Indholdsfortegnelse for August 2022 i PC Pro

How patient are you? I will admit to using a couple of choice words when I discovered that both the Asus Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED (see p54) and Zenbook 14X OLED Space Edition (see p62) that I review this month won’t be available for sale until around September. My knee-jerk reaction was to wonder why Asus had rushed units for review. But then a voice of reason, in the form of PC Pro alumnus James Gorbold, who now works at Scan and thus has his finger on the pulse of stock levels, reminded me that component shortages are still rife. And as you’ll discover if you read those reviews, part of these laptops’ attraction is the cutting-edge nature of their components. My theory – and it is speculation, as…

Dick Pountain is editorial fellow of PC Pro. He remains thankful that he programs as a hobby, not a job. Email dick@dickpountain.co.uk During the darkest days of lockdown I kept myself amused by practising jazz guitar chords and writing Python programs. I write a lot of small, off-the-cuff programs, for everything from updating phone codes and solving maths puzzles to playing with simulations to do with game theory. Python is the latest in a long list of languages I’ve used: Basic, Forth, Pascal, Lisp and Ruby are among the others, but the one I remember with most affection is Turbo Pascal. My programs are so small and ad hoc it’s never worth investing too much time writing graphical user interfaces, so Windows has proved a nuisance rather than a liberation.…

Early adopters of operating systems are always canaries in the mine. It’s been a year since Windows 11 was announced and many months since it was launched, but the operating system still has some sizeable holes. From signing in without handing over an email address, to being barraged by unwanted apps, to shrunken menus, to performance problems, Windows 11 remains a sticky work in progress. Here, we’re going to show you how to overcome many of the bigger problems with Windows 11, hopefully making your computing life a tad easier. Whether it’s fiddling with settings, tweaking the Registry or using third-party apps, there’s usually a workaround for many of the problems that Windows 11 presents. We’ve also got an end-of-first-year report from Headmaster Honeyball, who pulls no punches on p31.…

If you’re not already using a VPN to protect your online activity, you could be soon. Analyst Research and Markets anticipates VPN usage growing by 19% a year until at least 2026, and there are good reasons for that. While you may not be eager to take on yet another online subscription, it’s worth understanding how a VPN service could benefit you – and what to look for when choosing a provider. SO WHAT EXACTLY IS A VPN? If you haven’t yet delved into the world of VPNs, the idea is quite simple. Normally when you browse the web or use any online service, your online activities are an open book to your ISP. The provider knows which sites you’re connecting to, and if you’re not using an encrypted connection…

Boxshots for illustration purposes only Are you in the market for a new copy of Windows 11? Perhaps you’re building a new PC from scratch or looking to move up from Windows 7? Maybe you’re planning to run Windows alongside macOS or Linux? Whatever your reasons, a Windows 11 OEM licence is a great choice. The first reason is simple: price. Microsoft charges £120 for a retail licence of Windows 11 Home, and a staggering £220 for Windows 11 Pro. By choosing an OEM licence – and avoiding the many dubious sources of licences you may find online – you cut that price in half. OEM stands for original equipment manufacturer, but that doesn’t mean this licence is only an option for new system builders. Far from it, in fact.…

SCORE PRICE £1,166 (£1,400 inc VAT) from uk.store.asus.com (estimated price) Over the past three months I’ve reviewed numerous Asus gaming laptops, including the gorgeous ROG Zephyrus M16 (see issue 331, p59). Where that cost £2,600 and included all the gaming mod cons, this 2022 update to the TUF Gaming F15 is focused on value. That means the F15 won’t include top-end components. For example, the Core i7-12700H here is as fast as the TUF Gaming series gets, while the graphics card peaks with the RTX 3070. Compare that to the Core i9-12900H and RTX 3070 Ti of the M16. My test F15 featured an RTX 3060 mobile graphics chip, and together with that Core i7 processor and 16GB of DDR5 RAM it returned strong figures in our gaming tests. At…

SCORE PRICE £46 (£55 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk You can spend a lot of money on a router, but not everyone needs to. Wi-Fi 6 is fast enough that even a low-end router can provide plenty of bandwidth for everyday messaging, web browsing and video streaming. That’s the idea of the deliciously affordable Eagle Pro AI R15. It certainly qualifies as low-end: its 5GHz radio claims a top speed of 1.2Gbits/sec – the bare minimum for 802.11ax – and it’s limited to a channel width of 80MHz rather than the fatter, faster 160MHz option. The 2.4GHz transmitter, meanwhile, has a 300Mbits/sec rating that takes us back to the days of 802.11n. But it still adds up to a decent wodge of bandwidth, especially since the 2.4GHz band is mostly used…

