Table of contents for July 2017 in Computer Shopper

I REMEMBER THE first handset I owned, a bright yellow Nokia 5110 – I say ‘owned’ but it was actually borrowed from my mum, as paying a phone contract as a student teacher in the late nineties just wasn’t going to happen. But I loved that phone and pinched it as often as I could, and it was in the family for many years. Fast-forward 20 years, and the idea of a teenager not owning their own smartphone, or sharing a phone with anyone, seems laughable. As does the idea of using a handset for more than a couple of years – well, that’s if the smartphone manufacturers have anything to do with it. Apple and Samsung might be taking steps to be more environmentally friendly with their sourcing of…

DATA SECURITY USED to be easy. You’d just have to install some internet security software on your computer, and you’d be done. Today, with the proliferation of smartphones, laptops and wireless hotspots, protecting your data has become incredibly hard. It’s made even harder by progressively tougher surveillance laws, both at home and abroad. It makes sense that for this Cyber Insider, I should talk about ways to legally protect your data whether you’re at home, out and about, or abroad. First, let’s look at the US. Thanks to President Donald Trump, privacy seems to be a thing of the past. Now, ISPs have the rights to sell users’ browsing history without consent, and visitors can have their phones seized, with Homeland Security requesting security PINs so that all data can…

California Apple hits the road Apple is the latest company to enter the self-driving cars race. It has received a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test out autonomous vehicles on the US state’s roads. Apple has remained secretive about its plans, but told federal regulators that it had turned its attention to “machine learning and autonomous systems”. Rumours that Apple was interested in autonomous cars began two years ago, after it filed a patent for software called ‘Collision Avoidance of Arbitrary Polygonal Obstacles’. Middle East and North Africa I know that face UK surveillance outfit Digital Barriers has won the contract to provide facial-recognition technology to Careem, an Uber-like taxi service that dominates the Middle East and North African market, across locations including Saudi Arabia, the…

£2,000 • From www.chillblast.com VERDICT This quirky, GTX 1080 Ti-based PC is hugely expensive, but you do get what you pay for IT’S ALWAYS NICE to see something different amidst the stream of black cuboids that usually comprise our PC coverage. Chillblast’s Fusion Portal stands out for two reasons, the first of which is its form. Held aloft by thin legs on either side, the case (a BitFenix Portal, hence the name) is one of the most unusual Mini-ITX cases we’ve seen, with its rounded, pill-like shape with grooves cut into the sides, presumably lest they resemble unacceptably plain-looking panels of aluminium. It doesn’t open up at the sides either, another ditching of desktop PC convention. Instead, you loosen a couple of screws at the back and, with what is…

£365 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT It’s no powerhouse, but this highly portable laptop has a great screen and a practical battery life THE SLIM, TASTEFUL design of Asus’s ZenBook range calls to mind Apple’s now-defunct MacBook Air, but with a wider range of configurations, and much more palatable pricing. In this case, the resemblance isn’t purely aesthetic. Like the MacBook Air, the ZenBook UX310UA is designed for a specific role. It’s a lightweight travelling companion rather than a desktop replacement. That much is evident from the internals. Unlike many Windows-based ultraportables, the UX310UA comes with a dual-core Core i3-6100U processor rather than something from the Core m series, but the i3 still limits its multitasking capabilities. We wouldn’t call this a slow system, but with an overall score of 34…

£229 (twin pack) • From store.google.com VERDICT Staggeringly easy to configure and with some amazing configuration tools, this is wireless networking made easy THERE’S NO DOUBTING that whole-home Wi-Fi kits, which use multiple access points and a mesh network to give you a rock-solid wireless connection, are the big thing in networking. Following the Netgear Orbi (Shopper 348), Linksys Velop and BT Whole Home Wi-Fi (both Shopper 351), Google is now getting in on the act with Google Wifi. As with the BT Whole Home Wi-Fi system, Google Wifi is not a router, instead connecting to your existing network. For the best results, then, you need to disable your router’s existing wireless, so that Google Wifi becomes your default. Google Wifi is sold as either a single unit (£129) or…

£650 • From www.carphonewarehouse.co.uk VERDICT The LG G6’s sprawling display makes it a pleasure to use, but the Galaxy S8 is even more impressive THE LG G6 is the flagship smartphone that got everyone talking at the recent MWC show. Besides ditching the G5’s modular design, its 18:9 aspect ratio and almost bezel-free design adds even more screen space to a handset that keeps the familiar dimensions of a conventional 16:9 device. LG’s initial promise of a “very competitive” price hasn’t quite come to pass, as its £650 RRP isn’t vastly cheaper than the £689 Samsung Galaxy S8, while both the iPhone 7 and Google Pixel cost even less. Still, there’s no arguing that it oozes premium quality, with its stylish frame and Gorilla Glass 5 back panel. It’s tough…

£319 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT These stylish headphones don’t sound as good as they look HEADPHONES THAT BOTH look and sound good are somewhat hard to come by – a situation that Master & Dynamic is attempting to rectify with the MH40. This set of cans screams beauty, design and build quality, but ultimately it’s the sound quality that makes or breaks any audio product – including this one. At £319, the MH40 isn’t cheap, and with more affordable competition from the £280 Bowers & Wilkins P7 (Shopper 348), the Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 at £200, the Sony MDR-1A at £120 and even the likes of the Creative Sound BlasterX H5 at £95, the MH40 has its work cut out. In the package, you’ll find the headphones, two sets of detachable…

