PC Pro的May 2024目录

How fortunate I am that such a script would magically appear! One that so handily demonstrates the eternal battle been local and remote computing, when that’s exactly what I wanted to address this month. This decade, the battleground is AI. You may have heard of it. You’ve probably heard the term “AI PCs” in the past few months, too, as AMD, Intel and Microsoft have all attempted to jump on board this most lucrative of bandwagons. One that has seen Nvidia’s share value jump from $250 to $900 in the space of a year. That graph must bring a smile to the lips of Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang every time he sees it. Nvidia’s value has leapt because of its dominance within the AI space. Not in our local PCs…

Of all of the big tech companies challenged by the rise of AI, Google is arguably the most vulnerable. In a future where AI tools are ubiquitous, Apple will probably still be making phones and computers, Meta will still be connecting us to our friends, and Amazon will still be selling and shipping us products. But Google? The company’s major cash cow is advertising, which last year was responsible for 77% of the firm’s $307 billion revenue. And this could easily disappear if suddenly we have AI assistants scouring the web and answering questions for us. Unsurprisingly, then, Google is racing to catch up with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and the creators of the best-known AI model currently available, GPT-4. It recently launched its latest weapon in the AI…

For all its faults, YouTube offers an unprecedented breadth and depth of content. There’s all kinds of music, craft and sport on offer, even movies. Then there’s the educational side. I watch a lot of mathematics videos, and while most lack the professional depth you find on Wikipedia, they often make up for that by exploiting visualisation in original and useful ways. Then there’s my favourite topic of all: science. Okay, many YouTube videos are of increasingly dubious, click-baity quality, and that applies to much of its science content, too. Unsurprisingly the science on YouTube is dominated by cosmology and particle physics, those perennial playgrounds for opinionated nerds who know that Einstein or Bohr were wrong (or right, or whatever). It’s created a handful of stars like Sabine Hossenfelder and…

Ultimate advice Your review of Avast Ultimate (see issue 355, p84) reassures me that I have no need to think about changing my antivirus software. In the final column of the review, you mention your entirely reasonable annoyance at banner ads that prompt users to purchase additional apps such as Avast Breach Guard and Avast Driver Updater. Users can disable such pop-up ads in the configuration menu for Avast Premium Security. Head to Menu | Settings | Personal Privacy | Offers and then just untick the two boxes in that section, as shown in the screenshot. Simples! Raymond Dalgleish Second-hand thinking Have you ever featured an article on buying second-hand computers and components? As a budget-conscious PC user, I am often tempted by second-hand PCs and parts but am unsure…

Anyone looking for replacement tech will have spotted plenty of offers for refurbished devices nestling among the traditional adverts for new products. The refurbished electronics sector was valued at $85.4 billion in 2021, according to Transparency Market Research, and is predicted to swell to more than $250 billion within the decade. To put that into clearer context, more than half of all phones in circulation at the end of last year were second hand, according to estimates from analysts CCS Insight. Refurb has matured from a jumble sale full of scratched screens and dead batteries to global names selling warranty-backed, risk-free products, giving customers access to top-tier tech at cheaper prices. Although refurb looks impressive on corporate eco-credentials, forecasts state that the UK will still generate the highest amount of…

PRICE As reviewed, £2,333 (£2,799 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk For better or for worse, the new Dell XPS 14 follows the same design language as the XPS 13 Plus (see issue 350, p52). That means the same LED function row and invisible touchpad that made the XPS Plus such a divisive product. Less divisive is the inclusion of Intel’s Core Ultra chips, which pack a neural processing unit (NPU) to accelerate AI-driven tasks. As we cover in this month’s feature (see p28), the NPU remains a jam-tomorrow technology for the most part, but the XPS 14’s AI capabilities could bear fruit once more apps begin making the most of it. Whether you care about AI or not, the Dell XPS 14 still has plenty going for it. It’s compact and light…

PRICE As reviewed, £1,249 (£1,499 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk Sometimes I struggle to explain why you’d want a larger, heavier version of the MacBook Air. It’s especially difficult this year because, aside from its size, the new M3-powered 15in MacBook Air looks and performs an awful lot like the 13in version. Of course, the price is different. Where the 13in model starts at £1,099, the plus-sized version costs £200 more with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. There’s an argument for going beyond the entry-level spec, especially as the bigger screen lends itself to graphical and video work. Upgrading to 16GB of RAM or a 512GB SSD will add £200 to the cost, with options up to 24GB of RAM and 2TB of storage for a total of £2,499.…

Save 85% on the A List security suite £29.99 10 devices 2 years Avast Ultimate 2024 won our internet security suite Labs last month (see issue 355, p78), and we’ve managed to snag 85% off the price. That means £29.99 buys you protection, a VPN and a range of handy utilities and tools for two years across ten devices. That includes PCs, Android devices, iPhones and Macs. ■ Protection for your PC Avast Premium Security provides a powerful antivirus engine that detects and blocks the latest malware, but not just that: it can help you shop and bank safely, spot fake websites and ransomware, and stop hackers from remotely taking over your device. You also receive Avast Cleanup, a system maintenance toolkit to remove junk files, control your startup programs,…

PRICE £174 (£209 inc VAT) from bee.synology.com The BeeStation is a novel sort of NAS. While most appliances aim for versatility, Synology’s new baby is a stripped-down proposition with one job: to replace Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive or whatever cloud storage service you may be using. The pitch is easy to understand. The BeeStation comes with 4TB of onboard capacity, so you can forget about subscription fees and the worry of running out of space. The drive can be shared with up to eight other users, each with their own private storage area, so for a family or workgroup it can be very economical indeed. And as well as being cheaper than a full-fat NAS, the unit is comparatively small and quiet, with a footprint of only 63 x 196mm.…

