fps with the resolution and visuals upped. Even the less demanding Alien: Isolation is totally unplayable, too. At 720p, low settings, it ran at an average 12.8fps, dropping to 6.9fps at 1080p, high settings. If you want to play some games, then you’ll need to stick to very old, or very undemanding titles. As the Yoga 11 710 is passively cooled (no fans) and has no spinning platter hard drive, it’s totally silent in use. With light duties, only the very back of the laptop’s underside gets a little warm. The 128GB of storage is provided by an SSD, but it’s not the bizarrely fast kind you’ll find in some ultra‑expensive laptops. It can write at 157MB/s and read at 538MB/s. The fastest models are almost three times as fast, but it still comfortably beats any hard drive and is light years faster than the eMMC storage of a cheaper tablet or solid‑state laptop. As with the display, it’s not top‑end, but is good enough to offer step‑up real‑life performance.

Audio The speakers are surprisingly respectable for a slim and light laptop. Two drivers fire out from the front of the laptop’s underside, and they produce a fuller, richer sound than expected, as well as fair maximum volume that doesn’t cause distortion. There’s a granularity to the mids, but it’s not unpleasant. These are surprisingly decent speakers. And like the best laptops drivers, extend beyond the width of the laptop, as minor a feat as that might seem in a laptop this size.

Battery life Lenovo claims the 40Wh battery of the Yoga 11 710 will last for eight hours. But if anything that’s conservative. We achieved almost dead on that using the laptop out and about for a day’s work, which included several hours with the display on maximum brightness to combat the glossy display’s reflectivity on a sunny day. When simply playing an MP4 video direct from the SSD at 120cd/m2 brightness, the Yoga 11 710 lasted nine hours and 45 minutes. This is a very long‑lasting laptop, and a pretty strong case for Intel’s latest Core M processors when Core i‑series alternatives often struggle to last their ‘claimed’ hours in real use.

Verdict The Lenovo Yoga 11 710 is a great laptop for those who travel a lot or who have no need for a big computer. This is one of the best alternatives to the 12in MacBook, a truly tiny machine that offers better value than Apple, not to mention a touchscreen and an ultra‑flexible hinge. It’s not powerful, but that’s not the point. The trackpad, like several of Lenovo’s recent models, is not perfect. But given the great value on offer here, it’s worth persevering with.


27/10/2016 09:59


MSI GL62-6QC 065UK

£599 inc VAT • uk.msi.com

Build Features Value Performance Overall

The MSI GL62 is a 15.6in low-cost gaming laptop. From looks alone you would assume it costs over £1,000, but its entry-level specification is less than £600. It’s a bit of a patchwork of hits and misses though, and we’d advise getting a slightly higher-end specification than the model we’re reviewing if you can afford it as it will really pay dividends for discerning gamers. This version can handle recent demanding titles at bottom-rung settings only, and its lack of SSD storage means our MSI GL62 lacks the speed of some otherwise less powerful laptops at the same price.

connections required: HDMI and Mini-DisplayPort video outputs and a full-size Ethernet socket. Many may be happy with using Wi-Fi though, particularly as Wi-Fi ac is supported. On the other (right) side of the GL62 are a DVD Multiwriter optical drive and a full-size SD card slot. Just as this system strikes a good balance between a gamer-tinged look and an ordinary one, the laptop has an ultra-accessible set of connections that’ll suit the sort of buyer to whom a lower-cost gaming rig might appeal.

Design

There’s a similar melding of worlds in the screen, too. It’s a 15.6in 1080p resolution display, but unlike most modern £500-plus laptops does not use an IPS screen. It’s not a plain old TN screen either: MSI has opted for something a little different. The GL62 has a TN-based panel, but its tweaked architecture makes it look much better than other TN displays. MSI calls it a “world first”. Its colour is fantastically vivid for a laptop of this price. It can display deeper, richer tones than many £1,000 laptops. Setting our colorimeter loose on the GL62, it hit 99.7 percent of sRGB, the usual standard for laptops, as well as 77.8 percent of Adobe RGB by volume and 85.7 percent of the cinema-grade DCI P3 standard. We’ll admit to being genuinely surprised to seeing such an affordable laptop provide such rich colour. An IPS laptop at this price might hit 70 percent of sRGB and be considered more than fine. It’s the colour that helps give the MSI GL62 screen a bold look, because its contrast alone can’t. Thanks to raised blacks that become obvious even in good lighting when you crank up the backlight, the screen has a contrast of only 300:1. Viewing angles are not close to those of an IPS screen, despite MSI’s claims. When viewed from a severe vertical angle, there’s severe contrast shift, a typical feature of a TN screen. The effect is nowhere near as bad as a regular TN screen, though. There’s clever ‘wide angle’ tech going on here that’s particularly effective

It’s not hard to spot a gaming laptop, but the MSI GL62 has little bits of gaming flair here and there rather than opting for an outrageous colour scheme or flared vents and mad logos. The keyboard font, the badge insignia on the lid, the odd bits of red trim and some of the GL62’s angles are all obvious signs to an experienced eye. This means it isn’t a system that’ll make you feel self-conscious in public. It successfully treads the line along a few boundaries with confidence. This laptop has a metal-covered lid but the rest of it is plastic, as used in the vast majority of gaming machines. It doesn’t try to push its luck with thickness or weight either. At 2.3kg and 29mm thick, the GL62 isn’t light or small enough to be considered a portable laptop. You’ll want to keep it at home most of the time.

Features While it has a sensible, slightly conservative design for a gaming laptop, the MSI has up-to-date connections. It comes with two USB 3.0 sockets, one USB 2.0 port on the right side, plus USB-C. It’s reassuring to see MSI has added what is in effect an extra USB with the USB-C socket, rather than using it as an excuse to pare down the total number of plugs. It’ll be a while before everything uses this specification, after all. The MSI also has the main



Display

TEST CENTRE

27/10/2016 09:59


at improving horizontal angled viewing. If you’re prone to noticing poor black levels and are going to be playing with the lighting dimmed, maybe this isn’t the best laptop for you. However, its colours look a lot more vivid than most alternatives at the price. The screen has a matt finish, a type that tends not to make colours pop as much as glossy ones. As we’ve said, this is a decent screen for colours, although its 253cd/m2 brightness is nothing special. This isn’t a laptop you’re likely to want to use outdoors much, though. If you’re after a portable workhorse, take a look at the Asus’s ZenBook UX range.

Performance At this price, you’re probably expecting some concessions. And you have to compromise more than with a desktop PC at £599. The specification we’re reviewing has a GeForce GTX 940M CPU, one of the lower-end nVidia cards. Despite being a solid dedicated GPU, you will need to use low settings in order to get smooth-feeling framerates in today’s more demanding games at full-HD resolution. Thief is a classic example of a game that the GL62 struggles with. At 720p with Low settings, it averages 35.6fps, but that rate drops to an unusable 14.9fps when the resolution is increased to 1080p and graphics settings increased to ‘High’: unplayable. The much less demanding Alien Isolation test brings better results, but is still too slow in the GL62 with visuals at 1080p/High. It averaged 20fps, increasing to 49fps at 720p, Low settings. A GTX 960M or even a GTX 950M would let you get closer to the mid-level settings that represent the sort of experience offered by today’s game consoles, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. CPU power is without doubt the strongest part of the MSI GL62’s performance. The Intel Core i5-6500HQ is a ‘full power’ laptop processor rather than one of the efficiency-leaning chips used in more portable laptops, and its Geekbench result of 9247 (3034 single) is excellent for the price. It scores a similarly good 2681 points in the PCMark 8 Home test. This CPU could be paired with a much more expensive GPU and still not be the bottleneck for performance. It’s a shame that you probably won’t get to appreciate all that power on a daily basis. The reality is that, fitted with a traditional 1TB hard drive rather than an SSD, it’s relatively slow to boot up and come out of sleep mode. It also increases application load times. Storage speed is such an important part of creating a perception of good performance that the GL62 6QC feels a bit slower than a lot of much less powerful laptops. It has the power for photo- and video editing, but again you’d ideally want a machine with an SSD if that’s what you’re going to be doing. The fact that the 6QC’s drive spins at a slow 5400rpm (rather than 7200rpm) makes matters even worse. It’s the second reason, behind the graphics chip, to avoid this particular configuration of the GL62. Under heavy use, the laptop’s fans are significantly more obvious than those of the other laptops reviewed here. Higher-pitched and noisier, they can be a little distracting in quieter rooms. There is an interesting little keyboard shortcut that lets you ‘switch gears’, to use MSI’s terminology. The eco mode also helps keep the GL62 quiet when performing basic tasks.

standard, the action is a little unusual. Rather than aiming for crisp feedback, the GL62’s keys are deliberately a lot softer, a bit like a shrunken version of the mechanical Cherry switch keyboards SteelSeries produces (granted, some Cherry switches are clicky). It takes a little while to get used to, when the crispness of most chiclet designs is designed to make up for lesser key travel. However, the keys still feel good and the layout is conventional. There’s no backlight as standard and you’ll need to pay extra to get this. The trackpad’s surface is a disappointing roughened plastic that doesn’t even attempt to copy the feel of more expensive laptops’ frosted glass trackpads. Its driver needs work too: multi-touch gestures stopped working during testing. A lack of pad ambition pays off better with the keys. The MSI G62’s mouse buttons are separate and sit below the pad, a smart move for a gaming laptop. Finally, let’s not forget speaker quality. It’s not a highlight and despite being a gaming machine, they are unusually weak. The sound is thin and relatively quiet, outdone even by some smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S7.

Battery life A laptop like this, which uses dedicated GPU and an HQ-series CPU, is never going to offer particularly good battery life. During testing, it lasted three hours and 55 minutes when playing back a 720p MP4 video file at 120cd/m2 brightness. While it’s unrealistic to expect eight hours’ use out of a laptop with an HQ-series CPU, some others in this category will last around 30 minutes more.

Verdict The MSI GL62 looks like a pretty plain entry-level gaming laptop at first, but has a few neat tricks up its sleeve. Not everyone is going to love the SteelSeries keyboard, but its mechanical key-inspired feel is something different, and its display colour saturation is impressive at the price, even if the screen won’t blow you away in other respects. It does highlight the problem with today’s affordable gaming laptops, though. Its GPU will leave you scrabbling around at low graphics settings to get satisfying framerates in recent games and the lack of SSD storage means the system doesn’t feel as speedy day-to-day as laptops with much less powerful CPUs. This isn’t a laptop for hardcore gamers or performance snobs, but it is a solid machine with the right level of future-proofing and a display that makes a punchy first impression.

Keyboard and trackpad The MSI GL62’s keyboard is a SteelSeries-branded keyboard, and has a different feel to the average chiclet offering. While the key travel is

TEST CENTRE



27/10/2016 09:59


The Asus is prettier, but the Acer is a fantastic all-rounder with a great screen, keyboard, touchpad and long battery life.

Conclusion Whatever size of laptop you’re after, one of these four should suit. Starting with the smallest, the 11.6in Lenovo can be used as a traditional laptop, but as it has a touchscreen and a hinge that allows the screen to be folded all the way back under the keyboard, you can use it a bit like a tablet. It’s available in silver or black, and it’s small and light enough to carry around with you when you need it. Overall, a great

little notebook – as long as you don’t need lots of ports and slots. The two 13.3in laptops here are both excellent choices. The Asus is prettier, but the Acer is a fantastic all-rounder with a great screen (higher contrast than the UX310UA), keyboard, touchpad and long battery life. Really, though, it’s hard to separate these two, and you won’t be disappointed by either one.

Lastly, we come to the MSI GL62-6QC. It’s cheap compared to most gaming laptops, but even though it’s £50 more than the other three here, it’s well worth the extra outlay. For a start, it has the most powerful CPU and graphics chip – and it also has a bigger 15.6in screen. As long as you’re not primarily after portability, it’s one of the better choices for a laptop that will mostly be used at home.

ACER

ASUS

Model

S 13 S5-371-381P

UX310UA

Part code

NX.GCHEK.006

UX310UA-FC075T

Screen

13.3in (1920x1080, 165dpi) IPS LCD matt anti-glare

13.3in (1920x1080, 165dpi) LCD matt anti-glare

Processor

2.3GHz Intel Core i3-6100U, 2 cores, 4 threads

2.3GHz Intel Core i3-6100U, 2 cores, 4 threads

Operating system

Windows 10 Home (64-bit)


Graphics

Intel HD 520 GPU

Intel HD 520 GPU

Memory

8GB RAM LPDDR3

4GB RAM DDR4-2133

Storage

128GB SSD

128GB SSD

Gigabit Ethernet





Wi-Fi

802.11b/g/n/ac 2x2

802.11b/g/n/ac 2x2

Bluetooth

Bluetooth 4.1

Bluetooth 4.1

USB ports

2x USB 3.0, USB-C Gen 1

1x USB 3.0, 1x USB-C Gen 1, 2x USB 2.0

Video output

HDMI

HDMI

Card reader

SDXC card slot

SDXC card slot

Speakers

Stereo speakers

Stereo Harman Kardon speakers

Webcam

HD webcam

0.9Mp webcam

Audio output

3.5mm headset jack

3.5mm headset jack

Keyboard

UK tiled keyboard

UK tiled keyboard

Battery

4030mAh lithium-ion battery (non-removable)

48Wh lithium-ion, battery (non-removable)

Dimensions

327x287x15mm

323x223x19mm

Weight

1.3kg

1.45kg

£599 inc VAT (£ ex VAT)




TEST CENTRE

27/10/2016 09:59


How we test Application performance We test with Futuremark’s PCMark 8 benchmarking suite. The, results are divided into Home and Work tests. The Home benchmark reflects command tasks for typical home use with lower computing requirements such as web browsing and low-end gaming. The Work test is geared towards office work tasks such as creating documents and web browsing, spreadsheets and video conferencing. This test does not stress the gaming and multimedia capabilities of the laptops in this group test. In order to compare performance across different platforms, we also run

Geekbench 3, which tests both single- and multi-core performance.

Minimal gaming We’ve tested the systems in this group test by running two games – Thief and Alien: Isolation. This is enough to reveal differences in gaming performance.

Display quality We use DisplayCAL with a colorimeter to measure colour gamut and accuracy, contrast and uniformity across the surface of the screen. We also take into account each panel’s viewing angles.

Subjective assessment It’s not all about speed. We also pay close attention to the physical characteristics of each device, its noise output and build quality, and take note of important features such as the quality of components.

Warranty and support Differences in warranty terms can affect our verdict. Obviously, longer warranties are better, but we also look at the terms and conditions – whether faulty systems must be returned to the vendor at your own cost, and if both parts and labour are included. J

LENOVO

MSI

Yoga 710 (11)

GL62-6QC

80TX0002UK

GL62-6QC 065UK

11.6in (1920x1080, 190dpi) TN glossy

15.6in (1920x1080, 276dpi) IPS LCD matt anti-glare

900MHz Intel Core M3-6Y30 (1.5GHz boost), 2 cores, 4 threads

2.3GHz Intel Core i5-6300HQ quad-core, four threads



Intel HD 515 GPU

Nvidia GeForce 940MX 2GB

8GB RAM LPDDR3

8GB DDR3L RAM

128GB SSD

1TB 5400rpm HDD





802.11b/g/n/ac single-band 1x1 MIMO

802.11b/g/n/ac dual-band 1x1

Bluetooth 4.1

Bluetooth 4.0

1x USB 3.0

2x USB 3.0; 1x USB-C, 1x USB 2.0

Micro-HDMI

HDMI and Mini-DisplayPort outputs

None

DVD writer and SDXC card slot

Stereo speakers

Stereo Bang & Olufsen speakers

HD webcam (720p)

HD webcam single mic

3.5mm headset jack

3.5mm headset jack

UK tiled keyboard with number pad

UK tiled keyboard

40Wh lithium-ion battery (non-removable)

48Wh lithium-ion battery

281x195x4.9mm

383x260x29mm

1.06kg

2.3kg


TEST CENTRE


£599 inc VAT (£ex VAT)


27/10/2016 09:54

FEATURE

Google’s

n 4 October, Google held an event at which it announced new Pixel smartphones, a home assistant, the Chromecast Ultra, a Wi-Fi router, plus a VR headset. Over the following pages we review the Pixel XL phone, plus give our initial impressions of the other gadgets on show. Unfortunately, we didn’t see the Andromeda OS (thought to be a combination of Chrome OS and Android) or a new tablet. The Pixel C is still available, of course, but we were expecting a lower-cost replacement for the Nexus 7. Perhaps these will emerge next year, but for now there’s still a lot for Google fans to get excited about.

O

big

launch

76 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/features January 2017

076_086 Google Launch 258.indd 76

25/10/2016 10:13

FEATURE

Google Pixel XL

REVIEW

Price: £719 (32GB) £819 (128GB) Google has pulled the covers off its newest smartphone creations: the Pixel and the Pixel XL. The new devices mark a departure from the Nexus line that has served the company well for so long, bringing high-end specifications and prices to match.

Design and build At first glance, the Pixel XL has a lot in common with the current iPhone design thanks to its gently curved metal frame and large lower bezel. The Pixel XL’s dimensions of 76x155x8.6mm and 168g weight also make

the new model more manageable than the Nexus 6P. It feels a lot nicer in the hand. There’s a sizable area below the screen that is home to nothing, on the outside at least, which is a shame. This is offset by smooth rounded edges that allow the XL to

Price With its new Pixel phones, Google has decided to move up to the premium end of the market, both in terms of specifications and pricing, where it will compete with other flagship models, including the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge and the iPhone 7 (page 29). Two versions of the Pixel XL are available: a 32GB version, priced at £719; and a more capacious 128GB iteration that will set you back a whopping £819. That’s a big difference from last year’s Nexus 6P, which cost £449 for the 32GB version. It also follows Apple’s pricing for its iPhone 7, so Google must be confident that the new design and construction will be able to take on the Cupertino-based company.

January 2017 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/features 77


25/10/2016 10:13

Feature: Google’s big launch

sit snugly in the palm, and while you won’t want to use it one-handed too often, it’s a very nice phone to hold. The power and volume buttons are all located on the right of the handset, with a double-tap on the former launching the camera even if the screen is off. A NanoSIM card tray is on the left flank, so fans who hoped that the switch to the Pixel brand would see the introduction of an SD card slot will be disappointed. USB-C is the charging port of choice, just as it was on the Nexus 6P, and on the top of the device is a headphone jack. Turning over the device reveals the lower half to be the same matt aluminium as the sides, while the upper section, which houses the fingerprint reader and camera, has a polished glass finish. It’s an interesting look that makes a welcome change from the plain metal backs that now come as standard on most flagship models. Having the fingerprint sensor on the rear is handy when you’re holding the phone, since it’s where your index finger naturally lands. However, you’ll need to use the lockscreen if the Pixel XL is sitting on a flat surface like a desk, which can be annoying. Google has opted for a range of colours that include the amusingly named Quite Black, Very Silver, and a rather fetching Really Blue that has already won our hearts, although this is a limited edition for the US only. There will also be a number of colourful Live Cases available from the Google store, which can show off photos or even a section of Google Maps.

The Pixel XL comes with an IP53 rating, which means that it’s protected from light dust and water spray. It’s not waterproof or even water resistant though, which is a shame as many other flagship phones offer this. For some this will be a deal-breaker, especially now Apple’s iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are waterproof and we expected more from Google at this price point.

Hardware The XL is the larger of the two new Pixel phones and has a 5.5in Quad HD AMOLED display, with a 2560x1440 resolution. If that’s too big, the regular Pixel is a more manageable 5in but Full HD. The screen is up there with the best with excellent contrast and colours – similar to Samsung phones, it looks like a glossy magazine at times.



25/10/2016 10:13


Geekbench 4

GFXBench Manhattan

GFXBench T-Rex

JetStream

To power all those pixels Google has used a quad-core 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 CPU running at 2.15- and 1.6GHz, aided by an Adreno 530 GPU and 4GB of RAM. This is a potent combination and during testing we found the unit to be snappy and responsive even with multiple apps open. As mentioned earlier, you can get the Pixel phones in either 32- or 128GB storage capacities with £100 between the two. You’ll want to seriously consider which you one you get, too, as Google doesn’t offer expandable storage. This is a strangely Apple-like decision, especially considering that the vast majority of its partners making Android phones include a microSD card slot. It’s something that differentiates them from the iPhone, but Google clearly isn’t bothered about this. Something to factor into your decision as to which model to buy is Google’s Smart Storage, which will automatically clear older photos and videos when your device gets

full – those that have been backed up that is. Google is offering unlimited space for any photos or videos taken on the phone. As you’d expect from a flagship model, the XL offers dual-band 11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, NFC and CAT 9 LTE. Infrared ports seem to be a thing of the past. It’s nice that the Pixel Imprint fingerprint scanner supports ‘moves’, although you’ll need to switch this on in the settings. It means you can swipe downward on the fingerprint scanner to access the notification bar and a second time for quick settings. Nestling under the smart metal casing is a large 3450mAh battery that Google says will give you 32 hours of talk time, 14 hours of Wi-Fi browsing, or 14 hours of video playback. We found the Pixel XL will comfortably last a full day unless you hammer it and light users may even get a couple of days. Fast charging is also supported (no wireless here). When we plugged our review unit in for 15 minutes via the USB-C port,

the XL lasted for another seven hours. In our test the Pixel charged a decent 20 percent in that time period. It’s worth noting that the supplied charger requires a USB-C to USB-C cable, which is provided, as is a full-size USB to USB-C cable. Either side of the USB-C port are two slots that you’d be forgiven for assuming are stereo speakers. In fact, just one is for the speaker, which is a disappointing step down from the front-facing speakers of the Nexus 6P. There is a headphone jack, though, which is perhaps an important issue if you’re trying to decide between the Pixel XL and iPhone 7 Plus. Cameras are a big selling point for smartphones these days and the Pixel XL places its trust in a 12.3Mp rear unit with 1.55µm pixels that Google says was given a rating of 89 by DXO Mark, which is the highest score ever awarded to a smartphone. You can see one of our tests shots, opposite. The camera is no different to the smaller Pixel, or on the most part, the Nexus 6P. It now has phase detection and laser autofocus, but it’s strange that Google has opted not to include optical image stabilisation. Perhaps it didn’t want a camera bump, something it pointed out at the launch event. Instead, the phone uses digital stabilisation and while this certainly helps makes things smoother, it’s no match for the optical version. If you like selfies, the 8Mp front-facing camera is a fine way to capture plenty of duckfaces and holiday group shots. You’ll also be able to make use of this with Google’s new video calling app, Duo. There’s no doubt that the cameras are excellent, but we’re struggling to think why Nexus 6P owners would upgrade or why anyone else wouldn’t be satisfied with a rival at a lower price. There are options that are exclusive to the Pixel, such as Smartburst and Pro controls, but for us that’s not enough. There’s also the fact that the iPhone 7 Plus (same price remember) has dual cameras with one being 2x telephoto.

