Computer Shopper - July 2017

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WELCOME PAGE 

Welcome! 

I REMEMBER THE fi rst batteries, which makes it even harder to 

handset I owned, a bright squeeze extra life out of your handset, as 

yellow Nokia 5110 – I say this is often the component that will fail fi rst. 

‘owned’ but it was actually With this in mind, we’ve carried out a 

borrowed from my mum, thorough analysis and testing of the most 

as paying a phone 

recent smartphones, as well as digging out 

contract as a student some slightly older models that were highly 

teacher in the late nineties rated at launch, to identify the handsets 

just wasn’t going to happen. But I loved that that give you the best value and the best 

phone and pinched it as often as I could, and chance of longevity (page 80). 

it was in the family for many years. 

Some might salivate over the latest 

Fast-forward 20 years, and the idea of a fl agship models such as the Samsung Galaxy 

teenager not owning their own smartphone, S8 (page 42) or iPhone 7 Plus. But this is 

or sharing a phone with anyone, seems more about fi nding budget models that are 

laughable. As does the idea of using a 

able to package up an impressive array of 

handset for more than a couple of years – features at incredibly low prices – see our 

well, that’s if the smartphone manufacturers cover star, the Lenovo P2; older devices like 

have anything to do with it. 

the Google Nexus 5X and Samsung Galaxy 

Apple and Samsung might be taking S6, which have seen significant price drops 

steps to be more environmentally friendly since release but still offer slick performance; 

with their sourcing of materials and recycling and handsets that still retain the rare 

programmes (see Rants & Raves, page 12), swappable battery, such as the LG G4. 

but neither fi rm has taken the equally 

As an iPhone 6 user, I’m paying close 

important step of producing hardware that attention to the results to decide which 

has a more eco-friendly lifespan. 

phone to go for next. After all, my current 

Apple, for example, admits that its 

model came out in September 2014, meaning 

iPhones have only a three-year lifespan, it has less than six months left before it 

meaning a cost of at least £1,500 if you want conks out, based on Apple’s assertions. 

to equip yourself with the cheapest SE 

Happy reading! 

model for the next decade. 

Several readers have recently written in Madeline Bennett, Editor 

about the trend away from replaceable 

madeline@computershopper.co.uk 

QUESTION OF THE MONTH 

Which smartphone feature would you 

most like to see invented? 

Madeline Bennett 

A reverse-charges system 

for spam calls that I get a big 

cut from. 

David Ludlow 

A background noise generator 

so you can pretend you’re at 

work or on the train home when 

you’re in the pub. 

Nathan Spendelow 

Curved screens are nice and 

all, but it would be nice to have 

a battery that lasts more than a 

few hours. 

James Archer 

Chassis designs where 

the whole thing is one big 

fi ngerprint sensor. 

MEET 

THE 

TEAM 

Dave Neal 

Really, really, really long-life 

battery. Also a small fan for 

warm days. Plus a car horn. 

Roland Moore-Colyer 

A module that analyses my 

hangover, then injects me with 

all the vitamins and nutrients 

to remove it. 

Simon Handby 

A breathalyser I have to 

pass before being allowed on 

social media. And maybe a 

self-healing screen. 

CONTACT US 

Editor Madeline Bennett madeline@computershopper.co.uk 

Reviews Editor James Archer james@computershopper.co.uk 

News Editor Dave Neal daveneal@computershopper.co.uk 

Contributing Editor David Ludlow david@computershopper.co.uk 

Contributing Editor Roland Moore-Colyer 

roland@computershopper.co.uk 

Staff Writer Nathan Spendelow nathan@computershopper.co.uk 

DESIGN & PRODUCTION 

Design Bill Bagnall 

Production Editor Steve Haines 

Production Executive Maaya Mistry 

Network Production Manager Kerry Lambird 

CONTRIBUTORS 

Lee Bell, Jonathan Bray, Mel Croucher, Kay Ewbank, 

Darien Graham-Smith, Simon Handby, Vaughn Highfield, 

Christopher Minasians, Ben Pitt, Adam Shepherd, Clive Webster 

ADVERTISING 

Email ads.shopper@dennis.co.uk 

Group Advertising Manager Charlotte Milligan 020 7907 6642 

Senior Sales Executive Joe Teal 020 7907 6689 

COVER GIFT CONTACT 

Chris Wiles support@creativemark.co.uk 

SUBSCRIPTIONS 

Tel 0844 844 0031 / 01795 592905 Web www.subsinfo.co.uk 

UK £44.99, Europe £70, Rest of world £90 

PHOTOGRAPHY 

Michael Pheasant 

LICENSING AND SYNDICATION 

Ryan Chambers 020 7907 6132 Ryan_Chambers@dennis.co.uk 

Anj Dosaj-Halai 0207 907 6132 anj_halai@dennis.co.uk 

MANAGEMENT 

Tel 020 7907 6000 

Managing Director John Garewal 

Group Advertising Director Julian Lloyd-Evans 

Newstrade Director David Barker 

Group CFO/COO Brett Reynolds 

Chief Executive James Tye 

Company Founder Felix Dennis 

PRINTING 

Printed by Wyndeham, Bicester, Oxon 

Distributors Seymour 020 7429 4000 

LIABILITY 

While every care was taken preparing this magazine, the publishers 

cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the information or 

any consequence arising from it. All judgements are based on 

equipment available to Computer Shopper at the time of review. 

‘Value for money’ comments are based on UK prices at time of review. 

All prices include VAT unless otherwise stated. Computer Shopper 

takes no responsibility for the content of external websites whose 

addresses are published in the magazine. 

COMPUTER SHOPPER INCORPORATES UPGRADE SHOPPER, 

GAMES SHOPPER, INTERNET SHOPPER, MOBILE SHOPPER, 

PC SHOPPER, PORTABLE SHOPPER AND SOFTWARE SHOPPER 

A DENNIS PUBLICATION 

Computer Shopper is published by Dennis Publishing Ltd, 30 Cleveland 

Street, London W1T 4JD. Company registered in England. All material 

© Dennis Publishing Limited licensed by Felden 2017, and may not be 

reproduced in whole or part without the consent of the publishers. 

ISSN 0955-8578 

© Copyright Dennis Publishing Limited 

SUBSCRIBE 

AND SAVE 

CALL 0844 844 0031 

OR SEE PAGE 122 

ISSUE 353 | COMPUTER SHOPPER | JULY 2017 

3

CONTENTS 

Issue 353 July 2017 

Contents 

p22 

p80 

p114 

Regulars 

6 Letters 

Your monthly missives of wit and wisdom, 

tips and tricks, and moans and groans 

8 Mel’s World 

He was never really cut out for designing 

skyscrapers for rich Middle Eastern 

despots, but Mel Croucher believes 

the sky’s the limit when it comes to 

3D-printed buildings 

10 Cyber Insider 

As governments around the world demand 

ever greater access to our personal data, 

Cyber Insider provides some timely tips 

on how to maintain privacy in the face of 

official – and unoffi cial – snooping 

12 Rants & Raves 

Has the tech industry fi nally developed 

an environmental conscience? Recent 

announcements from Samsung and Apple 

would seem to suggest that it has 

138 Zygote 

You no longer have to make your bed and 

lie in it – well, you’ll still have to do the 

reclining bit yourself, but a computerised 

duvet can do all the hard work for you 

Features 

Learn 

p104 

p128 

114 Pixel Pushers 

Roland Moore-Colyer investigates how the 

next wave of graphics processing units will 

bring VR and artificial intelligence to your PC 

124 Business Help 

Our expert answers your soft ware queries 

126 Helpfile 

Your hardware and Windows problems solved 

128 Advanced Projects 

Give your old laptop a new lease of life with a 

cheap and easy upgrade and Clive Webster’s 

expert advice 

132 Multimedia Expert 

Everyday household items make for great 

percussion instruments. Ben Pitt makes some 

noise around the house 

News 

All the latest news and views from the 

technology world, including: 

14 Need to Know 

With everything from augmented-reality in-car 

navigation systems to intelligent pet monitors, 

the Wearable Technology Show is the place to 

be for the very latest smart devices 

18 Globe Trotting 

We round up some of the offbeat tech 

stories that you may have missed from 

around the world 

19 The Lowdown: 

State-sponsored 

Espionage 

As accusations about 

Russian interference 

in the US election 

and the EU 

referendum continue 

to grow, we investigate 

the scale of the problem 

20 From the Lab 

All the latest developments from the world of 

science and space 

21 Retro: IBM 5150 

With its 16KB of 

RAM and dual 160KB 

disk drives, the IBM 

5150 revolutionised 

personal computing. 

Join us on a trip 

down memory 

lane to celebrate the 

iconic PC without which 

we wouldn’t be heree today 

4 JULY 2017 | COMPUTER SHOPPER | ISSUE 353

p80 

p128 

p132 

Reviews 

22 Hot Product 

Hello Google, goodbye Alexa? Google Home is the latest attempt at a 

digital assistant-powered smart speaker, and its clever voice responses 

more than make up for a lack of third-party hardware support 

24 PCs 

The powerful GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is here, and 

the Chillblast Fusion Portal (p26) has tamed it 

28 Components 

The Ryzen 7 1700 is another Intel-rivalling chip 

from a resurgent AMD, and a great candidate 

for overclocking 

30 Printers 

Luckily for Canon’s £150 TS8050, it delivers the 

quality you’d expect from such a pricey inkjet 

32 Laptops 

Asus’s ZenBook UX310UA is a pleasantly 

affordable ultrabook, while the Dell XPS 13 

2-in-1 trades power for a fl ipping touchscreen 

36 Displays 

At over £600, AOC’s curved AGON AG352QCX 

is a high-end monitor for high-end gaming 

38 Networks 

Google joins the mesh wars with its impressive 

Google Wifi system 

42 Handhelds 

Fast and beautiful, Samsung’s Galaxy S8 is the 

fi nest Android smartphone to date 

46 Storage 

The Kingston SSD Now UV400 Upgrade Kit is a 

complete and straightforward way to upgrade 

your PC or laptop capacity 

48 Video 

The combination of smart streaming and 

Freeview helps the Humax H3 Espresso, 

but the lack of apps hurts 

50 Audio 

Unbalanced sound and an uncomfortable fi t 

let down the otherwise well-made Master & 

Dynamic MH40 headphones 

52 Photography 

The compact Panasonic DMC-G80 triumphs at 

still photography and video capture alike 

54 Wearables 

Built-in 4G on the Huawei Watch 2 lets you 

leave your smartphone behind 

56 Best Buys 

Looking for the best kit we’ve reviewed 

recently? It’s all in our Best Buys section 

72 How We Test 

Our tests, ratings and awards explained 

Group Tests 

80 Smartphones 

Don’t get ripped off paying 

a fortune for a fl agship 

phone – follow our 

bargain-hunter’s buying 

guide and snap up one of 

the 16 top-spec, low-price 

handsets on test this month 

104 Soundbars and Speakers 

Whether you’re watching a fi lm or playing 

tunes, a new soundbar and speaker will 

transform your listening experience. 

We sound out 12 of 

the best 

models 

74 Your Software* 

Create your own professional-looking 

animations with the powerful but 

easy-to-use CrazyTalk Animator 

6 FULL 

PACKAGES 

* FREE SOFTWARE 

EDITION ONLY 


5

LETTERS 

Letters 

The Windows 10 Creators Update may not be all it’s cracked up to be, 

if one reader’s frustrating experience is anything to go by 

letters@computershopper.co.uk 

Creator storm 

The Windows 10 Creators Update came 

on rather suddenly and, despite my 

natural curiosity (which would have made 

me install anyway), seemed to offer no 

way of averting installation (I 

knew that Microsoft account 

would lead to no good). 

So far my desktop has not 

seen any issues but those with 

laptops, and in particular with 

pre-Creative Cloud Adobe 

products, should keep well away. 

Immediately Photoshop CS6 (part of 

CS6 Production Premium) just crashed on 

launch. Despite uninstalling CS6 and 

re-installing, uninstalling and re-installing 

numerous Microsoft Visual C++ versions, 

moving various DLLs around, and 

uninstalling and re-installing Nvidia drivers 

(the laptop has a 960M GFX processor), 

nothing worked. 

Finally, after about 15 hours’ work 

trying to fi x it, I thought I would resort to 

re-installing Windows 10 Creators Update 

and keep my apps. It doesn’t work or isn’t 

available, as it comes back with 

the 

usual dumb Microsoft 

message saying nothing. 

Next stop was to roll back to 

a previous version of Windows 

10 

(1607, I think), which 

happened very quickly, and 

everything worked fi ne. 

It’s pretty clear that 

Microsoft needs to fi x the 

Creators Update as it offers little and kills 

much. There was no value in installing it for 

me. Also be warned: if you encounter error 

0xc000007b, then you’re banjaxed. 

Ian Douglas 

Thanks for the warning, Ian. Hopefully other 

readers have avoided similar problems. 

Network coverage needed 

You’ve covered anti-virus applications 

and given us data about the good and 

the bad. You’ve also covered the best cloud 

services and given us articles about the best 

backup services. I have been thinking about 

using a VPN to protect my privacy and to 

make my systems more secure, but I haven’t 

seen an article in Shopper about this subject. 

How about an article about the best VPN 

services, what they can and can’t do and, as 

home users, do we even need them? Is it 

worth buying into what our anti-virus 

vendors are trying to sell us or is it just 

scare-mongering? How do we set up a VPN? 

Stephen Hill 

As luck would have it, Advanced Projects in 

the next issue (354) will cover this very topic. 

We’ll be revealing some low-cost and free VPNs 

to keep you safer when you’re surfing, and 

explaining why they’re worth having. 

Star letter 

Price comparison slight 

I have just read the article on 

compact system cameras (CSCs) in 

Shopper 352. I am considering replacing 

my aged Canon G9 (not the current G9) 

and have been reviewing the fi eld at about 

the £500 mark. 

The reason that I am writing is to 

enquire as to why the Canon PowerShot 

SX720 HS was included. At £269, you are 

comparing it with a Fuji which is more than 

fi ve times as expensive. I realise that there 

has to be some price differential, but 

query why it should be that much. 

Surely a more appropriate Canon 

could have been included, such as the G7 

X Mk II at £549, the G5 at £609 or the G9 

Mk II at £449. Or how about the Canon 

M3, which offers the option of 

interchangeable lenses as per the Fuji? 

Your article has nonetheless given me 

food for thought, as I will now add the Best 

Buy-winning Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX15 

to my list, which is currently the Canon G7 

X MkII and Panasonic DMC-TZ100. 

Incidentally, I have 

only recently become a 

subscriber to Computer 

Shopper, and I 

wondered whether it is 

possible to access past 

tests, as your article 

refers to the Fuji X-T1, Sony a6000 

and Sony RX 100 IV in previous issues. 

Alec Bushell 

Thanks for picking up the mag. You’re right 

that the SX720 is much cheaper than the other 

cameras in the group test – maybe making 

❱❱ Write in and win 

direct comparisons 

with it is a little 

cheeky, but we like to 

cover a range of 

price points, so all 

our readers know 

what to expect 

regardless of their 

budget. Of the ones you’ve mentioned, 

the Canon G7 X Mark II is our pick, and if 

you want to read the original reviews of the 

Fuji X-T1, Sony a6000 & Sony RX 100 IV, 

they’ve all been posted on our sister site, 

Expert Reviews (www.expertreviews.co.uk). 

Do you wish your computer was faster when booting and loading 

applications? Thanks to Crucial, you can achieve your dream 

of a faster PC or laptop with the MX300 SSD. The writer of 

our Star Lett er will be awarded one of these solid-state devices, 

which can be installed in a desktop PC or a laptop. 

This SSD is six times faster than a hard disk, and will make your 

computer boot incredibly quickly and your applications load faster. With 

525GB 

of storage, there’s plenty of room for Windows and all your apps, too. 

STAR 

PRIZE 

525GB 

SSD 


LETTERS 

Irreplaceable replaceables 

It was interesting to see the letter from 

Paul Morris on battery issues (Shopper 

352). I’d been meaning to write in about this 

myself so he beat me to it. I did want to add, 

though, that in my experience phone 

batteries don’t really last more than a year 

before they rapidly degrade, and for this 

reason I wouldn’t even consider buying a 

phone without a replaceable battery. 

My current model is a Samsung Galaxy 

S4. It’s on its second battery now and I’ve 

owned it just over a year. My only future 

upgrade option is the Galaxy S5 

Neo, but as my needs are 

quite simple I’m in no rush. 

Looking further ahead, if 

there is no significant 

improvement in battery 

durability, what options will 

be available? I don’t believe 

in spending more than £600 

on a new unit, but the 

second-hand market will, as 

Mr Morris points out, be 

awash with phones whose batteries 

you can’t replace and therefore can’t trust. 

Keith Briffett 

We agree the trend for non-replaceable 

batteries makes choosing a new handset 

problematic. Part of the thinking behind our 

guide to the best-value smartphones (page 80) 

was to identify our pick of the current and 

previous-generation models that offer excellent 

value for money and plenty of longevity, so the 

battery degradation isn’t such an issue. 

Cracked Windows 

Just writing in to agree with Richard 

Collier’s letter regarding Windows 10 

and Linux (Shopper 352). I too have tried 

Windows 10, and do not like it, for various 

reasons. My fi rst frustration was with 

Recent Places, which I use all the time in 

Windows 7. It had vanished from Windows 

10, and Recent Items was the closest I could 

get back after some Googling and then 

Windows 10 tweaking. Why am I having to 

tweak something as fundamentally useful as 

Recent Places in a brand new operating 

system, I asked myself. Edge I hated, and it 

didn’t work with a number of websites. And 

a host of other things irked me. So back to 

Windows 7 I went, with no regrets. 

I wrote to you quite a while back 

regarding an article you had on making 

Windows 10 better, to which the main point 

of my reply was: I have, simply by reverting 

back to Windows 7. 

So, one thing’s for sure: if Windows 10 is 

the last operating system from Microsoft , 

my relationship with it might come to an 

end, most likely when the date passes where 

Microsoft no longer supports Windows 7. 

I have, like Richard, been using Linux on 

an old machine as I start my search for a 

new OS, well in advance of the day Windows 

7 dies. I would therefore really like to see 

much greater coverage of Linux in Shopper. 

I suspect Richard and I are not alone in our 

dislike of Windows 10 and are thinking 

what next in terms of what OS we might be 

using in fi ve years’ time. 

For now, I’ve stopped dabbling with Linux, 

as Windows 7 is on my main machine, and 

it’s a hassle setting up my old desktop so I 

can use it. More articles in Shopper might 

see me setting up my old machine on 

another desk and getting more familiar 

with it. I look forward to your coverage. 

Jim 

Thanks Jim, we have some more Linux 

content planned for future issues. 

Hyper critical 

I read your response to Colin Walker 

(Helpfi le, Shopper 352) and was a bit 

surprised you didn’t mention before your 

walkthrough for using Hyper-V that it’s only 

available in Windows 10 Pro. You can do 

something similar with Oracle VM VirtualBox 

in Windows 10 Home, and unless Colin has 

made a point of buying Pro, a pre-installed 

Windows 10 will probably be Home. 

Neil Packwood 

You’re right, Neil - it’s only available in 64-bit 

versions of Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise, 

which we omitted to mention. As Colin 

upgraded his own PC, there’s a fair chance he 

bought Windows 10 Pro, or was upgraded to it 

from a qualifying earlier release, so hopefully 

our advice worked for his particular problem. 

Keep politics out of it 

I was a little surprised with 

the political comments on 

the Welcome Page in the June 

edition (Shopper 352). I thought 

you would be mentioning the 

Creators Update for Windows 

10. I thought magazines should 

be neutral in political matters. 

Remember the readers of the 

magazine are of many different persuasions. 

Please keep to your brief in case you offend. 

Always look forward to the next edition. 

Best computer magazine available 

Elvin Rose MBE 

Thanks for the feedback, Elvin, great to 

hear you’re a Shopper fan. The comments on 

government IT weren’t aimed at supporting 

or criticising a particular political party, more 

to highlight how the UK public sector has a 

pretty poor track record when it comes to 

big technology projects. Shopper is defi nitely 

party-neutral and politics-free, although we 

would defi nitely like to see the UK government 

– whoever is forming it –applying our principles 

of acquiring the best technology available with 

the best value for money. 

In the next issue 

❱❱ £500 PCs 

on test 

Sett ing up a 

home office, or 

just want some 

extra power out 

of your home 

PC? Don’t spend too much on a fl ashy 

gaming system or high-end workstation – 

we’ll be testing out a range of budget 

desktops to fi nd out how much power, 

memory and storage you can get for £500. 

❱❱ Don’t forget to pack your tech 

Whether your summer holidays are a British 

staycation or a jet-setting jaunt around the 

world, these are the devices to pack in your 

carry-on bag and the apps you should 

download before you depart. 

❱❱ Stream everything 

Our complete guide to the world’s biggest 

media streamer, Kodi, shows you how to 

use it – and, most importantly, how to stay 

within the law. 

COMPUTER SHOPPER ISSUE 354 ON SALE IN NEWSAGENTS FROM 15th JUNE 


7

MEL’S WORLD 

Tall storeys 

He helped kick-start the high-rise building boom in Dubai in the 1970s, and now the 

visionary Mel Croucher has seen the future of construction again, and it’s in 3D 

MEL CROUCHER 

Tech pioneer and all-round good egg 

letters@computershopper.co.uk 

I BECAME AN economic migrant 

more than 40 years ago, when I 

was unable to fi nd work in my 

own country. My nation’s 

economy had collapsed, the 

electricity supply had failed, 

schools and hospitals were in 

chaos, piles of rotting fi lth fi lled 

the streets and the dead could 

not be buried. My country was 

called England. I was an architect. 

The country that gave me 

refuge was a dusty backwater in 

the Middle East. It was called 

Dubai. They had begun to extract 

oil from shallow-water rigs just 

offshore, and they needed 

workers to build stuff for the 

immigrants that were expected 

to come fl ooding in. 

My employer was an old 

beardy bloke with a big nose and 

sunglasses. He was called His 

Highness Sheikh Rashid bin 

Saeed Al Maktoum, and he was 

the ruler of the place. He ordered 

me to build him the fi rst high-rise 

I never did figure out how to work that computer for 

designing buildings, but after only a year I got it to 

play a pretty good version of Pong 

structures in his little kingdom, 

which he named after himself, in 

a street also named after himself. 

I had never built anything taller 

than a bungalow back home, but 

he didn’t seem to mind, as long 

as what I built was higher than 

anything his neighbouring 

despots had thrown up. And I 

didn’t mind, seeing as he was 

paying cash, and I was desperate. 

WHAT A CAD 

My structures started off nine 

storeys high, but in the 

boomtown that was 1970s Dubai, 

I was told to add a few more 

fl oors using the power of magic 

to compensate for my ignorance 

and inexperience. That magic was 

called 2DCAD, which stood for 

two-dimensional computer-aided 

design, and it ran on a machine 

that looked like Darth Vader’s 

severed head grafted on to a 

typewriter. I never did fi gure out 

how to work that computer for 

designing buildings, but after 

only a year I got it to play a 

pretty good version of Pong. 

Last month, I fl ew back into 

Dubai 40 years on. Everything I 

ever knew had gone, replaced by 

insane, gigantic structures. My 

buildings had been demolished 

years ago for being hopelessly 

ancient and insignificant. And to 

think, I used to worry that 

structures over nine storeys were 

hazardous, because back then 

the fi re brigade consisted of a 

Lebanese window-cleaner with a 

ladder and a bucket. But as my 

British Airways silver bird 

shuddered into the city of today, 

I could see that the buildings 

have become so tall only 

Superman could tackle a blaze. 

Many of today’s architectural 

monsters boast over 100 fl oors, 

and one skyscraper is 163 storeys 

high. And now a company called 

Cazza is about to dwarf the lot 

by constructing the world’s fi rst 

3D-printed skyscraper. 

HEIGHTS OF MADNESS 

The proposed megalith looks as 

though it’s been designed not 

by computers but by a billion 

giant termites from the planet 

Bonkers, on hallucinogens, in 

zero gravity, with knobs on. 

Cazza’s construction 

philosophy is a bit more 

ambitious than mine used to be, 

and the fi rm has recently spoken 

about the son and heir of my old 

boss in the following terms: 

“We admire His Highness 

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al 

Maktoum’s 10-times vision. We 

came here to change the world, 

and that’s what we’re doing.” 

How very true this is. In my 

day I had to make do with 

2DCAD and a basic knowledge 

of ALGOL programming, but 

thanks to modern computer 

technology today’s economic 

migrants will be using robot 

cranes as printers, specially 

adapted for building at superhigh 

speeds, at super-high levels, 

at super-high profi ts, because 

printing a building is vastly 

cheaper than getting a bunch of 

workers from Tamil Nadu to build 

it using muscle power. As well as 

plastics and alloys, the cranes 

can print concrete and steel 

reinforcement, all of which will 

sway about in the Arabian winds 

looking down on the miles of 

surrounding arid nothingness. 

Oh brave new world, that has 

such madness in it. 

COR BLIMEY 

Earlier this year, a company 

called Apis Cor printed a 

complete detached house in 24 

hours, using a mobile 3D rig on 

one of its Russian building sites. 

It cost £8,145, and is reckoned to 

have a lifespan of 175 years. I 

must confess that it’s a very nice 

little house too, miles better than 

the bungalow I managed to inflict 

on the world all those years ago. 

And so, from the smallest of 

dwellings to the most gigantic 

structures the planet has ever 

seen, this is just an indication of 

how robots are going to affect 

construction sites and the fate of 

those of us who used to work on 

them. Let alone the environment 

we will all inhabit. It will be a 

revolution far greater than the 

replacement of the horse and 

carriage by the automobile, and 

it has already begun. 

As for me, I trousered the 

loot and eventually made it back 

to England in 1977 to start up a 

video-games company. But that, 

as we high-rise experts say, is 

another storey. 


CYBER INSIDER 

Private principles 

Tough new laws and the threats from open networks can ruin your privacy. 

Cyber Insider is here to help 

DATA SECURITY USED to be 

easy. You’d just have to install 

some internet security soft ware 

on your computer, and you’d 

be done. Today, with the 

proliferation of smartphones, 

laptops and wireless hotspots, 

protecting your data has become 

incredibly hard. It’s made even 

harder by progressively tougher 

surveillance laws, both at home 

and abroad. It makes sense that 

for this Cyber Insider, I should 

talk about ways to legally protect 

your data whether you’re at 

home, out and about, or abroad. 

First, let’s look at the US. 

Thanks to President Donald 

Trump, privacy seems to be a 

thing of the past. Now, ISPs 

have the rights to sell users’ 

browsing history without 

consent, and visitors can have 

their phones seized, with 

Homeland Security requesting 

security PINs so that all data 

can be copied. 

And it gets worse, with the 

US now thinking about 

requesting social media account 

names and login details so that 

a person can be vetted before 

being allowed into the country. 

The trick is to mitigate any potential 

damage. Turning on two-factor 

authentication is a good starting point 

Currently, the US is targeting 

people from seven Muslim 

countries, but you have to 

wonder how long this will last. 

Indeed, there’s already talk 

about the same checks being 

performed on visitors from the 

UK, France and Germany. 

Certainly, no visitor arriving at 

the US border is entirely safe 

from being asked to hand over 

their phone. Where the US leads, 

other countries often follow or 

react, so similar draconian 

practices may start appearing 

at other borders. 

There’s a huge legal question 

about whether any of this is 

strictly allowed. But it makes 

little difference if you’ve been 

dragged off to a little room to 

have a chat about your phone. 

So what can you do? 

ENTRY LEVEL 

There’s not much you can do 

about having to hand over data. 

Clearing your phone of data and 

apps is a no-go, as that’s a red 

fl ag to immigration and could 

result in you being denied entry. 

The trick, then, is to mitigate 

any potential damage. Turning 

on two-factor authentication is 

a good starting point. That way, 

your accounts can’t be accessed 

with the password alone, should 

you have to hand over that bit 

of information. Instead, you 

also need an automatically 

generated code, which can be 

created by an app or sent via 

text message to your phone. 

It’s easy to argue that two-factor 

authentication is a common 

technology designed for security 

in case of any tricky situations 

with immigration officials. 

I also recommend using a 

temporary password for all 

accounts. That way, if you have 

to hand over the information, 

you can change the password at 

a later date, reducing damage. 

Likewise, change the PIN on your 

phone for a temporary one for 

travelling: if your phone has to 

be searched, you can hand over 

the PIN, safe in the knowledge 

that you can change it back 

again later. Ultimately, that’s 

about all you can do, and if you 

really don’t want to hand over 

any information, the best advice 

is not to travel to the US. 

BROWSER PRESS 

A second threat comes from 

when you browse the internet. 

As we’ve seen, US ISPs can 

collect a lot of data on you, but 

then again so can the UK 

government. Even worse, Wi-Fi 

hotspots can be notoriously 

insecure, with unencrypted 

communication easy for hackers 

to spy on. There have even been 

cases of hackers setting up fake 

Wi-Fi hotspots for the sole 

purpose of stealing login details. 

You can’t take any chances. If 

you think you’re in a potentially 

insecure area, it’s best to protect 

your internet traffic immediately. 

That means using a virtual private 

network (VPN). With a VPN, your 

network traffic is securely 

encrypted and sent across the 

internet to a secure endpoint 

where it pops out as normal. 

Using a VPN has two 

advantages. First, your internet 

traffic can’t be snooped on; 

second, the endpoint masks 

your real location so any 

service you visit can’t work out 

where you’re located. 

EXPRESS DELIVERY 

With a proper VPN, such as the 

excellent ExpressVPN (www. 

expressvpn.com), you can choose 

which country you want to 

appear in. For example, if you 

were in the US, you could tell 

ExpressVPN to use one of its UK 

endpoints, making it look as if 

you’re at home. This way, you 

avoid any potential snooping in 

the place you’re currently 

located, and you can access local 

UK services, such as BBC iPlayer. 

There is no technology 

greater for protecting your 

security and privacy than a 

VPN. After security soft ware, 

the VPN is the next most 

important tool that you can 

have. VPNs are perfectly legal 

technology and have a strong 

security reason for being used, 

should you need to justify it. 

While we can’t completely 

fi ght back against governments 

or protect data entirely, we 

shouldn’t take threats to security 

or privacy lying down. Bigger 

changes need to made, and it’s 

worth voicing your opinion to 

your MP to get the government 

to address concerns both at 

home and abroad. 


RANTS & RAVES 

The tech industry is fi nally going green, but it’s not as green around the gills 

as the government when it comes to encryption 

Madeline Bennett 

THE TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY has not been the greatest 

friend to the environment. The huge global appetite for laptops, 

tablets, mobile phones and so on has led to electronic devices 

becoming cheaper and more disposable. 

This is bad news for the planet, as it means more plundering of 

the earth’s natural resources, and more discarded items being sent 

to overflowing landfill sites. According to a United Nations report, 

in 2014 less than 16% of global e-waste was recycled. The UN also 

revealed that e-waste volumes from small products, such as mobile 

phones and PCs, will rise globally to 50 million metric tons or more 

every year in 2017, representing a huge waste of resources and a 

source of contamination from hazardous chemicals. 

But things could be about to change, as a couple of the big 

names in the technology industry are highlighting the sustainability 

issue with some eco-friendly plans. 

Samsung has announced it will be responsibly 

disposing of all the recalled Galaxy Note 7 handsets 

– admittedly after pressure from Greenpeace, but 

at least the fi rm is fi nally doing the right thing. 

It has committed to a number of steps, including 

refurbishing the recalled phones, detaching 

salvageable components such as semiconductors and 

camera modules for reuse, and extracting metals using 

environmentally friendly methods. Seeing as the product 

recall involves a whopping 4.3 million handsets, this will have a big 

impact on preventing a whole load of new e-waste being dumped. 

Not to be outdone by its arch rival, Apple has pledged to stop 

mining the earth for the manufacture of its devices. Rather than 

extracting metals and rare materials from the ground to make 

iPhones, iPads and MacBooks, Apple aims to produce devices 

entirely from recycled materials such as aluminium, copper and tin. 

Although Apple has yet to commit to a timetable or fl esh out 

concrete details of how it will achieve this green goal, the fi rm has 

thrown down the gauntlet to the tech sector to start including 

protection of the environment as part of the product development 

process. That in itself is to be commended. 

And who knows, perhaps the next step will be to make products 

that have a longer lifespan and are easier to repair. Here’s hoping. 

David Ludlow 

ONCE AGAIN, THE UK government has proved it has no idea 

how technology works and has called for the impossible or – bestcase 

scenario – the stupid. Following the attack on Westminster 

Bridge, where the terrorist was said to have used WhatsApp for 

communication, Amber Rudd, the home secretary, has called for a 

backdoor to allow government agencies to snoop on messages. 

“It used to be that people would steam open envelopes or just 

listen in on phones when they wanted to fi nd out what people were 

doing, legally, through warranty,” Rudd told the BBC. 

“But in this situation, we need to ensure our intelligence services 

have the ability to get into situations like encrypted WhatsApp.” 

Comparing communication in the real world to encryption in the 

virtual world is just plain stupid for many reasons. Encryption uses 

well-defi ned mathematics to protect communications. 

You just can’t change the maths to suit a government 

mandate: inserting a backdoor fundamentally 

weakens encryption, allowing other people to break 

it. 

In short, there’s no safe way to provide a master 

key 

for encryption without breaking it for all. 

The government also wants to ban end-to-end 

encryption, such as that used by WhatsApp. With 

this form 

of encryption, the service provider physically 

has no access to the sent messages. Banning end-to-end 

encryption, so the 

service has to store messages in the middle, would 

give government agencies a way to read our communications. 

Again, this method reduces security, as an attack on the servers 

in the middle can reveal information. It also doesn’t address the 

problem that end-to-end encryption exists, so terrorists could 

switch to other services or use open-source tools instead. Do the 

police or ISPs have the resources to check all internet traffic, PCs and 

smartphones to ensure no end-to-end encryption is being used? 

Ultimately, the government is attacking a useful technology it 

can’t understand. Rather than breaking encryption and eroding 

our privacy, traditional policing methods are the answer to 

stopping terrorism. 


The biggest stories from the tech world, and what they mean for you 

Wearable Technology Show 

London is the destination for the latest smart devices 

THE WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY Show brings together a diverse 

range of companies operating in the wearables space, from the more 

traditional fi tness bands and in-car navigation systems to newer 

products such as smart rings and intelligent pet monitors. 

Madeline Bennett went along to the Spring show to see which 

might take off and which are just a gimmick. Here, she rounds up her 

favourites from the dozens on display, 

which might just make your 

life that bit easier, or at least help you stand out from the crowd. 

Navdy 

£600 from www.amazon.co.uk 

Navdy is an in-car driving device that uses 

augmented reality to project information 

as a transparent image directly in the 

driver’s line of sight. You can choose to 

have information such as maps, calls, 

messages, notifications, email, music and 

car diagnostics data directly in front of 

you, so you can stay connected while 

keeping your eyes on the road. 

We had a quick test of the system in 

Navdy’s demonstration vehicle at the 

show, and can vouch for the transparent 

view not being too distracting from the 

road ahead. Navdy has a built-in GPS chip 

and local storage of maps, so you don’t 

have to worry about losing your way if you 

lose network coverage. 

You can use hand gestures to accept a 

phone call, so you don’t need to try to 

locate a certain button, and you can access 

Siri or Google Now through the system to 

take advantage of voice control. It also 

connects to your car with Navdy Dash to 

show your speed and automatically 

recommend nearby petrol stations when 

your fuel level is low. 

While car makers such as BMW have 

been offering these kinds of in-car 

systems for a while, Navdy has the 

advantage that it’s portable, and so 

can be carried around from car to 

car – ideal for business travellers, or 

for sharing among a family, for 

example. The device can be easily set up 

and mounted in any car with Navdy’s 

magnetic mounting system. 

Navdy is available from Amazon for £600. 

It’s compatible with iOS 9 and above, and 

Android KitKat 4.4 or newer. 

Tapdo 

€129 (around £108) from tapdo.io 

This mini smart button lets you control 

technology services with single-touch, 

personalised biometric interactions. The 

built-in fi ngerprint sensor button can hold up 

to 26 different functions across one hand. 

You just have to scan all the different parts 

of your fi ngers, and then give each part of 

each digit a function. You might set up one 

fi nger as a music controller, for example, with 

play/pause at the top of the fi nger, and up/ 

down in the middle part. Then just press away 

on the button with the relevant bit of your 

fi nger to carry out your 

desired action. 

When the Tapdo 

launches in September, 

it will support around 

20 applications, 

including controlling 

Spotify, Kodi and Philips 

Hue bulbs, tweeting a 

current location, and 

taking a photo. 

You can attach the 

button via the included 

clip, attach it to your 

watch, or use the Tapdo 

rubber wristband. 

Tapdo is being 

funded via a Kickstarter 

campaign, which went 

live in March. The buttons 

will start shipping in September and will be 

available in Europe, the US and Canada. 

Kerv 

£100 from kerv.com 

This smart payment ring can be used 

anywhere that takes contactless payments 

– you just tap the card reader with your ring 

and you’ve paid, saving you getting out a 

credit card or your smartphone. 

No setting up is required, and the ring 

doesn’t need charging. You get an activation 

code once your Kerv arrives through the post 

and you’re ready to go. The ring only supports 

MasterCard though, so you need to pre-load 

a Kerv ring account with cash to use it. 

The Kerv is scratch-resistant and 

waterproof. It’s available in 14 different colour 

options and 13 sizes, all priced at £100. 


