Computer Shopperの January 2017 の目次

WE’VE BEEN futuregazing this month, investigating the next stages of computing in the form of virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI). Even though these technologies might not appear to be commonplace at the moment, it’s amazing how much of our lives are already touched by VR and AI. I was in San Francisco for the Salesforce Dreamforce conference in October, a gathering of around 170,000 technologists (yes, it’s huge). While the event started out as a means for Salesforce to promote its software-as-a-service business applications, Dreamforce has now grown into a show attended by hundreds of other companies and tech startups, all looking to forge their place as the next big thing in tech. One of these companies was Leap Motion, a six-year old startup with the lofty ambition…

Clocking off Following your assessment of MSI’s H81M-E34 motherboard as a great buy (Shopper 338) and the universal acclaim for Intel’s Pentium G3258 Anniversary Edition unlocked processor (not to mention Microsoft’s extremely generous offer of a free Windows 10 upgrade), I invested my hard-earned cash in putting a system together for my son’s birthday present with the above core specifications, overclocked from stock 3.2GHz to a stable 4.2GHz. After some Microsoft updates, the processor has been downgraded to its stock clock speed and the CPU Clock Ratio option in the Bios (and MSI software) is locked to Auto. After some research, I now understand that this may be a micro code issue, supplied by Intel and incorporated by Microsoft in updates disabling overclocking functions on non-Z Intel chipset motherboards. Various…

CURRENTLY, IF YOU get distracted while driving and pile your car into a tree, it’s easy to know where to put the blame, for you, the police and your insurance company. Now, imagine it’s the very near future, and you’ve got a fancy internet-connected car with loads of built-in driving aids that are designed to make things safer. You’re happily driving along when hackers take over your car and force it off the road. What happens then? Are you still to blame, as you were in control of the vehicle at the time? Will an insurance company pay out? Or is it the fault of the manufacturer? It seems this is a future that we’re unequipped for. Not manufacturers, not the police, not insurance companies and not the users. BRAKING…

Silicon pushed aside by new transistor RESEARCH PUBLISHED IN the Science journal suggests that boffins are close to a breakthrough in the shrinking down of transistors because they are sick of the thickness of silicon and are leaning towards molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) transistors. The research comes from the US Department of Energy’s Berkeley Lab. “High-performance silicon transistors can have gate channel lengths as short as five nanometers (nm) before source-drain tunnelling and loss of electrostatic control lead to unacceptable leakage current when the device is off. [Research has] explored the use of MoS2 as a gate material, given that its electronic properties as thin layers should limit such leakage,” explained the authors. “A transistor with a 1nm physical gate was constructed with a MoS2 bilayer gate and a single-walled carbon…

£110 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A huge improvement on the original, but the Spark X still has some way to go to beat the Moto G4 THE WILEYFOX SPARK (Shopper 344) was pretty underwhelming when it first launched earlier this year, but the Spark X, its slightly more upmarket sibling, is arguably a better bet, what with is bigger 5.5in display, 16GB of storage rather than 8GB, double the amount of RAM, a bigger battery and a higher-resolution 13-megapixel camera. The Spark X still has some things in common with its little brother, namely its overall design, quad-core 1.3GHz MediaTek 6735 processor and 1,280x720 resolution, but otherwise it’s a huge improvement on paper. It’s still quite chunky, measuring 8.8mm at its thinnest point, but its classy soft-touch rear gives it…

£100 • From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT A budget gaming monitor that seems to have it all, but its FreeSync implementation is disappointing YOU COULD BE forgiven for thinking that PC gaming was the preserve of the well-heeled, considering all the £600 graphics cards, £100 keyboards and £600 monitors. Iiyama doesn’t seem to agree. Its GE2288HS-B1 is packed with gaming-orientated features but is only around £20 more than a standard 22in panel. For the very reasonable price of £100, you get a 1,920x1,080 resolution, a claimed 1ms response time to prevent blurred visuals in fast-moving games, and FreeSync, AMD’s adaptive synchronisation technology that makes sure your monitor’s refresh rate matches the frames per second coming from any compatible AMD graphics card. The matt black finish doesn’t betray the GE2288HS-B1’s budget price, but…

£239 (500GB) • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The same remarkable console you already know and love, but in a much neater box AS THE NAME implies, the PS4 Slim is simply a stripped-down version of the original PlayStation 4. That was a gorgeous bit of console design, and for the Slim model, Sony has done away with the strikingly clean, slate-like composition for something a little softer around the edges. The PS4 Slim has smooth, rounded corners and a matt plastic finish, shedding 61g of weight in the process. Inside it’s essentially the same, so don’t expect it to perform any better than its older brother. Those after a more powerful PS4 will need to wait for the PS4 Pro, a considerably beefier version that’s capable of rendering games at near-4K…

£167 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT A great price for a tri-band router, but the C3200 uses slightly old tech WITH SO MUCH kit reliant on a strong wireless connection, a tri-band router, such as the TP-Link Archer C3200, makes a lot of sense. This router has a single 2.4GHz network but can provide two 5GHz 802.11ac networks. It means you can use one 5GHz network for streaming devices and one for other devices, so you won’t suffer from Wi-Fi congestion. Traditionally, tri-band routers have been expensive and, while not cheap, the Archer C3200 is surprisingly well priced: something we’ve come to expect from TP-Link. Part of the reason for the lower price is because the C3200 doesn’t have the latest technology. Rather than having an ungainly mess of antennas, the…