PRICE £92 (£110 inc VAT) from logitech.co.uk While the Logitech Signature Slim Combo MK950 may look like a keyboard and mouse, what Logitech really wants to sell you is a promise. The promise that by spending a shade over £100 on this pair of devices, your life will become simpler. More productive. Just generally better. The key to this is Smart Actions, part of Logitech’s Options+ software. Say you have a morning routine where you launch Outlook, Slack and Edge. Or a string of tasks before you close down for the day. Maybe you edit videos in Premiere Pro and regularly change speeds, or you’re a coder who repeats the same checks. Whatever the sequence of events, you can assign them to one trigger action and Smart Actions will do…

PRICE 256GB, £291 (£349 inc VAT) from nothing.tech The Nothing Phone (2a) (we’ll drop the brackets from now on) reminds us that phone design needn’t be boring or safe. And with the 2a, Nothing manages to avoid the trap of producing just another iteration on an idea. And I should know, as I bought the Nothing Phone 1 (see issue 336, p72) on day one before upgrading to the Phone 2 (see issue 349, p72), which I use every day. So I’m already on board with this design-first, disruptive brand. I love how the innards are visible on the phone’s rear, turning tech into art, while the Glyph LED system has meant less screen time. Glyph uses a panel of LEDs on the reverse of the phone that light up…

It’s hard to beat a Chromebook for costconscious computing. Chromebooks consistently give you more for your money than the Windows or macOS competition, while Google’s Chromebook Plus initiative (see p81) drives home the point that they’re no longer just school and student laptops – they can handle business, content creation and even, via streaming, games. With strong baked-in security and hassle-free updates, they are also easier to set up and maintain. To prove it, we asked the leading Chromebook manufacturers to send in their latest and greatest Chrome OS devices, focusing on those that meet Google’s Chromebook Plus spec. These are Chromebooks that offer more performance for running applications locally, as opposed to simply running web-based apps. They also have the screen, features and performance to function as serious business…

PRICE £358 (£429 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk Acer’s large 15.6in screen and corresponding 1.7kg bulk mean that this is not going to be the ideal Chromebook for everybody. With a footprint of 361 x 238mm, it’s one of the largest laptops on test – only the HP Chromebook Plus 15a-nb004na and the Lenovo IdeaPad 5i Gaming are bigger – and the chunky 19.9mm profile is hard to ignore. However, if you’re looking for a Chromebook for use around the home or office, it has a lot to offer, especially if you’re prioritising comfort and good performance at a reasonable price. As with the smaller Chromebook Plus 514, what looks like an all-metal build turns out to be shiny grey plastic, with the impression enhanced by a faux-brushed aluminium treatment on…

PRICE £666 (£799 inc VAT) from asus.com/uk The Chromebook Enterprise Flip CB5 comes across as both a reinvention of Asus’ excellent Chromebook Flip CX5 convertible, and as a premium, supersized version of its CM34 Flip. Like the former, it’s a big-screen, 2-in-1 convertible with a metallic shell and a fast Intel Core i5 spec. Like the latter, it’s switched to a squarer display with a 16:10 aspect ratio and 1,920 x 1,200 resolution, only here the screen is a massive 16 inches. Using it as a tablet is a slightly bizarre experience and there’s no USI stylus for notes and doodles. But it’s brilliant used in tent mode for ad hoc presentations or entertainment. There’s a lot to like about this design, including the thin “nano-edge” frame around the display,…

PRICE £549 (£659 inc VAT) from very.co.uk Google’s attempts to push Chromebooks as gaming devices have mostly been disastrous. In the wake of the demise of its own Stadia cloud gaming service, Chromebook users have had to rely on Xbox Games Pass Ultimate and Nvidia’s GeForce Now if they wanted to play games. Yet Google’s initiatives have had one upside: the emergence of some gaming-focused, premium Chromebooks that turn out to be just as good for everything else. The Lenovo IdeaPad 5i Gaming Chromebook Plus is a case in point. Let’s start with the screen. Where most previous big-screen Chromebooks have fielded 15.6in, 1080p displays, the IdeaPad 5i Gaming Chromebook Plus has gone bigger, with a 16:10 aspect ratio 16in screen, and a higher resolution, at 2,560 x 1,600. What’s…

PRICE £317 (£380 inc VAT) from asus.com/uk Like the Lenovo 500e Yoga Chromebook, the Asus Chromebook CR11 Flip is a rugged 2-in-1 convertible sold mostly into the education market. However, the laptop feels like it belongs to an earlier era. At 209 x 206mm, it has a larger desktop footprint, and its 21mm thickness makes it feel bulkier when closed. Most seriously, it has the space for a 13.3in screen, but instead has a much smaller 11.6in display, floating within a massive frame that’s nearly an inch deep at the top and bottom. Whether you’re using it in laptop, tablet or tent mode, the CR11 looks and feels old-school in all the wrong ways. To balance that, it feels incredibly tough, with rubber bumpers, splash-proof keys, a scratch-resistant body and…