Petcube Play 

£159 from petcube.com 

It wasn’t just us humans catered for 

at the show. Our beloved four-legged 

friends also have their own smart 

devices, aimed at keeping them 

entertained while we’re out and 

letting worried pet owners keep an 

eye on their cat or dog. 

Petcube Play is an indoor home 

pet camera that lets you check in on 

your pets from your smartphone via 

the associated app. It consists of a 

small cube, which contains a 360º 

camera with night vision and 1080p 

HD wide-angle video. The cube has 

a built-in speaker so you can call 

your pet to come over when you 

want to see what they’re up to – great 

for dogs, who tend to come when 

they’re called; get ready to have lots 

of blank footage, cat owners. 

But the company has catered for 

felines with the addition of a laser, 

which cats, as anyone who’s owned 

one will know, just love chasing. 

The camera has a motion sensor, so 

the sound of a dog barking or a cat jumping in 

front of it will trigger the camera so you can see 

what’s going on. You can also share the footage 

with friends, family or the public. 

Petcube also donates the cameras to animal 

shelters to help with rehoming unwanted animals, 

which gets a big thumbs up from us. The Petcube 

goes on sale in May, priced at £159. 

The company also has the Petcube Bites, which 

offers the same camera functions, but with the 

added bonus of being a treat dispenser – just click 

a button on the Petcube app and it will throw out 

a biscuit for your furry friend. This goes on sale in 

September for £199. 

Princess Cruises 

Ocean Medallion 

www.princess.com 

Travel company Carnival was at the event to show 

off its new Ocean Medallion smart token, which will 

launch on its Princess Cruises line later this year. 

The Ocean Medallion is about the size of a 

10 pence piece, and has no discernible technology 

to it – there’s no on or off switch or user interface. 

But once a customer has booked their cruise, 

Carnival hopes that the Medallion will become 

the only device they need to carry around while 

on board, replacing their smartphone, credit card 

and any other devices. 

The token can be worn on a wristband or chain 

or carried in a pocket or purse, and will be used 

for everything from checking on to the ship 

and unlocking the guest’s cabin door as they 

approach the room to paying for goods. 

Once on board, guests 

will be able to use the 

accompanying mobile app 

to make reservations or 

pre-order drinks for a show 

later – and as soon as they 

approach the location, the 

token will alert staff so they 

can be seamlessly checked in 

and served. The housekeeping team 

will also be alerted when guests are out of the 

cabin so the cleaning crew can do the daily 

servicing without disturbing them. 

Princess Cruises has installed 122km of cable, 

7,000 sensors and 650 readers to enable this 

seamless experience, but the fi rm sees this as a 

worthwhile investment for establishing a larger 

base of cruise fans. 

Tony Roberts, vice-president UK & Europe at 

Princess Cruises, told attendees: “The cruise 

market is about 2% of the travel market and the 

idea here is how do we enhance the guest 

experience so much that people are thinking 

about a cruise holiday rather than beach holiday. 

“We’re providing guests with the most 

personalised experience so they really do get 

to make the best of their time on holiday. We 

think this is how people will enjoy their holidays 

in the future, with that level of personalisation 

they’ve come to expect when they’re shopping 

on the internet.” 

▶ For the den 

Last year’s XPS 12 was a vexing 

failure – how could such a 

close relation to the excellent 

XPS 13 get it so wrong? Wisely, 

Dell has stuck much closer to 

its fi nest clamshell for the new 

XPS 13 9365 2-in-1, which 

adopts a rotating hinge in 

place of a detachable one. 

We still prefer the standard 

laptop version, but the XPS 13 

9365 is a lovely convertible, 

with its gorgeous InfinityEdge 

display, ultra-thin chassis and 

much-improved battery life 

over the XPS 12. It’s powerful 

enough to get some light work 

done, before fl ipping the 

screen into tablet mode for 

some sofa-based relaxing. 

(Page 34) 

▶ For the shelf 

Looks aren’t everything, as 

the Master & Dynamic 

MH40 shows perfectly. 

This premium set of 

over-ear headphones looks 

great, incorporating both 

cowhide and lambskin, 

but it’s hampered by an 

uncomfortable fi t for 

anyone without a 

sufficiently small head 

or ears. Sound quality 

isn’t very refi ned for the 

price, either. 

(Page 50) 

▶ For the wallet 

We’ve long been fans of Asus’s 

ZenBook ultra-portables – in 

fact, much of this magazine 

was produced on a ZenBook 

UX305CA. The latest ZenBook 

UX310UA continues the streak, 

offering a brilliant 13.3in 

display and impressive 

portability, all for hundreds of 

pounds 

less than 

most 

similarly 

slim laptops. 

(Page 32) 


15

1 

Operating 

1 

AGA 

BOOTING UP 

system 

quality 

Microsoft has fi nally stopped supporting 

the much-maligned Windows Vista OS, 

10 years after its release. 

2Clean pavements 

The Watchdog 1 drone locates dog 

poo and then alerts the Patroldog 1 

robot, which rolls in to clean up. 

3 PowerPoint 

Celebrating its 30th birthday. 

Expect reams of meta-presentations 

on the occasion. 

4Russian linguists 

MI5 is seeking Russian speakers to 

help protect the UK from hackers. 

cookers 

Complicated, toast-burning, 

talking points, Aga ovens can be hacked. 

So you can forget any plans you had for 

perfect eggs. 

Samsung reveals green Galaxy Note 7 

recycling plans 

SOUTH KOREAN HARDWARE 

fi rm Samsung has come to 

agreeable terms with the 

environmental group 

Greenpeace over the massive 

Galaxy Note 7 product recall. 

Greenpeace said that the 

Samsung reaction followed 

strong public concern, and 

showed there was a clear 

interest in the need to properly 

dispose of electronics. 

“People around the world 

signed petitions, emailed 

Samsung’s CEO, demonstrated 

in cities around the world, and 

fi nally Samsung has listened. 

This is a major win for everyone 

that took action, and a step 

towards shifting the way we 

produce and dispose of 

electronics,” said Jude Lee, 

global senior campaigner at 

Greenpeace East Asia. 

Samsung has made a number of 

promises about tackling the kindling-like 

Note 7, and has recalled the whole lot of 

them for real safety reasons. It promised to 

recycle any units that can be recycled, and 

will strip down the rest for any usable parts 

and electronics. 

Once the handset maker has 

stripped the hardware for all the 

parts it wants, it will throw them 

open to any interested parties. 

“Regarding the Galaxy Note 7 

devices as refurbished phones or 

rental phones, applicability is 

dependent upon consultations 

with regulatory authorities and 

carriers as well as due 

consideration of local demand. 

The markets and release dates 

will be determined accordingly,” 

explained the fi rm. 

“For remaining Galaxy Note 7 

devices, components such as 

semiconductors and camera 

modules shall be detached by 

companies specialising in such 

services and used for test 

sample production 

purposes. Finally, for 

left over component 

recycling, Samsung shall 

fi rst extract precious 

metals, such as copper, 

nickel, gold and silver by 

utilising eco-friendly companies 

specialising in such processes.” 

Just as long as they aren’t stored near any 

petrol or matches, this should all go fi ne. 

Get packing: Vodafone kills roaming 

charges in 40 locations 

2Travelling laptops 

Good luck moving hardware 

through the air because of politics. 

3Watching a movie 

with a millennial 

There is a 50% chance that it’s a pirate 

copy, according to a recent study. 

4 Imagination 

Technologies 

People are putting the fi rm down 

following a failed Apple licensing deal. 

Shares fell like rotten apples. 

CRASHING 

GET OUT the beach towels and the suntan 

lotion once again, British people – roaming is 

very much back on the travel itinerary. 

Service provider Vodafone has got up early 

and rushed out to put roaming towels on 

sunbeds in 40 locations, providing 

holidaymakers and travellers overseas with 

no roaming charges, but exactly the same 

terms that they enjoy at home. 

The 40 locations include a number of 

popular European holiday destinations. 

including Greece, Spain and Turkey. 

“Customers have told us they want us 

and the rest of the industry to change. 

They want life to be simpler and for us 

to remove the things that make life 

stressful so they can live their lives, 

uninterrupted by these concerns,” said 

Nick Jeff ery, Vodafone UK CEO. 

“Our new programme will do that over 

the next few years and will prove our 

commitment to letting our customers 

talk, text or stream for a great price, 

wherever in the world they may be.” 

Ernest Doku, telecoms expert at the 

price comparison site uSwitch.com, 

congratulated Vodafone on its timing. 

“With EU roaming charges due to be 

abolished for UK customers as of 15th June 

and with uncertainty over what Brexit will 

mean for roaming charges in the longer term, 

Vodafone is fi ring the starting gun ahead of 

time, keen to steal a march on its rivals and 

put its current customers at ease,” he said. 

However, the perk is only offered to new 

customers or those upgrading an existing paymonthly 

contract, so not all users will benefi t. 


Loyal broadband customers ripped off 

by huge price hikes 

RESEARCH FROM THE UK Citizens Advice 

organisation has found that consistent and 

reliable customers get a raw deal when it 

comes to renewing their broadband prices. 

In fact, they actually get penalised by their 

provider, sometimes having to face price 

increases of up to 43% when one contract 

ends and another automatically begins. 

The advice bureau says that this can work 

out as an average price rise of £113 a year, 

which seems iniquitous, particularly when 

these fi gures are culled from the average 

prices of the most basic packages at the big 

fi ve service providers. 

BT and Sky make the biggest hikes, treating 

users to 67% and 53% increases respectively. 

Over four years, consumers are paying a 

loyalty penalty of up to £594 (BT), depending 

on where they take their services from. 

Virgin Media looks the best bet, with no 

increases on a £32.50 monthly tariff over a 

four-year renewing period, and TalkTalk 

shuffles in at second best with a ‘mere’ 

£132 penalty reward. 

Citizens Advice 

recommends that you shop 

around. “Loyal broadband 

customers are being stung 

by big price rises once 

their fi xed deal ends. 

People often choose their 

broadband deals based on 

the price that works for 

them – but our evidence 

shows that many do not 

realise the price will rise 

after the end of the fi xed 

deal. With people staying 

with their supplier for an 

average of four years, 

these extra costs can run 

into hundreds of pounds,” 

said Gillian Guy, chief 

executive of Citizens Advice. 

“Older customers and those who have less 

money are more likely to stay with their 

supplier for longer, meaning their loyalty 

penalty could reach over a thousand pounds. 

“The government has rightly put energy 

fi rms on warning for how they treat loyal 

customers – the actions of broadband fi rms 

warrant similar scrutiny. Extra protections for 

vulnerable consumers are also a must.” 

8% 

The projected decline in tablet 

and eReader sales by 2022 

2 46% 

MILES DRIVEN THROUGH 

GREENWICH BY A NEW 

DRIVERLESS SHUTTLE BUS 

UK businesses hit by acyber 

attack over past12months 

87% 

25- to 34-year-olds who 

use internet banking 

340 

The position thatcolourful anti-virus 

26% 

64% 

The position that colourful anti-virus 

OVER 65s WHO pioneer John McAfeeearnedearned in a 

BANK ONLINE newfamous person list 

50 

Hours of virtual-reality 

content watched to set a new 

Guinness World Record 

PROJECTED 

INCREASE IN 

SALES OF FITNESS 

BANDS AND 

SMARTWATCHES 

BY 2022 


17

California 

Apple hits 

the road 

Apple is the latest 

company to enter 

the self-driving cars race. It has received a 

permit from the California Department of 

Motor Vehicles to test out autonomous 

vehicles on the US state’s roads. 

Apple has remained secretive about its 

plans, but told federal regulators that it had 

turned its attention to “machine learning and 

autonomous systems”. 

Rumours that Apple was interested in 

autonomous cars began two years ago, after it 

fi led a patent for soft ware called ‘Collision 

Avoidance of Arbitrary Polygonal Obstacles’. 

Maribor, Slovenia 

Rest in pixels 

A Slovenian cemetery has created a vandaland 

weather-proof digital tombstone that can 

stand as a testament to a life, but perhaps 

with some concerns 

about blue screens 

of death in death. 

The fi tt ing, or 

fl ickering, memorial, 

is designed to last. 

“The tombstone has a sensor so that when 

nobody is around it only shows the person’s 

name and the years of their birth and death. 

This saves energy and the screen itself, and 

helps extend the tombstone’s lifetime,” said 

the outfit behind the technology. 

China 

Government gets strict on privacy 

China plans to impose the world’s strictest 

digital privacy rights rules against fi rms such 

as Facebook and Google by requiring them to 

obtain user permission before sending any 

data about them outside the country. 

The rules oblige large data companies to 

go through an annual security assessment. 

The law also prevents the transmission of 

economic, scientific 

or technological data 

outside the country 

if the government 

decides it poses a 

threat to security or 

public interest. 

Middle East and North Africa 

I know that face 

UK surveillance outfit Digital Barriers has won 

the contract to provide facial-recognition 

technology to Careem, an Uber-like taxi 

service that dominates the Middle East and 

North African market, across locations 

including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, 

Pakistan, Morocco and Kuwait. 

“When customers rely on a ride-hailing 

service or any other mode of 

transportation to go from 

point A to point B, they are 

also placing their trust in 

the service provider for 

their safety and security,” 

said Magnus Olsson, 

co-founder of Careem. 

India 

Watchdog welcomes e-voting hackers 

India’s election watchdog has invited hackers 

to target its e-ballot boxes, following demands 

for an investigation into the security of the 

country’s electronic voting machines. 

After recent elections, there were calls for 

the electronic voting machines to be ditched 

and replaced with paper ballots. 

While the Indian government 

rejected calls for a return to paper 

slips, the watchdog said it 

will organise a hackathon 

to probe the boxes. 

The 10-day competition 

invites anyone to subvert 

the voting machines and 

the back-end systems. 

Australia 

eBay threatens to 

block Oz shoppers 

Auction company 

eBay is threatening 

to block Australian 

customers if the 

government enacts laws to collect Goods and 

Services Tax (GST) from internet sales. The 

fi rm claimed proposals to tax all goods sold 

by overseas businesses were “unworkable and 

would harm Australian consumers”. 

Sales of under $1,000 currently aren’t taxed 

but the government plans to remove this 

threshold for businesses with sales of $75,000. 

Treasurer Scott Morrison said it would 

mean Australian businesses “do not continue 

to be unfairly disadvantaged”. 

18 

JULY 2017 | COMPUTER SHOPPER | ISSUE 353

State-sponsored espionage 

Mostly from Russia without love 

THE LAST YEAR has seen a swathe of political 

changes, some radical election results, and some 

scandalous talk of election manipulation. The US 

in particular has accused Russia of perpetrating 

attacks against its cyber systems, especially in 

the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. 

Buried deep in this is the problem of 

state-sponsored espionage, which has been a 

problem for industry and infrastructure for some 

time, and is now fi rmly on the political agenda 

and at the front of politicians’ minds. 

OH. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO 

WITH ME THEN… 

It might seem like faraway stuff, and the kind of 

thing that concerns the plot of modern James 

Bond movies, but this type of state-sponsored 

cyber spying is widespread and could have an 

impact on us lowly citizens. 

In the last six months of 2016, around 40% 

of all industrial computers faced a cyber attack 

of some kind, according to the Russian security 

fi rm Kaspersky Lab, which said that industrial 

systems and computers were becoming 

increasingly embattled. 

Infections were most commonly caused 

by internet-based attacks, removable storage 

devices and email attachments. These are the three evil musketeers 

of malware, and they could easily be used to disrupt national 

infrastructure and industry. 

Such tools are already being used for mayhem and mischief. 

In the US, two Russian spies, one Russian hacker and a lone 

Canadian have been charged with stealing the sensitive personal 

information of 500 million Yahoo! users. This huge attack on a 

massive American corporation was a real shocker and revealed 

a very soft security underbelly. 

IS THIS THREAT LEVEL MIDNIGHT? 

Speaking about the Yahoo! incident, 

Tim Matthews, vice-president at security 

fi rm Imperva, warned: “This case is 

disturbing on many levels, but enterprises 

should take note. Organisations may have 

been under the false impression that 

state-sponsored hacking was aimed at other 

governments – or at worst, political parties. 

Now we have learned that elite teams of 

state-sponsored conspirators and hackers 

are also seeking access to corporate data. 

“What’s more, the state-sponsored conspirators of this cyber war 

are, as in ancient times, giving the spoils of this war to their hacker 

combatants. In this case, after collecting the data on their political 

targets, which includes employees of commercial entities in 

transportation and fi nancial services, the hackers were given free 

rein with the spoils – the data from 500 million Yahoo users.” 

Here, we imagine Matthews will have paused for a shake of the 

head, before adding: “If a nation state hacked Yahoo!, who is to 

know what other companies may have been or will be hacked? 

Those who don’t carefully monitor their networks today may well 

regret it down the road.” 

“The anonymity of web-based 

attacks means nation states can 

achieve ethically questionable 

aims via puppet actors” 

HOW EASY IS IT TO PROVE GOVERNMENTS ARE BEHIND THIS? 

Security fi rm ThreatConnect suggests that the relationship between 

state and hacker works both ways, and that both make the most of 

the mystery of their trade. It is possible that the fi rst thing a victim 

will know about their own attack is when it becomes obvious that 

data is leaving or that traffic is unusual. 

“State-sponsored hackers are the big dogs. The anonymity of 

web-based attacks means that nation states can achieve their more 

ethically questionable aims via puppet actors, making it extremely 

difficult to prove links between individual 

hacks and state-sponsored campaigns,” 

the fi rm noted. 

“However, state-sponsored hackers are 

sometimes identifiable by their attack 

patterns and dedication to a specific target. 

They’re a tenacious breed; if you think 

you’re being targeted by a state-backed 

hacker you should be ready for a long 

struggle to throw them off.” 

HAS CYBER ESPIONAGE PEAKED? 

Unfortunately not. There were scandals in the US election, and talk 

of some manipulation in the UK’s EU referendum. And we now 

have a snap general election coming up in June, which could open 

the fl oodgates for a whole new load of cyber manipulation and 

interference. A lot of fi ngers get pointed at the Russian government, 

and perhaps with good reason. It has been found to be the source 

of a heap of sophisticated attacks, and to be keen on pushing 

forward with the development of proven tools. 

Turla, one of the most infamous malware groups said to be borne 

out of Russia, has recently updated its main attack, according to ESET, 

dubbing it Carbon and hurling as many as eight active versions out into 

the wild. 2017 is a bad year to be a target, that much is for sure. 


19

The F1 car is the easy-to-assemble star 

3D PRINTING has arrived in the 

fast-paced world of motor racing. 

McLaren has announced that it is 

printing Formula 1 racing car parts 

during the race. Quick 3D trackside 

printing is expected to give the 

fi rm an edge over the competition 

as it should be able to make 

modifications to parts on the fl y. 

The team produced its fi rst parts at 

the Bahrain Grand Prix in April. 

“We are consistently modifying and improving 

our Formula 1 car designs,” said Neil Oatley, design 

and development director, McLaren Racing. 

“So the ability to test new designs quickly is 

critical to making the car lighter and, more 

importantly, increasing the number of tangible 

iterations in improved car performance. 

“If we can bring new developments to the car one 

race earlier – going from new idea to new part in only 

a few days – this will be a key factor in making the 

MCL32 [car] more competitive. By expanding the use 

GRAPHENE, THE SEEMINGLY do-everything 

revolutionary technology, is helping to make salt 

water, which takes up most of the planet, into 

drinkable water where it might be most needed. 

The process is discussed in the Nature 

Nanotechnology journal, and says that a graphenebased 

oxide sieve could be used to form a barrier 

that efficiently cleans water as it passes through. 

The process is a new one because researchers 

struggled to produce large enough quantities of 

single-layer graphene. They turned to ‘simple 

oxidation’ to solve the puzzle. 

Dr Rahul from Manchester University explained: 

“Graphene oxide can be produced by simple 

oxidation in the lab. As an ink or solution, we can 

compose it on a substrate or porous material. Then 

of Stratasys 3D printing in our 

manufacturing processes, including 

producing fi nal car components, 

composite lay-up and sacrificial 

tools, cutting jigs, and more, we are 

decreasing our lead times while 

increasing part complexity.” 

McLaren is partnering with UK 

fi rm Stratasys and using its uPrint 

SE Plus machine on site. 

“Formula 1 is one of the world’s 

best proving grounds for our additive manufacturing 

solutions,” explained Andy Middleton of Stratasys. 

“As the official supplier of 3D printing solutions 

to the McLaren-Honda Formula 1 team, we are 

working closely together to solve their engineering 

challenges in the workshop, in the wind-tunnel, and 

on the track. 

“We believe that this, in turn, will enable us to 

develop new materials and applications that bring 

new efficiencies and capabilities to McLaren Racing 

and other automotive designers and manufacturers.” 

Graphene steps in to sieve salt from the sea 

BOEING IS ALSO embracing the 3D 

printing revolution for its latest aircraft. raft. 

The aerospace company has turned 

to Norway-based Norsk Titanium to 

provide it with fl ight-authorityapproved 

3D printed parts for its 

massive 787 Dreamliner. 

Boeing is expecting to save 

millions of dollars in manufacturing 

and material costs by adopting 

Norsk’s proprietary Rapid Plasma 

Deposition titanium production 

method for wire-based materials. 

This plan did not take fl ight overnight, and 

the project is only going ahead after a period of 

rigorous testing and inspection, which saw Norsk 

we can use it as a membrane. In terms of scalability 

and the cost of the material, graphene oxide has a 

potential advantage over single-layered graphene.” 

The paper is called ‘Tunable sieving of ions using 

graphene oxide membranes’, and describes the 

process in glorious detail. Dr Rahul told the BBC 

that the knack is getting the holes in the graphene 

small enough to stop the salt getting through. 

These are much simpler terms. 

“To make it permeable, you need to drill small 

holes in the membrane. But if the hole size is 

larger than one nanometre, the salts go through 

that hole,” he said. 

“You have to make a membrane with a very 

uniform less-than-one-nanometre hole size to make 

it useful for desalination. It’s a really challenging job.” 

Boeing turns to 3D printing to shave 

millions off the 787 Dreamliner 

awarded FAA certification. Boeing is 

confident it’s the right move. 

“From the outset, the 787 has 

been the hallmark of innovation 

and efficiency,” said John Byrne, 

vice-president, airplane materials 

and structures, supplier 

management at Boeing 

Commercial Airplanes. 

“We are always looking at the 

latest technologies to drive cost 

reduction, performance and value to 

our customers and Norsk Titanium’s RPD 

capability fi ts the bill in a new and creative way.” 

Boeing hopes to save between $2m and $3m off 

the cost of each plane by 3D printing the parts. 

SOUND 

BYTES 

Now I know that if 

you’re trying to 

catch terrorists it’s really 

tempting to demand to 

be able to break all that 

encryption, but if you 

break that encryption, 

then guess what – so 

could other people. 

And guess what – they 

may end up getting 

better at it than you are” 

Tim Berners-Lee offers some advice to 

governments looking for backdoors 

PowerPoint does 

something that 

many people want to do: 

expressing a sequence of 

ideas, one after another 

in order, using all kinds of 

graphics and language” 

PowerPoint inventor Robert Gaskins 

on the 30th birthday of his venerable 

meeting-improving soft ware 

We saw it as a 

technology to 

essentially punch through 

that fourth wall… it’s a 

cool way to connect 

directly with our guests” 

Burger King explains why an advert for 

recycled meat had to mess with Google 

Home in people’s homes 

We have now 

investigated an 

issue which meant some 

Virgin Media customers 

were intermittently not 

able to access Facebook 

and Instagram. Our fault 

has now been fixed and 

we apologise for any 

inconvenience caused” 

Virgin Media reopens the cat-pic 

fl oodgates after a period of downtime 

Over time I think 

we will probably 

see a closer merger of 

biological intelligence 

and digital intelligence… 

It’s mostly about the 

bandwidth, the speed of 

the connection between 

your brain and the digital 

version of yourself, 

particularly output” 

Elon Musk explains how the 

connected you might work in real life 


IBM 5150 

The revolutionary PC that kicked off the whole home computing boom in 1981 

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, what we have 

before us here is a dinosaur. The IBM 5150, 

the sort of stone-age piece of hardware that 

makes young people pick up sticks and start 

poking at it. 

It was born in 1981, which is eight years 

after this author, and has been loved ever 

since. The big grey box was embraced in 

classrooms and by early tech aficionados. 

Big Blue saw it as a replacement for the 

multimillion-dollar huge-array computing 

machines that industry was using, but one 

that was built and priced for the home. 

IBM remembers the thing fondly; in fact, 

you’d have to go some distance to fi nd 

anyone who doesn’t. “When the IBM Personal 

Computer (IBM 5150) was introduced to the 

world 25 years ago, it was dramatically clear 

to most observers that IBM had done 

something very new and different,” explained 

IBM about itself when marking the 5150’s 

quarter-century anniversary. 

“Here you had a large company, steeped 

in tradition, that had been willing and able to 

set aside its ‘business as usual’ methods to 

produce in volume a highly competitive, tiny 

computer of top quality, intended for both 

consumers and businesses. And IBM was 

able to do all that and roll out its fi rst PC in 

just one year.” 

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM 

IBM might now have a reputation for being a 

safe pair of hands, but at the time this was 

revolutionary stuff. When IBM fi rst began 

speaking about the machine, one analyst 

was dismissive, saying, “IBM bringing out a 

personal computer would be like teaching 

an elephant to tap dance”. 

IBM did it, though, announcing the 5150 

on 12th August 1981. “This is the computer 

for just about everyone who has ever 

wanted a personal system at the office, 

on the university campus or at home,” said 

CB Rogers Jr, IBM vice-president. 

“We believe its performance, reliability and 

ease of use make it the most advanced, 

affordable personal computer in the 

marketplace,” he enthused. 

The claims at launch will have been mind 

blowing, but now they are less so. Even IBM 

admits that the machine could only store as 

much data as a large cookbook. IBM wasn’t 

really comparing like for like though, as the 

computers of the 1960s required two fl oors of 

their own just to exist on. The 5150 was 

perhaps best compared against the IBM 

5100, which came out in 1975 and had low 

consumer appeal, or perhaps the zippy little 

5322 or Datamaster, though that was more 

of a word processor. 

By 1981, however, IBM was giving a leg up 

to Microsoft by embracing a modified version 

of its Basic language for the 5150. This later 

became PC-DOS and then, when safely 

ensconced at Microsoft , MS-DOS. 

IBM sold the 5150 for between $1,500 and 

$3,000, and for the highest price tag a 

shopper could get a maxed-out box with a 

monitor, RAM options scaling up from 16KB 

to a maximum 256KB, an 11.5in screen, dual 

160KB 5.25in disk drives, and a cassette and a 

keyboard. Put yourself back into 1981, doesn’t 

that all sound so appealing? Looking at it now, 

we can see how its design has dated, but it 

remains incredibly neat. The full package, 

complete with everything from monitor to the 

brace of disk drives, still wouldn’t look out of 

place in some circumstances. Even if those 

circumstances are a shelf in a shed. 

FANFARE FOR THE COMMON PC 

We began with an intro from IBM, so we’ll 

allow the fi rm to play its creation out with a 

fanfare: “The introduction of the IBM Personal 

Computer a quarter of a century ago set a 

worldwide personal computing standard and 

helped establish a multibillion-dollar industry.” 

Let us all agree that IBM is proud of the 

5150, and that it did indeed begin the home 

computing revolution. 


21

REVIEWS 

YOUR TRUSTED GUIDE TO WHAT’S NEW 

SMART HOME ASSISTANT 

GOOGLE Home 

★★★★★ 

£130 • From madeby.google.com 

VERDICT 

A very smart home assistant that’s easy to converse with, 

but third-party support lags behind the Echo for now 

THE AMAZON ECHO (Shopper 347) and Echo 

Dot (Shopper 349) proved people were keen 

to have an always-listening voice assistant in 

the home, with both devices selling in droves. 

It’s no wonder, then, that Google has decided 

to get in on the act with its rival product, Home. 

As with the Echo, Home is a small speaker 

powered by a personal assistant that can 

answer questions, play music and control your 

smart home devices. Home is an attractivelooking 

device, looking more like a funky light 

than a traditional speaker. Although it ships 

with a basic white base, you can buy various 

material or metal replacement bases (from 

£18) to match your Home to your interior 

decor. In many ways, the choice of bases 

makes Home more fl exible than the Echo, 

which is available only in black or white. 

Home has a single button on it: a 

microphone button at the back that stops 

the device from listening to you. The top is 

touch sensitive, and you can press and hold to 

activate listening mode, if the wake-up phrase 

“OK Google” doesn’t work. We never had 

trouble with this, as the far-fi eld voice 

technology picked up our speech from across 

our biggest room. The use of a two-word 

wake-up phrase meant we never 

triggered Google Home by accident; 

the Echo will quite often wake up when 

it thinks it hears you say “Alexa”. 

TALKING POINTS 

The touch-sensitive top of the Home 

also lets you change volume by 

swirling your fi nger around. A neat 

graphic appears on top to show the 

current setting. Alternatively, you can 

just use your voice and ask Home to 

set itself to a particular volume. 

The big difference between 

Google’s and Amazon’s devices is the 

personal assistant. While Amazon uses its 

Alexa service, Home has the Google 

Assistant, which has appeared on several 

recent Android phones. As the Google 

Assistant ties into the company’s other 

services, including Maps and search, Home 

certainly has an advantage on paper. 

It’s an advantage that’s carried over in 

practice, too, as the Google Assistant is the 

smartest assistant we’ve used, as well as the 

most natural to interact with. Part of its 

beauty is that the Assistant is context aware, 

so you can continue a conversation with it. 

Ask, “What’s the weather like tomorrow?” and 

you get an up-to-date forecast; you can then 

follow up with, “And at the weekend?”, and 

Google understands that you want a further 

weather update. Alexa isn’t that smart, and 

each interaction has to be carefully 

worded to get the right answer. 

Likewise, you can ask Google Home 

where the nearest supermarket is, 

and then follow up by asking when 

it shuts. It’s a far more natural 

experience than dealing with other 

personal assistants. The Google 

Assistant is also better at fi nding 

answers than Alexa, and we found it 

hard to stump Home completely. 

Google Assistant tends to be a bit more 

accurate, too. Ask what the weather is like in 

Falmouth, for example, and Home understands 

that you’re talking about the UK; Alexa starts 

telling you what the weather is like in the US. 

LEARNING CURVE 

Google can also pull in the information that it 

knows about you. For example, ask what the 

traffic is like on the way home, and the Google 

Assistant gives you the correct information. 

Home can also provide you with details 

from your calendar, as well as pulling 

information from Gmail, such as upcoming 

bookings and fl ights. Sadly, however, Home 

can only integrate with a single Google 

Account at the moment. An update rolling 

out soon will let Home detect different 

voices, giving them their information from 

their own Google account. 

Google Home also ties into other services. 

Netflix and Chromecast support is neat, as 

you can use your voice to ask Home to play 

content on your TV. While it’s arguably more 

useful to browse for content on your phone, 

Home’s advantage is that you can use your 

22 


voice to pause and resume playback, rewind, turn 

on captions and skip episodes. It’s a far quicker 

interaction than having to whip out a phone, 

switch to the Netflix app and hit the pause button 

when the phone rings. 

Spotify and Google Play Music support is built 

in, letting you play streamed music directly on the 

Home. There’s also TuneIn, so you can quickly play 

your favourite radio station, too. Unlike the Echo, 

though, there’s no Bluetooth support. 

Remove the Home’s base, and you’ll see the 2in 

high-excursion speaker and dual 2in passive 

radiators. In a high-excursion speaker, the cone 

moves further than on regular speakers, giving a 

The Google Assistant is the smartest 

assistant we’ve used, as well as the 

most natural to interact with 

greater frequency range. Compared to the full-size 

Echo, Home’s audio quality is similar: we found 

that Home has more bass, but the Echo goes a 

little louder. There’s very little in it, though, and 

both are capable, quality music devices. 

JOIN US 

Beyond the baked-in features, Google Home is 

expandable via third-party add-ons. One of the 

biggest uses is smart home control. For example, 

you can turn on, dim and control the colour of 

your Philips Hue lights. Home uses a similar set of 

commands to Alexa for smart home control, and 

we found little difference between the two devices. 

This hands Echo the advantage, as Alexa 

currently has far more smart home skills available 

for it than Home. In particular, Alexa has support 

for a wider range of smart thermostats and lighting 

systems. Google Home’s biggest support is from 

Nest (a Google company), SmartThings and Philips 

Hue. We expect Home’s support to grow in future, 

as more companies develop for the platform. 

Once you add a Home control service, found 

devices can be organised into Rooms. You can then 

control an entire Room, say turning everything off 

at once. It’s a similar idea to Alexa’s Groups. 

For smart home control, it’s likely that you’ll 

want more than one device so that multiple 

Google Homes will play nicely together. When 

you speak the wake word, only the closest Home 

will respond to your question. Home will override 

your Android phone, too, which isn’t always that 

helpful. Arguably, it would be better for Google 

to have different wake words for its Android and 

Home products so you can more easily choose 

which device you want to interact with. 

Kitting out a house can get expensive, which 

is where Amazon has the advantage with the tiny 

Echo Dot. At £50 a go, adding multiple Echo 

devices to your home isn’t that costly. 

Beyond the smart home, Home supports 

third-party news plug-ins, bringing you the latest 

news from the BBC, Daily Telegraph, Sky News 

and more. In particular, the BBC headlines are 

high-quality, with the regular news readers giving 

you the latest information. 

Home doesn’t have the same range of 

third-party plug-ins as Alexa. For example, on 

our Echo, we’ve got an Alexa Skill that can tell 

us the current status of a Tube line, as well as 

one that will tell a bedtime story. There are 

thousands (of varying quality) to choose from 

on Alexa, and it would be good to see a similar 

range of options available for Home. Admittedly, 

support for other services is starting to come, 

via Conversation Actions. 

HOME ALONE 

We love the My Day feature, where Home gives 

you an overview of your day. You can customise 

the information you get, although 

the default works well: it tells you the 

weather, how your commute is 

looking, when your next meeting is, 

gives you your reminders and then 

ends with the latest news report. 

It’s a neat thing to start a day with. 

In addition, Google Home can do 

all the usual things that you’d expect 

from a voice assistant, including acting as an 

alarm, setting reminders, helping you convert 

between different scales (great for cooking), 

and answering questions. 

Here are the big questions: is Google Home 

worth buying, and is it better than the Echo? 

The answers aren’t that straightforward, and 

it depends on what you want to do. As a 

standalone product, Google Home is cheaper 

than the full-size Echo, and its voice assistant is 

more accomplished and a little easier to interact 

with. That said, smart home support is more 

limited, and Home has fewer skills. It also works 

out more expensive to kit out a home with 

multiple speakers, as there’s no cheaper option 

to compete with the Amazon Echo Dot. In short, 

we’d pick the Echo for home control at the 

moment, and Google Home otherwise. 

David Ludlow 

SPECIFICATIONS 

DRIVERS 1x 2in driver, 2x 2in passive radiators • RMS 

POWEROUTPUT Not stated • DOCKCONNECTOR None • 

WIRELESS 802.11ac Wi-Fi • DIMENSIONS 143x96x96mm • 

WEIGHT 477g • WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS 

madeby.google.com/home • PART CODE Home 

ISSUE 353 | COMPUTER SHOPPER | JULY 2017

DESKTOP GAMING PC 

BOX Cube Panther 

★★★★★ 

£850 • From www.box.co.uk 

VERDICT 

The cheapest GTX 1060-based system we’ve seen yet is an unsurprisingly strong performer 

£850 MAY BE a sizable chunk of the average 

pay cheque, but in desktop terms, it’s a fairly 

middling amount – hence why it’s particularly 

crucial to judge where exactly the budget is 

being spent. High-end processor or a fast 

SSD? Luxury chassis or expansive 

motherboard? With any reasonably priced PC 

build, there are big component choices to be 

made, even if you’re not building it yourself. 

With the Cube Panther, Box has focused on 

gaming, forgoing higher-end parts elsewhere 

to include a GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card. 

It’s the 3GB VRAM version, rather than a 6GB 

model, but that generally only means the loss 

of a few frames per second – not a huge issue 

when you’re already getting high frame rates 

at both 1080p and 1440p. 

SMOOTH OPERATOR 

Indeed, Dirt Showdown running at Ultra 

settings was no match for the Cube Panther’s 

capable GPU. It returned performances of 

114fps at 1,920x1,080, 90fps at 2,560x1,440 

and even a very playable 51fps at 3,840x2,160. 

Dirt Showdown is a very undemanding 

game compared to our other test game, 

Metro: Last Light Redux, but even here the 

Cube Panther runs well. With Very High 

settings and SSAA enabled, it averaged 47fps 

at 1,920x1,080, which is perfectly fi ne without 

the need to tone down any textures or 

graphical effects. 2,560x1,440 proved a greater 

challenge, as the Cube Panther only managed 

27fps (30fps or higher is ideal), but this was 

easily fi xed by switching off SSAA, which 

doesn’t have much of a pronounced effect at 

this resolution anyway. Once that’s done, it 

jumps to a much smoother 44fps. 

The frame rate plummeted to 11fps at 

3,840x2,160, and turning off SSAA wasn’t 

enough this time, so we switched to Medium 

quality as well. This resulted in a 49fps average 

– not bad for a graphics card that wasn’t really 

intended for 4K gaming in the fi rst place. 

Overall, the Cube Panther is broadly on a 

par with the more expensive Yoyotech 

Warbird G2 (Shopper 351) and Chillblast Fusion 

Hubble (Shopper 350), making it an excellent 

choice for anyone primarily interested in 

games. It even achieved a high score of 7.5 in 

Valve’s punishing SteamVR Performance Test, 

so it’s ready for virtual reality as well. 