1 Visit pcprodownload.co.uk. You’ll need to enter the coupon code printed on the spine of the cover (or directly on the cover if you’re a digital subscriber). If there’s no code on the spine, you have bought the £4.99 version of PC Pro, which doesn’t include a code. Also enter your email address. We’ll then send an email to confirm that your code has been registered. 2 Once you’re in the download area, you can access this month’s bonus software by navigating to the relevant product page and clicking the red Install button. For trial software, freeware and other downloads, click the Install button below the product description, or follow the onscreen instructions (please make sure to read these carefully). 3 If the software needs registering, click the purple Register…

SCORE PRICE 256GB, Wi-Fi, £499 (£599 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra (see issue 332, p48) made a big statement with its massive 14.6in screen and steep £999 price. The regular Tab S8 brings a more manageable 11in display and a much lower price: £549 with Wi-Fi 6E and 128GB of storage, or £599 for 256GB, in a choice of graphite, pink gold and silver finishes. There are 5G variants, too, starting at £699. While the Tab S8 is notionally a mid-range tablet, nothing about it feels cut down. Weighing 503g and measuring a mere 6mm thick, it’s sturdy and comfortable in the hand; the pink gold colour scheme on my review unit added an elegant sheen to the tablet’s slim chassis. On the back, a modest…

SCORE PRICE £75 (£90 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk Now in its 4th generation, the current Amazon Echo is the first smart speaker from the company that feels as though it has been designed to fit into a house. Gone is the cylindrical design, replaced with a material-covered globe that looks nice when it’s turned off. It’s available in three colours (charcoal, glacier white and twilight blue), giving more variety than previously. It’s the little touches that make this product nicer than its predecessors. For starters, the light ring that shows notifications and lights up blue when you talk to Alexa now points downwards. The result not only looks better, but it doesn’t light up the room in such a distracting way as the original. Not that this speaker has to…

SCORE PRICE £50 (£60 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk Although it’s based on the current Echo Dot, the Kids edition is available as either a cute tiger or panda, and it costs £10 more than the standard version. Both models look fantastic, and we’d hazard a guess that it may not just be kids that want one of these. Aside from looks, the difference comes down to what’s included: a year’s subscription to Amazon Kids+ and a worry-free guarantee (if the speaker gets broken for any reason in the first two years, Amazon will send you a new one). Kids+ brings premium content to any of your Amazon devices, including the Kindle and Fire tablets, as well as the Echo range. There are games, including quizzes and educational content, and loads…

Smart speakers and voice control have gone from niche curiosities to commonplace. The latest statistics (from 2021) show that around 50% of households have a smart speaker and, unusually for cutting-edge technology, the figures are fairly evenly distributed between age groups. The main battle for dominance has been between Google and Amazon, keen to get people to use their platforms. Both companies love to collect data, which they’ll nominally use to improve the service, but all of this feeds back into building better profiles of you. It’s actually quite frightening how information is collected and how it’s used. I was surprised the other day when my Echo Show 15 popped up a message telling me that my Epson printer was low on ink, offering me the option to order more…

Small and medium businesses (SMBs) that are still relying on paper files and records are wasting huge amounts of time and money. Going paperless is the way forward, and investing in a document scanner can reap many extra benefits such as increased productivity, reduced office space requirements and improved compliance with data protection regulations. With office rental costs rising all the time, businesses can save hard cash, as once paper records have been scanned, they can be sent to a secure storage facility instead of occupying valuable office floor space. Digitisation will improve workflow efficiencies and customer experiences as staff won’t need to waste time searching through filing cabinets looking for that crucial invoice or sales record. Scanning all your paper documents offers a whole heap of other benefits, too.…

SCORE PRICE £213 exc VAT from printerbase.co.uk Small businesses and home workers short on desk space will appreciate Fujitsu’s ScanSnap iX1300, as it packs plenty of document-digitising features into a footprint that’s only 296 x 114mm. It’s good value, too, with the scanner combining a choice of USB or 802.11n wireless connections with fast 30ppm scan speeds. The iX1300 doesn’t need any space in front for ejected documents as it employs a smart motorised telescopic stacker. Just put your documents in the pop-up 20-page ADF and when scanning starts, the stacker automatically rises, extends itself and then closes back down again after the last page has been scanned. The iX1300 comes with Fujitsu’s ScanSnap Home software, which is designed to make scanning a simple, one-tap operation. It’s swift to install;…