PRICE £333 (£400 inc VAT) from lenovo.com/uk If you’re looking for a tough, flexible and highly portable Chromebook, the Lenovo 500e Yoga could be perfect. It’s a ruggedised 2-in-1 with a distinctive 12.2in, 16:10 screen, and it goes beyond the usual MIL-SPEC-810H standard for dust- and shock-proofing by meeting Lenovo’s DuraSpec standard for school laptops. That means chunky bumpers, reinforced ports, a robust plastic case and spill-resistant keyboard. If it can withstand life in a primary school, it will definitely handle life around the home or office. Thanks to the squarer aspect ratio, the design works brilliantly across laptop, tablet and tent configurations. The keyboard is also better than on some full-sized Chromebooks, with a light but clicky action that’s consistent across the whole width and depth. There’s just a…

Practical buying and strategic advice for IT managers and decision makers Buyer’s guide Network attached storage (NAS) appliances are the perfect solution for growing businesses facing a storage crisis. They offer a high-capacity and cost-effective solution that provides teams with fast local access to data and can grow as demand increases. Cloud storage is a natural contender for these duties but, once you take into account the regular monthly fees, such services can become expensive over the long term – especially if you’re using them to store increasingly large amounts of data. It’s true that NAS appliances represent a much higher initial spend, but ongoing costs will be comparatively insignificant. NAS appliances are also more versatile than cloud storage as they provide a ready-made repository for on-site server and workstation…

PRICE Diskless, £5,476 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com Synology’s “SA” family of rack NAS appliances are aimed at the mid-range and enterprise storage markets and deliver a wealth of features, top performance and a high scalability. The SA3410 on review is the entry point of the range and, along with support for SAS3 and SATA devices, it sports an 8-core 2.1GHz Xeon D-1541 CPU, 16GB of DDR4 memory (upgradable to 128GB) and a feast of gigabit and 10GbE network ports. Businesses looking to upgrade their elderly SA3400 appliances won’t be impressed, though. Apart from a single digit name change, the only difference between them is the SA3410 adds an extra gigabit port to isolate management traffic. That said, the SA3410 has a lot to offer businesses that want plenty of room…

PRICE £257 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com Zyxel’s XMG1915 family of switches is aimed at small businesses that want plenty of multi-gigabit ports in a space-saving design and at a competitive price. The range comprises three models, and we reviewed the XMG1915-10EP, which provides high-power PoE++ services. Measuring only 250 x 104 x 27mm (WDH), this desktop switch packs in eight 2.5GbE multi-gigabit ports all capable of delivering up to 60W. It partners them with a pair of 10GbE SFP+ fibre ports for high-speed uplinks. It has a good power budget of 130W, which is facilitated by a chunky 150W external power brick that’s over half the size of the switch. The switch uses its chassis as a heatsink and its fan-less design means it’s completely silent. Management options are good:…

Authy has long been my go-to app for all things two-factor authentication (2FA) because it runs on everything – all my desktops, my iPhone, my iPad and my Android phones. It’s super easy to use on the desktop: keep the app open and I can have a 2FA six-digit code with a few mouse clicks. It even copies the code onto the clipboard, so pasting into a site couldn’t be simpler. Last month, I wrote of my displeasure with Authy as it had decided to close down the desktop apps later this year, and how this would make me reconsider its use. I have a workable solution, as the iPhone/iPad app will work on an M-processor Mac desktop, giving me some continuity. But my primary desktop in the lab is…

In the long distant past, when I wasn’t even three decades old, I was a hacker. To be precise, I explored online networks without permission, being very careful indeed not to break them, in order to learn more about the emerging connected world. What I didn’t do was think it would be an excellent opportunity to steal data or blackmail people using whatever I might have stumbled upon. It would never in a million years have occurred to me to go and try to take a hospital offline or grab a load of patient data before locking down the original until half a tonne of cryptocurrency was sent in my direction. But then I am not, and never have been, a profit-driven arsehole who doesn’t care about the harm they…

PRICE £219 inc VAT from zx-touch.com There have been numerous attempts at creating devices based on the ZX Spectrum and some have proven to be hugely controversial – we’re looking at you, ZX Spectrum Vega+, which ran into a heap of trouble and led to a small number of units being delivered. The ZX Touch shouldn’t be tainted with such past woes, however. This is a handheld that began as a project purely for fun rather than to make money. It just happened to be so eye-catching that it was deemed suitable for unleashing on the retro market. Created by Goran Radan, co-owner of a company called Elmar Electronic in Croatia, the device is an impressive beast. It’s a chunky, robust offering with a 7in touchscreen that is a little…

We’re used to seeing dogs help blind and partially sighted people navigate the world. But normally the dogs are real. Researchers at the University of Glasgow have developed a system to put robot dogs to work for visually impaired people, helping them explore a museum and offering information about the exhibits. In the UK, more than two million people suffer sight loss of some sort, of whom 340,000 are registered as blind or partially sighted. Most people with sight loss are over the age of 65, and the number of people with sight loss increases each year; it’s set to double by 2050, according to the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB). Most of those people will need some assistance navigating their daily lives. “Mobility is a big issue…

I sometimes wonder about the competency of our ruling classes. I don’t mean His Maj, but rather the governmental departments tasked with keeping society going. This applies especially to the administration of private transport. I get that competition supposedly promotes a better service at a keen price – but local and national governments seem very ready to define vague specifications, then hand systems over to outside firms with no real competition. They then find themselves spending a huge amount of money supporting said firms when they can’t make a profit. Topped off, of course, by blame-shifting when things aren’t as rosy as promised. Take the Dartford Crossing, which opened in 1991. The original plan, as announced by Tony Blair in February 1999, was that toll charging would end in 2003…