£325 • From www.vmall.eu VERDICT This 4G-ready smartwatch overcomes some fitness foibles with the aid of a brilliant OS HUAWEI’S SECOND CRACK at a smartwatch comes in a fitness-orientated Sport version and a more stylish Classic model. The Classic has a stainless-steel body and comes with a leather strap, while the Sport has a plastic body and strap with a ceramic bezel and stainless rear – plus the option of 4G connectivity. The Watch 2 Sport’s headline feature is very much the ability to work independently, without the need for a phone. Both versions have GPS so you can go on a run and have it track your pace and location accurately, but 4G allows you to answer phone calls and reply to text messages, too. Simply install a nano-SIM…

CrazyTalk Animator 2 Standard Edition CRAZYTALK IS A versatile animation suite with the power to create professional animations, in particular applying 3D motions and effects to 2D characters You don’t need any artistic skill or animation experience to use the program. It comes with a library of characters and actions which you can combine in a few clicks. Customise a character, place it in your chosen environment, and make it walk, laugh, sing, applaud, dance, cry or talk. It’s just a matter of choosing the options you need from a menu, and adding and updating them as required It’s even possible to extract a face from a regular photo and apply it to a character. They’ll move realistically, blink, smile, laugh and talk (with automatic lip-sync), just like one of…

…STYLE Samsung Galaxy S7 It’s the most expensive smartphone in this group test, but not only is the Samsung Galaxy S7 still a sizable wad of cash less than the newer Galaxy S8, it’s also the most luxurious model here. From its glass and aluminium construction to its sleek, tapered edges and gorgeous display – which is almost bezel-less on the left and right edges – the S7 is a perfect show-off handset. It’s not just trading looks for practicality, either. That glass – on both sides – is highly damageresistant Corning Gorilla Glass 4, and the handset meets the IP68 standard for dustand water-proofing, so it will survive a dunk in any puddle or sink. …CUSTOMISATION Motorola Moto Z Play The Moto Z Play’s versatility is mainly derived from…

£225 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT With fantastic performance at a great price, Honor’s 6X shouldn’t be ignored REGARDLESS OF WHETHER Honor appreciates being pigeonholed as a budget smartphone brand, its latest device – the Honor 6X – may be its finest work yet. It squeezes a 5.5in, Full HD screen into an all-metal body with 32GB of integrated storage and 4GB of RAM. The rear is curved, so it sits nicely in your hand, and the glass on the front also tapers slightly at the edges for a slicker look. As for connectivity, the 6X has a dual SIM slot, perfect for travelling abroad or using it as a dual work/leisure device. There’s no USB Type-C connector for fast charging, with Honor opting for an older Micro USB port instead,…

£200 • From www.three.co.uk VERDICT With its monster battery life, the Lenovo P2 will keep on going long after others have died REMEMBER THE DAYS when your phone lasted more than a day on a single charge? As great as it is to have smartphones with enormous processing power and crisp, high-res screens, there’s no denying these advancements have made our handhelds thirstier for juice than ever. The Lenovo P2, however, heralds at least a partial return to those glory days: it lasted a staggering 28h 50m in our continuous video test. That’s a full five hours longer than our previous longest-lasting smartphone on record, Motorola’s Moto Z Play, and just over 11 hours longer than the top-end Galaxy S7. It shows some serious stamina in everyday use, too –…

£180 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The heir to the king of budget smartphones isn’t as good as we’d hoped THIS SHOULD BE an exciting occasion: the follow-up to 2016’s best budget phone by a mile, the Moto G4, updated with stylish metal bodywork and the latest Android 7.0 Nougat. Sadly, though, the new Moto G5 is a device we can only appreciate with caveats. Let’s start with the good. As mentioned, both this and the larger Moto G5 Plus (which we’ll cover in more detail in a future issue) have ditched the plastic backplates of previous Moto G handsets in favour of a sleeker, slinkier metal design. Although there’s the risk that this will scuff, scratch and dent rather more easily than the textured plastic rear of previous generations, out…

£332 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Samsung heads in the right direction with the keenly priced Galaxy A5 THIS ISN’T NEARLY the cheapest Samsung handset around, but the latest Galaxy A5 is appealing as a value purchase because it has much more in common with the Galaxy S7 than it does the budget Galaxy J series. For starters, there’s the flagship-bothering build quality. The Galaxy A5’s clean metal frame and all-glass front are incredibly handsome for a sub-£350 smartphone, and its tapered back helps it fit snugly into the palm of your hand. It’s also the first iteration of the A5 where the rear camera is totally flush with the body. It’s a lovely phone to hold and behold, then, but then last year’s Galaxy A5 was pretty nice, too. The…

£324 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Sony’s 4.6in handset both improves on and steps back from the luxury Z5 Compact SINCE THE NEXT cheapest option in Sony’s smartphone range is the rubbish Xperia XA (Shopper 344), the dinky Xperia X Compact looks like the family’s best balance of affordability and quality. It is, however, something of a Frankenphone, combining some features from the top-of-the-line XZ with some from the older Xperia X, all in its 4.6in chassis. So instead of the octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor from the XZ, the X Compact has the hexa-core Snapdragon 650 from the X – yet it inherits its camera lock, stock and barrel from the XZ. Honestly, this is a slightly disappointing departure from Sony’s previous Compact models, which were typically just as powerful…