SCORE PRICE £595 exc VAT from polar.uk.com Small offices and mobile workers that want a videoconferencing (VC) solution that puts everyone in shot will love Maxhub’s UC M40. This slim metal baton sports a 5-megapixel 4K camera with four lenses arranged around the top to deliver a full 360-degree panoramic field of view (FoV). Measuring 68mm on each side and only 182mm tall, the UC M40 is one of the smallest panoramic cameras we’ve seen, and its 450g weight makes it highly portable. This compactness doesn’t come at the cost of features, either, as the UC M40 is very well endowed. Inside is an array of four omnidirectional mics used for active speaker tracking. You can see these in action as the upper surface has a circular blue indicator that…

Although many laptops pass through my hands, I rarely get to see the throbbing power-boxes dribbling with the latest tech, but that’s where PC Pro continues to be vital. A team of testers burn barrels of midnight oil while benchmarking, logging and agglomerating data so we can get a feel for everything from budget bargains to wallet-shrivelling workstations. I mention this so I can talk about Diane, who wasn’t happy with the new laptop we’d sold her. The unit itself wasn’t a problem and hit her criteria for cost, usability and functionality, but three months in, she fired up the webcam for the first time. A few issues back, our editor bemoaned the fact that many laptop cameras are awful, and these were solacing words to read. As a small…

@stardotpro Over the past six months, I lost touch with three senior citizens. One had passed away, and as the weeks passed I became increasingly concerned about the other two. One lives in the Midlands, which made investigation of his sudden silence difficult. The other was in the ’burbs of west London. There, all I had to do was nudge a friend who had been taught by our missing man while in junior school. He went straight round to his ex-teacher’s house and banged on the door. Eventually, contact was made in both cases, and the silence turned out to be permutations of the same issue. In one case a migration from a cable TV connection provider to a general internet company managed to cut off his landline phone. The…

It’s impossible to see the future, but modelling potential outcomes is powerful. Want to know how a driverless car will perform on a specific street in rare weather conditions, how an individual will react to a new drug or the impact of a larger train station on a city’s travel habits? You could wait and see – or you could ask a digital model to tell you. Singapore is choosing the latter when it comes to everything from weather to 5G rollouts. The country is the first to edge towards that much-hyped concept of a digital twin, in which all of Singapore is represented digitally to act as a starting point for virtual modelling – and perhaps even a reality-based metaverse. Before we find out how the island nation made…

Nicole Kobie is PC Pro’s futures editor. Did she mention she had a baby? She did and she’s the best baby in the world. Fact. @njkobie While I was recently on maternity leave, my phone sent a notification that I’ve never previously noticed, alerting me to the fact I’d spent upwards of seven hours staring at the screen the day before. Apparently that was down from the previous week. Does that alarm you? Does it sound like a lot? It did to me, at first. And no wonder, given the many headlines I’ve seen shrieking about smartphone addiction. The New York Times ran a story in February offering advice on cutting down; according to Newsweek even a zoo gorilla is obsessed with smartphones. To help us, a Berlin-based startup called…

Let’s face it, listing the world’s most iconic PCs (see issue 333, p26) was always going to be controversial, we all have our favourites, the ones that inspired us into a life of computers. However, come on, you missed – nay, didn’t even mention – the ZX81! Reading your article, I like many others would have been searching for the key instrument that set them off. To not see mine listed, was, well, almost a subscription decision moment… Yes, you mentioned the ZX80, and I can understand why, but that was so limited it was quickly superseded by the ZX81, a monumental move that changed lives (it sold over 1.5 million). I remember typing so many programs in, getting the magazines to try the latest tips and tricks in your…

Most VPNs are used for securely accessing the internet, but the technology can work in the other direction too: lots of businesses run their own VPNs to allow remote workers to “dial in” to the company LAN over the internet. If you run one on your personal router, you can similarly connect to it from anywhere in the world and securely access your home network as if you were directly connected. Many Asus, Netgear and Synology routers have built-in VPN server capabilities that can be enabled with the flick of a virtual switch. Others can often be flashed with DD-WRT or Fresh Tomato firmware, which includes an inbound VPN option. These VPNs use the OpenVPN protocol, so to access your VPN you simply install the free OpenVPN Connect client on…