Lenovo Project Crystal PRICE Not confirmed AVAILABILITY Proof-of-concept only I’m not sure anyone ever asked “What if I could look through my laptop’s display?”, but regardless, Lenovo has created a laptop with a transparent display. And it’s really rather cool. Dubbed Project Crystal, this concept laptop uses a transparent micro-LED panel fitted between two panes of Gorilla Glass to equip the machine with a screen that you can see through as if it were just a rectangle of pure glass. And despite this, the icons and windows on the display were still crisp and clear. It’s been designed with the idea of creating “a more collaborative laptop experience”, enabling users to see other people when they’re also looking at the screen, instead of being hidden behind it. There are also…

Is it just me, or is software getting worse? I want my laptop to behave like my toaster or kettle: appliances that just work as expected without any thought on my behalf. But the first time I tried to open the proof of my book, with its thousands of comments, typesetting marks and the rest, Acrobat simply refused to load. (Did I mention I have a book coming out in July? Yes, I have, and I will again, no apologies.) I had only installed the full version of Adobe Acrobat on my laptop because I was testing its new AI assistant, which is a genuinely handy tool for digging data out of documents. But I wish Adobe had spent less time on whizzy AI features and more time on getting…

Cyberattacks don’t look like you might expect – and they certainly don’t look like they do in the movies. If your security is compromised, you probably won’t see a big flashing sign saying “YOU HAVE BEEN HACKED”, or weird skull-and-crossbones graphics filling your display. On the contrary, modern attacks lay low. The era when hackers just wanted to attract attention and cause chaos is long past: today, they more likely want to use your computer for mining cryptocurrency, or as a staging point for launching anonymous attacks on remote targets. Or, of course, they may intend to quietly encrypt your personal files, with a view to demanding a ransom for the decryption key. Whatever the goal, it’s in their interest to be as discreet as possible, and not to tip…

PRICE £4,083 (£4,899 inc VAT) from hp.co.uk It’s true: HP really is expecting people to spend almost five grand on a single computing device. It almost makes the £4,239 that Lenovo demands for the ThinkPad X1 Fold 16 (see issue 355, p58) look reasonable. But there are reasons to choose the HP. Of the three foldable PC designs I’ve tested, HP’s is the cleverest. Asus arguably rushed out the Zenbook 17 Fold (see issue 338, p50), which costs £3,299 but comes with bulky padding around the hinge. Lenovo relies on a separate stand to keep the screen upright in all-in-one mode, again adding bulk. HP’s design is the most compact by a distance, with a kick-out stand to keep the screen upright while the keyboard is sandwiched between the folded…

PRICE RTX 4070, £1,999 (£2,399 inc VAT) from uk.asus.com I was worried about the 2024 Asus ROG Zephyrus G14. Change is scary and this is one of my favourite gaming laptops of all time. I’ve had my hands on each release since 2019, and loved every second I’ve spent with these miniature powerhouses. A complete redesign, the sacrifice of RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 options, a new screen type – all announcements that had me holding my breath anxiously during CES. After two weeks with the latest Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 in hand, though, those updates have won me over. This is a much slimmer model, dropping the chunky base plate required for heavier RTX 4080 and 4090 cards and adopting a mainstream, ultralight profile. Even compared to a non-gaming…

PRICE Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 GRE Pulse, £458 (£550 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk The AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE isn’t a new graphics card: it officially launched in China back in July 2023. However, AMD has now allowed its partners to release the Golden Rabbit Edition in the UK, at a price that pitches it directly against Nvidia’s RTX 4070 (see issue 345, p56) while hoping to steal sales from the RTX 4070 Super (see issue 354, p58). AMD’s “new” card compares well to the 7800 XT, which costs around £500. Both have 16GB of VRAM, but the 7800 XT has only 60 compute units while the 7900 GRE has 80 — a 33% increase. That compares to 84 for the 7900 XT and 96 for the XTX. At 18Gbits/sec,…

Total value this month £155 PCmover Express 11.3 Laplink PCmover Express is an easy-to-use tool that helps you migrate your files, settings and other data from an old PC to a new one. It’s fully compatible with all versions of Windows from 7 to 11, and is a true set-and-forget application – so you can start it running, then leave it to finish the job while you get on with other things. It’s one of the simplest and most effective ways to get your brand new Windows 11 PC ready to use, without the hassle of having to reconfigure everything manually. While PCmover Express automatically transfers the files, settings and profiles you choose, it doesn’t migrate your installed applications. As many apps now run in the cloud, getting these set…

PRICE 512GB, £917 (£1,100 inc VAT) from hihonor.com/uk The Magic6 Pro’s undisputed killer feature sits within the circular unit at the rear, which contains a trio of powerful cameras: one with a 180MP sensor and 2.5x optical zoom, the primary 50MP unit with an adjustable aperture, and a third wide-angle 50MP camera. Although the Magic6 Pro has many manual controls, it remains a great choice for point-and-shooters like me. At MWC Barcelona (see p14), I used the main lens to capture the city at night to great effect – the graffiti ridden walls simply looked stunning. This is where the adjustable aperture comes into effect, switching from its standard f/2.0 to a wider f/1.4 setting. The only area in which this phone’s camera falls behind the Galaxy S24 Ultra (see…

PRICE £249 (£299 inc VAT) from oneplus.com I’d be the first to tell you that the original OnePlus Watch wasn’t worth buying. Launched back in 2021, it brought limited fitness features and a small, clunky selection of first-party apps that left us cold (see issue 322, p74). But that was then: the OnePlus Watch 2 is a fresh, modern wearable that’s ready to compete with the Google Pixel Watch 2 (see issue 351, p74) and Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 6 (see issue 349, p76). It starts with a smart new look. The first OnePlus Watch looked basic; the OnePlus Watch 2 is positively stylish. It comes in two finishes, Radiant Steel and Black Steel, with a digital crown and action button, both of which extend slightly from the chassis rather than…