Software As you’d expect from Google’s own smartphone, the Pixel XL comes with the very latest iteration of Android Nougat (7.0). It’s a clean, smart update that doesn’t change things too much, but does introduce the ability to slide up from the main screen to open the app tray and replaces the Google bar with a small tab on the left. The round icons won’t be to everyone’s taste, though. There are a few nice touches here and there, including the ability to blur the background wallpaper image, which we found useful almost straight away. You can also choose daily wallpapers or even Live Earth ones which move as you do things.



25/10/2016 10:13


we think is no a bad thing, allowing group chats and even has a privacy mode. Google Duo also now comes as standard. This video messaging service is similar to Apple’s FaceTime (and indeed Google’s Hangouts), is free and works on both Android and iOS. The Pixels are the first Daydream – Google’s new VR technology – ready devices. For more on this turn to page 83.

Verdict While the Pixel XL is an attractive phone (if you can get used to the glass section) with a decent combination of hardware and software, it’s a disappointing device. It’s very similar, for example, to the much cheaper Nexus 6P and OnePlus 3. You can get plenty of other Android phones for less that have extra features such as waterproofing and expandable storage. J Chris Martin

Specifications

Google has also added a Night Light, which turns the screen a red hue to ease the strain on your eyes and help you get to sleep. You can also get support from the firm, via call or chat, straight from the settings menu. Speaking of the settings menu, we like the new notification style slots at the top, which mean you can quickly switch off things such as the Wi-Fi hotspot quickly and easily without having to delve into the menu. The Pixels are the first phones to have Google’s new Assistant ‘built in’, so although you’ll be able to download it on other phones in the future, you can long-press the home

button on the Pixel XL anytime to launch it. This impressive organisational tool is in essence a powered-up version of Google Now and can help schedule your diary, answer queries, give you directions to events and control various apps on the phone. It’s something that Google is making the central point of its entire range going forward, so as you use it on a phone, tablet, or even Chromebook, it will learn more about your preferences and improve in its suggestions. Another included app is Google Allo, the new messaging that also incorporates Google Assistant. This has replaced Hangouts, which

• 5.5in (2560x1440) Quad-HD display • Android 7.0 Nougat • 2.15GHz Snapdragon 821 CPU • 1.6GHz Adreno 530 GPU • 4GB RAM • 32- or 128GB storage • 12.3Mp rear camera • 8Mp front camera • 3450mAh battery • Nano-SIM • 4G LTE • 802.11ac Wi-Fi • Bluetooth 4.2 • USB-C charging port • Fingerprint sensor • Headphone jack • 154.7x75.7x8.5mm • 168g



25/10/2016 10:13


Google Home

PREVIEW

Price: $129 (£TBC) Google announced Home earlier this year, showcasing the standalone device’s ability to interact with users via voice control and complete a number of useful tasks. Now the search giant has revealed more details about this exciting new product.

Price Amazon’s Echo (page 48), which will be the main rival for Home, costs £149.99 (with the smaller Dot version at £49.99) so we expected Google to price the Home towards the bigger Echo being as it has a decent built-in speaker. So far we know only the US price of $129, which includes a free six-month subscription to YouTube Red, the ad-free YouTube variant that also includes music streaming. Alas YouTube Red is also a US-exclusive product, so it’s hard to know whether UK buyers will receive a similar perk, but we’d speculate on a free Google Play Music trial to be bundled with Home over here. Of course the big question is when we’ll see the device on this side of the ocean, and Google has not been forthcoming on this. At the moment there’s no information on when Home will be released globally, but preorders opened on 4 November for US customers.

Design There’s no doubt that Google has been careful to make Home a subtle device that blends into the background. At first glance, it can easily be mistaken for a lamp of some kind. The mesh-style base and white angledplastic top wouldn’t look out of place in a Habitat store, such is the fresh design. Aesthetics are something Google seems to be taking seriously with Home. Alongside the standard mesh base there will also be a number of additional models available in the Play Store that feature alternative patterns and colours. This makes sense as unlike the Chromecast Ultra (page 85), the Home is

meant to be seen, and therefore needs to be easy on the eye. Home is a child of the minimalist school, featuring just one hardware button at the rear, which is used to mute the device. Google has included four LEDs to illuminate the top of the plastic casing and show when the device is in operation. This area also doubles up as a capacitive surface for simple commands. It’s an understated look, and one we like very much.

Features and specs The main brains of the device are housed in the mesh base, which contains the far-field



25/10/2016 10:13

Goog users detai


microphones through which all interactions take place. There’s also a speaker, so that Home can let you know of any appointments you have coming up, respond to questions you might pose, and act as a Wi-Fi speaker for streaming music. Google Home uses the same technology as Google Assistant, so you can simply tell the device what you want to do – find out what’s on at the cinema, what the weather will be tomorrow, who you’re meeting on Saturday – and the device will speak back the answers. You can also schedule appointments and other daily tasks without ever picking up your phone. In terms of specifications, we still don’t know much about the innards of Home. There have been rumours that the technology is very similar to the Chromecast Ultra, which boasts a Linux-based OS, dual-core ARM CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi chip, but until Google confirms this it remains a bit of a mystery.

Software Home has no discernible interface other than the voice interaction. In essence, it’s a more powerful version of Google Now that you would find on your phone, but with a speaker built-in. The LEDs on the top of the device will flash to indicate that Home is in operation, but this is primarily an aural experience. That doesn’t mean that it’s limited, though. Google announced that Home will work with a number of partners, including Spotify, YouTube Music, Google Play Music, Pandora, and TuneIn. You can request songs

Amazon Echo and Dot from each of these by name, or set one as the default service. Home also plays music through external speakers that support the Chromecast platform, and can even control multi-room setups. So saying “Play Bob Dylan on the upstairs speakers” will do just that. But like the large Amazon Echo, its built-in speaker is capable of “filling a room” with music, according to Google. Google Home can also control Nest thermostats, Phillips Hue Bulbs, Samsung SmartThings devices, and works with IFTTT, plus you can use it with a Chromecast to send media content from services such as YouTube and Netflix directly to your TV. Nice. It’s also an organisational tool that hooks into Google Calendar and Google Keep, so you can make appointments and take notes just by talking to the device. One feature that we like the look of is called My Day. This is intended to be a kind of morning brief from your assistant, which reads out your schedule for the day ahead. This is augmented with traffic conditions on the commute, weather conditions, and any reminders you have set.

How does it compares to the Amazon Echo and Dot? In this space the only real competitors around at the moment are Amazon’s Echo and Dot. Both feature the same voice-controlled interface, with the Echo also boasting an internal speaker that enables it to answer questions and play music. The Dot has a speaker for voice feedback but needs an

external speaker for music, and this might be preferable if you already have a hi-fi you like. It’s hard to compare on price because we don’t know how much the Google Home will be in the UK. As an indication though, Amazon currently sells the Echo on its US site for $179 and the Dot for $49. If Google Home offers the same conversion rate, then its $129 would make the unit cheaper in the UK. This becomes a moot point though if it’s unavailable. So the current £149 Echo price and £49 Dot are a better deal because you can actually buy them. There are a lot of crossovers in terms of compatible services. Both Echo and Home work with Spotify, TuneIn, Spotify, Google Calendar, and Philips Hue Smart light bulbs, but as Echo has come out first it has a few more UK-focused offerings. Amazon has introduced something called Skills (basically apps) that allow the capabilities of the Echo unit to be expanded over time by companies releasing them into the Skills Store. At the moment this gives Echo a big advantage over Home as there are Skills for Skyscanner, Uber, National Rail, various UK news outlets, and a wide range of smart home products such as Nest, Hive, Netatmo, WeMo, LIFX and Tado.

Our verdict We’re excited by the potential of Google Home, but until it makes it to these shores the Amazon Echo will continue to build up a lead. J Martyn Casserly



25/10/2016 10:13


Google PREVIEW Daydream View Price: £69 For use with its new Pixel smartphones, Google has released its first VR headset: the Daydream View.

Price

cosy feel and it’s certainly done this with the ‘jersey fabric’ finish. It’s a comfortable and lightweight headset at 220g (around 30 percent lighter than the average). The

adjustable strap goes round your head rather than over it, which we found slightly restricts how quickly you can move your head without fear of it falling off.

Rather than a fully fledged VR headset such as the HTC Vive, the Daydream View is a headset with which you look at a smartphone through built-in lenses. It’s a step up from Google’s popular cardboard VR and a rival to the likes of Samsung’s Gear VR. Plus, because it doesn’t contain a huge amount of tech, its price is low. You can preorder one from tinyurl.com/hmLb9qh for just £69. It’s due to be released in the UK in November.

Design The Daydream View is one of the most attractive headsets we’ve seen with its fabric covering on the outside. It’s available in three colours: Slate (see right), Snow and Crimson. Google said it’s worked hard on creating a



25/10/2016 10:13


The breathable fabric covered foam that comes into contact with your skin is soft and comfy, and we were able to use the headset while wearing glasses without any trouble. Inserting the phone is easy via the hinged flap at the front, which is held in place with an elastic catch (hopefully this won’t wear out over time). Thanks to NFC, the phone and headset know what’s happening, so by the time you put the Daydream View headset on, the app has already launched.

Apps Since the Daydream View is a ‘viewer’ VR headset, the specs largely depend on which phone you put in it. The Pixels are the first

compatible devices and Google said a handful of major phone makers have committed to producing phones that can use the Daydream by the end of the year. When it comes to the Pixel phones, you’re best off taking advantage of the XL’s Quad HD resolution for a sharper image. One useful feature is its wireless controller. It’s very small, maybe a little too small for some, and while you might lose it, the remote fits inside the headset when there isn’t a phone inserted. It connects over Bluetooth LE and charges via USB-C offering a 12-hour battery life, according to Google. When you first put on the headset you’ll see a floating menu in front of you (below).

Using the controller as a pointing device, you can navigate around this and also use it to interact with experiences or play games. For example, we played a mini-game in Wonderglade, which used the remote as a motion controller to tilt a virtual labyrinthstyle race circuit. We found the tracking, via 9-axis IMUs, smooth and accurate. Google has also teamed up with J.K. Rowling for an exclusive Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them experience. Even a short play on this was pretty immersive and the controller becomes your wand. You’ll be able to do other stuff too, such as watch YouTube and Netflix videos in a virtual theatre, and Google is planning to add support for Google Play Movies, too. You’ll also want to check out Street View, which includes prepared guides of tourist attractions such as the Taj Mahal. Other apps include Guardian VR, New York Times VR, WSJ VR and Lego. More will arrive over time with Google touting more than 50 by the end of the year.

Verdict You’ll need a compatible phone but the Daydream View is an accomplished device. Its attractive style is complemented by a comfortable fit, although an over the top strap might be an oversight for more energetic tasks. The NFC and wireless experience is great and the simple yet effective motion controller is a real bonus. J Chris Martin



25/10/2016 10:13


Google Chromecast Ultra

PREVIEW

Price: £69 The new Chromecast is here with added support for 4K streaming. We’ve had an early look at Google’s latest dongle.

Price Whereas the old Chromecast was a pocket money product thanks to its £30 price tag, Google is releasing the updated Ultra at £69, which is quite a leap in price from its more humble brethren. No doubt the added technology involved in rendering 4K content required a general bump in specs, hence the increased cost, but bear in mind that this is currently the only mainstream streaming stick available in the UK that can handle UHD content. There’s no set release date as yet, but Google announced that you should expect to see the new Chromecast ‘soon’, so we expect it to be hitting stores before Christmas.

Design There’s little room for design aesthetics in streaming sticks, mainly due to the fact that they’re often relegated to the back of a TV

set. That being said the new Chromecast Ultra retains the circular frame of the previous model, but the loud colours have been replaced with a stately black. You still attach the device through an HDMI lead that dangles the Chromecast Ultra behind your TV, and power is drawn from a USB lead connected to a power block. Google has told us that the power block also houses an optional ethernet connection so that you can run the device directly into your router via a wired connection.

Features Just as in design, Chromecasts are never really much for features. What they do they do well, but the addition of 4K UHD streaming is the main headline here. We didn’t have the opportunity to test how seamless the streaming was, as a packed press area with hundreds of mobile devices trying to connect to the same Wi-Fi connection isn’t a normal state of affairs, so we’re looking forward to getting the device back to PC Advisor towers for a real-world Netflix binge. We do know

that the new device is the first to support HDR and Dolby Vision, plus Google claim that it will be 1.8x faster than the previous model.

Software One of the Chromecast’s best features has always been that there is no interface to deal with. The device just attaches to your TV and when you want to stream content from your smartphone, tablet or PC, you hit the Cast option on the video. Therefore the only software involved is internal and hidden from the user. We believe that the Chromecast runs a lightweight Linux based OS, but we’ve yet to confirm this. Google points out that the device will be compatible with a number of streaming services including Spotify, BT Sport, YouTube 4K and Google Play.

Verdict Chromecasts have always been cheap and cheerful devices that you can throw into your bag and take anywhere. The new Ultra 4K model is a bit pricier, but it still looks like good value to us. J Martyn Casserly



25/10/2016 10:14


Google Wifi

PREVIEW

Price: From $129 (£TBC) If you’ve ever played around with Powerline and Wi-Fi extenders in an effort to make your wireless signal reach all the way through your home, new Google Wifi is the product for you.

Price The Google Wifi UK release date has not been confirmed, though we were told at the launch that Google hoped it would be coming soon. In the US Google Wifi is available to preorder from November, and will cost $129 for a single pack and $299 for a pack of three.

Features Built on the strengths of OnHub, Google Wifi is in essence a series of mini wireless routers that all talk to each other and can be scattered across the home to ensure a

strong and fast wireless signal in every room. Google designed Wifi to be able to support multiple devices at once, and to withstand high-bandwidth activities such as streaming video and gaming. You can buy Google Wifi points in packs of one or three, enabling you to keep adding to your setup if you have a large home. Google recommends using one point in a small house or flat measuring between 500- and 1500 square feet, two in a medium house measuring between 1500- and 3000 square feet, and three in a large home between 3000- and 4500 square feet. It uses mesh Wi-Fi, with each Google Wifi point creating a high-powered connection and able to determine the best path for your data. Other alternatives include Powerline, which uses the electrical wiring in your home to create a simple but fast, wired network that connects adapters in rooms away from your internet router. (See our top Powerline adaptors on page 137). If you want manual options they are available through a companion app for Android and iOS, but for those who don’t, Network Assist technology takes the hard work out of optimising your router basically by doing it for you. It will ensure your Wi-Fi is operating on the clearest channel, and it will continue to optimise your Wi-Fi no matter which room of the house you are in. Network Assist can even tell you where best

to place a Google Wifi point or advise you to adjust your broadband tariff. A handy feature of Google Wifi is that at any point you can pause the Wi-Fi connection on a given connected device, such as the kids’ tablets when you want them to come down for dinner. You can also see how much bandwidth these devices are using and prioritise particular devices over others. Google Wifi supports wireless encryption, verified boot and auto updates, keeping security and user privacy as high priorities. J Marie Brewis

Specifications Connectivity • AC1200 2x2 Wave 2 Wi-Fi • Expandable mesh Wi-Fi • Simultaneous dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4GHz/5GHz) supporting 802.11a/b/g/n/ac • TX Beamforming • Bluetooth Smart Ready • 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports per point Security • WPA2-PSK • Automatic security updates • Infineon SLB 9615 trusted platform module Core hardware • 710MHz Quad-core processor • 512MB DDR3L RAM • 4GB eMMC flash storage • 15W power adaptor Device • White plastic build • 106.12x68.75mm • 340g



25/10/2016 10:14

FOR EVERYTHING

ANDROID

DIGITAL EDITION ON ANDROID & iOS

tinyurl.com/nk4osoh

Every issue is packed with the latest reviews, features, tutorials & more.

FEATURE

HOW

GRAPHICS Thomas Ryan dismembers a video card to reveal how it works

Inner knowledge

Game on Your computer processor may be the heart of your PC, but your graphics card is the parallel processing monster that powers your gaming adventures. Producing digital worlds that run without stuttering and stopping is no easy feat. On page 112 we show you how to set up a new graphics card. Now, we’re dismembering an old AMD Radeon R9 290 that died

when a power supply gave up the ghost during a firmware update. There’s a practical reason for ripping apart this beast screw-byscrew: to give you a better understanding of its workings. You’ll often hear complaints that some GPUs run too hot, too loud or are too expensive. If you want to understand why, then tearing down a graphics card is a great place to start.


088_094 How Graphics Cards Work 258.indd 88

20/10/2016 15:59

FEATURE

S CARDS

WORK

Back in black Let’s first take a peek at the exterior package. The Radeon 290 we’re mutilating measures a hair under 11x4x1.5in wide. Examining the back of the card reveals the black printed circuit board and many smaller components that help regulate power delivery

to the larger chips on the printed circuit board (PCB). You’ll also see small lines running all over the board, connecting the tiny components together. These copper lines, dubbed ‘traces’, carry electrical signals for communication and power.



20/10/2016 16:00

Feature: How graphics cards work

Shrouded in mystery One major way that graphics card manufacturers differentiate their products is in the design of the fan shroud, which we’ve removed here. On a more practical level, the purpose of a fan shroud is twofold: it hides and protects the internals of the graphics card, and channels the airflow into and out of the GPU, over its heatsinks.

This Radeon R9 290 has a reference design that was produced in limited quantity by AMD itself, rather than a hardware partner like Sapphire, Asus or VisionTek. To push the Radeon branding – remember, that’s a big factor in shroud composition – AMD coloured its hard plastic fan shroud matte black and glossy red.

Fins and fans With the fan shroud removed, you can see the large aluminium fins of the heatsink that covers the silicon GPU die. (The Radeon R9 290’s GPU was codenamed ‘Tahiti’ by AMD.) Dislodging the shroud also reveals the large red fan that blows air over the heatsink and out the I/O panel at the opposite

end. This cooling configuration is, fittingly, called a ‘blower-style’ design. Alternatively, some graphics cards feature an ‘open aircooling’ design that utilises multiple fans and smaller fan shrouds to disperse heat from all around the graphics card and into your PC’s case, rather than forcing hot air out through the I/O panel.



20/10/2016 16:00


A panel of choices With the fan shroud as well as the I/O panel bracket removed, you can see the display connectors on the end of the graphics card. From left to right, there’s a full-size DisplayPort, an HDMI port and two single-link DVI ports. The I/O panel bracket attaches to the graphics card via the three screw holes on the far left.

Taking the heat The underside of the heatsink mounting plate is made from aluminium, which helps dissipate heat from the memory chips and voltage regulator modules (VRMs) on the graphics card. It also attaches the cooling fan to the graphics card, and holds the large main heatsink for the GPU die at the correct height so it can just

touches the top of the die without crushing it. The light coloured thermal pads transfer heat from the card’s GDDR5 memory, while the grey material in the centre of the copper heatsink is thermal paste that transfers heat from the GPU die. The holes are for screws that secure the plate to the graphics card.



20/10/2016 16:00


Baring it all Now we’re getting to the good stuff: the bare printed circuit board of our graphics card. Starting from the left, you can see the display output ports, then the XDMA CrossFire chips (which enable AMD multi-GPU setups) covered by a small thermal pad near the upper-left corner of the board. The large Tahiti GPU die is sitting pretty in the centre of the board and covered in thermal paste. It’s surrounded by 16 black GDDR5 memory chips that

endow the Radeon 290 with 4GB of RAM over a 512-bit memory bus. Distributed about both sides of the board are voltage regulator modules (VRMs), capacitors, chokes and other circuits that regulate and deliver power to the rest of the GPU. Finally, the upper righthand corner houses the 8- and 6-pin PCI-E power connectors. These supply most of the electricity needed to keep your graphics card churning out new frames.

Silicon needs support Here’s a closer look at the silicon die beating at the heart of the graphics card – or at least the layer of thermal paste that covers it. The die sits on a small green PCB of its own that connects to the main black PCB via tiny balls of solder. Graphics cards will occasionally fail when these balls get too hot and melt. That’s why you’ll sometimes see people on YouTube baking their dead cards

in the oven in an attempt to melt the damaged solder balls back into place. The metal bracket that runs around the edge of the die’s green PCB is a shim designed to support the weight of the heatsink so that it doesn’t crush the die. The support shim’s adorned with AMD’s logo, an identifying code, and info on when and where the GPU was produced. In this case, TSMC built the chip in Taiwan.