Recommended This, quite simply, is a product we recommend you buy – if it meets your needs. A-List The best buy in its category right now. The product will also feature on our A-List, starting on p14. It’s updated each month. Labs Winner Each month we run a group test, or Labs. This product has managed to beat all others to top position. The pcpro.link Throughout the magazine you’ll see pcpro.link shortcuts. Enter these into the address bar of your browser and it will take you to a particular page, which will either be too long or awkward for us to publish or will take you to the precise shop from which to buy. If it’s Amazon, note that we have an affiliate deal in place so we will receive…

SCORE PRICE £694 (£833 inc VAT) from business.currys.co.uk While we’ve seen many manufacturers switch to recycled packaging, Acer is leading the charge when it comes to the laptops themselves. We saw this with the consumer-targeted Aspire Vero (see issue 329, p48), and now Acer turns its attention to businesses with the Travelmate Vero. The first question to ask is what makes the Vero “green”. The key ingredient is its post-consumer recycled (PCR) materials, with 30% of the chassis and 50% of the keycaps consisting of PCR plastic. That’s almost identical to the Aspire Vero, but where that was finished in a perky light green, the Travelmate is dressed in subdued black. Acer liberally sprinkles the plastic with yellow and white speckles, in an effort to remind users that it’s not…

SCORE PRICE £2,583 (£3,100 inc VAT) from razer.com The Razer Blade 15 has long been the MacBook Pro of gaming laptops, and this 2022 update continues the trend. The all-black anodised CNC aluminium finish is still gorgeous and slim, yet Razer packs in a plethora of ports: Thunderbolt 4 plus USB-C, three USB-A ports, an HDMI 2.1 output and Gigabit Ethernet. Considering it measures 17mm from top to bottom, that’s quite a feat. The keyboard is as comfortable as ever, with per-key RGB lighting that looks refined rather than garish; a major plus point compared to many gaming laptops. It seems odd not to exploit more of the chassis width by enlarging the keys, but that leaves space for the superb up-firing speakers. Razer makes much of the THX Spatial…

SCORE PRICE £58 (£70 inc VAT) from logitech.co.uk When it comes to ergonomics, you can be confident that Logitech has done its research. This device is certified by ergonomics institutions and, according to Logitech’s own testing, 70% of users reported “great comfort from day one”. It has been geared towards people with small to medium-sized hands, and there’s even a left-handed edition. It instantly felt natural under my (medium-sized) hand, with the left- and right-click buttons sitting almost preternaturally under my index and middle fingers. The next thing I noticed was how quiet the clicks are; almost silent. The Lift has four programmable buttons, all of which are easy to reach without moving your hand. Two buttons sit under your thumb, one via the scroll wheel and one just below…

SCORE PRICE £333 (£400 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk Looking for an e-reader that’s not just another Kindle? The Onyx Boox Nova Air C one-ups Amazon’s readers with a colour display and a classy design, packing a spacious 7.8in display into a frame that’s about the height and width of a standard hardcover book. It’s more versatile than a Kindle, too. It runs a full version of Android 11, albeit with a highly customised interface, and comes loaded with an eight-core processor, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. So aside from reading, there’s enough power here to browse the web in Chrome and run a range of preinstalled apps. I was even able to load up YouTube and Crunchyroll in the browser – although the screen isn’t ideal for cinematic…

SCORE PRICE £117 (£140 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com Motorola has form when it comes to building great smartphones at low prices. The Moto G22 certainly ticks the latter box, costing only £140 for a fully featured Android 12 phone, even it’s hard to get excited about a phone with so much evident cost-cutting. Not that this is obvious at first glance. Though fairly chunky at 8.5mm, the G22’s casing is nicely curved and feels well put together. Unsurprisingly it’s all plastic, but it doesn’t feel flimsy, and both the Cosmic Black and Iceberg Blue finishes have a shimmer effect on the back that adds a touch of class. Traditionalists will be pleased to see a 3.5mm headphone socket at the top of the case, with power and volume buttons on…

SCORE PRICE £42 (£50 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk The Echo Dot (4th Generation) takes everything that its bigger brother does and squeezes it into a smaller body. As with the larger speaker, the new design looks great. Here, the Dot is about the size of a tennis ball and comes in the same range of colours as its bigger brother (charcoal, glacier white and twilight blue). Once again, the physical controls are placed on the top of the speaker, with volume controls, a mute button that turns off the microphone and an action button to wake Alexa without the need for you having to speak. We love the way that the light ring has been moved to the bottom of the speaker, shining down a more diffuse light that isn’t…