£1,000 (body only) • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT A solid set of features, but the EOS 80D doesn’t do enough to stay ahead of the competition THE EOS 80D is the latest model in Canon’s enthusiast line of cameras. It’s a step up from the 750D and 760D, with a bigger viewfinder, more physical controls, a weather sealed body, longer battery life, faster performance and more sophisticated autofocus. It’s not as feature-packed as the 7D Mark II, but is designed to be capable while leaving enough in the budget for some decent lenses. Compared to the preceding EOS 70D, the main imaging sensor is up from 20 to 24 megapixels and the autofocus sensor has been upgraded from 19 to 45 points, all of which are cross-type for increased sensitivity. Exposure…

£600 • From www.chillblast.com VERDICT The Fusion Nitro’s charming style, all-round performance and affordable upgrades more than compensate for its drawbacks IT’S ALWAYS NICE to see a change from the usual black boxes, and the Fusion Nitro – with its clean, white, angular mini tower case – is one PC we’d be happy to keep sat atop a desk. At 412x208x366mm it’s a very compact system, just shorter and narrower than even the Yoyotech Warbird RS11v2, although some blue LEDs around the fans and flashes of black mesh do give it some flair. There’s a good range of built-in, front-side connections, including two USB2 ports, one USB3 port and SD and TF (microSD and microSDHC) card reader slots. Integrated card readers are rare among budget systems, so they’re particularly welcome…

£600 • From www.palicomp.co.uk VERDICT Good for games and teeming with storage space, the AMD Vertigo hits numerous high points IT’S NOT SURPRISING to see the AMD Athlon 880K inside budget systems; its unlocked multiplier theoretically allows for the kind of easy overclocking that can help make up for any cost-inflicted speed deficiencies. This is the route Palicomp has taken for the AMD Vertigo, boosting each of the Athlon 880K’s four cores to an impressive-sounding 4.5GHz. With this, plus an equally attractive 16GB of RAM, surely it would stomp through our application benchmarks? Well, not quite. It’s not a bad performer – we noticed no slowdown in Windows, for instance – but its image score of 69, video score of 58, multitasking score of 44 and overall score of 53…

£600 • From www.yoyotech.co.uk VERDICT A diminutive and stylish PC that’s ideal for games, but its 2D performance isn’t quite up there with the best YOYOTECH’S SECOND TAKE on the Warbird RS11 (Shopper 342) is all about improved graphics performance. Both inside and outside, the RS11v2 is largely the same PC – its AMD Athlon 880K CPU, MSI A68 Grenade motherboard and Aerocool QS-240 case all remain unchanged, leaving the 3GB EVGA GTX 1060 graphics card as the sole major update, replacing the original’s GTX 960. Fortunately, that one change makes a big difference to the RS11v2’s gaming credibility. It sailed through our Dirt Showdown benchmark, for example, attaining a smooth 77fps at 1,920x1,080, up from the RS11’s 68fps. Equally impressive was its 2,560x1,440 run, where it only dropped to…

£719 • From madeby.google.com/phone VERDICT A step up in build quality from previous phones, but the Pixel XL is expensive and has no SD card slot WE ALWAYS HAD a soft spot for Google’s Nexus phones. Cheaper than the competition, but with a pure Android experience, they were the enthusiast’s phone. Now Nexus is dead, replaced by Pixel. Google is pushing the phone as a competitor against the major flagship handsets, such as Samsung’s Galaxy S7. There are two Pixels: a 5in 1,920x1,080 model and a larger 5.5in 2,560x1,440 XL, which we reviewed. Both have otherwise identical specs. You’ll notice the price leap compared to previous Google phones. The Pixel costs £599 for the 32GB model and £699 for the 128GB model; the Pixel XL costs £719 for the 32GB…

£469 • From www.handtec.co.uk VERDICT An interesting dual-camera array makes the Huawei P9 stand out, but its uneven performance and annoying Android UI detract THE QUALITY OF a smartphone’s camera is crucial to a lot of people, so the Huawei P9 will garner a lot of attention thanks to its partnership with Leica. Turn the P9 over and you’ll see two Leica lenses, each capable of shooting 12-megapixel images. This isn’t the first phone with dual cameras, but Huawei is using its lenses in a different way, with one a standard RGB sensor and the second monochrome only. Huawei claims its monochrome sensor can capture up to 200% more light. It also creates a truer result than black and white film photography. The monochrome sensor can also be used in…

£345 • From www.handtec.co.uk VERDICT A massive price cut makes the Moto X Style an compelling choice, but battery life is very poor AT JUST £345 SIM-free, the Moto X Style is £60 cheaper than when it went on sale in October 2015. The price drop makes it an interesting phone, particularly if you want a large, 5.7in handset on a tight budget. The sculpted metal frame feels classy. Its slim 6.1mm edges only add to that sense of premium build quality. As with all Motorola handsets, you can personalise your handset through the Moto Maker service at no extra cost, although you’ll get a better deal by shopping around. You can choose the colour of the frame and front of the handset, the metallic accent on the back and…