20/10/2016 16:00


More power Much of the PCB’s most important power circuitry resides to the right of the die, including the PCI-E power connectors, a collection of VRMs, and (most importantly) the digital power controller – the small chip with the magenta dot, right of centre in the image. This chip controls the delivery of power to the GPU by regulating the VRMs. It’s produced by International Rectifier.

Cleaning up Cleaning time! Here are the GPU die, memory chips and VRMs free of thermal paste. The bare die features a highly reflective surface with a mirror finish. If you peer closely enough, you can read some of the markings on the memory chips and VRM heat spreaders.



20/10/2016 16:00


The glory shot Here’s a close-up of the bare GPU. (We placed a red sheet of paper above the die to hide our reflection, which is why there’s a red hue to its mirrored surface.) Underneath that mirror lies the Tahiti die,

complete with 6.2 billion transistors and 44 compute units. Despite those lofty numbers, the die itself is merely the size of a potato chip, but it takes about three months to produce.

The final pieces Finally, the unsung heroes that hold it all together. We extracted 26 screws of six different types from the Radeon 290 and managed to misplace only one during the making of this article. That big chunk of metal is the I/O panel bracket, while the square in the upper right is the heatsink retention bracket that secures the large heatsink to the GPU from the back of the main PCB. J



20/10/2016 16:00

iPad & iPhone User magazine is the essential guide for all things iOS-related DOWNLOAD THE LATEST ISSUE TODAY

DIGITAL EDITION ON ANDROID & iOS

tinyurl.com/kg776m8

Every issue is full of the latest app reviews, gaming, tutorials, buying advice & more 095 IPU113 AD.indd 95

20/10/2016 15:43

FEATURE

WHY YOU SHOULD TRY TRY LINUX TODAY: COMPELLING REASONS

6

Brad Chacos reveals why there’s never been a better time to give Linux a try here’s never been a better time to give Linux a try. Wait, don’t turn the page. We’re not one of those rabid ‘Year of the Linux desktop’ types. Windows works just fine for hundreds of millions of people, and – sorry, Linux lovers – there’s little to suggest Linux usage will ever be more than a rounding error compared to Microsoft’s behemoth. That said, there are some pretty compelling reasons you might want to consider switching to Linux on your computer, or at least give it a hassle-free trial run.

T


096_100 Why Linux 258.indd 96

20/10/2016 15:45

FEATURE

1

WINDOWS 10’S TAKING AWAY YOUR CHOICES Bear with us. This may seem off topic, but it’s the crux of the issue for a lot of people. Linux’s most alluring feature for many won’t be anything that it does, but what it doesn’t do. And it’s all due to Microsoft’s folly. Windows 10 may be the best Windows ever (and we use it daily on our primary PC), but Microsoft has pulled some tricks that range from questionable to downright gross in order to drive its adoption numbers higher, and to coax you into using the myriad Microsoft services and paid upgrades baked into the operating system. It began with endless pop-ups on Windows 7 and 8.1 PCs – popups that started innocently enough before crossing the line into deceptive malware-like tactics. When that didn’t boost adoption numbers high enough, it morphed into nastier tricks and full-on forced upgrades that prompted some fearful owners to disable Windows updates completely rather than be pushed into Microsoft’s new operating system. More recently, the Windows 10 Anniversary Update bundled some severe negatives in with its plentiful positives. The Cortana digital assistant, which pings Bing servers whenever you search your PC, is damned near impossible to disable completely now. And when we upgraded our primary PC to the Windows 10 AU, we discovered that all of the settings related to the many ways Windows 10 pushes ads at you were re-enabled, after we’d explicitly disabled them prior. None of our

On a Windows 8.1 PC. Mostly full screen pop-up. No clear ‘No thanks’ button, just download Windows 10 now or later other system settings appear to have been touched. What’s more, Windows 10 changed the way it handles updates to more closely resemble mobile operating systems. You can’t pick and choose which patches to install or even refuse updates on consumer operating systems. If Microsoft pushes a Windows 10 update, you will receive it eventually. The company also tweaked the way Windows 7 and 8 handle patching. Now, you can no longer choose which individual updates to install; you have to take the whole kit and caboodle. By default, Windows 10 beams much more of your data back to Microsoft than previous Windows versions as well. Most of it can be disabled, but most people don’t dive that far into system settings. Lots of people are still plenty happy with Windows 10, don’t get us wrong. But these moves are also ruffling the feathers of a lot of users.

Eventually, Microsoft began pushing Windows 10 out as a Recommended upgrade, forcibly installing it on some systems



20/10/2016 15:45

Feature: Why you should try Linux today

2

LINUX IS MORE POLISHED THAN EVER Most major Linux distributions never abandoned the basic principles of the desktop. While Microsoft enraged the world with the Windows 8 disaster, popular Linux distributions such as Fedora and Linux Mint kept their heads down and spit-polished the traditional PC interface. For people used to Windows XP and 7, some Linux distributions may be easier to wrap your head around than Windows 8 and 10 – both of which have a learning curve, just like switching to Linux. Linux Mint’s ‘Start menu’ bears much more similarity to the traditional Windows Start menus than Windows 10’s Live Tileinfused alternative, that’s for sure.

Better yet, Linux’s dark days of rampant incompatibility with PC hardware have largely been eradicated. Most Linux operating systems work with a wide swathe of modern PCs and PC hardware, though you may need to perform a few extra steps to install Linux on a PC with Intel’s Secure Boot enabled. Better yet, you can test Linux distributions on your PC before actually installing them, so you’ll know whether everything works. We’ll get into that a bit later, though. The key point, however, is that Linux is no longer a broken mess useful only to dyed-in-the-wool geeks anymore. There are numerous polished, refined distributions that anybody can pick up and use.

Chrome for L Netflix on Ub

Linux Mint with the MATE desktop environment

4

LINUX IS FREE Not only does that make it relatively risk-free to try, but it also means you won’t need to spend £100 on a Windows licence if you’re building a PC from scratch or upgrading an old computer.



20/10/2016 15:46


3 5

OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE IS, TOO The quality – or lack thereof – of opensource software was another longtime bugbear for Linux. No more. These days, Linux houses superb alternatives to all of the most-used Windows software, from Office rivals (Libre Office) to Photoshop alternatives (GIMP) to media players (VLC). That trio alone covers the typical software usage of many households. Many top-notch video games even call Linux home now thanks to the arrival of Valve’s Linux-powered Steam Machines. Playing copy-protected movies and music used to be another major Linux headache. Once again, that’s no longer the case. VLC will run virtually anything you throw at it, while Chrome (and Firefox soon) support streaming videos from the likes of Netflix and Amazon Instant Video. But standard PC usage for a lot of people revolves around the internet – checking Facebook, slinging email, browsing YouTube and Amazon, and so on. Naturally, those all work just fine on Chrome and Firefox in Linux. The browsers work the exact same as they do on Windows.

Chrome for Linux playing Netflix on Ubuntu The modern Linux ecosystem can handle everything you throw at it and handle it well (though hardcore gamers may still want to keep a copy of Windows handy). And did we mention most of the software available for Linux is free, too?

LINUX RUNS GREAT ON OLD PCs Windows XP was tossed to the wolves long ago, and Vista’s end is rapidly drawing near. But hundreds of millions of people rely on PCs that are several years old. Installing Linux not only plops an up-to-date (and updated) operating system on your computer, it can breathe new life into your system if you choose a lightweight distribution designed for aging machines, such as Puppy Linux or Lubuntu (otherwise known as ‘Lightweight Ubuntu’). The transition doesn’t have to be painful, either. There are numerous easy Linux alternatives designed for Windows XP refugees. These distributions offer dedicated ‘Windows XP Modes’ that mimic the look and feel of Microsoft’s most venerable operating system.



24/10/2016 09:39


6

LINUX IS EASY TO TRY Okay, we’ve sold you. You’re ready to test-drive Linux. Fortunately, Linux is dead simple to try. You don’t even have to ditch Windows if you’re feeling hesitant. Before you install a Linux distribution on your PC’s hard drive, we suggest giving your chosen operating system a whirl with a live drive or live DVD. With live drives, you install a bootable system of a Linux distribution to a DVD or flash drive, then configure your PC to boot from that rather than your hard drive. It takes minimal muss and fuss, lets you try several Linux operating systems quickly, and doesn’t touch the Windows installation on your primary storage drive. Personally, we think Linux Mint provides the best experience for experimental Windows users, because it mixes Ubuntu’s flexible approach to closed-source software with a Windows-like interface. Using Linux shouldn’t be too much of a hassle, especially if you opt for an OS with a Windows-like Start menu, but there are several core differences. Most major Linux distributions offer an online forum with dedicated help sections.

If you decide you like Linux, you can use the same live drive (or disc) to install your new operating system on your hard drive. You can keep Windows on your PC if you’d like, too. If you’re running an older PC with limited hardware or a dead OS or if you’re irked at some of Microsoft’s recent decisions around Windows 10, there’s no reason not to give Linux a try. You might just like what you find – especially if you spend most of your digital life in a browser and productivity suite. J

Installing Ubuntu Linux alongside Windows



20/10/2016 15:46

Feature: G-Sync vs FreeSync

G-Sync vs FreeSync Imagine games without stuttering or tearing. Two technologies promise that. Jason Evangelho reports

V

ariable refresh rate monitor. That jumble of words isn’t rocketing to the top of any ‘sexiest tech phrases’ list anytime soon. Nevertheless, it’s game-changing technology that’s just beginning to seep into mainstream awareness and adoption. You may know this technology by another, slightly more memorable pair of names from two companies driving your PC gaming experience: Nvidia’s G-Sync and AMD’s FreeSync. There are now dozens of G-Sync and FreeSync monitors are available to satisfy a broad range of cravings. You’ll find models priced from £125 to north of £1,000, encompassing 1080p, 4K, and even gorgeous curved 1440p UltraWide displays. So what’s the big deal? Do you need G-Sync or FreeSync in your life? Does it cost more? Are there any deal-breaking drawbacks? Is this tech restricted to desktop use? Is your current video card compatible? Sit back, grab a cup of tea and let’s tackle these pressing questions.

equation have been butting heads. Your video card is impatient to push image frames to your monitor. But if your monitor’s refresh rate is fixed at something like 60Hz, that beautiful frame of animation comes along and the monitor isn’t ready for it. You only see part of what’s happening: a portion of the current frame, and a portion of the next frame. It looks as if the picture were trying to split itself in two and take off in different directions, and it only worsens the more dynamic your game’s framerate becomes.

Another name for this is screen tearing, an ugly artifact that’s become something PC gamers grudgingly accept as reality. But it’s more than an annoyance – it’s the difference between in-game life and death. Say you’re playing Battlefield 4 and a sniper camping on a mountain peak takes aim at you. The glint of his scope against the sunlight would give him away, except you didn’t see it because it took place on that fragment of a frame your monitor rejected. Yes, it’s an extreme case, but it punctuates the very real problem.

What’s so special about G-Sync and FreeSync? Ever since we began manipulating onscreen gaming graphics with a keyboard and mouse, the two crucial pieces of hardware in that


101_103 G-Sync vs FreeSync 258.indd 101

20/10/2016 15:42


Another example of screen tearing

The existing workaround is the V-Sync setting on your graphics card. Sadly, in solving one problem this introduces another – a scenario where your monitor is calling the shots. Now when your GPU is ready to deliver that frame, the monitor says: “Wait a few more milliseconds! This silly gamer doesn’t want screen tearing”. With V-Sync on, this manifests itself as ‘stutter’, or seeing the animation last a touch longer than it’s supposed to. It can be a little jarring, and make the game you’re playing feel sluggish. Ready for yet another symptom of V-Sync? The dreaded ‘lag’. Let’s go back to Battlefield 4 and imagine you just pulled the trigger during a gunfight. Guess what happens if you do it right before the monitor ‘accepts’ the corresponding onscreen visual? That precious bullet doesn’t fire at the exact millisecond you need it to. G-Sync and FreeSync elegantly eradicate these problems by giving your video card

complete control over the display. If your game is bouncing between 40- and 75 frames per second (fps), for example, then your monitor is going to follow suit, its refresh rate constantly changing to keep pace with the video card. Screen tearing, stutter, and input lag all go away.

What are the differences between G-Sync and FreeSync? Nvidia’s G-Sync deserves credit for being first solution on the scene. Aside from the bragging rights, however, a couple of key differences distinguish this variable refresh rate technology from AMD’s. Nvidia invented G-Sync to address both sides of the problem – the GPU and the monitor. Every monitor box emblazoned with a G-Sync logo packs a proprietary module. Nvidia understandably won’t divulge too many details, but it allows Nvidia to fine-tune the experience based on its characteristics

like maximum refresh rate, IPS or TN screens, and voltage. Even when your frame rate gets super low or super high, G-Sync can keep your game looking smooth. Nvidia points to ghosting as a key advantage G-Sync has over AMD’s FreeSync. Its G-Sync module prevents ghosting by customising the way it operates on each and every monitor. With AMD, these adjustments are made within the Radeon driver itself, while the display’s firmware is in charge of other parts of the mix. One of Nvidia’s loudest arguments is that AMD may or may not keep pace with those changes on the driver level. With Nvidia’s G-Sync module, because each monitor is physically tweaked and tuned, keeping up with all the panel variations is part of the job. We have seen ghosting in AMD FreeSync panels like the Acer XG27OHU, but never in a G-Sync monitor, though the ghosting issues in some earlier FreeSync displays have since been corrected via monitor firmware updates. PC Perspective created this video to compare the ghosting effects in early FreeSync monitors against the Asus ROG Swift, a G-Sync monitor. AMD based FreeSync on a royalty-free, industry-standard spec known as DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync. The indisputable fact here is that monitor manufacturers don’t need to implement a proprietary hardware module, meaning the cost to them is cheaper. Ideally, that savings gets passed on to you, the consumer. In fact, across the board, FreeSync monitors are cheaper. Let’s take a quick look at two gorgeous FreeSync monitors from Acer. Both of them are sexy, curved UltraWide displays with an IPS panel at 3440x1440 resolution. Both have a 4ms response time, and both include HDMI and DisplayPort inputs. They’re nearly identical, except that the XR341CK supports FreeSync and costs £990. The G-Sync version—the Predator X34 – costs £10 more. Granted, it rocks a slightly higher 100Hz refresh rate, but the G-Sync markup is obvious. That’s an expensive example, but it doesn’t hurt AMD’s argument that FreeSync is the more affordable solution.

Is the card in your PC compatible? As you can imagine given the frequently bitter rivalry between AMD and Nvidia, your GeForce GTX video card won’t support FreeSync, and your Radeon video card won’t give you that buttery smooth experience on a G-Sync monitor. Yes, Nvidia has the option A G-Sync monitor



20/10/2016 15:42


Most – but not all – of the AMD and Nvidia graphics cards released in the previous two- or three years should be compatible with FreeSync or G-Sync

of adopting the FreeSync/Adaptive-Sync standard – as Intel plans to do one day – but if you’d invested millions into developing a technology to exclusively benefit your users, would you? Worries about brand lock-in aside, let’s say you want to take the plunge. Is your beloved graphics card compatible? On the Nvidia side the answer is simple: every GeForce GTX card since the 650Ti will do the trick, including every 700 series and 900 series desktop graphics card. With AMD the support is a bit scattershot, because some of the company’s offerings are based on older GPUs. For example, the Radeon 360 is FreeSync compatible but the Radeon 370 isn’t. The Radeon 260, 260x, 285, 290, and 290x are ready for FreeSync, but the 270 and 270x aren’t. And so it goes. Here’s something cool though: a strong handful of AMD’s affordable APUs (an all-in-one CPU and GPU) also support FreeSync, which opens the possibility of building a cheap 1080p gaming box and still getting a smooth gaming experience courtesy of FreeSync.

Are there any deal-breakers to choosing either one? In our experience, no. Both will greatly improve your gameplay experience. There is, however, one minor niggle: as things stand right now, G-Sync works only with DisplayPort inputs, meaning the vast majority of TVs are locked out of the equation. That’s bad news for people who have an HTPC or perhaps an upcoming Steam Machine in their living rooms over HDMI. AMD, however, now has FreeSync working over HDMI on certain GPUs. Nvidia currently has no announced plans to incorporate HDMI into G-Sync.

Closing thoughts Both FreeSync and G-Sync work exceptionally well at combating the decades-old visual problems plaguing PC gaming. Neither has

an exclusive feature compelling enough to warrant switching camps, however. Nvidia has a slight advantage at the very low and very high end of the frame rate spectrum, and its G-Sync does a better job with ghosting, but these are what we’d call edge cases that won’t affect the vast majority of gamers. On the other hand, AMD has a price advantage with comparable FreeSync monitors clocking in at an average of £100 to £150 less. Whichever you choose, we enthusiastically encourage you to jump on the variable refresh rate train, as long as you’re okay with the fact that you’re locking yourself into purchasing graphics cards from the same brand for the life of the display. If you’re rocking Radeon, make FreeSync your next monitor upgrade. If you’re gaming with GeForce, take a good hard look at the crop of G-Sync options. It can’t be stressed enough how dramatically they improve a game’s immersion, and how effectively they eliminate nasty screen tearing, stutter, and input lag, all without introducing new problems into the mix. I’ll go on record saying that if given the choice between a non-G-Sync/FreeSync 4K monitor and a smaller, G-Sync/FreeSyncenabled 1440p monitor, we’ll choose the latter every single time. It’s just that awesome. Find a way to witness it for yourself and you’ll be convinced. J

Wait, can you get this technology on a notebook? Yes. A handful of G-Sync and FreeSync powered notebooks are on the market right now from Asus and MSI, with more on the way from popular manufacturers like Lenovo and Gigabyte. Unlike desktop monitors, notebook displays won’t require that proprietary G-Sync module, but to ensure quality, Nvidia is pretty stingy with its approval process. For example, all of the current G-Sync-enabled laptop displays top out at 75Hz, not the standard 60Hz. As for supported mobile GPUs, right now it’s just the 950, 960, 965M, 970M, and 980M, plus all GeForce GTX 10-series laptops. Nvidia is dedicated to the G-Sync cause, so expect to see a proliferation of G-Sync gaming notebooks in the near future.

Acer’s curved, ultra-wide 3440x1440 XR341CKA G-Sync monitor



20/10/2016 15:42

FEATURE

Meet Pixel, a gorgeous, much-needed visual overhaul for Raspberry Pi’s main distro A delicious upgrade for Raspberry Pi, writes Brad Chacos

T

he Raspberry Pi isn’t exactly known for its polish. The glorious, but bare-bones £29 mini-PC packs humble hardware and even lacks a case in its quest to deliver affordable computing to the masses. That austere design even extended to the no-frills ‘Raspbian’ Linux distribution designed specifically for the Pi – until now. The Raspberry Pi Foundation recently revealed ‘Pi Improved Xwindows Environment, Lightweight’, or Pixel, a beautified new desktop environment for the Raspbian operating system. Pixel delivers a much-needed coat of fresh paint to the Raspberry Pi. Gone are the cryptic scrolling startup messages, replaced by a simple splash screen, as is the stark Pi-logo wallpaper, replaced by your choice of 16 gorgeous photos captured by Foundation co-founder Greg Annandale.


104_105 Meet Pixel 258.indd 104

20/10/2016 15:33

FEATURE

The old icons have been replaced by a menu that, according to the Foundation, is designed to look “businesslike enough to be appropriate for those people who use the Pi desktop for serious work, but with just a touch of playfulness.” Even the window

frames and login dialog box have been overhauled with a sleeker, more modern design. This is a top-to-bottom refresh of the Raspbian visual design, and it looks to be a huge quality of life improvement for Raspberry Pi aficionados. Be sure to check out the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s Pixel blog post (tinyurl.com/jmop8y8) for much more detail on every single design decision. The latest Raspbian image extends beyond Pixel’s amped-up aesthetics, though.

The distribution now includes RealVNC server and view applications by default, as well as a desktop Sense HAT emulator. The Raspbian image also introduces Chromium, which may eventually replace Epiphany as the Raspberry Pi’s primary web browser. Raspbian preloads Chromium with the uBlock Origin ad blocker, to keep online advertisements from bogging down the miniPC’s modest hardware. Likewise, Raspbian’s Chromium also utilises the h264ify extension,

which “forces YouTube to serve videos in a format which can be accelerated by the Pi’s hardware,” according to the Foundation. The impact on you at home: Pixel’s release won’t matter for Raspberry Pi users who use their machine for fantastical projects. But if you’re using the Pi as a basic computer, a tool to learn coding, or many other surprisingly practical projects, the new look will make navigating the mini-PC much more pleasant. With each new release of Raspbian and the Raspberry Pi itself, the Raspberry Pi Foundation does a fantastic job of working out the device’s more annoying kinks. J

Right: the new Sense HAT application


104_105 Meet Pixel 258.indd 105

20/10/2016 15:33

HOW TO

Master Windows’ PowerShell feature Woody Leonhard’s guide will help you get to grips with this handy addition to the Windows toolbox

106 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to January 2017

106_110 HT Use Windows PowerShell 258.indd 106

20/10/2016 10:28

HOW TO If you’ve wrestled with Windows 10, you’ve undoubtedly heard of PowerShell. If you’ve tried to do something fancy with Win7/8.1 recently, PowerShell has probably come up, too. After years of relying on the Windows command line and tossed-together batch files, it’s time to set your sights on something more powerful, more adaptive – better. PowerShell is an enormous addition to the Windows toolbox and it can provoke a bit of fear given that enormity. Is it a scripting

language, a command shell, a floor wax? Do you have to link a cmdlet with an instantiated .Net class to run with providers? And why do all the support documents talk about administrators – do you have to be a professional Windows admin to make use of it? Relax. PowerShell is powerful, but it needn’t be intimidating. The following guide is aimed at those who have run a Windows command or two or jimmied a batch file. Consider it a step-by-step transformation from PowerShell curious to PowerShell capable.