Gone are the days when all Chromebooks were chunky plastic ultraportables with 11in to 13in screens. Now they run the whole gamut of laptops, from slimline 2-in-1 convertibles and detachables to more powerful gaming Chromebooks with RGB lighting and 16in displays. As with buying any laptop, then, you need to fix your requirements before you buy. Are you going to prioritise portability or focus on models that will be comfortable to work on all day long? Do you need features such as a touchscreen, ruggedisation or a more flexible form factor, or are these irrelevant in comparison to a great keyboard, a big screen and strong performance? Working out your priorities will help you select the right Chromebook. ■ Go big or go small? The first decision this will help…

PRICE £666 (£799 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk For several years, Acer’s Chromebook Spin 713 was the premium Chromebook to buy, competing with Google’s own Pixelbooks on design, specs and features, while undercutting them on price. The Spin 713 is still available, but it’s no longer being updated with Intel’s latest CPUs. Luckily, its successor, the Spin 714, is every bit as good. Sure, it comes without the old model’s 3:2 ratio QHD screen, swapping it out for a more standard 14in, 16:10 display with a 1,920 x 1,200 resolution. Otherwise, though, it maintains the same styling and dark grey, all aluminium build. It’s still a 2-in-1 convertible, with a 360° hinge that allows the screen to fold back flat against the base, and work either as a chunky pseudo-tablet or…

PRICE £358 (£429 inc VAT) from very.co.uk It doesn’t have the flexible form factor of the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 Chromebook Plus or the specifications of the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 or Chromebook Vero 514, but the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 triumphs when it comes to value for money. For under £450 you can have a 14in Chromebook with good all-round performance, an attractive thin and light design and a very workable 1080p screen. What’s more, it frequently turns up on sale with even more attractive discounts, making it a good choice if you want a Chromebook Plus on the cheap. It isn’t hard to spot where Asus has trimmed some corners. The body and lid are both made from plastic, without a hint of fancy aluminium or magnesium alloys…

PRICE £416 (£499 inc VAT) from very.co.uk The Asus Chromebook Plus CM34 Flip makes a striking first impression. Its body might be plastic rather than the aluminium it appears to be, but the Zinc finish looks impressive and, with its squarer 16:10 screen, it brings back memories of Google’s classic Pixelbooks and Acer’s much-loved Chromebook Spin 713. Like them, it’s a 2-in-1 convertible, where the screen can fold back flat against the base to work in a tablet format, or in a screen-first tent configuration in between. Build-quality is excellent. It looks and feels like a premium device. Asus has also got the practicalities right. You’ll find USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 port on each side of the laptop, along with a single USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port, a microSD card…

PRICE £233 (£280 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com Weirdly, the IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook isn’t particularly slim, with a 19.3mm thickness that makes it no less chunky than most other Chromebooks on test. What it is, though, is unusually compact, thanks to a shallow 216mm depth that shaves a centimetre or two from the footprint of a typical 14in device. Combine that with a 1.5kg weight, and it’s a good option for slinging in the laptop pocket of a backpack and carrying for a day of work or study, especially where conditions might be cramped. The body is made from plastic, but the aluminium lid and good build quality mean that it feels robust. Lenovo might have put more thought into the connectivity, however. It’s fantastic to have Wi-Fi 6E on…

PRICE 20TB, £2,475 exc VAT from megamac.com With a track record stretching back over 35 years, OWC (Other World Computing) has built up an extensive portfolio of storage components and complete business solutions. Stepping in at the entry point of its Jupiter NAS family, the Mini is a desktop storage appliance that’s pretested and ready for use. We reviewed the 20TB model, which came with five labelled 4TB Toshiba MG08 SATA enterprise HDDs that are loaded by pushing them into the corresponding spring-loaded drive slot. It may be small but the Mini is no lightweight, as it’s powered by a quad-core 2.2GHz Intel Xeon D-1518 CPU plus a generous 32GB of DDR4 memory, offers dual gigabit and 10GbE copper ports and has a spare PCI-E expansion slot should you need…

PRICE Diskless, £916 exc VAT from amazon.co.uk TerraMaster’s T9-450 will appeal to SMBs that want an affordable NAS appliance that puts a pile of storage on their desktop. Designed to stand on its side or base, it delivers nine hot-swap SATA drive bays and teams them up with dual 2.5GbE multi-gigabit and 10GbE SFP+ ports. Enclosed in a sturdy steel chassis, the appliance is driven by a 2.4GHz quad-core Intel Atom C3558R CPU partnered by 8GB of DDR4 memory, expandable to 32GB using the two SODIMM slots. Upgrades are easy: you only need to remove the side cover to access the motherboard, and you’ll also find two M.2 NVMe SSD slots, which can be used as a standard storage pool or a performance-boosting cache. For testing, we fitted four 14TB…

If your network generates equal amounts of data and embarrassment, don’t worry – you’re not alone. I’ve visited plenty of blue-chip company machine rooms, and if they’re not running at 70°C with every fan at maximum howl then they’re frequently a heaving, unsanitary mantrap of patch leads and power cables, primed to spring free from no stronger vibe than a passing tea-trolley. Almost every business can benefit from a network decluttering; not only will this reduce the number of physical points of failure, it can minimise administrative loopholes, vulnerabilities and weird unintended behaviours by bringing everything under a few properly managed and closely monitored roofs. ■ Subnets and segments There’s one big reason why most networks need decluttering: the fact is that networks tend to be very old, relative to…