£299 • From www.pixmania.co.uk VERDICT Incredibly well made, with a decent screen and camera, the A5’s only problem is that you can spend a little more to get a better handset. YOU CAN PICK up a Galaxy A5 for under £300, which isn’t bad considering its premium build and decent specs. Swapping the old A5’s metal unibody for a luxurious glass back, it’s prone to picking up messy fingerprints, but its hard, slim frame feels comfortable in the hand. Samsung has used an octa-core 1.6GHz Exynos 7580 chip and 2GB of RAM for the A5, which gives it a significant power boost over the A3. In Geekbench, the A5 scored 727 in the single-core test and 3,558 in the multicore test, the latter of which was around 1,400 points faster…

£379 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT It has a low price and a decent camera, but the Xperia X Compact doesn’t have the build quality or features to keep up with other smartphones INSTEAD OF SIMPLY shrinking down the top-of-the-range Xperia XZ, Sony’s Xperia X Compact combines some of the XZ’s features with some from the older Xperia X in its compact, 4.6in chassis. So, instead of the XZ’s barnstormingly quick Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, the X Compact has the Xperia X’s hexa-core Snapdragon 650. Yet it inherits the new camera from the XZ. The plastic, wraparound frame and glossy plastic back compare poorly with the sharp lines of its predecessor. The finish isn’t great, either, with unsightly gaps at the top and bottom of the rear panel. The camera has…

It would be easy to forget how far interacting with computers has come. Navigating a desktop with a mouse is arguably now more natural than penning a letter, and touchscreens lost their thrill long ago, soon after Apple’s iPhone took off. There are probably precious few among us who remember using command-line interfaces with any joy, let alone punch cards. Modern computer interfaces, and control methods for hardware and software, have advanced so far that using them almost feels like a natural extension of your body. But we’re now at a point where the way we interact with computers and other digital devices is set to take human-machine interfacing to a whole new level. VOICE CONTROL The next logical step for computer interfacing is to take the physical element out…

Send your problems to help@computershopper.co.uk Bandwidth bandit I’ve got a slightly unusual setup at home, with two separate networks, each with their own internet connection. One side has a Billion BiPAC 8800NL router with a Plusnet internet connection. The only things connected to it are my partner’s PC and the DVR box of my Swann CCTV system, both via Ethernet. It’s probably a coincidence, but since upgrading the PC to Windows 10 we have reached the 10GB cap on the Plusnet connection twice in as many months, while prior to that we were never anywhere near it. My partner’s PC says that she has used 5.3GB of data in the last 30 days, but Plusnet says that 9.4GB has been used. Something must have used the other 4GB – no…

What would you most like to use virtual reality for? MEET THE TEAM Madeline Bennett To have an hour every day lying on the beach in the Maldives – ideally with an actual cocktail James Archer To create an existence where I don’t need glasses, thus allowing me to actually wear VR headsets Katharine Byrne To escape the reality of Britain today and pretend I live in Japan. Or the Mushroom Kingdom Nathan Spendelow To get a glimpse of a reality where the Star Wars prequels never existed David Ludlow Now that I work from home, I’d opt for a life-like re-creation of a mundane office Dave Neal Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve. With a tank Lee Bell Escaping the world in any way possible. If the coming years are…

Don’t get hacked Hackers are improving their techniques all the time to avoid detection and carry out their online attacks. Don’t let them get the better of you: follow our guide to protecting your PC, your identity and your data. Security software shoot-out We’ve picked out the best security software to protect your systems, and put the latest versions to the test. MedTech advancements We visited the Swedish capital, Stockholm, to get first-hand insights into the latest digital health advances, find out what will be coming to the UK, and assess how they will improve medical care here. Best tech of 2016 We’ll be looking back over all the issues of Shopper from 2016 to select the very best products released this year that would be a worthy addition to…

Mel Croucher RAVES You can’t beat a good book, and thanks to electronic publishing any Tom, Dick or Mel can now unleash their masterpiece upon the world I’VE WRITTEN A few books in my time, and not one of them has enjoyed commercial success. A simple calculation reveals that the hours I invest writing books deliver a return of half the minimum wage. But I’m writing another one, because it’s a harmless indulgence and thanks to self-publishing I’m in control. In the beginning was The Word, and The Word was with God. Later on some smart ape scratched it in the sand with a stick, and the magic began. Next it was scored on bone, etched on stone, scorched on goatskin, painted on papyrus and finally, in 305AD, the Chinese…

Spain Stop making sense A budding young rock star has let down his mum by confusing Google’s AdWords and AdSense, and run up a bill for €100,000. The boy thought he was doing well out of his group’s popularity by using AdSense to make money from video ads. In fact, he was funding it via Google’s paid-for AdWords. “He thought he was making money and not the opposite,” said his mother. There is a happy ending. Google has offered to take the charges on the chin, which will be good news for the boy, and great news for his mum. China Bad callers in big trouble Chinese authorities are taking action to reduce the number of scam phone calls. “Telecom and internet fraud crimes impact the people’s legal interests, destroy…