Step 1: Crank it up The first thing you’ll need is PowerShell itself. If you’re using Windows 10, you already have PowerShell 5 – the latest version – installed. (Windows 10 Anniversary Update has 5.1, but you won’t know the difference with the Fall Update’s 5.0.) Windows 8 and 8.1 ship with PowerShell 4, which is good enough for starting out. Installing PowerShell on Windows 7 isn’t difficult, but it takes extra care – and you need to install .Net Framework separately. PowerShell offers two interfaces. Advanced users will go for the full-blown GUI, known as the Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE). Beginners, though, are best served by the PowerShell Console, a simple text interface reminiscent of the Windows command line, or even DOS 3.2. To start PowerShell as an Administrator from Windows 10, click Start and scroll down the list of applications to Windows PowerShell. Click on that line, right-click Windows PowerShell

and choose Run as Administrator. In Windows 8.1, look for Windows PowerShell in the Windows System folder. In Win7, it’s in the Accessories folder. You can run PowerShell as a ‘normal’ user by following the same sequence but with a left click. In any version of Microsoft’s operating system, you can use Windows search to look for PowerShell. In Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, you can put it on your Ctrl-X ‘Power menu’ (right-click a blank spot on the taskbar and choose Properties; on the Navigation tab, check the box to Replace Command Prompt). Once you have it open, it’s a good idea to pin PowerShell to your taskbar. Yes, you’re going to like it that much.

Step 2: Type old-fashioned Windows commands You’d be amazed how much Windows command-line syntax works as expected in PowerShell. For example, cd changes directories (folders), and dir still lists all the files and folders included in the current folder. Depending on how you start the PowerShell console, you may start at c:\Windows\system32 or at c:\ Users\. In the screenshot example, we use cd .. (note the space) to move up one level at a time, then run dir to list all files and subfolders in the C:\ directory.

January 2017 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to 107


20/10/2016 10:29

How to: Master Windows’ PowerShell feature

Step 3: Install the help files Commands such as cd and dir aren’t native PowerShell commands. They’re aliases – substitutes for real PowerShell commands. Aliases can be handy for those of us with finger memory that’s hard to overcome. But they don’t even begin to touch the most important parts of PowerShell. To start getting a feel for PowerShell itself, type help followed by a command you know. For example, in the screenshot, we type help dir. PowerShell help tells us that dir is an alias for the PowerShell command Get-ChildItem. Sure enough, if you type get-childitem at the PS C:\> prompt, you see exactly what you saw with the dir command. As noted at the bottom of the screenshot, help files for PowerShell aren’t installed automatically. To retrieve them (you do want to get them), log on to PowerShell in Administrator mode, then type update-help. Installing the help files will take several minutes, and you may be missing a few modules – Help for NetWNV and SecureBoot failed to install on our test machine. But when you’re done, the full help system will be at your beck and call. From that point on, type get-help followed by the command (‘cmdlet’ in PowerShell speak, pronounced ‘command-let’) that concerns you and see all of the help for that item. For example, get-help get-childitem produces a summary of the get-childitem options. It also prompts you to type in variations on the theme.

Thus, the following: get-help get-childitem -examples produces seven detailed examples of how to use get-childitem. The PowerShell command get-help get-childitem -detailed includes those seven examples, as well as a detailed explanation of every parameter available for the get-childitem cmdlet.

Step 4: Get help on the parameters In the help dir screenshot, you might have noticed there are two listings under SYNTAX for getchilditem. The fact that there are two separate syntaxes for the cmdlet means there are two ways of running the cmdlet. How do you keep the syntaxes separate, and what do the parameters mean? The answer’s easy, if you know the trick. To get all the details about parameters for the getchilditem cmdlet, or any other cmdlet, use the -full parameter, like this: get-help get-childitem -full That produces a line-by-line listing of what you can do with the cmdlet and what may (or may not) happen. See the screenshot. Sifting through the parameter details, it’s reasonably easy to see that get-childitem can be used to retrieve ‘child’ items (such as the names of subfolders or filenames) in a location that you specify, with or without specific character matches. For example: get-childItem “*.txt” -recurse retrieves a list of all of the “*.txt” files in the current folder and all subfolders (due to the -recurse parameter). Whereas the following: get-childitem “HKLM:\Software” returns a list of all of the high-level registry keys in HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINE\Software. If you’ve ever tried to get inside the Registry using a Windows command line or a batch file, I’m sure you can see how powerful this kind of access must be.



20/10/2016 10:29


Step 5: Nail down the names There’s a reason why the cmdlets we’ve seen so far look the same: get-childitem, update-help and get-help all follow the same verb‑noun convention. Mercifully, all of PowerShell’s cmdlets use this convention, with a verb preceding a (singular) noun. Those of you who spent weeks struggling over inconsistently named VB and VBA commands can breathe a sigh of relief. To see where we’re going, look at some of the most common cmdlets. Start with those that reach into your system and pull out information, like these: set-location: Sets the current working location to a specified location get-content: Gets the contents of a file get-item: Gets files and folders copy-item: Copies an item from one location to another remove-item: Deletes files and folders get-process: Gets the processes that are running on a local or remote computer get-service: Gets the services running on a local or remote computer invoke-webrequest: Gets content from a web page on the internet To see how a particular cmdlet works, use get-help, as in

Try this cmdlet. (It may try to get you to install a program to read the ‘about’ box. If so, ignore it.) invoke-webrequest askwoody.com You get a succinct list of the web page’s content declarations, headers, images, links, and more. See how that works? Notice in the get-help listing for invoke-webrequest that the invokewebrequest cmdlet ‘returns collections of forms, links, images, and other significant HTML elements’ – exactly what you should see on your screen. Some cmdlets help you control or understand PowerShell itself: get-command: Lists all available cmdlets (it’s a long list!) get-verb: Lists all available verbs (the left halves of cmdlets) clear-host: Clears the display in the host program Various parameters let you whittle down the commands and narrow in on options that may be of use to you. For example, to see a list of all the cmdlets that work with Windows services, try this: get-command *-service It lists all the verbs that are available with service as the noun. Here’s the result:

get-help copy-item -full Based on its help description, you can readily figure out what the cmdlet wants. For example, if you want to copy all your files and folders from Documents to c:\temp, you would use: copy-item c:\users\[username] \documents\* c:\temp As you type in that command, you’ll see a few nice touches built into the PowerShell environment. For example, if you type copy-i and press the Tab key, PowerShell fills in Copy-Item and a space. If you mistype a cmdlet and PowerShell can’t figure it out, you get a very thorough description of what went wrong.

Get-Service New-Service Restart-Service Resume-Service Set-Service Start-Service Stop-Service Suspend-Service You can combine these cmdlets with cmdlets to dig into almost any part of PowerShell. That’s where pipes come into the picture.

Step 6: Bring in the pipes If you’ve ever used the Windows command line or slogged through a batch file, you know about redirection and pipes. In simple terms, both redirection (the > character) and pipes (the | character) take the output from an action and stick it someplace else. You can, for example, redirect the output of a dir command to a text file, or ‘pipe’ the result of a ping command into a find, to filter out interesting results, like so: dir > temp.txt

1

ping askwoody.com | find “packets” > temp2.txt In the second command above, the find command looks for the string packets in the piped output of an askwoody.com ping and sticks all the lines that match in a file called temp2.txt. Perhaps surprisingly, the first of those commands works fine in PowerShell. To run the second command, you want something like this: ping askwoody.com | select-string packets | out-file temp2.txt Using redirection and pipes greatly expands the Windows command line’s capabilities. Instead of scrolling endlessly down a screen looking for a text string, for example, you can put together a

piped Windows command that does the vetting for you. PowerShell has a piping capability, but it isn’t restricted to text. Instead, PowerShell lets you pass an entire object from one cmdlet to the next, where an ‘object’ is a combination of data (called properties) and the actions (methods) that can be used on the data. The hard part, however, lies in aligning the objects. The kind of object delivered by one cmdlet has to match up with the kinds of objects accepted by the receiving cmdlet. Text is a very simple kind of object, so if you’re working with text, lining up items is easy. Other objects aren’t so rudimentary. How to figure it out? Welcome to the get-member cmdlet. If you want to know what type of object a cmdlet produces, pipe it



20/10/2016 10:29


through get-member. For example, if you’re trying to figure out the processes running on your computer, and you’ve narrowed down the options to the get-process cmdlet, here’s how you find out what it produces: get-process | get-member Running that command produces a long list of properties and methods for get-process, but at the very beginning of the list you can see the type of object that get-process creates:

2

TypeName: System.Diagnostics.Process The screenshot also tells you that get-process has properties called Handles, Name, NPM, PM, SI, VM and WS. If you want to manipulate the output of get-process so that you can work with it (as opposed to having it display a long list of active processes on the monitor), you need to find another cmdlet that will work with System.Diagnostics.Process as input. To find a willing cmdlet, you simply use PowerShell:

object loops through each item sent down the pipeline, one by one, and applies whatever selection criteria you request. There’s a special marker called $_. that lets you step through each item in the pipe, one at a time. Let’s say you wanted to come up with a list of all of the processes running on your machine that are called “svchost” – in PowerShell speak, you want to match on a Name property of svchost. Try this PowerShell command:

get-command -Parametertype System.Diagnostics.Process get-process | where-object {$_.Name -eq “svchost”} That produces a list of all of the cmdlets that can handle System.Diagnostics.Process. Some cmdlets are notorious for taking nearly any kind of input. Chief among them: where-object. Perhaps confusingly, where-

The where-object cmdlet looks at each System.Diagnostics. Process item, compares the .Name of that item to “svchost”; if the item matches, it gets spit out the end of the pipe and typed on your monitor. See the above screenshot.

Step 7: Dissecting a useful PowerShell command Before we point you to further reading and drop you off the deep end, let’s go through an example of a PowerShell command that many people have asked about. This particular command works only in Windows 10 and only if you’re running PowerShell as an administrator. It’s designed to reinstall the default Windows 10 apps, and we’ve found it useful for refreshing the little beasts – particularly for those who delete;d the built-in apps but suddenly have a change of heart. The command looks like this: Get-AppXPackage | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\ AppXManifest.xml”} If you run that PowerShell command, ignore the red warnings, and when it’s done, reboot your machine; all of your default Windows 10 apps will suddenly appear in their latest incarnations. Here’s how the command works. Get-AppXPackage goes through all of the app packages in your user profile. Even if you’ve deleted an app, by whatever means (some are easy, some not so), it’s still listed in your user profile. The Get-AppXPackage cmdlet returns an object with the TypeName Microsoft.Windows.Appx.PackageManager. Commands.AppxPackage, which includes the full name of the app package and the location of the accompanying XML manifest file. If you run the get-appxpackage cmdlet, you see a long list of app packages. The screenshot shows the entry for the

Xbox app on our main computer. In the PowerShell command, the Foreach cmdlet loops through each of the entries in the AppXPackage object, feeding them to the Add-AppxPackage cmdlet. According to get-help for Add-AppxPackage, there are two key switches: • The -Register switch is used “To register an existing app package installation, you must specify the DisableDevelopmentMode parameter and the Register parameter.” • The -DisableDevelopmentMode switch tells Windows to reregister “an existing app package installation that has been disabled, did not register, or has become corrupted.” The $($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml string specifies where the XML manifest file is located. If you peek into one of the AppXManifest.xml files, you’ll see a complex list of application IDs, executable files, and a large number of visual elements associated with the app. On reboot, all of the freshly added app packages get downloaded from the Windows Store and installed. J



20/10/2016 10:29

How to: Shut down your computer at a set time

Shut down your computer at a set time Ian Paul reveals two simple applications that will make it easy to schedule your PC’s bedtime RTG Ninja Shutdown RTG Ninja Shutdown is a single window, portable app created by India-based developer Priyanshu Kumar. After you download it as a ZIP file from Kumar’s website (tinyurl.com/zq2nkke), extract the folder and keep it somewhere handy, like your Documents folder. Whenever you need to use it, just double-click the EXE file and the program appears. Everything is pretty selfexplanatory. You want to be on the Offline Mode tab. Then choose the hour, minute, second, and AM/PM option that you want. A key thing to remember here is that RTG Ninja won’t work if you don’t fill out all four fields. So make sure you set your seconds option even if you’re only setting it to zero. Next, choose the radio button for the option you want, which can be to Shutdown, Restart or Log off. Now click Set and you’re done. If you don’t want to keep the window open click Hide to keep it out of the way. RTG Ninja also has an ‘online mode’ that allows you to set a shutdown time remotely, but we didn’t explore that option as it requires interfacing with the developer’s server. Personally, we’d rather just keep it local.

Simple Shutdown Timer PCWinTech’s Simple Shutdown Timer (tinyurl.com/hnfyo3o) is ridiculously small. It would be nice if it had an option to expand the window, but it doesn’t. With this app all you have to do is set how long you want your computer to run, filling out the hours, minutes, and seconds text entry boxes. Then click the drop-down menu and decide whether you want the PC to log off your account, reboot, shutdown, hibernate or sleep. Click Start, the timer begins counting down. Simple Shutdown Timer is a traditional installed desktop program that works with Windows 2000 or later, and there’s a portable version available as well. If you’re into the command line, it also works with a few commands, which you can read about on the company’s website. If these two programs don’t catch your fancy there are tons more such as Windows Reboot (tinyurl.com/zshLq85) and Switch Off (tinyurl.com/2e2fv5t). If you’re really daring, you could also learn to schedule regular shutdown times via Windows’ built-in Task Scheduler. J


111 HT Shut Down PC 258.indd 111

20/10/2016 10:56

How to: Give your PC a boost with a new graphics card

Read our graphics card recommendations on page 140

Give your PC a boost with a new graphics card If you want high-end performance you’ll need to install a new graphics card. Thomas Ryan shows how


112_114 HT Install A Graphics Card 258.indd 112

20/10/2016 15:54


Few upgrades add as much punch to your PC as installing a new graphics card. It can transform your PC from a system that chokes on lightweight games into a monster that churns through even the most visually punishing titles with ease. But you need to get that new hardware up and running before you’re able to bask in enhanced graphics glory. Here’s how to upgrade your existing computer with a new GPU, from basic buying considerations to step-by-step installation instructions.

Buying considerations Simply deciding which graphics card you want is a complex and nuanced discussion, as both AMD and Nvidia offer choices for virtually every budget from sub-£100 to £1,000-plus. In general, you want the graphics card that offers the most bang for your buck, though you’ll also want to consider a card’s noise, heat, and power consumption. Next make sure your computer has the proper hardware to support your new card. The most common problem that people run into is an inadequate power supply: either it can’t supply enough wattage, or it doesn’t have enough available PCI-E power connectors. As a rule of thumb, your power supply should be rated from double the power consumption of your graphics card. For example, if you purchased a R9 290X – a video card that draws 300 watts – you should have a power supply that can provide at least 600 watts of power and has both 8- and 6-pin PCI-E power connectors. To find out how much wattage your power supply pumps out, open your case and look for the standard identification sticker all power supplies have, which lists their basic information. While you’re there you can also identify how many 6- and 8-pin PCI-E connectors are available. Picking the right power supply is even more important if you’re upgrading to a multi-card configuration, because you’ll likely need to buy a power supply rated for one or more kilowatts. Finally, is there enough room inside of your case to fit your new graphics card? Some high-end graphics card can be over a foot long, and two or even three expansion slots wide. You can find the physical dimensions for a graphics on its product page or on the manufacturer’s website. With all of those questions resolved, it’s time to get down to business.

You’re going to need a decent power supply if you want to get your game on

Graphics cards can be drastically different sizes depending on the model and vendor

Installing a graphics card Installing a graphics card is a straightforward process that requires three things: a new graphics card, your computer, and a Phillips-head screw driver. Be sure to

You install a graphics card into a PCI-E x16 slot on your computer’s motherboard (the long, blue slots in this picture)



20/10/2016 15:55


turn off your PC and unplug it from the wall before you begin. Start by removing the side of your computer’s case, then locate and remove your current graphics card. Some PCs will not have a graphics card installed. Instead, you need to locate the PCI-E x16 slot closest to the heat sink of your processor. This will either be the first or second expansion slot on your motherboard. Make sure that there are no loose wires blocking your access to this slot. If you’re replacing an existing graphics card, unplug any cables connected to it, remove the screw from its retention bracket, and then remove the card. Most motherboards have a small plastic latch on the end of the PCI-E slot that locks the graphics card in place. Make sure that you toggle this latch to unlock your old graphics card so you can remove it. You can now install your new graphics card into the open and unobstructed PCI-E x16 slot. Firmly insert the card into the slot, then push down the plastic lock on the end of the PCI-E slot to hold it in place. Next, use a screw to secure the graphic card’s metal retention bracket to your PC’s case. You can reuse the same screw(s) that held the cover bracket or your former graphics card in place. Most gaming-level graphics cards require additional power connectors. If yours does, make sure you connect those PCI-E power cables. Your graphics card will not function correctly without properly supplied power.

Don’t forget to lock the latch at the end of the PCI-E slot after firmly inserting your graphics card

Finishing off With your graphics card secured and powered up, finish the job by sliding your case’s side panel back into position and plugging your display cable into your new graphics card. Turn on your computer. Now it’s time to take care of the software side of things. If your new graphics card is the same brand as your old one this process is simple. Just go to the manufacturer’s website and download the latest driver package for you operating system. Keep in mind that graphics drivers are quite large, generally about 300MB in size, and it make take some time for them to download depending on the speed of your internet connection. Install the driver, restart your computer, and now you’re ready to enjoy the buttery-smooth framerates your new graphics card will no doubt deliver. If you’re switching manufacturers (from Intel to AMD, from AMD to Nvidia, or vice versa), uninstall your old graphics driver and restart your computer before installing the driver for your new graphics card. If you don’t uninstall the old driver it may conflict with the new driver. J

Your graphics card won’t run unless you’ve connected it to your PSU



20/10/2016 15:55

How to: Understand when your SSD could die

Understand when your SSD could die Josh Norem explains how the type of flash a solid-state drive uses can affect its lifespan Solid-state drives are fundamentally different from hard drives, and they can, in fact, die in one of two ways. Here we explain this difference, how SSDs can die and how you can check yours to make sure it still has plenty of life. The main difference between hard drives and SSDs is this: the area of a hard drive that can hold data can be rewritten as many times as is needed, and will always be usable as long as the drive is functioning (bad sectors aside). This is not the case with SSDs: each cell that holds data can only be written to, or programmed, a finite number of times before it is effectively dead. That’s because every time a write operation needs to be performed, any data in the cell has to be erased before it’s used. This process of writing/ erasing/rewriting essentially causes wear and tear on the cells and erosion of the insulator between cells. Eventually individual cells can no longer hold a charge. Different types of flash memory have different life cycles depending on how many bits there are per cell. Fewer bits equal fewer problems over time, and more bits cause more issues. The most common form in SSDs is called MLC, which stands for Multi-Level Cell. This means each cell can hold two bits of data, and this type of flash, generally speaking, can handle 3000 or so cycles of erasing the cells and reprogramming them. More recently, SSD manufacturers are using a type of flash called TLC, which stands for Triple-Level Cell. This adds one more bit to each cell, thus improving density, but at the cost of endurance. This type of flash can generally withstand 1000 cycles, or about one-third the endurance of MLC. Note, too, that we’re talking two-dimensional or planar flash, not 3D NAND, which is a whole different animal that we won’t get into here. All this means is your SSD has a finite lifespan, usually measured in ‘terabytes written’ (TBW). Manufacturers don’t often

quote these numbers, and your SSD might die way before it hits this magic number, or long afterward, depending on a multitude of factors. For example, Samsung lists 150TBW as the endurance figure for its 850 EVO SSDS. For most SSDs it’s somewhere between 75- and 150TBW. Most SSDs include software that will tell you how much data has been written to your drive? For our Samsung SSD it’s right out in the open on the main page of its SSD Magician software. That’s our two-year old SSD, and so far we’ve written almost 32TB. If that number were higher, like 60TB, we’d be concerned, but apparently my drive has plenty of life left. We still have a backup of it, though, as should you (not my drive, but yours). J

Most SSD software will tell you the terabytes written (TBW)


115 HT SSD Die 258.indd 115

20/10/2016 15:49

How to: Work faster and smarter in Microsoft Excel

Work faster and smarter in Microsoft Excel JD Sartain’s shortcuts will help boost your productivity in Microsoft’s spreadsheet application Select the entire spreadsheet Everyone knows that Ctrl+A selects the entire spreadsheet, document, email, and so on. In Excel, however, there’s an even faster way. Click the small green arrow in the square space between the row numbers and column letters.


116_118 HT Boost Your Productivity 258.indd 116

20/10/2016 10:51


Number formats Which is faster, the mouse or the keyboard? Those who use both work faster than either one or the other alone. Try these shortcuts. After you enter a number or column of numbers, highlight the target cells and press: Ctrl+Shift+! to display the Number format with two decimal points Ctrl+Shift+£ to format the selected cells as currency

£

£

Ctrl+Shift+% to format as percentages, Ctrl+Shift+~ for the General format Ctrl+Shift+# for the Date format Ctrl+Shift+@ for the Time format Ctrl+Shift+^ for the Exponential number format

Quick Zoom If you want to zoom in or out of your spreadsheet, you have to perform several steps. First, select the View tab, then the Zoom button in the Zoom group, then select a Zoom Magnification from the Zoom dialog box (or click Custom and type a Zoom Magnification size in the field box), then click OK. Use this simple shortcut instead. Hold down the Ctrl key and roll the mouse’s scroll wheel forward to zoom in or backward to zoom out.