£200 • From shop.cambridgeaudio.com VERDICT Big sound, solid bass and a great price; if you want to improve your TV’s sound on a budget, look no further TECHNICALLY THIS IS a soundbase rather than a soundbar, but the added depth isn’t just so your TV can sit on top of it; the TV2 (v2) has room for larger drivers, potentially meaning a bigger sound, as well as a 6.5in subwoofer driver on the underside, so you don’t need to make room for a separate unit The design is elegantly simple: a mediumsized, squat box, clad in matt black, with a simple cloth grille covering the front. It’s not ostentatious or even particularly eye-catching, but it’s smart in an understated way. A small status LED gleams from behind the grille, glowing…

£899 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Atmos without the atmosphere – the Fidelio SkyQuake is expensive and disappointing DOLBY’S ATMOS surround-sound tech is getting steadily cheaper, but any Atmos-ready soundbar is still an investment. Philips’ Fidelio SkyQuake will set you back £900, and that’s just for the soundbar, subwoofer and remote control, with no satellite speakers included. There’s a reason Atmos costs so much. By bouncing sound off the ceiling with upwardfiring speakers, Atmos soundbars can add a vertical dimension to surround-sound audio, more clearly defining the origins of sound in a scene than just placing it on a left-right plane. The SkyQuake offers a similar Atmos configuration to Samsung’s HW-K850, with a pair of upward-firing drivers providing the two height channels in a 5.1.2 setup. But despite its total of…

£170 • From www.superfi.co.uk VERDICT A Bluetooth speaker with a delightful design and the sound quality to match WHILE THE ADDON T3 is smaller and lighter than both the Addon T5 and Addon T10 Gen 2, it’s not quite the kind of Bluetooth speaker you’d want to carry around all day; at 2kg, it’s still pretty hefty. However, as a speaker you can move freely around the house or take down to the end of the garden, it’s a comfortable weight. Measuring 215x135x115mm, it’s not overly large, either, and takes up less space on a shelf or sideboard than many of its rivals. On top, you’ll find a row of control buttons in an attractive, metallic rose gold. It’s a slightly odd selection, though: there are separate buttons for switching…

£399 • From www.urbanears.com VERDICT This loud and proud speaker entertains, providing you can live with the cost and its hidden connections URBANEARS HAS FINALLY expanded beyond headphones by launching the Stammen and the Baggen, two multiroom speakers developed with the help of legendary amp maker, Marshall. We tested the Baggen, the bigger, more expensive brother. There’s support for streaming via Spotify Connect and AirPlay, and Google Chromecast is built in. Multiroom prowess comes in the ability to form a network with up to four other Baggens or Stammens. Up to seven presets can be assigned to one of the two knob switches on top, which also switches between Bluetooth, aux and Wi-Fi inputs. The other knob is dedicated to volume. That’s almost it in terms of controls; pressing the…

Send your problems to businesshelp@computershopper.co.uk Save it for the morning after I tend to check my emails late at night, sometimes into the early hours of the morning. Often, I’ll want to reply to an email, but I don’t want my answer to be sent straight away. If I’m sending a routine reply, I don’t want to risk waking my recipient at 2am because they sleep with their smartphone by their bed, and it doesn’t look very professional either. My problem is that while I know I can use Outlook’s facility to defer the delivery by choosing Options, Defer Delivery, the default delivery time is set to 17:00. This means I have to remember to change the time, as I’d like my reply to be sent at 8am, to be…

clive@computershopper.co.uk Upgrade your laptop There are a whole host of ways you can extend the life of an old laptop, from hardware upgrades for less than £100 to free software and maintenance. Clive Webster reveals your options A NEW LAPTOP might be shinier, thinner, lighter and faster than your current one, but it will also set you back a good few hundred quid. If your laptop is still largely serviceable, you might be tempted to upgrade it rather than shell out for a whole new machine. But is it possible to upgrade a laptop and, if so, which upgrades are worth paying for and which aren’t? We have the answers. TESTING TIMES There are many ways to make an old laptop more usable, from upgrading the hardware to cleaning out…

KICK DRUM This should have a sharp, clearly defined initial transient followed by a deep, full-bodied decay. Stamping feet on a wooden floor Slamming a door Banging table or chair legs on the floor Hitting a cavity wall with the palm of your hand Bouncing a football or basketball Punching a sofa or bean bag Hitting a large, empty plastic box with a rolling pin SNARE DRUM Real snare drums vary widely depending on what they’re made of and how they’re tuned, but broadly speaking they’re a wide-frequency, non-pitched burst of noise. This is relatively tricky to replicate, but various household objects can make viable stand-ins. Striking a baking tray with a wooden spoon Quickly crushing a plastic packaging tray Popping bubble wrap (a sharp twist will pop lots at…

letters@computershopper.co.uk Creator storm The Windows 10 Creators Update came on rather suddenly and, despite my natural curiosity (which would have made me install anyway), seemed to offer no way of averting installation (I knew that Microsoft account would lead to no good). So far my desktop has not seen any issues but those with laptops, and in particular with pre-Creative Cloud Adobe products, should keep well away. Immediately Photoshop CS6 (part of CS6 Production Premium) just crashed on launch. Despite uninstalling CS6 and re-installing, uninstalling and re-installing numerous Microsoft Visual C++ versions, moving various DLLs around, and uninstalling and re-installing Nvidia drivers (the laptop has a 960M GFX processor), nothing worked. Finally, after about 15 hours’ work trying to fix it, I thought I would resort to re-installing Windows 10…

