Indice dei contenuti per January 2018 in Computer Shopper

THE NOTION OF the smart home doesn’t always have positive connotations. Sometimes the ‘smart’ device actually requires more effort to carry out the desired action than just doing it the old way – turning on a light, for example – especially when you account for all the potential setup woes. There are also the hackneyed examples of ‘the home of the future’ that have been doing the rounds for years, with manufacturers espousing fridges that reorder your milk for you, but the device in reality is often a bit more basic. In our in-depth report on making your home smarter (page 80), we’ve waded through all the hypotheticals and imaginary scenarios to give you a practical guide on what smart devices can actually do at the moment, and what it’s…

On the wrong track @ I have been a regular reader of Computer Shopper for 30 years, but it wasn’t until I read your review of the TrackR Pixel (Shopper 358) that I was motivated to write in. It seemed to me that an obvious application for this piece of kit – that of tracking vulnerable people, for example young children and elderly folks, those suffering dementia in particular – was not given a mention. A quick surf of the web revealed more expensive GPS-enabled devices aimed at tracking children; however, as a device that is relatively inexpensive and that could be attached to clothing when out and about in busy areas with a child, it occurred to me this would give peace of mind should parents become temporarily separated…

ANOTHER MONTH, AND another massive security flaw has been found. In this case, the problem is with Wi-Fi connections, which given how much we all use it – in public, at home and at work – is a serious problem for everyone. So how big is the problem? Well, the issue is that anyone within range of your wireless network can eavesdrop and read everything going across it. In other words, the problem is massive. The exploit has been named Krack (Key Reinstallation Attack) by the Belgian researcher who discovered it. Without getting overly technical, the root of the problem is in the way in which Wi-Fi networks establish a secure connection with a device. GOLDEN HANDSHAKE Using what’s known as a four-way handshake, the client connects to a network,…

For the wallet While the likes of OnePlus and Google are bumping up their smartphone prices, Honor continues to put out great affordable mid-range devices. Its latest, the Honor 9, offers both a powerful Kirin 960 system-on-a-chip and a dual-lens camera, not to mention some of the sleekest looks in its price range. (Page 50) For the den We can sometimes be down on 4K media players, as most TVs that support such a resolution tend to have streaming capabilities built-in. Even so, the new Apple TV 4K makes for a fine addition to your living room, and not just for its range of available services (which finally includes Amazon Video). Voice commands via Siri work brilliantly, but the best part is that Apple will automatically upgrade any HD content…

REMEMBER THE DAYS when Tufty the Squirrel would advise pedestrians to ‘stop, look and listen’ before crossing the road? Those days are gone, and the ubiquitous ‘smartphone zombies’ have taken over, too engrossed in their phone screen to pay attention to the road. To enhance road safety, insurance company Direct Line has been working on a smart zebra crossing with a tech firm called Umbrellium. The prototype, unveiled in Mitcham, South London, works by using lights to alert the driver of a pedestrian who may have walked out into the road unexpectedly. If movement is detected by two cameras placed at the crossing, a thick red line will light up across the road, giving the motorist prior warning of a potentially unaware pedestrian. Performing like a traditional crossing, the dynamically…

FLAGSHIP SMARTPHONE GOOGLE Pixel 2 XL £799 • From store.google.com VERDICT Despite its slightly lacklustre screen, the pure Android experience and quality camera make this a flagship to contend with AFTER YEARS OF dishing out cheap, but good, Android handsets, Google switched tack last year with the Pixel. It was a great handset with a fantastic camera, but lacked some of the polish of its flagship competitors. Now Google is back with the more refined Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. We’re focusing on the larger, 6in XL here; we’ve covered the Pixel 2’s differences in a short review opposite. HEY, GOOD LOOKING The Pixel 2 XL looks fantastic. The front of the phone is practically all screen, with just a thin strip at the top for the front-facing camera…

£2,150 • From www.yoyotech.co.uk VERDICT A versatile Ryzen 7-based rig that excels at Windows tasks and demanding games alike WITH THE ARRIVAL of Intel’s 8th-gen chips and the mid-range Ryzen 5 series putting in some stellar performances, let’s not forget about what the original Ryzen 7 family can do. Case in point, Yoyotech has produced a couple of PCs centered around the top-of-theline, octa-core Ryzen 7 1800X: the Redback N6 and the Redback N6 WS. The ‘WS’ suffix identifies the latter as a workstation. It comes with productivityminded parts such as an AMD Radeon Pro WX 1700 graphics card and 32GB of DDR4 RAM. The standard N6, which we reviewed, is a gaming machine – it’s £50 more expensive and has half the memory, but swaps the Radeon Pro GPU…

£1,300 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT The ZenBook Flip S is an incredibly thin convertible that packs in the features AT A LUDICROUSLY thin 10.9mm, the ZenBook Flip S is the slimmest convertible laptop on the market, yet it still manages to squeeze in an Intel Kaby Lake Core i5-7200U processor instead of a low-power Core m. Could this be the ultimate 2-in-1 laptop? As it turns out, not quite, but it’s still a lovely device. The all-metal, aluminium alloy chassis is gorgeous, its sumptuous royal blue colour and diamond-cut golden edges providing an elegant look, while extra touches of class, such as the backlit keyboard’s subtle golden hue, are visible throughout. TWIST AND SHOUT Build quality and features haven’t been neglected, either. The laptop’s 360º hinge is well made and…

£460 • From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT It’s mighty powerful, but the RX Vega 56 isn’t a better buy than the GTX 1070 – for now IT’S BEEN A long time since we last saw a high-end gaming GPU from AMD. Since the last one, the Radeon R9 Fury X, we’ve had not just Nvidia’s excellent GTX 10-series (including the 4K-ready GTX 1070, GTX 1080 and GTX 1080 Ti) but two separate Radeon mid-range/entry-level lines, the RX 400 series and the RX 500 series. Still, sometimes you wait ages for a premium graphics card, then two show up at once. The RX Vega 56 and top-end RX Vega 64 are here, and a look at its namesake Vega architecture gives some hints as to what’s been taking so long. WHAT HAPPENS IN…

£48 • From www.argos.co.uk VERDICT With decent performance, this router is a good choice for anyone who wants a low-cost upgrade BIG-MONEY ROUTERS will give you more features and performance, but if you need something reliable and lower cost to replace an old or broken router, the D-Link DIR-842 could be for you. The DIR-842’s body is around the same size as a clock radio, but it has four 180mmtall antennas that you’ll need to find space to accommodate. Alternatively, the router can be wall-mounted to keep it out of the way. Around the back are the standard router ports: one Ethernet WAN port (you’ll need this to hook the router into a modem), and four Gigabit Ethernet ports for your wired devices. There are no USB ports on this…

£500 • From www.carphonewarehouse.com VERDICT The Nokia 8 is a handsome, long-lasting high-end smartphone that’s cheaper than might be expected AFTER A BRIEF hiatus, Nokia has returned to the world of smartphones, ditching Windows 10 Mobile for Android. So far, however, its planned resurgence hasn’t gone off with a bang so much as a faint whimper, and the phones we’ve been treated to – for lack of a better word – have failed to recapture the firm’s past glories. The Nokia 3 (Shopper 357), for instance, could have been a good budget handset were it not for its poor screen and sub-par performance. Now that Nokia’s first proper flagship phone, the Nokia 8, has finally landed, the question is whether this is the handset that can turn the company’s fortunes…