SCORE PRICE £21 (£25 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk The cheapest smart speaker that Amazon sells at just £25, the Echo Flex simply plugs directly into a wall socket and hangs there. It’s small enough that it won’t block another plug on a double wall socket. There are just two buttons on this model: a mute button and the action button. There are no volume controls on the speaker itself, so you have to use your voice or the Alexa app. While size is the advantage of this product, the design can also be something of a disadvantage. Trying to find a plug socket where the speaker won’t be hidden or covered can be tricky. That’s particularly a problem with the Flex’s accessories. Via the USB port on the bottom, you…

GOOGLE NEST AUDIO A worthy competitor to the Amazon Echo, this is the best Google Assistant based smart speaker SCORE PRICE £75 (£90 inc VAT) from store.google.com If there was one problem with the original Google Home speaker, it was that music didn’t sound great on it. The Nest Audio was intended to fix that, with revamped audio internals designed to make this the all-round smart speaker to suit most people. Google also revamped its smart speaker design. Decked out in a soft material, the Nest Audio’s lozenge-shaped body looks far nicer than the cylindrical Google Home, even if the new model looks a little like a fancy bath pillow in pictures. As with the smaller speakers, there’s a physical switch on the rear that cuts off the microphones and…

SCORE PRICE £269 exc VAT from ballicom.co.uk Coming in at the entry point of Canon’s family of imageFormula desktop scanners, the R40 offers home workers and small offices an affordable solution that’s easy to set up and use. It’s a standalone USB-only device with no network capabilities and, for the price, claims good speeds of 40ppm for mono scans at 300dpi and 30ppm for colour scans. An advantage of USB scanners is their simple installation process. We chose a Windows 10 host PC, ran a single utility to load the TWAIN drivers plus the CaptureOnTouch 4 software, and plugged the scanner in. There are some compromises: the R40 comes with the basic CaptureOnTouch Standard version so you don’t get the batch scanning and barcode recognition features of the Pro version.…

SCORE PRICE £210 exc VAT from ballicom.co.uk Aimed at home workers and small businesses with a paper mountain to tackle, the Xerox D35 Scanner offers great scanning performance for a small price. For only £210, you get a top speed of 45ppm for colour and mono scans at 200dpi, with speeds only dropping to 35ppm for colour scans at 300dpi. The D35 is ready for some serious scan action thanks to a high daily duty cycle of 8,000 pages and a capacious 50-page ADF. Its relatively flat paper path helps when scanning heavier media such as photos, and the paper tray guides can be flipped down for scanning documents up to three metres in length. Installation on a Windows 10 desktop took ten minutes, with the routine loading the latest…

The trouble with emerging technologies is that, while they may open up exciting possibilities for the future, it’s often hard to see what on earth you can use them for today. The metaverse is a great example of this: it has real practical potential, but Mark Zuckerberg makes it sound like science fiction. I’m not here to offer yet another explanation of what the metaverse is all about. Instead, I want to share my own experiences of going live with headset-based metaverse-type technology. They’re based on six years of experiments, recently culminating in helping a financial institution take its first tentative steps into the metaverse. The company’s goal was to facilitate stronger collaboration among remote team members, while cutting business travel costs and hopefully reducing office costs in the future…

For the first time in what seems forever, I am on a trip to a foreign land. I am in Las Vegas for the National Association of Broadcasters convention and trade show. This is where you will find absolutely everything to do with pro audio, video, TV, film and broadcasting, and it is a subject close to my heart. It’s good to be back, but it’s not the same. Many of the in-hotel restaurants have reduced opening hours. Getting a cab is no problem, nor is parking at the enormous Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC), which has just added an extension that feels bigger than the whole of NEC in Birmingham. Service isn’t as good, with a reduced number of servers compared to before. All of which are small changes,…

I’m currently mourning the loss of a wonderful work colleague. We went through a lot together over the years, yet we always managed to get things done without issue or complaint. I couldn’t have wished for a better companion, and I really don’t know how I’m going to cope. It’s the guilt, you see; the guilt I feel because I’m to blame for this tragic passing. Yes, I confess to you now: I killed my keyboard. My dearly missed friend was a Compaq keyboard I acquired on one of the first jobs I did after starting my business. The job was a complete office upgrade that included PCs and a server, with the old equipment being decommissioned and recycled. The company was happy for me to keep any peripherals I…