Madeline Bennett RAVES THE TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY has not been the greatest friend to the environment. The huge global appetite for laptops, tablets, mobile phones and so on has led to electronic devices becoming cheaper and more disposable. This is bad news for the planet, as it means more plundering of the earth’s natural resources, and more discarded items being sent to overflowing landfill sites. According to a United Nations report, in 2014 less than 16% of global e-waste was recycled. The UN also revealed that e-waste volumes from small products, such as mobile phones and PCs, will rise globally to 50 million metric tons or more every year in 2017, representing a huge waste of resources and a source of contamination from hazardous chemicals. But things could be about to…

£130 • From madeby.google.com VERDICT A very smart home assistant that’s easy to converse with, but third-party support lags behind the Echo for now YOUR TRUSTED GUIDE TO WHAT’S NEW THE AMAZON ECHO (Shopper 347) and Echo Dot (Shopper 349) proved people were keen to have an always-listening voice assistant in the home, with both devices selling in droves. It’s no wonder, then, that Google has decided to get in on the act with its rival product, Home. As with the Echo, Home is a small speaker powered by a personal assistant that can answer questions, play music and control your smart home devices. Home is an attractivelooking device, looking more like a funky light than a traditional speaker. Although it ships with a basic white base, you can buy…

£300 • From www.overclockers.co.uk VERDICT Cool, efficient and a blazingly fast multitasker, the cheapest Ryzen 7 is the one to buy TO PUT IT harshly, the Ryzen 7 1700 is the runt of AMD’s Zen architecture-based processor family: it has the lowest base and boost clocks of 3GHz and 3.7GHz respectively and, unlike the flagship 1800X (Shopper 352) and 1700X, its Extended Frequency Range (XFR) boost – which provides a bit of extra speed when temperatures allow – is limited to just 50MHz. It also doesn’t have the 1800X’s benefit of being an incredible bargain. Whereas that chip sells at half the price of its closest Intel competitor, the Core i7-6900K, the 1700 is only around £30 cheaper than its direct rival, the quad-core Core i7-7700K (Shopper 350). Still, for…

£1,449 • From www.dell.com/uk VERDICT Dell’s second stab at a hybrid laptop is an expensive success BACK IN 2016, Dell inflicted upon us the XPS 12, a dire laptop/tablet hybrid riddled with shortcomings ranging from battery woes to flat-out design faults (see Shopper 341). Fortunately, the new XPS 13 9365 2-in-1 is a radical departure. For starters, it’s actually a rotating convertible, rather than a detachable 2-in-1 like the XPS 12. It’s also really good. We’d certainly have hoped so, given the price: the entry-level model, with its Intel Core i5-7Y54 processor, 4GB of RAM and 128GB SSD, costs £1,349, which is £200 more than the cheapest non-convertible XPS 13 (Shopper 351). We tested the next model up, which has a Core i7-7Y75 processor, 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD…

£218 • From www.morecomputers.com VERDICT A fast and powerful router, but you can get similar performance for less WE’VE SEEN A lot of whole-home Wi-Fi systems in recent issues of Shopper, all of which are designed to use multiple access points to give you better coverage. If you just want raw speed and don’t have a huge house, a single high-powered router, such as Linksys’s WRT3200ACM, might be a better option. This hefty router has Tri-Stream 160 technology, which combines three simultaneous 867Mbit/s streams to give a total of 2,600Mbit/s on the 5GHz band. The 2.4GHz band is taken care of with a 600Mbit/s throughput. As a modern router, the WRT3200ACM supports multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO). This enables the router to split its bandwidth, giving each compatible device its own dedicated…

£155 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT A great upgrade option for laptop owners, but you can get cheaper standalone drives ALTHOUGH AN SSD can make a huge difference to the speed of your PC, increasing boot speeds and application load times, installing one can be tricky. That’s doubly so if you want to upgrade a laptop. Kingston wants to make things easy with this, the SSDNow UV400 Upgrade Kit. Inside the box, you get the 2.5in SATA3 drive (available in 120GB, 240GB, 480GB and 960GB versions; we tested the 480GB kit), plus a full copy of Acronis True Image HD and everything you need to install the drive. For a desktop PC, this includes a mount to convert a 3.5in drive bay into an SSD-compatible one, and a Molex-to-SATA power adaptor.…

£799 (with 12-60mm kit lens) • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Packed with useful features, the Lumix DMC-G80 is a superb CSC for stills, and even better for video THE PANASONIC LUMIX DMC-G80 is the seventh generation in a line that stretches back to the first ever compact system camera (CSC), the Panasonic G1. It may be overshadowed by the flagship GH series, the gadget-laden GX series or the budget-friendly GH series, but then the most unassuming cameras can sometimes offer the best value, and the G80 is well placed to repeat the all-round greatness of the Panasonic G7. The G80 looks remarkably similar to the G7, both in the flesh and in its specifications: 16-megapixel photos, 4K videos, a 3in articulated touchscreen and a 2.4-million dot electronic viewfinder. Body-only, it costs…