£250 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT Excellent speakers and a nice design let down by a poor fingerprint reader and a flat-looking screen DOLBY ATMOS IS used in high-end soundbars to bounce sound off your ceiling and deliver a spacious surround-sound effect. So it comes as a surprise to see it included in the Lenovo Tab 4 8 Plus tablet. The specific technology used for tablets and mobile devices isn’t as revolutionary as its soundbar counterpart, but the improved audio fidelity is still impressive. Four sound profiles are available – Movie, Music, Game and Voice – and you can customise the sound as well. Audio presets can sometimes be a waste of time, but here, we were pleasantly surprised by how each one had a positive effect on the listening experience.…

01 A 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. 02 If you want to play games, you’ll have to upgrade the graphics card. Budget cards such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 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 1070. 03 All…

01 All tablets rely on an operating system (OS) to run apps. You have three main choices: Apple’s iOS, which runs on the iPad, Android, which Google licenses to various manufacturers, and Windows 10, which is slowly becoming more common in hybrid tablets and convertibles. If you own an Apple or Google smartphone, you can download your apps, music and so on to a tablet that runs the same OS, so it makes sense to stick with a compatible device. 02 It’s important to pick a tablet that has a good-quality high-resolution screen. Many budget tablets have 1,280x800- resolution displays, but better tablets have Full HD 1,920x1,080 panels, and we’re starting to see tablets that have even higher screen resolutions. Some are as high as 2,560x1,600 or even 4K. Entry-level…

01 A 32in Full HD TV costs around £200 and will suit smaller living rooms. TVs look much smaller in the shop than in your home, so measure the space available before you buy. Curved TVs are becoming increasingly more common, but bear in mind that these typically take up more floor space than a traditional flat set. 02 A 1,920x1,080-resolution TV can display a 1080p image. You can still buy TVs with a 720p (1,366x768) resolution, but they’re no cheaper and the image won’t be as sharp. 3,840x2,560 Ultra HD resolution, or 4K, TVs are finally available at reasonable prices, although you’ll still pay a premium for one over a 1080p model. 03 Consider the number of inputs you’ll need to connect the rest of your equipment. Two HDMI…

01 Wearable tech can include anything from chest-strap heart-rate monitors to augmented reality glasses, but the two most common types are smartwatches and fitness trackers. Both are designed to sit unassumingly on your wrist, and are almost always meant to be used in tandem with a paired smartphone. 02 Smartwatches are typically more complex and expensive, though more closely resemble a traditional wristwatch. You can use them to receive and reply to text messages and emails, quickly check maps and even play games – like a smartphone, most smartwatches allow you to install your own choice of apps. 03 Fitness trackers are much more dedicated to healthy pursuits. Step counters, heart-rate monitors and even sleep tracking are all common, and the data collected is fed back to you so you…

01 Wireless routers each use a number of Wi-Fi standards, so you shouldn’t have any trouble connecting your computer or phone wirelessly if you get an 802.11n or 802.11ac router. Nearly all routers support 802.11n, so even a cheap model should provide decent performance. You can expect a transfer speed of around 40Mbit/s at a distance of 10m from any modern 802.11n router. The very latest routers use the 802.11ac standard, which provides tremendously fast transfer speeds. Some devices still don’t support the 802.11ac standard, so check the specifications before you buy. 02 If you subscribe to an ADSL broadband service, you should buy a wireless router that has a built-in ADSL modem. This will cost more than the equivalent cable router, but it allows you to connect your router…

The big problem with talking about the smart home is the damage that predictive articles have done. Read about how the world is getting smarter, and it’s full of examples of things that we’ll be able to do in the future, such as a robot to do the cooking for you or a fridge that re-orders food. We’re not interested in what the future might hold, but rather the smart products that you can buy today that genuinely make your house smarter, more efficient and more secure. There’s not been a better time to kit out your home. Thanks to fast, always-on internet connections and ubiquitous Wi-Fi, we’ve all got the backbone to run everything from smart thermostats and lighting systems to powerful security systems. More importantly, the way we…

SMART LIGHT SWITCH LightwaveRF Gen 2 £185 www.lightwaverf.com LightwaveRF has just updated to Gen 2. You get the same high-quality metal light switches and power sockets, but better LED compatibility and two-way communication (so you can see your light switches’ current settings). The base kit gets you the smart hub and one light switch; additional switches cost from £60. If you want the best-looking light switches, these are the ones to go for. Apple HomeKit, Google Home and Amazon Echo are all supported, as is IFTTT. SMART LIGHT BULBS Philips Hue £45 www.amazon.co.uk Philips Hue is the best-known smart light bulb system, and the best. The cheapest starter kit gets you the Hue Bridge and two white bulbs; you can buy more expensive kits with temperature or colourchanging bulbs. Philips supports…

One of the biggest issues with the smart home is that devices largely act by themselves, controlled via their distinct apps. While voice assistants can help unify control, talking to a speaker isn’t always easy, and the current assistants don’t work with all devices, or give you any automation controls. Fortunately, there are other options for unifying your smart home: IFTTT and Samsung SmartThings. IFTTT If This Then That (IFTTT) is a great way to make your smart home devices talk to each other. This cloud-based service is free; you can sign up for your own account at ifttt.com. IFTTT uses Applets, which make things happen in your home. The ‘if this’ part is known as a trigger, and the subsequent action is the ‘then that’ part. For example, you…

SMART FRIDGE Both Samsung and LG have had a go at making a smart fridge, building a giant tablet into the front that lets you make notes, see inside the fridge without opening the door and play media. Prices are astronomical, the features aren’t particularly useful, and who wants a fridge that needs regular software updates? In the future, we’re promised fridges with RFID tags and barcode scanners that will keep track of our food and re-order items automatically. It all seems an unnecessary faff to us. WASHING MACHINE Samsung has a smart washing machine, which you can turn on automatically via your smartphone. Sounds great, but you still have to load the machine yourself and empty it. So unless you often load up your machine, close the door and want…

£125 • From www.plumbarena.co.uk VERDICT A little inflexible at times, but the Lyric T6 makes up for it by being extremely good value IF THE FULL-ON Evohome system is a little bit too much for you, Honeywell also has the simplified Lyric T6. Designed to replace your existing thermostat, the Lyric T6 gives you control over your entire home’s heating. Honeywell makes the Lyric T6 available in two versions. The standard T6 connects to existing thermostat wires; the T6R costs about £14 more, comes on a stand and operates wirelessly. Both versions require you to install the remote relay, which hooks up to your boiler and triggers heat on demand. Given that the relay installation involves mains power, you may want to get a professional to install the system. There’s…

