Table of contents for June 2021 in Tech Advisor

We’re starting to see leaks about Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 4, which is rumoured to be launching in the spring. A new report says both the 13.5in and 15in Surface Laptop 4 versions will offer AMD’s Ryzen processors, though they may not be the chips you’re hoping for. A separate report also claims that Microsoft may release a standalone webcam in April, alongside the Surface Laptop 4. WinFuture.de has reported that the probable CPUs inside the new Surface Laptop 4 will include ‘Surface Editions’ of the AMD Ryzen 5 4680U as well as the Ryzen 7 4980U. The mobile Ryzen 4000 series was the first of AMD’s Ryzen chips to yield a tremendous performance boost compared to Intel rivals. (In our review of the Surface Laptop 3, we found the opposite…

Google is making a play to turn Chromebooks into gaming platforms. Going forward, new models will ship with the Google Stadia cloud gaming service pre-installed. “Did you know Chromebooks now come with @GoogleStadia already installed?” the official ‘Made by Google’ account tweeted recently. “Start playing games without waiting for downloads or updates. Click the Stadia icon in your app menu to get started.” Google news site 9to5Google reports that the Stadia link does not show up as an Android app, as has previously occurred. Instead, Google is installing Stadia as a Progressive Web App: an ‘app’ that’s essentially a self-contained web page, allowing you to play Stadia via a browser instead of an app. This also allows Google to quickly update the PWA with the most recent content and updates.…

Microsoft’s Surface Pro 7+ (or Surface Pro 7 Plus) launched unexpectedly, stepping up from the Surface Pro 7’s 10th-gen Intel Ice Lake chips to 11th-gen Tiger Lake Core chips. The question we immediately had was: is the Surface Pro 7+ worth the upgrade? We’ve been somewhat shocked by the performance we’ve seen from the new model. In this story, we begin to answer two related questions: how much faster is the Surface Pro 7+ compared to the Surface Pro 7, and how much faster is the tablet version of Intel’s 11th-gen Tiger Lake chip versus its predecessor, the 10th-gen Ice Lake? The answer is: a lot, and without any fan noise to go along with it. For benchmark nerds, one of the best things about the Microsoft Surface family is…

Price: £1,149 (inc VAT) from fave.co/38kqM0d There are all sorts of concessions that you can pay to a phone depending on factors like price or its standing within a brand’s portfolio; when it comes to the Pro Maxes and Ultras of this world, however, there’s far less room for error. Just as hypercars have emerged as a class above supercars, so too have phones like the S21 Ultra in the flagship space – billed as uncompromising devices that can handle anything a user dares to throw at them, without so much as breaking a sweat – albeit for a premium, of course. The idiom ‘the bigger they are the harder they fall’ felt apt for last year’s Galaxy S20 Ultra, which promised so much – primarily from its impressive-sounding camera…

In the age-old laptop vs desktop debate, those who prefer a permanent workstation often highlight one of its key advantages: upgradeability. Most desktop PCs let you swap out the processor, RAM and hard drive as and when they need replacing, allowing you to fine-tune your set-up. You simply don’t get that sort of functionality on the majority of laptops, where the component parts are often locked way and inaccessible to most consumers. When laptop performance slows significantly or you’re running extremely low on storage space, it’s common practice to upgrade to a device which better suits your needs. But what if you didn’t have to compromise on portability in order to get the benefits of upgradeability? That’s something San Francisco-based start-up Framework is exploring, claiming that its first laptop can…

Solid-state drives have clear advantages over old-school hard-disk drives: SSDs are faster, quieter, and consume less power. Problem is, they also come with an array of acronyms listed in their specs, which can make it hard to figure out what you need. Cutting through the clutter is simple –you just pick a form factor and a speed. Our guide explains how. SSD FORM FACTORS: M.2 DRIVES VS 2.5IN DRIVES We’ll start with form factor. SSDs come in multiple shapes and sizes, but the two most common types are M.2 drives and 2.5in drives. Each type has its advantages: gumstick-shaped M.2 drives connect directly to your motherboard (thus reducing cable clutter in desktop PCs), and some types are faster than 2.5in drives. For their part, rectangular 2.5in drives, which slot into…