Choosing a... PC system 01A basic PC costing around £350 will be able to run everyday office, multimedia and education software and will easily cope with surfing the internet. It might even be able to run some modern games. Many PCs can be sold either with or without a monitor. If you don’t like the display that the manufacturer is offering, you can always use your current one, or buy another one separately. 02If you want to play games, you’ll have to upgrade the graphics card. Budget cards such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 950 will cope well with many 3D games, but to play the latest 3D games smoothly (and enjoy the best-quality graphics) it’s worth upgrading to a more powerful card such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 970.…

Chat and Communication Evernote 6.4.2.3788 Store your notes, ideas and plans in the cloud, and synchronise them between computers. Mailbird 2.3.42 A free desktop email client for Windows. UPDATED Miranda IM 0.10.68 Chat with friends across multiple messaging platforms, including AIM, Facebook, IRC and MSN, all from one simple interface. UPDATED Skype for Windows 7.35.0.101 Make internet voice and video calls for free, and buy credit to make calls to mobiles and landlines. Trillian 5.6 Use all your instant-messaging accounts with one application. Supports Windows Live!, AIM, Yahoo! and Google Talk. UPDATED WhatsApp Desktop 0.2.3699 A free PC and Mac version of the popular messaging app, allowing you to chat straight from your desktop instead of using the web app. Customisation UPDATED iolo System Mechanic Free 16.5.214 Speed up your…

£379 • From www.apple.com/uk VERDICT Well built and with a top camera and great battery life, the iPhone SE is the best 4in phone out there FINDING AN AFFORDABLE iPhone is practically impossible if you stick to the main series of handsets. Even the iPhone 6, which is now two generations old (having been replaced by the iPhone 6s and, most recently, the iPhone 7), goes for about £500 SIM-free. And that’s if you can actually find it new, among the far more prevalent refurbs. Hope remains with Apple’s smaller 4in models. For minimum expense, there’s the iPhone 5c, which has fallen well below the £300 mark, albeit at the cost of a plasticky build and slow performance. By contrast, the much more up-to-date iPhone SE has nailed pretty much…

£310 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Beautifully designed and with a highly customisable UI, the One A9 is great value MUCH OF THE HTC One A9’s appeal lies in its stunning design. Its clean lines and simple metal chassis may be eerily reminiscent of Apple’s recent iPhones, but it’s a winning combination, particularly since the subtle ridge on the back of the handset actually makes it easier to hold than Apple’s phone. The A9 is also very light for its size, weighing just 143g. It’s a beautiful smartphone, and immediately more appealing than the flagship One M9, not least because of its 5in, 1,920x1,080 AMOLED display. The M9’s display didn’t score very highly on colour accuracy, but the A9’s AMOLED panel rectifies this instantly, covering the full 100% of the sRGB…

£319 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT With its vibrant screen, versatile camera and surprisingly comfy leather rear, the LG G4 still holds its own ALTHOUGH LG DIDN’T stick with the G4’s leather backing for its G5 and G6 handsets, it was still a fantastic flagship smartphone when it launched in 2015 – and now that it’s over £200 cheaper than on release, it makes a great alternative to newer mid-rangers. Measuring 149x75x8.9mm, it’s not the slimmest of phones, but the leather cladding adds a real premium feel. The same goes for the 5.5in display, which has a 2,560x1,440 resolution producing a crisp 534ppi. LG’s IPS Quantum panel helps out here, showing lovely rich, vibrant colours and eye-searingly bright whites. We measured peak brightness as 505.66cd/m2, so colours look just as punchy…

£370 • From www.motorola.co.uk VERDICT The Moto Z Play’s stupendous battery life and modular design make it a great buy LIKE THE ONEPLUS 3T, the Moto Z Play aims to provide flagship-quality features while undercutting them on price. Take, for example, the big 3,510mAh battery inside – that even dwarfs the 2,600mAh of its own bigger brother, the Moto Z (Shopper 348). It thus lasted almost twice as long in our continuous video loop benchmark, clocking in at an outstanding 23h 45m. Only the Lenovo P2 can top that. It’s clear where Motorola has stashed all those extra milliampere hours in the Moto Z Play. Measuring a sizable 6.9mm at its thinnest point, the phone feels positively behemoth-like compared with the svelte 5.2mm Moto Z, and its lightly chamfered edges…

£374 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT What was an impressive step forward in 2015 is still a highly competitive smartphone today EVEN AT THE ripe old age of two years old, the Galaxy S6 still impresses – after all, it was the first Samsung smartphone to look and feel like a truly premium product, without the plasticky panels of what came before. It’s not as eye-catching as the S6 Edge, with its tapered screen, and also doesn’t feel as grippy in the hand, due to the S6 having smoother, more rounded edges. Still, these are minor quibbles, and there’s much more to like about the design than not. It only weighs 138g, for starters – that’s a good 17g less than the LG G4, which is also 1.9mm fatter – and…

£280 • From shop.vodafone.co.uk VERDICT It’s fast and has a great screen, but the Smart Platinum 7’s camera falls short of perfection VODAFONE MAY NOT be thought of as a prolific maker of quality smartphones, but it has been on a bit of a roll. In the past couple of years we’ve had such genuinely great devices as the Smart Ultra 6, the Smart Prime 7 and this: the Smart Platinum 7, a high-spec/ low-cost handset in a similar vein to the OnePlus range or the Moto Z Play. It certainly makes a good first impression. With its glossy, glass back, there’s something very reminiscent of the Samsung Galaxy S7 in the Smart Platinum 7’s design, but its angular, chamfered edges actually make it much easier to hold. The textured…