CHIP SERVICE 

As we said, everything else about Box’s PC is 

less impressive. That’s not to say it’s actually 

bad. Take the quad-core, 3.7GHz Intel Core 

i5-7500 processor – it’s non-overclockable 

and would likely limit the performance of 

more powerful GPUs, were you to upgrade 

in the future, but here it’s fi ne enough for 

home use, and evidently doesn’t bottleneck 

the GTX 1060. Together with 8GB of DDR4 

memory, it scored (amusingly) 108 in every 

single part of our processing benchmark, 

naturally including the overall score. You’ll 

need more muscle for things like video editing 

or heavy multitasking with large fi les, but it’s 

still a respectable performance at this price. 

There’s also no dedicated SSD, though at 

least you’re not stuck with a simple hard disk 

either. Storage comes in the form of a 

decent-sized 1TB hybrid drive – the bulk of 

this is traditional mechanical storage, but 

there’s also an 8GB cache, which can help 

speed up your most-used applications. 

We do feel it could have 

done with a few more full-size 

USB ports, mind. There are 

only two USB3s on the front 

panel plus two USB3 and four 

USB2 ports at the rear, which 

is about the minimum we’d 

expect from a desktop PC. 

There are only basic 3.5mm 

audio jacks as well, though 

some fl ashes of bonus utility 

do come via a single USB 

Type-C port and a 802.11n 

Wi-Fi card, which has two 

antenna mounts on the rear 

I/O panel. Credit where it’s 

due, this is not only a useful 

inclusion on its own, but if 

you have to go wireless 

instead of using the Ethernet 

socket, it will save one of the limited USB 

ports being taken up by a receiver. 

A more premium touch is the inclusion of 

two M.2 slots on the motherboard, with 

support for Intel’s new, ultra-fast Optane 

drives. Even if you eventually go for a more 

basic NVMe SSD, we’d defi nitely recommend 

it over another SATA drive, though with three 

3.5in, two 2.5in and two 5.25in drive bays, 

you’ve got a fair few options. 

MOODY VIEWS 

The interior is bathed in a moody red light, 

which you have a good view of through the 

acrylic side window. Unfortunately, the rest of 

the case doesn’t look quite as slick, especially 

the storm drain grate-looking plastic bars 

running across the front fan intake. 

Looks aside, this is a competent and quiet 

gaming rig that we wouldn’t mind keeping 

under the desk (though perhaps not on it). It 

may lack a huge array of exceptional features, 

but not everyone can stretch to the £1,000 of 

our current Best Buy, the Chillblast Fusion 

Hubble, and as long as you avoid serious 

data-crunching or multimedia tasks, this 

cheaper system will get things done just fi ne. 

James Archer 


PROCESSOR Quad-core 3.7GHz Intel Core i5-6500 • RAM 

8GB DDR4 • FRONT USB PORTS 2x USB3 • REAR USB 

PORTS 4x USB2, 2x USB3, 1x USB Type-C • GRAPHICS CARD 

3GB Asus Dual GeForce GTX 1060 • TOTAL STORAGE 1TB 

SSHD • DISPLAY None • OPERATING SYSTEM Windows 10 

• WARRANTY Two years labour inc one year collect and 

return and one year parts • DETAILS www.box.co.uk • 

PART CODE CU-Pani5GTX10608Win10 

Windows overall 

Multitasking 

Dirt Showdown 

Metro: Last Light 

0% 

-50 

108 

108 

114fps 

47fps 

Reference +50 +100 

See page 72 for performance details 


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DESKTOP GAMING PC 

CHILLBLAST Fusion Portal 

★★★★★ 

£2,000 • From www.chillblast.com 

VERDICT 

This quirky, GTX 1080 Ti-based PC is hugely 

expensive, but you do get what you pay for 

IT’S ALWAYS NICE to see something different 

amidst the stream of black cuboids that 

usually comprise our PC coverage. Chillblast’s 

Fusion Portal stands out for two reasons, the 

fi rst of which is its form. Held aloft by thin legs 

on either side, the case (a BitFenix Portal, 

hence the name) is one of the most unusual 

Mini-ITX cases we’ve seen, with its rounded, 

pill-like shape with grooves cut into the sides, 

presumably lest they resemble unacceptably 

plain-looking panels of aluminium. 

It doesn’t open up at the sides either, 

another ditching of desktop PC convention. 

Instead, you loosen a couple of screws at 

the back and, with what is ideally no small 

amount of care, pull out a separate internal 

chassis, on to which the motherboard and 

other components are attached. The whole 

thing rolls backwards on a rail, leaving the 

outer shell empty until you slide it all back 

in again. It’s bizarre, and of questionable 

practicality, but we did fi nd ourselves grinning 

at the audacity of such a design. 

Topping it off (literally) is an acrylic window, 

which gives you a fi ne view of the Fusion 

Portal’s second big selling point: an Nvidia 

GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, the new king of the 

Pascal-based graphics cards. 

CUDA, WOULDA, SHOULDA 

Selling for £699 by itself, this 

GPU dwarfs even the mighty 

GTX 1080 in pure specs: it 

has 11GB of GDDR5X RAM 

running at 11GB/s and a 

whopping 3,584 CUDA 

processing cores, 

compared to the GTX 

1080’s 8GB of GDDR5X 

RAM running at 10GB/s 

with 2,560 CUDA cores. 

The GTX 1080 has slightly 

faster boost and base 

clock speeds, but when 

the new model has over 

1,000 additional cores, 

that doesn’t exactly 

even the odds. 

In fact, on paper the 

GTX 1080 Ti is closer to 

Nvidia’s own Titan X, a 

12GB card priced at 

£1,179 – and intended 

for use in things such 

as machine-learning 

development as 

much as high-end 

gaming. This ultimately means 

two things: one, you probably 

shouldn’t spend an extra £420 

on a Titan X; and two, the Fusion 

Portal is a Shopper record-setter 

when it comes to real-world 

gaming performance. 

In our most demanding 

benchmark, Metro: Last Light 

Redux at Very High settings, 

Chillblast’s PC managed 107fps 

at 1,920x1,080, making it the 

fi rst PC we’ve used to break 

100fps at this resolution. 

Happily, it also fi nished 

over the golden 60fps 

mark at 2,560x1,440, 

averaging 62fps by the 

end of the test. Since 

SSAA (anti-aliasing) 

isn’t as useful here as it 

is at lower resolution, we also ran the test with 

it switched off, which saw an increase to a 

beautifully crisp and smooth 116fps. 

At 3,840x2,160 with SSAA back on, the 

Fusion Portal produced a slightly jerky 28fps, 

but again, disabling edge-smoothing allowed 

for a boost up to 59fps with a negligible effect 

on overall quality. Compare that to 

the GTX 1080-powered PC 

Specialist Apollo K-VR 

(Shopper 352), which scored 

42fps under the same 

conditions; 17fps may 

not sound like much, 

but the difference is 

immediately noticeable. 

POWER STRUGGLE 

Strangely, however, the 

Fusion Portal’s result in 

the 1080p Dirt Showdown 

benchmark was lower 

than that of the Apollo 

K-VR: after multiple runs, 

it never averaged higher 

than 159fps, a 10fps 

defi cit. The Chillblast 

system also only managed 

2fps more at 1440p 

(157fps), fi nally pulling 

out a more expected 

lead at 4K, where it 

produced 113fps to 

the Apollo K-VR’s 

93fps. The Fusion 

Portal is absolute 

overkill for playing at 1080p anyway, but we’re 

quite baffled as to how the GTX 1080 Ti lost 

out to a GTX 1080 in this one instance. 

The bottom line, however, is that this is the 

better GPU (and thus the better system) for 

maxed-out gaming on a 4K monitor. Since you 

also get all the Pascal architecture’s VR 

optimisations, it won’t sweat when paired with 

an HTC Vive either. It scored 11 out of 11 in the 

SteamVR Performance Test, so gameplay will 

be as smooth in a headset as it is on a monitor. 

UNLOCK, STOCK AND BARREL 

Nvidia’s beastly GPU has been combined 

with an appropriately capable CPU, the 

quad-core, 4.2GHz Intel Core i7-7700K, as well 

as 16GB of DDR4 RAM. As per usual with 

Chillblast’s PCs, the processor doesn’t come 

pre-overclocked, but since it’s unlocked you 

can tweak the frequencies yourself if you’ve 

got the know-how. 

4K benchmark results were exactly where 

we’d expect for an i7-7700K system, which is 

to say they were very good indeed: 151 in the 

image test, 162 in the video test, 181 in the 

multitasking test and 169 overall. Besides 

allowing the GTX 1080 Ti to perform unabated, 

this shows that the CPU/RAM combo can 

cope well with more serious pursuits, such as 

video editing or livestreaming. 

With powerful parts crammed into a 

relatively small space (the BitFenix case is only 

411mm long and 395mm tall with the stands), 

we were worried about heat build-up forcing 

some noisy fans. However, we were pleased to 


e proved wrong – the Fusion Portal is 

amazingly quiet, barely going beyond a whisper 

during the heavy load of our synthetic 

benchmarks. Full marks to the Corsair Hydro 

Series H80i GT watercooler, a 120mm 

closed-loop system, which keeps both CPU 

temperatures and fan noise nice and low. 

Still, there are sacrifices to be made with a 

build of this size. Pulling out the internal 

chassis shows just how tightly everything – the 

full-size GPU, the watercooler, the power 

cables – has been packed in, and the Mini-ITX 

form factor leaves little scope for further 

expansion. There are no spare PCI-E or RAM 

slots on the motherboard, for example, and 

while there is one empty 3.5in drive bay, in our 

sample it was partly occupied by some cables. 

The obvious retort to this criticism would 

be that since most of the components 

included are top-of-the-line (or near enough), 

making upgrades is hardly an urgent concern. 

Indeed so – when you can already get 59fps in 

Metro at 4K resolution, with practically 

maximum settings, adding a second graphics 

card would be madness, and 16GB of memory 

is more than enough for most uses. 

Storage is another high point, with the 

huge 2TB hard disk complemented by a 256GB 

Samsung SM691 SSD. This is an NVMe drive, 

so is even faster than SATA-based SSDs, and 

takes up minimal space – crucial when there’s 

so little room to spare. 

CONNECT THE SLOTS 

There’s no real need to add dedicated sound 

or Wi-Fi cards, either: the rear I/O panel 

offers up an audiophile-friendly mix of 

connectors, including C/SUB and optical S/ 

PDIF, while the Gigabyte motherboard 

provides dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi built in. 

We’re not sure about the bundled antenna, 

though – it stands on a fl imsy base and 

connects to the rear panel via wires, so you’ll 

need to fi nd somewhere accessible yet 

discreet for it to sit; it can’t be placed on top 

of the PC itself, due to the rounded top. 

We also wish there were a few more (and 

better placed) USB ports. At the back, there 

are just four USB3 and one USB Type-C ports 

(keep in mind you’ll immediately lose two of 

the former to a mouse and keyboard), while 

The Fusion Portal is a Shopper record-setter when it comes 

to real-world gaming performance. It’s the first PC we’ve 

used to break 100fps at 1,920x1,080 in Metro: Last Light 

there are none whatsoever at the front; the 

last two USB3 ports are in the middle of the 

right side panel instead. We assume this was a 

purely aesthetics-based decision, as it makes 

them trickier to access than if they’d just 

been put up front, and effectively prevents 

you from sitting the PC up against a wall, 

cupboard, shelf or bed – at least on one side. 

On the bright side, there’s a great 

assortment of video outputs, including three 

HDMI ports, three DisplayPorts and one 

dual-link DVI-D. There’s also a DVI-to-HDMI 

adaptor in the box. 

NOUVEAU RICHE 

Besides a couple of limitations, the Fusion 

Portal is a proudly lavish top-end PC, with 

the price to match. Is it actually worth it? 

We must say that a perusal around the other 

big PC builder sites turns up custom GTX 1080 

Ti/Core i7-7700K systems, with the same or 

similar memory, cooling and storage, from 

about £1,800 upwards, so it does look as 

though you’d be paying a premium for the 

conversation-starter chassis. 

For premium gaming, we’re also still 

tempted by the Apollo K-VR. Its GTX 1080 is 

no longer the world champion of graphics 

cards, but it will still handle 4K and VR 

admirably, and the whole system costs over 

£400 less with very few other drawbacks. 

And yet, even saying this, we can’t shake 

the feeling that if we were to spend £1,800 

on the latest tech, then £200 on top of that 

wouldn’t be an outright deal-breaker – 

especially if it pays for something a bit 

different and interesting. 

James Archer 


PROCESSOR Quad-core 4.2GHz Intel Core i7-7700K • 

RAM 16GB DDR4 • FRONT USB PORTS None (2x USB3 on 

side) • REAR USB PORTS 4x USB3, 1x USB Type-C • 

GRAPHICS CARD 11GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti • 

STORAGE 256GB SSD, 2TB hard disk • DISPLAY None • 

OPERATING SYSTEM Windows 10 • WARRANTY Five years 

labour, including two years collect and return • DETAILS 

www.chillblast.com • PART CODE Fusion Portal 


Multitasking 

Dirt Showdown 

Metro: Last Light 

169 

181 

159fps 

107fps 

0% 

-50 




27

AM4 PROCESSOR 

AMD Ryzen 7 1700 

★★★★★ 

£300 • From www.overclockers.co.uk 

VERDICT 

Cool, efficient and a blazingly fast multitasker, 

the cheapest Ryzen 7 is the one to buy 

TO PUT IT harshly, the Ryzen 7 1700 is the runt 

of AMD’s Zen architecture-based processor 

family: it has the lowest base and boost clocks 

of 3GHz and 3.7GHz respectively and, unlike 

the fl agship 1800X (Shopper 352) and 1700X, 

its Extended Frequency Range (XFR) boost 

– which provides a bit of extra speed when 

temperatures allow – is limited to just 50MHz. 

It also doesn’t have the 1800X’s benefi t of 

being an incredible bargain. Whereas that chip 

sells at half the price of its closest Intel 

competitor, the Core i7-6900K, the 1700 is 

only around £30 cheaper than its direct rival, 

the quad-core Core i7-7700K (Shopper 350). 

Still, for that money you’re getting twice 

the cores and twice the threads than the i7, 

which is good news considering the Intel chip’s 

much faster 4.2GHz base clock and 4.5GHz 

boost clock. In practice, it becomes clear that 

for everything that the 1800X doesn’t pass 

down to its cheaper brethren, the 1700 does 

at least share its best aspect: outstanding 

multithreaded performance. 

INTEL OUTDONE 

Its score in our imaging benchmark, 124, is 20 

points shy of the i7-7700K, likely due to the 

latter’s greater single-core strength. However, 

the 1700 races ahead otherwise, scoring 191 in 

the video test, 203 in the multitasking test and 

186 overall – all victories by greater margins 

than the i7’s image test win. As ever, we ran 

these tests with 8GB of RAM, swapping in a 

compatible Auros AX370 Gaming 5 

motherboard and Noctua NH-U12S air cooler. 

The Ryzen 7 1700 thus becomes the 

highest-scoring sub-£400 CPU we’ve tested 

yet, making it a potentially excellent candidate 

for home workstations and media-editing rigs. 

It’s a ways off the 1800X, with its overall score 

of 215 at stock speeds, but there’s no shame in 

that when it costs nearly £200 more. 

Conversely, the i7-7700K remains a better 

pick for games. As with all Ryzen chips, the 

1700 has no integrated graphics, so we tested 

our usual suite of gaming benchmarks with 

both our test rig’s Radeon R7 260X and a 

much more powerful Nvidia GTX 1080 

Founder’s Edition. At stock speeds with the 

260X, the 1700-based system averaged 84fps 

in Dirt Showdown running at 1080p, as well 

as 33fps at 4K resolution. Switching to the 

GTX 1080, these only rose to 107fps and 

85fps respectively. For comparison, we’ve 

recorded 169fps at 1080p and 93fps at 4K on 

a GTX 1080/i7-7700K system. 

SLOW PATROL 

There was less of a stark difference in Metro: 

Last Light Redux, where the 260X/1700 

configuration managed 25fps at 1080p and 

6fps at 4K, and the 1080/1700 configuration 

recorded 77fps at 1080p and 20fps at 4K. 

This fi nal frame rate is actually the very same 

as the i7-7700K achieved with the same GPU, 

although the Intel processor also squeezed a 

little more out at 1080p, scoring 84fps. 

There’s something peculiar about how 

Ryzen struggles with Dirt Showdown in 

particular, as the 1800X also tripped up in it 

when paired with the same two graphics 

cards. We suspect it’s because Dirt relies quite 

heavily on single-threaded performance, 

where neither the 1800X or 1700 as are 

strong. It’s not that the 1700 is incapable of 

The Ryzen 7 1700 is a potentially excellent candidate for 

home workstations and media-editing rigs 

allowing extreme frame rates in games, as a 

quick side-step into Tomb Raider showed that 

it helped the GTX 1080 produce 170fps with 

Ultra settings at 1080p, but it’s also proven 

itself inferior to the Intel alternative. 

That said, we did note that in every test 

with the 260X, the 1700 either matched or 

came within 1fps of the 1800X, which is 

clocked at considerably higher 3.6GHz 

base/4GHz boost speeds – a surprise, to be 

sure, but a welcome one. 

The 1700 also seems more overclockfriendly 

than the 1800X, as well as the 

i7-7700K. Using AMD’s helpful Ryzen Master 

utility, we tweaked core speeds and voltages 

up to a stable 3.9GHz – any further caused 

crashing during our 4K benchmarks, but this is 

still a bigger increase than we could safely 

coax out of the Intel and upper-tier AMD 

chips with the same Noctua air cooler. 

At a consistent 3.9GHz, the 1700 fi nally 

matched the i7-7700K’s image test score of 

144, and its improved video score of 204, 

multitasking score of 231 and overall score of 

208 put it within spitting distance of the 

mighty 1800X itself. Sadly, though, this didn’t 

do much for gaming; in fact, it didn’t really do 

anything, as every Dirt Showdown and Metro 

benchmark we ran returned identical (to the 

nearest fps) results as at stock speeds. 

COOL CUSTOMER 

More impressive is the 1700’s TDP of 65W, 

an absurdly low requirement for an octa-core 

chip; it certainly puts the quad-core i7-7700K’s 

91W TDP to shame. AMD’s processor also 

runs much, much cooler; whereas the i7 

fl uttered around 90-100°C during our 4K 

benchmarks, even with water-cooling, the 

air-cooled 1700 peaked at a mere 54°C at stock 

speeds, maxing out at 71°C when overclocked 

to 3.9GHz. Idle temperatures were good as 

well: 34°C at stock speed, 41°C at 3.9GHz. 

While the 1700 doesn’t offer the same 

value as the 1800X, it stands up to its own 

nemesis – the i7-7700K – admirably, claiming 

greater multithreading performance, cooler, 

more efficient running and easier overclocking. 

You should still stick with Intel for a premium 

gaming system, but for everything else, the 

1700 is the CPU to go for – arguably, even 

over the rest of the Ryzen 7 range. 

James Archer 


SOCKET AM4 • CORES 8 • FREQUENCY (BOOST) 3GHz 

(3.7GHz) • INTEGRATED GRAPHICS None • 

WARRANTY Three years RTB • DETAILS www.amd.com • 

PART CODE YD1700BBAEBOX 


Multitasking 

Dirt Showdown 

0% 

-50 

186 

203 

84fps 




INKJET MFP 

CANON 

Pixma TS8050 

★★★★★ 

£150 • From www.amazon.co.uk 

VERDICT 

The Pixma TS8050 is sleek, swift, fl exible and 

produces great creative results – and so it 

should, at this price 

THE TS8050 IS almost the top model in 

Canon’s revised range of Pixma inkjet 

multifunction peripherals (MFPs), and it has 

the price to prove it. For the money you get 

a highly specified device with a creative bias: 

its scanner can stretch to 2,400 dots per inch 

(dpi), capturing four times as much detail as 

the more frequently found 1,200dpi, while its 

printer has a claimed maximum resolution of 

9,600x2,400dpi. That’s the highest you’ll fi nd 

among consumer inkjets. 

It’s well specified elsewhere, too, with two 

paper trays, double-sided (duplex) printing as 

standard, Wi-Fi and SD card support, plus a 

smartphone-like touchscreen on its glossy 

front panel. Alongside is an NFC touch-spot 

for easy pairing with mobile devices; we can’t 

think of anything Canon has left out. 

SHADE CONTROL 

It’s not uncommon for photo-focused inkjets 

to have six inks, but the TS8050 has a slightly 

unusual setup: it shares the same pigment 

black ink as the fi ve-colour models in the 

Pixma range, and supplements their dyebased 

black, cyan, magenta and yellow inks 

with a mid-grey, for better shading control in 

photos. Canon says that the dye-based black 

and grey are barely used on plain paper, but 

running costs still work out at a not especially 

competitive 7.8p per A4 page, of which the 

black component is a steep 2.7p. 

The TS8050 prints on paper held in a slim 

tray in its base, but photo paper can only be 

loaded into its pull-up rear tray. It won’t print 

from this until you remember to close the 

tiny, hinged feed lid – and it’s all too easy to 

forget. On plain paper, print speeds are fair. 

For this money you’ll fi nd plenty of other 

inkjets that can beat the 13.3ppm the TS8050 

reached on our 25-page black text test, and 

quite a few that will beat its 3.9ppm on our 

colour graphics test. Photo prints compare 

better for speed, with each 6x4in shot 

completing in well under two minutes at 

the highest available quality. 

This MFP has a fairly quick scanner. 

Connected via USB it could capture an A4 

page at 300dpi in just 14 seconds, and it 

completed a 1,200dpi photo scan in just 

under a minute. At 12 seconds, mono A4 

photocopies were quick, but colour copies 

took twice as long. 

We were somewhat disappointed with 

the TS8050’s dark photocopies, and some 

lines in our black text prints had a very subtle 

horizontal tear, but it’s unlikely you’d notice it 

unless you were looking very closely. Colour 

graphics on plain paper were just a touch less 

bold than we’d like, but they were otherwise 

extremely good. Photographs were exemplary, 

with extremely fi ne detailing, particularly on 

With two paper trays, duplex printing, Wi-Fi and SD card 

support, plus a smartphone-like touchscreen on its glossy 

front panel, we can’t think of anything Canon has left out 

our black and white test print. Scans were 

also excellent, with superb detail and about 

the sharpest focus we’ve seen. 

If your home is full of creative types and 

you can afford a high-end MFP, the Pixma 

TS8050 will more than fi t the bill. It is 

expensive, though, and you’ll get almost as 

good results from mid-range Pixma models. 

Unless you need its exceptional scan and 

photo quality we’d save some money and get 

one of Canon’s cheaper models, such as the 

Pixma TS5050 (£66 from www.amazon.co.uk). 

Simon Handby 


TECHNOLOGY Thermal inkjet • MAXIMUM PRINT 

RESOLUTION 9,600x2,400dpi • MAXIMUM OPTICAL 

SCAN RESOLUTION (OUTPUT BIT DEPTH) 2,400x4,800dpi 

(24-bit) • DIMENSIONS 139x372x324mm • WEIGHT 

6.5kg • MAXIMUM PAPER SIZE A4/legal • WARRANTY 

One year RTB • DETAILS www.canon.co.uk • 

PART CODE 1369C008 

⬅ The Pixma 

TS8050 lets 

you print 

directly from 

an SD card 

Mono speed 

Mixed colour 

speed 

Mono page cost 

Colour page cost 

0% 

13.3ppm 

3.9ppm 

2.7p 

5.1p 

-50 Reference +50 +100 



Ultra Wide-Color 

with 4K in an immersive design 

Colours like you’ve never seen before. This brilliant 4K UHD 

resolution display with Ultra Wide-Color offers the richest 

and most vivid colours wrapped in an immersive curved 

design for a your best creations yet. 

UltraWideColor 

CurvedDisplay 

4K 

UltraClear 4K Ultra HD 

40" 4K curved display 

(BDM4037U)

Chillblast 

sales@chillblast.com 

01202 068 333 

ULTRAPORTABLE LAPTOP 

ASUS ZenBook 

UX310UA 

★★★★★ 


FUSION OUTLAW 

 

 

PROCESSOR: INTEL PENTIUM G4560 

CASE: CHILLBLAST F3 

CPU COOLER: INTEL STOCK CPU COOLER 

MOTHERBOARD: ASUS H110M-A/M.2 

MEMORY: 8GB DDR4 2133MHZ 

GRAPHICS CARD: NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1050Ti 4GB 

HARD DISK: 

Seagate 1TB SSHD 

POWER SUPPLY: AEROCOOL 80 PLUS 500W 

SYSTEM: WINDOWS 10 HOME 64-BIT 

FUSION HUBBLE 

PRICE FROM £579.99 

www.chillblast.com 

 

 

PROCESSOR: INTEL CORE i5-7600K 

CASE: CHILLBLAST SILENT 

CPU COOLER: CHILLBLAST 120 WATER COOLER 

MOTHERBOARD: GIGABYTE GA-Z270-GAMING K3 

MEMORY: 8GB DDR4 2133MHZ 

GRAPHICS CARD: NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1060 3GB 

HARD DISK: 

250GB SSD / 1TB HDD 

POWER SUPPLY: EVGA 80 PLUS WHITE 600W 

SYSTEM: WINDOWS 10 HOME 64-BIT 

PRICE FROM £999.99 

Terms and conditions are on the website. 

All trademarks are acknowledged. 

Pictures are for illustration only. 

Prices are correct at time of going to press (25-04-17) E&OE 

VERDICT 

It’s no powerhouse, but this highly portable laptop 

has a great screen and a practical battery life 

THE SLIM, TASTEFUL design of Asus’s ZenBook 

range calls to mind Apple’s now-defunct MacBook 

Air, but with a wider range of configurations, and 

much more palatable pricing. In this case, the 

resemblance isn’t purely aesthetic. 

Like the MacBook Air, the ZenBook UX310UA is 

designed for a specific role. It’s a lightweight 

travelling companion rather than a desktop 

replacement. That much is evident from the 

internals. Unlike many Windows-based ultraportables, 

The screen is fantastic, with a maximum 

luminance of 341cd/m 2 

the UX310UA comes with a dual-core Core 

i3-6100U processor rather than something from 

the Core m series, but the i3 still limits its 

multitasking capabilities. We wouldn’t call this a 

slow system, but with an overall score of 34 in our 

desktop benchmarks, plus 20 in the multitasking 

test, it’s not exactly overpowered either. 

GAME’S UP 

Gaming capability is limited, too. In our Dirt 

Showdown test, running at 720p with High settings, 

the ZenBook averaged a just-about playable 29fps. 

Note, too, that this ZenBook model comes with just 

4GB of RAM, and a stingy 128GB SSD. That’s fi ne 

for emails and spreadsheets, and a lot more than 

you’ll get from any Chromebook, but if you 

regularly deal with weighty workloads, it could 

prove constraining. 

Yet the ZenBook has some significant strengths. 

Let’s start with the one that shines out as soon as 

you open the lid: the screen 

is fantastic, with a maximum 

luminance of 341cd/m 2 . 

While it’s not quite the 

brightest laptop display 

around, a superb contrast 

ratio of 1,282:1 makes it an 

excellent all-round visual 

performer. It’s also worth 

mentioning that the 13.3in 

panel has a native resolution 

of 1,920x1,080, for a sharp 

pixel density of 165ppi. 

From a typical operating 

distance, text looks 

beautifully crisp, and the 

matt screen keeps 

distracting refl ections to 


PROCESSOR 2/3GHz dual-core Intel Core i3-6100U • RAM 

4GB DDR4 • DIMENSIONS 323x223x18.4mm • WEIGHT 

1.4kg • SCREEN SIZE 13.3in • SCREEN RESOLUTION 

1,920x1,080 • GRAPHICSADAPTOR Intel HD Graphics 520 • 

TOTALSTORAGE 128GB SSD • OPERATING SYSTEM 

Windows 10 Home • PARTS AND LABOUR WARRANTY 

One year RTB • DETAILS www.asus.com/uk • 

PART CODE UX310UA-FC075T 


Multitasking 

Dirt Showdown 

Battery life 

a minimum. This isn’t a touchscreen, mind you: 

with its conventional hinged laptop design, the 

ZenBook entirely rejects the hybrid vision. 

That’s fi ne by us, because the conventional 

input methods work very nicely. The backlit 

keyboard is comfortably sized, with a good 

responsive feel – if a little more spongy than we’d 

really like – and the touchpad is luxuriously large, 

so you never feel constrained by its edges. 

Connectivity is pretty good, too. As you’d hope, 

there’s 802.11ac wireless and Bluetooth 4.1. You 

also get a decent set of USB ports, 

comprising USB3, twin USB2 

connectors and a USB Type-C 

socket, for newer phones and 

peripherals. It would have been nice 

to use the faster USB3 platform 

exclusively, but then this probably 

isn’t a system that will be regularly hooked up to 

multiple high-bandwidth devices. 

BALANCING ACT 

As for sound, the system’s speakers are 

pleasingly balanced – predictably, there’s not 

much in the way of bass, and the maximum 

volume won’t fi ll a room, but watching videos at 

your desk is perfectly agreeable. 

A fi nal feather in the ZenBook’s cap is battery 

life. In our tests, the UX310UA delivered 8h 6m of 

video playback on a single charge. Yes, there are 

devices out there that will last longer, but those 

all rely on ultra-low-power Core m processors. 

If you’re looking for a more capable Windows 

system that will make it through an entire working 

day, the ZenBook UX310UA is your answer. 

Clearly, even with all this going for it, the 

ZenBook’s mid-table performance and old-school 

design mean it’s not for everyone. Yet with its 

excellent screen, impressive 

battery life and portable 


dimensions – it’s just 

18.4mm thick, and weighs a 

mere 1.4kg – we can’t deny 

the ZenBook’s charms. 

If we have a caveat, it’s 

this: the UX310UA 

currently uses sixthgeneration 

Skylake 

processors, but a Kaby 

Lake update is due in the 

next few weeks. Any 

performance benefi t is 

likely to be modest, but if 

you’re not in a rush to buy, 

it makes sense to hold out. 

Darien Graham-Smith 

32 JULY 2017 | COMPUTER SHOPPER | ISSUE 353 

0% 

34 

20 

-50 

29fps 

8h 6m 

See page 72 for performance details

2-IN-1 LAPTOP 

DELL XPS 13 9365 

★★★★★ 

£1,449 • From www.dell.com/uk 

VERDICT 

Dell’s second stab at a hybrid laptop is an 

expensive success 

BACK IN 2016, Dell inflicted upon us the XPS 

12, a dire laptop/tablet hybrid riddled with 

shortcomings ranging from battery woes to 

fl at-out design faults (see Shopper 341). 

Fortunately, the new XPS 13 9365 2-in-1 is a 

radical departure. For starters, it’s actually a 

rotating convertible, rather than a detachable 

2-in-1 like the XPS 12. It’s also really good. 

We’d certainly have hoped so, given the 

price: the entry-level model, with its Intel Core 

i5-7Y54 processor, 4GB of RAM and 128GB 

SSD, costs £1,349, which is £200 more than 

the cheapest non-convertible XPS 13 (Shopper 

351). We tested the next model up, which has a 

Core i7-7Y75 processor, 8GB of RAM and 

256GB SSD and costs £1,449, and there are 

£1,499 and £1,669 models too. 

SPIN DOCTOR 

Aside from the chunky 360° hinge, the 2-in-1 

looks remarkably similar to the standard XPS 

13. The chassis is made of the same aluminium 

and carbon-fibre combo, although there’s 

something extra below the screen: a dual-lens 

Windows Hello camera, which lets you log in 

using just your face. There’s also a fi ngerprint 

reader, should the camera be a little fi nicky. 

The 2-in-1 is thinner than the regular XPS 13 

too. In fact, it’s the slimmest XPS ever made, 

measuring just 13.7mm at its thickest point 

and tapering down to 8mm at its thinnest. 

Weighing just 1.24kg, it’s ideal for commuting. 

However, the slimmed-down design also 

means that there aren’t any full-size USB 

ports. Instead, you get just two USB Type-C 

ports, one on either side. Since one port is 

needed for charging, it’s a meagre provision, 

even with the USB3-to-Type-C adaptor 

included in the box. 

One area where Dell hasn’t scrimped is the 

display. The familiar 13.3in InfinityEdge panel is 

still here, minimal screen bezels and all, and as 

always it’s a delight to use. No manufacturer 

does laptop displays quite like this, and it 

makes the 2-in-1 look great, especially in the 

fully rotated tablet mode. 

Our model was fi tt ed with a 1,920x1,080 

panel; the QHD+ version costs £50 more, and 

otherwise has the same specs. In our display 

tests, the Full HD display covered 85.4% of the 

sRGB colour gamut, with a contrast ratio of 

1,206:1. That’s a smidge below the latest XPS 

13 with its 91.9% coverage, but to the naked 

eye the difference is hard to make out. 

The maximum screen brightness of 

253cd/m 2 is also lower than the XPS 13’s 

289cd/m 2 output, but it’s not disastrous. 

Overall, it’s a beautiful display to gawk at, 

with wonderfully vibrant colours – just don’t 

try to use it in bright sunlight. 

RIPE TO TYPE 

Too often, the keyboard and touchpad on a 

hybrid system feel like an afterthought, but 

that’s not the case here. In fact, the keyboard 

is unchanged from the regular XPS 13. The 

keys are nicely spaced, and there’s just the 

right amount of movement and feedback with 

each keystroke. Backlighting still comes as 

standard, with adjustable brightness levels. 

The touchpad is well sized, too. Windows 

10 multitouch gestures worked without any 

slip-ups, and it’s easy to jump between 

applications with ease. We weren’t even 

tempted to plug in a USB mouse while working 

in more demanding applications. Our only 

criticism is that it does seem to pick up greasy 

fi ngerprints a little too easily. 

Having a Core i7 in a slimline 

convertible sounds great, but 

remember that the Kaby Lake 

generation merely rebranded 

Intel’s low-power Core m chips 

to have Core i prefi xes. The 

Core i7-7Y75 is one of these 

rebranded processors. 

Unsurprisingly, this led the 

2-in-1 towards the lower end 

of our 4K benchmark results, 

with an overall score of 31 

and multitasking score of 

just 8. That’s some way 

behind the cheaper, yet proper Core i5- 

powered XPS 13, which scored 33 in the 

multitasking test and 50 overall. 

Regardless, this 2-in-1 is plenty powerful 

enough for the usual desktop and browserbased 

applications, such as Word and Google 

Docs. Just don’t expect it to whizz through 

anything particularly processor-heavy. 

With Intel HD Graphics 615, you’re limited to 

very basic games as well. 

In theory, the low-powered chip should at 

least deliver a battery life benefi t: the XPS 13 

9365 lasted 7h 54m in our continuous video 

playback test, so it should more or less deliver 

a full day’s conservative use. The regular Dell 

XPS 13 was just eight minutes behind, though, 

so the difference is negligible. 

MOST IMPROVED AWARD 

Dell has evidently learned from criticism of its 

last XPS hybrid. While performance is on the 

lightweight side, the XPS 13 2-in-1 is a joy to 

use, shining a light on the potential of the 

hybrid design. It’s a well-balanced device for 

however you want to use it. 

The issue, as so often, is the price. When 

you can pick up an entry-level XPS 13 with a 

full-fat, Kaby Lake Core i5 for £1,149, it’s hard 

to justify paying an extra £200 for a bit of 

added versatility. Still, within the convertible 

market specifically, there’s nothing out there 

to challenge the XPS 13 9365. 

Nathan Spendelow 


PROCESSOR Dual-core 1.3GHz Intel Core i7-7Y75 • RAM 

8GB • DIMENSIONS 304x199x13.7mm • WEIGHT 1.24kg • 

SCREEN SIZE 13.3in • SCREEN RESOLUTION 1,920x1,080 • 

GRAPHICSADAPTOR Intel HD Graphics 615 • TOTAL 

STORAGE 256GB SSD • OPERATING SYSTEM Windows 10 

• WARRANTY Three years RTB • DETAILS www.dell.com/ 

uk • PART CODE CNX36504 


Multitasking 

Dirt Showdown FAIL 

Battery life 

0% 

31 

8 

-50 

7h 54m 




35in CURVED MONITOR 

AOC AGON 

AG352QCX 

★★★★★ 

RECOMMENDED 

£605 • From www.ebuyer.com 

VERDICT 

With its 200Hz refresh rate and accurate 

colours, the AOC AG352QCX is a fantastic 

curved gaming monitor 

IN 2016, AOC released the C3583FQ (Shopper 

342), a curved 165Hz monitor running at 

2,560x1,080. It had a few issues, including 

washed-out colours and, with certain Nvidia 

graphics cards, frame skipping at 165Hz. 

Now, there’s the AGON AG352QCX, a 

similar 35in curved monitor that comes 

equipped with an MVA panel, 200Hz 

maximum refresh rate and built-in support for 

AMD’s FreeSync technology. Can this new 

model fi x its predecessor’s problems? 

The monitor is extremely well built and 

looks striking with its silver and black colour 

scheme. Underneath and around the back, 

you’ll fi nd six LED strips that can be used to 

bathe your desk in red, green or blue. They’re 

a bit silly and can be disabled if you fi nd them 

distracting, but can work as mood lighting, 

especially when the lights are dimmed. 

The stand allows -3° to 15° of tilt and 15cm 

of height adjustment, while a handle at the 

top of the metal stand allows you to carry it 

around – though with a monitor this big, we’re 

not sure why you’d want to. 