Microsoft may have given up on smart speakers for the consumer, but the company hasn’t given up on letting others build intelligent devices based on its own technologies and hardware. Microsoft has launched Azure Percept, a platform of hardware and services that’s built around Microsoft-designed hardware and Microsoft’s Azure AI platform. They’re part of what’s known as ‘edge computing’, intelligent devices that can process data on their own but are best when combined with the cloud. To get started, Microsoft unveiled Azure Percept Vision, a smart camera; plus Azure Percept Audio, an intelligent audio system at its virtual Microsoft Ignite conference. They can connect to the Azure IoT Hub. While these components could go into consumer-focused smart devices, Microsoft’s first example is vertical: the company said the Percept Vision camera…

I am very sceptical about Microsoft Mesh, the company’s new virtual-reality platform, and you should be, too. Microsoft’s last attempt at virtual reality, the HoloLens headset, was introduced with a flourish before largely melting away. The signs so far for Mesh suggest a similarly concerning pattern. Beyond that, we have to ask, do meeting participants event want to mingle in virtual spaces? Microsoft Mesh was announced at the company’s recent Ignite conference – an event taking place via Microsoft Teams and YouTube because of the pandemic. Microsoft technical fellow Alex Kipman, the person most closely tied to Microsoft’s HoloLens efforts, announced that the entire Ignite conference is being hosted on Mesh. If you’d like, you can view it in virtual reality. There’s even a Mesh videoconferencing app in preview. Microsoft…

Price: £539 (inc VAT) from fave.co/3jpeqIf As a global tech giant, Samsung produces an incredible amount of hardware each year. Its high-end TVs and flagship smartphone usually make most of the headlines, but there are plenty of devices specifically targeted to certain industries. Among them is the Galaxy Tab Active3, a rugged tablet that’s aimed at B2B customers and those working in extreme environments. With a host of durability features, it feels well optimized for this purpose, but does it make sense for consumers to pick one up? Read on to find out. DESIGN The design of the Tab Active3 feels like taking a trip back in time, with huge bezels and physical navigation buttons below the screen. Both of these have long since been upgraded on consumer-focused tablets, but…

Price: £219 (inc VAT) from fave.co/3qrtqHI Priced at £219, the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro are worthy options for Samsung-focused Android users who want a little bit of everything packed into their wireless earbuds, whether it’s attractive audio performance, excellent waterproofing, a comfortable fit, or active noise cancellation. With their unique voice detection feature and impressive waterproofing, they even manage to come out ahead of other earbuds aimed at a similarly wide market. Unfortunately, you’ll need to be fully committed to the Samsung ecosystem if you want to get the most out of them, but their versatility makes them a solid choice for anyone with an Android device. DESIGN They certainly look good. Elements of both the Galaxy Buds Plus and the Galaxy Buds Live reveal themselves in the design, and…

If your old laptop needs a little more pep in its step, there’s an easy fix most people overlook: the performance settings. These settings reside in most laptops, usually via a pre-installed utility. The vast majority of laptop users never poke around in there – and you shouldn’t need to, if all you do on your laptop is email, web browsing and mainstream productivity applications. But if you want to try your hand at a bit of light gaming, or you’re tinkering with Twitch streaming or video production, you could unlock a free performance boost with a simple mouse click or button-push. While we encourage you to take advantage of that free performance, please note that tinkering with these settings does not turn a 4-core CPU into an 8-core CPU.…