WHETHER YOU LOVED it or hated it, you are still likely to remember the Amstrad E-m@iler with a mixture of awe and sadness in its misguidedness. You may not have used one, which perhaps makes this ‘Retro’ harder to relate to than our previous editions. But a certain Alan Sugar – currently back on the telly putting mooncalves through their paces – thought he would be firing them at living rooms and kitchen work surfaces all over the place, and we couldn’t resist a look back at where it all went so wrong. The Amstrad E-m@iler was the landline phone that you could read and send emails on. It was a product before its time, and a solution to a problem that does not really exist any more: the fact…

£300 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT Asus’s ZenPad 3S 10 is a good-looking Android tablet but with a few flaws  A FEW YEARS ago – if that – we had dozens of Android tablets running the entire gamut of different price points, with budget, mid-range and high-end tablets all competing for Android slate supremacy. Now, that middle section seems to have disappeared, leaving us with expensive flagship tablets, such as Samsung’s £350 Galaxy Tab S2 and Google’s £400 Pixel C, or super-cheap budget devices such as Amazon’s £90 Fire HD 8 (page 36). Asus’s ZenPad 3S 10 falls into the former category, although thankfully it comes in a little lower price-wise than its nearest competitors. At £300, it’s still quite expensive, but its slick diamond-cut chamfered edges and super-slim 5.3mm bezels…

£1,695 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT With its superb picture quality and excellent HDR, Samsung’s KS9000 is a force to be reckoned with  THE KS9000 IS one of Samsung’s flagship SUHD TVs for 2016. Available in 49in, 55in, 65in and 78in screen sizes (we tested the 55in model), this curved, edge-lit, 4K Quantum Dot display is one of Samsung’s best yet, offering a significant step up in picture quality from the entry-level KS7500 (Shopper 344). Even in its Standard picture mode, the KS9000’s Quantum Dot display was able to display an impressive 99.6% of the sRGB colour gamut straight out of the box. This fell to 90.3% after switching to the slightly dimmer Movie mode, but it didn’t take long to bring it up to a full 100% by changing a…

£369 • From www.apple.com/uk VERDICT It may look the same as last year’s model, but the Apple Watch Series 2 has improvements in all the right places THE FIRST APPLE Watch was, once it had had a few software upgrades, a rather successful device. In fact, we had one on our wrists from launch, and it became our watch of choice, using it to check notifications, keep up to date with calendar appointments and pay for things in shops with Apple Pay. With the product 18 months old, Apple has gone back to the drawing board to see if it could improve on the original. The result is the Watch Series 2, which looks exactly like the first release. This is a little disappointing at first. But the more you…

£68 • From www.lambda-tek.com VERDICT Not bad performance, but the SU800 is a little expensive compared to the competition IF YOU’RE GOING to get one upgrade for your PC, an SSD is guaranteed to make a huge difference. ADATA’s new entry-level SSD, the SU800, is designed to be fast and affordable. We reviewed the 256GB model, but it’s also available in 128GB, 512GB and 1TB versions. The SU800 uses 3D TLC Nand flash memory, which stacks cells on top of each other to increase density and reduce the price. 3D Nand also increases the number of write cycles before the drive fails. That should balance out the use of TLC (triple-level cell) technology, which stores three bits per cell and offers lower endurance than SLC (single-level cell) or MLC (multi-level…

£13 per month • From www.expressvpn.com VERDICT A powerful, flexible VPN that works reliably for Netflix and even has a great router option THERE ARE TWO good reasons to buy a virtual private network (VPN). One is for security, encrypting your network traffic so you can’t be spied on, which is particularly useful when using public networks, such as in a hotel. The second is to make it look as if your computer is located in a different country, so you can access services that would otherwise be blocked. For example, you could watch iPlayer while you were abroad, or unblock US Netflix. Finding a VPN that’s good at both is tricky, but ExpressVPN does a great job. PLATFORM CHOOSE ExpressVPN has simple apps for every popular platform, including macOS,…

Steganos Safe 17 STEGANOS SAFE IS a versatile tool that protects your important files in a secure encrypted vault. You can create this vault on a system drive, and also on an external drive or USB key, enabling you to keep your files safe as you carry them around. The vault is protected by a password, and Steganos Safe goes to a lot of trouble to ensure it’s as secure as possible. Enter a password manually and the program checks that it doesn’t contain any dictionary words. There’s a password generator to automatically create something really uncrackable, and you can even use pictures as your password. Once your vault is generated it becomes available in Explorer as another drive. You can create folders, and copy, move or store data there.…

£600 • From www.aria.co.uk VERDICT Armed with Nvidia’s superb GTX 1060, the Gladiator Centurion marries versatility with raw power IT’S A GOOD thing that looks aren’t everything, because with its blocky, plasticky front panel design and slightly sickly, green-and-silver Game Max badge, the Aria Gladiator Centurion isn’t going to win any beauty contests. Stick it under your desk, however, and you’ll soon appreciate what this well-specced system has to offer. For one, its Intel Core i3 6100 processor and Asus-built GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card make for a potent combination. Aided by 8GB of RAM, the Centurion had a decent crack at our 4K application benchmark, scoring 91 in the image test, 68 in the video test, 57 in the multitasking test and 66 overall. The CCL Omega pips it,…