NOW HOOK HERE 

If you’re looking to wall-mount it, you can do 

so via the 100x100mm VESA mounts at the 

back. In the top left -hand corner, you’ll fi nd a 

retractable headphone arm, which conveniently 

lets you keep your headphones or headset 

close to hand without cluttering up your desk. 

There are DisplayPort, HDMI, DVI and VGA 

video inputs, two sets of 3.5mm input and 

output audio jacks and two USB3 ports, one 

of which supports quick charge. There’s also a 

surprisingly effective 5W speaker in the chassis, 

which provides a loud output with great 

sound quality by monitor speaker standards. 

Physical controls are great, especially the 

QuickSwitch Controller – a separate dongle 

equipped with a series of buttons – which 

allows you to fl ick between colour profi les and 

navigate around the OSD menu. Even if you 

don’t use that, though, you should fi nd the 

on-monitor joystick controller easy to use. It 

provides a far more effective way of accessing 

settings than the touch-sensitive buttons 

favoured by many other manufacturers. 

AMD FreeSync is another fi ne inclusion. If 

you have a recent AMD graphics card, the 

AG352QCX syncs its refresh rate with the GPU’s 

output to prevent screen tearing in games. 

REFRESH PRICE 

The monitor uses a 2,560x1,080 resolution 

MVA panel with a native refresh rate of 144Hz, 

but through your graphics card’s settings, this 

can be cranked up to an ‘overclocked’ 200Hz. 

Unlike the C3583FQ, the AG352QCX 

doesn’t suffer from any frame skipping at 

200Hz, but we did notice a gamma shift at this 

refresh rate, resulting in washed-out colours. 

If you’re looking to use the monitor at 200Hz, 

you’ll have to put up with this, or calibrate it 

to compensate. We therefore conducted our 

image-quality tests at 144Hz, which in any 

case should be enough for most users. 

The AOC performs extremely well in sRGB 

mode. Colour accuracy is good, with an 

average delta-E of 0.59. Its 2,467:1 contrast 

ratio is also very impressive, providing 

excellent detail in even the darkest scenes. 

However, the monitor’s colour gamut 

coverage is rather disappointing in sRGB 

mode. Despite 95.4% sRGB coverage, which 

is good, it has below-par 67.4% Adobe RGB 

and 70% DCI P3 coverage. 

Maximum brightness reaches 260cd/m 2 , 

which is fi ne for use in most environments, 

although brightness uniformity is 

disappointing. We found a dramatic variation 

of 27.29% between the top corners of the 

panel and the bottom corners, which is 

where the monitor’s backlight is located. 

That means if you’re looking at a dark scene 

in a fi lm or game, you might fi nd it brighter in 

the top corners than the bottom. Backlight 

bleed isn’t a deal breaker but is noticeable in 

very dark scenes at the top corners. 

One benefi t of enabling the 200Hz refresh 

rate is that it’s buttery smooth in fast-paced 

gaming, even if the improvement over 144Hz 

isn’t very noticeable. Nevertheless, it’s ideal for 

competitive gaming, and with a low perceived 

response time and low input lag, the monitor 

fl ew through our tests. Better still, when 

adjusting its response time settings, ghosting 

overshoot (which typically takes the form of 

shadows around objects) was barely visible. 

BEND OF THE LINE 

The curvature of the screen isn’t as deep as 

the Samsung CF791, which takes away from 

the immersion a touch, but compared with a 

fl at-panel ultra-wide monitor, the AG352QCX 

still provides a better gaming experience. 

Our only real complaint is that the 

2,560x1,080 resolution results in games not 

looking as crisp as they do on the admittedly 

more expensive 3,440x1,440 Samsung CF791. 

Despite both the resolution and brightness 

uniformity fl aws, there’s still plenty to like 

about the AOC AG352QCX. In fact, the high 

refresh rate, fast response times, low input lag, 

good colour accuracy and lovely overall design 

make it tough not to recommend. 

The price may look high, but there aren’t 

many ultra-wide monitors on the market that 

can provide as good all-round performance for 

much less. It comes warmly recommended. 

Christopher Minasians 


SCREEN SIZE 35in • RESOLUTION 2,560x1,080 • 

SCREEN TECHNOLOGY MVA • REFRESH RATE 144Hz 

native (200Hz maximum) • VIDEOINPUTS HDMI, DVI, 

DisplayPort, VGA • WARRANTY Three years repair and 

replace • DETAILS www.aoc-europe.com 

CONNECTION PORTS 

USB3 x2 

DisplayPort 

HDMI 

VGA 

DVI 

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HOME WI-FI SYSTEM 

GOOGLE Wifi 

★★★★★ 

£229 (twin pack) • From store.google.com 

VERDICT 

Staggeringly easy to configure and with some amazing configuration tools, this is wireless networking made easy 

THERE’S NO DOUBTING that whole-home 

Wi-Fi kits, which use multiple access points 

and a mesh network to give you a rock-solid 

wireless connection, are the big thing in 

networking. Following the Netgear Orbi 

(Shopper 348), Linksys Velop and BT Whole 

Home Wi-Fi (both Shopper 351), Google is 

now getting in on the act with Google Wifi. 

As with the BT Whole Home Wi-Fi system, 

Google Wifi is not a router, instead connecting 

to your existing network. For the best results, 

then, you need to disable your router’s 

existing wireless, so that Google Wifi 

becomes your default. 

Google Wifi is sold as either a single unit 

(£129) or as a two-unit pack (£229). Given 

that this is a mesh networking product, it 

makes the most sense to buy two access 

points. Google Wifi is comparatively good 

value – BT Whole Home Wi-Fi costs £300 for 

three units – although adding extra access 

points is expensive at £129 each. 

NET WORTH 

Google has done a good job with the Wifi 

access point design. Each one is a small 

hockey puck-style unit, which you can place 

conveniently out of the way without having to 

make too much room. A single white LED 

shows each access point’s status, although 

you can dim or turn this off if the light is 

proving to be distracting. 

Each unit has two Gigabit Ethernet ports, 

which is a step up from BT’s single-port access 

points. Only one device needs to be physically 

connected to the network, with further access 

points communicating via a mesh network. 

Configuration is extremely simple using 

the Android or iOS app; there’s no web 

configuration option, so you’re going to need 

a smartphone. Following the app’s simple 

instructions, we soon had our dual access 

points placed in the ideal positions, and our 

network name and password set. There’s 

very little need for any other configuration at 

this point, as Google Wifi is designed to be 

smart and automatically configure the 

optimal network settings. 

⬆ The Family Wi-Fi option lets you set schedules 

for the kids’ internet access 

First, as with other products of this ilk, 

there’s band steering. This automatically 

assigns a client to the 2.4GHz or 5GHz band, 

depending on signal strength and abilities. It 

takes the hassle out of networking, as you 

know each device will get the best connection. 

HELPING HANDS 

Next, there’s Google’s client steering feature. 

Typically, wireless devices will connect to an 

access point and then stick to it until the 

⬆ You can choose which devices on the network 

your guests are able to see 


signal drops. With client steering, Google 

gently nudges devices to disconnect from 

one access point and reconnect to a 

stronger one. Indeed, monitoring via 

the app, we noticed our devices 

would switch from one access 

point to another, maintaining 

signal strength and speed. 

There’s no need to configure 

wireless channels either, as Google 

uses a dedicated sensing radio to 

monitor surrounding interference, 

changing settings automatically as 

required. Cloud-based machine 

learning lets Google automatically 

create a schedule, changing wireless 

channels at set times during the week. 

Finally, you don’t have to worry 

about updates, as Google will 

automatically download and install 

them for you. Really, Google Wifi is a 

brilliantly simple system that you can 

just plug in and forget about. 

INTERNAL OPPOSITION 

Internally, each access point has dual-band 

wireless, with 2x2 1,200Mbit/s on a single 

5GHz band. In comparison, BT’s Whole Home 

Wi-Fi has tri-band wireless, with dual 

1,733Mbit/s 4x4 5GHz bands. On paper, BT 

certainly has the advantage, with a lot more 

network bandwidth available. 

Using dual Google Wifi access points, 

we measured an average throughput of 

329.25Mbit/s at close range, 431.06Mbit/s on 

the fi rst fl oor and 164.6Mbit/s on the second 

fl oor. This is better performance than we saw 

from the BT Whole Home Wi-Fi, bar secondfl 

oor performance. BT’s higher number of 

access points and higher bandwidth seemed 

to make the difference in this test. 

Likewise, testing in the garden, just 

outside of the kitchen window – a traditional 

dead spot – we found BT to be the winner. 

We got throughputs of 153Mbit/s with 

Google Wifi and 185.11Mbit/s with BT Whole 

Home. At the bottom of the garden, BT 

managed to give us 56Mbit/s compared to the 

37.7Mbit/s from Google Wifi. 

MEDDLING KIDS 

Where Google Wifi shines is through the app 

and configuration options. Family Wi-Fi is the 

best of the bunch, letting you group together 

multiple devices and then set schedules for 

their internet access. For example, you can let 

an older child have more time online with 

their laptop and tablet, shutting down a 

younger child’s tablet earlier. You can also 

⬅ Each Wifi access point is equipped with 

two Gigabit Ethernet ports 

to your Google Wifi; however, 

everything connected to Google 

Wifi can see your entire home 

network. If these last couple of 

paragraphs have made alarming 

sense to you, Google Wifi won’t 

present any problems, but if it all 

sounds a bit baffling, BT Whole 

Home Wi-Fi might be a better fi t 

– it simply integrates into your 

existing network. 

The only way around Google’s 

configuration issue is to use a single 

device in Bridge mode; however, if 

you’re going down this route, you’re 

better off buying a dedicated router. 

There’s no option to configure 

the DHCP range of IP address that 

Google Wifi hands out, either. That 

shouldn’t cause too much trouble, 

though, and you can use the app to reserve 

a device an IP address; effectively, this is a 

quick way to give out static IP addresses. 

SIMPLER TIMES 

Aside from the slightly quirky way in which 

Google Wifi works, the system is rather neat, 

and the app (and the control it provides) is 

the best we’ve seen. Really, this system makes 

wireless networking and device control super 

easy. Whether or not it’s the right product for 

you, though, depends on what you want to do. 

BT’s Whole Home Wi-Fi is slightly more 

expensive (although that said, at the time of 

writing it was on sale for just £200), but its 

network integration is neater and long-range 

performance is better. For larger houses or 

ones with a few dead spots, BT’s system is 

the best choice. 

Google Wifi is a brilliantly simple system that you can 

just plug in and forget about 

⬆ The Google Wifi app provides plenty of 

configuration options 

manually pause internet access by group, too; 

it’s a brilliant way to get children’s attention. 

Google has a built-in guest network, which 

is something missing from the BT Whole 

Home Wi-Fi. You can select which devices 

people on the guest network can see. For 

example, you can hide your NAS, but you 

could make your Chromecast available so that 

guests can stream photos to your TV. 

The one downside of Google Wifi is that in 

mesh mode, it operates in Network Address 

Translation (NAT) mode. This doesn’t affect 

performance, but it can make configuring 

some port-forwarding services, such as for 

games, tricky. In effect, you have to set up 

port forwarding on your main router and the 

Google Wifi, which can break some services. 

Access from one device to another can be 

confusing, too. A device connected to your 

original router can’t see a device connected 

If you can get by with two access points, 

Google Wifi is an excellent, easy-to-manage 

alternative. Finally, if you want to replace 

your existing router, the Netgear Orbi is an 

expensive option, but it’s by far the fastest 

whole-home Wi-Fi product we’ve tested. 

David Ludlow 


MODEM Gigabit Ethernet • WI-FI STANDARD 802.11ac • 

STATED SPEED Not disclosed (2.4GHz), 1,200Mbit/s (5GHz) 

• USB PORTS 0 • WALL MOUNTABLE No • 

WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS madeby.google.com • 

PART CODE Google Wifi 

5GHz close 

5GHz 1 fl oor 

5GHz 2 fl oors 

329.25Mbit/s 

431.06Mbit/s 

164.6Mbit/s 

0 200 

400 

600 



39

TRI-STREAM WIRELESS ROUTER 

LINKSYS 

WRT3200ACM 

★★★★★ 

£218 • From www.morecomputers.com 

VERDICT 

A fast and powerful router, but you can get 

similar performance for less 

WE’VE SEEN A lot of whole-home Wi-Fi 

systems in recent issues of Shopper, all of 

which are designed to use multiple access 

points to give you better coverage. If you just 

want raw speed and don’t have a huge house, a 

single high-powered router, such as Linksys’s 

WRT3200ACM, might be a better option. 

This heft y router has Tri-Stream 160 

technology, which combines three 

simultaneous 867Mbit/s streams to give a 

total of 2,600Mbit/s on the 5GHz band. The 

2.4GHz band is taken care of with a 600Mbit/s 

throughput. As a modern router, the 

WRT3200ACM supports multi-user MIMO 

(MU-MIMO). This enables the router to split 

its bandwidth, giving each compatible device 

its own dedicated network stream. That’s the 

good news; the bad news is that there are few 

MU-MIMO devices, so you won’t necessarily 

see the benefi t of this technology today. Even 

so, on paper, this is one of the fastest routers 

we’ve come across. 

Setting up the router for the fi rst time is 

easy, with Linksys’s simple wizard taking you 

through broadband configuration and Wi-Fi 

setup. This router has a single Ethernet WAN 

port, so you’ll need to plug it into a modem to 

get internet access. 

BAND TOGETHER 

Wi-Fi configuration gives you the option of 

splitting the 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks or 

joining them under the same network name. 

With the latter option, the router uses band 

steering to select the best network for your 

connecting devices automatically. This is a 

good choice for simplicity, but you may want 

to leave the networks separated if you want 

to choose which band you want to use. 

Finally, there’s the option of a guest 

network. Connected to this, people who visit 

you can access the internet, but your other 

devices remain protected and hidden. 

Once the wizard is complete, the 

WRT3200ACM can be configured via the web 

interface. It’s one of the best, with a clear and 

modern look. We like the main page, which 

gives you an at-a-glance look at all of the 

router’s main settings. 

CHILD’S PLAY 

Linksys has provided all the common options 

you’d expect, including dynamic DNS, port 

forwarding and parental controls. Using the 

latter option, you can set schedules for when 

certain devices can use the internet, and you 

can also block access to set websites. 

Blocking is a manual job, which requires 

you to enter each blocked website’s address. 

As such, you’ll want to use proper parental 

controls for younger children. We couldn’t 

fi nd an option to turn on IGMP YouView 

support. Without this, our streamed YouView 

channels, such as BT Sport, wouldn’t work. 

Basic settings can be controlled via the 

Linksys smartphone 

app, and it’s nice to 

see Alexa support. 

Using an Amazon 

Echo, you can tell 

the WRT3200ACM 

to turn on its 

guest network or 

to give you your 

network details. 

If you don’t like 

Linksys’s fi rmware, 

this router officially 

supports DD-WRT 

and OpenWRT open-source fi rmware. Flashing 

the router with either of these opens up some 

more advanced features, such as full VPN 

support. You can also run applications, such 

as a BitTorrent client, directly on the opensource 

fi rmware, making them a good choice 

for more advanced users. 

JUST PASSING THROUGHPUT 

Performance was very good. Using the 5GHz 

band, we saw average throughputs of 


the fi rst fl oor and 335.89Mbit/s on the 

second fl oor. We found 2.4GHz performance 

was just as good, with throughputs of 


the fi rst fl oor and 107.28Mbit/s on the second 

fl oor. Only the Netgear Nighthawk X8 

(Shopper 345) did better, although that costs 

£80 more. Even so, if you want the best 

performance and support for BT YouView, the 

Nighthawk X8 is the best choice. 

Linksys has provided all the options you’d expect, including 

dynamic DNS, port forwarding and parental controls 

⬅ The web interface is 

one of the best, with a 

clear and modern look 

Alternatively, the TP-Link Archer C3200 

(Shopper 345) managed similar performance 

to the WRT3200ACM but gives you two 

more dedicated 1,300Mbit/s 5GHz options. 

The C3200 doesn’t have MU-MIMO, but it 

supports streamed YouView channels, and 

costs just £150, making it the better choice. 

David Ludlow 


MODEM Gigabit Ethernet • WI-FI STANDARD 802.11ac • 

STATED SPEED 600Mbit/s (2.4GHz), 2,600Mbit/s (5GHz) • 

USB PORTS 1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0 • WALL MOUNTABLE 

Yes • WARRANTY Three years RTB • DETAILS www.linksys. 

com • PART CODE WRT3200ACM 

5GHz 1m 

5GHz 1 fl oor 

5GHz 2 fl oors 

2.4GHz 1m 

2.4GHz 1 fl oor 

2.4GHz 2 fl oors 

335.89Mbit/s 

91.55Mbit/s 

406.65Mbit/s 

115.58Mbit/s 

107.28Mbit/s 

481.21Mbit/s 

0 200 

400 

600 



FLAGSHIP ANDROID SMARTPHONE 

SAMSUNG Galaxy S8 

★★★★★ 


VERDICT 

Pairing speed and power with a sophisticated and attractive 

design, the Galaxy S8 runs rings around the competition 

THE SAMSUNG GALAXY S8 is one of the 

most anticipated phones of all time. Not only 

is it the follow-up to one of 2016’s best devices, 

the Galaxy S7, it also has the unenviable task 

of winning back anyone who got burned – 

fi guratively or literally – by the ill-fated Note 7. 

The standout feature is its screen. The 

bezels of the display have been almost entirely 

shorn off, leaving a screen that extends to 

almost every edge of the device, save for thin 

slivers of black glass at the top and bottom. 

It thus fi lls virtually all of the S8’s front 

panel, with just a few millimetres of bezel 

banding the top and bottom edge. Curved 

edges now come as standard, too; there’s still 

a larger, pricier Galaxy S8+ model, but 

Samsung has dropped the fl at-screened 

variant and the Edge moniker with it. 

FULL SCREEN MODE 

The device is immediately arresting and the 

Galaxy S8 looks unlike anything else on the 

market. It’s essentially a fl at slab of glass, but 

there’s no way you’ll mistake it for any other 

phone. It’s an absolutely gorgeous device – 

instantly striking and breathtakingly beautiful. 

It is, without a doubt, the best example of 

smartphone design produced to date. 

As part of the great bezelpocalypse, the 

home button and navigation buttons below 

the screen have been replaced, leaving a 

soft ware-based navigation bar. However, 

Samsung has also included an ‘embedded’ 

home button, which emulates the 

feel of a physical button using 

technology that feels similar to 

Apple’s Force Touch. It’s very 

polished, to the extent that we 

almost prefer this style of button 

to Samsung’s previous approach. 

As you’d expect from a 

Samsung phone, the display is 

pretty much fl awless. sRGB colour 

gamut coverage hits 99.9% and 

contrast is, unsurprisingly for a 

Super AMOLED panel, perfect. 

The QHD+ resolution is pin-sharp 

and the brightness, which we 

measured peaking at 569cd/m 2 , is 

absolutely blazing – the maximum 

setting actually carries a health 

warning. This is also the only 

smartphone screen to be certified 

by the UHD Alliance to the Mobile 

HDR Premium standard. 

The use of an unusual 18.5:9 

aspect ratio means the Galaxy S8 

is taller and thinner than you’d 

expect, which makes it much more 

comfortable to hold and use 

one-handed. It also feels a lot 

smaller than it actually is, in a 

good way. It may be a 5.8in phablet, but it 

actually feels more like a 5in device, easily 

fi tt ing into your pocket. It also feels a lot 

slimmer than you’d expect, given it’s 8mm 

thick, thanks largely to its tapered 

edges. 

One slight issue is that because the 

vast majority of video content is 

formatted to fi t the more common 16:9 

aspect ratio, you’ll often end up with 

black bars surrounding whatever you’re 

watching, which somewhat defeats the 

purpose of an edge-to-edge display. 

There are several viewing options, such 

as cropping the content to fi t your 

screen, but you’ll likely lose the edges 

of the picture in the process. 

THE POWER OF EIGHT 

Performance is spectacular. Samsung 

has been all but topping the charts 

for speed for recent generations of 

its smartphone range, so it’s no 

shock to fi nd it’s still doing the same 

here with the S8. 

⬅ The Galaxy S8’s stunning screen extends 

to almost every edge of the device 

Packing Samsung’s 10nm Exynos 8895 

CPU and 4GB of RAM, the Galaxy S8 scored 

1,994 in Geekbench’s single-core test and 

6,629 in the multicore test. The latter is 

the highest score we’ve seen on any 

smartphone, and the single-core result is 

also the highest on Android; only the 

iPhone 7 scored higher, with 3,489. 

It’s just as powerful in games, achieving a 

spectacular 64fps average in the GFXBench 

Manhattan offscreen test. By pipping the 

iPhone 7’s 63fps, that’s another new record 

for the books. 

Networking is similarly speedy, with 

Gigabit Wi-Fi and LTE support out of the box. 

While Gigabit routers and mobile networks 

are still far from widespread, they’re defi nitely 

on the rise, so it’s nice to know that the S8 is 

in a position to take advantage of all these 

emerging technologies. 

BURNING SENSATION 

Batt ery life is the only mild disappointment. 

The S8 clocked up a score of 16h 45m in our 

benchmark tests, and while that’s still an 

incredibly high score, it’s about an hour less 

than the S7 and about two hours less than 

the S7 Edge. On the other hand, this still 

42 


The Galaxy S8 looks unlike anything else on 

the market. It is, without a doubt, the best 

example of smartphone design to date 

places the Galaxy S8 very high up in our 

ranking tables, and it’s more than enough to 

carry you through a full day. 

The Galaxy S8’s camera is excellent. It 

effectively uses the same lens as the S7 

(which was already fantastic), but with a 

host of soft ware-based enhancements such 

as multi-frame image processing to give it an 

extra edge. The most impressive of these is 

the selective focus feature, which allows you 

to fl ick between different depth-of-fi eld 

settings on the fl y. 

Watching this in action is amazing: each 

image takes a couple of seconds to capture, 

but once it does, you can switch the focus 

between the foreground and background at 

will, resulting in supremely impressive photos 

with virtually no effort or skill required. 

The ‘smart’ auto focus is also superb, 

capturing crystal-clear shots with lightning 

speed. The camera initialises almost instantly, 

and focuses on your subject just as fast, with 

facial-recognition technology to ensure you’re 

capturing the right parts of your subject. 

It has the usual suite of professional 

modes as well, offering fi ne-grained control 

over settings such as ISO, white balance, 

shutter speed and more. There’s a nifty 

manual focus mode, 

too, which uses green 

highlights to visualise 

exactly what will be in 

focus in the fi nal shot. 

Photos taken with 

the S8 almost invariably 

come out looking slick 

and attractive, even in 

the hands of a rank 

amateur. Samsung 

claims that its latest 

fl agship can serve as a 

backup device for 

photographers that use 

a DSLR camera, and 

based on the strength of 

our experiences, we’d 

say that’s not far wrong. 

ARTIFICIAL 

FLAVOURING 

One of the Galaxy S8’s 

unique features is Bixby, 

Samsung’s AI assistant. 

Similar to Alexa and the 

Google Assistant, Bixby 

will answer questions, 

help plan your day 

and interact with your 

device. Bixby is tied into 

every element of the S8, 

and Samsung has even 

included a dedicated 

button on the side of the device to launch it. 

In addition to the usual suite of calendarplanning, 

app-launching and phone-searching 

functions, Bixby also includes image-searching 

capabilities; take a picture of something, and 

Bixby can identify what it is and suggest 

appropriate actions. If it’s a landmark, for 

example, it may offer more information via 

an internet search. For products, it will 

suggest online shopping pages. There’s even 

a mode for identifying types of wine based 

on the label. 

Bixby’s voice-command functionality 

isn’t available at launch, but Bixby Vision 

and the Bixby app are. The Bixby app is 

reasonably helpful – much like Google Now, it 

collects useful information such as calendar 

entries, reminders, health data and news 

headlines on to one screen for easy access. 

Outside of this, however, we can’t see Bixby 

being all that useful. Voice assistants as a 

whole haven’t really taken off in any major 

sense, so it’s hard to see this as a particularly 

vital feature either way. 

Interestingly, the S8 also includes the 

Google Assistant – a surprising inclusion. 

We would have expected Samsung to shy 

away from including support for what is 

effectively a competing service, so it’s nice to 

see that user choice is more of a priority here. 

After learning its lessons with previous 

generations, Samsung has not skimped on 

fan-favourite Android features. IP68 waterand 

dust-proofi ng is in attendance, as is 

expandable storage up to a limit of 256GB. 

Fast-charging and wireless charging are both 

present and correct as well, with the fl agship 

range fi nally making the jump to USB Type-C. 

EYE EYE 

As with its last few devices, Samsung has 

packed the S8 with biometric authentication 

technology. Alongside the fi ngerprint scanner 

(now mounted on the rear of the phone), 

the S8 includes the same iris-scanning 

technology as the Note 7 and brand-new 

facial recognition tech, letting you unlock 

your phone just by looking at it. 

We couldn’t get the iris scanner to work 

with our peepers, but similarly bespectacled 

colleagues had no trouble using it, so it 

may just have been our eyes that were the 

problem. Regardless, however, the 

combination of all three technologies 

means that unlocking your phone should be 

fast and easy every time. 

The Samsung Galaxy S8 is the best 

smartphone in the world, pure and simple. 

It’s one of the fastest devices we’ve ever 

tested, the camera is incredible and it has 

the sleekest, snazziest design around by a 

country mile. By virtually every metric you’d 

care to name, the Galaxy S8 is the best 

phone on the market. 

You’re paying for all that quality, though. 

At £689 SIM-free, it’s far from cheap, and 

contract prices aren’t much better – the 

cheapest we’ve found is £46 per month 

with £50 up front from Vodafone. However, 

the Galaxy S8 justifies its price by being one 

of the most impressive smartphones ever 

built. It’s the perfect confluence of smooth 

elegance and raw power, and there’s no 

other device that comes close to matching 

it for capability or attractiveness. 

Adam Shepherd 


PROCESSOR Octa-core 2.3GHz Samsung Exynos 8895 • 

SCREEN SIZE 5.8in • SCREEN RESOLUTION 2,560x1,440 • 

REAR CAMERA 12 megapixels • STORAGE 64GB • 

WIRELESSDATA 4G • DIMENSIONS 68x149x8mm • 

WEIGHT 155g • OPERATING SYSTEM Android 7.0 Nougat • 

WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.samsung.com/ 

uk • PART CODE SM-G950FZKABTU 

Battery life 

0% 

-50 

16h 45m 




43

FLAGSHIP ANDROID SMARTPHONE 

LG G6 

★★★★★ 

£650 • From www.carphonewarehouse.co.uk 

VERDICT 

The LG G6’s sprawling display makes it a pleasure 

to use, but the Galaxy S8 is even more impressive 

THE LG G6 is the fl agship smartphone that 

got everyone talking at the recent MWC 

show. Besides ditching the G5’s modular 

design, its 18:9 aspect ratio and almost 

bezel-free design adds even more screen 

space to a handset that keeps the familiar 

dimensions of a conventional 16:9 device. 

LG’s initial promise of a “very competitive” 

price hasn’t quite come to pass, as its £650 

RRP isn’t vastly cheaper than the £689 

Samsung Galaxy S8, while both the iPhone 7 

and Google Pixel cost even less. Still, there’s 

no arguing that it oozes premium quality, 

with its stylish frame and Gorilla Glass 5 back 

panel. It’s tough as well, holding the IP68 

rating, meaning you can submerge it in water 

at a depth of 1.5m for 30 minutes. 

The 5.7in front display is protected by 

Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 and, due to its 18:9 

aspect ratio, the LG G6 screen-to-body ratio is 

an impressive 78.6%. The phone isn’t too 

heavy, at 163g, and despite the size of the 

screen, it’s still usable one-handed. 

TERA OF THE DEEP 

The volume rocker sits on the left side, with a 

dual-SIM and microSD card tray on the right. 

The G6 comes with 32GB of onboard storage 

so the latter is particularly welcome, and it 

impressively supports cards up to 2TB in size 

– such huge cards aren’t even on sale yet. To 

charge and transfer fi les, you have a USB 

Type-C port on the bottom edge, and to listen 

to music, a 3.5mm headphone jack at the top. 

Of course, the main attraction is the 

display. Its 18:9 aspect ratio is a refreshing 

step forward for smartphones; it’s hard to 

appreciate just by looking at product shots, 

but the extra bit of 

screen genuinely 

makes reading the 

news, watching fi lms, 

taking pictures, 

multitasking and 

gaming more 

enjoyable and 

practical than before. 

There’s also Dolby 

Vision and HDR 10 

support. Previously 

only available on 

high-end TVs, HDR 

widens the colour 

range, producing 

blinding whites and 

seriously deep blacks. 

Obviously, your 

content will have to be HDR as 

well, but you should be able to 

watch both Netflix and Amazon 

HDR content as soon as the 

mobile apps have been enabled 

for the technology. 

However, there is some 

day-to-day benefi t, too: to meet 

these standards, LG has clearly 

worked on the screen’s contrast 

and brightness. We measured 

the screen’s contrast at a frankly 

astonishing 1,678:1 and 2,112:1 

depending on screen content, 

which is the best we’ve seen on 

a smartphone, ever. 

BLACK AND WHITE 

SITUATION 

With a maximum 492cd/m 2 

brightness, the IPS screen is 

readable in all but the very 

brightest of conditions – we 

had no problem viewing the 

phone outside – and it also 

delivers stunning black level 

response. Surprisingly, our black 

measurement test result of 

0.23cd/m 2 is a very slight 

downgrade on the LG G5’s (Shopper 341) 

0.19cd/m 2 , but it’s still up there with the 

very best IPS phone screens. 

Our only disappointment was that it 

covered 93.2% of the sRGB colour gamut. 

This is still a high fi gure, but many other 

smartphones – especially those with 

AMOLED displays – can do better. 

The G6 comes with Android 7.1 Nougat, 

along with LG’s latest 

UX 6 overlay. This 

soft ware – particularly 

its take on splitscreen 

multitasking 

– is a pleasure to use, 

and doesn’t seem to 

hog too much of the 

G6’s 4GB of RAM. 

That’s just as well, 

because LG has 

decided to go with the 

Snapdragon 821 CPU 

rather than the newer 

fl agship-standard 

Snapdragon 835. As 

such, its Geekbench 

single-core score of 

1,777 and multicore 

score of 4,137 fall behind those of betterspecced 

rivals such as the Samsung Galaxy S7 

and Huawei P10. The Exynos 8895-powered 

Galaxy S8 comprehensively beats it as well. 

GAMING THE SYSTEM 

Generally, the G6 does feel slower during 

strenuous multitasking than its octa-core 

contemporaries. Even the fi ngerprint sensor 

feels relatively sluggish to respond, and it 

doesn’t cope well with moisture, either – a 

tiny bit of sweat will force a PIN input instead. 

It is, at least, much more competitive in 

gaming. In the GFXBench Manhattan 

offscreen test, the LG G6 averaged a high 

49fps, which actually beats the Galaxy S7 

by 11fps, the P10 by 2fps and the Google 

Pixel XL by 1fps. You’ll have no issue with 

demanding 3D games here. 

We weren’t too thrilled by the battery life, 

however. Lasting 12h 53m in our video 

playback benchmark, the LG G6 will get you 

through a day of moderate use, but is still 

rather short-lasting by fl agship standards. 

Next to the Google Pixel’s 16h 23m or the 

Galaxy S7’s 17h 48m, it defi nitely loses out. 

That said, one advantage of the 

Snapdragon 821 is its support for Qualcomm’s 


Quick Charge 3, which together with the 

included fast charger and USB Type-C cable 

will net you about 50% charge in 30 minutes. 

BETTER THAN ONE 

The dual-lens camera on the old G5 was great, 

but the G6 has changed things a little: the 

resolution has fallen from 16 to 13 megapixels. 

It still works in the same way, though, with 

one 125º wide-angle lens and the other with a 

bog-standard, 71º fi eld of view. As was the 

case with the LG G5, the main camera has a 

bright f/1.8 aperture, while its wide-angle 

counterpart is a smidge dimmer at f/2.4. 

The 18:9 FullVision display is a great 

companion for camera enthusiasts. You can 

separate the display into two squares and 

preview the previous shot while snapping the 

next one immediately above. It’s strangely 

satisfying, and means the whole process of 

capturing, previewing and taking the next 

shot is much quicker than normal. 

We were also very impressed by the LG 

G6’s camera app, which provides a host of 

different options and modes. When you 

open the app, you’ll notice two icons with 

trees in them at the top. This allows you to 

cycle between the wide 125º and the normal 

71º lenses. The transition between the 

lenses is seamless, allowing you to quickly 

capture two different perspectives at the 

touch of a button. 

Within the camera app’s settings, you 

can choose between several different 

photographic modes: panorama, 360 

panorama, food, popout, snap, slow-mo and 

time-lapse. A tap of another menu button 

brings up different fi lters. 

Then there are the manual photo and 

manual video modes. Manual photo mode 

gives you control over the white balance, 

focus (regular lens only), exposure 

compensation, ISO and shutter speed. 

FILM STUDIES 

The LG G6’s manual video mode gives you 

even more control, including the ability to 

change the mic gain, audio crossover, add a 

wind noise fi lter, change the white balance, 

manual focus (regular lens only), exposure 

compensation, ISO sensitivity and shutter 

speed. You can also set the resolution, aspect 

ratio and frame rate for videos, and record in 

4K 16:9 at 30fps, and in 1080p 16:9, 18:9 and 

21:9 Cinema at 60fps. Recording at 720p 

grants you 120fps with a 16:9 aspect ratio, 

and 60fps at 18:9 or 21:9 Cinema. 

It’s even possible to lock the exposure 

(AE-L) in this pro video mode, which is 

fantastic if you want to whack the LG G6 on 

a tripod and record professional-looking 

footage. Better still, there’s focus peaking 

under the manual focus option. This fringes 

objects in focus in green pixels, just as with a 

professional video camera. Unfortunately, 

focus peaking disappears when you hit 

record, which means it’s not all that useful. 

When it comes to quality, the LG G6’s 

dual 13-megapixel lenses are up there with 

We measured the screen’s contrast at a frankly astonishing 

1,678:1 and 2,112:1 depending on screen content, which is 

the best we’ve seen on a smartphone, ever 

the very best. It’s not the outright best 

camera on a smartphone – that accolade 

belongs to the Google Pixel and Google 

Pixel XL’s shared snapper design, closely 

followed by the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S8 

– but it’s fantastic nonetheless. 

Images are clear and packed with detail 

through both lenses. The difference 

between the two is most apparent indoors; 

low-light performance is a lot better on the 

f/1.8 lens because it lets in more light, so if 

you’re snapping photos indoors, avoid the 

wide-angle lens. 

HDR adds a considerable amount of 

detail to photographs, with images appearing 

more natural. Naturally, you’ll get more 

objects in your image with the wider lens, but 

there is a compromise on quality, with the 

f/2.4 lens able to capture less light. It’s a 

trade-off , but given you have the option to 

cycle between the two modes, there’s not 

much to complain about. 

We particularly appreciated the LG G6’s 

dual-LED fl ash, which doesn’t wash the 

scene in blue or pink as some phones’ 

fl ashes are liable to do, and it manages to 

maintain good colour accuracy while 

eliminating distracting shadows. 

GALAXY FARING 

The LG G6 is a decent fl agship smartphone 

with a great screen, an impressive camera 

and a great design. We love the tall, narrow 

shape – it provides a slice of extra screen 

real estate without making the phone 

awkward to use one-handed – and the 

thin borders at the top and bottom of 

the phone keep its height to a minimum 

as well. 

However, at £650, the LG G6 isn’t that 

much cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy S8, 

and we think that the extra £39 is worth 

paying for a beautifully designed smartphone 

with a more colourful AMOLED screen, 

a faster processor, more onboard storage 

and useful extras such as iris- and facialrecognition 

unlocking. 



PROCESSOR Quad-core 2.35GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 

• SCREEN SIZE 5.7in • SCREEN RESOLUTION 2,880x1,440 

• REAR CAMERA 13 megapixels • STORAGE 32GB • 

WIRELESSDATA 4G • DIMENSIONS 149x72x7.9mm • 

WEIGHT 163g • OPERATING SYSTEM Android 7.1 • 

WARRANTY Two years parts and labour • 

DETAILS www.lg.com/uk • PART CODE H870 

Battery life 

0% 

12h 53m 

-50 




45

SSD UPGRADE KIT 

KINGSTON SSDNow UV400 Upgrade Kit 480GB 

★★★★★ 


VERDICT 

A great upgrade option for laptop owners, but you can get cheaper standalone drives 

ALTHOUGH AN SSD can make a huge 

difference to the speed of your PC, increasing 

boot speeds and application load times, 

installing one can be tricky. That’s doubly so 

if you want to upgrade a laptop. Kingston 

wants to make things easy with this, the 

SSDNow UV400 Upgrade Kit. 

Inside the box, you get the 2.5in SATA3 

drive (available in 120GB, 240GB, 480GB and 

960GB versions; we tested the 480GB kit), 

plus a full copy of Acronis True Image HD and 

everything you need to install the drive. For a 

desktop PC, this includes a mount to convert a 

3.5in drive bay into an SSD-compatible one, 

and a Molex-to-SATA power adaptor. 

CLAMSHELL OUT 

It’s laptop upgraders who really benefi t from 

this kit. You get an external USB hard disk 

caddy, designed for the SSDNow UV400. 

Plugging this into your laptop, you can use the 

simple Acronis True Image soft ware to clone 

your existing hard disk before you make the 

swap and install the SSD permanently. 