£130 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT A gorgeous-looking thermostat that can be expanded with radiator valves, but the scheduling is fiddly to configure A LOT OF smart thermostats can look rather ugly, much like their regular old-fashioned counterparts. Netatmo’s Smart Thermostat is rather different, as it was designed by the renowned Philippe Starck, so looks great. The neat battery-powered thermostat looks great, and it’s the kind of device that you can display with some pride in your living room. WILLING AND CABLE As well as looking neat, you have two options for installing the thermostat. First, you can wire the bundled receiver directly to your boiler using the provided adaptor cables. Alternatively, if you have a wired thermostat already, you can remove that from the wall and connect up the thermostat…

OFFICE USE FILCO Majestouch Convertible 2 There’s no way around this: the Majestouch Convertible 2 is expensive for what you get, which doesn’t include premium features such as backlighting. However, it is a proper mechanical keyboard, with Cherry MX Brown switches: one of the best choices for tactile typing, without a disruptive amount of noise. The best part is that this is one of very few mechanical keyboards with wireless capability. You can still plug it in via a Micro USB cable for standard desk use, but should you need to move it elsewhere (or if you just want to keep your work space as tidy as possible), it’s easy to switch to Bluetooth instead. PORTABLE USE BAKKERELKHUIZEN UltraBoard 940 Compact Its name might be long, but this lovely Bluetooth…

£35 • From www.argos.co.uk VERDICT With its three-way connectivity and device stand, this is ideal for those wedded to their phones WE LOOK AT keyboards that swap between desk-bound PCs and mobile handsets on the go later in this group test, but the K375s Multi-Device sits somewhere between these portable boards and traditional office models. It’s full-sized and isn’t meant to leave your desk, but is fully wireless and can freely switch between any Windows, Mac, Chrome OS, Android and iOS devices you have. To this end, it includes a universal smartphone/tablet stand in the box, and can pair with up to three devices at once, switching between them with the three white hotkeys integrated into the number key row. One of these will likely be your main PC, which…

£120 • From www.microsoft.com VERDICT Microsoft’s latest ergonomic keyboard is mostly a downgrade, yet costs far more than before WHILE WE HAD some issues with Microsoft’s Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop (Shopper 349), none of them would have been solved by making it wider, less adjustable and nearly twice as expensive. Nonetheless, that’s precisely what Microsoft has done with its successor, the Surface Ergonomic Keyboard. First, some words in its defence. It’s better than most keyboards for anyone suffering from, or at risk of, afflictions such as RSI or tendonitis; as with the Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop, keys are split across two sides of a large bump, which in practice means that we could leave our wrists laying on the spot while still being able to reach all the letter keys. This bizarre-looking…

£9 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT An imperfect yet comfortable, and incredibly affordable, keyboard for most computers and handhelds WE LOVE A bargain as much as anyone, but isn’t spending a meagre £9 on a keyboard asking for trouble? We still remember the spectacularly terrible LinDon-Tech Pretty Portable Flexible Wireless (Shopper 348), a £14 floppy silicone model that broke within a day of us rolling it out of its packaging. We were pleasantly surprised, then, when the AAJ Wireless Keyboard quickly proved itself to be a decent little Bluetooth keyboard. It’s clearly aping Apple’s Magic Keyboard for Macs, with its white and grey colour scheme, and flat, chiclet-style keys – albeit on a tight budget, so you get plastic construction instead of aluminium. The AAA batteries it needs to run are…

£13 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Tiny keys and minimal grip let down what might have been a viable budget option JOINING THE AAJ Wireless Keyboard at the low end of the Bluetooth market is TeckNet’s ultra-compact X366. Feather-light and measuring only 7mm at its thickest point, this is about as portable as non-folding QWERTY keyboards come – and it’s yours for an attractive-sounding £13. As we said in the AAJ review, however, this isn’t the sub-£20 keyboard we’d recommend out of the two; in fact, it’s not really one we’d recommend at all. This is mainly due to how small and cramped the keys are: it’s nice that TeckNet has included a full set of Function and character keys, and some squeezing is to be expected when the whole thing…

£16 • From www.cclonline.com VERDICT The Speedlink Ludicium is a startlingly cheap gaming board, with just a few attempts to hide the fact AT CLOSE TO one-tenth of what Corsair’s or SteelSeries’ premium models will set you back, the Ludicium looks like a good deal, especially to anyone who blew all their gaming PC budget on components and now needs to save on peripherals. Still, you can’t go this cheap without making compromises, and they’re not hard to find on Speedlink’s membrane keyboard. It’s extremely plasticky, even flexing in certain places if you press down on the chassis, and this airiness also contributes to a lack of grip on the desk, made worse by the use of tiny textured plastic pads instead of rubber feet. USB ports and even single-colour…

ACQUI-HIRE When acompany is acquired forits employees, rather than its product or intellectual property. ANGEL INVESTOR Ausually wealthy individual who offers cash to a startup forequity or debt. CROWDFUNDING Getting your cash by asking many people,offering equity or afinal product, such as with Kickstarter. INCUBATORS Alonger-form accelerator,usually to help astartup grow its business with help from amentor. IPO An initial public offering, the first time stock is sold on public markets to let investors cash out or to raise more capital. PIVOT What startups do when their product isn’t working, so they‘pivot’ to anew,tangentially related idea or business model. MEZZANINE LEVEL Acompany that has developed beyond astartup, but hasn’t yet hit IPO. ROUNDS OR SERIES OF FUNDING An Around or Series Ainvestment is the first major funding acompany gets, after…

clive@computershopper.co.uk Make a media streamer Unleash those DVD backups from your NAS with a Raspberry Pi running Kodi. Clive Webster shows you how A NAS MIGHT be a great place to store your videos, but it can be a pain to actually watch them. Many smart TVs and Blu-ray players only support a few video formats and codecs, and even then with only limited control. Too often you can’t rewind a video, or access any information about the video; and the interface tends to be pretty uninspiring too. Kodi solves these frustrations, playing your files with the same ease and panache as Netflix. Better yet, you can build your own Kodi box easily and quickly with a Raspberry Pi. KODI IS A NEAT application that lets you turn almost any device…

MEET THE TEAM Madeline Bennett “The Corgi Disco Roadshow DJ set – if only the vinyl revival would extend to these bright yellow plastic decks” David Ludlow “The original Game Boy – still the best portable games console ever made” Nathan Spendelow “Robosapien. Although, looking back, it was pretty naff” James Archer “My first mechanical keyboard – never went back after that” Roland Moore-Colyer “I got a console called a TV Boy, which came packed with 100+ arcade games; kept me amused and out of trouble for years” Dave Neal “Sega Mega Drive. First proper console in the Neal house” Simon Handby “Two words: Star Bird. I still have it. It still works. No, you can’t have a go”…

Happy 30th birthday Computer Shopper! To mark our 30th anniversary, we’re running a special report on the highs and lows of computing over the past three decades The return of Under Dev As part of the celebrations, our very own industry insider David Robinson returns with a special Under Development, while Mel Croucher will be shedding some light on Shopper’s origins Mini PCs on test We put mini PCs and maker boards on test to see how much computing power can fit in the palm of your hand COMPUTER SHOPPER ISSUE 360 ON SALE IN NEWSAGENTS FROM 7th DECEMBER…