£599 • From www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk VERDICT The blow of underwhelming performance is softened by some quality components and the potential for future greatness WE ADMIT, IT’S unusual to get excited about a PC case. Despite being the part of the PC you’ll look at and physically handle the most, it’s easy to view the case in coldly utilitarian terms compared to the potential of a beefy new graphics card or absurdly fast CPU. Yet we fell for the Ultra FX Elite’s chassis, the Thermaltake View 27, as soon as we set our monitor-strained eyes on it. It’s new for autumn 2016 – it wasn’t even on general sale at the time it arrived in the Shopper labs – and feels just as much like a new, shiny, must-have piece of hardware…

£599 • From www.pcspecialist.co.uk VERDICT The old ways are the best for the RX1, with its 2012 processor using all eight cores to impressive effect WHILE PC SPECIALIST’S RX1 is more than slightly ostentatious in the looks department, the happier news is that it has the power to back up that loud-and-proud aesthetic. Not that the RX1 is teeming with the most up-to-date parts; its processor is the AMD FX-8350, which was first released all the way back in 2012 as, notably, the first octa-core chip to use AMD’s Piledriver architecture. Still, it remains spry for its age, with each of those eight cores running at 4GHz with a 4.2GHz Turbo clock. With the help of 8GB of RAM, the FX-8350 made a very admirable showing in our 4K benchmarks,…

We subject any PC we review to a customised benchmark suite, which uses a number of open-source applications to test the system’s image-editing, videoediting/encoding and multitasking performance. The scores from each benchmark test are also combined to produce an overall score. Scores are measured against our test PC: higher than 100 means it runs better than our reference machine, lower than 100 means it runs slower. This reference PC includes an Intel Core i5-4670K processor, an AMD Radeon R7 260X graphics card and 8GB of DDR3 RAM. SETTINGS We run our application tests at native resolution Dirt Showdown is a chaotic racer, so 60fps or higher is ideal, though anything above 30fps is playable. It’s a fairly undemanding game, so most dedicated GPUs will have no problem with it. SETTINGS…

£599 • From www.apple.com/uk VERDICT Only a marginal improvement over the iPhone 6s, but the iPhone 7 is still the best iPhone you can buy THE REMOVAL OF the headphone jack from the latest iPhone is a strange choice, but a Lightning-to-3.5mm adaptor is in the box. More annoying is the price rise, with the entry-level iPhone jumping £60 to £599. At least you get double the storage, with 32GB as standard. The other storage options have also doubled (and increased in price), to 128GB and 256GB. Apple has replaced the mechanical Home button with the Force Touch technology found in its MacBook laptops. This button doesn’t move but uses haptic feedback to make you feel as if it is. We didn’t find it quite as easy or as intuitive…

£505 • From www.debenhamsplus.com VERDICT An improvement over last year’s phone, but the HTC 10 can’t quite catch the competition THERE’S NO DENYING that the HTC 10 is a gorgeous phone, with a sleek full metal unibody. There’s a choice of colours, too, with glacier silver, topaz gold and carbon grey. It’s a slim phone, measuring just 3mm at its thinnest point. Admittedly, this stretches to a rather chunky 9mm at the centre, but the HTC 10’s angular back feels great in the hand. On the front, the Home button doubles as a fingerprint reader. It’s not the most sensitive, and wouldn’t recognise our thumb when it was placed horizontally on the button. One thing the HTC 10 isn’t short on is raw processing power, as it has a quad-core…

£410 • From www.laptopsdirect.co.uk VERDICT The ambitious LG G5 is very different to the competition and a good deal cheaper, too METAL PHONES DON’T have removable batteries – at least until now. LG has cracked it with the G5. The battery compartment also takes LG Friends: plug-in modules, including a better camera (£80) and hi-fi DAC (£150). Both are rather expensive, but they shouldn’t detract from the removable battery. In our continuous video playback test, the G5’s 2,800mAh battery lasted 11h 10m. It’s not bad, but with a spare module, you could get 22h 20m. However, the Samsung Galaxy S7 lasted over 17 hours with just one battery. The quad-core 2.2GHz Snapdragon 820 chip, paired with 4GB of RAM, scored an impressive 2,325 in Geekbench’s single-core test and a massive…

£329 • From oneplus.net/uk/3 VERDICT A super-fast processor, excellent build quality and low price make the OnePlus 3 a winner ONEPLUS HAS A cunning plan: manufacture phones with the features of flagship devices, but at a wallet-friendly price. Available for just £329, the OnePlus 3 is a remarkably small price to pay for a phone so big on features. With a quad-core 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chip and 6GB of RAM, the OnePlus 3 has flagship specs. In our Geekbench tests, its scores of 2,371 in the single-core and 5,416 in the multicore test put it up there with the best of the competition. Gaming is amazing, too, with GFXBench GL returning a score in the offscreen Manhattan 3.0 test of 2,901 frames, or 47fps. The OnePlus 3 also has…