“Dad?” I knew by my daughter’s intonation that something was amiss. “Why is this naked lady eating a huge sausage?” I didn’t get the chance to answer before her younger sister popped up, looking equally baffled. “Why is the aubergine emoji funny?” Screens emerged showing a chat app with lots of (seemingly) young kids gabbling away courteously, interrupted by a couple of trolls, keen to demonstrate their loquacious wit with four letter put-downs and a sizeable collection of porn GIFs. Let me explain. One item I recommended in the PC Pro Christmas gift guide was the Divoom LED Bluetooth speaker (see issue 352, p26). It’s a fun device with a powerful companion app, allowing users to create vibrant designs and animations that appear on its 16 x 16 LED display.…

A last-minute invite from a firm of Hungarian drone makers was just what I needed in the depths of winter. An invite made all the more intriguing by the fact this was a new company in the midst of a geopolitical area hosting the first drone war, even if the subject of our presentation was drones in agriculture. That the agriculture in question was a vineyard had nothing whatsoever to do with my interest. From a tech perspective, most of the demos were basic. The drones looked like an upside-down ride-on lawnmower, except with a watertight compartment where the seat would normally go. A double-glazed window was enough to make their hovering shapes silent and a trifle ominous against the cloudy, snowy sky that day. These beasts were built for…

Back in 2021, Intel made a dramatic strategic change to its business. Faced with the twin threats of companies such as Apple designing its own custom silicon, and making use of gun-for-hire foundries such as Taiwan-based TSMC to produce it, the company decided it could no longer simply design and produce its own wares. CEO Pat Gelsinger made the dramatic decision to separate the two parts of the company, announcing that it would be opening up its fabs to anyone who needs chips manufacturing, just like its rival. Two years on, the company has received perhaps the strongest signal yet that the pivot is paying off, as the company has inked a deal to produce custom AI chips with long-time partner Microsoft, thought to be worth around $15 billion. The…

PREMIUM LAPTOPS Apple MacBook Pro 16in (2023) M3 power from £1,699 from apple.com/uk The M3 chips give the already brilliant MacBook Pro series a boost in games with no sacrifices elsewhere, so power users who are happy with Apple must grapple with the big decisions: which M3 chip, which size of screen, and how much RAM and storage? REVIEW Issue 352, p46 ALTERNATIVES NEW ENTRY HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) An Intel Core Ultra 7 processor means that this is a fast 2-in-1 as well as being beautifully designed, with a sumptuous screen and excellent battery life. £1,899 from hp.com/uk REVIEW Issue 355, p62 Apple Mac Book Air 13in (M3) Both the 13in and 15in MacBook Airs impress for speed, styling and battery life, but the 1.2kg 13in Air wins…

For the past few months, I feel like I’ve been living the inverse of Monty Python’s “What have the Romans ever done for us?” sketch. Every time I’ve been at a press conference where a PC manufacturer has launched a new AI PC I’ve asked the question: what’s it going to do for us? The answer: blur the background of our video calls without smashing the granny out of your CPU. Er… that’s it. Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration. There are practical benefits to having a neural processing unit (NPU) inside your PC today – as you’ll discover in our feature on p28 – but it’s safe to say that the real advantages of AI PCs are yet to reveal themselves. The hardware’s on the market, now the software developers…

Remember when 3D screens were the next big thing? What about virtual reality? Or 5G? The truth is that the technology industry loves buzzwords almost as much as it loves the tech itself, and its latest crush is AI PCs. But here’s the thing: if you ask five different vendors what an AI PC is you’d get five different answers. AMD and Intel will explain that it’s all about their new silicon, which now includes neural processing units to go along with CPUs. Nvidia will point to its hugely powerful RTX GPUs. Microsoft will tout its mix of remote and local platforms. Truth is, the definition is hazy. By some definitions, you already have an AI PC to hand via the mobile phone in your pocket. It’s personal, it computes,…

Back in issue 336 we showed you how to configure a Raspberry Pi as a VPN gateway for your home network, routing all your internet traffic through a secure, external VPN server. But what if you want to do the opposite? Running a VPN server on your local network enables you to securely access home devices such as NAS appliances and printers from anywhere in the world. You can also route your internet activity through your home ISP connection when you’re travelling – handy for getting around local access restrictions, or if you’re using an untrusted Wi-Fi service and want to ensure the operator can’t spy on your activity. A VPN server can be hosted on almost any computer, and inbound VPN capabilities are also built in to some routers.…

PRICE As reviewed, £1,249 (£1,499 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk Apple’s third-generation M3 processor debuted in last year’s MacBook Pro and iMac computers; now it comes to the MacBook Air, making this the most powerful thin and light laptop the company has ever offered. Even better, the new entry-level model costs £150 less than the 2022 M2-powered version. That older model remains on sale, now at a more tempting £999, while the original 2020 M1 Air has been discontinued. While the base M3 model’s price is a nice surprise, what’s less welcome is the fact that it still only bags you 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage. In 2024 that is tight: even if it suits your needs for now, it’s hard to feel confident that it will remain adequate…

PRICE £1,895 (£2,275 inc VAT) from tinyurl.com/356cyber My words won’t do justice to Cyberpower’s choice of chassis, the dramatic NZXT H6 Flow. It’s almost like two chassis: one made of tempered glass that reveals all the RGB-lit components within, the other adding around 100mm to its width where the power supply and ugly cables hide away. And then it’s as if NZXT took an angle grinder to it, shaving off a corner for a trio of 120mm RGB fans to suck in air and cool the powerful components within. It’s both clever and stylish. Three more 120mm RGB fans sit at the top of the case, with a single fan at the rear to add more glow. On first launch, the fans run at full speed and you’ll hear a…