Madeline Bennett RANTS TECHNOLOGY STARTUPS HAVE been responsible for some welcome cultural changes across our society. Want to raise some cash for a charity event? You no longer need to waste time getting people to fill in sponsorship forms, just set up a JustGiving page. Want to hang out with 100 of your closest friends on a Saturday night? Just log into Facebook or Instagram. Fancy avoiding the daily commute? Just work from home using one of the many cloud apps available. But while tech startups have impacted our lives in ways that more traditional businesses could never have dreamed of doing, the latter still have a lesson to teach these upstarts when it comes to the basic art of paying your taxes. Accommodation website Airbnb is the latest tech…

Canada Drone ranger Panic ensued when an errant drone crashed into a commercial plane in the skies above Canada. The incident was caused by a drone user without a clue on the local rules, according to the aviation authority. “Although the vast majority of drone operators fly responsibly, it was our concern for incidents like this that prompted me to take action and issue interim safety measures restricting where recreational drones could be flown,” said transport minister Marc Garneau. London, UK Big Brother is marketing to you The advertisement boards in Piccadilly Circus will soon be able to show adverts based on the cars and people going by. At peak times, this could cause a strobe effect, but they’ve probably thought of that already. LandSec, the company behind the scheme,…

I don’t need to understand how encryption works to understand how it’s helping – end-to-end encryption – the criminals” Home Secretary Amber Rudd reveals her lack of in-depth technical knowledge It’s really crazy that we build these sophisticated rockets and then crash them every time we fly. This is mad. If we’re building this thing to go to the Moon and Mars then why not go to other places on Earth as well?” Elon Musk imagines a new market for rocket travel Any of our experts would consider it unethical to abuse user trust in order to facilitate spying by any government” Eugene Kaspersky shoots back at US accusations of collusion with the Russian government We know the incredible impact technology can have on lives and the opportunities it can…

£629 • From store.google.com VERDICT A well-performing phone with an excellent camera and pure Android experience, and its screen is better than its big brother’s WHILE THE PIXEL 2 shares important features with the Pixel 2 XL (SoC, IP67 rating and camera), it has enough differences to set it apart from its big brother, which is why we’re looking at here. The most obvious difference is its smaller size (146x70x7.8mm, 143g) and smaller display (5in). As the Pixel 2 uses a standard 16:9 aspect ratio display, its screen doesn’t fill the phone’s front in the same way as the Pixel 2 XL’s. As a result, the Pixel 2 looks similar to the original Pixel, which is to say a little plain. That said, the refined rear casing looks and feels…

£949 • From www.dell.co.uk VERDICT A smart-looking all-in-one with a decent screen, but the slow processor lets it down IT MIGHT FALL under the budget-minded Inspiron brand, but looking at the AIO 5475 you couldn’t tell, as this is a truly attractive all-in-one. A revamp of the old Inspiron 500 all-in-one series, Dell has done a fantastic job, giving the new model an incredible facelift. Gone are the massive bezels of the old series, replaced by an edge-to-edge Infinity screen with razor-thin bezels. It’s a similar display technology as used on the gorgeous XPS 13 laptop. With such small bezels, the PC’s’s Full HD 24in display doesn’t look so imposing, and the all-in-one doesn’t take up much room on a desk. VERY ARTICULATE Dell has used a fully articulated stand…

£407 • From www.uk.insight.com VERDICT This 240Hz monitor is sumptuously smooth, but it’s hard to tell the difference from 144Hz GAMING MONITORS HAVE been progressing rapidly in recent years. It wasn’t long ago that we considered 120Hz the pinnacle for gamers. Then came 144Hz, 165Hz, 180Hz… and now we’re at 240Hz. ViewSonic is one of the latest manufacturers to produce a monitor with this huge refresh rate, but is it worth it? Will you really notice the difference over a cheaper 144Hz monitor? The design and build quality of the XG2530 are superb. The bezels are relatively thin, so the screen feels nice and big. Although the stand is made out of plastic, it’s sturdy and allows you to tilt, pivot and fully rotate the display. The black and red…

£35 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The multifunctional Canon Pixma TS3150 is cheap and mostly cheerful CANON’S PIXMA TS3150 is a budget inkjet multifunction peripheral (MFP) for people who don’t print all that often. It’s about as no-frills as we’d expect for its sub-£40 asking price, but it does have support for wireless networking: you can connect it up and share it around all your home PCs and mobile devices. It’s small, light and looks inoffensive, and is available in black (the TS3150) or white (the TS3151). At the back there’s a simple paper tray, and at the front there’s a similarly utilitarian output, which actually kept everything impressively tidy when printing. When not in use, the rear tray flips shut to act as a lid. Canon has sprinkled a few…

£110 • From www.jessops.com VERDICT Just as fun as the original Polaroids, and having physical copies of your photos is almost more important in this digital world WHEN EVERYTHING WENT digital, older physical formats looked like they might go the way of the dodo. However, it turns out that not everyone wants everything stored as 0s and 1s, and physical formats are fighting back. We’ve seen book sales increase, vinyl is enjoying a huge resurgence, and Computer Shopper remains as useful today as when it launched 30 years ago. Now, it could be the turn of the Polaroid photo, if the OneStep 2 has anything to do with it. Based on the original Polaroid camera, the OneStep 2 takes the same film cartridges and outputs the same style photos as…

£599 • From www.carphonewarehouse.com VERDICT Sony’s Xperia XZ1 brings 3D image scanning to smartphones, but it’s not good value TO STAND OUT in an ever-growing pile of metallic rectangles, smartphone makers are putting a lot of stock in gimmicks, whether it’s the pressure-sensitive chassis of the HTC U11 (Shopper 355) or the augmented reality toys of the Asus ZenFone AR (Shopper 358). Sony’s Xperia XZ1 very much follows suit, with a 3D scanning feature unlike any other, except for the smaller Xperia XZ1 Compact. First, let’s consider how it stacks up as an actual phone. It’s pretty swish-looking, with metal construction and diamond chamfered edging reminiscent of the flagship XZ Premium (Shopper 356), though at 7.4mm it’s noticeably thicker. At 155g, it’s also a little heavier than it looks. Still,…

Free • From Windows Update VERDICT Windows 10 continues to evolve, but if you’re not into VR, there’s not a lot here for you MICROSOFT IS CONTINUING with its promise to update Windows 10 regularly, adding new features and tweaking existing ones in much the same way as Apple does with macOS. For this release, the big introduction is support for the Windows Mixed Reality platform. Mixed Reality, as the name suggests, is designed to merge the virtual with the real, overlaying the computer generated on the physical world. A NEW DIMENSION Paint 3D, an application that launched with April’s Creators Update, now integrates with the Mixed Reality platform. If you have a device with a suitable built-in camera, such as the Surface Pro, you can drop 3D models into…

01 A basic laptop costing around £300 will run everyday office, multimedia and education software, but it won’t be suitable for 3D gaming or processor-intensive tasks such as video editing. Many laptops at this price have a 15.4in screen and weigh around 2.4kg, so they’re best used around the house and for occasional journeys. 02 If you want to play modern games, you’ll need a laptop with a dedicated graphics chip such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060M. Good gaming laptops tend to have large 17in screens and weigh around 3kg, so they’re best suited to use at home. 03 If you want a laptop that you can take everywhere, look for a model that weighs less than 2kg. For the best portability, buy one that has an 11in or…