£569 • From www.samsung.com/uk VERDICT A fantastic screen, great performance and long battery life make the waterproof S7 a winner THE 5.1IN SAMSUNG Galaxy S7 brings back most of the features that the S6 didn’t have, bar the replaceable battery. You get a microSD card slot to expand storage, too. Samsung has also brought back its waterproofing protection. With an IP68 certificate, the S7 can survive being submerged in up to 1.5m of water for up to 30 minutes. Design improvements over the S6 are all relatively minor. The S7’s metal frame is now slightly smoother and less angular, but it’s also a fraction fatter and heavier. However, it’s not something you’d notice in everyday use. The fingerprint reader on the front is quick to respond, but you have to…

£540 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Neither cheap enough nor exciting enough to justify its price, the Xperia XZ is outclassed by its rivals THE XPERIA XZ has the same 5.2in display as previous flagship Sony smartphones, but the company has ditched the ridiculous 4K display for a Full HD screen, which is a better choice. The familiar ultra-slim power button-cumfingerprint sensor adorns the side of the handset. You’ll need to press the sensor before it can recognise your fingerprint, but on the whole, it’s pretty quick and accurate. Despite sharing the same screen size, the Xperia XZ’s design differs from its Z-series brethren: it ditches Sony’s traditional glass back for something altogether more plasticky. It might be tougher, but it looks worse. Unlike previous Z phones, Sony doesn’t recommend submerging…

PUNCH CARDS The first computers were of a size that could dwarf the average bedroom, and relied on commands being inputted by stacks of punch cards, which are exactly as the name would suggest: cards full of holes that need to be inputted sequentially into computers. Ask anyone who worked with such computers, and you’ll soon discover that this was hardly a way to make processing data and running basic programs a speedy process. All it took was one clumsy colleague to knock over a stack of cards and you’d have to restart the whole process. COMMAND-LINE INTERFACE From punch cards evolved keyboards and command-line interfaces. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, these let people write lines of text-based commands to get computers to do their bidding. Anyone who owns a…

Photographer, musician, sound engineer, designer and video producer Ben Pitt guides you through a multimedia project ben@computershopper.co.uk CHOOSING A SOCIAL media profile picture is never easy. If you have an artistic streak, it’s a bit of a minefield. A nicely lit studio portrait can look too corporate, while a more artistically creative photo can come across like you love your own face a bit too much. Photographers, artists and designers often resort to using their artwork rather than a picture of themselves, but I think a profile picture should at least vaguely resemble the person in question. That’s what led me to use illustration software to produce an image that looks like me but – I hope – doesn’t come across as being too self-indulgent. I particularly like how these…

clive@computershopper.co.uk Be a tech hipster Don’t make the same dull, uninspired choices as everyone else. Clive Webster shows you how to avoid the obvious, reject the homogenous, and become a technology pioneer  AVOID TAX-DODGING MEGA-CORPS and unethical retailers by going sub-culture. Reject the obvious choices and globalised conformity to support sustainable businesses; spend your money with UK companies and charitable enterprises; avoid mainstream homogeneity in favour of character, individuality and the feel-good factor. Join us as we show you how to become… a tech hipster! THE HIPSTER WILL not make the obvious choice; the hipster will reject the mainstream option and favour the quirky, the individual and the superior. The hipster will not support damaging or exploitative practices; the hipster will choose ethical alternatives and sustainable businesses. Thankfully, the tech…

FAMOUS WORDS. “They think it’s all over – it is now!” Kenneth Wolstenholme, 1966 World Cup Final. I thought it was all over – but I was wrong. ‘What was all over?’ I hear you ask. Well, it’s the damned REIN saga, that’s what. My regular reader will remember that this concerned noise on the phone line disrupting our old ADSL internet connection and the ISP blaming Repetitive Electrical Impulse Noise, aka REIN (Shopper 341). The problem was solved (well not exactly solved, but bypassed) by switching to an optical fibre connection on some subsidised scheme (which no longer exists) because we do out-of-hours support from home. Cost to the taxpayer: three grand. And we’re the only house with fibre internet in the whole neighbourhood. The ISP deal included the…

£150 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The first voice assistant we’ve wanted to use and a decent speaker to boot, the Amazon Echo teaches Siri a thing or two WE’VE ALWAYS FOUND that the problem with mobile voice assistants, such as Siri and Google Now, is that you feel a bit of an idiot using them in public. Using voice control in the comfort of your own home is a different thing entirely, but it’s not always very convenient. Step forwards the Echo, a cylindrical speaker powered by Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa. Designed to sit in your house, listening for input, it’s an always-on assistant. Think of it, if you will, as the equivalent of the computer in Star Trek. The Echo immediately feels a lot more natural to use than…