PRICE £250 (£300 inc VAT) from hihonor.com On the surface, the Honor Pad 9 is a standard Android tablet. It’s sleek and stylish in its matte green aluminium frame, and has the same 16:10 aspect ratio display as most of its Android brethren. But Honor has created the most iPad-like experience I’ve seen, thanks to MagicOS on Android 13. In particular, it’s solved the user interface problem that beset Android tablets. Simple three-finger gestures drop you straight into multitasking modes (including running two instances of the same app) with ease, while swiping up from the bottom to flip between apps is fast and fluid. You can also connect your Honor phone, tablet and laptop together – if signed in to Honor Connect and on the same Wi-Fi network – to…

PRICE £183 (£219 inc VAT) from logitech.com Even if you’re not familiar with Logitech’s MX range of mice and keyboards, the price and all-metal finish gives this webcam’s executive aspirations away. But the name isn’t merely a marketing signal of intent: Logitech has designed the MX Brio 705 to work in tandem with your MX peripherals, so that if you launch Teams or Zoom then shortcut buttons are automatically assigned. What sets this webcam apart from rivals, though, is image quality across a range of lighting conditions. There’s a swish video on Logitech’s website that demonstrates this, rotating through 360 ° to show the user against a range of backgrounds, including the dreaded sunny-window-behind-you. And it’s true: the Brio captures the same, even skin tones whether you’re in good, dark…

PRICE 256GB, £708 (£849 inc VAT) from mi.com/uk Want a compact phone but don’t want to compromise on an optical zoom or the latest Snapdragon chipset? Xiaomi has heard your plea, answering with the diminutive, high-quality and rather expensive Xiaomi 14. Not to be confused with the Xiaomi 14 Pro, which isn’t being sold in the UK, nor the soon-to-land Xiaomi 14 Ultra. Even though it isn’t branded Pro or Ultra, the plain Xiaomi 14 includes a fine selection of cameras. All three of its rear cameras pack 50MP sensors, covering main, ultrawide and 3.2x telephoto duties. There’s also a 32MP selfie camera on the front. Xiaomi’s relationship with Leica continues, visible not merely by the branding on the square camera housing but also in the various colour profiles and…

PRICE £267 (£320 inc VAT) from withings.com The Withings ScanWatch 2 isn’t your ordinary wearable. While most smartwatches offer modern, high-tech designs, this one has an elegant, timeless appearance. It’s made from stainless steel and topped with sturdy sapphire glass; two illuminated hands sweep around the watch face, while a small analogue dial tracks your step progress. It’s comfortable to wear at night, with a fluoroelastomer strap that doesn’t dig in, and it comes in white, dark blue and beige face options. In fact, the only indication that there’s more to the ScanWatch 2 is the little black circle on the upper half of the face. Twist the rotating crown, or just raise the watch, and this 0.63in greyscale OLED screen springs to life. By default it shows the time…

Google has long had problems making the distinction between cheap, low-performance Chromebooks and the more ambitious, premium Chromebooks it’s trying to sell to enthusiast users and big business. In October 2023 it launched Chromebook Plus, an initiative designed to address that problem, while also driving home the point that modern Chromebooks can do much more than run a browser. Manufacturers can employ a new logo while users gain a handful of perks. Meanwhile, developers of Android apps can have more confidence adding Chromebook-friendly UIs and tools, knowing that Chromebook Plus models will have the performance and features to run them at their best. Minimum requirements for a Chromebook Plus model include an Intel Core i3 or equivalent CPU, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage – though this can be…

PRICE £667 (£800 inc VAT) from store.acer.com/en-gb Acer’s sustainable Chromebook is getting a little long in the tooth – this is its third appearance in PC Pro and its second entry in the Labs. Yet it still has the charms that have served it well so far, along with a spec that keeps it in contention. It comes in Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 variants, with different RAM and SSD configurations, but the Core i7 version tested here gives you an extra burst of speed. The chassis and screen bezel are formed from 30% post-consumer recycled plastics, while the keycaps and speakers are 50% PCR. The OceanGlass touchpad is a glass-like surface made from reclaimed plastic waste, and even the packaging combines recycled card and paper with sustainable natural…

PRICE £333 (£399 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk If you can’t quite stretch to the Acer Chromebook Spin 714, take a good look at the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus. Like Acer’s premium option, it’s a 2-in-1 convertible Chromebook with a 14in, 16:10 aspect ratio display. It has a 12th generation Intel Core i3 CPU rather than the Acer’s 13th gen Core i5, but it’s fairly strong on features overall. And where the Acer will cost you close to £800, the Lenovo can be found for under £400 (although its price can sometimes jump to £449). That makes it one of the best-value propositions in this Labs. You don’t get quite the same experience. Where the Spin 714 has a gorgeous all-aluminium construction, the Flex 5i makes do with a…

PRICE £291 (£349 inc VAT) from very.co.uk With its 14in, 16:10 screen and 1.5kg body, the smaller of Acer’s Chromebook Plus 51x models offers a cost-conscious alternative to the Acer Chromebook Spin 714 and the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus. Up close, it loses a little of that appeal thanks to its all-plastic construction, but the faux-metallic finish looks good, the construction feels solid and it’s easy to lug around. What’s more, with two USB-C ports (albeit 5Gbits/sec), a single USB-A port and HDMI 1.4 video output, connectivity is a cut above some cheaper options. You also get a backlit keyboard that makes up for a soft action with a comfortable and spacious layout, while Acer’s OceanGlass touchpad is both smooth and responsive. Cost savings never come without at…