It’s not too far-fetched to believe that a billion people have viewed the ‘Bliss’ image that defines the desktop view of Windows XP. But you’d barely notice the real-world ‘Bliss’ scene if you stepped out of your car and gazed at it today. Driving anywhere in California’s wine country can be treacherous. Roads curve back and forth, well, drunkenly. Bicyclists are common, and the next bend could hide an entrance to one of Napa’s finest wineries, a tour group jaywalking across the road, or even a couple on horseback, exploring the area. In 1998, photographer Charles ‘Chuck’ O’Rear was driving from Sonoma County through Napa on his way to Marin County. His mission was to meet Daphne, the woman who eventually became his wife. In January, as most California natives…

PCs have no expiration date. Chromebooks do. However, executives at Google recently revealed they’re working with Chromebook makers to ensure you won’t end up buying a Chromebook that will go out of support anytime soon. During a press briefing to mark the 10th anniversary of Chrome OS and Chromebooks, a reporter asked the Google executives on the call about a typical Chromebook experience: once a Chromebook’s support window expires, it won’t receive updates. If a website or service requires an up-to-date browser to access it, does that mean the unsupported computer is now worthless? One of the distinctions between a PC and a Chromebook is that support window. Microsoft stops supporting Windows versions at some point, but it doesn’t stop supporting the PC surrounding it. Assuming your PC isn’t ancient,…

Price: £1,629 (inc VAT) from fave.co/30xqejb By naming this Windows tablet the Surface Pro 7+, Microsoft mistakenly implies that it’s some sort of minor upgrade from the Surface Pro 7. Nothing could be further from the truth: we rarely see such massive upgrades in CPU and GPU horsepower, as well as battery life. It also offers an LTE option and an absolutely dead-silent, fanless chassis. Sure, a few decisions made us scratch our heads. Why do we have to choose between an integrated microSD slot or the LTE option? Thunderbolt still isn’t here, either. But even these flaws really can’t mar an exciting leap in performance. This is the best Surface Pro of several generations, and for the moment the best Windows tablet on the market, too. SPECS AND FEATURES…

Price: £769 (inc VAT) from fave.co/3aH8rL3 The Galaxy S21 might be the smartest phone Samsung has ever made. Like the iPhone 12, it doesn’t have the best specs or the biggest screen. But it delivers where it counts, at a price that’s very attainable for a phone with a full complement of 5G, a high-end camera, and the latest Exynos 2100 processor. At £769, £30 less than the iPhone 12, and £170 more than the Google Pixel 5 and Galaxy S20 FE, the S21 is already a strong contender for smartphone of the year. Android and Galaxy enthusiasts will moan and wail over the things that are missing, which is admittedly a pretty lengthy list: 12GB of RAM, QuadHD+ resolution, expandable microSD storage, MST payment support, earbuds, a glass back…

Price: £29 (inc VAT) from fave.co/30l6b7z Samsung Galaxy SmartTags have entered a market already dominated by the third-party Tile tracker, and possibly about to be disrupted by the rumoured circular AirTags from Apple. Can Samsung use the strength of its own Smart Things ecosystem to become a player? We tried them with a Samsung Galaxy S21 to find out. Similar to Tile Bluetooth trackers, Samsung Galaxy SmartTags work by attaching to a keychain and using Bluetooth and the larger Galaxy Find Network to locate lost items, whether they fell under the couch or were left in your last Uber driver’s car. The £29 tag itself is very Tile-like, with a somewhat thick, black ‘squircle’ design, and a small hole in the corner for a keychain or clip. It almost seems…

Even if you’ve got a long-lasting notebook, sometimes you need to preserve every last bit of your laptop’s battery to help it survive the day. Recently, my house suffered from extended power and Internet outages during a brutal wind storm. These three tactics helped my laptop battery stay alive until the lights turned back on. Is there more you can do to make your laptop survive until you’re able to connect to a power outlet? Definitely – you’ll want to avoid power-sucking tasks like gaming or 3D modelling, for example. But these three tips deliver the most bang for most people’s bucks. 1. CHANGE YOUR WINDOWS POWER PROFILE Windows 10 ships with several power profiles available, ranging from a setting that maximizes performance to another than prioritizes battery life.…