Features When the going gets tough, get tough tech Barry Collins goes in search of the cockroaches of the technology world: the kit that will keep on going whatever happens, including how reporters keep broadcasting in war zones. Make your home truly smart Alex as kills can only get you so far. To make his home truly smart, James O’Malley delved deep into the technology–he shares his journey, and provides practical tips, next month. Securely wipe your disks & media Selling your computer or simply getting rid of old disks and drives? Darien Graham-Smith explains how to wipe things properly–and why the information is so often retained. Labs Processors megatest If you want to build a new PC, or upgrade your existing system, then this comprehensive test of all the…

The year 1896 was arguably when modern motoring was born. It was when the infamous “red flag law” was repealed, which forced early motorists to have someone walk ahead of their vehicle, waving a flag to warn pedestrians about what was approaching. Perhaps future historians will view 2022 the same way, as the government has just taken its first tentative step towards allowing us to drive autonomous vehicles – while taking our eyes off the road. According to new plans announced by the Department of Transport, the Highway Code is to be updated to allow motorists to take their hands from the wheel and even watch video when in slow-moving traffic, provided that certain conditions are met. Under the plans, when travelling under 37mph in a single lane, vehicles capable…

PREMIUMLAPTOPS Apple MacBook Pro 14in Stunning creative power from £1,899 from apple.com/uk Alongside its 16in sibling, this is simply the world’s best laptop for demanding users. The amount of power on tap via the M1 Pro or M1 Max processor is staggering, and it’s backed up by a terrific screen and stunning battery life. With all the ports you could ask for, the only negatives are its relative bulk (especially compared to the Air) and high price. REVIEW Issue 328, p58 ALTERNATIVES Samsung Galaxy Book Pro (15.6in) A powerful laptop with a 15.6in AMOLED screen that weighs a mere 1.05kg? And with stonking battery life too? The Galaxy Book Pro is a winner. Core i7, £1,449 from johnlewis.com REVIEW Issue 323, p50 Apple MacBook Air If you don’t need the…

Barry Collins is the co-editor of BigTechQuestion.com. He’s got more bandwidth than sense. @bazzacollins It’s contract renewal time for my broadband/mobile phone deal, and I’m in full Alan Sugar mode. “Oh, you want to put my prices up by almost 60%, do you? Have a word with yourself and I’ll be over here when you’ve stopped taking those psychedelics.” I embark on the always tortuous journey through Virgin Media’s phone system to reach the retention department. Forty-eight minutes on hold and a “can’t do nuffink” support assistant later, I’m finally put through to someone who does have the authority to stop you walking off the reservation by throwing discounts at you. “All right,” says the man with a hefty sigh, as if I’ve just threatened to slit the throat of…

Looking a particular past review? Visit our index at pcpro.link/index SCORE PRICE £1,500 (£1,800 inc VAT) from consumer.huawei.com The Huawei MateStation X is the best all-in-one Windows computer yet. I insert the word “Windows” in that sentence because the 24in M1 iMac (see issue 322, p48) haunts it like a spectre at the feast, but if you want a premium all-in-one and prefer Windows to macOS, then head to Huawei’s site now. Its star factor, what lifts it above all Windows rivals, is the screen: a sumptuous 3:2 display that stretches 28.2in across and packs in so many pixels (3,840 x 2,560) that it looks sharp even if your nose is inches from the panel. The fact that Huawei also includes a speedy computer, and in such a small space,…

SCORE PRICE £908 (£1,090 inc VAT) from box.co.uk Following on from last month’s award-winning £1,810 Box Cube Legendary Elite (see issue 333, p54), Box is back to show what it can do with a more limited budget. There’s hot competition at this price, though, with Cyberpower showing what £1,000 could buy with its Infinity X123 Gaming PC (see issue 333, p52). Cyberpower opted for a combination of a four-core Core i3-12100F processor and GeForce RTX 3050 graphics, but Box ups the ante here with a six-core Ryzen 5 5500 and an RTX 3060. As ever with Box, that configuration is adjustable. Head to pcpro.link/334box and you can save £100 by opting for an RTX 3050, upgrade to an RTX 3060 Ti for £120, or go wild with an RTX 3070…