01 If you’re ready to step beyond the basic controls of a compact camera, or you want greater flexibility than an ultra-zoom can offer, a compact system camera (CSC) is the next logical upgrade. With interchangeable lenses, manual controls and stellar image quality, these cameras give proper digital SLRs a run for their money. 02 There are three competing types of CSC mount, and the one you buy determines the number of compatible lenses and accessories you have available. Samsung’s NX-mount is arguably the most limited in terms of lens selection, and the company has confirmed that it’s shutting down its European camera business, so it’s best to avoid these altogether if possible. Sony’s E-Mount has a slightly wider range, but Micro Four Thirds offers the widest variety. Both Panasonic…

01 Bluetooth speakers come in all shapes and sizes, so you’ll need to decide what you want to do with the speaker before you buy. If you don’t plan to take your music outdoors or around the house, look for a wired speaker. These are typically cheaper than speakers with built-in batteries. If you do want a portable speaker, however, pay particular attention to how much it weighs. Ruggedised models should be able to survive accidental drops, water spills and unexpected rain showers. 02 Many of the cheapest Bluetooth speakers use the lossy A2DP Bluetooth protocol, which is prone to compressing your music and discarding detail compared with the original recording. It’s hard to tell the difference when listening to pocket-sized speakers, but if you’re looking for a speaker to…

01 A smart thermostat can save you a lot of money by intelligently controlling your heating. Most smart heating devices are designed to be used with hot water central heating systems, with the boiler directly controlled by the system. These typically require a relay to be wired into your boiler, with a wireless thermostat giving you direct control. Smartphone apps then tie into the system to give you remote control. While it’s possible to fit controls yourself, you may want to pay an experienced plumber to do the job: expect to pay around £150 for a typical installation. If you have electric heating, there are very few choices, and the big names (Nest, Honeywell and so on) do not directly support these systems. 02 Want smart hot water control? If…

01 A basic 1TB internal hard disk should cost around £40. This will be fast enough for general use and will provide enough storage for most users. Make sure the hard disk you choose has the appropriate interface type for your PC. Some mechanical hard disks still come with SATA2 interfaces, but newer models and most solid-state drives (SSDs) have faster SATA3 interfaces. You’ll need a motherboard with a SATA3 port if you want to benefit from SATA3’s faster speeds; SATA3 disks will work with SATA2 ports but can only transfer files at SATA2 speeds. 02 SSDs can make the most of SATA3’s extra bandwidth for fast file transfers. They use flash memory similar to that found in USB flash drives, and although they tend to provide less capacity than…

Voice assistants are big business, with Apple, Google and Amazon all keen to give you voice-activated control of your life. The table opposite gives you an overview of each system, but here we’ll talk you through what they’re capable of. SOUND OFF Voice assistants for the home usually come as a smart speaker system, which looks like a Bluetooth speaker. The main difference is that these devices have an always-on microphone that lets you control the device by talking to it. To activate the speaker, you say the wake-up phrase or word, followed by a command. For example, “Alexa, what’s the weather like today?” will get you a local weather forecast. Both Google (Hey, Google) and Apple (Hey, Siri) use two-word wake-up phrases, which cuts down on false activations; Alexa…

£190 • From www.screwfix.com VERDICT It may lack some of the features of its competitors, but this multiroom heating system is easy to use and excellent value MULTIROOM HEATING systems are usually a little complicated to set up and control, but Drayton is aiming to make things easier with its Wiser Heat system. It’s available in several versions, depending on whether you need to control just heating (one channel), heating and water (two channels), or two heating zones and hot water (three channels). We looked at the one-channel kit, which ships with the boiler switch, a wireless thermostat and two Radiator Thermostats. Impressively, this costs just £190, which is cheaper than some thermostat-only kits. RELAYING INFORMATION As with other smart heating systems, the Wiser Heat has to be wired up…

£160 • From www.lightwaverf.com VERDICT The only choice if you have electric radiators, but it’s basic and expensive for everyone else LIGHTWAVERF IS best known for its smart-looking connected light switches and power sockets, but the company has also expanded into the heating market. All of its kit is controlled through the same app as the heating and lighting products, but the heating products use two-way communication, whereas the original generation of products was one way only. The difference is that with two-way communication you can see what state a device is in. In the case of the heating products, this means you can see what the temperature of each device is. For the best results, you’ll need to use the new LightwaveRF Link Plus bridge, although the older Link…

£199 • From www.tado.com VERDICT A great app, powerful geolocation feature and future expansion capabilities make this a great choice THE TADO SMART Thermostat is a system that has evolved and grown since it first launched. It now offers a huge degree of flexibility, even extending into smart radiator controls, so you can expand the system to give room-by-room control. At its most basic, you need the Smart Thermostat Start Kit, which consists of the Smart Thermostat and the USB-powered Internet Bridge that connects via Ethernet to your router to give you app and voice assistant control. With the v3 Bridge, you also get HomeKit support for Siri integration. If you have a wired room thermostat already, this is the only kit that you need; if you had a wireless…

£120 • From www.keyboardco.com VERDICT This compact Cherry MX board is brilliant, but not enough to justify the high price THE TENKEYLESS IS a slightly cheaper version of Filco’s full-size Majestouch Ninja, which means it shares that keyboard’s defining trait: key markings are printed on the lower side of each keycap, not the top, to avoid them wearing out over time. The thinking, presumably, is that since you’ll probably be looking at the keyboard from a diagonal angle (rather than straight down), you can still see the markings clearly. A secondary benefit is the attractive clean look, which is aided further by the compact dimensions of a tenkeyless keyboard. This is a good call from Filco. Readability isn’t really an issue for seasoned touchtypists, but for those who do occasionally…

£119 • From www.keyboardco.com VERDICT A more peaceful take on the mechanical keyboard, generously equipped with USB connectivity THE MATIAS SECURE Pro (Shopper 349) gave top billing to its 128-bit AES encryption, which would ostensibly prevent anyone from remotely peeking at your inputs. As far as threats go, however, the logistics of keyboardhacking put it pretty far down the severity list, leaving its secondary special feature as the best thing about it: a mechanical key switch that’s just as quiet as a rubber dome. As it happens, you can ditch the encryption altogether with the Matias Quiet Pro and this, the tenkeyless Mini Quiet Pro. These keyboards lack the Secure Pro’s wireless capabilities but share its switch design, general look and, in the Mini Quiet Pro’s case, exact shape. In…

£210 • From www.keyboardco.com VERDICT Don’t be dazzled into overpaying for the fancy capacitive keys, even if they do work well NO, THAT’S NOT a typo, this really is a tenkeyless keyboard that costs £210. That’s a whopping £90 more than the Filco Majestouch-2 Ninja Tenkeyless, and even that excellent device barely feels worth it. The main reason why Topre’s keyboards are so expensive is because of their proprietary, electrostatic key design, which includes elements of both mechanical switches and rubber dome style. Essentially, each keypress is detected electrically, by way of an internal spring and capacitive sensor on the printed circuit board. When the spring is depressed, it’s detected by the sensor, which registers the input without a physical circuit ever being completed. The spring is housed in a…