The height of drives can be an issue with 

some laptops, so Kingston also ships the drive 

with a foam spacer. This pads out any room 

inside the laptop to ensure that the SSD fi ts 

snuggly and doesn’t jog around. If you don’t 

want or need all of this, the SSDNow UV400 is 

available as a drive only for around £15 less. 

While ease of installation shouldn’t be 

ignored, it’s the raw speed that determines if 

an SSD should be bought or not. Kingston 

uses Triple-level cell (TLC) storage, which 

stores three bits per cell. TLC memory delivers 

the lowest-cost SSDs but has the slowest 

performance. That said, the SSDNow UV400 

is a SATA3 drive, which has a maximum 

throughput of 600MB/s. With the SSDNow 

UV400’s maximum read speed of 550MB/s 

and write speed of 500MB/s, the drive is 

pushing against the maximum bandwidth the 

interface offers. In other words, the fact that 

it’s using TLC storage should have little impact. 

SOLIDLY STATED 

Our test results showed this to be the case, 

too. Copying our huge fi les, we saw read 

speeds of 475.4MB/s and write speeds of 

482.21MB/s. In our large fi les test, we saw 

read speeds of 441.43MB/s and write speeds 

of 479.71MB/s. Our small fi les test, which 

really pushes the drive to its limits with lots 

and lots of fi le operations, slowed the 

UV400 right down, producing a read speed of 

321.36MB/s and write speed of 439.64MB/s. 

In all cases, Windows’ caching technology 

helps improve the real-world write 

performance by buffering fi les. Read speeds 

can’t be improved, as data has to be pulled 

from the drive before it can be cached. 

Switching to the CrystalDiskMark 

benchmark, sequential speeds showed that 

the drive was bang on the money for its 

quoted specs: 552.6MB/s read speeds and 

506.6MB/s write speeds. Switching to the 4K 

fi le test, which pushes SSDs by requiring 

thousands of random fi le operations, the 

UV400 slowed down considerably: 341.8MB/s 

read and 322.7MB/write. These speeds 

compare favourably with similarly specced 

drives from other manufacturers. 

GETTING LAPPED 

As to whether the UV400 is worth buying or 

not depends on what you want it for. If you’re 

upgrading a laptop, the entire kit is excellent 

value and gives you everything you need for a 

quick upgrade. If you just want a bare drive for 

a PC, the kit is overpriced and the standalone 

drive not quite as good value. For standalone 

drives, the Crucial MX300 series is slightly 

better value and performed a tiny bit faster in 

our benchmarks, making it the better choice. 

David Ludlow 


CAPACITY 480GB • COST PERGIGABYTE £0.32 • 

INTERFACE SATA3 • CLAIMEDREAD 550MB/s • CLAIMED 

WRITE 500MB/S • WARRANTY Three years RTB • DETAILS 

www.kingston.com • PART CODE SUV400S37/480G 

Huge fi les 

Large fi les 

Small fi les 

0% 

478.80MB/s 

460.57MB/s 

-50 

380.5MB/s 




MEDIA STREAMER 

HUMAX H3 Espresso 

★★★★★ 

£80 • From www.currys.co.uk 

VERDICT 

It’s simple to use and control, but the H3 

Espresso lacks the fi nesse and app variety of 

its main competition 

GIVEN THAT THE media streamer market is 

dominated by Apple, Amazon and Google, any 

competitor has to be better, cost less or do 

something different. Humax has decided to go 

with the third option and offer something a 

little unusual with its H3 Espresso: live TV 

streamed over the internet, and integration 

with the company’s Freeview set-top boxes. 

Size- and shape-wise, the H3 Espresso 

looks like a slimmed-down Apple TV. 

Humax’s player measures a similar 95x95mm, 

with the same curved corners. However, the 

H3 is considerably slimmer than the 35mm 

Apple TV, measuring just 18mm. 

WOODEN PERFORMANCE 

The small size means that it’s easy to tuck 

the media player out of the way. If you do 

have it on display, the wood-eff ect top at 

least gives the H3 a different look to its rival 

media streamers. 

Humax has kitted out the H3 with a decent 

range of ports. Around the back, you get 

HDMI 1.4, Ethernet (there’s 802.11n Wi-Fi 

built in, too) and an optical S/PDIF output. 

There’s also a USB2 port on the side for 

connecting external storage directly. 

Powering on the H3 for the fi rst time 

takes you through a quick setup wizard, which 

gets the box connected to your network. 

It also takes you through configuring the 

companion Android and iOS apps, although 

you can stick with the dedicated remote 

control. Humax has done a good job with the 

remote: it’s comfortable to hold and gives you 

all the main playback controls you need. 

The two main benefi ts of using the app are 

that you don’t need line of sight to the H3, as 

the app works over your network, and you 

can use your phone’s onscreen keyboard to 

enter text. The latter sounds like a good idea, 

but it’s a little fl aky in practice. Using our H3 

box, we found that text entry didn’t work 

with every app, which is a real shame. 

Humax’s main interface for the H3 

Espresso is a little basic, with simple 

thumbnails letting you select and launch 

apps. It works well enough, although the 

interface is rather functional. 

SURFING SEASON 

One of the key selling points of the H3 is the 

access it gives you to live TV. The easiest 

method is to stream from the internet using 

the TVPlayer app. This gives you, at the time 

of writing, 79 free channels, including every 

main terrestrial channel. You also get a 

number of additional channels, including QVC, 

Bloomberg and CNN International. Using the 

supplied code, you get two months of free 

TVPlayer Plus access (usually £5.99 a month), 

netting you an additional 29 premium 

channels – well, if you consider stations 

such as MTV, Gold and Cartoon Network as 

being premium, that is. 

Image quality is very good: better quality 

than standard-defi nition Freeview, but not as 

good as HD from BBC iPlayer. TVPlayer is also 

available on the Apple TV, Fire TV and 

Chromecast, though, so there’s no clear 

reason to buy the H3 Espresso for this app. 

However, the H3 has another trick up its 

sleeve: it can live-stream content from a 

Humax Freeview Play FVP-4000T. This can 

either be recorded shows or live TV via one of 

the FVP-4000T’s three tuners. 

While access to live TV is good, ondemand 

TV is disappointing. There’s no 

iPlayer, ITV Hub, All4 or My5. In this regard, 

the H3 lags behind its competition. 

Other content is also a little lacking, and 

only the Netflix and YouTube apps stand out, 

both of which use the same familiar interfaces 

as they do on other media streamers. That’s it 

for premium content, as there’s no Now TV, 

Amazon Prime Video or Spotify. 

SLIM PICKINGS 

Humax has a simple app store, but the 

range of available content is poor. What’s 

more, apps don’t have descriptions, so you 

have to guess what add-ons such as ‘Know 

Yourself’ and ‘Check Body’ do. 

The built-in Humax Media Player is useful 

for anyone with a media server on their 

network, though, letting you stream video, 

music and photos. Most formats are 

supported, too. If you don’t have a media 

server, you can just plug in a USB key directly 

into the H3 Espresso’s side port. 

As a basic media streamer or Netflix 

player, the H3 Espresso does a good job, but 

at the moment, it’s painfully lacking in 

content and apps. As it stands, the Amazon 

Fire TV with 4K Ultra HD (Shopper 350) costs 

the same, yet has more content and supports 

4K footage. If you want to save money, the 

Chromecast or Amazon Fire TV stick cost 

less than half the price of the H3 Espresso. 

David Ludlow 


VIDEOOUTPUTS HDMI 1.4 • NETWORKING 802.11n 

(2.4GHz) Wi-Fi • DIMENSIONS 95x95x18mm • 

STREAMING FORMATS UPnP, DLNA, SMB • 

INTERNET STREAMING SERVICES Netflix, YouTube, 

TVPlayer • WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS 

⬆ Other than Netflix and YouTube, the H3 Espresso is somewhat lacking when it comes to apps 

uk.humaxdigital.com • PART CODE H3/UK 


OVER-EAR HEADPHONES 

MASTER & DYNAMIC MH40 

★★★★★ 


VERDICT 

These stylish headphones don’t sound as 

good as they look 

HEADPHONES THAT BOTH look and 

sound good are somewhat hard to come by 

– a situation that Master & Dynamic is 

attempting to rectify with the MH40. This set 

of cans screams beauty, design and build 

quality, but ultimately it’s the sound quality 

that makes or breaks any audio product – 

including this one. 

At £319, the MH40 isn’t cheap, and with 

more affordable competition from the £280 

Bowers & Wilkins P7 (Shopper 348), the 

Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 at £200, the 

Sony MDR-1A at £120 and even the likes of 

the Creative Sound BlasterX H5 at £95, the 

MH40 has its work cut out. 

In the package, you’ll fi nd the headphones, 

two sets of detachable cables (a 1.25m cable 

with remote and mic, and a 2m standard 

cable), a leather cable box, a soft carrying 

pouch and a 6.3mm adaptor. 

The remote on the 1.25m cable allows 

you to adjust the volume on iOS devices, 

but unfortunately, this particular function 

doesn’t work on Android as well. That said, 

you can still play/pause tracks, answer and 

receive calls, and skip through tracks (by 

double- or triple-tapping the middle 

button) on both operating systems. 

VEGAN UNFRIENDLY 

These accessories, OS compatibility 

aside, show an attention to detail 

that we’re happy to say is replicated 

on the MH40 itself, which has a 

stunning look and distinctive design. 

There are a few colours to choose 

from; we received the silver 

metal/brown leather model for 

review, and it looks better in the 

fl esh than it does on Master & 

Dynamic’s website. 

The MH40 has “heavy grain 

premium cowhide” on the top 

of the headband, with soft 

lambskin on the earpads 

and the inner part of the 

headband. Grilles adorn 

the exterior of each cup to 

complete the retro ham 

radio look, but it’s important 

to note that these aren’t 

open-back headphones in 

the technical sense. 

The earcups are in fact 

closed, which is good news if 

you’re planning on listening to 

the MH40 in the office or on your 

daily commute, 

since you can do 

so without fear 

of annoying 

your fellow 

travellers. 

The MH40 

is practical in 

other ways, 

too. The 

earcups pivot 

fl at, allowing 

you to store 

them with 

greater ease in 

the included pouch. 

The earpads attach 

magnetically to the metal 

housing of each earcup, 

making it easy to replace them when they 

wear out. The 3.5mm cable is removable, 

with a jack on each earcup so you can 

choose which side to hang the cable and, 

unusually, there’s a mechanical mute button 

on the right earcup as well. 

However, it’s not the most comfortable set 

of headphones we’ve ever worn. The 

headband is adjustable, but there isn’t 

much range to the adjustment – if you 

have a large head, you might fi nd the 

MH40 just doesn’t fi t. We also found 

the narrow earpads a touch small for 

our ears, and with the minimal amount 

of padding on the headband, the total 

weight of 360g was immediately 

noticeable. We’re not sure we’d want to 

wear these for long periods of listening. 

FALLING FLAT 

The MH40’s other technical 

specifications are well up to scratch. 

In each earcup is a large 45mm 

neodymium driver, and the 

overall impedance of the 

headphones is 32 ohms. 

This means they’ll need a 

little more volume over your 

regular 16-ohm headphones. 

Sound quality, however, is 

lower than we’d expect from 

a set of headphones costing 

over £300. First up, there’s 

the bass, which we found to 

lack presence to the extent 

that the lowest of low notes 

didn’t have much rumble to 

them. For example, in Usher’s Yeah!, 

at each chorus the 

bass cuts off, leaving 

you wanting more. 

Its mid-bass slam 

was a little 

uncontrolled but 

did at least have 

plenty of oomph. 

There are 

also better 

headphones for 

listening to 

classical music, 

as there’s an 

over-warm 

presentation to the 

sound that muddles 

fi ne details in the 

mid-range of the sound spectrum. Certainly, 

compared with the excellent Sennheiser 

Momentum 2.0, the MH40 just isn’t as 

forward-sounding or as clear. 

To top it all off, the highs aren’t that 

impressive, either. For example, in The 

Weeknd’s Starboy, the recurring electric sound 

in the background isn’t delivered with quite 

enough sparkle for our liking. Everything just 

sounds a little soft and indistinct. 

JUST A PRETTY FACE 

As for soundstage, that’s not so bad. The 

MH40 has an intriguing soundstage, with a 

rather deep but narrow sound. Instrument 

separation is acceptable, but again, we would 

have liked a bit more refi nement, as when 

testing with games the positioning of sounds 

wasn’t terribly accurate. 

The Master & Dynamic MH40 is one of the 

most attractive, beautifully designed pairs of 

headphones we’ve laid hands – and eyes – on. 

Constructed entirely from aluminium and 

leather, they feel like they’ve been built to last. 

However, at £319, they simply miss the 

mark in terms of comfort and, most 

importantly, sound quality. You’d be better 

off considering the Sennheiser Momentum 

2.0 or the Creative Sound BlasterX H5, both 

of which offer superior sound quality and 

are considerably cheaper. 



HEADPHONES SUBTYPE Over-ear • PLUG TYPE Dual 

3.5mm • WEIGHT 360g • CABLELENGTH 1.25m with 

remote and mic, 2m standard cable • WARRANTY Two 

years repair and replace • DETAILS www.masterdynamic.eu 

• PART CODE MH40S2 


COMPACT SYSTEM CAMERA 

PANASONIC 

Lumix DMC-G80 

★★★★★ 

£799 (with 12-60mm kit lens) • 

From www.amazon.co.uk 

VERDICT 

Packed with useful features, the Lumix DMC-G80 

is a superb CSC for stills, and even better for video 

THE PANASONIC LUMIX DMC-G80 is the 

seventh generation in a line that stretches 

back to the fi rst ever compact system 

camera (CSC), the Panasonic G1. It may be 

overshadowed by the fl agship GH series, the 

gadget-laden GX series or the budget-friendly 

GH series, but then the most unassuming 

cameras can sometimes offer the best value, 

and the G80 is well placed to repeat the 

all-round greatness of the Panasonic G7. 

The G80 looks remarkably similar to the 

G7, both in the fl esh and in its specifications: 

16-megapixel photos, 4K videos, a 3in 

articulated touchscreen and a 2.4-million dot 

electronic viewfinder. Body-only, it costs £629, 

but it makes sense to go with the £799 

package, which includes a 12-60mm kit lens – 

a big step up from the G7’s 14-42mm. Both 

the lens and the body are weather-sealed, 

which is unusual for a sub-£1,000 camera, and 

indicates that Panasonic is aiming this model 

at a more demanding type of photographer. 

Another key feature is the same sensorshift 

optical stabilisation as seen in the GX80 

(Shopper 343), something that was missing 

from the G7. When a stabilised lens is fi tt ed, 

the camera uses both sensor-shift and in-lens 

systems in tandem to help cope with shaky 

conditions or extremely slow shutter speeds. 

TAKE THE CONTROLS 

While the G80 is bigger than most CSCs 

(being about the same size and weight as a 

typical DSLR), this allows for a chunky, 

comfortable handgrip and plenty of dials. 

The SD card slot has its own compartment 

on the side, so is easier to access when using 

a tripod than on the G7, and a designed 

shutter makes it quieter as well. 

There are fi ve customisable buttons dotted 

around the camera, plus fi ve further virtual 

ones on the touchscreen. Buttons labelled Fn 

aren’t as quick to learn as those labelled with 

specific functions, but it does give you more 

fl exibility to set up the camera to your liking, 

and you can always apply your own stickers. 

In addition, you get dedicated buttons for 

ISO speed, white balance, autofocus mode 

and AF/AE lock, plus a lever for toggling 

between single auto, continuous auto and 

manual focus modes. There are also two 

chunky command dials on the top plate for 

direct access to shutter speed and aperture 

in manual exposure mode. 

Exposure compensation is accessed by 

pressing the Fn1 button on the top plate and 

then spinning the rear command dial. We 

found this a little awkward, so assigned it 

permanently to the rear wheel. It still reverted 

to shutter speed in manual exposure mode, 

though, with the front command dial 

assigned to aperture. 

Over on the 

other side of 

the viewfinder 

hump there’s a 

dedicated drive 

mode dial, which 

includes the usual 

single, burst and 

self-timer options, 

plus three more 

unusual ones. 

Interval mode, 

for instance, 

provides access 

to Panasonic’s 

time-lapse and stop-motion animation modes, 

while 4K Photo mode takes advantage of the 

8-megapixel resolution of each 4K video 

frame to deliver a 30fps burst mode (shots 

are limited to JPEG-only, but you can choose 

the aspect ratio). 

The third option is Post Focus, which 

works in a similar way, recording a video as it 

sweeps through the focus in a scene. After 

capture, you can tap the screen to choose 

which part to focus on, and even combine 

shots using a technique called focus stacking, 

so a larger area or the whole scene is in sharp 

focus. It produced slightly odd results when 

selecting a range of areas to keep sharp, but 

the Auto mode that keeps everything sharp 

worked extremely well. 

TOUCH AND GO 

The electronic viewfinder uses a 2.36-million 

dot OLED screen, but it’s bigger than on the 

G7, with 0.74x rather than 0.7x magnification. 

The LCD screen switches off automatically 

when the camera is raised to the eye, but it 

can still be used as a touchscreen to move 

the autofocus point. This feels natural and 

is extremely quick, and it’s only slightly 

upset by accidental nose nudges. Helpfully, 

switching it from Exact to Offset mode 

(which makes it behave more like a laptop 

touchpad) makes nose prods merely 

wiggle the autofocus point, rather than 

having it veer off course. 

After moving the autofocus point, the 

command dials can be used to adjust the 

autofocus area size, which varies from a 

tiny point to almost the entire frame height. 

This fl exibility is helpful generally, and 

particularly so in very dark conditions where 

the camera might struggle to focus on a very 

small area. What’s also useful is that face 

detection focuses on eyes rather than faces, 

and the accuracy of both face detection and 


touchscreen-powered subject tracking is as 

good as we’ve seen from any camera. 

Fast autofocus performance also 

contributes towards impressive operating 

speeds, with the G80 taking 0.8 seconds from 

powering up to capturing a shot and 0.4 

seconds between subsequent shots. Burst 

shooting was at 9.2fps in our tests, the buffer 

is good for over 100 JPEGs, and it showed no 

sign of fi lling up. Switching to Raw mode 

slowed it down to 7.1fps, and this rate slowed 

significantly after 47 frames. After enabling 

continuous autofocus, it ran at 6.2fps for 

JPEGs and 5.4fps for Raw. There are faster 

cameras, but the G80 is quick enough for 

most purposes, and the generous buffer 

means it has stamina as well as speed. 

MOVIE BUFF 

Panasonic has led the way for video capture 

in recent years, and the G80 continues this 

tradition. It records both 4K (3,840x2,160) 

and 1080p videos, both of which are packed 

with crisp, fi ne details. Sensor-shift, lensbased 

and electronic stabilisation can all 

be employed simultaneously to deliver 

impressively smooth handheld footage, which 

is effective enough to use while walking. 

Unlike the cheaper G-series cameras, the 

G80 also includes the Cinelike D colour profi le. 

This produces fl at colours, which make a good 

starting point for colour grading. There’s also 

Zebra stripe peaking, which shows which 

parts of the frame are overexposed. You get 

a 3.5mm microphone socket, too, but sadly 

there’s no headphone socket for monitoring. 

There are no slow-motion modes, but the 

camera’s 1080/60p videos could be slowed 

to 25p in editing soft ware. 

Video autofocus is excellent, with the same 

superb subject tracking as per photos and 

decisive refocusing when the subject or 

camera moves. However, it’s not quite up to 

professional standards, as there’s still some 

focus hunting and the occasional error. 

Panasonic CSC cameras use Micro Four 

Thirds sensors that measure 17.3x13mm. 

That’s about 40% smaller (by surface area) 

than the APS-C sensors found in CSCs from 

Sony, Fujifilm and Canon. As such, they’re 

always likely to be a little behind rivals for 

image quality. The G80 bears this out with 

a 16-megapixel resolution that’s lower than 

rival cameras’ 24 megapixels, and a little 

more noise at fast ISO speeds. 

This might be enough to put off some 

people, but for us it’s not a deal breaker. 

The 16-megapixel resolution equates to 

278dpi for an A3 print, which is close enough 

to the ideal level of 300dpi. Noise levels are 

more of an issue, and we’d be tempted to 

limit the G80 to ISO 3200 (where other 

cameras can be pushed to ISO 6400). 

However, with a wide-aperture prime lens it’s 

rare to need ISO speeds beyond 1600. 

ZOOM SERVICE 

Taken on their own terms, the G80’s photos 

are excellent. The new kit lens performed 

superbly and its generous 5x zoom range is 

much more versatile than the 3x zooms 

offered by rivals. Metering and automatic 

exposures were hard to fault, with the 

camera responding intelligently to moving 

subjects by raising the shutter and ISO speed. 

Colours were lifelike, 

with excellent handling 

of subtle textures. 

We spotted some 

subtle errors on dense 

foliage, where the 

demosaicing fi lter 

couldn’t work out what 

colour a particular pixel 

should be and thus rendered it grey, but it 

didn’t happen often and was hard to spot. 

The G80 is pricier than the G7 was at 

launch, but with its weather sealing, larger 

viewfinder, sensor-shift stabilisation 

and posher kit lens, this feels like a big step 

up. Its price puts it somewhere between 

entry-level CSCs such as the Canon EOS M3 

and high-end models such as the Fujifilm X-T2 

(Shopper 351), but in most respects – 

ergonomics, controls, performance, features 

– it’s much closer to the latter, and it 

outperforms almost everything for video. 

The new Fujifilm X-T20 may be the camera 

to steal the show – we’ll be reviewing it soon. 

For now, though, the Lumix DMC-G80 is the 

best sub-£1,000 CSC kit on the market. 

Ben Pitt 


SENSOR RESOLUTION 16 megapixels • SENSOR SIZE 

17.3x13mm • FOCAL LENGTH MULTIPLIER 2x • 

VIEWFINDER Electronic (2.36 million dots) • LCDSCREEN 

3in (1.04 million dots) • OPTICAL ZOOM (35mm-EQUIVALENT 

FOCAL LENGTHS) 5x (24-120mm) • 35mm-EQUIVALENT 

APERTURE f/7-11.2 • LENS MOUNT Micro Four Thirds • 

WEIGHT 715g (with kit lens) • DIMENSIONS 79x137x130mm 

• WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.panasonic. 

com/uk • PART CODE DMC-G80MEB-K 

Battery life 

0% 

-50 

900 shots 



PORTABLE FOLDAWAY SEAT 

SITPACK 

★★★★★ 

£49 • From sitpack.com 

VERDICT 

A clever, compact seat that you can take (and use) practically anywhere 

FOLD-UP CHAIRS might be useful, but 

they’re a pain to carry around. Wouldn’t it 

be better if there was a more compact and 

fl exible design, giving you a seat for 

everything from photography to sitting in a 

queue? Now there is: the Sitpack. 

The same size as a 500ml can of beer, the 

Sitpack is the smallest folding seat you can 

get. At 600g, it’s also pretty light, although the 

compact dimensions make it feel weighty. 

When you want to relax, you just fl ip the 

sides out to make the base, extend the 

monopod leg, and you’re done. Using the 

Sitpack falls someway between 

standing and sitting: the seat’s leg should 

stand at a 40-degree angle to your legs. 

The top telescopic section can collapse, too, 

so the Sitpack will suit most heights. 

Thanks to the glass fi bre reinforced 

polycarbonate build (the same stuff riot 

shields are made of), the Sitpack is tough 

and durable, able to take anyone up to 100kg 

(15st 10lb) in weight. 

It’s surprisingly comfortable, too, with the 

seat taking a lot of stress: using it, only 30% 

of your body weight goes on to your coccyx. 

That’s the science; in actual use, the Sitpack 

certainly relieved our tired legs. 

The Sitpack is particularly handy for 

photographers, giving you a comfortable 

stance while you wait to take the perfect shot. 

If you’re out and about a lot, the Sitpack’s 

tiny dimensions and comfort make it the ideal 

travel companion. 

David Ludlow 


DIMENSIONS 168x66x66mm • WEIGHT 0.6kg • MAXIMUM 

WEIGHT 100kg • DETAILS sitpack.com 


53

4G SMARTWATCH 

HUAWEI Watch 2 Sport 

★★★★★ 

RECOMMENDED 

£325 • From www.vmall.eu 

VERDICT 

This 4G-ready smartwatch overcomes some 

fi tness foibles with the aid of a brilliant OS 

HUAWEI’S SECOND CRACK at a smartwatch 

comes in a fi tness-orientated Sport version 

and a more stylish Classic model. The Classic 

has a stainless-steel body and comes with a 

leather strap, while the Sport has a plastic body 

and strap with a ceramic bezel and stainless 

rear – plus the option of 4G connectivity. 

The Watch 2 Sport’s headline feature is 

very much the ability to work independently, 

without the need for a phone. Both versions 

have GPS so you can go on a run and have it 

track your pace and location accurately, but 

4G allows you to answer phone calls and reply 

to text messages, too. Simply install a nano-SIM 

beneath the bottom strap attachment, and the 

built-in microphone and speaker can be used 

to dial out and answer calls, while Android 

Wear 2’s new smart replies, dictation and 

onscreen keyboard let you answer and send 

texts directly from the watch face. 

If you’d prefer to exercise in peace, the 

non-4G version is cheaper and offers 

everything else you need for fi tness tracking, 

with built-in GPS and a heart-rate monitor. 

Both variants have a circular 1.2in, 390x390 

AMOLED display with an ambient light sensor 

– it’s sharp and colourful, although Huawei’s 

stock faces look unsophisticated. 

WEAR NECESSITIES 

The Watch 2 is powered by the 1.1GHz 

Snapdragon Wear 2100 processor, 

Qualcomm’s fi rst dedicated wearables chip, 

and its 768MB is plenty for a smartwatch. 

Swiping around feels responsive, other than a 

few brief pauses here and there. We’re hoping 

these will be fi xed with fi rmware updates. 

Battery life is fi ne: by disabling Wi-Fi and 

sticking to Bluetooth, we got nearly two days 

out of the 420mAh battery, and ultra-saving 

mode helps draw it out in emergencies. 

However, it’s not quite as good in 

this department as the Samsung 

Gear S3 (Shopper 350), which 

lasts for two to three days 

in normal use. 

While both the Classic 

and Sport models are 

attractive, they are quite 

bulky, both measuring 

12.6mm thick. We also 

wish Huawei had gone for 

a Gear S3-style rotating 

bezel control scheme; 

instead, there are just two 

push buttons on the right edge, 

which is an odd choice considering 

the Android Wear 2 OS has 

been designed with spinning 

bezels in mind. 

Screen size is also down, 

from 1.4in on the original Huawei 

Watch to 1.2in. The makes it harder 

to use one of Android Wear 2’s 

best features, its onscreen keyboard. 

Nonetheless, the operating system 

remains a big improvement. It’s more 

intuitive, accessible and user-friendly than 

previous versions, and the newfound ability to 

install standalone apps solely on the watch 

– so you don’t need a paired smartphone to 

use them – is very handy when you don’t 

have your phone on you. 

This could do with some additional 

support; Huawei’s fi tness app and Google 

Maps both work fi ne, but Gmail and Spotify 

still need a handset present. Still, it’s a useful 

inclusion, as is Android Pay support and 

Google Assistant implementation. The former 

doesn’t seem to work as fast as, say, Apple 

Pay on an Apple Watch, but the latter is 

beautifully responsive when dictating texts. 

NOT WORKING OUT 

However, we’re not entirely convinced by the 

Watch 2 as a fi tness aid – even the Sport 

model. Huawei’s fi tness app delivers 

everything from training plans to guided 

workouts, and the watch itself tracks all sorts 

of metrics (from heart rate to estimated VO2 

capacity) in conjunction with the 

heart-rate monitor and GPS 

sensor. And yet it falls short 

for two key reasons. 

First, in our two weeks 

of using it, we never got 

the watch to sync 

successfully with the 

Huawei Fit smartwatch 

app; hopefully this was 

related to the fact that 

we were testing it 

pre-release. Second, for all 

its fancy features, the app 

misses out one key thing: it 

doesn’t make any attempt to 

auto-detect fi tness activities. 

That’s not so much of an issue for distinct, 

easily defi ned activities such as going for a run, 

but you also want activities like brisk walks to 

be detected without intervention, as you 

never know when a light stroll will turn into 

something more demanding. We often found 

that after starting a walking activity in Huawei 

Fit, it wouldn’t automatically terminate after 

Simply install a nano-SIM and the built-in microphone and 

speaker can be used to dial out and answer calls 

we’d fi nished, and would continue to track for 

hours until we ended it manually. That’s bad 

news for both accuracy and battery life. 

Also, while the Watch 2 handles 

continuous heart-rate tracking, which it 

displays in a nice-looking ‘last six hours’ 

graph onscreen, it doesn’t show you your 

average heart rate, just your maximum, 

minimum and most recent readings. 

SECOND LIFE 

There are some irritations, then, but on the 

whole we like the Huawei Watch 2. It’s no Gear 

S3, but the battery life is good, both variants 

are stylish (if a tad chunky), and it’s packed 

with all the sensors you could want – even if it 

doesn’t always put them to the best use. 

Special mention goes to Android Wear 2, 

which makes it simple to use and adds the 

ability to use Android Pay, and despite the 

weaknesses of the Huawei Wear app, it is 

undoubtedly a boon to be able to go for a 

run leaving your smartphone at home. 

Jonathan Bray 


PEDOMETER Yes • HEART-RATE MONITOR Yes • 

DISPLAYSIZE 1.2in • RESOLUTION 390x390 • BATTERY 

LIFE Two days • WARRANTY Two years RTB • DETAILS 

consumer.huawei.com/uk • PART CODE Watch 2 Sport 


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We cover the whole spectrum of technology news, reviews and features.

Choosing a... PC system 

A basic PC costing around £350 will 

01 be able to run everyday office, 

multimedia and education soft ware 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. 

If you want to play games, you’ll 

02 have to upgrade the graphics card. 

Budget cards such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 

950 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 970. 

All modern PCs come with at 

03 least a dual-core processor and 

are capable of most tasks. Anyone who 

regularly undertakes demanding tasks 

such as video editing and encoding 

should consider a quad-core or even a 

hex-core processor. 

There are plenty of good reasons to 

04 upgrade the PC’s memory or hard 

disk. If you’ll use your PC for gaming, video 

editing or other demanding tasks, you’ll 

need at least 8GB of RAM and a large hard 

disk; 1TB should suffice. Many new PCs have 

an SSD, which speeds up the time it takes for 

your PC to boot and programs to load. 

Having plenty of USB ports is 

05 always useful, as most computer 

peripherals attach to these ports. Most 

new PCs come with the latest USB3 ports, 

which provide faster data transfers when 

used with supported devices than the 

older USB2 standard. 

Most new PCs now come with 

06 Windows 10 pre-installed. Don’t 

be too easily swayed by the inclusion of 

other soft ware, though, as it may be that 

you’ll never use it. 

While most PCs come in cases 

07 of a similar size, some have more 

compact mini tower or mini PC cases. 

These smaller PCs will fi t under your TV 

or on your desk more easily, but bear in 

mind that they’re significantly harder to 

upgrade than full-size machines. 

PCs 

RASPBERRYPi 

Zero W 

★★★★★ 

£10 • www.thepihut.com 

The Pi Foundation’s latest 

pocket-sized hobbyist PC is 

a big improvement on the 

original Pi Zero, thanks to integrated Wi-Fi 

and better performance. It’s not as fast as 

the more expensive Pi 3, nor as generous 

with connections and ports, but the bargain 

Zero W is perfect for low-power projects. 

PROCESSOR 1GHz single-core Broadcom BCM2835 • RAM 512MB • USB PORTS 1x Micro USB 

(power), 1x Micro USB OTG • TOTALSTORAGE MicroSD card slot • DISPLAY None • 

OPERATING SYSTEM Raspbian • WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.raspberrypi.org • 

PART CODE Pi Zero W • FULL REVIEW Jun 2017 

CHILLBLAST Fusion Hubble 

★★★★★ 

£1,000 • www.chillblast.com 

One of the fi rst PCs 

we’ve seen to take 

advantage of Intel’s 

latest Kaby Lake processors, the Fusion 

Hubble excels at compute tasks thanks 

to its overclockable Core i5-7600K. 

A GTX 1060 also allows for nippy games 

performance, and you get a good-sized 

SSD, watercooling and a long warranty 

to sweeten the deal. 

NEW 

ENTRY 

PROCESSOR Quad-core 4.6GHz Intel Core i5-7600K • RAM 8GB • FRONTUSB PORTS 2x USB2, 

2x USB3 • REAR USB PORTS 2x USB2, 4x USB3, 1x USB3.1, 1x USB Type-C • TOTALSTORAGE 250GB 

SSD, 1TB hard disk • GRAPHICSCARD 3GB Palit GeForce GTX 1060 Dual • OPERATING SYSTEM 

Windows 10 • WARRANTY Five years labour including two years collect and return • 

DETAILS www.chillblast.com • PART CODE Fusion Hubble • FULL REVIEW Apr 2017 

PC SPECIALIST Apollo K-VR 

★★★★★ 

£1,645 • www.pcspecialist.co.uk 

If you’ve got the cash for a 

truly top-flight gaming 

system, look no further 

than the Apollo K-VR. Its 8GB GTX 1080 

graphics card deft ly handles 4K and VR, while 

an Intel Core-i7-7700K and 16GB of RAM 

make for swift multitasking. There’s potential 

for additional overclocking as well. 

PROCESSOR Quad-core 4.2GHz Intel Core i7-7700K • RAM 16GB • FRONT USB PORTS 2x USB2, 2x 

USB3 • REAR USB PORTS 4x USB3, 1x USB3.1, 1x USB Type-C • TOTAL STORAGE 250GB SSD, 1TB 

hard disk • GRAPHICSCARD 8GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 • DISPLAY None • OPERATING 

SYSTEM Windows 10 • WARRANTY Three years labour inc. one year parts and one month collect 

and return • DETAILS www.pcspecialist.com • PART CODE Apollo K-VR • FULL REVIEW Jun 2017 

PALICOMP 

AMD Avenger 

★★★★★ 

£500 • www.palicomp.co.uk 

It’s not the most 

stylish or upgradable 

PC, but the AMD 

Avenger manages astounding frame 

rates in 1080p games for a £500 

system. It has premium-grade storage, 

too, combining a 1TB hard disk with a 

speedy 240GB SSD. 

NEW 

ENTRY 

• FRONT USB PORTS 2x USB2, 2x 

PROCESSOR Quad-core 4GHz AMD Athlon X4 880K • RAM 8GB • FRONT USB PORTS 2x USB3 • 

REAR USB PORTS 4x USB2, 2x USB3 • TOTAL STORAGE 240GB SSD, 1TB hard disk • 

GRAPHICS CARD 4GB AMD RX 460 • OPERATING SYSTEM Windows 10 Home 64-bit • 

WARRANTY Three years RTB • DETAILS www.palicomp.co.uk • PART CODE KAV3 • 

FULL REVIEW Aug 2016 


Choosing a... Laptop 

A basic laptop costing around £300 

01 will run everyday office, multimedia 

and education soft ware, 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. 

If you want to play modern 

02 games, you’ll need a laptop with a 

dedicated graphics chip such as the Nvidia 

GeForce GTX 960M. Good gaming laptops 

tend to have large 17in screens and weigh 

around 3kg, so they’re best suited to use 

at home. 

If you want a laptop that you can 

03 take everywhere, look for a model 

that weighs less than 2kg. For the best 

portability, buy one that has an 11in or 13in 

screen. In general, the smaller and lighter the 

laptop, the more expensive it is, especially if 

it has plenty of processing power. 

Battery life is extremely important 

04 for a laptop, particularly if you’ll be 

carrying it around. We’d expect all but the 

biggest and heaviest to last for at least fi ve 

hours on a single charge, but for an ultraportable 

that you carry everywhere, eight 

hours and above is more desirable. 

Laptops use mobile versions of 

05 processors to conserve power, 

and these lag behind desktop chips when 

it comes to performance. For a budget 

Windows laptop, an Intel Core i3 processor 

will do the job, but if you want better 

performance, you should look for an 

Intel Core i5 or Core i7 model instead. We 

recommend a minimum of 4GB of RAM, 

although 8GB is better for multitasking. 

Most budget and mid-range laptops 

06 use a mechanical hard disk for 

storage. You’ll want at least 500GB, but 

1TB or more is better. Solid-state drives 

(SSDs) have faster performance, making 

your computer quicker to boot and more 

responsive. They have lower capacities, 

though. You’ll need at least 128GB. 

Netbooks are a type of small, 

07 low-cost ultra-portable laptop. 

They’re fi ne for light use, but avoid them if 

you want to do complicated tasks. 

LAPTOPS 

RAZER Blade Stealth 

★★★★★ 

£1,250 • www.razerstore.comre.com 

Razer has 

stepped away 

from its 

traditional focus on gaming devices 

to create the defi nitive ultra-portable laptop: 

it’s thin, light, has a vibrant screen and gleans 

good performance from its Kaby Lake processor. The Chrome 

backlit keyboard is also hands-down the best laptop keyboard 

we’ve ever used. 

PROCESSOR Dual-core 2.7GHz Intel Core i7-7500U • RAM 16GB • DIMENSIONS 300x104x43mm 

• WEIGHT 1.29kg • SCREEN SIZE 12.5in • SCREEN RESOLUTION 2,560x1,600 • GRAPHICS 

ADAPTOR Intel HD Graphics 620 • TOTALSTORAGE 256GB SSD • OPERATING SYSTEM 

Windows 10 Home • WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.razerone.com • 

PART CODE Razer Blade Stealth QHD • FULL REVIEW Mar 2017 

ACER 

Chromebook R 11 

★★★★★ 

£229 • www.tesco.co.uk 

The Acer 

Chromebook 

R 11 is the most 

attractive and practical budget 

Chromebook you can 

buy, with exceptional 

build quality, top 

processing and a lovely display. 