SCORE PRICE Core i9, £2,083 (£2,500 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk (available September) There are two obvious reactions when you see the Asus Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED for the first time. “Whoa, what is that? I want it and I want it now.” Or: “Whoa, what is that? Who in the heck would want such a ridiculous design?” I’m not here to advocate for second screens in laptops, and doubt that I could persuade the doubters anyway. But as we’re now in the third iteration of this design, it’s clear that a bunch of people do indeed want it; otherwise Asus would surely have stopped production long ago. There are numerous ways to take advantage of the second screen. If you use Adobe Photoshop, Premiere or Lightroom, you can load up…

SCORE PRICE With keyboard and pen, £375 (£450 inc VAT) from consumer.huawei.com/uk The beautiful thing about tablets is their simplicity. You really only need ask yourself four questions before buying: does it do what I need it to do? Is it fast enough? Is the battery life long enough? And how good is the screen? Everything else is in the detail. I’ll tackle those four questions in reverse, starting with the excellent screen. The 11in diagonal that gives this tablet its name includes 2,560 x 1,600 pixels, equating to 274ppi, 10ppi higher than the Apple iPad Air (see issue 332, p63). It hit a peak brightness of 492cd/m2 in our tests, covering a glorious 91% of the DCI-P3 colour space. Colour accuracy is excellent, with an average Delta E of…

SCORE PRICE £792 (£950 inc VAT) from hihonor.com Formerly a sub-brand of Huawei, Honor is now its own company – and the Magic 4 Pro is one of its best ever smartphones. That’s partly because the firm is no longer bound by the US sanctions that blocked Huawei from using Google services. Thus, for the first time in years, Honor can offer a flagship phone with the Play Store and a full complement of Google apps preinstalled. The design is attractive, too. The phone is made of high-gloss glass and metal, and though a little on the thick side at 9.1mm, it feels elegant in the hand, with the curved back and front tapering into the sides. It’s relatively life-proof for a modern handset: it comes with a pre-fitted screen…

SCORE PRICE £74 (£89 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk The original HomePod (no longer on sale) was relatively large and expensive, limiting its appeal. The smaller HomePod mini is far cheaper, introduces new features and sounds far better than a speaker this size has any right to. As you might expect from Apple, the HomePod mini is a good-looking device. The size of a baseball, it’s available in five colours, including the all-new yellow, blue and orange. Each has a multi-colour status light on top, which lights up when you ask Siri something; technically, there’s no need for the light to be more than one colour, but Apple’s choice looks cool. There’s still a captive cable, as with the original, which plugs into a USB-C adapter at the other end. This…

SCORE PRICE £50 (£60 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk When it’s unplugged, it’s not easy to tell the difference between the fourth generation Echo Dot with Clock and the regular Echo Dot reviewed above. Plug this speaker in and the front lights up with a clever LCD clock that fills in behind the mesh body. The speaker has an ambient light sensor inside that can adjust the clock’s brightness. This works brilliantly, making this speaker an extremely useful bedside companion, with a clock that’s not so bright that it will keep you awake at night. As well as showing the current time, which is automatically set over the internet based on the location you set in the Alexa app, this display can show a limited range of other features. Set a…

AMAZON ECHO SHOW 15 Alexa on a big screen has its plus points, but the lack of video services and weedy sound limit this speaker’s appeal SCORE PRICE £200 (£240 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk While previous Echo Show devices have looked like a tablet slapped onto a fixed stand, the Echo Show 15 takes its design cues from TV sets. Thinner than previous models, the Echo Show 15 is built to hang on a wall, becoming a central part of family life. If you don’t like that idea, there’s an optional desktop stand for £30. Both the included wall mount and the desktop stand let you place the speaker in portrait and landscape modes, the first time an Echo Show has had this option. Portrait mode looks smart and is…

SCORE PRICE £163 (£195 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk The extremely niche original Facebook Portal smart displays were focused on video calls through the social network, but few people cared at the time. Thanks to a global pandemic and an increased reliance on videoconferencing tools, the company has another chance at success with the Facebook Portal Go. Rather than just using Facebook, the new display can also make and receive calls through WhatsApp, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, BlueJeans, GoToMeeting and Webex. You don’t need to be tied to your desk thanks to the integrated battery, which gives up to five hours of video calls and 14 hours of standby use on a single charge. Rather than having to fiddle around with charging cables, there’s a magnetic charging puck onto which you drop…