£79 • From www.wellworking.co.uk VERDICT The multitalented UltraBoard 940 blurs the lines between desktop, laptop and mobile keyboards FLEXIBILITY ISN’T SOMETHING we expect from a keyboard – by their nature, they have a very specialised job, and it’s perfectly fine for one to simply sit there on a desk and do it. However, with the rise of 2-in-1s, and even smartphones and mobile OS-equipped tablets becoming more capable as productivity devices, there’s room for keyboards that can switch seamlessly between desktop PC duty and wireless typing on the go. This is exactly what the UltraBoard 940 Compact Keyboard, from Dutch firm BakkerElkhuizen, is built for. It’s expensive for a portable board, but it tries to elevate itself above the crowd. It uses scissor-switch keys rather than a membrane design, which…

£150 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT Its quiet keyswitches are nice, but the Strafe RGB MX Silent is far more than a one-trick keyboard MECHANICAL GAMING KEYBOARDS pose an unusual dilemma. Mechanical switches are simply better than rubber domes for gaming; they’re more responsive and have greater tactile feedback, which is crucial when you need to keep your eyes on what’s happening on the screen. However, mechanical switches mean more noise, which might be good for touch-typists but can encroach on the fidelity of a game’s soundtrack. Enter stalwart switch-maker Cherry, and its MX Silent RGB design. This is a bumpless, clickless linear switch (like the more common MX Red) designed for true mechanical feel and durability, while being as quiet as possible and containing an RGB LED to boot. Corsair’s…

£150 • From www.steelseries.com VERDICT SteelSeries’ QX2 switches are a capable Cherry MX alternative, but you can get more keyboard than this for £150 THE STEELSERIES APEX M500 (Shopper 349) was a great no-nonsense gaming keyboard, though this was mainly thanks to its all-round competence rather than any exciting, standout features. The Apex M750 is an altogether flashier affair. Gone are the M500’s plastic chassis, solid blue LEDs and mass-produced Cherry MX Red switches – instead, this rocks a more durable aluminium-based build, with fully customisable RGB lighting and SteelSeries’ own QX2 switches. True, these are basically based on existing Gateron switches (which are, in turn, pretty hard to tell apart from Cherry switches), but the main thing is that they’re good for gaming and typing. The linear, bumpless design…

Send your problems to businesshelp@computershopper.co.uk Bite the bullet I use Word to prepare notes to hand out to my students, and I’m trying to improve the layout. I’ve created a number of bullet styles where some of the styles are based on the main bullet style I’ve designed. What I want to do is to have the document set up so that if I promote or demote a numbered style or a bulleted style, they change correctly up or down to look the same as the level of style they now occupy in the document. What I’m not sure of is whether I’ve succeeded in linking the styles. Where can I check on this? Habib Ahmed There are a couple of places you can check on linked styles. If you…

ben@computershopper.co.uk Create 360-degree photos Capture a view in all directions using a 360-degree camera, a smartphone or your main camera IN THE PAST few months we’ve seen a big increase in the number of photo spheres appearing in our Facebook feeds. They capture a view in all directions, and when viewed on a phone or tablet, panning and tilting the device makes the image move like a virtual reality (VR) headset. Photo spheres also have some artistic merit. It can be hard to do justice to a scene when shooting it through the rectangular frame of a normal photograph. A bleak yet majestic landscape can become simply bleak and boring, but with a photo sphere the viewer can get a sense of the vastness of the space. Other subjects more…

letters@computershopper.co.uk Home truths @ I do trust that Mike Conder’s point about the printing costs of colour boarding passes is in jest (Letters, Shopper 358). If such travellers as observed were as concerned about expenditure as Mike, they would be staying at home, perhaps with their HP DesignJet T830 AO, which they could then afford. Stuart Brooks Snap decisions @ It seems that the only reviews for powerful computers and displays revolve around gaming. I would like to see more about photography. What is a good spec for Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom? Which displays best suit photographic processing, and are curved screens OK? The best printers? Mac or Windows? Which features benefit from a GPU? Is it all about RAM or speed? Are high-resolution mice worth the extra cost? (I…

COMPUTERS HAVE RUINED my eyesight. A dimmer switch has been applied to the world, which has itself become more and more out of focus, and those floaty things and zig-zag patterns are no longer amusing. It’s my own fault, of course. I spent 50 years slouched in front of a screen, peering at pixels and absorbing the damage they cause. Those early cathode ray tubes fried my retinas with radiation and beta rays. Then I allowed TFT displays to bombard my eyeballs with charged dust particles. And I embraced ultrawide screens as soon as they hit the market. What I mean is, I threw my arms around them and physically embraced them for hours on end. These days I can transfer gunk directly into my orbital sockets thanks to touchscreens…

A NUMBER OF tech companies, including Samsung, Huawei and Amazon, are failing to meet Greenpeace’s energy standards, despite saying they are making efforts to be more green. The charity researched 17 of the world’s biggest technology companies for its 2017 Guide to Greener Electronics, ranking their practices across reduction of emissions through renewable energy, use of recycled materials and elimination of hazardous chemicals. Samsung, Huawei and Amazon were all graded D or below, meaning the way they’re being run needs to change dramatically if they’re to make a significant change to the fortunes of the world’s environment. “Tech companies claim to be at the forefront of innovation, but their supply chains are stuck in the Industrial Age. We know they can change. Rather than fuelling climate change, IT companies need…

ONCE UPON A time, we didn’t have Sky on demand, or Netflix, or Amazon Prime to find a film to watch. We had to go down to the video shop and see if the film we wanted was in. It was in the late 1980s that video tapes of the VHS variety started to pop up in petrol stations, off licences and newsagents. With their often loud and beguiling cover images, the tapes quickly became one of the most popular ways – other than going to the cinema or a Punch and Judy show – to escape from everyday life and see something exciting. Video tapes were rented in both VHS and Betamax formats while the format wars ran their course. Soon there were dedicated video stores in towns up…

£1,650 • From www.scan.co.uk/3XS VERDICT You can’t overclock it, but with its premium Coffee Lake chip, the 3XS Gamer is already a multitalented powerhouse INTEL’S 8th-GEN Coffee Lake CPUs are out, which means so are the pre-built PCs based around them. The first to arrive in our labs is Scan’s premium 3XS Gamer, and while you might not have guessed it after seeing the price, it has a few things in place to keep the cost down – at least, by high-end standards. For starters, rather than the flagship Core i7-8700K (which we’ll be reviewing next issue), Scan has opted for the non-overclockable Core i7-8700, and a standard SATA SSD instead of an ultra-fast NVMe drive. The 3XS Gamer also makes do with air cooling, which is hard to argue…