PROCESSOR Dual-core 1.6GHz Intel Celeron N3050 • RAM 2GB • DIMENSIONS 20x295x203mm • 

WEIGHT 1.2kg • SCREEN SIZE 11.6in • SCREEN RESOLUTION 1,366x768 • GRAPHICS ADAPTOR 

Intel HD Graphics • TOTAL STORAGE 16GB eMMC • OPERATING SYSTEM Chrome OS • 

WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.acer.co.uk • PART CODE ND.20411.07Q • 

FULL REVIEW Apr 2016 

LENOVO Yoga Book 

★★★★★ 

£450 (Android), £500 (Windows) • www.currys.co.uk 

The Yoga Book 

is a genuinely 

innovative 

convertible: the fully virtual 

keyboard can give way to a smooth, oth, 

fl at writing surface, perfect for 

drawing or digitising notes. Both 

the Android 6.0 and Windows 10 

models include an Intel Atom chip, 

and measure just 9.6mm thin. 

PROCESSOR Quad-core 2.4GHz Intel Atom x5-Z8550 • RAM 4GB • DIMENSIONS 256x170x9.6mm 

• WEIGHT 960g • SCREEN SIZE 10.1in • SCREEN RESOLUTION 1,920x1,200 • TOTAL STORAGE 

64GB SSD • OPERATING SYSTEM Windows 10 Home • WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS 

www.lenovo.com/uk • PART CODE ZG38C01299 • FULL REVIEW Feb 2017 

DELL XPS 13 (2017) 

★★★★★ 

£1,245 • www.amazon.co.uk 

Powered by an 

updated Intel Core 

i7-7500U, 7500U, the refreshed 

Dell XPS 13 goes from a tantalising 

purchase to an essentialential one. 

The 3,200x1,800 display still 

looks excellent, too, both in itself 

and surrounded 

by the razor-thin 

InfinityEdge bezels. 

PROCESSOR Quad-core 2.7GHz Intel Core i7-7500U • RAM 8GB • DIMENSIONS 304x200x15mm 

• WEIGHT 1.29kg • SCREEN SIZE 13.3in • SCREEN RESOLUTION 3,200x1,800 • 

GRAPHICSADAPTOR Intel HD Graphics 620 • TOTALSTORAGE 256GB SSD • 

OPERATING SYSTEM Windows 10 Home • WARRANTY Three years RTB • 

DETAILS www.dell.com/uk • PART CODE XPS 13 9360 • FULL REVIEW May 2017 


57

Choosing a... Smartphone 

A smartphone’s operating system 

01 (OS) dictates its basic features and 

which third-party soft ware 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 

is mainly used on Lumia phones. Apple iOS 

and Google Android have the most apps 

available but Windows Phone is slowly 

catching up. 

All smartphones have colour screens, 

02but 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 

has improved tremendously in recent years, 

and resolutions have increased to as high as 

20 megapixels. 

Very few modern smartphones have a 

03physical keyboard for entering text; 

they almost exclusively use touchscreens 

now. Physical keyboards can aid heavy 

emailing, but today’s touchscreen keyboards 

work just as well. 

Android smartphones and iPhones 

running iOS 9 or 10 allow you to install a 

variety of custom onscreen keyboards so 

you can fi nd one that suits you. 

Be careful when choosing a contract. 

04 Look for one that includes a large 

data allowance if you want to use the 

internet regularly or you’ve set your phone 

to synchronise your contacts, calendar and 

email through online services. 

Built-in Wi-Fi can help you avoid high data 

charges by connecting to the internet 

through wireless hotspots when you’re out, 

or your router when you’re at home. Android 

and iPhone handsets can operate as wireless 

hotspots, letting you connect your laptop to 

the web over your mobile data connection. 

There may be an extra charge for this. 

SMARTPHONES 

MOTOROLA Moto Z Play 

★★★★★ 

£330 SIM-free • www.amazon.co.uk 

Another laudable take on the 

modular smartphone, the Moto 

Z Play combines excellent 

attachments with great base specs, respectable 

performance and outstanding battery life of nearly 

24 hours in our tests. 

PROCESSOR Octa-core 2.0GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 • SCREEN SIZE 5.5in • SCREEN 

RESOLUTION 1,920x1,080 • REAR CAMERA 16 megapixels • STORAGE 32GB • WIRELESSDATA 4G 

• DIMENSIONS 156x76x6.9mm • WEIGHT 165g • OPERATING SYSTEM Android 6.0 • WARRANTY 

One year RTB • DETAILS www.motorola.co.uk • PART CODE XT1635 • FULL REVIEW Mar 2017 

APPLE iPhone SE 

★★★★★ 

£379 SIM-free; free on £23.50-per-month contract • 

www.apple.com/uk (SIM-free); 

www.carphonewarehouse.com (contract) 

While it lacks the 3D Touch capabilities of 

the more expensive iPhone 6s, this tiny 

successor to the iPhone 5s exceeds all 

expectations. It’s fast, light and includes a lovely 12MP camera. 

PROCESSOR Dual-core 1.8GHz Apple A9 • SCREEN SIZE 4in • SCREEN RESOLUTION 1,136x640 • 

REAR CAMERA 12 megapixels • STORAGE 32GB/128GB • WIRELESSDATA 4G • DIMENSIONS 

124x59x7.6mm • WEIGHT 112g • OPERATING SYSTEM iOS 10 • WARRANTY One year RTB • 

DETAILS www.apple.com/uk • PART CODE iPhone SE • FULL REVIEW Jul 2016 


★★★★★ 

£420 SIM-free; free on £29-per-month contract • 

www.amazon.co.uk (SIM-free); 

www.carphonewarehouse.com (contract) 

Samsung’s latest fl agship is the best 

Android smartphone money can buy. It’s not cheap, 

but you get superb build quality, an excellent display, 

top-tier performance and outstanding battery life. 

PROCESSOR Quad-core 2.3GHz Samsung Exynos 8890 • SCREEN SIZE 5.1in • SCREEN RESOLUTION 

2,560x1,440 • REAR CAMERA 12 megapixels • STORAGE 32GB/64GB • WIRELESSDATA 4G • 

DIMENSIONS 142x70x7.9mm • WEIGHT 152g • OPERATING SYSTEM Android 6.0 • WARRANTY One 

year RTB • DETAILS wwww.samsung.com/uk • PART CODE SM-G930F • FULL REVIEW Jun 2016 

ONEPLUS 3T 

★★★★★ 

£399 SIM-free • oneplus.net/uk 

This replacement for the OnePlus 3 isn’t 

quite as big a bargain, but it still takes 

the 3’s place as the best-value handset 

on the market, even more capable of taking on premium 

fl agships with its Snapdragon 821 processor and a huge 6GB of RAM. 

PROCESSOR Quad-core 2.35GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 • SCREEN SIZE 5.5in • 

SCREEN RESOLUTION 1,920x1,080 • REAR CAMERA 16 megapixels • STORAGE 64GB • 

WIRELESSDATA 4G • DIMENSIONS 153x75x7.4mm • WEIGHT 156g • OPERATING SYSTEM 

OxygenOS (Android 7.0) • WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS oneplus.net/uk • 

PART CODE A3010 • FULL REVIEW Mar 2017 

LENOVO P2 

★★★★★ 


www.three.co.uk 

NEW 

ENTRY 

MOTOROLA Moto G4 

★★★★★ 


www.carphonewarehouse.com 

It’s not the fastest phone in its price 

range, nor does it have the best 

camera or design. But the P2 is a 

reliable jack-of-all-trades handset, with the exception 

of its battery life, which is the best we’ve ever seen. 

PROCESSOR Octa-core 2GHz Snapdragon 625 • SCREEN SIZE 5.5in • SCREEN RESOLUTION 

1,920x,1080 • REAR CAMERA 13 megapixels • STORAGE 32GB • WIRELESSDATA 4G • 

DIMENSIONS 153x76x8.3mm • WEIGHT 177g • OPERATING SYSTEM Android 6.0.1 • WARRANTY 

One year RTB • DETAILS www.lenovo.com • PART CODE P2aH42 • FULL REVIEW Jun 2017 

The best budget smartphone you 

can buy. From its sharp, 5.5in Full HD 

display to its slick performance and 

high-quality camera, you get much more out of this 

handset than its low price suggests. 

PROCESSOR Octa-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 • SCREEN SIZE 5.5in • 

SCREEN RESOLUTION 1,920x1,080 • REAR CAMERA 13 megapixels • STORAGE 16GB/32GB • 

WIRELESSDATA 4G • DIMENSIONS 153x77x7.9mm • WEIGHT 155g • OPERATING SYSTEM 

Android 6.0.1 • DETAILS www.motorola.co.uk • PART CODE XT1622 • FULL REVIEW Sep 2016 


Choosing a... Tablet 

All tablets rely on an operating system 

01 (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. 

It’s important to pick a tablet that has 

02 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 tablets 

typically use TN panels, which don’t have 

particularly good viewing angles. The viewing 

angles of IPS panels are much better. 

If you want to listen to music, watch 

03 fi lms and play games, make sure your 

tablet has plenty of storage. Many tablets 

come with 8GB or 16GB of internal storage, 

although some budget models have less. 

You’ll typically pay more for a higher storage 

capacity. Many tablets also have microSD 

slots that let you add extra storage, although 

you won’t fi nd one on an iPad. This is a cheap 

way of boosting storage capacity. 

Tablets rarely include a SIM card slot. 

04 This means you’ll have to rely on 

Wi-Fi to get online, although some tablets 

let you access the internet through your 

smartphone. If you want mobile access to 

the internet, look for 3G- and 4G-ready 

devices. These almost always cost more 

than Wi-Fi-only models but they’re great 

if you use your tablet while commuting 

or travelling. 

Your choice of tablet determines the 

05 apps you can use on it. You may fi nd 

that some of the apps you want are available 

on iOS but not Android and vice versa. 

Windows 10, meanwhile, runs traditional 

desktop applications. 

TABLETS 

LENOVO ThinkPad X1 Tablet 

★★★★★ 

£1,560 • www.pcworldbusiness.co.uk 

The ThinkPad X1 Tablet isn’t just 

another Surface Pro clone; its 

attachable modules provide it 

with a huge amount of fl exibility, from addingding extra 

battery life and connection ports to transforming it into a portable 

projector. Even better, it’s a fast, attractive 2-in-1 in its own right. 

PROCESSOR Dual-core Intel Core m7-6Y75 • SCREEN SIZE 14in • SCREEN RESOLUTION 

2,560x1,440 • REAR CAMERA None • STORAGE 256GB • WIRELESSDATA 4G LTE • 

DIMENSIONS 291x210x8.6mm • WEIGHT 725g • OPERATING SYSTEM Windows 10 Pro • 

DETAILS shop.lenovo.com • PART CODE SP40G76043 • FULL REVIEW Nov 2016 

APPLE iPad Pro 9.7in 

★★★★★ 

£549 • www.apple.com/uk 

A smaller, more portable form 

factor makes the newest iPad Pro 

the best yet. With the same great 

display and quick A9X processor as its larger 

predecessor, its notepad size and compatibiity 

with the Apple Pencil make it particularly suitable for artists. 

PROCESSOR Dual-core 2.16GHz Apple A9X • SCREEN SIZE 9.7in • SCREEN RESOLUTION 2,048x1,536 

• REAR CAMERA 12 megapixels • STORAGE 32/128/256GB • WIRELESS DATA 4G (cellular version) 

• DIMENSIONS 240x170x6.1mm • WEIGHT 437g • OPERATING SYSTEM iOS 10 • WARRANTY One 

year RTB • DETAILS www.apple.com/uk • PART CODE 9.7in iPad Pro • FULL REVIEW Jul 2016 

AMAZON Fire HD 8 

★★★★★ 

£90 • www.amazon.co.uk 

This is the budget tablet 

to beat. With a build 

quality seemingly 

beyond its low-cost nature and long 

battery life, the Fire HD 8 has plenty 

to offer for a mere £90. 

PROCESSOR Quad-core 1.3GHz MediaTek MT8163 • SCREEN SIZE 8in • SCREEN RESOLUTION 

1,200x800 • REAR CAMERA 2 megapixels • STORAGE 16GB • DIMENSIONS 214x128x9.2mm • 

WEIGHT 341g • OPERATING SYSTEM Fire OS • WARRANTY One year RTB • 

DETAILS www.amazon.co.uk • PART CODE Fire HD 8 • FULL REVIEW Jan 2017 

HUAWEI MediaPad M3 

★★★★★ 

£298 • www.ebuyer.com 

Android slates may have fallenlen out 

of fashion in favour of 2-in-1s, but 

the MediaPad M3 shows they can 

still be worth your cash. The Kirin 950 chip delivers 

massive processing power, and the sleek design 

and vibrant screen deserve your attention as well. 

PROCESSOR Octa-core 2.3GHz Hisilicon Kiring 950 • SCREEN SIZE 8.4in • SCREEN RESOLUTION 

2,560x1,440 • REAR CAMERA 8 megapixels • STORAGE 32GB • WIRELESSDATA 4G • 

DIMENSIONS 124x215x7.3mm • WEIGHT 320g • OPERATING SYSTEM Android 6.0 • WARRANTY 

One year RTB • DETAILS www.huawei.com/uk • PART CODE BTV-DL09 • FULL REVIEW Feb 2017 

MICROSOFT Surface Pro 4 

★★★★★ 

From £749 (£1,099 as reviewed) • 

www.microsoft store.com 

The most compelling ‘laptop replacement’ tablet yet. 

Thinner, powerful and equipped with a gorgeous 

screen, this is a fantastic Windows 10 tablet. The 

Surface Pen and optional Type Cover have been improved as well. 

PROCESSOR Dual-core 2.4GHz Intel Core i5-6300U • SCREEN SIZE 12.3in • SCREEN RESOLUTION 

2,736x1,824 • REAR CAMERA 8 megapixels • STORAGE 256GB • WIRELESSDATA No • 

DIMENSIONS 292x201x8mm • WEIGHT 1.37kg inc Type Cover and power brick • OPERATING 

SYSTEM Windows 10 • WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.microsoft.com/surface • 

PART CODE Surface Pro 4 • FULL REVIEW Jun 2016 

AMAZON Kindle Oasis 

★★★★★ 


The Kindle Oasis is 

expensive by eReader 

standards, but you 

absolutely get what you pay for: a 

well-built, long-lasting device with a sharp 

screen and brilliant clip-on cover accessory. 

PROCESSOR Not stated • SCREEN SIZE 6in • SCREEN RESOLUTION 1,440x1,080 • REAR CAMERA 

None • STORAGE 4GB • WIRELESSDATA None • DIMENSIONS 143x122x8.5mm • WEIGHT 131g • 

OPERATING SYSTEM Kindle OS • WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.amazon.co.uk • 

PART CODE Kindle Oasis • FULL REVIEW Aug 2016 


59

Choosing a... Compact system camera 

If you’re ready to step beyond the 

01 basic controls of a compact camera, 

or you want greater fl exibility 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. 

There are three competing types of 

02 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 and Olympus 

cameras use this mount, and the lenses are 

interchangeable between manufacturers. 

Micro Four Thirds cameras are 

03 typically more compact than other 

types of CSC because the image sensor is 

physically smaller – with a 22mm diagonal, 

it’s roughly 30% smaller than an APS-C 

sensor. The APS-C sensors that Sony and 

Samsung use in their CSCs are the same size 

as those in traditional digital SLRs. 

Like digital SLRs, CSCs come at a 

04 wide range of prices. Available from 

as little as £200, there’s a CSC to suit every 

budget. Most come with at least one kit 

lens, but if you already have lenses for a 

particular CSC mount, you can buy the body 

on its own and save money. 

05 

Once you’ve settled on a particular 

mount, you should pay attention to a 

camera’s features. Articulating screens and 

integrated viewfinders will help you compose 

shots, while extra physical controls and a 

hotshoe mount will give you fl exibility for 

manual shooting. 

Touchscreens are great, but they’re no 

replacement for physical dials when it comes 

to changing shutter speed and aperture. An 

integrated fl ash is much more convenient 

than a detachable one, as you can never 

forget to take it with you. 

PHOTOGRAPHY 

SONY RX100 V 

★★★★★ 


It may be small, but the 

RX100 V is seriously fast, 

and because it also captures a surprising amount of 

light, image and video quality are both top-notch. 

SENSOR RESOLUTION 20 megapixels • SENSOR SIZE 13.2x8.8mm (1in) • FOCAL LENGTH 

MULTIPLIER 2.7x • VIEWFINDER Electronic (2,400,000 dots) • LCDSCREEN 3in (1,228,800 dots) • 

OPTICAL ZOOM (35mm-EQUIVALENT FOCAL LENGTHS) 2.9x (24-70mm) • 35mm-EQUIVALENT 

APERTURE f/4.9-7.6 • WEIGHT 298g • DIMENSIONS 60x104x41mm • WARRANTY One year RTB 

• DETAILS www.sony.co.uk • FULL REVIEW Apr 2017 

FUJIFILM X-T2 

★★★★★ 

£1,399 • www.amazon.co.uk 

The X-T2 is a mirrorless 

CSC capable of shooting 

high-quality images at incredibly high burst speeds, 

making it a particularly fi ne choice for wildlife and sports photography. 

SENSOR RESOLUTION 24 megapixels • SENSOR SIZE 23.6x15.6mm (APS-C) • 

FOCAL LENGTH MULTIPLIER 1.5x • VIEWFINDER Electronic (2.36 million dots) • LCDSCREEN 3in 

(1.04 million dots) • VIEWFINDER MAGNIFICATION (35mm-EQUIVALENT, COVERAGE) 0.77x, 

100% • LENS MOUNT Fujifilm X Mount • WEIGHT 507g • DIMENSIONS 92x143x51mm • 

WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.fujifilm.eu/uk • FULL REVIEW May 2017 

NIKON D3400 

★★★★★ 

£429 • www.johnlewis.com 

NEW 

ENTRY 

CANON G7 X Mark II 

★★★★★ 

£449 • www.e-infin.com/uk 

A collection of minor 

improvements to battery life, 

shooting speed and stills quality 

add up to make the D3400 the best entry-level DSLR available. 

SENSOR RESOLUTION 24 megapixels • SENSOR SIZE 23.5x15.6mm (APS-C) • VIEWFINDER 

Optical TTL • LCDSCREEN 3in (921,000 dots) • OPTICAL ZOOM (35mm-EQUIVALENT FOCAL 

LENGTHS) 3x (27-82.5mm) • 35mm-EQUIVALENT APERTURE f/5.25-8.4 • LENS MOUNT Nikon F 

Mount • WEIGHT 655g • DIMENSIONS 99x124x135mm • WARRANTY One year RTB • 

DETAILS www.europe-nikon.com • FULL REVIEW Jun 2017 

CANON G9 X 

★★★★★ 

£298 • www.e-infin.com/uk 

A tiny compact that can keep 

up with heavier SLRs and CSCs when 

it comes to image quality, while squeezing in all the 

shooting settings and features you’ll need. 

SENSOR RESOLUTION 20 megapixels • SENSOR SIZE 1in • FOCAL LENGTH MULTIPLIER 2.75x • 

VIEWFINDER None • LCDSCREEN 3in (1,040,000 dots) • OPTICAL ZOOM (35mm-EQUIVALENT 

FOCAL LENGTHS) 3x (28-84mm) • 35mm-EQUIVALENT APERTURE f/5.5-13.5 • WEIGHT 207g • 

DIMENSIONS 62x101x31mm • WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.canon.co.uk • 

FULL REVIEW Jun 2016 

The successor to our 

favourite camera of 2015, the 

G7 X Mark II is another fantastic CSC. A capable 1in 

sensor, a tilting touchscreen, a comfortable grip and a big 4.2x optical 

zoom; this has all you need to take great photos even in low light. 

SENSOR RESOLUTION 20 megapixels • SENSOR SIZE 1in • LCD SCREEN 3in (1,040,000 dots) • 

OPTICAL ZOOM (35mm-EQUIVALENT FOCAL LENGTHS) 4.2x (24-100mm) • 35mm-EQUIVALENT 

APERTURE f/5-7.7 • LENS MOUNT Canon EF-S • WEIGHT 319g • DIMENSIONS 64x108x42mm • 

WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.canon.co.uk • FULL REVIEW Oct 2016 

NIKON D500 

★★★★★ 

£1,299 (body only) • www.e-infin.com/uk 

You’ll pay a lot for the D500, 

the headline model in Nikon’s 

cropped-sensor SLR range, but with its 

stunning photos, long battery life and heaps of extra features 

(including useful wireless upload capability), it’s worth every penny. 

SENSOR RESOLUTION 21 megapixels • SENSOR SIZE 23.5x15.7mm (APS-C) • FOCAL LENGTH 

MULTIPLIER 1.5x • VIEWFINDER Optical TTL • LCD SCREEN 3.2in (2.4 million dots) • LENS 

MOUNT Nikon F mount • WEIGHT 860g • DIMENSIONS 115x147x81mm • WARRANTY One year 

RTB • DETAILS www.europe-nikon.com • FULL REVIEW Oct 2016 


Choosing a... Display 

A basic 24in LCD monitor costs 

01 around £100. It will be fi ne 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. 

A VGA input lets you use the monitor 

02 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, which lets you watch 

protected video content, such as Blu-ray 

movies. DisplayPort is becoming more 

popular, but you’ll need a graphics card with 

a DisplayPort output (mini or full-size) to 

use this input on your monitor. 

A larger monitor will be easier on the 

03 eye and may have a higher resolution. 

Most monitors have a resolution of at least 

1,920x1,080 (1080p), which provides lots of 

room for working with multiple windows at 

the same time. For even higher resolutions, 

you’ll need a larger display. Some 27in and 

30in screens have 2,560x1,600 or even 4K 

resolutions. You’ll need a graphics card with 

a dual-link DVI output and a dual-link DVI 

cable or either HDMI or DisplayPort to use a 

monitor at these resolutions. 

If you want better picture quality, 

04 look for a monitor with a high 

contrast ratio. The higher the ratio, the 

whiter the whites and the blacker the blacks. 

You’ll also be able to see more fi ne detail in 

images with high contrast levels. Viewing 

angles are important, as wider angles mean 

you don’t have to sit directly in front of the 

monitor to get the best picture. Wider 

viewing angles also allow more people to 

view the screen at the same time. 

Fast response times reduce ghosting, 

but don’t be dazzled by the numbers. A 

response time of 25ms or quicker is fi ne 

for all applications. 

DISPLAYS 

ASUS VC239H 

★★★★★ 

£127 • www.box.co.uk 

It’s rare to see IPS 

panels on monitors 

this cheap, and in 

Standard mode, the VC239H 

delivers much better image quality 

than we’ve come to expect from budget displays. 

SCREEN SIZE 23in • RESOLUTION 1,920x1,080 • SCREEN TECHNOLOGY IPS • VIDEOINPUTS 

VGA, DVI, HDMI • WARRANTY Three years RTB • DETAILS www.asus.com/uk • PART CODE 

VC239H • FULL REVIEW Mar 2017 

IIYAMA G-Master GB2888UHSU 

Gold Phoenix 

★★★★★ 


It’s unusual to consider a £380 

monitor a bargain, but that’s what 

this is: a 28in, Ultra HD display with a mere 1ms 

response time and support for AMD’s anti-tearing FreeSync tech. 

SCREEN SIZE 28in • RESOLUTION 3,840x2,160 • SCREEN TECHNOLOGY TN • 

VIDEO INPUTS VGA, 3x HDMI, DisplayPort • WARRANTY Two years collect and return • 

DETAILS www.iiyama.com • PART CODE ProLite GB2888UHSU-B1 • FULL REVIEW Aug 2016 

PHILIPS Brilliance 258B6QUEB 

★★★★★ 

£367 • www.uk.insight.com 

A USB Type-C port doesn’t 

sound like the most thrilling 

feature on a monitor, but it 

gives the Brilliance 258B6QUEB a wonderful 

fl exibility, allowing you to hook up any laptop, 2-in-1 or Type-C 

peripheral. Picture quality is very good, too. 

SCREEN SIZE 25in • RESOLUTION 2,560x1,440 • SCREEN TECHNOLOGY IPS • REFRESH RATE 

60Hz • VIDEOINPUTS VGA, HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI, USB Type-C • WARRANTY Three years RTB 

• DETAILS www.philips.co.uk • FULL REVIEW Mar 2017 

AOC Q2781PQ 

★★★★★ 


While a touch of 

ghosting means it’s 

not ideal for gaming, 

the AOC Q2781PQ combines excellent 

desktop picture quality with a gorgeous 

thin-bezel design, plus a high resolution for clean multitasking. 

SCREEN SIZE 27in • RESOLUTION 2,560x1,440 • SCREEN TECHNOLOGY IPS • VIDEOINPUTS 

VGA, HDMI, DisplayPort • WARRANTY Two years collect and return • DETAILS aoc-europe.com • 

PART CODE Q2781PQ • FULL REVIEW Nov 2016 

AOC AGON AG271QX 

★★★★★ 

£420 • www.overclockers.co.uk 

AOC U3477PQU 

★★★★★ 


NEW 

ENTRY 

This is the ideal 27in 

monitor for gaming: 

smoothing Adaptive Sync, 

a resolution that’s sharp but not too 

demanding, a high 144Hz refresh rate and 

minimal input lag. Contrast and colours are generally good as well. 

SCREEN SIZE 27in • RESOLUTION 2,560x1,440 • SCREEN TECHNOLOGY TN • REFRESH RATE 

144Hz • VIDEO INPUTS VGA, 2x HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI • WARRANTY Three years RTB • 

DETAILS aoc-europe.com • FULL REVIEW May 2017 

Ultra-wide monitors are 

best suited to those who 

want to multitask on 

two full-size windows at once, but also kick back with a fi lm or game 

in the evening. AOC’s U3477PQU is the best example we’ve seen so 

far, with an incredible panel and excellent build quality. 

SCREEN SIZE 34in • RESOLUTION 3,840x1,440 • SCREEN TECHNOLOGY IPS • REFRESH RATE 

60Hz • VIDEO INPUTS DisplayPort, DVI, HDMI, VGA • WARRANTY Three years RTB • DETAILS 

www.aoc-europe.com • FULL REVIEW May 2015 


61

Choosing a... TV 

A 32in Full HD TV costs around 

01 £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 fl oor space than a 

traditional fl at set. 

A 1,920x1,080-resolution TV can 

02 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 fi nally available at reasonable 

prices, although you’ll still pay a premium for 

one over a 1080p model. 

Consider the number of inputs 

03 you’ll need to connect the rest of 

your equipment. Two HDMI ports should be 

the bare minimum, but many TV sets come 

with four HDMI connectors. You’ll need 

HDMI 2.0 if you want a future-proof 4K TV, 

as this is the only way to get 60fps video 

playback from external sources at such 

a high resolution. 

If you want to plug a PC into your TV, 

you’ll need to use either HDMI or VGA 

inputs. Be aware that some TVs only let you 

use a PC on an analogue input, and others 

won’t display the Windows desktop at the 

TV’s highest resolution. 

The contrast ratio tells you the 

04 difference between the darkest 

and the brightest shades that the screen 

will be able to display. The higher the 

number, the darker the blacks and the 

brighter the whites. A screen with a high 

contrast ratio is more likely to show a 

wider range of detail. 

HD content is now becoming fairly 

05 widespread, but if you want Ultra 

HD content your options are more limited. 

Most Ultra HD TVs have Netflix built into 

their smart TV systems, but only BT is 

currently providing live Ultra HD video, 

with BT Sport Ultra HD. 

Ultra HD Blu-ray players are due to arrive 

in 2016, but in the meantime Amazon’s Fire 

TV set-top box will stream its Instant Video 

service at Ultra HD resolutions. 

HOME CINEMA 

PANASONIC Viera TX-50DX802B 

★★★★★ 

£749 • www.hillsradio.co.uk 

The Viera 

TX-50DX802B not 

only looks great and 

comes equipped with an expansive 

suite of smart apps, but it also has its own soundbar, allowing for 

clearer, boomier movie nights. 

SCREEN SIZE 50in • NATIVE RESOLUTION 3,840x2,160 • VIDEOINPUTS 3x HDMI (1x ARC), 

component, composite • TUNER Freeview HD • DIMENSIONS 895x559x203mm • WARRANTY Five 

years RTB • DETAILS www.panasonic.com/uk • PART CODE TX-50DX802B • FULL REVIEW Apr 2017 

SAMSUNG UE49KS7000 

★★★★★ 

£799 • www.cramptonandmoore.co.uk 

A good-quality 4K TV 

needn’t cost the earth, 

as the UE49KS7000 

proves. In fact, this Quantum Dot 

display earned the UHD Alliance’s 

UHD Premium badge for its rich, detailed visuals. 

SCREEN SIZE 49in • NATIVE RESOLUTION 3,840x2,160 • VIDEOINPUTS 4x HDMI • TUNER 

Freeview HD, Freesat HD • DIMENSIONS 1,445x908x295mm • WARRANTY Five years RTB • 

DETAILS www.samsung.com/uk • PART CODE UE49KS7000 • FULL REVIEW Apr 2017 

SONY HT-XT3 

★★★★★ 

£319 • www.superfi.co.uk 

The HT-XT3 is a classy-looking 

soundbase that delivers great audio, 

with its integrated subwoofer helping to 

pump out seismic bass. It also provides a degree of future-proofi ng 

with its 4K pass-through support, and can be linked together with 

other Sony speakers for a multiroom audio setup. 

SPEAKERS 2+2 • RMS POWER OUTPUT 350W (total) • DIMENSIONS 750x358x83mm • WEIGHT 

10.5kg • DOCK CONNECTOR None • NETWORKING Bluetooth (SBC, LDAC) • WARRANTY One 

year RTB • DETAILS www.sony.co.uk • PART CODE HT-XT3 • FULL REVIEW Mar 2016 

SAMSUNG UE32J6300 

★★★★★ 

£425 • www.tvsandmore.co.uk 

It might look expensive for 

the screen size, but the 

UE32J6300 is jam-packed with 

features, including one of the best smart TV systems 

around and every major UK catch-up TV service. It’s the ideal 

small TV for a bedroom, kitchen or office. 

SCREEN SIZE 32in • NATIVE RESOLUTION 1,920x1,080 • VIDEO INPUTS 4x HDMI, component, 

composite • TUNER Freeview HD • DIMENSIONS 428x370x91mm • WARRANTY One year RTB • 

DETAILS www.samsung.com/uk • PART CODE UE32J6300AK • FULL REVIEW Dec 2015 

PANASONIC DMP-UB900 

★★★★★ 


Together with the 

Samsung UBD-K8500, 

this forms the vanguard of a new 

breed of Ultra HD Blu-ray players. Samsung’s model is cheaper, 

but the DMP-UB900 has superior features, particularly where 

audio delivery is concerned. 

BLU-RAY PROFILE 6.0 • 3D CAPABLE Yes • DIMENSIONS 435x199x68mm • 

NETWORKING Ethernet, 802.11ac Wi-Fi • WARRANTY One year RTB • 

DETAILS www.panasonic.co.uk • PART CODE DMP-UB900EB • FULL REVIEW Aug 2016 

PHILIPS Fidelio XS1 SoundStage 

★★★★★ 


The Fidelio XS1 SoundStageStage 

is a beautiful-looking 

soundbase with sound 

quality that matches its stunning design. There 

are plenty of connections, including Bluetooth, and the wireless 

subwoofer delivers the lower frequencies with aplomb. 

SPEAKERS 3 • RMS POWER OUTPUT 60W • DIMENSIONS 730x331x40mm • WEIGHT 5.3kg • 

DOCK CONNECTOR None • NETWORKING Bluetooth (SBC, aptX, AAC) • WARRANTY One year 

RTB • DETAILS www.philips.co.uk • PART CODE Fidelio XS1/12 • FULL REVIEW Jan 2016 


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Choosing a... Bluetooth speaker 

Bluetooth speakers come in all shapes 

01 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. 

Many of the cheapest Bluetooth 

02 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 fi ll a room, an 

aptX-compatible device is a better option. 

This Bluetooth protocol retains more detail 

than the A2DP profi le, although you’ll need 

to use it with a compatible smartphone in 

order to get the benefi ts. 

As with any audio product, the 

03 number and size of speaker drivers 

can have a significant impact on the quality 

of sound you get from a Bluetooth speaker. 

Typically, the presence of multiple drivers 

enables the manufacturer to tune each one 

for specific frequencies, directing high-end 

sounds towards a tweeter and sending the 

mid-range frequencies to the main driver. 

Single-driver speakers with larger driver 

cones can be just as capable of producing 

fantastic audio, however. 

04 

Most Bluetooth speakers have at 

least one auxiliary input for a wired 

3.5mm audio jack, in case you want to 

listen to music from a device that doesn’t 

have Bluetooth. 

There are other extra features to look out 

for, though. Speakers with built-in batteries 

may have a USB port for charging your 

smartphone, or a built-in microphone to turn 

it into a speakerphone when a paired 

smartphone receives a call. Not all speakers 

have physical controls; many rely on your 

paired device’s controls for adjusting the 

volume or muting playback. 

AUDIO 

BOWERS & WILKINS P7 Wireless 

★★★★★ 


Bowers & Wilkins’ second-ever 

pair of Bluetooth headphones 

are a triumph – they’re 

exceedingly comfortable and sound superb, 

even without any active noise cancelling. 

HEADPHONES SUBTYPE Over-ear headset • PLUG TYPE 3.5mm 

jack plug (optional) • WEIGHT 323g • CABLELENGTH 1.2m • 

WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.bowers-wilkins.co.uk • 

PART CODE FP38954 • FULL REVIEW Feb 2017 

PANASONIC SC-All7CD 

★★★★★ 

£319 • www.currys.co.uk 

A focus on 

good oldfashioned 

CDs, 

in addition to the usual digital 

streaming services, makes the SC-All7CD one of the most versatile 

multiroom speaker systems you can buy. 

SPEAKERS 2.1 • RMSPOWER OUTPUT 40W • WEIGHT 3.4kg • NETWORKING Bluetooth • 

WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.panasonic.com • PART CODE SC-All7CD • 

FULL REVIEW Dec 2016 

AMAZON Echo Dot 

★★★★★ 


This shrunk-down 

version of the Amazon 

Echo loses the 360-degreee 

speaker, but retains all the same smart home 

functions and excellent Alexa digital assisstant – all 

for a drastically lower price. 

DRIVERS 1 • RMSPOWER OUTPUT Not stated • WEIGHT 163kg • NETWORKING Bluetooth, 

802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi • WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.amazon.co.uk • 

PART CODE Echo Dot 2016 • FULL REVIEW Mar 2017 

Q ACOUSTICS M3 

★★★★★ 

£300 • 

www.weybridge-audio.co.uk 

Although 

there’s no 

subwoofer or Wi-Fi here, the M3 is an awesome 

soundbar that looks as good as it sounds. It also improves on the old 

Media 4 with HDMI ARC support. 

LG SH5 

★★★★★ 


Proof that greatsounding 

soundbar and 

subwoofer combos don’t need to 

cost the earth, the LG SH5 is a sleek, stylish 2.1 set 

with plenty of modes and features. 

SPEAKERS 2.1 • RMSPOWER OUTPUT 320W • DOCK CONNECTOR None • NETWORKING 

Bluetooth 4.0 • DIMENSIONS 945x53x85mm (soundbar), 171x320x252mm (subwoofer) • WEIGHT 

2.26kg • WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.lg.com/uk • PART CODE SH5 • FULL 

REVIEW Jan 2017 

LIBRATONE One Click 

★★★★★ 


NEW 

ENTRY 

SPEAKERS 4 • RMS POWER OUTPUT 80W • WEIGHT 4kg • NETWORKING Bluetooth • 

WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.qacoustics.co.uk • PART CODE QA7440 • 

FULL REVIEW Jun 2017 

The One Click has one of the 

cleverer wireless speaker designs 

we’ve seen; it’s surrounded by a 

rubber frame with both protective bumpers and a 

carry handle/hook. Hang it up or just let it stand, and 

you’ll get rich, loud sound in 360 degrees. 

SPEAKERS 2 • RMS POWER OUTPUT Not disclosed • DOCK CONNECTOR None • WIRELESS 

Bluetooth (SBC) • DIMENSIONS 120x41x205mm • WEIGHT 0.9kg • WARRANTY One year RTB • 

DETAILS www.libratone.com • PART CODE One Click • FULL REVIEW Oct 2016 


Choosing an... Action camera 

Action cameras are typically much 

01 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. 

Almost all action cameras will shoot 

02 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 widest possible 

choice of resolutions and frame rates. 

Most action cameras rely on fl ash 

03 memory for storing your video, 

letting you swap out memory cards on the 

fl y when you fi ll one up with clips. More 

expensive devices can have integrated 

fl ash memory as well as a card slot, but 

it’s typically cheaper to buy the basic 

version of a camera and pick up memory 

cards separately. 

Not all action cameras have LCD 

04 displays; in fact, many deliberately 

don’t include a sceen in order to extend 

battery life. 

If you want to be able to see exactly 

what you’re pointing the lens at, keep an 

eye out for cameras with companion 

smartphone apps, or wrist-mounted 

viewfinders that also let you start and 

stop shooting remotely. 