Google Assistant settings are tied up with general settings to do with your Google account. You can manage them through myactivity.google.com. Here you’ll see a list of recent activity across all Google services, including the Assistant. First, click the Filter option to view only Assistant interactions. For each one, you can click on it to review the recording, and delete an individual entry. There’s also a Delete option at the top of the page, which lets you delete activity by the last hour, last day, all time or a selected range of dates. To disable data collection, remove the Assistant filter and then click “Web & app activity”. You can then deselect “Include voice and audio activity” to prevent Google from recording any conversations with your smart speaker. Click on…

SCORE PRICE £499 exc VAT from thescannershop.com Epson’s WorkForce DS-790WN is ideal for businesses that don’t want to dedicate a host system to their scanning operations, as along with a standard USB 3 port, this desktop model has integral Gigabit LAN and 802.11n wireless services. Its fast 45ppm scan speed for colour and mono documents means it can digitise your documents in double quick time and, at £499, it’s priced right for those on tight budgets. The scanner is built to handle high demand, with a quoted 7,000-sheet daily duty cycle and a capacious 100-page ADF. It looks up to the job, too: its sturdy input paper guides kept our large bank statement bundles firmly in place during scanning, and its long paper mode can scan fan-fold documents and banners…

SCORE PRICE £354 exc VAT from solwise.co.uk On the surface, the EnGenius ECW220S looks like a standard business Wi-Fi 6 access point (AP), but what lies beneath makes it a bit special: it has not two, but three radios. Along with the 2.4GHz and 5GHz variety, the ECW220S has a dedicated wireless intrusion detection system (WIDS) radio for sniffing out wireless security threats and bringing them to your attention. Collectively grouped under the AirGuard banner, the ECW220S can detect rogue APs, evil twins, misuse of valid SSIDs, man-in-the-middle attacks, RF jamming and de-authentication. And if that’s not enough, it even has a Bluetooth low energy (BLE) sensor for detecting nearby Bluetooth client devices. You don’t need to be a wireless wizard to use AirGuard, thanks to its easy management from…

At the CST Group office, we’re spoilt for choice when it comes to connectivity. The building sits midway between two BT telephone exchanges and so we had fibre installed to both of them, entering our building at different points for proper resilience and redundancy. In addition, there’s also fibre from Virgin and other providers either entering into our building or passing right by it. The local infrastructure maps look like knitted spaghetti. The result of this plethora of connectivity options is that we’re able to get internet connections from several different providers and telcos, chopping and changing to work around planned maintenance windows and unplanned outages. It’s wonderful. Unfortunately, the same isn’t true for me at home. Until recently, my only options were a fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) service…

@happygeek Following on from my “privacy triumvirate” column last month, I’m sticking with the browser theme. Not just from the privacy perspective but [best Cilla voice on] surprise, surprise, the security angle as well. As canny readers have already pointed out, using Brave is like using Chrome as both are powered by the exact same Chromium engine. Canny, but not completely correct. Sure, Brave, Microsoft Edge, Opera and Vivaldi all use the same underlying Chromium engine, but the bodywork and specs are quite different. Brave chooses to be privacy-focused, and that’s why I like it so much. However, it’s true that if vulnerabilities are found in Chromium then they impact users of all browsers built around it. This is important, not least as that means disclosure and patch release cycles…

Building your own PC in 2022 can be intimidating, but at least it’s easy to identify the parts involved. Not so for the Antikythera mechanism: scientists have been trying to recreate and understand the world’s first analogue computer for the best part of 120 years. But since this curious device is over two millennia old, in bits and has two-thirds of the pieces missing, it’s no wonder it’s puzzled them for so long. The Antikythera mechanism could have come straight out of an Indiana Jones film. Discovered in 1900 by Captain Dimitrios Kontos and his crew of divers near the tiny island of Antikythera, its main surprise is its sophistication. There is simply nothing else like it from the ancient world. Among the astounded researchers is Professor Tony Freeth, of…

As I crash into my 58th year on this planet, I am becoming more aware of the physical toll of getting old. I am not getting old, of course; 60 is the new 40, according to my friends. They are too kind. But we should be aware that the old view that OAPs don’t use technology is going to come to a crashing halt soon. Those of us marching towards retirement are quite tech-aware, and the old excuses don’t wash. With age comes some, shall we say, “adaptations” of our abilities. For me, real-time glucose monitoring from the Libre, and now the Dexcom G6, has been transformative for my diabetes (see my column on p110). However, we need to consider accessibility in the wider context. On a recent PC Pro…