£1,349 • From store.hp.com/uk VERDICT HP’s glamorous 2-in-1 makes some key improvements, but still can’t stand up to Microsoft’s Surface Pro LAST YEAR’S HP Spectre x2 (Shopper 346) was a worthy rival to Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4, offering similar features in a sleek and affordable package, but it was held back by its poor-quality screen, speakers and stylus. These are the issues HP has looked to fix in the Spectre x2’s 2017 remake, which takes a more overtly premium approach to 2-in-1 design. Its dark grey aluminium body and copper-coloured trim look great, and the folding kickstand – a fiddly weakness of the old model – is easy to set up at just the right angle, providing up to 165° of adjustment. At less than 8mm thin, it’s just as…

£967 • From www.uk.insight.com VERDICT The Z35P offers fantastic visuals and performance, but it’s simply too expensive THERE ARE A handful of ultrawide gaming monitors on the market, offering various configurations at differing price points. On paper, the Acer Predator Z35P has almost the same specifications as the AOC AG352UCG, yet costs around £300 more. Is it worth the extra? The Z35P gets off to a good start on build quality and design. Finished in a brushed grey aluminium shell with red accents, it looks great. The bezels are thin, but have an eye-catchingly chunky design, which may be a desired taste. TURN OF EVENTS The metal stand provides plenty of flexibility: it can be adjusted in height, tilted from -4º to 35º and swivelled by 20º. A handle makes…

VERDICT Tonnes of expansion space, lots of expansion options and great performance make this a brilliant NAS IT’S BEEN A couple of years since Synology revamped its entry-level four-bay NAS, but we now have the DiskStation DS418j. Designed for users that want a lot of storage at a more reasonable price, this is a NAS for busy households with big media libraries. From the outside, the DS418j looks like its predecessor, the DS416j. A rather plainlooking cube, the DS418j isn’t going to win any design awards, but as you’re likely to tuck the NAS away under a desk or in a cupboard, looks don’t matter so much. DISK-OVERY CHANNEL As with other Synology products, the DS418j is a barebones NAS, which means that you need to add your disks to…

£179 • From www.apple.com/uk VERDICT Apple’s latest streamer is big on features and will upgrade your HD content to 4K for free YOU’D BE FORGIVEN for mistaking this fifth-generation, 4K-capable Apple TV box for its 2015 predecessor. Little has changed design-wise: it still measures a compact 98x98x35mm and is almost identical in look, feel and weight compared to the fourthgeneration model. The main difference is the lack of a USB Type-C port on the rear, with now only three ports on the back of the Apple TV: the figure-of-eight power input, a single HDMI 2.0a output and Gigabit Ethernet. Of course, the TV 4K also has 802.11ac Wi-Fi, which most will use to connect to their home network. Similarly, little separates the latest Siri remote from its predecessor. It’s slim…

£389 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT This sleek mid-ranger is a fine alternative to overpriced flagships, even with some flaws THE HONOR 9 joins the mid-range smartphone market at an intriguing time. With OnePlus raising its prices, Google abandoning the middle ground entirely and almost every other manufacturer seemingly adding £50 to £100 to the prices of their phones, there’s a big £350-£400 gap to be filled. Honor, which is no stranger to the reasonably priced smartphone sector, has helpfully stepped in over the past year or so to fill that void. Last year’s excellent Honor 8 laid the groundwork, but the Honor 9 takes things a stage further, offering design standards previously unheard of in the sub-£400 smartphone market. With most other manufacturers seemingly leaving Honor to it, you could…

£50-£100 per year • From www.kaspersky.co.uk VERDICT It’s mostly familiar, but Kaspersky Security Cloud is feature-rich and can talk you out of bad security practices RATHER THAN BEING an all-new product, Kaspersky Security Cloud appears to have been built around the existing Total Security suite – they’re both multi-platform, share the same anti-virus engine, and come with mostly identical extras, including the Secure Connection VPN and the Software Updater and Software Cleaner tools. That’s no bad thing: Total Security is a fully featured assortment of protection that, most importantly, is practically perfect at catching malware while avoiding false positives. Still, it raises the question of what Security Cloud does differently. The answer is how it tailors protection and warnings to specific users. Security Cloud keeps track of user details and…

01 A smartphone’s operating system (OS) dictates its basic features and which third-party software you can install. There are three main contenders: Apple’s iOS, which is found on the iPhone, Google’s Android, which is used by various handset manufacturers, and Windows Phone, which has few options. Apple iOS and Google Android have the most apps available but Windows Phone is slowly catching up. 02 All smartphones have colour screens, but their resolutions vary. Basic models have 800x480 pixels, but text can be indistinct. Look for a display that has at least 1,280x720 pixels so it’s easy to browse web pages. Don’t worry too much about built-in media players or Office document editors; you can always install apps to replace these with better versions later. The image quality of smartphone cameras…

01 A basic 24in LCD monitor costs around £100. It will be fine for typical Windows work but is likely to have poor viewing angles, so you’ll need to sit straight on for the best picture quality. Its colour accuracy may not be very good, either. 02 A VGA input lets you use the monitor with any PC, but the quality may not be as good as it is over DVI or HDMI. Both are digital connections and require a compatible graphics card but they avoid the need for digital-to-analogue or analogue-todigital conversions, which can reduce image quality. A digital connection achieves the best picture automatically, so you won’t have to adjust clock or phase settings as you do with analogue connections. Many DVI and all HDMI connections support HDCP,…

01 Action cameras are typically much smaller than a regular camcorder, as they are designed to be mounted to a bike, board or car, or worn on your person. As the name suggests, they are designed primarily for shooting action footage, but because of their small size they are ideal for strapping on to your pet’s collar or your children’s toys for a different perspective. 02 Almost all action cameras will shoot Full HD video, and some will even shoot 4K, but frame rate is arguably more important than resolution when it comes to action video. Higher frame rates will mean smoother clips, and super-high frame rate videos can be played in slow motion to emphasise exciting shots. Keep an eye out for 4k/30, 1080p/60 and 720p/120 models for the…

01 You should be able to buy a decent inkjet printer for less than £40. High-quality printing is possible on such a printer, but it will be slow. The actual print speed of an inkjet can be half the quoted (maximum) speed for text documents, and even slower when printing graphics. Budget inkjet printers such as these are designed only for light use and can be expensive to run. 02 For £60 you can buy a much more capable printer that’s either faster and better built or better at reproducing photos. If documents are your priority, you’ll want a high minimum speed and low print costs. Look for inkjets that can handle all your office media, such as envelopes and labels. 03 If photos are your priority, speed is less…

01 You really don’t have to spend much to buy a decent graphics card that can drive multiple monitors. The AMD Radeon R7 250 costs less than £60, for example, and while it isn’t suited to playing the latest games in Full HD, it is perfect for watching videos, browsing the web and playing basic games. 02 You’ll need to spend more money if you want to play the latest games. A good mid-range gaming graphics card is the Nvidia GTX 950, which is powerful enough to play any of the latest games. High-powered cards tend to be more expensive, so expect to pay over £300 if you want to play games in Ultra HD at the highest quality settings. 03 Check that your chosen card has the graphics outputs…