05 

Action cameras typically have a huge 

range of accessories, with specific 

mounts and harnesses for different activities 

and sports. If the camera itself isn’t water 

resistant, a weatherproof case will protect it 

from the elements, while a tripod mount will 

let you lock it fi rmly in place. 

Spare batteries are essential for longer 

shoots, and some decent video-editing 

soft ware will help you to produce a more 

polished result. 

VIDEO 

AMAZON Fire TVStick 

with 4K Ultra HD 

★★★★★ 


This upgraded box has plenty of services your 4K TV 

might not have (much more so than the competing 

Chromecast Ultra), and you can play games on it, too. 

VIDEOOUTPUTS HDMI 2.0 • NETWORKING 802.11ac Wi-Fi, 10/100 Ethernet • DIMENSIONS 

115x115x17mm • STREAMINGFORMATS UPnP, AirPlay, DLNA, Plex • INTERNET STREAMING 

SERVICES iPlayer, Netflix, Sky News, Spotify, TuneIn Radio, Amazon Prime Instant Video, TVPlayer 

• WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.amazon.co.uk • PART CODE Fire TV with 4K UHD • 

FULL REVIEW Apr 2017 

NVIDIA Shield TV (2017) 

★★★★★ 


A good media streamer/ 

Android games console hybrid made even better by a 

more comfortable controller, a wider range of 

streaming sources and smart home integration. 

VIDEOOUTPUTS HDMI 1.4 • NETWORKING 802.11ac Wi-Fi, 10/100/1,000 Ethernet, Bluetooth 4.1 

• DIMENSIONS 159x98x26mm • STREAMINGFORMATS Plex, Kodi • INTERNET STREAMING 

SERVICES Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Google Play Movies and TV, Google Play Music, YouTube, 

BBC iPlayer • WARRANTY Two years repair and replace • DETAILS www.nvidia.co.uk • PART 

CODE 945-12897-2505-000 • FULL REVIEW May 2017 

PANASONIC HC-VX980 

★★★★★ 

£548 • www.ukdigitalcameras.co.uk 

This 4K-capable camcorder 

lets you capture 8-megapixel 

stills from 4K video. It has 

fantastic image stabilisation and its HDR video mode can help 

with exposing difficult scenes. The newest model has been updated 

with more useful 4K cropping modes and slow-motion features, too. 

OPTICAL ZOOM 20x • SENSOR 1 /2.3in BSI MOS • LCD SCREEN 3in, 460,800 dots • 

DIMENSIONS 73x65x139mm • WEIGHT 351g • WARRANTY One year RTB • 

DETAILS www.panasonic.com • PART CODE HC-VX980 • FULL REVIEW Apr 2016 

SKY Now TV Smart Box 

★★★★★ 

£40 • www.nowtv.com 

Sky has made its fl agship 

media streamer even better, 

adding a Freeview HD tuner and a fl exible 

range of content passes (including movie and sport packages) to 

complement the usual on-demand and catch-up services. 

VIDEOOUTPUTS HDMI 1.4 • NETWORKING 802.11n Wi-Fi, 10/100 Ethernet • DIMENSIONS 

165x165x21mm • STREAMINGFORMATS None • INTERNET STREAMING SERVICES Now TV, 

iPlayer, ITV Hub, All4, Demand 5, TuneIn, Sky News, Spotify • WARRANTY One year RTB • 

DETAILS www.nowtv.com • PART CODE Now TV Smart Box • FULL REVIEW Dec 2016 

GOPRO Hero 5 Black 

★★★★★ 


At last, GoPro’s fl agship 

action camera fi nally has 

built-in waterproofi ng. 

That’s the biggest in a sizable list of 

improvements over the Hero 4 Black, making this the superior 

purchase in spite of its higher price. 

SENSOR 1 /2.3in CMOS • SENSOR PIXELS 12,000,000 • MAXRECORDING RESOLUTION 4K (30fps) 

• AV CONNECTIONS Micro HDMI • DIMENSIONS 45x62x32mm • WEIGHT 117g • WARRANTY One 

year RTB • DETAILS www.gopro.com • PART CODE Hero 5 Black • FULL REVIEW Mar 2017 

SONY FDR-X1000V 

★★★★★ 


Sony looks to take on GoPro with 

this miniscule action cam capable of 

recording 4K video at 30fps. The Hero4 

Black wins out on image quality, but image stabilisation and a fl exible 

range of shooting modes means Sony’s camera still has lots to offer. 

SENSOR 1 /2.3in CMOS • SENSOR PIXELS 8,800,000 • MAX RECORDING RESOLUTION 4K (30fps) 

• AV CONNECTIONS Micro HDMI, 3.5mm microphone input • DIMENSIONS 24.4x51.7x88.9mm • 

WEIGHT 114g • WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.sony.co.uk • PART CODE 

FDR-X1000V • FULL REVIEW May 2016 


65

Choosing an... Inkjet printer 

You should be able to buy a decent 

01 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. 

For £60 you can buy a much more 

02 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. 

If photos are your priority, speed is 

03 less important. Choose a printer that 

reproduces subtle tones well. You can’t 

determine this by looking at the 

specifications – only hands-on testing will 

do, so remember to check our reviews 

before you buy. 

Borderless printing (up to the edge of 

the paper) should also be possible. Pay 

particular attention to running costs: 

photos use three times as much ink as 

regular colour documents. 

Heavy-duty office inkjets can cost 

04 up to £1,000 and their build quality 

is improving. They use large individual ink 

tanks, which can cut running costs. 

Printers with automatic duplex (doublesided) 

printing or A3 capabilities are now 

much more affordable. 

Pricier photo printers let you print 

05 from memory cards plugged straight 

into the printer, so you don’t need to use a 

PC. An LCD preview screen offers greater 

control for this method of printing. Many 

inkjet printers now have a PictBridge USB 

port, which you can use to print images 

directly from most digital cameras. 

06 

If you’re really serious about 

photography, consider buying an 

inkjet that can produce borderless prints 

up to A3 size. The best devices can print 

photos that look nearly as good as those 

from professional labs. 

PRINTERS & SCANNERS 

BROTHER HL-L6300DWT 

★★★★★ 

£260 • www.printerland.co.uk 

A combination of fast 

printing speeds and a good 

mix of connectivity and 

hardware feature makes the HL-L6300DWT 

a fi ne choice for offices. It’s quieter than 

you might think as well. 

TECHNOLOGY Mono laser • MAXIMUM PRINT RESOLUTION 1,200x1,200dpi • DIMENSIONS 

420x400x396mm • WEIGHT 17.1kg • MAXIMUM PAPER SIZE A4/legal • WARRANTY One year 

RTB • DETAILS www.brother.co.uk • PART CODE HLL6300DWTZU1 • FULL REVIEW Oct 2016 

EPSON Expression Premium XP-530 

★★★★★ 


Other than a tiny screen 

and slightly high running 

costs, the XP-530 is a 

welcome addition to Epson’s Expression Premium range. It prints and 

scans incredibly quickly, while maintaining high quality throughout. 

TECHNOLOGY Piezo inkjet • MAXIMUM PRINT RESOLUTION 5,760x1,440dpi • SCANNER 

RESOLUTION 2,400x4,800dpi • DIMENSIONS 138x390x341mm • WEIGHT 6.2kg • 

MAXIMUM PAPER SIZE A4/legal • WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.epson.co.uk • 

PART CODE XP-530 • FULL REVIEW May 2016 

HP Officejet 250 

★★★★★ 

£214 • www.pcworldbusiness.co.uk 

A pleasantly portable 

MFP, the OfficeJet Pro 

250 not only has more hardware features than 

you might expect – including a handy adjustable screen – but it 

runs cheaply and at respectable speeds, too. 

TECHNOLOGY Thermal inkjet • MAXIMUM PRINTRESOLUTION 4,800x1,200dpi • 

SCANNERRESOLUTION 600x600dpi • DIMENSIONS 91x380x198mm • WEIGHT 2.96kg • 

MAXIMUM PAPER SIZE A4/legal • WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.hp.co.uk • 

PART CODE CZ992A#B1H • FULL REVIEW Dec 2016 

XYZPRINTING da Vinci Minimaker 

★★★★★ 

£200 • www.toysrus.co.uk 

It’s not as fully featured as the da 

Vinci Jr 1.0w, but the Minimaker 

prints at identical speed and 

quality, and costs much, much less. In fact, it’s the 

most affordable 3D printer we’ve ever used. 

TECHNOLOGY Fused Filament Fabrication • MAXIMUM PRINTRESOLUTION 100 microns • 

MAXIMUM BUILD SIZE 150x150x150mm • DIMENSIONS 390x360x335mm • WEIGHT 11.5kg • 

FILAMENT 1.75mm PLA • WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS eu.xyzprinting.com • 

PART CODE 3FM1XXEU00D • FULL REVIEW Apr 2017 

CANON Pixma MG5750 

★★★★★ 


The MG5750 is good 

value with a great 

balance of features 

and quality. Its strong performance 

lets us forgive less-than-perfect controls. 

TECHNOLOGY Thermal inkjet • MAXIMUM PRINT RESOLUTION 4,800x1,200dpi • 

SCANNER RESOLUTION 1,200x2,400dpi • DIMENSIONS 148x455x369mm • WEIGHT 6.3kg • 

MAXIMUM PAPER SIZE A4/legal • WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.canon.co.uk • 

PART CODE 0557C006 • FULL REVIEW Apr 2016 

RICOH SP 150SUw 

★★★★★ 


NEW 

ENTRY 

Buying a mono laser 

printer for your home 

may sound strange, but 

the SP 150SUw’s printing speed, quality 

and quietness make a lot of sense at this price. 

TECHNOLOGY Mono laser • MAXIMUM PRINT RESOLUTION 1,200x600 • SCANNER 

RESOLUTION 1,200x1,200dpi • DIMENSIONS 137x350x275mm • WEIGHT 7.5kg • 

MAXIMUM PAPER SIZE A4/legal • WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.ricoh.co.uk • 

PART CODE 408005 • FULL REVIEW Jun 2017 


Choosing a... Wireless router 

Wireless routers each use a number 

01 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. 

If you subscribe to an ADSL 

02 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 directly to your 

broadband connection without having to 

use a separate modem. 

Most 802.11n wireless routers use 

03 the 2.4GHz frequency band. This has 

good range but it can be prone to 

interference if it’s positioned close to a lot 

of other 2.4GHz devices, such as other 

routers and baby monitors. If you have 

trouble getting a consistent signal or you 

want faster speeds for video streaming, for 

example, it’s worth buying a dual-band 

router that can use both the 2.4GHz and 

5GHz bands. 

Alternatively, a high-gain antenna can 

boost signals and improve ranges and 

throughputs to the entire house. You can 

also add a high-gain antenna to a PC’s 

network adaptor. If wired network speeds 

are a priority, you should look for a router 

with a Gigabit Ethernet connection. 

04 

Many routers come with built-in USB 

ports that let you connect a USB 

drive and use the router as a network storage 

device. If you want to share a USB printer 

over your network, look for a wireless router 

that has a USB print server. 

Finally, if you’re interested in making voice 

calls over the internet, buy a router with 

built-in VoIP support (and phone sockets) 

because this can save you money. 

NETWORKS 

TP-LINK Archer C3200 

★★★★★ 


Besides being quite 

well priced for a 

tri-band router, the 

Archer C32000 is impressively fast and 

has a good-looking, folding six-antenna 

design. 

WI-FI STANDARD 802.11ac • STATED SPEED 1,300Mbit/s • USB PORTS 1x USB3 • 

WALL MOUNTABLE Yes • WARRANTY Three years RTB • DETAILS www.tp-link.com • 

PART CODE Archer C3200 • FULL REVIEW Jan 2017 

NEST Cam Outdoor 

★★★★★ 


The Nest Cam Outdoor 

allows you to set up your 

own home security camera 

without any specialist wiring knowledge. 

Video quality is excellent, and the simple 

app makes managing it even easier. 

VIDEORESOLUTION 720p/1080p • CLOUDSTORAGE Yes • NETWORKING 802.11n (2.4GHz) • 

WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.nest.com/uk • PART CODE Nest Cam Outdoor • 

FULL REVIEW Apr 2017 

TP-LINK Archer VR2600 

★★★★★ 

£200 • www.scan.co.uk 

While it needs 

thus-far-theoretical 

4x4 MIMO devices 

to reach its best speeds, this is still 

among the very fastest routers around, 

especially on the 5GHz band. 

MODEM VDSL/ADSL • WI-FI STANDARD 802.11ac • STATED SPEED 1,733Mbit/s • USB PORTS 

2x USB3 • WALL MOUNTABLE Yes • WARRANTY Three years RTB • PART CODE Archer VR2600 

• FULL REVIEW Nov2016 

NETGEAR Orbi 

★★★★★ 

£370 • www.maplin.co.uk 

The Orbi system employs 

both a base router and a 

separate satellite router to 

effectively boost Wi-Fi speed and stability 

throughout your house – a great fi t for 

larger homes. 

MODEM Gigabit Ethernet • WI-FISTANDARD 802.11ac • STATED SPEED 866Mbit/s (5GHz), 

400MBit/s (2.4GHz) • USB PORTS 1x USB2 • WALL MOUNTABLE No • WARRANTY Two years 

RTB • PART CODE RBK50-100UKS • FULL REVIEW Feb 2017 

BT Whole Home Wi-Fi 

★★★★★ 

£200 • www.shop.bt.com 

An excellent 

alternative to 

the Orbi, BT’s 

Whole Home Wi-Fi mesh system is designed to work with your 

existing router, spreading faster, more reliable Wi-Fi around the 

house with three disc-shaped access points. 

MODEM N/A • WI-FI STANDARD 802.11ac • STATED SPEED 1,733Mbit/s (5GHz), 800Mbit/s 

(2.4GHz) • USB PORTS 0 • WALL MOUNTABLE No • WARRANTY Two years RTB • 

DETAILS www.bt.com • PART CODE 181209 • FULL REVIEW May 2017 

NETGEAR Arlo Q 

★★★★★ 

£140 • wwww.argos.co.uk 

1080p night-vision capability 

more than makes up for the 

Arlo Q’s lack of wireless 

cameras, and the system is just as easy to 

use as the original Arlo range. 

RESOLUTION 1080p 30fps full colour • ZOOM 8x digital • NIGHT VISION Yes • 

CONNECTIVITY 2.4GHz + 5GHz Wi-Fi • WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.arlo.com/uk • 

PART CODE VMCC3040-100UKS • FULL REVIEW Jun 2016 


67

Choosing an... Internal hard disk 

A basic 1TB internal hard disk should 

01 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 benefi t 

from SATA3’s faster speeds; SATA3 disks will 

work with SATA2 ports but can only transfer 

fi les at SATA2 speeds. 

SSDs can make the most of SATA3’s 

02 extra bandwidth for fast fi le transfers. 

They use fl ash memory similar to that found 

in USB fl ash drives, and although they tend 

to provide less capacity than mechanical hard 

disks, they’re significantly faster. 

Buy a hard disk that provides more 

03 capacity than you think you need, as 

your storage requirements are likely to grow. 

A 3TB disk strikes the best balance between 

capacity and low cost per gigabyte, but in 

general you should aim to buy the largest 

disk you can afford. 

If you want more disk space or you 

04 want to protect your data against 

disk failure, think about buying several hard 

disks to create a RAID array. These use 

multiple hard disks to create one large 

logical disk with better performance, or to 

duplicate your data for better protection. 

RAID arrays require hard disks of the same 

size. In theory, they can be from different 

manufacturers, but it’s better to buy identical 

disks if you can. 

A hard disk’s spindle speed 

05 determines how quickly it can 

transfer data. A spindle speed of 7,200rpm 

is common in desktop drives and is fast 

enough for most purposes. Desktop hard 

disks with 5,400rpm spindle speeds are 

quite slow but use less power and generate 

less heat and noise. 

To strike the best balance between 

speed and storage capacity, use an SSD as 

your system disk and store your fi les on a 

larger mechanical disk. 

STORAGE 

SAMSUNG 850 Evo 500GB 

★★★★★ 


Samsung’s 850 Evo is simply 

the fastest SATA SSD around, 

and it’s available in a wide 

range of capacities. The 2TB model might be 

expensive at around £590 (from www.ebuyer.com), 

but it means saying goodbye to mechanical storage for good. 

CAPACITY 500GB • COST PER GIGABYTE £0.30• INTERFACE SATA3 • CLAIMED READ 540MB/s 

• CLAIMED WRITE 520MB/s • WARRANTY Five years RTB • DETAILS www.samsung.com/uk • 

PART CODE MZ-75E500BW/EU • FULL REVIEW Oct 2015 

SYNOLOGY Diskstation DS216+ 

★★★★★ 


Synology’s fast two-bay NAS is 

particularly ideal for small 

businesses and workgroups, 

possessing AES-NI encryption and extensive 

support for a range of devices and servers. 

3.5in HARD DISK BAYS (FREE) 2 (2) • NETWORKING 1x 10/100/1,000 Ethernet • 

DLNA MEDIASERVER Yes • PRINTSERVER Yes • DIMENSIONS 165x108x233mm • 

WEIGHT 1.25kg • WARRANTY Two years RTB • DETAILS www.synology.com • 

PART CODE DS216+ • FULL REVIEW Jun 2016 

TOSHIBA Canvio Connect II 2TB 

★★★★★ 


There’s plenty of 

choice when it comes to 

portable hard disks, but 

Toshiba’s Canvio Connect II has an 

excellent bundled soft ware package and 

impressive USB3 speeds. Considering the 

price, there’s no reason not to have one. 

,000 Ethernet • 

CAPACITY 2TB • COST PER GIGABYTE £0.04 • INTERFACE USB3 • WARRANTY One year RTB • 

DETAILS www.toshiba.eu • PART CODE HDTC820ER3CA • FULL REVIEW Nov 2015 

WESTERN DIGITAL Red 6TB 

★★★★★ 


The Red 6TB 

combines excellent 

performance with a 

high capacity and special fi rmware to 

make a hard disk that’s perfect for use in NAS 

enclosures. It’s guaranteed for three years, too, 

which should provide peace of mind. 

CAPACITY 6TB • PRICE PER GIGABYTE £0.03 • INTERFACE SATA3 • WARRANTY Three years 

RTB • DETAILS www.wdc.com • PART CODE WD60EFRX • FULL REVIEW Nov 2014 

ADATA SV620 240GB 

★★★★★ 


If you want an 

external, rather than 

internal, SSD for your PC or 

laptop, the SV620 offers good value. It’s fast and 

compact, and it’s easy to forget about the slightly bendable plastic 

casing when there’s a three-year warranty. 

CAPACITY 240GB • COST PER GIGABYTE £0.43p • INTERFACE USB3 • CLAIMED READ 420MB/s 

• CLAIMED WRITE 440MB/s • WARRANTY Three years RTB • DETAILS www.adata.com • 

PART CODE ASV620-240GU3-CTI • FULL REVIEW Dec 2016 

SAMSUNG 960 Evo250GB 

★★★★★ 

£129 • www.maplins.co.uk 

While it’s not quite as 

quick as the 960 Pro, 

the 960 Evo is still the 

second-fastest NVMe SSD we’ve ever 

tested, and since it’s much more affordable, 

able, 

it’s the one most people should go for. 

CAPACITY 250GB • COST PERGIGABYTE 52p • INTERFACE M.2/NVMe • CLAIMEDREAD 

3,200MB/s • CLAIMEDWRITE 1,500MB/s • WARRANTY Five years RTB • 

DETAILS www.samsung.com • PART CODE MZ-V6E250BW • FULL REVIEW Mar 2017 


Choosing a... Graphics card 

You really don’t have to spend much 

01 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. 

You’ll need to spend more money if 

02 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. 

Check that your chosen card has 

03 the graphics outputs you need. 

Only low-end cards now have VGA 

outputs, but many come with a DVI-to-VGA 

adaptor. Depending on your monitor, you 

may also want an HDMI output or even 

DisplayPort connection. 

Bear in mind that AMD’s Eyefi nity 

triple-monitor gaming mode requires at 

least one DisplayPort monitor, which 

means your AMD graphics card must have 

at least one DisplayPort output. Nvidia’s 

Surround three-monitor mode needs only 

DVI and HDMI ports. 

The amount of memory a card has 

04 is important if you want games to 

look their best at high resolutions. Get a 

card with 2GB of RAM at the very least, 

as this should allow you to select the 

highest-quality textures in games. 

05 

A card’s size, noise output and 

power requirements are the fi nal 

considerations. Make sure your PC’s case 

has enough room to accommodate your 

chosen card. Double-slot cards with large 

fans tend to be quieter than single-slot 

cards with small fans but will block other 

expansion slots on your motherboard. 

Also check that your power supply 

can provide the power the card needs 

and that it has the right connectors. 

Many cards require a six-pin PCI Express 

power connector, and some also need an 

additional eight-pin connector. 

COMPONENTS 

GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1050 D5 2G 

★★★★★ 

£116 • www.overclockers.co.uk 

Nvidia’s GTX 1050 is 

the best-performing 

entry-level GPU, and 

Gigabyte has made some nice tweaks 

to its own version, including a near-silent fan 

cooler. It also sips power, with a tiny TDP rating of 75W. 

GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 • MEMORY 2GB GDDR5 • GRAPHICSCARDLENGTH 172mm • 

WARRANTY Three years repair and replace • DETAILS www.gigabyte.com • 

PART CODE GV-N1050D5-2GD • FULL REVIEW Mar 2017 

INTEL Core i5-6600K 

★★★★★ 


The Core i5-6600K is the fi rst 

of Intel’s latest processor 

generation, previously 

codenamed Skylake. The unlocked multiplier means you can 

push it further when overclocking, and energy efficiency has never 

been better, which means less power draw when using your PC. 

SOCKET LGA1151 • CORES 4 • FREQUENCY 3.5GHz • INTEGRATED GRAPHICS Intel HD Graphics 

530 • WARRANTY One year RTB • DETAILS www.intel.com • PART CODE BX80662I56600K • 

FULL REVIEW Nov 2015 

ASUS Prime Z270-A 

★★★★★ 


New Intel chips mean new Intel 

chipsets, and the Prime Z270-A is a 

brilliant mid-range companion to any compatible 

Kaby Lake processor. Great hardware (including two M.2 slots), a 

user-friendly BIOS, RGB LED decoration – it’s a superb package. 

PROCESSORSOCKET LGA 1151 • DIMENSIONS 244x305mm • CHIPSET Z270 • MEMORY SLOTS 

4 • PCI-E x16 SLOTS 3 • PCI-E x1 SLOTS 4 • PCI SLOTS 0 • USB PORTS 4x USB3, 1x USB3.1, 1x 

USB Type-C • VIDEO OUTPUTS 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort, 1x DVI-D • WARRANTY Three years RTB 

• DETAILS www.asus.com/uk • PART CODE Prime Z270-A • FULL REVIEW Apr 2017 

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 

★★★★★ 

£275 • www.geforce.co.uk 

Based on the same Pascal 

architecture as the fearsome 

GTX 1080 and GTX 1070, the 

mid-range GTX 1060 is unmatched when it 

comes to marrying price with 4K and VR-readiness. 

It’s surprisingly power-effi cient, too. 

GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 • MEMORY 6GB GDDR5 • GRAPHICSCARDLENGTH 250mm • 

WARRANTY Three years repair and replace • DETAILS www.geforce.co.uk • PART CODE GTX 1060 

Founder’s Edition • FULL REVIEW Nov 2016 

NZXT Manta 

★★★★★ 

£110 • www.scan.co.uk 

A brilliant basis for any Mini-ITX PC 

build, the Manta is a versatile case 

with plenty of room for fans and 

storage drives, plus a distinctive curvy shape. Its 

convex side panels leave more room to hide cables, too. 

CASE TYPE Mini tower • MOTHERBOARD TYPE Mini-ITX • SUPPLIED FANS 3x 120mm • 

MAXIMUM DRIVE BAYS 2x 3.5in, 3x 2.5in • DIMENSIONS 426x245x450mm • 

WEIGHT 7.2kg • WARRANTY Two years parts and labour • DETAILS www.nzxt.com • 

PART CODE CA-MANTW-M1 • FULL REVIEW Aug 2016 

CORSAIR Carbide Series Air 240 

★★★★★ 

£92 • www.box.co.uk 

This microATX case is very well 

made. It’s light and compact, 

but its cuboid shape means 

there’s plenty of room inside for all your 

components, so it’s easy to work with. 

CASE TYPE microATX • MOTHERBOARD COMPATIBILITY microATX, Mini-ITX • SUPPLIED 

FANS 3x 120mm • MAX 3½in DRIVE BAYS 3 • MAX 5¼in DRIVE BAYS 0 • DIMENSIONS 

320x260x397mm • WEIGHT 5.6kg • WARRANTY Two years RTB • DETAILS www.corsair.com • 

PART CODE CC-9011070-WW • FULL REVIEW Apr 2016 


69

SOFTWARE 

DIGITALVOLCANO SOFTWARE 

Duplicate Cleaner 4.0 Pro 

★★★★★ 

£24 • www.digitalvolcano.co.uk 

Deduplicating 

software 

The free version of Duplicate Cleaner program is 

good, and upgrading to the Pro version makes it 

exceptional for ridding your PC of duplicate fi les. 

OS SUPPORT Windows Vista/7/8/10 • HARD DISK SPACE 20MB • 

DETAILS www.digitalvolcano.co.uk • FULL REVIEW Sep 2016 

EXPRESSVPN 

★★★★★ 

£13 per month • www.expressvpn.com 

Virtual 

private network 

ExpressVPN allows you to easily dodge region 

restrictions on online content while encrypting 

your connection, and is fast enough to handle 

4K Netflix streaming. Its great soft ware support and huge number of 

endpoints makes it the most fl exible service, too. 

OS SUPPORT Windows, macOS, iOS, Android • DETAILS www.expressvpn.com • 

PRODUCTCODE ExpressVPN • FULL REVIEW Jan 2017 

ADOBE Premiere Elements 14 

★★★★★ 


Lots of features to keep advanced users happy and 

even more to help new users make the most of it. 

It’s the consumer video editing package to buy. 

MICROSOFT Windows 10 

Anniversary Update 

★★★★★ 

Free • www.microsoft .com 

Video 

editing 

OS SUPPORT Windows 7/8/10 • MINIMUM CPU 2GHz with SSE2 • MINIMUM GPU DirectX 9 • 

MINIMUM RAM 2GB • HARD DISK SPACE 5GB • DETAILS www.adobe.com/uk • PRODUCT 

CODE 65234288 • FULL REVIEW Jan 2016 

OS 

update 

This update adds UI improvments, new features and 

apps for stylus users, and a host of bug fi xes, making 

Microsoft ’s OS even more worthwhile. 

OS SUPPORT Windows 10 • MINIMUM CPU 1GHz • MINIMUM GPU DirectX 9 or later with WDDM 1.0 

driver • MINIMUM RAM 1GB (32-bit), 2GB (64-bit) • HARDDISKSPACE 16GB (32-bit), 2GB (64-bit) • 

DETAILS www.microsoft.com • PRODUCTCODE Windows 10 version 1607 • FULL REVIEW Nov 2016 

ABBYY FineReader 14 

★★★★★ 

£249 • www.abbyy.com 

OCR 

software 

MAILBIRD Mailbird Pro 2.0 

★★★★★ 

£10 per year or £36 lifetime • www.getmailbird.com 

Email 

client 

The more feature-rich Corporate edition is expensive, 

but FineReader 14 is perfect for turning paper notes 

and documents into digital, editable fi les using 

optical character recognition (OCR). 

OS SUPPORT Windows 7/8/8.1/10 • MINIMUM CPU 1GHz • MINIMUM GPU DirectX 10 • 

MINIMUM RAM 1.5GB plus 512MB per additional CPU core • HARD DISK SPACE 2.4GB • 

DETAILS www.abbyy.com • PRODUCTCODE FineReader 14 • FULL REVIEW May 2017 

While the free version of this email client is good, 

upgrading to Pro is even better – you get a unified 

view of all your mailboxes, loads of themes and 

extensive integration with other apps and productivity soft ware. 

OS SUPPORT Windows XP/7/8/8.1/10 • MINIMUM CPU N/A • MINIMUM GPU N/A • 

MINIMUM RAM N/A • HARD DISK SPACE 50MB • DETAILS www.getmailbird.com • 

FULL REVIEW Nov 2016 

GAMING 

XBOX One S 

★★★★★ 


HDR support is great, 

but it’s the 4K Blu-ray 

player that makes this 

sleeker, smaller Xbox One really stand 

out against the competing PS4 Slim. 

PROCESSOR Octa-core 1.75GHz Jaguar • RAM 8GB DDR3 • FRONTUSB PORTS 1x USB2 • 

REAR USB PORTS 2x USB2 • STORAGE 500GB/1TB/2TB • WARRANTY One year RTB • 

DETAILS www.xbox.com • PART CODE Xbox One S • FULL REVIEW Dec 2016 

4K 4K gam games 

console console 

NINTENDO The Legend of Zelda: 

Breath of the Wild 

★★★★★ 


NEW 

ENTRY 

Breath of the Wild’s vision of Hyrule is a beautifully 

intricate open world – one you have total freedom 

to explore right from the off. Charming and 

challenging, this is both a brilliant game and the single best reason 

to buy a Nintendo Switch. 

AVAILABLE FORMATS Ninetendo Switch • DISK SPACE 13.4GB (Switch), 13GB (Wii U) • 

DETAILS www.zelda.com • FULL REVIEW Jun 2017 

Action 

adventure 

Doom 

★★★★★ 

£10 • www.cdkeys.com 

First-person 

shooter 

SONY PS4 Slim 

★★★★★ 

£210 • www.zavvi.com 

Games Games 

console console 

A bloody and breathless FPS, Doom is a worthy 

entry into one of gaming’s most hallowed series. 

Open-ended levels, agile enemies and gory but 

satisfying takedown moves make every demon battle rewarding. 

AVAILABLE FORMATS PC, Xbox One, PS4 • OS SUPPORT Windows 7/8/8.1/10 • MINIMUM CPU 

Intel Core i3-550, AMD Phenom II X4 955 • MINIMUM GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 2GB, AMD 

Radeon HD 7870 2GB • MINIMUM RAM 4GB • HARD DISK SPACE 55GB • DETAILS doom.com • 

FULL REVIEW Sep 2016 

Sony has made the 

PlayStation 4 even better 

with a slimmer, neater 

chassis and superior power efficiency. It’s as 

cheap as the PS4 has ever been as well. 

PROCESSOR Octa-core 1.6GHz AMD Jaguar • RAM 8GB GDDR5 • FRONTUSB PORTS 2x USB2 • 

REAR USBPORTS None • STORAGE 500GB/1TB/2TB • WARRANTY One year RTB • 

DETAILS www.playstation.com • PART CODE B01GVQVQH2 • FULL REVIEW Jan 2017 


REVIEWS 

How we test 

Find out how well products perform with the help of 

Computer Shopper’s comprehensive tests 

COMPUTER SHOPPER’S REVIEWS use some 

of the most exhaustive testing procedures 

you’ll fi nd in any PC magazine. Every product 

is subjected to qualitative and quantitative 

tests that show how it performs in practical 

use. Graphs for performance, battery-life 

scores and costs are used in the Reviews 

section, as shown on the right. Look in the 

‘Summary of tests’ table (below) for details 

of each test we run. 

For PCs and laptops, we evaluate 

performance using our own custom 

benchmarking suite. See below for a brief 

description of our benchmarking soft ware 

and game tests. 

SUMMARY OF TESTS 

PC SYSTEMS & GAMING LAPTOPS 

Windows overall Average speed across numerous demanding tasks 

Multitasking Speed when running simultaneous applications 

Dirt Showdown Frames per second at 1,920x1,080, 4xAA, 

(1080p) Ultra detail 

Metro: Last Light Frames per second at 1,920x1,080, SSAA, 

Redux Very High detail 

LAPTOPS 


Multitasking Processor-intensive multitasking test 

Dirt Showdown Frames per second at 1,280x720, 4xAA, 

(720p) High detail 

Batt ery life Run time in minutes for continuous video playback 

SMARTPHONES/TABLETS 

Battery life Run time in minutes for continuous video playback 

PRINTERS AND MFPs 

Mono text speed Pages per minute for correspondence-quality text 

Mixed colour speed Pages per minute for presentable text and graphics 

Mono page cost Running costs expressed as pence per page 

Colour page cost Running costs expressed as pence per page 

DIGITAL CAMERAS 

CAMCORDERS 

ROUTERS 

Battery life Number of shots from full charge 

Battery life Run time in minutes for recording 

Laptop 2.4GHz 5m Mbit/s at 5m with 802.11ac laptop on 2.4GHz band 

Laptop 2.4GHz 1 fl oor Mbit/s 1 floor up with 802.11ac laptop on 2.4GHz band 

Laptop 2.4GHz Mbit/s 2 fl oors up with 802.11ac laptop on 

2 fl oors 2.4GHz band 

Laptop 5GHz 5m Mbit/s at 5m with 802.11ac laptop on 5GHz band 

Laptop 5GHz 1 fl oor Mbit/s 1 floor up with 802.11ac laptop on 5GHz band 

Laptop 5GHz Mbit/s 2 fl oors up with 802.11ac laptop on 

2 fl oors 5GHz band 

NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGE 

HARD DISKS 

Large fi les Average MB/s for read/write of 100MB large fi les 

Small fi les Average MB/s for read/write of 100MB small fi les 

Extra large fi les Average MB/s for read/write of a single 2.5GB fi le 

PROCESSORS 

Large fi les Average MB/s for read/write of 2.5GB of large fi les 

Small fi les Average MB/s for read/write of 2.5GB of small fi les 





MOTHERBOARDS 



Dirt Showdown Frames per second at 1,920x1,080, 4xAA, 




GRAPHICS CARDS 

Dirt Showdown Frames per second at 1,920x1,080, 4x MSAA, 


Tomb Raider Frames per second at 1,920x1,080, SSAA, Ultra detail 

Metro: Last Light Frames per second at 1,920x1,080, SSAA, 

Redux Very High detail 

Normal speed 

The actual scores in each test are shown 

inside each bar 

Mono costs 

Colour costs 

0% 

This line represents the performance of a reference product in each 

test. All graphs for components and systems are relative to our 

reference PC (see below for specifications) 

BENCHMARKS 

-50 

SHOPPER BENCHMARKS 

Our benchmark suite uses 

open-source soft ware that 

runs on Windows, Mac OS X 

and Linux systems. This lets 

us use objective results to 

compare PCs and laptops, 

no matter which operating 

system they run. It’s designed 

11ppm 

2.2p 

6.7p 


to test each computer to its limit, using a combination of 

intensive image-editing, video-encoding and multitasking tests. 

We ran the tests on our reference PC, which has an Intel 

Core i5-4670K processor, 8GB of DDR3 RAM and an AMD 

Radeon R7 260X graphics card. We normalised our results 

so this PC had a score of 100. This makes it easy to draw 

comparisons between test systems. 

The resulting overall score is shown at the bottom of 

every PC and laptop review. As we use the same tests in our 

standalone and group test reviews, you can compare the 

performance of any computer, whether it’s a hybrid, 

laptop or desktop, from both sections of the magazine. 

3D BENCHMARKS 

DIRT SHOWDOWN 

Dirt Showdown is a cracking racing game 

that makes good use of DirectX 11’s 

fancy graphical effects. You’ll want at 

least 30fps for smooth racing. 

TOMB RAIDER 

With the ultra-demanding Super- 

Sampling Anti-Aliasing (SSAA) enabled, 

2013’s Tomb Raider reboot is a great 

indicator of mid-range performance. 

METRO: LAST LIGHT REDUX 

Our most demanding graphics test 

uses tessellation, SSAA and massive 

textures to give even high-end cards a 

thorough workout. 

RATINGS & AWARDS 

Avoid 

Computer Shopper rates 

products out of fi ve: 

Below average 

Good 

Bigger is better for all 

bars except the red 

ones, which show 

running costs 

A product hitting the 

+100 per cent mark 

performed twice as well 

as our reference 

Very good 

Excellent 

★★★★★ 

★★★★★ 

★★★★★ 

★★★★★ 

★★★★★ 

The best products can win the 

following awards: 

BEST BUY 

Products with outstanding 

quality and performance for the 

money win our Best Buy award. 

RECOMMENDED 

Products that don’t quite qualify 

for a Best Buy award but are still 

highly rated by our reviewers. 

BUSINESS BUY 

The very best products 

for work win our 

Business Buy award. 