£228 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT A small yet beautiful-looking soundbar that delivers good sound for PCs as well as TVs WHILE MOST SOUNDBARS are aimed at living room TVs, the Katana has an extra trick: it can connect to a Windows PC via USB, augmenting the audio output of your desktop For £228, you get a dedicated subwoofer, a remote and two wall-mount brackets. Its build quality and looks reflect the price, too: the brushed-aluminium design couples well with the RGB light strip under the speaker, which can be customised with different colours. The Katana can be used as a standalone speaker – either via Bluetooth with your smartphone or a flash drive plugged into the USB port – but to get the most out of it, you’ll need a…

£900 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT Supreme sound quality, but expensive for a single soundbar and subwoofer combination THE SAMSUNG HW-K850 soundbar is an odd product. It effectively takes the HW-K950 (Shopper 350) and ditches the two satellite speakers. This leaves the soundbar, subwoofer and Dolby Atmos support all intact, but does mean the HW-K850 is merely half a surround system, and an expensive one at that. First, the positives: the soundbar remains superb for non-surround uses, mainly streaming and music listening. It sounds just as good as the HW-K950, which makes it the joint-best soundbar we’ve ever heard, and it’s still not half bad for movies and TV. It doesn’t process DTS-HD in anything but stereo, so you need a player that will process the signal and spoon-feed it to…

£249 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT The Libratone Zipp can extend multiroom music even into your garden, and the 360° sound is great THIS UPDATED VERSION of the Zipp isn’t just about Bluetooth; it also adds support for Libratone’s multiroom-focused SoundSpace Link, plus Wi-Fi, Apple AirPlay, Spotify Connect and internet radio. Otherwise, the new Zipp range looks the same: a cylindrical speaker with a detachable cover from which it derives its name. Unzip the cover and you can replace it with a different colour, either to customise the look or to distinguish one speaker from another. The built-in battery lets you carry the Zipp around, but other than its humidity resistance it’s not been ruggedised, so don’t leave it out in the rain. The battery is rated at 8 to 10…

£699 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT With an attractive design, handy wireless hub and great sound quality, the A1 is a superb set of desktop speakers WHARFEDALE IS ONE of the classic names in the world of traditional hi-fi, but its new Diamond A1 speakers bring the marque bang up to date with Wi-Fi streaming, dedicated 50W amplifiers and a modern-looking design. The A1 speakers are a bit chunkier than most PC speakers, standing about 320mm tall and 186mm wide, so you’ll need a fair amount of space on your desk if you want to sit them beside your PC monitor. However, the A1’s ingenious wireless design makes it easy to move the speakers up on to a shelf – you’re not restricted by cables as you are with traditional desktop…

CORES Much like a CPU, GPUs have processing cores, only they number in the thousands in the latest graphics cards rather than in quad- or octa-core configurations in CPUs. These cores act as stream processors to produce the textures, shaders and polygons that make up parts of an image. While AMD sticks with the term stream processors, Nvidia calls them CUDA cores; in general AMD’s cores are smaller and less complex, while Nvidia’s are larger and more complex. AMD cores do more optimisation on the tasks that cores are assigned, while Nvidia lets the GPU assign the cores according to the task at hand. What this means is that the number of cores doesn’t necessarily dictate the overall performance of a GPU, the real results being seen in how well…

Send your problems to help@computershopper.co.uk Hitting the buffers Last year TalkTalk upgraded my ADSL broadband and phone package to include TV services as well. I was given a YouView box and a Super Router, which turned out to give better coverage and speeds than my old one. At Christmas I bought an iPad Pro. Although it connected to my router, web pages timed out while “awaiting response from server”. After digging around on the internet, I followed a suggestion to change the iPad’s DNS settings from 192.168.1.1 (my router) to 8.8.8.8 (Google). Normal service seemed to be restored. TalkTalk gave me a free film, which I decided to try and watch, but the YouView box kept stopping to re-buffer every 90 seconds. Again an internet search suggested I change the…

ben@computershopper.co.uk Create drum loops from household objects Why settle for samey drum sounds when your house is full of stuff to hit, shake, rattle and roll? Ben Pitt reveals how to make music from everyday objects Keep the microphone close to the sound source to minimise background noises and try different angles to see what sounds best MUSIC PRODUCERS TAKE drum sounds very seriously. Many modern musical genres are defined by their drum production: the speeded-up samples of drum’n’bass or the electronic thuds and clicks of techno. Ultimately, though, a drum kit is a collection of objects that make a thud, crack or pinging noise when hit with a stick. Most objects make similar noises when hit with a stick, so why limit yourself? From saucepans and wine glasses to…

MEL CROUCHER Tech pioneer and all-round good egg letters@computershopper.co.uk I BECAME AN economic migrant more than 40 years ago, when I was unable to find work in my own country. My nation’s economy had collapsed, the electricity supply had failed, schools and hospitals were in chaos, piles of rotting filth filled the streets and the dead could not be buried. My country was called England. I was an architect. The country that gave me refuge was a dusty backwater in the Middle East. It was called Dubai. They had begun to extract oil from shallow-water rigs just offshore, and they needed workers to build stuff for the immigrants that were expected to come flooding in. My employer was an old beardy bloke with a big nose and sunglasses. He was…