4. The PMT function Ever wonder how much your house or car payment would be for a specified loan amount? Imagine having the tools to determine if you can afford a BMW or a Jaguar; a house or a flat? Say, for example, the house cost £200,000 for a 30-year loan at 3.2 percent interest? Use the PMT formula to find out. In cell A3, enter this formula: =PMT(3.2%/12,360,200000). Note the answer is (£864.93). Why is it displayed as a negative number? Because it represents money that you pay out (as opposed to money you receive). Now, instead of piling all the information into a single formula, place the data into separate cells so you can change the numbers and play around with the payment amounts. For example, enter the following field names in columns A, B, C, D, and E: Interest Rate, Divide by Months In the Loan Year, Term (in Months), Loan Amount, and Payment. Now enter some data into these fields; for example: in A7 enter the current market interest rate. Next (in B7), if the rate is per year, enter 12 (for 12 months in the year. In column C, enter the term or length of the loan (in months, not years). Last, enter the loan amount in D7. Then enter this formula in the Payment field (E7): =PMT(A7/B7,C7,D7). The answer is (£1100.65). Now you can change the values in A7 through D7 (or copy the information down) and enter different interest rates, loan amounts, and terms to find out how much the payments are for your next house, car, boat, or any other loan.

£ £ £ £ £ £

£ £ £ £ £ £



20/10/2016 10:47


5. The RAND function If you’re one of those disciplined few who changes your password every week or month, or you manage the passwords of users on a network, the RAND function is your best friend because the numbers really are random. You can create a list in Excel, use this function to create the passwords, then pass them out to your staff. And because Microsoft’s program recalculates formulas every time you press the Enter key and every time you save and exit, the numbers will never be saved anywhere. Enter 12 names in cells A3 through A14. Move your cursor to cell B3. Go to Formulas > Function Library > Math & Trig, and select the RAND function from the drop-down menu. Note the dialog box says: “This function takes no arguments.” That means you don’t have to do anything except click OK. Copy the function from B3 down to B14. Notice that every time you press Enter, the numbers change. To keep a record of the random numbers, use the VALUE() command or Copy > Paste > Paste Values to create a static list of the numbers in column B. However, you must first turn off the Auto Calculation (set it to Manual), or the random numbers/passwords will change the second you press Enter. To change Auto-Calc to Manual, select File > Options > Formulas. At the top of the screen under Calculate Options, check Manual and uncheck Recalculate Workbook Before Saving. Now you can copy the random numbers/passwords in column A to column B. Highlight A3 through A14. Type Ctrl+C for Copy. Move to B3 and select Paste Special from the Home tab’s Clipboard group. Then check Values in the Paste Special dialog box and click OK. Now you have a copy of the random numbers in column A. Press F9 to recalculate the spreadsheet while in Manual Calc mode, or you can change the Manual Calc back to Auto Calc.

The RANDBETWEEN function The RANDBETWEEN function is just like the RAND function, except you get to choose the range of numbers—for example, between one and 500, or 10 and 1,000. Once you remove the decimals in the RAND command, the random numbers created are good for most all situations. But if you specifically want four- or six-digit numbers only, use RANDBETWEEN and choose a range of numbers that fall into that requirement. Use the same names as in the previous spreadsheet (on cells A3 through A14). In cell B3, select the RANDBETWEEN function from Formulas > Function Library > Math & Trig. In the Function Arguments dialog box, enter the bottom (lowest) number of your range and a top (highest) number of your range, then click OK. Copy the formula from B3 down through B14, then press F9 so the formula calculates. Then move to C3 and Copy > Paste > Paste Values. J



20/10/2016 10:51

Reader software downloads zone

DOWNLOADS ZONE Download the latest software from the PC Advisor Software Downloads Zone Available in print and digital formats, and featuring latest news, reviews, group tests, features and tutorials, PC Advisor magazine is simply the best technology magazine you can buy. In every issue we bring you software downloads through the PC Advisor Download Zone. All software downloads can be found in a central location. To make things as easy as possible, we have removed the need for individual codes to download or register each program. The only code you’ll need is DOWNLOAD1215, which you can enter at the following page: pcadvisor.co.uk/magazine/download Once logged in, you’ll be able to browse the software on offer or search for something specific using the search box, or click the Downloads link at the top of each page and browse by category. The Downloads Zone has hundreds of great programs and apps that are just a click or two away.

January 2017 pcadvisor.co.uk/magazine/download 119

119 Software Download 258 .indd 119

21/10/2016 11:29

TOP5CHARTS TEST CENTRE PC Advisor’s charts rank and rate the best products every month. If you’re looking to buy the latest and greatest kit, look no further than our 100-plus reviews

121

122

123

124

125

126

128

129

130

131

132

133

134

135

136

137

138

139

140

141

142

143

145

145


120_145 New Top 5 Charts 258.indd 120

144

Prices listed are those quoted by the distributor or manufacturer and include VAT. They are intended only as a guide. If you’re interested in purchasing one of the products reviewed here then please contact the manufacturer or supplier directly, mentioning both PC Advisor and the issue in which you saw the product. If it won’t supply the product as reviewed, contact us at [email protected]. Manufacturers are under no obligation to feature reviewed products on their websites. Our recommendations are for guidance only. Star ratings are awarded at the time of the original review and given in relation to the market competition at that time.

TEST CENTRE

20/10/2016 10:09

Top 5 charts

Best laptops

1

2

3

4

5

Dell XPS 13 9350

Lenovo Yoga 710 (11in)

Asus ZenBook UX305CA

Dell Latitude 13 7370

HP Envy 13

Price

£1,720 inc VAT

£549 inc VAT

£649 inc VAT

£1,079 inc VAT

£799 inc VAT

Website

Dell.co.uk

Lenovo.com/uk

Asus.com/uk

Dell.co.uk

Hp.com/uk

Processor

2.2GHz Intel Core i5-5200U

Intel Core M3-6Y30

Intel Core i5-6300HQ

Intel Core m5-6Y57

2.5GHz Intel Core i7

RAM

8GB DDR3

8GB LPDDR3

8GB

8GB

8GB DDR3

Storage

128GB SSD

128GB SSD

128GB SSD

256GB SSD

256GB SSD

Screen size

13.3in matt IPS

11.6in TN glossy

13.3in matt

13.3in InfinityEdge

13.3in matt

Screen resolution

1920x1080

1920x1080

3000x2000

1920x1080

1920x1080

Graphics

Intel HD Graphics 5500

Intel HD 515

Intel HD 515

Intel HD 515

Intel HD 520

Video memory

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

Wireless

802.11ac

802.11ac

802.11a/b/g/n/ac

802.11ac

802.11a/b/g/n/ac

Ethernet

Gigabit

Gigabit

Gigabit

Gigabit

Gigabit

Bluetooth











USB

2x USB 3.0

1x USB 3.0

3x USB 3.0

1x USB 3.0, 2x USB-C

3x USB 3.0

FireWire











Thunderbolt











DisplayPort











HDMI











DVI











VGA











eSATA











Media card slot











Audio

Headphone jack, mic

Headphone jack, mic

Headphone jack, mic

Headphone jack, mic

Headphone jack, mic

Optical drive

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

Extras

720p webcam

HD webcam

HD webcam

HD webcam

HD webcam

Operating system

Windows 10 Home

Windows 10 Home

Windows 10

Windows 10 Professional

Windows 10 Home

Bundled software

None

None

None

None

None

Gaming scores

24.5/17.9fps in Tomb Raider

Not tested

Not tested

Not tested

Not tested

Battery

Not stated

40Wh lithium-ion

44Wh lithium-ion

34Wh

45Wh lithium-ion

Battery life

Not tested

9 hrs 45 mins

8 hrs

8 hrs 23 mins

1 hr 24 mins

PCMark8 score

Not tested

4712

1985

2942

2657

Dimensions

304x200x15mm

281x195x14.9mm

324x226x12.3mm

304.8x210.5x14.mm

326x226x13mm

Weight

1.3kg

1.04kg

1.2kg

1.12kg

1.3kg

Warranty

2-year return-to-base

1 year

1 year

1 year

1-year collect-and-return

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/ZZF4ZQ2

TINYURL.COM/ZSVR34C

TINYURL.COM/HWHAJYR

TINYURL.COM/HDHYG2P

TINYURL.COM/HDAQHQX

Build rating Features rating Performance rating Value rating Overall rating

HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/P82TEPF FOR OUR BUYING ADVICE TEST CENTRE



20/10/2016 10:09

Top 5 charts

Best budget laptops

1

2

3

4

5

HP 250 G4

HP 255 G4

Asus X555LA-XX290H

Dell Inspiron 11 3000

HP Stream 11

Price

£299 inc VAT

£269 inc VAT

£300 inc VAT

£179 inc VAT

£179 inc VAT

Website

Hp.com/uk

Hp.com/uk

Asus.com/uk

Dell.co.uk

Hp.com/uk

Processor


2.2GHz AMD A8-7410


1.6-2.1GHz Intel Celeron N3050

2.16GHz Intel Celeron N2830

RAM

8GB

4GB DDR3

4GB DDR3

2GB

2GB DDR3

Storage

1TB HDD

1TB HDD

1TB HDD

32GB SSD

32GB SnaDisk eMMc drive

Screen size

15.6in matt

15.6in matt

15.6in glossy

11.6in matt

11.6in matt

Screen resolution

1366x768

1366x768

1366x768

1366x768

1366x768

Graphics

Intel HD GPU

AMD Radeon 5


Intel HD

Intel HD Graphics

Video memory

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

Wireless

802.11b/g/n

802.11b/g/n

802.11b/g/n

802.11a/b/g/n

802.11b/g/n

Ethernet

Gigabit

Gigabit

Gigabit





Bluetooth











USB

1x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0

1x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0

1x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0

1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0

1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0

FireWire











Thunderbolt











DisplayPort











HDMI











DVI











VGA











eSATA











Media card slot











Audio

Headphone minijack

Headphone minijack

Headphone minijack

Headphone minijack

Headphone minijack

Optical drive

DVDRW

DVDRW

DVDRW

None

None

Webcam

Kensington lock slot, webcam


Webcam


Operating system

Windows 10

Windows 8.1 Pro

Windows 8.1

Windows 8

Windows 8.1

Bundled software

None

None

None

None

None

Battery

31Wh Lithium-ion

31Wh Lithium-ion

37Wh Lithium-ion

32Wh Lithium-polymer

37Wh Lithium-polymer

Battery life

5 hrs 5 mins

4 hrs 6 mins

5 hrs 17 mins

8 hrs 15 mins

8 hrs 45 mins

PCMark 8 Home score

2171

1863

1985

Not tested

Not tested

Batman (Low/High)

Not tested

28fps/Not tested

30fps/Not tested

Not tested

Not tested

Dimensions

384x254x24mm

385x255x24.6mm

381x257x26.3mm

292x196x19.9mm

300x205x20mm

Weight

2.1kg

2.1kg

2.1kg

1.39kg

1.25kg

Warranty

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/Z5XNZOR

TINYURL.COM/GWWV8TH

TINYURL.COM/OMYZQJ3

TINYURL.COM/Z3AUEFY

TINYURL.COM/GNRP9BC


Extras

HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/PVGMVTS FOR OUR BUYING ADVICE 122 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews January 2017


TEST CENTRE

20/10/2016 10:09

Top 5 charts

Best ultraportable laptops

1

3

4

5

Apple MacBook Pro Retina 13in HP EliteBook Folio 1040 G1

2

Apple MacBook Air 13in

Dell XPS 13 9350

HP Envy 13

Price

£999 inc VAT

£2,116 inc VAT

£849 inc VAT

£1,720 inc VAT

£799 inc VAT

Website

Apple.com/uk

Hp.com/uk

Apple.com/uk

Dell.co.uk

Hp.com/uk

Processor


2.1GHz Intel Core i5-4600U 1.6GHz Intel Core i5



RAM

8GB LPDDR3

8GB DDR3L

4GB LPDDR3

8GB DDR3

8GB DDR3

Storage

128GB SSD

256GB SSD

128GB SSD

128GB SSD

256GB SSD

Screen size

13.3in matt

14in matt

13.3in glossy

13.3in matt IPS

13.3in matt

Screen resolution

2560x1600

1920x1080

1440x900

1920x1080

1920x1080

Graphics

Intel Iris Graphics 6100




Intel HD 520

Video memory

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

Wireless

802.11a/b/g/n/ac

802.11a/b/g/ac

802.11a/b/g/n/ac

802.11ac

802.11a/b/g/n/ac

Ethernet

Gigabit

Gigabit

None

Gigabit

Gigabit

Bluetooth











USB

2x USB 3.0

2x USB 3.0

2x USB 3.0

2x USB 3.0

3x USB 3.0

FireWire











Thunderbolt











DisplayPort











HDMI











DVI











VGA











eSATA











Media card slot











Audio

Headphone jack, mic

Headphone jack, mic

Headphone jack, mic

Headphone jack, mic

Headphone jack, mic

Optical drive

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

Extras

720p FaceTime

0.9Mp webcam

720p FaceTime

720p webcam

HD webcam

Operating system

OS X Yosemite

Windows 7 Professional

OS X Yosemite

Windows 10 Home

Windows 10 Home

Bundled software

None

None

None

None

None

Gaming scores

Not tested

49/33fps in Tomb Raider

Not tested

24.5/17.9fps in Tomb Raider

Not tested

Battery

74.9Wh lithium-ion

42Wh lithium-polymer

38Wh lithium-ion

Not stated

45Wh lithium-ion

Battery life

17 hrs 5 mins

5 hrs 41 mins

12 hrs 49 mins

Not tested

1 hr 24 mins

PCMark 7 score

Not tested

4783

Not tested

Not tested

2657

Dimensions

314x219x18mm

338x232x17.3mm

300x192x17mm

304x200x15mm

326x226x13mm

Weight

1.6kg

1.6kg

1.4kg

1.3kg

1.3kg

Warranty





1-year collect-and-return

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/NG98LD4

TINYURL.COM/OWV2FRR

TINYURL.COM/PH3YN5K

TINYURL.COM/ZZF4ZQ2

TINYURL.COM/HDAQHQX


HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/PKNC5CL FOR OUR BUYING ADVICE TEST CENTRE



20/10/2016 10:09

Top 5 charts

Best Chromebooks

1

2

3

4

5

Dell Chromebook 11 (3120)

Toshiba Chromebook 2

Asus Chromebook Flip C100PA

Dell Chromebook 13 (7310)

Chromebook Pixel (2015)

Price

£202 inc VAT

£269 inc VAT

£249 inc VAT

£1,078 inc VAT

£799 inc VAT

Website

Dell.co.uk

Toshiba.co.uk

UK.asus.com

Dell.co.uk

Google.co.uk

Build rating Features rating Performance rating Value rating Overall rating Processor

2.16GHz Intel Celeron N2840 Intel Celeron

1.86GHz Rockchip RK3288C 2.9GHz Intel i5-5300U

Intel Core i7

RAM

4GB DDR3

4GB DDR3

4GB DDR3

8GB

8GB DDR3

Storage

16GB SSD

16GB SSD

16GB SSD

32GB SSD

32GB SSD

Screen size

11.6in HD

13.3in IPS

10.1in

13.3in

12.85in IPS

Screen resolution

1366x768

1920x1080

1280x800

1920x1066

2560x1700

Graphics

Intel HD graphics

Intel HD graphics

Rockchip Mali T764

Intel HD graphics

Intel HD 5500

Video memory

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

Wireless

802.11a/b/g/n

802.11a/b/g/n/ac

802.11a/b/g/n/ac

802.11a/b/g/n/ac

802.11a/b/g/n/ac

Ethernet

Gigabit

Gigabit

Gigabit

None

Gigabit

Bluetooth











USB

1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0

1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0

2x USB 2.0

1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0

2x USB 3.0

FireWire











Thunderbolt











DisplayPort











HDMI











DVI











VGA











eSATA











Media card slot











Audio

Headphone minijack

Headphone minijack

Headphone minijack

Headphone minijack

Headphone minijack

Optical drive

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

Webcam

Webcam

Webcam

Webcam

Webcam

Operating system

Google Chrome OS

Google Chrome OS

Google Chrome OS

Google Chrome OS

Google Chrome OS

Bundled software

None

None

None

None

None

Battery life

9 hrs 46 mins

7 hrs 36 mins

9 hrs 33 mins

10 hrs 46 mins

9 hrs

SunSpider score

697ms

Not tested

803ms

219ms

Not tested

Dimensions

297x217.7x120.1mm

320x214x19.3mm

262.8x182.4x15.6mm

381.9x252.5x19.9mm

297.7x224.55x5.3mm

Weight

1.25kg

1.4kg

890g

1.72kg

1.5kg

Warranty

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/ZQFP4MF

TINYURL.COM/OP9NQAY

TINYURL.COM/J9CU5YH

TINYURL.COM/HKLN3U9

TINYURL.COM/HQDFR8H

Extras

HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/NPO9J8A FOR OUR BUYING ADVICE 124 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews January 2017


TEST CENTRE

20/10/2016 10:09

Top 5 charts

Best gaming laptops

1

2

3

4

Asus RoG G752

Alienware 17

Schenker XMG U506

Asus RoG GL552VW-DM201T

MSI GL62-6QC 065UK

Price

£1,299 inc VAT

£1,350 inc VAT

£1,585 inc VAT

£899 inc VAT

£599 inc VAT

Website

Asus.com/uk

Alienware.co.uk

Mysn.co.uk

Asus.com/uk

Uk.msi.com

Processor

2.7GHz Intel Core i7-6820HK

4.1GHz Intel Core i7-6820

3.5GHz Intel Core i5-6600K 2.6GHz Intel Core i7-6700HQ

2.3GHz Intel Core i5-6300HQ

RAM

32GB DDR4

8GB DDR5, 16GB DDR4

8GB (2x 4GB) DDR3

8GB DDR3

8GB DDR3L

Storage

1TB HDD

512GB SSD, 1TB HDD

256GB SSD, 1TB HDD

1TB HDD

1TB HDD

Screen size

17.3in IPS

17.3in IPS

15.6in matt

15.6in IPS

15.6in IPS

Screen resolution

1920x1080

1920x1080

1920x1080

1920x1080

1920x1080

Graphics

Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M




Nvidia GeForce GTX 940MX

Video memory

Not specified

Not specified

Not specified

Not specified

Not specified

Wireless

802.11ac

802.11ac

802.11ac

802.11ac

802.11ac

Ethernet

Gigabit

Gigabit

Gigabit

Gigabit

Gigabit

Bluetooth











USB

3x USB 3.0

3x USB 3.0, 1x USB-C

3x USB 3.0, 1x eSATA/USB 3.0

2x USB 3.0, 1x USB 3.0

3x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0, 1x USB-C

FireWire











Thunderbolt











DisplayPort











HDMI











DVI











VGA











eSATA











Media card slot











Audio

Headphone jack, mic

Headphone jack, mic

Headphone jack, mic

Headphone jack, mic

Headphone jack, mic

Optical drive



None

None

None



Extras

1.2Mp webcam

2Mp webcam

2Mp webcam

HD webcam

HD webcam

Operating system

Windows 10

Windows 10 Home

Windows 8.1 Pro

Windows 10

Windows 10

Bundled software

None

None

None

None

None

Gaming scores

Not tested

Not tested

113/58fps in Tomb Raider

Not tested

35.6/14.9fps in Thief

Battery

66Wh lithium-ion




48Wh lithium-ion

Battery life

4 hrs 37 mins

3 hrs 59 mins

2 hrs 23 mins

4 hrs 50 mins

3 hrs 55 mins

PCMark 7 score

4184 (PCMark 8)

3400 (PCMark 8)

4000 (PCMark 8)

3102 (PCMark 8)

2681 (PCMark 8)

Dimensions

428x334x43mm

430x292x34.4mm

387x266x37.5mm

384x257x34.5mm

383x260x27mm

Weight

4.4kg

3.8kg

3.4kg

2.6kg

2.3kg

Warranty

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/J8AFNHP

TINYURL.COM/JYK953S

TINYURL.COM/NT6UUKF

TINYURL.COM/HQKNNRJ

TINYURL.COM/JAXBRDB

5


HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/QCDUCZ7 FOR OUR BUYING ADVICE TEST CENTRE



20/10/2016 10:10

Top 5 charts

Best gaming PCs

1

2

3

4

Chillblast Fusion Catapult

Wired2Fire Diablo Predator VR

Yoyotech Warbird RS14

Overclockers Kinetic VR Gaming Palicomp i5 Matrix

Price

£999 inc VAT

£1,150 inc VAT

£999 inc VAT

£739 inc VAT

£1,199 inc VAT

Website

Chillblast.com

Wired2fire.co.uk

Yoyotech.co.uk

Overclockers.co.uk

Palicomp.co.uk

Processor

3.5GHz Intel Core i5 6600K (4.4GHz OC)

3.5GHz Intel i5-6600K (OC 4.4GHz)

3.3GHz Intel Core i5-6600 (3.9GHz Intel Boost)

3.2GHz Intel Core i5-6500 (3.6GHz Turbo)

3.5GHz Intel Core i5-6600K (OC 4.7GHz)

CPU cooler

Corsair Hydro H55

ID Cooling SE-214

Silentium Spartan PRO

Intel CPU

BeQuiet Pure Rock

Memory

16GB DDR4

16GB DDR4

8GB DDR

8GB DDR4

16GB DDR4

Storage

1TB HDD

1TB HDD, 250GB SSD

21TB HDD, 128GB SSD

1TB SSHD

2TB HD, 256GB SSD

Power supply

750W FSP

750W FSP

600W Aerocool Integrator

Kolink 600W

750W FSP

Motherboard

Asus Z170-K

Asus Z170-E

MSI B150M Mortar

Asus H110M-A micro ATC

Asus Z170-Pro Gaming

Operating system

Windows 10 Home

Windows 10 (64-bit)