£149 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Xperia E5 is fast, but it’s marred by poor battery life and a sub-par camera SONY’S XPERIA E5 is unfeasibly handsome for a budget smartphone. With its matt finish and gently rounded corners, it’s reminiscent of Sony’s brilliant miniature flagship, the Xperia Z5 Compact. The E5 doesn’t have the Z5 Compact’s metal frame, but it’s great to see Sony’s flagship build quality trickling down to one of its most basic, entry-level handsets. The Xperia E5 is one of the smaller smartphones we’ve seen recently, and the combination of a 5in screen and 8.2mm-thick chassis make it feel nice and compact in the hand. The display’s 1,280x720 resolution isn’t that exciting now that other budget handsets – including our favourite, the Motorola Moto G4 (Shopper…

£90 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT With its long battery life and excellent build quality, the new Amazon Fire HD 8 raises the bar for budget tablets LAST YEAR’S AMAZON Fire HD 8 was a fairly decent cut-price tablet, but it struggled to stand out next to the cheaper Fire 7 or the larger Fire HD 10. This year, though, Amazon has revamped its 8in Fire tablet, giving it more storage and more powerful internals. Whereas last year’s model was hamstrung by just 8GB of storage, the new Fire HD 8 now comes in 16GB and 32GB models, both of which can be expanded up to 200GB via microSD. There’s also a new quad-core 1.3GHz chip inside, as well as 1.5GB of RAM. It’s still a relatively chunky piece of kit,…

£95 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A low-priced and capable Android box let down principally by its focus on games GOOGLE’S ANDROID OPERATING system works perfectly on smartphones and tablets, but it’s always had a bit of trouble when it comes to TV. Google’s own Nexus Player, Nvidia’s Shield TV and a slew of Android consoles such as the ill-fated Ouya and long-forgotten GameStick all prove that Android still has a way to go as a home entertainment platform. Sadly, Emtec’s GEM Box continues that trend. To be fair, what the GEM Box does well, it does fantastically so. This isn’t a half-baked attempt at a portable Android TV streamer or console. Instead it’s a considered solution targeted at a very specific market. Whether we in the UK match that demographic…

£203 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT With great sound quality and superb design, the LG SH5 is a brilliant entry-level soundbar and subwoofer combo FROM THE SUBWOOFER’S cuboidpatterned finish to the almost book spine-like design of the soundbar itself, LG’s new SH5 combo has a classy yet understated look that immediately sets it apart from Samsung’s similarly priced HW-K450 (Shopper 346). Admittedly, the SH5’s silver body might not suit everyone’s living room, but at least its compact design means it will be fairly inconspicuous if it does end up clashing with your décor. Standing a mere 53mm tall, the soundbar should easily slot underneath most TVs, and its length of 945mm means it’s best suited to screens that are 42in or larger. The subwoofer is equally compact, measuring 171x320x252mm, so you…

£120 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT A true entry-level GPU, the Radeon RX 460 is a fine choice for cheap 1080p gaming WE WERE EXTREMELY impressed by the Radeon RX 480 (Shopper 345), AMD’s first video card to use its newest Polaris architecture. Now there’s an even cheaper RX 460 card as well, and we’ve been testing XFX’s customised model. This entry-level graphics card aims to deliver console-beating frame rates at 1080p resolution, with a particular focus on less demanding MOBA games such as League of Legends and Dota 2. It uses the smaller Polaris 11 processor, as opposed to the RX 480’s Polaris 10, which shares the superefficient 14nm FinFET manufacturing process but comes equipped with a 128-bit GDDR5 memory bus (instead of the Polaris 10’s 256-bit bus) and 14…

Chat and Communication UPDATED Evernote 6.3.3 Store your notes, ideas and plans in the cloud, and synchronise them between computers. UPDATED Mailbird 2.3.32 A free desktop email client for Windows. UPDATED Miranda IM 0.10.58 Chat with friends across multiple messaging platforms, including AIM, Facebook, IRC and MSN, all from one simple interface UPDATED Skype for Windows 7.28 Make internet voice and video calls for free, and buy credit to make calls to mobiles and landlines. Trillian 5.6 Use all your instant-messaging accounts with one application. Supports Windows Live!, AIM, Yahoo! and Google Talk. WhatsApp Desktop 0.2.1880 A free PC and Mac version of the popular messaging app, allowing you to chat straight from your desktop instead of using the web app. Customisation iolo System Mechanic Free 15.5 Speed up your…

£600 • From www.cclonline.com VERDICT Not the best for gaming, but the Omega is a respectable general-use rig with flashes of premium quality THE CCL OMEGA doesn’t leave much to the imagination – its side ‘door’ is one big piece of tempered glass, so you can admire every radiator fin and perfectly cable-tied wire inside the case. This isn’t the only unusual aspect to CCL’s attempt at a £600 rig (or, to be more specific, its hilariously named Phanteks Enthoo Pro M chassis) – the two front-mounted USB3 ports are both located on the left side, so any thumb drives or peripherals you plug into them will jut outwards. It’s neither a practical benefit nor a hindrance, but might appeal if you’re after a PC with some little quirks. Either…