The F1 car is the easy-to-assemble star 3D PRINTING has arrived in the fast-paced world of motor racing. McLaren has announced that it is printing Formula 1 racing car parts during the race. Quick 3D trackside printing is expected to give the firm an edge over the competition as it should be able to make modifications to parts on the fly. The team produced its first parts at the Bahrain Grand Prix in April. “We are consistently modifying and improving our Formula 1 car designs,” said Neil Oatley, design and development director, McLaren Racing. “So the ability to test new designs quickly is critical to making the car lighter and, more importantly, increasing the number of tangible iterations in improved car performance. “If we can bring new developments to the…

£850 • From www.box.co.uk VERDICT The cheapest GTX 1060-based system we’ve seen yet is an unsurprisingly strong performer £850 MAY BE a sizable chunk of the average pay cheque, but in desktop terms, it’s a fairly middling amount – hence why it’s particularly crucial to judge where exactly the budget is being spent. High-end processor or a fast SSD? Luxury chassis or expansive motherboard? With any reasonably priced PC build, there are big component choices to be made, even if you’re not building it yourself. With the Cube Panther, Box has focused on gaming, forgoing higher-end parts elsewhere to include a GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card. It’s the 3GB VRAM version, rather than a 6GB model, but that generally only means the loss of a few frames per second –…

£150 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Pixma TS8050 is sleek, swift, flexible and produces great creative results – and so it should, at this price THE TS8050 IS almost the top model in Canon’s revised range of Pixma inkjet multifunction peripherals (MFPs), and it has the price to prove it. For the money you get a highly specified device with a creative bias: its scanner can stretch to 2,400 dots per inch (dpi), capturing four times as much detail as the more frequently found 1,200dpi, while its printer has a claimed maximum resolution of 9,600x2,400dpi. That’s the highest you’ll find among consumer inkjets. It’s well specified elsewhere, too, with two paper trays, double-sided (duplex) printing as standard, Wi-Fi and SD card support, plus a smartphone-like touchscreen on its glossy front…

£605 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT With its 200Hz refresh rate and accurate colours, the AOC AG352QCX is a fantastic curved gaming monitor IN 2016, AOC released the C3583FQ (Shopper 342), a curved 165Hz monitor running at 2,560x1,080. It had a few issues, including washed-out colours and, with certain Nvidia graphics cards, frame skipping at 165Hz. Now, there’s the AGON AG352QCX, a similar 35in curved monitor that comes equipped with an MVA panel, 200Hz maximum refresh rate and built-in support for AMD’s FreeSync technology. Can this new model fix its predecessor’s problems? The monitor is extremely well built and looks striking with its silver and black colour scheme. Underneath and around the back, you’ll find six LED strips that can be used to bathe your desk in red, green or blue.…

£689 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Pairing speed and power with a sophisticated and attractive design, the Galaxy S8 runs rings around the competition THE SAMSUNG GALAXY S8 is one of the most anticipated phones of all time. Not only is it the follow-up to one of 2016’s best devices, the Galaxy S7, it also has the unenviable task of winning back anyone who got burned – figuratively or literally – by the ill-fated Note 7. The standout feature is its screen. The bezels of the display have been almost entirely shorn off, leaving a screen that extends to almost every edge of the device, save for thin slivers of black glass at the top and bottom. It thus fills virtually all of the S8’s front panel, with just a few…

£80 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT It’s simple to use and control, but the H3 Espresso lacks the finesse and app variety of its main competition GIVEN THAT THE media streamer market is dominated by Apple, Amazon and Google, any competitor has to be better, cost less or do something different. Humax has decided to go with the third option and offer something a little unusual with its H3 Espresso: live TV streamed over the internet, and integration with the company’s Freeview set-top boxes. Size- and shape-wise, the H3 Espresso looks like a slimmed-down Apple TV. Humax’s player measures a similar 95x95mm, with the same curved corners. However, the H3 is considerably slimmer than the 35mm Apple TV, measuring just 18mm. WOODEN PERFORMANCE The small size means that it’s easy to…

£49 • From sitpack.com VERDICT A clever, compact seat that you can take (and use) practically anywhere FOLD-UP CHAIRS might be useful, but they’re a pain to carry around. Wouldn’t it be better if there was a more compact and flexible design, giving you a seat for everything from photography to sitting in a queue? Now there is: the Sitpack. The same size as a 500ml can of beer, the Sitpack is the smallest folding seat you can get. At 600g, it’s also pretty light, although the compact dimensions make it feel weighty. When you want to relax, you just flip the sides out to make the base, extend the monopod leg, and you’re done. Using the \Sitpack falls someway between standing and sitting: the seat’s leg should stand at…

£284 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT It’s over a year old, but the Nexus 5X remains a superb Android handset for a reasonable price WHILE WE’RE FOND of the Pixel and Pixel XL, Google’s most recent smartphones, they both went down the ultra-premium route, abandoning the surprising affordability of the previous-generation Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X. Happily, the latter is still an excellent choice. It doesn’t make the best first impression; made of plastic, it looks like a budget handset, with utterly featureless side buttons that are so simple as to appear an afterthought. It’s great to hold, though. The plastic finish provides plenty of grip and, at 136g, it’s among the lightest phones around. The shape is good too, with the rear panel neatly meeting the front bezels. The front-facing…

