Table of contents for May 2021 in Tech Advisor

Microsoft’s next-gen Surface Laptop 4 will follow Microsoft’s recent trend of upgrading internal components more often than external features. The new laptops will include up-to-date Intel Core and AMD Ryzen processors and not much else, a new report says. Windows Central says that the Surface Laptop 4 will include Intel’s 11th-gen Tiger Lake processors and AMD’s Ryzen processors – though whether they’ll be a ‘Surface Edition’ chip based on the Ryzen 5000 Mobile chips that began appearing today, the site can’t say. Prices will remain the same: £909 for the 13.5in model and £1,199 for the 15in version. They’re expected to ship in April. While the site reveals a few new tweaks – Ryzen chips should appear in both the 13.5in and 15in models, for instance – those are essentially…

After months of silence about Apple’s impressive M1 chip, Intel just clapped back with a carefully crafted takedown of the Arm-based chip. It isn’t pretty. (You can read our review of the 13in MacBook Pro (M1) on page 26.) Intel said its testing shows: • An 11th gen Core i7-1185G7 can match or greatly exceed the M1’s performance in a MacBook Pro in both native and non-native applications. • The M1 just won’t run a lot of software. • In battery life, it’s pretty much a wash. • The MacBook Pro wouldn’t pass muster to be certified as an Evo laptop. • The new MacBooks have a range of compatibility issues, from multiple monitor to game controllers, as well as many documented software plug-in problems. In the parlance of our…

Price: £1,799 from fave.co/3qdtD1F The ZenBook Flip S is a premium, performance-focused convertible laptop. That’s arguably a niche within a niche, but if that’s where you are there is a lot to like here. Eleventh-generation Intel chips are paired with a slim build, a modern port selection (minus the startling omission of a 3.5mm headphone jack), and a 13.3in 4K OLED touchscreen – all in a 2-in-1 design that means you can use the Flip S as a regular laptop, or as a powerful Windows tablet. Not many people will be able to justify the £1,799 outlay of course, but if you can afford it this can go toe-to-toe with most premium 2-in-1s right now. DESIGN Asus has settled into an aesthetic when it comes to its premium notebooks, and…

Price: £649 (inc VAT) from fave.co/2K7feo4 The Reno series has always placed a focus on aspects like design and camera performance, with the best of the current bunch – the Oppo Reno 4 Pro 5G – being no exception. Oppo has hit what could roughly be considered a biannual release schedule with its Reno line, meaning the differences from the likes of the Reno 3 to Reno 4 (and indeed the forthcoming Reno 5) Series’ will feel incremental to those wondering whether they should upgrade from one generation to the next. In the case of the Reno 4 Pro 5G specifically (notably a different device to the LTE-only Reno 4 Pro), Oppo has essentially blended some of the best bits from its Find X2 and Find X2 Neo smartphones to…

Protecting your personal data isn’t just smart these days – it’s a necessity. As the world grows more and more connected, your private information becomes more and more valuable. Whether it’s using leaked info from website breaches to hack into your other accounts or holding your personal computer ransom for money, malicious attackers won’t hesitate to ruin your day if it puts profits in their pockets. All is not lost, though. Following some basic security principles can help protect you from most of the attacks you’ll find on the World Wild Web. Better yet, these five easy security tasks should take only a short while to get set up. Do them now and sleep easier at night. 1. USE A PASSWORD MANAGER On of the biggest security risks these…

Microsoft has announced Viva, a new ‘employee experience platform’ that integrates with Microsoft Teams. If your company uses Teams, chances are that you’ll see Viva, along with some of its more familiar features like Topics and Insights, soon. The tech giant already uses Teams as a launchpad for apps like Word and PowerPoint, plus shared resources on OneDrive and SharePoint. Inside Viva are features that Microsoft is calling Viva Connections, Viva Insights, Viva Learning, and Viva Topics. Topics is available today; Insights is available in preview, and Insights in private preview. Microsoft designed Connections for employee interactions, and Topics to allow employees to seek out answers from their colleagues. If they can’t help, Learning is designed to provide company-designed and external online courses and videos to help out. Finally, there’s…

Price: £2,699 (inc VAT) from fave.co/3tMM6o3 Gigabyte’s new Aero 15 OLED laptop is the first we’ve seen to feature one of Nvidia’s brand new, high-performance RTX 30 series GPUs – but instead of targeting this graphics power at gamers, here Gigabyte is focused on creatives. If it’s of interest, there is a non-OLED Aero 15 model available with a lower spec. DESIGN The Aero 15 is thin and light – similar in size and weight to Apple’s 16in MacBook Pro. Its aesthetic draws more from gaming than the sleek elegance of Apple’s device – but gaming laptop chassis manufacturers’ tendency to try to make their machines look like sci-fi spaceships or armour plates has been tempered here to create something that looks more architectural. It’s not overloaded with fussy details,…