£600 • From www.eclipsecomputers.com VERDICT It may lack a discrete GPU but high performance and extensive upgradability means the Apollo Series stays relevant THE FIRST TIME we opened up this machine – one of the more affordable configurations of Eclipse’s new Apollo Series of PCs – we thought the GPU might have been lost in the post. In fact, for £600 this specification doesn’t include a dedicated graphics card at all. That’s not necessarily a terrible thing, however. It’s obvious that at least some of the cash saved from forgoing a GPU has gone straight on the main processor instead, as our Apollo Series review unit came with an Intel Core i5-6400 – a bona fide mid-range chip, with four cores clocked at 2.7GHz (and, unlike the Core i3-6100 that…

£600 • From www.wired2fire.co.uk VERDICT Powerful yet nearly silent, the Diablo Nucleus is a superb example of a general-use PC THIS DIMINUTIVE SYSTEM may be small – at 378mm tall it’s easily the shortest PC here – but it’s hiding a surprising amount of computing strength, thanks to its 3.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i5-6500 CPU. With this thoroughly mid-range processor plus 8GB of DDR4 RAM, running at a relatively swift 2,400MHz, the Diablo Nucleus emerged as the winner of our 4K application benchmarks, narrowly beating the PC Specialist RX1; its image score of 105, video score of 101 and multitasking score of 100 resulted in a final overall score of 101, making it a great bet for basic media editing and other productivity work on a budget. It won’t disturb…

£719 • From www.apple.com/uk VERDICT Its clever dual-camera setup is interesting, but the iPhone 7 Plus is hugely expensive THE iPHONE 7 Plus isn’t just a bigger version of the iPhone 7, but a more accomplished device with a clever dual-camera setup. The iPhone 7 Plus has a 28mm, six-element lens with a f/1.8 aperture and optical image stabilisation, the same as the iPhone 7. It produced the same results, too, which is to say not much better than the iPhone 6s. The iPhone 7 Plus’ party trick is its second camera. Its 56mm focal length adds a 2x optical zoom to the Plus, which you can flick in and out of by tapping the 2x icon on the camera app screen. It’s a powerful feature, letting you get closer…

£341 • From www.alza.co.uk VERDICT The Nova is a decent mid-range phone, but its camera and Emotion UI let it down HUAWEI IS ROLLING out a lot of phones, but the Nova is one of the most interesting. With its glossy front, minimal screen bezel and textured metal back, it’s a great-looking device, even if it is a little tricky to keep a grip on. On the rear is a fingerprint reader, which is well placed for your index finger. Switch it on, and the Nova continues to impress. With its high contrast ratio of 1,494:1, the 1,920x1,080 display is not only sharp but pops right off the screen. The IPS display shows 100% of the sRGB colour gamut, too, ensuring rich, vibrant colours. Performance-wise, pretty much everything was up…

£450 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT A supremely tough smartphone that can take a lot of punishment, the Moto X Force is the right choice for the butterfingered owner MOTOROLA’S MOTO X Force is the world’s first shatterproof smartphone. It’s taken three years to come to fruition, and Motorola is so confident in the Force’s display that it’s guaranteeing the screen for four years. The Moto X Force is truly indestructible. It was able to survive repeated display-side drops on different surfaces, including wood, concrete and stone, from around two metres, without incurring any damage to the screen. The phone is also water repellent. While not designed to be completely submerged, its nano-coating will survive an accidental spill, splash or a rain shower. It’s a shame it’s not completely waterproof, but…

£220 • From www.debenhamsplus.com VERDICT An incredibly well-built mid-range phone, but graphical performance lets the A3 down slightly THE 4.7IN SAMSUNG Galaxy A3 2016 could almost be mistaken for a miniature Galaxy S7. It’s a stunning piece of design, and the phone’s smooth glass rear does make it look and feel like a premium smartphone. The A3 has some tough competition, but it’s a fast phone for the price. The quad-core 1.5GHz Exynos 7580 chip and 1.5GB of RAM return some decent benchmark scores. In Geekbench, the single-core score of 701 and multicore score of 2,143 put the phone solidly in mid-range levels. The only area where it loses out is its gaming performance, as a rather pitiful 254 frames (around 4.1fps) in the offscreen Manhattan 3.0 test in GFXBench…

£639 • From www.samsung.com/uk VERDICT Better battery life and the curved screen make the S7 Edge this year’s most desirable flagship smartphone, but the flat S7 is better value A LARGER, CURVIER version of the regular Galaxy S7, the S7 Edge is immensely more attractive than its flat little brother, and it also has a bigger battery, giving it more stamina. It shares the same features with the S7, including a microSD card slot and a responsive fingerprint reader, and it has the same IP68 certification, which makes it dustproof and waterproof to 1.5 metres. The 5.5in curved display looks stunning, and Samsung has made a number of improvements to the Edge Screen software, too. Activated by a simple thumb swipe over the small tab on the side of the…

Send your problems to businesshelp@computershopper.co.uk Renames of the day I’m being blocked from renaming any of my Access tables from the Navigation Pane. If I select a table and right-click it to get to the rename dialog, the Edit window appears briefly, but then disappears and the cursor appears to jump to a different table. The database was started in Access 2000, then used in Access 2003, and I’ve now converted it to Access 2007 format. If I need to rename a table, all I can do is to save it under a new name, meaning I end up with two copies of the same table. Alan Clifford The first thing to try is Compact and Repair on the database; that may solve what is an underlying problem with the…