£182 • From www.csmobiles.com VERDICT The updated P8 Lite is a good budget smartphone but it has stiff competition IF SUB-£200 smartphones are on your agenda, Huawei’s £185 P9 Lite (Shopper 350) is worth a look, but we’ve been more taken with the 2017 remake of the P8 Lite – it has a slightly better processor (a Kirin 655 to the P9 Lite’s 650) and, while it originally came with a higher price, we’ve actually found the P8 Lite for less cash post-launch. That’s not all that’s good about it, either. The P8 Lite is a dual-SIM smartphone that features a 5.2in Full HD display, a fingerprint reader and an octa-core processor, and it runs on Android 7.0 – not bad for £182, which is around the same price as…

£145 • From www.carphonewarehouse.com VERDICT Fast speeds, an excellent camera, long battery life – the Moto G4 is a budget masterpiece WE’LL GET TO the newer Moto G5 soon, but it’s worth noting that for over a year now, the Moto G4 has been the yardstick by which all other budget smartphones have been judged. It’s only recently that genuine alternatives such as the Lenovo P2 have arrived, such is its phenomenal balance of quality and thriftiness. In particular, its octa-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor and 2GB of RAM give it serious power. In Geekbench 3, the Moto G4 scored 717 in the single-core test and a massive 3,107 in the multicore test, about what we’d expect from a good mid-range device. Indeed, these scores are on a par…

£399 • From oneplus.net/uk VERDICT The OnePlus 3T is a small upgrade with a big price increase, but it’s still fantastic value THE ARRIVAL OF the OnePlus 3T at the end of 2016 was a bittersweet occasion. This was an update to one of our favourite high-end phones, the OnePlus 3, and made several small but welcome changes to the processor and battery – yet these incremental improvements came with a steep £70 price increase, which seemed antithetical to the OnePlus ethos of creating flagship-standard devices at knockdown prices. You couldn’t even get the older model for less, as it was canned with such remarkable speed and force that it disappeared from all but the shadiest of grey market stores. That said, by any reasonable measure the OnePlus 3T is…

£420 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Samsung Galaxy S7 is still one of the best smartphones out there, now with Android Nougat and a lower price YOU MIGHT BE wondering what the Galaxy S7 is doing here – aren’t we meant to be looking at more affordable current phones and older classics? Well, you’d be right in that the S7 isn’t exactly chump change, but then by the time you read this, the Galaxy S8 will have arrived to replace it as Samsung’s premier smartphone. That means price drops for last year’s model, and we’ve already found the S7 for nearly £150 less than its original RRP. This is great news for bargain hunters, as the S7 quickly became our favourite-ever Android handset when we first reviewed it. Not that…

£300 • From shop.orbitsound.com VERDICT A capable all-in-one soundbar that ensures everyone in the room gets high-quality audio AT A MODEST 817x123x223mm, the One P70 soundbar can be placed under a TV, stashed in an AV cabinet or fixed to a wall via the 200mm VESA mounts. Despite the size, it’s been packed with an integrated 5.25in subwoofer plus four 2in drivers: two at the front and one at each side, angled away from the centre. This setup enables the airSOUND system, which blasts proper stereo sound out to the left and right, rather than just straight on. In practice, this delivers an impressively wide soundstage; we could park ourselves at a fairly severe angle to the TV and still get rich, clear audio, with discernible left/right separation, so it…

£130 • From www.zavvi.com VERDICT A great budget soundbar gains a great budget subwoofer; at this price, it’s a peerless bargain WE WERE BIG fans of the Steljes Audio Calliope (Shopper 342) – a cheap standalone soundbar that nonetheless sounded great and offered loads of connections. The Erato is basically a Calliope with a wireless 5in subwoofer. Considering our only major complaint (aural-wise) with the Calliope was its weak bass, this seems like a great idea. Sure enough, it is. The subwoofer looks superb: its dimensions of 290x280x180mm are manageable, and its painted wood finish is miles ahead of the soundbar’s black plastic. There’s a noticeable performance improvement as well. With 30W of power behind it, it’s not going to shake the house down, but onscreen explosions and crashes are…

£120 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT A portable, waterproof multiroom speaker you can use almost anywhere, but its sound won’t be to everyone’s tastes THE SC-ALL05 IS a small speaker that seems to do it all. It’s portable, battery-powered, waterproof up to 1m, multiroom-capable and has a unique quirk in its Voice mode: this cuts down on bass to boost vocals, and is intended for easier listening while you’re in the shower. It’s a small touch, but it gives the SC-All05 a degree of versatility that other speakers of its ilk struggle to match, especially if you like to warble in the bathroom. Even more useful is the internal battery, which lasts around nine hours. You can just leave it plugged in, but it’s easy to take around the house or…

£119 • From www.richersounds.com VERDICT A capable, compact multiroom speaker, but it’s not without some playback issues THIS LITTLE CUBOID belongs to the same family as the Yamaha MusicCast YAS-306 soundbar (Shopper 350), and as you’d expect of anything with ‘Cast’ in the name, the WX-010 has some fine wireless credentials, despite being exclusively mains-powered. You can stream from your own DLNA server, use Spotify Connect, AirPlay and Quboz or simply beam from a Bluetooth device; there’s SBC and AAC codec support, but no aptX. There’s also no remote, but you’ll need to install the MusicCast app on your phone or tablet, as this acts as the control hub for the WX-010’s multiroom capabilities. The app is very adept at this – it’s easy to link devices and set up…