Price: £299 from fave.co/3rLAdgu We’ve all grown accustomed to a certain design ethic when it comes to Chromebooks. Either they are compact laptops with 11.6in displays or larger 14in variants that often have the ability to fold the display back through 180 or 360 degrees. Very occasionally, we see an outlier that uses a tablet format. The most notable example was Google’s ill-fated 12.3in Pixel Slate, but that suffered from buggy software and an eye-watering price. Thankfully, this hasn’t killed off the idea entirely, as the new Lenovo IdeaPad Duet takes the form factor but shrinks both the size and cost. The Duet itself is a tablet with 10.1in HD IPS display, accompanied by a rear case that features a built-in tilt stand, plus there’s clip-on external keyboard that also…

Antivirus software is nearly as crucial as a PC’s operating system. Even if you’re well aware of potential threats and practice extreme caution, some threats just can’t be prevented without the extra help of an AV program – or a full antivirus suite. You could, for example, visit a website that unintentionally displays malicious ads. Or accidentally click on a phishing email (it happens). Or get stung by a zero-day threat, where an undisclosed bug in Windows, your browser, or an installed program gives hackers entry to your system. We’re not suggesting that PC security software is fool-proof. Antivirus software often can’t do much to stop zero-day exploits, for example. But it can detect when the undisclosed vulnerability is used to install other nasty bits, like ransomware, on your machine.…

Coming up with a strong, unique password and storing it in a password manager or browser isn’t good enough. You need to know if and when your password was stolen in a password breach, so you can act quickly enough to change that password before your personal information is potentially compromised. Here’s how. It’s been some time since the massive Collections breaches of 2019 leaked literally billions of email addresses and passwords to the web, putting the security of those accounts at risk. The problem users faced at the time was a limited number of ways to tell if they were actually at risk. Now, there are many password monitoring services that will reveal if your password has been stolen. Many are designed to let you quickly take action and…

Although AMD executives have touted their market-share gains in the PC processor market during 2020 as a whole, Intel actually clawed back a bit of share during the fourth quarter, an independent analyst confirmed recently. That’s probably just fine for AMD, which is prioritizing the high-end market. For the fourth quarter of 2020, Intel recorded a market-share gain of 0.8 percentage points in desktop CPUs, as well as 1.2 percentage points in the mobile market, Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research, confirmed. (Both numbers excluded the Internet of Things market and tablets.) AMD gained share in the higher-margin server space, McCarron said via email. That’s a slight reversal from November, when AMD hit an all-time high in notebook PCMarket share, at just over 20 per cent. That Intel gained…

Price: £1,299 from fave.co/3m59RDG For years, it’s been iPhone this, iPhone that. And for good reason. But now, the Mac – the platform that pushed Apple to the forefront of computing – is back in the spotlight. And for good reason. While the Intel years were good for the Mac, Apple needed something to take its computer to the next level. That something now comes in the form of Apple’s own system on a chip (SoC), called the M1. Along with macOS Big Sur (the OS built for the M1), the Mac makes breakthroughs in performance and battery efficiency that were never possible with Intel silicon. This review takes a look at the £1,299 13in MacBook Pro, which has an Apple 8-core M1. This SoC includes 8GB of RAM and…

Price: £279 (inc VAT) from fave.co/3nC1T4O The Realme 7 line has pushed the envelope in terms of what you can expect from an affordable phone; with the standard 7 serving as a brilliant budget option, while the higher pricing of the 7 Pro edges it into the mid-range tier, equipped with some notable tricks to grab your attention. While these devices staked their claim as noteworthy budget offerings back in October 2020, Realme actually had a third member waiting in the wings, in the Realme 7 5G. While COVID and its effects on the company’s supply chain meant that the 7 5G wasn’t ready to launch alongside its siblings, it’s no less potent a mix of impressive hardware at a low price – Realme’s bread and butter. Despite the name,…

We are terrible at passwords. We suck at creating them (the top two most popular remain ‘123456’ and ‘password’), we share them way too freely, and we forget them all the time. Indeed, the very thing that can ensure our online security has become our biggest obstacle to it. This is what makes a good password manager essential. A password manager relieves the burden of thinking up and memorizing unique, complex logins – the hallmark of a secure password. It allows you to safely share those logins with others when necessary. And because these tools encrypt your login info in a virtual vault – either locally or in the cloud – and lock it with a single master password, they protect the passwords themselves. If you’re looking to up your…