Windows 10 Home

Windows 10 (64-bit)

Screen

None supplied

None supplied

None supplied

None supplied

None supplied

Graphics

XFX AMD Radeon R9 390X

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070

MSI GeForce GTX 980Ti Armor X2

Asus GeForce GTX 970 Turbo KFA2 nVIDIA GTX 980

Sound

Onboard

Onboard

Onboard

Onboard

Onboard

Connectivity

Gigabit ethernet

Gigabit ethernet

Gigabit ethernet

Gigabit ethernet

Gigabit ethernet

Ports

2x USB 3.1 Type-A, 6x USB 3.0, 4x USB 2.0, 1x USB 5Gb/s (Type C), 2x DVI, 1x DP, 1x HDMI

4x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0 On Motheboard I/O, 1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 3x DP

2x USB 3.1 Gen2, 6x USB 3.1 Gen1, 6x USB 2.0

2x USB 3.0, 4x USB 2.0, 2x dual-link DVI, 1x DP, 1x HDM

1x USB 3.1 (Type-A) 1xUSB 3.1 (Type-C) 4xUSB 3, 2x USB 2.0, 1xPS/2, 1x DVI, 1x D-Sub, 1x DP, 1x HDMI

Optical drive

None

None

None

None

None

Case

Zalman Z11 Neo

Aerocool QS240 M-ATX

Phanteks Enthoo Pro Mid

Kolink Satellite Cube

Sharkoon VG5-W

Keyboard & mouse

None supplied

Cooler Master Devastator Keyboard and Mouse

None supplied

None supplied

Nemesis Kane Gaming Keyboard and Mouse

PCMark 8 2.0 Home score

4832

5670

4818

4669

5911

Alien Isolation score (4K)

17.02/49.28fps

12.99/63.23fps

16.48/59.94fps

20.24/40.43fps

116.55/50.37fps

Thief (4K Ultra)

21.5/32.9fps

36.2/42.1fps

35.4/42.5fps

Benchmark failed to run

27.6/32.8fps

3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited

212,222

227,383

183,814

145,866

230,982

3DMark Fire Strike

10,629

14,235

13,482

7,005

11,917

Power Consumption

Not tested

56/385W

48/369W

36/235W

73/436W

Warranty

5 years labour, 2-year C&R

2 years return to labour, 3 years labour

3 years RTB. first year parts and labour, 2 years labour only

2-year parts and labour C&R warranty

3 years C&R

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/J6X5HFD

TINYURL.COM/JJCP6N3

TINYURL.COM/ZOQXPGU

TINYURL.COM/GV5AZTU

TINYURL.COM/ZZMN9HW

5


HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/OW68EKE FOR OUR BUYING ADVICE 126 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews January 2017


TEST CENTRE

20/10/2016 10:10

Don’t miss a single copy of Macworld by subscribing digitally Subscribe from as little as £1.99

083 MACWORLD FILLER.indd 83

31/05/2016 15:48

Top 5 charts

1

2

3

4

5

Apple iMac with 5K display

Acer Aspire AZ3-615

Chillblast Volante AIO

Asus Eee Top

HP Envy Beats 23-n001na

Price

£1,999 inc VAT

£799 inc VAT

£1,299 inc VAT

£799 inc VAT

£900 inc VAT

Website

Apple.com/uk

Acer.co.uk

Chillblast.com

Asus.com/uk

Hp.com/uk

Processor

3.9GHz Intel Core i5-4690

2.7GHz Intel Core i5-4460T

4GHz Intel Core i7-4790S


3.2GHz Intel Core i7-4785T

RAM

8GB DDR3

8GB DDR3

16GB DDR3

6GB DDR3

8GB DDR3

Storage

1TB Fusion Drive

1TB HDD

1TB SSD

1TB HDD

1TB HDD

Screen

27in

23in touchscreen

24in

23in touchscreen

23in touchscreen

Screen resolution

5120x2880

1920x1080

1920x1080

1920x1080

1920x1080

Graphics card

AMD Radeon M9 M290X

Nvidia GeForce GT 840M

Nvidia GeForce GT 750M



Video memory

2GB

2GB

2GB

N/A

N/A

Wireless

802.11b/g/n

802.11b/g/n

802.11b/g/n

802.11b/g/n

802.11b/g/n

Ethernet

Gigabit

Gigabit

Gigabit

Gigabit

Gigabit

Bluetooth











USB

4x USB 3.0

2x USB 3.0, 3x USB 2.0

4x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0

3x USB 3.0, 3x USB 2.0

2x USB 3.0, 4x USB 2.0

FireWire











Thunderbolt











HDMI











Media card slot











Optical drive

None

DVD Writer

Blu-Ray Combo

DVD Writer

DVD Writer Wireless keyboard and mouse, Beats Audio stereo speaker system (8x 12W)

All-in-one PCs


Other

Final Cut Pro X, Logic Pro X, Aperture

1Mp webcam, wireless keyboard and mouse

Logitech MK520 wireless keyboard and mouse

2Mp webcam, Freeview TV, wireless keyboard and mouse

Operating system

OS X Yosemite

Windows 8.1 64-bit

Windows 8.1 64-bit

Windows 8.1 64-bit

Windows 8.1 64-bit

Power consumption (idle/max)

46/215W

46/91W

35/177W

33/69W

43/81W

Sniper V2 Elite (Low/High/Ultra)

Not tested

47.7/18.7/5.1fps

91.5/41.2/10.5fps

31.4/7.8/5fps

27.7/7.4/5fps

PCMark 8 Home score

Not tested

2906

3776

2828

2702

Dimensions

650x203x516mm

540x489x579mm

585x200x450mm

571x359x50-214mm

563x143x413mm

Weight

9.54kg

8.8kg

14.6kg

9kg

8.4kg

Warranty


Not specified

5-year labour (2-year collect-and-return)


1-year limited parts, labour, and pickup-and-return service

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/NWJUJSF

TINYURL.COM/QEY8FOE

TINYURL.COM/LO8A5MC

TINYURL.COM/PRPHC7L

TINYURL.COM/O6M4BCN

HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/PGXGFWE FOR OUR BUYING ADVICE 128 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews January 2017


TEST CENTRE

20/10/2016 10:10

Top 5 charts

Best smartphones

1

2

3

4

5

Samsung Galaxy S7 edge

Samsung Galaxy S7

LG G5

Google Nexus 6P

Apple iPhone 7

Price

£639 inc VAT

£569 inc VAT

£529 inc VAT

£449 inc VAT

£599 inc VAT

Website

Samsung.com/uk

Samsung.com/uk

LG.com/uk

Google.co.uk

Apple.com/uk

OS (out of box)

Android 6.0 Marshmallow




iOS 10

Processor

Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 Qualcomm Snapdragon 810

A10 Fusion

RAM

4GB

4GB

4GB

3GB

2GB

Storage

32GB

32GB

32GB

32/64/128GB

32/128/256GB

MicroSD support











Graphics

Adreno 530

Adreno 530

Adreno 530

Adreno 430

Not stated

Screen size

5.5in

5.1in

5.3in

5.7in

4.7in

Screen resolution

2560x1440

2560x1440

2560x1440

2560x1440

1334x720

Pixel density

534ppi

577ppi

554ppi

518ppi

326ppi

Screen technology

IPS

IPS

IPS

AMOLED

IPS

Front camera

5Mp

5Mp

8Mp

8Mp

7Mp

Rear camera

16Mp, LED flash

12Mp, LED flash

8/16Mp, LED flash

12.3Mp, LED flash

12Mp, LED flash

Video recording

4K

4K

4K

4K

4K

Cellular connectivity

4G

4G

4G

4G

4G

SIM type

Nano-SIM

Nano-SIM

Nano-SIM

Nano-SIM

Nano-SIM

Dual-SIM as standard











Wi-Fi

802.11a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band





Bluetooth

Bluetooth 4.2

Bluetooth 4.2

Bluetooth 4.2

Bluetooth 4.2

Bluetooth 4.2

GPS

GPS, Glonass

A-GPS, Glonass

A-GPS

A-GPS, Glonass

A-GPS, Glonass

NFC











USB OTG











Extra features

Fingerprint scanner

Fingerprint scanner

Fingerprint scanner

Fingerprint scanner

Fingerprint scanner

Geekbench 3.0 (multi)

6469

6466

5404

3939

6088

SunSpider

Not tested

Not tested

Not tested

636ms

Not tested

GFXBench: T-Rex

53fps

53fps

53fps

34fps

60fps

GFXBench: Manhattan

27fps

27fps

29fps

14fps

60fps

Battery

3600mAh, non-removable


2800mAh, removable


Lithium-ion

Dimensions

151x73x7.8mm

142x70x7.9mm

149x74x7.7mm

159.3x77.8x7.3mm

138.3x67.1x7.1mm

Weight

157g

152g

159g

178g

138g

Warranty

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/ZDKDRE4

TINYURL.COM/J5CQ9OU

TINYURL.COM/JES3ZUD

TINYURL.COM/NABSV4E

TINYURL.COM/JKDLR6H


HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/PNWWW6X FOR OUR BUYING ADVICE TEST CENTRE



20/10/2016 10:10

Top 5 charts

Best budget smartphones

1

2

3

4

5

Motorola Moto G (3rd gen)

Vodafone Smart Ultra 6

Vodafone Smart Prime 7

Vodafone Smart Prime 6

Xiaomi Redmi 3S

Price

£149 inc VAT

£125 inc VAT

£75 inc VAT

£79 inc VAT

£121 inc VAT

Website

Motorola.co.uk

Vodafone.co.uk

Vodafone.co.uk

Vodafone.co.uk

Xiaomi-mi.co.uk

OS (out of box)

Android 5.1.1 Lollipop




MIUI 7.5

Processor

1.4GHz Snapdragon 410





RAM

2GB

2GB

1GB

1GB

2GB

Storage

16GB

16GB

8GB

8GB

16GB

MicroSD support

Up to 32GB

Up to 128GB

Up to 128GB

Up to 64GB

Up to 128GB

Graphics

Adreno 406

Adreno 405

Adreno 304

Adreno 306

Adreno 505

Screen size

5in

5.5in

5in

5in

5in

Screen resolution

1280x720

1920x1080

1280x720

1280x720

1280x720

Pixel density

294ppi

401ppi

294ppi

294ppi

294ppi

Screen technology

IPS

IPS

IPS

IPS

IPS

Front camera

5Mp

5Mp

5Mp

2Mp

5Mp

Rear camera

13Mp

13Mp

8Mp

8Mp

13Mp

Video recording

720p

1080p

720p

1080p

1080p


4G

4G*

4G*

4G*

4G

SIM type

Micro-SIM

Nano-SIM

Micro-SIM

Micro-SIM

1x Micro-SIM, 1x Nano-SIM












Wi-Fi

802.11b/g/n

802.11b/g/n

802.11b/g/n

802.11b/g/n

802.11b/g/n

Bluetooth

Bluetooth 4.0

Bluetooth 4.0

Bluetooth 4.1

Bluetooth 4.0

Bluetooth 4.1

GPS

GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS

GPS, A-GPS

A-GPS

A-GPS

GPS, A-GPS

NFC











USB OTG











Extra features

FM radio, accelerometer

FM radio

FM radio

FM radio

Rear-mounted fingerprint scanner

Geekbench 3.0 (single)

Not tested

649

Not tested

464

Not tested


1628

2469

1098

1401

2848

SunSpider

1344ms

1545ms

Not tested

1301ms

Not tested

GFXBench: T-Rex

10fps

14fps

10fps

9.4fps

24fps

GFXBench: Manhattan

4fps

5.7fps

4fps

3.8fps

13fps

Battery




Not specified


Dimensions

142.1x72.4x11.6mm

154x77x9mm

144x72x8mm

141.65x71.89x9mm

139.3x69.6x8.5mm

Weight

155g

159g

128g

155g

144g

Warranty

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/HTEFW7H

TINYURL.COM/Q7Q9NXR

TINYURL.COM/ZTLQLUZ

TINYURL.COM/Q5DSNHE

TINYURL.COM/J8HXZ49


* Locked to Vodafone. All other models here are unlocked

HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/PAUHFUN FOR OUR BUYING ADVICE 130 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews January 2017


TEST CENTRE

20/10/2016 10:10

Top 5 charts

Best phablets

1

2

3

4

5

Samsung Galaxy S7 edge

Google Nexus 6P

OnePlus 3

Samsung Galaxy Note5

Apple iPhone 6s Plus

Price

£639 inc VAT

£449 inc VAT

£309 inc VAT

£499 inc VAT

£619 inc VAT

Website

Samsung.com/uk

Google.co.uk

Oneplus.net

Samsung.com/uk

Apple.com/uk

OS (out of box)



Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow


iOS 9

Processor

Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 Qualcomm Snapdragon 810

Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 2.1GHz Exynos 7420

A9

RAM

4GB

3GB

6GB

4GB

2GB

Storage

32GB

32/64/128GB

64GB

32/64GB

16/64/128GB

MicroSD support











Graphics

Adreno 530

Adreno 430

Adreno 530

Mali-T760MP8

M9

Screen size

5.5in

5.7in

5.5in

5.7in

5.5in

Screen resolution

2560x1440

2560x1440

1920x1080

1280x720

1920x1080

Pixel density

534ppi

518ppi

401ppi

518ppi

401ppi

Screen technology

IPS

Quad HD capacitive

AMOLED

Super AMOLED

IPS

Front camera

5Mp

8Mp

8Mp

5Mp

5Mp

Rear camera

16Mp, LED flash

12.3Mp, LED flash

16Mp, LED flash

16Mp, LED flash

12Mp, LED flash

Video recording

4K

4K

Auto HDR

4K

4K


4G

4G

4G

4G

4G

SIM type

Nano-SIM

Nano-SIM

Nano-SIM

Nano-SIM

Nano-SIM












Wi-Fi



802.11a/b/g/n/ac



Bluetooth

Bluetooth 4.2

Bluetooth 4.2

Bluetooth 4.2

Bluetooth 4.2

Bluetooth 4.2

GPS

GPS, Glonass

A-GPS, Glonass

A-GPS, Glonass

A-GPS, Glonass

A-GPS, Glonass

NFC











USB OTG











Extra features

Fingerprint scanner

Fingerprint scanner

Fingerprint scanner

Heart-rate sensor, fingerprint scanner

Fingerprint scanner


6469

Not tested

Not tested

1497

2527


Not tested

3939

5546

Not tested

4407

SunSpider

53fps

636ms

Not tested

718ms

210ms

GFXBench: T-Rex

27fps

34fps

59fps

37fps

59fps

GFXBench: Manhattan

27fps

14fps

46fps

15fps

38fps

Battery





Lithium-ion

Dimensions

151x73x7.8mm

159.3x77.8x7.3mm

152.7x74.7x7.4mm

153.2x76.1x7.6mm

158.2x77.9x7.3mm

Weight

157g

178g

158g

171g

192g

Warranty

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/ZDKDRE4

TINYURL.COM/NABSV4E

TINYURL.COM/Z3HQ6BZ

TINYURL.COM/OCQAJPL

TINYURL.COM/OYRA5MX


HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/OE56HJY FOR OUR BUYING ADVICE TEST CENTRE



20/10/2016 10:10

Top 5 charts

Best tablets

1

2

3

4

5

Apple iPad Air 2

Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8

9.7in Apple iPad Pro

Apple iPad mini 4

Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4

Price

£399 inc VAT

£319 inc VAT

£499 inc VAT

£319 inc VAT

£319 inc VAT

Website

Apple.com/uk

Samsung.com/uk

Apple.com/uk

Apple.com/uk

Samsung.com/uk

OS (out of box)

iOS 10

Android 5.0 Lollipop

iOS 10

iOS 10

Android 4.4 KitKat

Processor

Apple A8X, Apple M8

1.9GHz Exynos 5433

Apple A9X, Apple M9

Apple A8, Apple M8

Exynos 5420, octa-core

RAM

2GB

3GB

3GB

2GB

3GB

Storage

16/64/128GB

32GB/64GB

32GB/128GB/256GB

16GB/64/128GB

16GB/32GB

MicroSD support



Up to 128GB





Up to 128GB

Graphics

Apple A8X

Not specified

Apple A9X

Apple A8

ARM Mali-T628 MP6

Screen size

9.7in

8in

9.7in

7.9in

8.4in

Screen resolution

2048x1536

2048x1536

2048x1536

2048x1536

2560x1440

Pixel density

264ppi

320ppi

264ppi

326ppi

359ppi

Screen technology

IPS

Super AMOLED

IPS

IPS

Super AMOLED

Front camera

1.2Mp

2.1Mp

8Mp

1.2Mp

2.1Mp

Rear camera

8Mp

8Mp

12Mp, LED flash

8Mp

8Mp, LED flash

Video recording

1080p

QHD

1080p

1080p

1080p


4G version available





Wi-Fi


802.11a/b/g/n/ac




Bluetooth

Bluetooth 4.0

Bluetooth 4.1

Bluetooth 4.2

Bluetooth 4.2

Bluetooth 4.0

GPS

A-GPS, Glonass

A-GPS, Glonass

GPS in cellular model only

A-GPS, Glonass

GPS, Glonass

NFC











USB OTG











Fingerprint scanner











Waterproof











Extra features

None

None

Stereo speakers

None

Stereo speakers


1816

Not tested

Not tested

1719

Not tested


4523

4305

5257

3101

2765

JetStream

Not tested

Not tested

142

Not tested

1089ms (SunSpider)

GFXBench: T-Rex

48fps

26fps

60fps

52fps

14fps

GFXBench: Manhattan

Not tested

11fps

34fps

25fps

3fps

Battery


4000mAh, non-removable, Qi 7306mAh, non-removable



Dimensions

240x169.5x6.1mm

198.6x134.8x5.6mm

170x240x6.1mm

203.2x134.8x6.1mm

126x213x6.6mm

Weight

437g

265g

437g

304g

294g

Warranty

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/PLQXWSZ

TINYURL.COM/P37QFDW

TINYURL.COM/HFY7T4Z

TINYURL.COM/PBMONMA

TINYURL.COM/OUEM64Z


HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/QXC8GDB FOR OUR BUYING ADVICE 132 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews January 2017


TEST CENTRE

20/10/2016 10:10

Top 5 charts

Best tablets

6

7

Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact Google Pixel C

8

9

10

Amazon Fire

Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet

Xiaomi Mi Pad 2

Price

£299 inc VAT

£399 inc VAT

£49 inc VAT

£499 inc VAT

£144 inc VAT

Website

Sony.co.uk

Google.co.uk

Amazon.co.uk

Sony.co.uk

Mi.com/en

OS (out of box)

Android 4.4 KitKat


FireOS 5



Processor


Nvidia Tegra X1

1.3GHz quad-core

Snapdragon 810

Intel Atom X5-Z8500

RAM

3GB

3GB

1GB

3GB

2GB

Storage

16GB/32GB

32GB/64GB

8GB

32GB

16GB/64GB

MicroSD support

Up to 128GB



Up to 128GB

Up to 128GB



Graphics

Adreno 330

Nvidia Tegra X1

Mali 450

Adreno 430

Intel HD Graphics

Screen size

8in

10.2in

7in

10.1in

7.9in

Screen resolution

1920x1200

2560x1800

1024x600

2560x1600

2048x1536

Pixel density

283ppi

308ppi

171ppi

299ppi

326ppi

Screen technology

IPS

IPS

IPS

IPS

IPS

Front camera

2.2Mp

2Mp

VGA

5.1Mp

5Mp

Rear camera

8.1Mp

8Mp

2Mp

8.1Mp

8Mp

Video recording

1080p

1080p

Not specified

1080p

Not specified










Wi-Fi



802.11a/b/g/n



Bluetooth

Bluetooth 4.0

Bluetooth 4.1

Bluetooth 4.0

Bluetooth 4.1

Bluetooth 4.1

GPS

A-GPS, Glonass





A-GPS, Glonass



NFC











USB OTG











Fingerprint scanner











Waterproof











Extra features

PS4 Remote Play, stereo speakers

None

None

None

None


Not tested

Not tested

Not tested

Not tested

Not tested


2708

4048

Not tested

4573

3280

JetStream

1017ms

Not tested

Not tested

580ms (SunSpider)

454

GFXBench: T-Rex

28fps

48fps

Not tested

37fps

30fps

GFXBench: Manhattan

11fps

28fps

Not tested

16fps

13fps

Battery



Not specified



Dimensions

213x124x6.4mm

242x179x7mm

191x115x10.6mm

254x167x6.1mm

200x133x7mm

Weight

270g

517g

313g

393g

322g

Warranty

1 year

1 year


1 year

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/NJ6VHEO

TINYURL.COM/ZA79M7Z

TINYURL.COM/J3LJP7T

TINYURL.COM/JG34GZP

TINYURL.COM/H7DYTTL


HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/PC9D92G FOR OUR BUYING ADVICE TEST CENTRE