PRICE £233 (£279 inc VAT) from hp.com/uk Big-screen Chromebooks are in relatively short supply, but the HP Chromebook Plus 15a gives you a 15.6in, 1080p display and Chromebook Plus specs at a great price. Officially it costs £450, but the £279 here is what we typically saw in HP’s promotions. Needless to say, you don’t get this screen and spec without some cost-cutting measures. Despite the silver finish, the body and lid are completely plastic, and while the former feels solid there’s more give in the latter than we’d like. The lineup of ports and sockets is respectable, though, with two USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 ports, an SD card slot, a 3.5mm audio socket and a single USB-A port. The Type-C ports support DisplayPort 1.4, but are limited to 5Gbits/sec…

How we test Our regular benchmarks don’t run on Chrome OS devices, so we put each Chromebook through a battery of benchmarks that simulate performance in web-based applications along with synthetic tests.Geekbench 6 falls into the latter category. We use the Android app version of this excellent cross-platform benchmark, which pushes the CPU inside each Chromebook to its maximum, particularly in the multicore test. WebXPRT, Basemark and JetStream are all web-based benchmarks, giving you an indication of how the Chromebooks will perform when faced with more demanding websites. We test multitasking by playing a 4K video while running Basemark and Jetstream. The figures you see are the Jetstream scores under these harsh conditions. We use GFXBench, Geekbench Compute and 3DMark Mobile to assess the GPU’s performance in Android apps. The…

PRICE Diskless, £1,278 exc VAT from lambda-tek.com Representing the entry point of Qsan’s new NAS appliance family, the XCubeNAS XN5104R offers SMBs a small footprint storage solution with plenty of room to grow. This competitively priced 1U rack NAS presents four hot-swap LFF/SFF SATA drive bays at the front, secretes a pair of NVMe SSD slots inside and teams them up with four 2.5GbE multi-gigabit ports. A quad-core 2.3GHz Intel Xeon D-1714 CPU sits in the driving seat and is partnered by 8GB of DDR4 which can be expanded hugely to 256GB. There’s room for more network ports, as the spare PCI-E Gen4 slot accepts Qsan’s dual-port 10GbE and 25GbE cards. A compelling feature of Qsan’s NAS appliances is their enormous expansion potential, and the XN5104R is no exception. Fit…

PRICE £93 exc VAT from ballicom.co.uk TP-Link may be best known for its affordable business networking products, but it also has a strong presence in the video surveillance market. Its VIGI family offers a range of network video recorders (NVRs) and cameras, and in this review we look at its NVR1004-4P four-channel NVR and test it with TP-Link’s latest C540V outdoor PTZ IP camera. Costing under £100, the NVR looks great value but you’ll need to add the extra cost of a SATA hard disk to store video recordings. At the rear are four network camera ports, each delivering PoE+ services, and it has a total power budget of 53W. HDMI and VGA ports support local monitors, two old-school phono jacks are provided for audio in and out and a…

Let me guess: is this using AI to keep tabs on our employees? You’re not far off, but the AI part is, in this case, optional. Employee engagement software is a class defined by its aims, rather than any particular technology, or indeed any industry sector. The key idea is simply to track the behaviour and performance of “good” and “bad” workers, and hopefully encourage the former with prizes and recognition. So it does mean using technology to spy on workers? That’s an emotive way to put it, but not a wholly incorrect one. The vendors of these systems like to focus on supporting winners, but a key plank of that is giving managers enhanced visibility of what everyone’s doing. And where there are winners, there will be losers –…

In the history of human development, we have never seen such rapid technological advancements as today. Even the Space Race doesn’t compare; few had access to that technology, so the rest of the world merely observed. This acceleration in technological progress would be tricky to navigate during peaceful times, but this rapid innovation is unfolding simultaneously with ongoing geopolitical tensions. Open warfare continues to rage as Ukraine battles fiercely to defend itself from Russian aggression. The threat of war spilling over into other parts of Europe became a pronounced concern when the Danish defence minister warned that Russia could attack NATO in three to five years. The Prime Minister of Estonia is on record estimating a similar timeframe. The death of Alexei Navalny, the Russian political activist, shows an increasingly…

PRICE $68 from anbernic.com Anbernic’s RG35XX H is at the other end of the spectrum to the ZX Touch, if you pardon the pun. It’s inexpensive and it allows you to play games across a host of platforms. It’s also a tad smaller, making for a more pocket-friendly device. Like the ZX Touch, it uses a horizontal format, placing the buttons to the left and right of a central 3.5in 640 x 800 screen. There’s a four-directional D-pad, four input buttons and dual analogue sticks. Capable of emulating games created for over 30 different platforms, it’s powerful enough to play games developed for the PlayStation, PSP and Dreamcast. The latter point is also true of another notable Anbernic device, the slightly cheaper RG35XX Plus. As you’ll see, there’s a similarity…

ON SALE Thursday 9 May 2024 Features 7 habits of highly effective geeks Whether it’s staying ahead of threats, spending wisely on the right IT kit or being your most productive self, we reveal how to be your best geek. Features Build your own smart grid Millions of us have solar panels and batteries, but how best to take advantage of them and really drive down your electricity prices? We explore ways to build your own smart grid. Features Use a phone as a computer Whether for personal or business use, more people are tapping into the power of their phone to run a full desktop environment. We explain how to take full advantage. Labs Professional monitors We test almost 20 monitors ranging from 27in to 45in to see which…