Chat and Communication UPDATED Evernote 6.7.5.5825 Store your notes, ideas and plans in the cloud, and synchronise them between computers. Mailbird 2.4.14.0 A free desktop email client for Windows. UPDATED Miranda IM 0.10.75 Chat with friends across multiple messaging platforms, including AIM, Facebook, IRC and MSN, all from one simple interface. Skype for Windows 7.40.0.103 Make internet voice and video calls for free, and buy credit to make calls to mobiles and landlines. Telegram 1.1.23 This free IM app synchronises your conversations across multiple devices, and can spruce up chats with stickers and GIFs. UPDATED WhatsApp Desktop 0.2.6426 A free PC and Mac version of the popular messaging app, letting you chat from your desktop. Customisation iolo System Mechanic Free 17.0.1 Speed up your system with Iolo’s PC optimisation suite.…

Using Alexa to control your smart home is straightforward and easy once you know all of the tricks. To follow this guide, you’ll need an Echo device and a compatible smart home device. We’re using Philips Hue light bulbs for this demonstration. 1 ADD YOUR SKILL Open the Alexa app and tap the menu bar (three horizontal buttons) and then Smart Home. Tap Smart Home Skills and select Enable Skills. Scroll through the list or use the search bar to find the Skill you want. 2 ENABLE SKILL Tap your selected Skill and choose Enable. At the login page, enter your authentication details for your chosen service. Follow the instructions to authorise Alexa. When complete, you’ll see a message saying you can close the window, so tap the ‘X’ icon.…

We’ve covered the main products you’ll want in this feature, but a more well-rounded smart home benefits from a range of products. Here, we’re looking at some of the other kit you can buy, and how it ties into your home. We’ve also listed a few of the crazier products that are also vying for your attention but we think are best avoided. YALE KEYLESS CONNECTED SMART DOOR LOCK The Yale Keyless Connected Smart Door Lock (£125) attaches to your existing Nightlatch, but removes the need for keys. Instead, you can open your door with a security code or dedicated RFID tag. Upgrade to the Z-Wave module (£70) and the door lock can be controlled via a Z-Wave controller or SmartThings, so you can lock and unlock your door from…

£210 • From theevohomeshop.co.uk VERDICT A powerful and flexible room-by-room heating system, but it’s expensive to install THERE WAS NO messing around when Honeywell launched the Evohome, and it was the first product to offer room-by-room control using the system’s smart TRVs. A couple of years on from launch and the system has evolved, maintaining its position as the most powerful multi-zone product that you can buy. It’s also one of the most expensive. At its cheapest, the Evohome costs £210, which nets you the touchscreen controller and the remote boiler relay. In this mode, the system acts as a smart heating system, with the touchscreen controller using its internal temperature sensor. You can add an additional boiler relay in if you’d like to control hot water. Operating like this,…

£199 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT This system can’t be expanded, and it’s not cheap, but the simple controls and great-looking thermostat make it a top product IF THERE’S ONE name synonymous with smart heating, it’s Nest. Now on the 3rd Generation, the company’s Learning Thermostat remains one of the best and simplest smart heating systems. The system ships as two components: the smart thermostat and the Heat Link, which connects to your boiler. With this version, the Heat Link is capable of controlling both heating and hot water. In addition, you can install multiple Learning Thermostats into zoned heating systems if you have one installed. Although it’s fairly straightforward to connect the Nest up yourself, professional installation might make more sense, particularly as the Heat Link needs 230V mains power.…

£143 • From www.keyboardco.com VERDICT A pricey but flexible mechanical keyboard, capable of swapping between wired and wireless modes FILCO IS ONE of the more storied keyboard brands. Owned by the Japanese Diatec Corporation, Filco ticked along for several years (producing, alongside the usual fare, the SMK-8851 – a full tenkey board in the shape of a dinosaur), but it wasn’t until the launch of the Majestouch mechanical series that it really started to take off. A decade later, Majestouch and more recent Majestouch-2 keyboards are viable options for Western consumers, localised layouts and all. The Convertible 2 is one of the more recent additions to the range. It looks like a fairly unremarkable full-size keyboard, but by detaching the USB cable and adding two AA batteries (handily included in…

£138 • From www.keyboardco.com VERDICT This better-equipped version of Matias’ quiet mechanical design is the one to buy THIS SHINY BLACK board is basically the Mini Quiet Pro on the previous page, but it’s wider and with more keys. It has the same glossy black plastic chassis, the same muted mechanical switches, and the same set of three USB2 ports. Clearly, the bulk of the additional keys are found in the tenkey number pad. This alone makes the Quiet Pro better-suited than the Mini Quiet Pro for mathematical or spreadsheet work, and Matias has also added a personal touch: a secondary Tab key, which sits where the Num Lock key is typically found on tenkey boards. This is a small change, but a smart one; if you’re filling out an…

£100 • From www.keyboardco.com VERDICT A true typist’s keyboard, inspired by the springy keys of the IBM Model M IF THERE’S SUCH a thing as a ‘legendary’ keyboard, IBM’s Model M is the closest thing to it. Launched in 1984, it became popular for its durability, easily swappable keycaps and ‘buckling-spring’ switch mechanism, which gave a uniquely lively and extremely tactile keypress. Surviving units can still be found either as collector’s items or in active use by enthusiasts, but first-party production has long since ceased. Luckily for fans of the old-fashioned ways, US firm Unicomp still makes Model M-style keyboards using the exact same buckling-spring mechanism. While you can get an even more faithful re-creation in the Classic 101, the Ultra Classic aims to be a bit more practical, using…

£90 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT This trackpad-equipped keyboard is great for smart TVs and media PCs, but not much else THIS KEYBOARD SOMEWHAT stretches the definition of portable: at 367mm wide and 16.5mm deep, it barely fits in a satchel. There’s a good reason for that, though, one you’ve probably already noticed: the laptop-style trackpad and left/right click buttons, mounted to the right of the keys. This is a design inherited from Logitech’s old TK820, which had the same, unusual raison d’être as the K830 TV does: to stay in your living room and act as a controller for a home media PC or smart TV. The trackpad and mouse buttons, then, are an integral feature rather than a tertiary gimmick; when you’re sitting on a sofa, you really don’t…

£165 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT With excellent switches and heaps of extras, this is the king of high-end keyboards RAZER’S BLACKWIDOW SERIES is one of the most ubiquitous mechanical keyboard lines in the business, and for good reason: they’re almost always great performers, with high standards of build quality and bonus features, such as the Chroma subseries’ RGB lighting. As Razer’s current flagship, the BlackWidow Chroma V2 therefore has a lot to live up to, and it gets off to a good start with its choice of keyswitches. Our review sample came with the linear, quiet-ish Razer Yellow switches, though you can also pick from Razer Green or Orange switches: the former is clicky, for the typist crowd, while the latter has a Cherry MX Brown-style bump. All three are…

Send your problems to help@computershopper.co.uk Lost my network drives I recently started to lose patience with my main Windows PC, and replaced it with a Chromebook. I use a NAS drive both to store my family’s photos and other media, and as the backup destination for the remaining PCs in our house. I also use our wireless router to share a USB thumb drive as a bit of scratch storage we can all access. After a bit of jiggering about, I’d mapped the thumb drive and the shared NAS volumes to my Chromebook using the Network File Share for Chrome OS app. This all worked great until a week or so back, when suddenly all the mapped drives – from both the NAS and the router – just disappeared. Now…