20/10/2016 10:10

Top 5 charts

Best smartwatches

1

2

3

4

5

Huawei Watch


Motorola Moto 360 2

Samsung Gear S2

LG G Watch R

Price

£289 inc VAT

£369 inc VAT

£229 inc VAT

£199 inc VAT

£195 inc VAT

Website

Consumer.huawei.com/en

Apple.com/uk

Motorola.co.uk

Samsung.com/uk

Lg.com/uk

Operating system

Android Wear

iOS 10

Android Wear

Tizen-based OS

Android Wear

Compatibility

Android

iOS

Android, iOS

Android, iOS

Android

Display

1.4in 400x400 AMOLED

38mm, 340x272; 42mm, 390x312, AMOLED

1.37in 360x325 LCD

1.2in 360x360 AMOLED

1.3in 320x320 P-OLED

Processor

Snapdragon 400

S2

Snapdragon 400

1GHz Exynos 3250

1.2GHz Snapdrgon 400

RAM

512MB

Not stated

512MB

512MB

512MB

Storage

4GB

4GB

4GB

4GB

4GB

Waterproof

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Battery

300mAh

273mAh

300mAh

250mAh

410mAh

Dimensions

42x11.3mm

38.6/42.5x33.3/36.4mm

42x11.4mm

42.3x49.8x11.4mm

46.4x53.6x9.7mm

Weight

40g

28.2g/34.2g

53.6g

47g

62g

Warranty

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/PXV9PVX

TINYURL.COM/HAT545L

TINYURL.COM/GUJR9XX

TINYURL.COM/P4UKB74

TINYURL.COM/QATY8FT

Best smartwatches

6

7

8

9

10

Fossil Q Founder

Asus ZenWatch 2

Motorola Moto 360

LG Watch Urbane

Sony SmartWatch 3

Price

£259 inc VAT

£149 inc VAT

£199 inc VAT

£259 inc VAT

£189 inc VAT

Website

Fossil.com/uk

Uk.sasus.com

Motorola.co.uk

Lg.com/uk

Sony.co.uk

Operating system

Android Wear

Android Wear

Android Wear

Android Wear

Android Wear

Compatibility

Android, iOS

Android, iOS

Android

Android

Android

Display

1.5in, 360x326 LCD

1.63in 320x320 LCD

1.56in 290x320 LCD

1.3in 320x320 P-OLED

1.6in 320x320 LCD

Processor

Intel Atom Z34XX


TI OMAP 3


1.2GHz ARM V7

RAM

1GB

512MB

512MB

512MB

512MB

Storage

4GB

4GB

4GB

4GB

4GB

Waterproof

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Battery

400mAh

300mAh

320mAh

410mAh

420mAh

Dimensions

47x13mm

40.7x49.6x10.9mm

46x11.5mm

46x52x10.9mm

36x51x10mm

Weight

156g

50g

49g (leather band model)

67g

45g

Warranty

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/Z3X6D6F

TINYURL.COM/ZVRZLNJ

TINYURL.COM/O9C69K6

TINYURL.COM/Q3VK7ES

TINYURL.COM/OQVZ3PN

Overall rating

Overall rating

HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/QCXEDLX FOR OUR BUYING ADVICE 134 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews January 2017


TEST CENTRE

20/10/2016 10:10

Top 5 charts

Best activity trackers

1

2

3

4

5

Fitbit Charge 2

Fitbit Charge HR


Fitbit Alta

Xiaomi Mi Band 2

Price

£129 inc VAT

£119 inc VAT

£369 inc VAT

£99 inc VAT

£33 inc VAT

Website

Fitbit.com/uk

Fitbit.com/uk

Apple.com/uk

Fitbit.com/uk

Mi.com/en

Compatibility

iOS, Android, Windows


iOS


iOS, Android

Display

OLED

OLED

AMOLED

OLED

OLED

Pedometer

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Heart-rate monitor

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Sleep tracking

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Alarm

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Third-party app synching Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Call notifications

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Waterproof

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Battery life

5 days

5+ days

18 hours

5 days

20-day

Weight

35g

26g

28.2g/34.2g

32g

7g (tracker only)

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/Z3NN8RL

TINYURL.COM/PCKV4SU

TINYURL.COM/HAT545L

TINYURL.COM/ZO8TN2L

TINYURL.COM/ZAF6OAW

Overall rating

Best activity trackers

6

7

8

9

10

Fitbit Surge

Misfit Ray

MyZone MZ-3

Microsoft Band 2

Fitbit One

Price

£199 inc VAT

£79 inc VAT

£129 inc VAT

£199 inc VAT

£79 inc VAT

Website

Fitbit.com/uk

Misfit.com

Myzone.org

Microsoft.com/en-gb

Fitbit.com/uk

Compatibility


iOS, Android



iOS, Android

Display

Touchscreen

No

No

AMOLED

OLED

Pedometer

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Heart-rate monitor

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

No

Sleep tracking

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Alarm

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Third-party app synching Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Call notifications

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

Waterproof

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Battery life

5 days

6 months

7 months

2 days

10-14 days

Weight

51g

8g

Not stated

159g

8g

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/O83DR47

TINYURL.COM/JG3XVT9

TINYURL.COM/HK5JOXX

TINYURL.COM/HHP4LMR

TINYURL.COM/PT2TC6F

Overall rating

HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/PGMS2PW FOR OUR BUYING ADVICE TEST CENTRE



20/10/2016 10:11

Top 5 charts

1

2

3

4

5

Canon Pixma MG7550

Samsung Xpress M2835DW

Brother HL-L9200CDWT

HP LaserJet Pro M277dw

HP OfficeJet 7510

Price

£130 inc VAT

£143 inc VAT

£548 inc VAT

£258 inc VAT

£129 inc VAT

Website

Canon.co.uk

Samsung.com/uk

Brother.co.uk

Hp.com/uk

Hp.com/uk

Technology

Colour inkjet

Mono laser

Colour laser

Colour laser

Colour inkjet

Max print resolution

9600x2400dpi

4800x600dpi

2400x600dpi

300dpi

1200x600dpi

Actual print speed

B=14.3ppm

B=22.7ppm

B=30ppm C=30ppm

B=15ppm C=13ppm

B=12.5ppm C=7.5ppm

None

1200x1200dpi scanner, 300x300dpi fax

1200x1200dpi scanner, 300x300dpi fax

Best printers

Overall rating

Scan/fax facilities

2400x4800dpi scanner

None

Supported interfaces

USB 2.0, ethernet, 802.11b/g/n USB 2.0, ethernet, 802.11b/g/n USB 2.0, ethernet, 802.11b/g/n USB 2.0, ethernet, 802.11b/g/n USB 2.0, ethernet, 802.11b/g/n

Cost per page

B=2.4p C=8.1p

B=1.5p

B=1p C=5.9p

B=2.2p C=9p

B=1.7p C=3.3p

Media card/auto duplex











Input capacity

125 sheets

250 sheets

750 sheets + 50 sheet



Dimensions

435x370x148mm

368x335x202mm

410x495x445mm

420x417x322mm

613x725x287mm

Weight

7.9kg

7.4kg

28.3kg

16.3kg

13kg

Warranty

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/PZ3SVH7

TINYURL.COM/QECOF7V

TINYURL.COM/PT52MH6

TINYURL.COM/GPXACL7

TINYURL.COM/HDXF85Y

6

7

8

9

10

Epson EcoTank ET-2500

HP OfficeJet 3830

Lexmark CS410dn

HP Envy 5640 e-All-in-One

Epson Expression XP-530

Price

£229 inc VAT

£60 inc VAT

£268 inc VAT

£69 inc VAT

£92 inc VAT

Website

Epson.co.uk

Hp.com/uk

Lexmark.co.uk

Hp.com/uk

Epson.co.uk

Technology

Colour inkjet

Colour inkjet

Colour laser

Colour inkjet

Colour inkjet

Max print resolution

5760x1440dpi

1200x1200dpi

2400x600dpi

4800x1200dpi

5760x1440dpi

Actual print speed

B=7.5ppm C=4ppm

B=11ppm C=4ppm

B=30ppm C=30ppm

B=12.5ppm C=8.5ppm

B=9.5ppm C=9ppm

Scan/fax facilities


None

None



Supported interfaces

USB 2.0, ethernet, 802.11b/g/n USB 2.0, 802.11b/g/n, AirPrint

USB 2.0, ethernet, 802.11b/g/n USB 2.0, 802.11b/g/n

USB 2.0, ethernet, 802.11b/g/n

Cost per page

B=0.2p C=0.4p

B=6p C=7p

B=1.8p C=9.5p

B=2.2p C=9p

B=3.8p C=5.2p

Media card/auto duplex











Input capacity

100 sheets

60 sheets

250 sheets


100 sheets

Dimensions

169x489x300mm

222x454x362mm

291x442x407mm

454x410x161mm

390x341x138mm

Weight

4.6kg

5.8kg

20.5kg

6.8kg

6.2kg

Warranty

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/ZWCECPA

TINYURL.COM/HBTE9BX

TINYURL.COM/PT52MH6

TINYURL.COM/JGZPOZ3

TINYURL.COM/HRFB62D

Best printers

Overall rating

HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/NMMP4ER FOR OUR PRINTERS BUYING ADVICE 136 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews January 2017


TEST CENTRE

20/10/2016 10:11

Top 5 charts

Best wireless routers

1

2

3

4

5

Apple AirPort Extreme

TP-Link Archer VR900

BT Smart Hub

Netgear Nighthawk R7000

TP-Link VR2600

Price

£169 inc VAT

£139 inc VAT

£129 inc VAT

£150 inc VAT

£174 inc VAT

Website

Apple.com/uk

Tp-link.com

Bt.com

Netgear.co.uk

Tp-link.com

Standards supported

802.11a/b/g/n/ac

802.11a/b/g/n/ac

802.11a/b/g/n/ac

802.11a/b/g/n/ac

802.11a/b/g/n/ac

Frequency modes

2.4GHz/5GHz (concurrent)





Antennas

6x internal

3x external

7x internal

3x external

4x external

Built-in modem











Manufacturer’s rating

1300/450Mb/s

1300/600Mb/s

Not specified

1300/600Mb/s

1733/800Mb/s

WPS











Ports

Gigabit WAN, 3x gigabit LAN, USB

Gigabit WAN, 1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0

Gigabit LAN, 1x USB 3.0

Gigabit WAN, 1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0

2x USB 3.0, 4 x RJ11

Average power use

8W

N/S

N/S

9W

N/S

Max speed (11n/11ac)

171/572Mb/s

146/622Mb/s

85/239.5Mb/s

171/592Mb/s

Not tested

Dimensions, weight

98x168x98mm, 945g

245x181x90mm, 720g

240x155x65mm

285x186x45mm, 750g

263.8x197.8x37.3mm

Warranty

1 year

Not specified

Not specified

Not specified

Not specified

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/MFDLLSC

TINYURL.COM/OF8KYPC

TINYURL.COM/ZL9TV96

TINYURL.COM/Q2NRQ8Q

TINYURL.COM/Z6E2DMG

Overall rating

Best powerline adaptors

1

2

3

4

5

TP-Link AV2000

TrendNet Powerline 500 AV2

TP-Link AV1200

Solwise SmartLink 1200AV2

Devolo dLan 1200+

Price

£99 inc VAT

£41 inc VAT

£88 inc VAT

£43 inc VAT

£119 inc VAT

Website

Uk.tp-link.com

Trendnet.com

Uk.tp-link.com

Solwise.com

Devolo.com/uk

No of adaptors in kit

2

2

2

1 (2 required)

2

Max throughput

2000Mb/s

600Mb/s

1200Mb/s

1200Mb/s

1200Mb/s

Near test result

432Mb/s

146Mb/s

500Mb/s

410Mb/s

357Mb/s

Far test result

117Mb/s

71Mb/s

200Mb/s

107Mb/s

126Mb/s

Ethernet ports

2x gigabit

1x gigabit

1x gigabit

2x gigabit

1x gigabit

Passthrough socket

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Wireless hotspot

No

No

No

No

No

Encryption

128-bit

128-bit

128-bit

128-bit

128-bit

Dimensions

131x72x42 mm

55x87x58mm

230x190x100mm

62x122x41mm

130x66x42mm

Weight

Not specified

90g

898g

Not specified

Not specified

Warranty

1 year

3 years

1 year

2 years

3 years

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/H9W89QM

TINYURL.COM/QYEPJQ7

TINYURL.COM/NVONCWT

TINYURL.COM/NZ4EJW8

TINYURL.COM/Q4EOO4M

Overall rating

HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/PNUDFBK FOR OUR PERIPHERALS BUYING ADVICE TEST CENTRE



24/10/2016 10:15

Top 5 charts

Best NAS drives

1 Synology DS115j

2 Qnap HS-210

3 WD My Cloud EX2100

4 Synology DS216play

5 Synology DS414j

Price

£83 inc VAT (diskless)





Website

Synology.com

Qnap.com

Wd.com

Synology.com

Synology.com

Drive bays

1

2

2

2

4

Processor

800MHz Marvell Armada 370

1.6GHz Marvell single-core

1.3GHz Marvel Armada 385

1.5GHz STM STiH412

1.2GHz Mindspeed Concerto

Memory

256MB DDR3

512MB DDR3

1GB DDR3

1GB DDR3

512MB DDR3

Remote access











eSATA









1x

USB port

2x USB 2.0

2x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0

2x USB 3.0

2x USB 3.0

1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0

Raid options

None

0/1/JBOD

00/1/JBOD

00/1/JBOD

0/1/5/6/10/JBOD

Software

DSM 5.1

HD Station

My Cloud

DSM 5.2

DSM 5.0

Dimensions

71x161x224mm

302x220x41mm

216x109x148mm

165x100x226mm

184x168x230mm

Weight

700g

1.5kg

3.5kg

1.8kg

2.2kg

Warranty

1 year

2 years

3 years

2 years

3 years

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/MNEYVNK

TINYURL.COM/OEXRYNY

TINYURL.COM/M643BSG

TINYURL.COM/JTQF67V

TINYURL.COM/M643BSG

Overall rating

Best portable hard drives

1

2

3

4

5

Adata SE730

Samsung Portable SSD T3

Transcend ESD400

SanDisk Extreme 500 Portable SSD

Toshiba Canvio Connect II

Price

£106 inc VAT

£606 inc VAT

£420 inc VAT

£70 inc VAT

£104 inc VAT

Website

Adata.com

Samsung.com/uk

Transcend-info.com

Sandisk.co.uk

Toshiba.co.uk

Price per GB (at capacity tested)

46p

32p

39p

31p

3p

Capacity tested

250GB

2TB

256GB

240GB

3TB

Capacity range

250GB

250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB

128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB

120GB, 240GB, 480GB

500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 3TB

Storage

MLC NAND Flash

NAND Flash

NAND Flash

NAND Flash SSD

HDD

406.9/211.2MB/s

410.8/163.8MB/s

398.3/203.4MB/s

131.1/135.5MB/s

Overall rating

Sequential performance 380.8/278.5MB/s 4K performance

19.8/38.9MB/s

21.9/2.3MB/s

16.1/2.7MB/s

19.8/3.7MB/s

0.5/1.2MB/s

Other interfaces

USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C

USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C

USB 3.0

USB 3.0

USB 3.0

Encryption

None

256-bit AES

None

128-bit AES

None

Software

None

T3 Security Enabler

Transcend Elite Data Management

SanDisk SecureAccess

NTI Backup Now EZ, Tuxera NTFS for Mac

Dimensions

44x73x12mm

58x74x10mm

92x62x10.5mm

75.7x75.7x10.7mm

78x109x19.5mm

Weight

33g

51g

56g

79g

230g

Warranty

3 years

3 years

3 years

3 years

2 years

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/OABWL4B

TINYURL.COM/M72D3EP

TINYURL.COM/J43SQM5

TINYURL.COM/HNKNV3M

TINYURL.COM/GVWUTV2

HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/O99Z6ZO FOR OUR STORAGE BUYING ADVICE 138 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews January 2017


TEST CENTRE

20/10/2016 10:11

Top 5 charts

Best SSDs

1

2

3

4

5

Samsung 850 Evo (500GB)

Toshiba Q300 (480GB)

Samsung 850 Pro (1TB)

SanDisk Extreme Pro (480GB)

Kingston KC400 SSDNow (512GB)

Price

£109 inc VAT

£79 inc VAT

£365 inc VAT

£172 inc VAT

£132 inc VAT

Website

Samsung.com/uk

Toshiba.co.uk

Samsung.com/uk

Sandisk.co.uk

Kingston.com/en

Price per GB

23p

18p

36.5p

35.8p

28p

4K performance

36.3/106.2MB/s

29.8/65.1MB/s

36/89MB/s

32/88MB/s

29.4/98.2MB/s

529.3/511.5MB/s

508/482MB/s

513/490MB/s

533.7/521.6MB/s

Overall rating

Sequential performance 525.4/512.1MB/s Memory cache

512MB DDR3 SDRAM

Unknown

1GB LPDDR2

1GB

Unknown

Controller

Samsung MGX Controller

Toshiba TC58NC1000

Samsung MCX

Marvell 88SS9187

Phison 3110

Encryption

AES 256-bit

None

AES 256-bit

AES 256-bit

None

Flash

Samsung 3D V-NAND

TLC NAND

Samsung 40nm V-NAND MLC

SanDisk 19nm MLC

Kingston NAND

Connection

SATA III 6GB/s

SATA III 6GB/s

SATA III 6GB/

SATA III 6GB/s

SATA III 6GB/s

Power consumption

4.7W active/0.5W idle





Warranty

5 years

3 years

10 years

10 years

5 years

Dimensions

69.85x100x6.8mm

69.85x100x7mm

69.85x100x6.8mm

69.85x100.5x7mm

69.9x100.1x7mm

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/JB2VWLF

TINYURL.COM/ZZBWFJZ

TINYURL.COM/OVHDALD

TINYURL.COM/NMSJU25

TINYURL.COM/JF4E3NL

Smart thermostats

1

2

3

4

5

Honeywell EvoHome

Heat Genius

Nest Learning Thermostat

Hive Active Heating

Tado

Price (from)

£249 inc VAT

£249 inc VAT

£179 inc VAT

£179 inc VAT

£199 inc VAT

Website

Honeywelluk.com

Heatgenius.co.uk

Nest.com

Hivehome.com

Tado.com/gb

Zones controlled

12

6

1

1

1

Hot water control











Underfloor heating











Warranty

18 months

2 years

2 years

1 year

1 year

Verdict

EvoHome is the best smart heating system we’ve tested. It isn’t perfect though, and it’s also very expensive, or can be. But if you value convenience and comfort above saving money, it’s the one to buy.

Heat Genius is very good at a very useful thing. It is easy to use and efficient. How long it takes to pay for itself will depend on your circumstances, and it may be that a full system is too much of a long-term investment for you. If you are looking to install in your a zoned smart heating system, we are happy to recommend Heat Genius.

If you need only a single thermostat and don’t need control over hot water, the Nest is a good choice. The Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide alarm also works with the thermostat, but it’s not cheap. There’s also the Nest Cam, but the tie-in with the thermostat is minimal.

The Hive Active Heating system is a great upgrade for anyone that wants or needs the ability to be able to control their heating remotely. It’s by no means the most advanced smart thermostat, but it will do the job at a good price for a lot of people.

Tado is the best smart thermostat if you like the idea of presence detection as it simply follows you and your smartphone via GPS, and turns the heating up or down as you get further away or nearer home. There’s also hot water control, but the thermostat itself isn’t the best looking.

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/Q3CXA4Z

TINYURL.COM/Q2TUKL9

TINYURL.COM/N9MWV4G

TINYURL.COM/PDLCSAS

TINYURL.COM/O4K3A2A

Overall rating

HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/O99Z6ZO FOR OUR STORAGE BUYING ADVICE TEST CENTRE



20/10/2016 10:11

Top 5 charts

Best budget graphics cards

1

2

3

4

5

Sapphire Radeon R7 250X

MSI R7 260X OC

EVGA GeForce GTX 750

Asus GeForce GT 740 OC

MSI GeForce GT 730

Price

£65 inc VAT

£91 inc VAT

£90 inc VAT

£65 inc VAT

£48 inc VAT

Website

Sapphiretech.com

Uk.msi.com

Eu.evga.com

Asus.com/uk

Uk.msi.com

Graphics processor

AMD Radeon R7 250X

AMD Radeon R7 260X


Nvidia GeForce GT 740

Nvidia GeForce GT730

Installed RAM

1GB GDDR5

2GB GDDR5

1GB GDDR5

1GB GDDR5

2GB GDDR3

Memory interface

128-bit

128-bit

128-bit

128-bit

128-bit

Core clock

950MHz

1175MHz

1294MHz

1033MHz

780MHz

1625MHz/6.5GHz

1253/5012MHz

1.25/5GHz

900/1800MHzHz

Overall rating

Memory clock/Effective 1125/4500MHz Stream processors

640

896

512

384

320

Texture units

40

56

32

32

20

Power connectors

1x 6-pin

1x 6-pin

None

1x 6-pin

1x 6-pin

DirectX

12

11.1

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Digital interface

1x DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort

2x DVI, HDMI, Mini-DP

1x DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort

1x DVI, HDMI, VGA

1x DVI, HDMI, VGA

Warranty

2 years

3 years

3 years

3 years

2 years

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/OLJ83SQ

TINYURL.COM/OZ6WUYT

TINYURL.COM/PB3F6EN

TINYURL.COM/PAH5VMJ

TINYURL.COM/P8J4C2R

Best graphics cards

1

2

3

4

5

Asus ROG Strix GTX 1080

Nvidia GTX 1080 Founders Ed

MSI GTX 1070

Nvidia GTX 1060 Founders Ed

XFX Radeon RX 480

Price

£659 inc VAT

£619 inc VAT

£419 inc VAT

£275 inc VAT

£249 inc VAT

Website

Asus.com/uk

Nvidia.co.uk

Uk.msi.com

Nvidia.co.uk

Novatech.co.uk

Graphics processor





AMD Radeon RX480

Installed RAM

8GB

8GB

8GB

6GB

8GB

Memory interface

256-bit

256-bit

256-bit

192-bit

256-bit

Core clock/boost

1759/1898MHz

1607/1733MHz

1607/1797MHz

1506/1708MHz

1120/1288MHz

Memory clock

10,010MHz

10,000MHz

4006MHz

4006MHz

7000MHz

Stream processors

2560

2560

1920

1280

2304

Texture units

160

160

120

80

144

Power connectors

1x 8-pin, 1x 6-pin

1x 8-pin

1x 8-pin, 1x 6-pin

2x 6-pin

1x 6-pin

DirectX

12

12

12

12

12

Digital interface

DVI, 2x HDMI, 2x DisplayPort

DVI, HDMI, 3x DisplayPort

DVI, HDMI, 3x DisplayPort

DVI, HDMI 2.0, 3x DisplayPort 1.4

3x DP 1.4, HDMI

Warranty

3 years

3 years

3 years

3 years

2 years

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/HL4SOJ2

TINYURL.COM/ZEQXYQU

TINYURL.COM/J6HWN55

TINYURL.COM/HH6TYT8

TINYURL.COM/HSVQWBQ

Overall rating

HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/M7DF9RF FOR OUR GAMING BUYING ADVICE 140 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews January 2017


TEST CENTRE

20/10/2016 10:11

Top 5 charts

Best 4K flat-panel TVs

1

2

3

4

5

Panasonic TX-50CX802B

Samsung UE48JU7000

Sony KD-55X8505C

Philips 40PUT6400

Finlux 55UX3EC320S

Price

£1,299 inc VAT

£1,200 inc VAT

£1,200 inc VAT

£449 inc VAT

£799 inc VAT

Website

Panasonic.co.uk

Samsung.com/uk

Sony.co.uk

Philips.co.uk

Finlux.co.uk

Screen size

50in

48in

55in

40in

55in

Panel type

LCD (LED)

LCD (LED)

LCD (LED)

LCD (LED)

LCD (LED)

Native resolution

3840x2160

3840x2160

3840x2160

3840x2160

3840x2160

3D enabled











Apps

BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, All 4, Demand 5, Netflix, YouTube, Amazon

BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, All 4, Netflix, Amazon, YouTube and apps store

YouView with BBC iPlayer, ITV BBC iPlayer, Netflix, YouTube, BBC iPlayer, Netflix, Player, All 4 and Demand 5; Spotify Connect, Daily Motion, YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Philips App Store, Google Play Facebook, Viewster, Flickr

Networking

Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct




Ethernet, Wi-Fi

Inputs

3x HDMI, 3x USB

4x HDMI, 3x USB

4x HDMI, 3x USB

4x HDMI, 3x USB

4x HDMI, 3x USB

Dimensions

112.1x4.6x65.2cm

108.7x6.7x63cm

123.6x6x72.2cm

90.4x8.3x52.6m

123.3x10.6x71.3cm

Weight

18kg

11.1kg

19.9kg

7.8kg

17.2kg

Warranty

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/ZLFQ3JV

TINYURL.COM/Q2W3VZY

TINYURL.COM/ZGSP9FM

TINYURL.COM/JQVWCFU

TINYURL.COM/P934VXT

Overall rating

Best 4K flat-panel displays

1

2

3

4

5

BenQ BL3201PT

Philips BDM4065UC

Samsung UD970

Acer S277HK

ViewSonic VP2780-4K

Price

£699 inc VAT

£600 inc VAT

£1,400 inc VAT

£499 inc VAT

£699 inc VAT

Website

Benq.co.uk

Philips.co.uk

Samsung.com/uk

Acer.co.uk

Viewsoniceurope.com/uk

Screen size

32in

40in

31.5in

27in

27in

Panel type

IPS

VA

PLS

IPS

IPS

Native resolution

3840x2160

3840x2160

3840x2160

3840x2160

3840x2160

Pixel density

157ppi

110ppi

140ppi

163ppi

163ppi

Brightness

350cd/m2

120cd/m2

350cd/m2

300cd/m2

350cd/m2

Static contrast ratio

1000:1

5000:1

1000:1

530:1

1000:1

Response time

4ms

8.5ms

8ms

4ms

5ms

Ports

DVI-DL, HDMI, DP, mDP

HDMI, DP, mDP, VGA

HDMI, DVI, 4x USB 3.0

DVI, HDMI, DP, mDP, 4x USB 3.0 HDMI, DP, 4x USB 3.0

Dimensions

490.2x740.3x213.4mm

904x512x88mm

728x427x62mm

614x406x113mm

642.7x469.7x347.8mm

Weight

12.5kg

8.5kg

10.3kg

4.9kg

11.7kg

Warranty

3 years

2 years

Not specified

Not specified

3 years

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/NPA62QL

TINYURL.COM/Q2W3VZY

TINYURL.COM/OBWBBYN

TINYURL.COM/NTV4EVD

TINYURL.COM/O69CMTB

Overall rating

HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/LNLDBJX FOR OUR DIGITAL HOME BUYING ADVICE TEST CENTRE



20/10/2016 10:11

Top 5 charts

Best e-book readers

1

2

3

4

5

Amazon Kindle Voyage

Amazon Kindle Oasis

Amazon Kindle (8th gen)

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite

Nook GlowLight

Price

£169 inc VAT

£269 inc VAT

£59 inc VAT

£109 inc VAT

£89 inc VAT

Website

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.co.uk

Nook.com/gb

Screen size

6in touchscreen

6in touchscreen

6in touchscreen

6in touchscreen

6in touchscreen

Screen technology

E Ink

E Ink

E Ink

E Ink

E Ink

Screen resolution

1440x1080

1440x1080

600x800

768x1024

758x1024

Built-in light

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Storage

4GB

4GB

4GB

2GB

4GB

Book store

Amazon Kindle

Amazon Kindle

Amazon Kindle

Amazon Kindle

Nook


Optional extra

Optional extra

No

Optional extra

No

Battery life

Six weeks

Eight weeks

Four weeks

Eight weeks

Eight weeks

Dimensions

162x115x7.6mm

143x122x8.5mm

160x115x9.1mm

117x169x9.1mm

127x166x10.7mm

Weight

180g

131g

161g

206g

175g

Warranty

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/NXAAU3Q

TINYURL.COM/Z924POY

TINYURL.COM/HJONZA4

TINYURL.COM/PREZPRK

TINYURL.COM/OZ5WMPO

Overall rating

Best media streamers

1

2

3

4

5

Roku Streaming Stick

Roku 3

Google Chromecast 2

Amazon Fire TV Stick

Google Chromecast

Price

£49 inc VAT

£99 inc VAT

£30 inc VAT

£35 inc VAT

£30 inc VAT

Website

Roku.com

Roku.com

Play.google.com

Apple.com/uk

Play.google.com

Type

Dongle

Set-top box

Dongle

Dongle

Dongle

Ports

HDMI, Micro-USB

HDMI, USB, ethernet

HDMI, Micro-USB

HDMI, Micro-USB

HDMI, Micro-USB

Processor

600MHz single-core

900MHz single-core

13.GHz dual-core

Dual-core

Single-core

RAM

512MB

512MB

512MB

1GB

512MB

Graphics

Not specified

Not specified

Not specified

Not specified

Not specified

Storage

None

512MB, plus microSD slot

None

8GB (not user-accessible)

None

Voice search

No

Yes

No

No

No

Remote control

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

Dimensions

78.7x27.9x12.7mm

89x89x25mm

52x52x13.5mm

84.9x25x11.5mm

72x35x12mm

Weight

18g

170g

39g

25g

34g

Warranty

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/OAP9QF9

TINYURL.COM/PT7MGUL

TINYURL.COM/Q4B6B29

TINYURL.COM/NAQRNOC

TINYURL.COM/QBGTCS2

Overall rating

HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/LNLDBJX FOR OUR DIGITAL HOME BUYING ADVICE 142 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews January 2017


TEST CENTRE

20/10/2016 10:11

Top 5 charts

Best games consoles

1

2

3

4

Sony PlayStation 4

Microsoft Xbox One

Nintendo Wii U Premium

Sony PlayStation 3 Super Slim Microsoft Xbox 360

5

Price

£349 inc VAT

£349 inc VAT

£249 inc VAT

£249 inc VAT

£199 inc VAT

Website

Playstation.com

Xbox.com

Nintendo.co.uk

Playstation .com

Xbox.com

Processor

Octa-core AMD x86

1.75GHz octa-core AMD x86

IBM Power multicore CPU

IBM CPU

IBM Xenon CPU

Graphics

1.84TFlops AMD Radeon GPU

1.31TFlops AMD Radeon GPU

AMD Radeon GPU

256MB Nvidia RSX

512MB ATI Xenos

RAM

8GB GDDR5

8GB DDR3

Not specified

Not specified

512MB GDDR3

Storage

500GB

500GB

32GB, plus SD card support

500GB

500GB

Optical drive

Blu-ray, DVD, game discs


Wii U, Wii discs only


DVD, game discs

Ports

2x USB 3.0, AUX, HDMI

USB 3.0, HDMI

4x USB 2.0, HDMI

2x USB 2.0, HDMI

5x USB, HDMI

Connectivity

Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n

802.11b/g/n

Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n

Other

1 controller

1 controller, 4K, Kinect option

1 controller

1 controller

1 controller

Dimensions

275x53x305mm

333x274x79mm

46x269x171mm

290x230x60mm

269x75x264mm

Weight

2.8kg

3.2kg

1.6kg

2.1kg

2.9kg

Warranty

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/NBFLQK2

TINYURL.COM/M6J4KHS

TINYURL.COM/6J49LHL

TINYURL.COM/QDJP56O

TINYURL.COM/PFP9CCK

Overall rating

Best budget portable speakers

1

2

3

4

5

Sumvision Psyc Monic

Denon Envaya Mini

UE Roll

Marsboy 5W Orb

Lumsing B9

Price

£37 inc VAT

£99 inc VAT

£99 inc VAT

£38 inc VAT

£23 inc VAT

Website

Sumvision.com

Denon.com

Ultimateears.com

Amazon.co.uk

Lumsing.com

Speaker(s)

Not specified

Not specified

Not specified

Not specified

Not specified

Bluetooth

Bluetooth 4.0

Bluetooth 4.0

Bluetooth

Bluetooth 4.1 + EDR

Bluetooth 3.0 + EDR

Handsfree calls

No

Yes

No

No

Yes

NFC

No

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Frequency response

90Hz to 20KHz

Not specified

108Hz to 20kHz

80Hz to 18kHz

20Hz to 20kHz

Impedence

Not specified

Not specified

Not specified

4 ohms

4 ohms

Extra features

None

IPX4 splashproof

IPX7 splashproof

MicroSD slot

MicroSD slot, lanyard

Claimed battery life

7 hours

10 hours

9 hours

12 hours

25 hours

Dimensions

200x60x60mm

209x54x51mm

134x39x40mm

150x148x138mm

177x50x70mm

Weight

Not stated

558g

330g

454g

300g

Warranty

1 year

1 year

2 years

1 year

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/JC8CZM2

TINYURL.COM/QDRNP3P

TINYURL.COM/O7T7ZUU

TINYURL.COM/JJLOPCD

TINYURL.COM/P623MK8

Overall rating

HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/LNLDBJX FOR OUR DIGITAL HOME BUYING ADVICE TEST CENTRE



20/10/2016 10:11

Top 5 charts

Best budget headphones

1

2

3

4

5

Rock Jaw Alpha Genus V2

Verbatim 44400

RHA S500i

RHA MA450i

Sennheiser HD 429

Price

£43 inc VAT

£27 inc VAT

£39 inc VAT

£39 inc VAT

£45 inc VAT

Website

Rockjawaudio.com

Verbatim-europe.co.uk

Rha-audio.com/uk

Rha-audio.com/uk

En-uk.sennheiser.com

Type

In-ear

In-ear

In-ear

In-ear

Circumaural over-ear

Frequency response

20Hz to 20kHz

Not stated

16Hz to 22kHz

16Hz to 22kHz

18Hz to 22kHz

Nominal impedance

16 ohms

16 ohms

16 ohms

16 ohms

32 ohms

Sensitivity

108dB

96dB

100dB

103dB

110dB

In-line remote

No

Yes

Yes (3 button)

Yes (3 button)

No

Mic

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Extra tips

Yes, and filters

Yes

Yes

Yes

N/A

Carry case

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Cable length

1.2m

1.25m

1.35m

1.5m (braided)

3m

Weight

11g

Not stated

14g

14g

218g

Warranty

1 year

1 year

3 years

3 years

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/NNYUFBF

TINYURL.COM/ZFSD333

TINYURL.COM/ZZ9PZDG

TINYURL.COM/P7W7RVL

TINYURL.COM/ND8TD8O

Overall rating

Best headphones

1

2

3

4

5

Final Audio Design Sonorous III

Bose QuietComfort 35

Denon AH-D600

Denon AH-MM400

Audio-Technica ATH-WS99

Price

£299 inc VAT

£289 inc VAT

£229 inc VAT

£196 inc VAT

£79 inc VAT

Website

Final-audio-design.com

Bose.co.uk

Denon.co.uk

Denon.co.uk

Eu.audio-technica.com/en

Type





Over-ear

Frequency response

Not stated

Not stated

5Hz to 45kHz

10Hz to 40kHz

8Hz to 25kHz

Nominal impedance

25 ohms

Not stated

25 ohms

32 ohms

37 ohms

Sensitivity

105dB

Not stated

108dB

96dB

120dB

In-line remote

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Mic

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Extra tips

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

Carry case

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Cable length

1.5m

1.2m

3m

Not specified

0.8m

Weight

410g

310g

250g

310g

250g

Warranty

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/JQW529E

TINYURL.COM/JZWSSSQ

TINYURL.COM/NBCFJW6

TINYURL.COM/J7G56N9

TINYURL.COM/QDRCCAT

Overall rating

HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/OKZ9TUK FOR OUR BUYING ADVICE 144 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews January 2017


TEST CENTRE

20/10/2016 10:11

Top 5 charts

Best power banks

1

2

3

4

5

Zendure A2 (2nd gen)

Anker PowerCore 10000

CHJDG UltraCompact

Xiaomi 10,000mAh

Flux Card

Price

£25 inc VAT

£20 inc VAT

£19 inc VAT

£11 inc VAT

£19 inc VAT

Website

Zendure.com

Anker.com

Chargedpower.com

Mi.com/en

Fluxchargers.com

Capacity

6700mAh

10,000mAh

10,000mAh

10,000mAh

2500mAh

Input

1x 7.5W Micro-USB

1x 10W Micro-USB

1x 5W Micro-USB

1x 10W Micro-USB

1x 5W Micro-USB

Outputs

1x 10.5W USB

1x QC 3.0 USB

1x 10.5W USB

1x 10.5W USB

1x 10W Micro-USB

Auto-on/-off

Yes

Yes/No

Yes/No

Yes

Yes/No

Passthrough charging

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

No

Status indicator

4 LEDs

4 LEDs

4 LEDs

4 LEDs

1 LED

LED flashlight

No

No

No

No

No

Carry case

Yes

No

No

No

No

Dimensions

93x48x23mm

92x60x22mm

93x19x63mm

91x60.4x22mm

96x62x6.6mm

Weight

137g

188g

181g

207g

60g

Warranty

1 year

1 year

1 year

1 year

18 months

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/NGCNO5F

TINYURL.COM/ZSREH65

TINYURL.COM/JMOUUUO

TINYURL.COM/NFQZOCB

TINYURL.COM/JM593RM

Overall rating

Best desktop chargers

1

2

3

4

5

Tronsmart Titan

Tronsmart U5PTA

CHOEtech 6-port Charger

Aukey USB Charging Station

iClever USB Travel Charger

Price

£25 inc VAT

£22 inc VAT

£25 inc VAT

£17 inc VAT

£20 inc VAT

Website

Tronsmart.com

Tronsmart.com

Choetech.com

Hisgadget.com

Hisgadget.com

90W

54W

60W

54W

50W

USB 1 QC 2.0

QC 3.0

QC 2.0

QC 2.0

12W USB

USB 2 QC 2.0

12W

QC 2.0

12W

12W USB

USB 3 QC 2.0

12W

12W

12W

12W USB

USB 4 QC 2.0

12W

12W

12W

12W USB

USB 5 QC 2.0

12W

12W

12W

12W USB

USB 6 N/A

N/A

12W

N/A

12W USB

Overall rating Max output Outputs:

Colours available

Black

Black

Black

Black

Black

Dimensions

160x81x28mm

165x156x56mm

71.5x29x88.4mm

94x60x25mm

100x69x27mm

Weight

292g

390g

158g

149g

180g

Warranty

1 year

18 months

1 year

1 year

1 year

FULL REVIEW

TINYURL.COM/GMVDCHM

TINYURL.COM/QG4X5D9

TINYURL.COM/QG4X5D9

TINYURL.COM/P2CZMCU

TINYURL.COM/MPA4DWC

HEAD TO TINYURL.COM/QCD8J7Y FOR OUR BUYING ADVICE TEST CENTRE



20/10/2016 10:11

OUTBOX LEAH YAMSHON

Google burns Apple during Pixel announcement ot on the heels of Apple’s big autumn event, Google held a launch event of its own on at which the company announced a plethora of new products. These included two new Android phones (the Pixel and Pixel XL, pictured), an updated Chromecast dongle (the Chromecast Ultra), a VR headset (the Daydream View), and some connected-home devices (Google Home and Google Wifi). You can read more on these on page 76. Both Google and Apple are known for taking subtle digs at each other’s products during events and marketing campaigns, so we were expecting some snipes, but Sundar Pichai and pals took it to a whole new level. They kept the zingers coming throughout the entire event.

H

1. Camera bump We’ll start with the low-hanging fruit: the camera bump. The iPhone has one; the new Pixel does not. Yet, this feature came up again and again during the live demos. Google even slid it in its new promo video for the Pixel. Yes, the iPhone 7’s camera bump is a little annoying, but nowhere near a deal-breaker – and sales figures prove that.

2. Blue bubbles to green bubbles iOS and Android devices both include software to help users switch from one platform to the other. iOS, for example, has a dedicated app for new iPhone owners to port their apps and data over to their handset from their old Android phone. With the Pixel, Google is going straight for the jugular: its switching software can even copy over iMessages, and the phone ships with a Quick Switch adaptor so you don’t have to perform the data transfer over the air.

3. Best camera ever? Onstage, Google executives bragged about the Pixel’s camera, stating that it was the bestperforming smartphone camera on the market based on shoot-out benchmarking carried out by DxOMark. The Pixel scored 89 out of 100, while the iPhone 7 recorded 86. Can you guess which phone was missing from the testing? Yep, the iPhone 7 Plus, which has a two-camera system that’s far superior to that of the iPhone 7. True, DxOMark hasn’t reviewed the 7 Plus’s camera yet, but Google used that to its advantage during the event.

4. Limited storage Speaking of the camera, Google had one more thing to add: “We think people are

going to use this camera a lot, so as a special bonus for Pixel owners, we’re including free unlimited storage for photos and videos at full resolution,” revealed Brian Rakowski, Google’s vice president of product management. Could this be a dig at Apple’s iCloud Photo Library and iCloud Drive, which cost extra for iPhone owners if you want more than 5GB of storage? If that isn’t, then this definitely is: “You can say goodbye to those painful Storage Full pop-ups.”

5. Different size, same specs The Pixel is available in two sizes – the 5in Pixel and 5.5in XL – similar to the 4.7in iPhone 7 and 5.5in 7 Plus. However, Apple’s two handsets have slightly different specifications, namely when it comes to battery life and camera capabilities. But what about the Pixel and Pixel XL? “All the great features you heard about today work on both, and both of these sizes come with all of these amazing hardware specs,” enthused Google product manager Sabrina Ellis.

“

With the Pixel, Google is going straight for the jugular: its switching software can even copy over iMessages

”

6. Really Blue Okay, this may not have been a total jab at Apple, but Pixel’s colour varieties seem a little shady. Instead of picking between jet black or black, or between rose gold or gold (all iPhone finishes), the Pixel is available in Quite Black, Really Blue and Very Silver.

7. Like, new new? “Need a new phone? Like new new? Like doesn’t have a version number new?” That’s fine, Google, but talk to us in a year when your next Pixel handset comes out.

8. Enough with the headphone jack This zinger from one of the Pixel promo videos is probably the best burn of them all: “3.5mm headphone jack satisfyingly not new.” J

146 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/opinion January 2017

146 Outbox 258.indd 146

24/10/2016 09:56

Don’t miss a single copy of PCAdvisor by subscribing digitally Subscribe from as little as £1.99

PCA Digital Filler Feb16.indd 123

17/03/2016 14:08

WERED BY PO

IT

RE

NK

S

SP

FI

SIP TR

U

Specialists in business-class Internet connectivity, SIP and Voice over IP

Humpback Whale [Megaptera Novaeangliae] The Humpback Whale swims over 15,500 miles while migrating to cool or warmer water

Our SIP Communicator™ hosted phone system enables your staff to work anywhere, with complete flexibility Ideal For: • SME businesses • New start-ups • Multiple locations • Homeworkers • Seamless multi-site working

Benefits • Multiple business call features • Free calls between sites • No up front phone system set up costs • 3 month contract gives maximum flexibility

Cutting edge cloud phone system – save up to 50% against traditional phone system costs.

Sales 0800 319 6010 • Partner Services 0800 319 6500 Innovative • Flexible • Reliable • Supportive

WINNER WINNE

HIGHLY HIGH FINALIST COMMENDED FINALIST

Service Provider of the Year

Provider ovider of the Year

2010 2011 2012 Internet rnet Service

HIGHLY HIGH

WINNER WINNE R COMMENDED

2013 2013 2014

Best Channel SME Ho Hosted ed Bestt Channel Best Bes ISP Soluon ISP

OBC Spitfire Ad.indd 148

Best ISP

www.spitfire.co.uk 23/08/2016 10:04

PC Advisor - January 2017

Recommend Documents