PRODUCT INDEX 

Product Reviews 

Our guide to all the products reviewed 

in this month’s Computer Shopper 

Hot Product 

Google Home 22 

Displays 

AOC AGON AG352QCX 36 

130 

Reviews 

PCs 

Box Cube Panther 24 

Chillblast Fusion Portal 26 

Components 

AMD Ryzen 7 1700 28 

Printers 

Canon Pixma TS8050 30 

Laptops 

Asus ZenBook UX310UA 32 

Dell XPS 13 9365 34 

SUBSCRIBE 

AND SAVE 

CALL 0844 844 0031 

OR SEE PAGE 122 

Networks 

Google Wi-Fi 38 

Linksys WRT3200ACM 40 

Handhelds 

Samsung Galaxy S8 42 

LG G6 44 

Storage 

Kingston SSD Now UV400 

Upgrade Kit 480GB 46 

Video 

Humax H3 Espresso 48 

Audio 

Master & Dynamic 

MH40 50 

Photography 

Panasonic Lumix 

DMC-G80 52 

Sitpack 53 

Wearables 

Huawei Watch 2 Sport 54 

Smartphones 

Apple iPhone SE 84 

Google Nexus 5X 85 

Honor 6X 86 

HTC One A9 87 

Huawei P8 Lite 88 

Lenovo P2 89 

LG G4 90 

Motorola Moto G4 91 

Motorola Moto G5 92 

Motorola Moto Z Play 93 

OnePlus 3T 94 

Samsung Galaxy A5 95 



Sony Xperia X Compact 98 

Vodafone Smart 

Platinum 7 99 

Soundbars 

Cambridge Audio 

TV2 (v2) 106 

Creative Labs Sound 

BlasterX Katana 106 

Orbitsound One P70 107 

Philips Fidelio SkyQuake 107 

Samsung HW-K850 108 

Steljes Audio Erato 108 

Speakers 

Audio Pro Addon T3 109 

Libratone Zipp 109 

Panasonic SC-All05 110 

Urbanears Baggen 110 

Wharfedale Diamond A1 111 

Yamaha MusicCast 

WX-010 111 


73

Free software guide 

It’s easy to access your free software. Just go to www.shopperdownload.co.uk/353 and 

register with the code from the card insert. Please be aware that you need to have 

bought the ‘Free Software Edition’ and not the ‘£4.50 Edition’ to access the downloads 

GETTING STARTED 

The download instructions on the card 

insert (opposite) show you how to 

connect to the download site. Make 

sure you type in the web address exactly 

as shown. You’ll need your coupon code 

the fi rst time you log on to the site. 

ANY PROBLEMS 

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REGISTER YOUR SOFTWARE 

BY 22nd JUNE 2017 

REQUIREMENTS Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 or 

10 32/64-bit, 70MB hard disk space 

WEBSITE www.bitreplica.com 

NOTES Get your registration code at 

bitreplica2.disc.computershopper.co.uk 

CrazyTalk Animator 2 

Standard Edition 

CRAZYTALK IS A versatile 

animation suite with the power 

to create professional 

animations, in particular 

applying 3D motions and 

effects to 2D characters. 

You don’t need any artistic 

skill or animation experience to 

use the program. It comes with 

a library of characters and 

actions which you can 

combine in a few clicks. 

Customise a character, place it in your chosen 

environment, and make it walk, laugh, sing, applaud, 

dance, cry or talk. It’s just a matter of choosing the 

options you need from a menu, and adding and 

updating them as required. 

REQUIREMENTS Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 32/64-bit, 

300MB hard disk space 

WEBSITE www.reallusion.com 

NOTES www.reallusion.com/event/CTA2Std/magazine.html 

It’s even possible to extract 

a face from a regular photo 

and apply it to a character. 

They’ll move realistically, blink, 

smile, laugh and talk (with 

automatic lip-sync), just like 

one of the built-in animations. 

You can create and share 

custom characters with other 

CrazyTalk Animator users, or if 

it’s just you, there’s an option 

to render your masterpiece at 

any time, exporting it as a video or a series of images. 

While the animation is surprisingly 

straightforward, CrazyTalk Animator is still a 

heavyweight tool. There’s a lot to learn before you’ll 

be producing quality work. 

Fortunately, the program comes with some 

example projects to get you started. Click File, Open 

Projects, browse to the demo folder and select a 

project. Click Control, Play to play the animation, then 

right-click any character to explore your options. 

Auslogics BitReplica 2.1 

AUSLOGICS BITREPLICA IS a capable and 

straightforward backup tool that makes it easy to 

protect your most important fi les from disaster. 

The program has a list of predefi ned backup 

sources, so if you want to back up your browser 

favourites or Documents folder, it’s as easy as ticking 

a box, although you can add other custom folders. 

BitReplica offers a good selection of backup 

types: simple backup, exact 

backup (obsolete fi les are 

removed from the 

destination folder), and full, 

incremental or differential 

backups. A scheduler lets 

you run the job manually, 

hourly, daily or weekly, and 

there are a few useful 

configuration options: you 

get predefi ned ‘exclude’ fi le 

fi lters; the program is able 

to back up alternate data 

streams; and you can have specific applications run 

before and after the backup job runs. 

Your backup can then be saved locally, but you 

can also store it on a local drive, upload it to Box.net 

or SkyDrive, or even (at extra cost) use Auslogics’ 

own cloud storage service. 

There are a few downsides, though. You can only 

choose particular folders to back up, for instance; 

it’s not possible to select 

specific fi les within a folder. 

There’s no support for 

saving your backup to 

discs or an FTP server, 

nor can you compress, 

encrypt or passwordprotect 

your archive. 

Still, BitReplica is fast 

and easy to use, and if 

your needs are simple 

then it could make an 

excellent backup choice. 

74 


REQUIREMENTS Windows Vista, 7, 8, 10 

32/64-bit, 50MB hard disk space 

WEBSITE www.ashampoo.com 

NOTES Get your registration code from 

within the application 

Ashampoo Snap 8 

THERE ARE A number of reasons why you might 

want to take a picture of the contents of your 

desktop. Such images can be useful when putting 

together a website, creating tutorials, demos or 

manuals, or just to record something for posterity. 

Windows makes it easy to create simple screen 

captures by pressing the Print Screen key, but 

Ashampoo Snap opens up a number of new options. 

As well as capturing precisely what you see on 

the screen at any given moment, Snap can be used 

to capture timed shots from games. These screen 

captures can then be joined together to create a 

video. Recording can be paused and resumed at any 

time, so you can compose your screen to get 

everything looking exactly as you want it to. 

Snap can be used with a multi-monitor setup so 

huge screen captures can be created as easily as 

capturing a single window. If you want to highlight a 

particular area of a screen capture, resizable shapes, 

text and other graphics can be added. 

There will be circumstances in which it isn’t 

possible to compose your screen to show everything 

you would like to include in a screen capture, such as 

when working with a complex website, for example. 

Snap enables you to perform scrolling captures so 

such lengthy documents can be captured in their 

entirety, meaning you don’t have to stitch together 

numerous images manually. 

With the ability to capture non-standard shaped 

parts of the screen, the option of adding voice-over 

recordings to your video captures and support for a 

range of video codecs, Ashampoo Snap is one of the 

most versatile screen capture tools available. 

PC Fresh 2017 

BUY A NEW PC and it will 

generally be fast, reliable, with 

everything working just as you 

would expect, at least initially. 

But as you use the system – 

installing, running and removing 

programs – so this begins to 

change. Performance tails off, 

your system might crash 

occasionally, and some features 

might no longer work at all. 

You don’t have to live with 

this, though. If your system 

seems slow, then just install PC 

Fresh 2017, and the program will 

quickly help you restore your PC 

to its original performance. 

This starts with PC Fresh 

asking questions about your 

computer: whether it’s connected 

to a printer, if Wi-Fi is active, 

whether you use Windows 

Search, and so on. Answering 

these queries helps the 

program tailor its advice to suit 

your exact needs. 

The main PC Fresh console 

then allows you to optimise 

the system in many different 

ways, from configuring which 

programs launch on startup to 

optimising key Windows 

performance settings. 

This process is surprisingly 

easy, too. Unlike some similar 

tools, you’re not left alone to 

fi gure out what you should do. 

PC Fresh will highlight any 

problems it’s found in a 

particular area, and you can 

view its recommendations – and 

make the changes you need – in 

just a few clicks. 

The program doesn’t stop 

there, though. Once you’ve got 

your system running 

smoothly again, PC 

Fresh 2017 provides 

several other tools 

to help you tune it 

even further, so you 

can track down any 

large, disk-hogging 

fi les, reorganise 

your fi les or activate 

the Power Now! 

mode, which 

temporarily turns 

off every nonessential 

item to 

help deliver the best 

performance – very 

useful if, for example, 

you’re about to 

run a demanding 

application such 

as a game. 

REQUIREMENTS Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 


WEBSITE www.abelssoft.de 




75



WEBSITE www.softorbits.com 



SoftOrbits Easy Photo Unblur 

IF YOU HAVE a blurred photo, 

you can turn to your image 

editor’s Sharpen tool, but in most 

cases this isn’t smart enough to 

guarantee a fi x. The typical 

algorithm blindly applies the same 

fi lter right across your image, and 

is just as likely to cause problems 

as solve the original issue. 

Easy Photo Unblur takes a 

more intelligent approach. 

The program analyses your 

photos, attempts to detect the 

type of blur – camera shake, 

motion blur, simple focus issues 

– and applies the appropriate fi x, 

sometimes to the most affected 

areas of the image only. 

You don’t need to understand 

or even care about these 

low-level details. Simply open 

an image, click Reduce Blurring, 

Run, and Easy Photo Unblur will 

often fi nd and fi x your photo 

problems all on its own. 

There are some fi ne-tuning 

options available, but again the 

program does its best to 

remain easy to use. You can 

select presets from a list, 

drag sliders and watch 

the effects, or browse the 

Help fi le for explanations 

of how it all works. 

Bonus tools include an 

Image Correction panel 

where you can manually 

tweak brightness, contrast, 

saturation, temperature, 

tint and gamma, or tap the 

‘Auto correction’ button to 

fi x everything at once. 

Easy Photo Unblur 

even has a Batch Mode for 

applying the same fi xes to a 

group of photos, potentially 

saving you a lot of time. 



WEBSITE www.oo-software.com 

NOTES Get your registration code at 

diskimage10.disc.computershopper.co.uk 

O&O DiskImage 10.5 

Professional 

ANYONE WHO’S EVER experienced the shock of 

data loss, or had to spend hours recovering their 

system, will know the importance of backing up. 

O&O DiskImage Professional provides you with all 

the tools you need for backing up both individual 

data such as selected fi les and folders, as well as 

drive images of entire partitions and drives. 

While’s it’s not a tool for complete beginners, it 

does provide some hints and tips to guide you 

towards protecting your data, and the latest version 

attempts to make things even easier with a 

revamped, Windows 8-style interface. For 

much fi ner control over creating disk images, 

the Options menu lets you set the imaging 

method (used or all sectors), destination 

format (DiskImage or VHD), image type (full, 

incremental or differential), compression, 

encryption, exclude fi lters, and a lot more. 

Backups will by default be run on demand, 

but set them up as a job and they can be run 

at defi ned times, particular days of the week, 

at regular intervals, or when certain devices 

are connected. There are also options to 

receive email notifications, run commands 

before or after the job, and shut your system 

down when it’s fi nished. 

When it comes to managing your backups, 

DiskImage has all the options you need. You 

can restore entire images or select individual fi les and 

folders, and ‘mount’ your image fi les in Windows, so 

you can browse them like any other attached drive. 

DiskImage also allows you to convert drive 

images into virtual hard disks, meaning you can 

attach them to programs such as VirtualBox or 

VMWare Workstation for use as virtual PCs. 

DiskImage also supports Machine Independent 

Restoration, which lets you tweak backup images so 

they can be restored to different computers – a 

great way to migrate from an old PC to a new one. 


Resources 

Chat and Communication 

Evernote 6.4.2.3788 Store your 

notes, ideas and plans in the cloud, and 

synchronise them between computers. 

Mailbird 2.3.42 

A free desktop email client for Windows. 

UPDATED Miranda IM 0.10.68 

Chat with friends across multiple 

messaging platforms, including AIM, 

Facebook, IRC and MSN, all from one 

simple interface. 

UPDATED Skype for Windows 7.35.0.101 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. 

UPDATED WhatsApp Desktop 0.2.3699 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 

UPDATED iolo System Mechanic Free 

16.5.214 Speed up your system with 

Iolo’s PC optimisation suite. 

Rainmeter 4.0 

Customise the desktop with your choice 

of tools and shortcuts. 

Windows 8 Transformation Pack 9.1 

Emulate the look of Windows 8 on an 

earlier version of the operating system. 

Windows 8 UX Pack 9.1 

Get a glimpse of the Windows 10 UI without 

committing to a full OS upgrade. 

UPDATED Windows 10 Transformation Pack 

6.0 Bring some of Windows 10’s new features 

to your current operating system. 

Winstep Xtreme 17.1 

Freshen up your system with this suite of 

desktop and UI replacement applications. 

General 

Genie Timeline Free 2016 Protect your 

most valuable fi les with this easy-to-use 

backup tool. 

Paragon Partition Manager 14 Free 

Create, format, split, merge and reorganise 

all your hard disk’s partitions. 

UPDATED PeaZip 6.4.0 A tremendously 

powerful archive-management tool. 

UPDATED Screenshot Captor 4.20.1 Create 

and manage screenshots the easy way. 

SUMo 5.1.4 Quickly scan your PC’s installed 

applications and fi nd any updates that are 

available for them. 

ZipGenius 6.3.2.3116 A fl exible fi lecompression 

tool with support for a huge 

number of compressed fi le formats. 

Internet and Network 

CarotDAV 1.13 

Manage all your online storage services 

with one simple application. 

Cyberduck 5.4.0 

A powerful but easy-to-use FTP client for 

uploading and downloading your fi les. 

Easy WiFi 4.0 

Find free Wi-Fi hotspots while you’re out 

and about. 

UPDATED FileZilla 3.25.1 A fast and reliable 

FTP client with lots of useful features. 

NetBalancer 9.9.2 

Make the most of your internet connection 

by assigning download and upload priorities 

to web applications. 

UPDATED TeamViewer 12.1.10277 

Remote-control your computer from 

anywhere in the world. 

Tweaking and Performance 

CCleaner 5.28 Remove unwanted 

information, temporary fi les, browsing 

history, huge log fi les and even the settings 

that uninstalled soft ware leaves behind. 

Defraggler 2.21 Ensure your system is 

defragmented properly and improve its 

performance. 

Finestra Virtual Desktops 2.5.4501 Set up 

four or more virtual desktops on your PC. 

IObit Advanced SystemCare Free 

10.2.0.721 A complete computer security, 

maintenance and optimisation suite. 

UPDATED Revo Uninstaller Free 2.0.3 Remove 

installed applications completely, including all 

their folders, system fi les and Registry entries. 

Simple Performance Boost 1.0.5 Tweak the 

Windows Registry to give your PC a 

performance boost. 


77

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• Microsoft Windows 10 64bit 

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3XS Performance GTX 

• Intel Core i7 7700K Quad Core with HT 

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Microsoft product images reprinted with permission from Microsoft Corporation. Prices subject to change.

POCKET 

MONEY 

VALUESMARTPHONES 

With flagship phone prices going through the roof, you could save hundreds of pounds by hunting for a 

better deal – whether it’s an up-to-date budget handset that punches above its weight, or a top-flight 

model from yesteryear. We round up the 16 handsets that offer high quality at a low price point 


CONTENT REVIEWS 

Page 84 


Page 85 

GOOGLE Nexus 5X 

Page 86 

HONOR 6X 

Page 87 

HTC One A9 

Page 88 

HUAWEI P8 Lite 

Page 89 

LENOVO P2 

Page 90 

LG G4 

Page 91 


Page 92 


Page 93 


Page 94 

ONEPLUS 3T 

Page 95 

SAMSUNG Galaxy A5 

Page 96 


Page 97 


Page 98 

SONY Xperia X Compact 

Page 99 

VODAFONE Smart Platinum 7 

ISSUE 353 | COMPUTER SHOPPER | JULY 2017 81

SMARTPHONES 

IT SEEMS ALMOST churlish to complain that 

premium smartphones come with premium 

prices attached, especially when they do make 

an effort to earn it: to name just a few, there’s 

the new Samsung Galaxy S8, with its vast 

edge-to-edge display; the incredibly powerful 

iPhone 7; and the Google Pixel, which features 

the best rear camera on any handheld. 

And yet, for anyone who remembers 

being able to get the Nexus 6P for £449, the 

costs are hard to stomach. The iPhone 7? 

Yours for £599, minimum. Google Pixel? 

A cool £600 for the base model. The Galaxy 

S8 is the worst offender yet, starting at £689 

– that’s £120 more than the Galaxy S7 when it 

launched just one year ago. 

Fortunately, while the top end of the 

market is exploding, we’ve been consistently 

impressed by a lot of cheaper phones recently 

– specifically, how they deliver the kind of 

performance, display quality, battery life and 

build quality we’d expect from devices costing 

a lot more. For some, like the OnePlus 3T, this 

is a conscious design goal; others, like the 

Motorola Moto G4, just happen to be 

excellent pieces of hardware. 

We therefore wouldn’t hesitate to 

recommend a great lower- or mid-range 

smartphone over an overpriced fl agship, but 

then, that’s not your only option. Even with 

the never-ending churn of the annual 

smartphone release cycle, you can still get 

older high-end models new and unwrapped, 

and the inevitable price drops that come with 

their age mean that it’s possible to fi nd these 

premium products at heavily discounted rates. 

Therein lies the best thing about avoiding 

a smartphone rip-off : you’ve got a huge 

amount of choice when it comes to value 

handsets. Allow us to make things a bit easier 

with this test of 16 possible purchase 

candidates – we’ve skipped any duff phones 

and only included those that are at least very 

good, so you can be sure that with any of 

them, you’ll be getting a fair deal. 

CORE DRAW 

If pure performance is what you’re after, it’s 

generally better to go with an older fl agship 

rather than a new budget phone; they might 

not be the fastest any more, but the best 

processors of 2015 and 2016 can still easily 

outpace anything built to sell for peanuts, 

especially when it comes to games. For 

demanding 3D titles at their best, you’re 

looking at paying around £330 and up. 

Not that cheaper alternatives are 

necessarily slow. Hexa- and even octa-core 

processors aren’t uncommon even in the 

£100-£200 range, so it’s actually rather hard 

to fi nd something that doesn’t stay slick and 

responsive throughout everyday multitasking. 

Special mention goes to the Apple A9 

chip found within the iPhone SE; don’t be 

deceived by the fact that it’s dual-core, as 

Apple has somehow optimised it to run so 

well with iOS that it’s one of the bestperforming 

phones here. 

INCHING FORWARD 

It’s important that you choose a smartphone 

with your ideal screen size, as there’s no 

single ‘best’ spec here. The 4in iPhone SE is 

wonderfully portable but doesn’t offer nearly 

as much real estate as, say, the 5.5in Honor 

6X, which is arguably better for watching 

videos and web browsing but could prove 

uncomfortable for small hands. 

Many cheaper phones now deliver the kind of performance, 

display quality, battery life and build quality we’d expect 

from devices costing a lot more 

Otherwise, display quality can be measured 

in conveniently objective terms. We test for 

how much of the sRGB colour gamut a screen 

can cover (ideally, at least 90%), plus the 

contrast (higher is better) and peak 

brightness. A high brightness (over around 

400cd/m 2 ) will make the screen easier to read 

when exposed to direct daylight, though you 

can get away with a lower fi gure if you’ll 

primarily be using your phone indoors. 


SMARTPHONES 

As for resolution, 1,920x1,080 is perfectly 

fi ne even on larger phablets; anything higher 

is nice to have, but it’s harder to tell the 

difference on such small screens compared to 

Full HD vs Quad HD monitors. That said, try 

not to settle for anything lower unless the 

screen is also smaller than average, as is the 

case with the Sony Xperia X Compact. 

ELECTRIC BOOGALOO 

Battery life is a no-brainer: the longer, the 

better. Naturally, a higher milliampere hour 

(mAh) count is preferable, but variables 

including the processor power, screen size, 

and brightness and frequency of use mean 

you shouldn’t rely on hard specs alone. 

That’s why we run a benchmark test, which 

involves looping a video fi le with the screen 

brightness set to 170cd/m 2 and measuring 

how long this takes to run a full battery dry. 

Most phones fall around the 12-hour mark, 

which indicates the ability to make it through 

a full day of normal use on a single charge. 

LOST IN SPACE 

There was an odd period throughout late 

2015 and early 2016 in which smartphone 

manufacturers seemingly agreed that 

expandable storage wasn’t actually 

that important, and that they just 

wouldn’t bother with microSD slots 

– presumably another ‘brave’ 

decision along the lines of the 

iPhone 7’s missing headphone jack. 

Luckily, sanity has re-asserted 

itself, and most handsets these days 

adhere to the gold standard of 

expandable microSD compatibility. 

This is good because onboard 

storage can fi ll up at a surprising 

rate, particularly if it’s a relatively 

low capacity such as 16GB. 

Our advice would be to aim for a 

minimum of 32GB of integrated memory, 

ideally with microSD support as a fallback; 

any lower and you’ll have to be very careful 

with saving music and movies. 

SENSOR SENSIBILITY 

Perhaps the most common pitfall for budget 

smartphones is the quality of the camera. 

Many models boast of having 12-megapixel, 

13-megapixel or even 16-megapixel rear 

snappers, but image size is only one aspect, 

and the ability to capture fi ne details and 

cut down on visual noise are even more 

important. Here, a lot of cheaper devices can 

struggle, especially indoors. 

We’ll cover each phone’s main camera in 

more detail in their respective reviews. To be 

fair, there are a few models that do manage to 

excel at photography: the Moto G4 is your 

best bet at the budget end, while the LG G4, 

Nexus 5X and Samsung Galaxy S7 all impress 

at higher price points. 

The best phones for… 

Got something specific in mind besides all-round quality? These are 

the great-value handsets that most effectively fi ll their niche 

…STYLE 

Samsung Galaxy S7 

It’s the most expensive smartphone in 

this group test, but not only is the 

Samsung Galaxy S7 still a sizable wad of 

cash less than the newer Galaxy S8, it’s 

also the most luxurious model here. 

From its glass and aluminium 

construction to its sleek, tapered edges 

and gorgeous display 

– which is almost 

bezel-less on the left 

and right edges – 

the S7 is a perfect 

show-off handset. 

It’s not just 

trading looks for 

practicality, either. 

That glass – on 

both sides – is 

highly damageresistant 

Corning 

Gorilla Glass 4, 

and the handset 

meets the IP68 

standard for dustand 

water-proofi ng, 

so it will survive a 

dunk in any puddle 

or sink. 

…CUSTOMISATION 

Motorola Moto Z Play 

The Moto Z Play’s versatility is mainly 

derived from its modular design. There are 

loads of clip-on attachments available, from 

simple expanded batteries to booming 

speakers and camera grips with added optical 

zoom capability. One – the Moto Insta-Share 

– even turns the handset into a projector. 

It’s all very 

impressive stuff, 

although it’s 

easily possible to 

spend more on 

these ‘Moto Mods’ 

than you did on 

the actual phone. 

Luckily, you can 

still add a 

personal touch 

on the (relative) 

cheap with 

interchangeable 

backplates – these 

cost £16 and 

come in some 

unusual fi nishes, 

including nylon 

fabric and 

oak wood. 

…TRAVELLING 

Lenovo P2 

The P2 is great for a lot of reasons, but 

the headline act has to be its incredible 

battery life. A gigantic 5,100mAh unit 

provides about three days of regular use 

between charges, and its result in our 

video playback test – 28h 50m – is well 

over double what we normally see from 

Android smartphones. 

For long plane, train 

and car rides, its 

usefulness is obvious. 

Its dual SIM slot is 

also a handy bonus 

for anyone who 

frequently travels 

abroad, as it allows 

you to keep your main 

SIM installed while 

you switch to an 

international SIM to 

dodge roaming fees 

– so you don’t have to 

fi ddle with the tray at 

the beginning and end 

of the journey, or 

worry about the main 

SIM getting lost while 

you’re away. 


83

SMARTPHONES 


★★★★★ 

£379 • From www.apple.com/uk 

VERDICT 

Well built and with a top camera and great battery 

life, the iPhone SE is the best 4in phone out there 

FINDING AN AFFORDABLE iPhone is 

practically impossible if you stick to the main 

series of handsets. Even the iPhone 6, which 

is now two generations old (having been 

replaced by the iPhone 6s and, most recently, 

the iPhone 7), goes for about £500 SIM-free. 

And that’s if you can actually fi nd it new, 

among the far more prevalent refurbs. 

Hope remains with Apple’s smaller 4in 

models. For minimum expense, there’s the 

iPhone 5c, which has fallen well below the 

£300 mark, albeit at the cost of a plasticky 

build and slow performance. 

By contrast, the much more up-to-date 

iPhone SE has nailed pretty much everything: 

it’s got the build quality, it’s got the 

processing power and it’s got the camera, all 

packed into a neat metal chassis. 

What’s more, on the same day we began 

work on this group test, Apple announced 

that the 16GB and 64GB storage options 

would be replaced by 32GB and 128GB 

models respectively, addressing our previous 

criticism that the cheapest model’s capacity 

was too low. This update is accompanied by 

price rises of between £20 and £40, but 

you’re still looking at a much cheaper 

proposition than any iPhone 6s or 7. All other 

hardware remains the same. 

Weighing 113g and at 7.6mm thick, the 

iPhone SE is exactly the same size as the old 

iPhone 5s, and is compatible with the same 

range of cases and covers. While the SE is 

the lightest iPhone currently available, it’s 

actually the thickest of the current crop. 

This doesn’t particularly matter, as it 

makes the handset easier to grip, and it 

means that the camera sits fl ush with the 

rear of the case. Besides, overall the iPhone 

SE is comparatively tiny by today’s standards, 

slipping easily into any pocket. 

colour accuracy coverage 

of 94.6% of the sRGB 

colour gamut goes some 

way to make up for it. 

Sadly, the SE doesn’t 

have the fancy 3D Touch 

features of recent 

fl agship iPhones, but this 

cost-saving omission 

isn’t a deal-breaker as 

we could still use iOS 

perfectly well without 

feeling too hampered. 

Apple has fi tt ed a 

12-megapixel camera 

into the iPhone SE, 

the same as in the 

iPhone 6s. It’s a great 

all-rounder, ably 

adapting to most 

situations to produce 

well-exposed shots with 

plenty of detail in them. 

The HDR mode captures a 

particularly excellent dynamic range, without 

over-processing the fi nal shots. 

There’s also a True Tone LED fl ash, which 

measures ambient light then fi res the fl ash at 

the same colour temperature, reducing the 

tell-tale signs of a regular fl ash. You also get 

all the shooting modes that the iPhone 6s 

has, including panoramic shots and 4K video. 

The iPhone SE 

absolutely delivers on 

battery life, too. Its 

1,624mAh battery might 

sound pretty tiny 

compared to the 

3,000mAh+ batteries 

found on Android 

phones, but its smaller 

screen requires a lot less 

power. As a result, it 

lasted an incredible 16h 

46m at a brightness of 

170cd/m 2 in our battery 

test. This is just shy of 

the Galaxy S7’s run time, 

and 1h 48m longer than 

the iPhone 6s lasted. 

Since launching with 

iOS 9.3, the iPhone SE 

has been updated all the 

way up to iOS 10.2 – with 

10.3 coming very soon, if 

it’s not out already by the 

time you read this. This means it’s been able 

to benefi t from third-party integration for 

iMessage and Siri, redesigned Maps and 

Music apps and the Memories feature for 

The iPhone SE has nailed pretty much everything: it’s got 

the build quality, it’s got the processing power and it’s got 

the camera, all packed into a neat metal chassis 

sorting images in Photos. Apple Pay support 

remains, though the iPhone SE uses an older 

TouchID sensor, which isn’t quite as fast or 

error-proof as on pricier iPhones. 

DENSITY SLICKER 

Moving back to a 4in screen, Apple has 

re-used the iPhone 5s’s resolution of 

1,136x640. This is one of the lowest-resolution 

phones here, not even hitting standard HD, 

but the pixel density of 326ppi actually 

matches that of the 2015 iPhone 6s, which 

has a resolution of 1,334x750. Both phones 

are defi nitely sharp enough, and text looks 

clear and easy to read. 

Image quality isn’t quite as good as 

Apple’s pricier iPhones, but the iPhone SE’s 

screen performs better than stated: Apple 

claims maximum brightness of 500cd/m 2 and 

a contrast ratio of 800:1, but we measured it 

at 577cd/m 2 with a contrast ratio of 892:1. 

While this contrast ratio still isn’t great, its 

CLOUD A9 

Performance is excellent, thanks to the 

iPhone SE having the same 1.8GHz A9 

processor and 2GB of RAM as the 6s line-up. 

In Geekbench, the iPhone SE scored 2,550 in 

the single-core test – the same as the iPhone 

6s and faster than the 2,115 scored by the 

Samsung Galaxy S7. In the multicore test, the 

S7 takes the lead with a score of 6,437, but 

that’s a quad-core device: the iPhone SE has a 

dual-core processor and still scored 4,444. 

As with all of Apple’s phones, the slick 

combination of the processor, iOS and Safari 

makes web browsing a super-smooth 

experience: the Peacekeeper browser 

benchmark score of 4,761 is one of the best 

we’ve seen on a smartphone. 

MAKE ROOM 

As mentioned, the original 16GB (£359) and 

64GB (£439) models have been discontinued, 

replaced by 32GB (£379) and 128GB (£479) 

variants. The price bumps are a shame (bear 

in mind these are largely the same phones 

that launched back in March 2016) but 

otherwise, that’s fi ne by us; 16GB isn’t much 

space at all, especially with the lack of 

expandable storage. 

The iPhone SE surpassed our expectations 

when it fi rst came out, and now the minimum 

storage issue has been dealt with, it’s become 

even better. Really, the only thing it lacks 

compared to the iPhone 6s is 3D Touch. For 

anyone who still hankers after a powerful 4in 

smartphone, it’s an amazing choice. 


SMARTPHONES 

GOOGLE Nexus 5X 

★★★★★ 


VERDICT 

It’s over a year old, but the Nexus 5X remains a 

superb Android handset for a reasonable price 

WHILE WE’RE FOND of the Pixel and Pixel 

XL, Google’s most recent smartphones, they 

both went down the ultra-premium route, 

abandoning the surprising affordability of the 

previous-generation Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X. 

Happily, the latter is still an excellent choice. 

It doesn’t make the best fi rst impression; 

made of plastic, it looks like a budget handset, 

with utterly featureless side buttons that are 

so simple as to appear an afterthought. 

It’s great to hold, though. The plastic fi nish 

provides plenty of grip and, at 136g, it’s among 

the lightest phones around. The shape is good 

too, with the rear panel neatly meeting the 

front bezels. The front-facing speakers provide 

better audio than any tiny port tucked away at 

the bottom of some fl agship smartphones. 

POKE’S ON YOU 

Underneath the unassuming exterior lies a 

powerful smartphone packed with features. 

The circular rear fi ngerprint sensor is placed 

just below the rear camera, so you may have 

to adjust your grip if you’re used to holding 

your phone by the edges, but otherwise it’s 

easily accessible. Resting your fi nger on the 

sensor switches on and unlocks the phone 

almost instantly. It’s accurate too, learning 

fi ngerprints even quicker than the sensors in 

Samsung’s fl agship phones, and recognising 

them more consistently as well. 

There’s also a USB Type-C port. It’s a little 

chunkier and feels sturdier than Micro USB, 

and the reversible design helps minimise 

fi ddling. However, USB Type-C cables still 

aren’t exactly common, and Google includes 

only a Type-C to Type-C cable in the box. 

There’s no video output, and data transfer 

rates are only at USB2 speeds. Wireless 

charging has been dropped, too, but Type-C 

allows for fast charging, reaching 50% from 

fl at in just 30 minutes. 

A 2,700mAh battery is par for the course, 

given this is a pretty slim 7.9mm handset. In 

our continuous video playback test, it lasted 

10h 14m. This is one area where the 5X hasn’t 

aged well, as many more recent phones beat 

this by miles. Lenovo’s P2, for instance, lasted 

almost three times as long, despite costing less. 

Still, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 

chipset means the Nexus 5X is no slouch. It 

consists of two high-performance Cortex A57 

cores running at 1.8GHz, and four powerefficient 

Cortex A53 cores running at 1.44GHz. 

A Geekbench multicore score of 3,489 

puts it alongside the similarly specified LG G4. 

It’s not the best, but in practice everything is 

quick and smooth. It’s well ahead of the 

Moto Z Play’s Snapdragon 625, which scored 

only 2,599. In terms of gaming, it doesn’t run 

3D titles as smoothly as most high-end 

smartphones, but it played our usual 

selection of Android titles without a hitch. 

Amidst all that is a decent Full HD LCD 

screen. Even at 5.2in across it has a whopping 

pixel density of 424ppi and, despite higher 

resolutions being available, there’s no serious 

advantage in day-to-day use. In objective tests, 

In most areas, the Nexus 5X may be pretty good, 

but its camera is truly excellent 

the screen stood up well, covering 94.8% of 

the sRGB colour gamut, with 415cd/m 2 

maximum brightness, a contrast level of 

1,309:1 and a black level of 0.32cd/m 2 . 

We’ve seen brighter LCDs at this price, but 

the Nexus 5X nails consistency. It also has a 

pleasingly fl at colour output, without the 

boosted and garish shades seen elsewhere. 

In most areas, the Nexus 5X may be pretty 

good, but its camera is truly excellent, coming 

out on top against the very capable Samsung 

Galaxy S6. Twelve megapixels on a typically 

sized 1 /2.3in sensor sounds unremarkable, but 

each pixel is bigger than most, measuring 

1.55um. By comparison, the S6 reportedly has 

1.12um pixels on its 16-megapixel sensor. 

The Nexus 5X’s photos were packed with 

detail, compared to the more smoothed off 

appearance of the Galaxy S6’s efforts. 

Outdoors, you can see great detail in brick 

walls and a sharper image overall. Colour 

balance was spot on, too, with the camera 

matching the output of the S6 almost exactly. 

It dealt well with higher-contrast scenes, 

eliminating noise from large areas of colour 

without removing detail elsewhere. Colours 

remained accurate indoors, with great detail in 

complex textures and well-balanced exposures 

across our various lighting setups. 

The Nexus 5X was quick to shoot in HDR 

mode, and you can jump straight to the 

camera by double-clicking the power button. 

Google’s camera app is fi ne for basic snapping, 

but lacks any manual controls or fancy features. 

THE SWEETEST THING 

Being a Google device, the Nexus 5X was 

among the fi rst smartphones to be updated to 

Android 7.0 Nougat. This adds a good few 

improvements and new functions to the 

already-great Android 6.0, such as native 

split-screen multitasking, bundled 

notifications and a Data Saver mode, which 

can prevent certain apps from munching on 

your data allowance in the background. 

The Nexus 5X isn’t the best-looking phone, 

nor the best designed. It isn’t the fastest, it 

doesn’t have the best battery life and the 

screen isn’t outstanding. Don’t be fooled by 

the lack of standout features, however – it 

also has a distinct lack of weaknesses, and few 

handsets can claim the 5X’s comprehensive 

competence. As such, it’s a device that’s far 

greater than the sum of its parts, and it could 

be yours for £100 less than it cost at launch. 


85

SMARTPHONES 

HONOR 6X 

★★★★★ 


VERDICT 

With fantastic performance at a great price, 

Honor’s 6X shouldn’t be ignored 

REGARDLESS OF WHETHER Honor 

appreciates being pigeonholed as a budget 

smartphone brand, its latest device – the 

Honor 6X – may be its fi nest work yet. 

It squeezes a 5.5in, Full HD screen into 

an all-metal body with 32GB of integrated 

storage and 4GB of RAM. The rear is curved, 

so it sits nicely in your hand, and the glass 

on the front also tapers slightly at the 

edges for a slicker look. 

As for connectivity, the 6X has a dual SIM 

slot, perfect for travelling abroad or using it 

as a dual work/leisure device. There’s no USB 

Type-C connector for fast charging, with 

Honor opting for an older Micro USB port 

instead, but you do get an extremely 

fast-acting fi ngerprint sensor on the back, 

nestled below the twin-lens camera. 

The Honor 6X’s screen itself isn’t an 

AMOLED model, but instead a good-quality 

LCD unit. It measures pretty well, with a 

contrast ratio of 1,694:1 helping it produce 

wonderfully impactful images. Its peak 

brightness of 502cd/m 2 also means you’ll 

only have problems reading it in the very 

brightest of conditions. 

SHOO BLUE 

Its colour reproduction isn’t quite so good, 

unfortunately. The screen covers only 89% of 

the sRGB colour gamut, which is far from 

brilliant. However, thanks to Honor’s new ‘eye 

comfort mode’, which fi lters out blue light in 

the evenings, and automatically adjusts 

brightness and colour temperature according 

to ambient light, it is easy on your eyes. 

The Honor 6X is the only phone we’ve 

seen in this price range to include a twin-lens 

camera, in this case a 12-megapixel unit with 

a 2-megapixel secondary sensor. This allows 

it to take wide-aperture shots similar to the 

iPhone 7 Plus’s bokeh mode, blurring 

everything beyond the point of focus. The 

effect quality isn’t quite on a par with Apple’s 

phablet (as you’d expect, considering the 6X 

is a fraction of the price), but it’s still good 

enough to give your shots a handy facelift. 

There’s also the usual suite of shooting 

modes, with the rear camera producing some 

decent shots packed with detail. Outdoors, 

the rear camera produces good-looking shots, 

capturing details such as the brickwork on 

buildings particularly well. 

Indoor image quality isn’t so good, with 

photos losing vibrancy and gaining graininess, 

but generally the 6X still manages balanced, 

well-judged exposures in low light, and has a 

single LED fl ash to help cut through the 

darkness when conditions get really tricky. 

It’s certainly got a 

better rear camera 

than that of the 

similarly priced 

Huawei P9 Lite, as 

well as the cheaper 

P8 Lite, which we 

cover later in this 

group test. 

If you do feel the 

need to tweak your 

images, you do get 

both Pro still and 

video modes for 

fi ne-grained control 

over every aspect of 

your images, allowing 

you to tinker with 

ISO and exposure 

values to your 

heart’s content. 

KIRIN IN THE NAME 

The Honor 6X is no slouch in everyday use, 

either. There’s a 2.1GHz Kirin 655 octa-core 

processor inside, joining forces with 4GB of 

RAM. With a Geekbench single-core score 

of 784 and 3,319 for multicore, the 6X gets 

close to the Moto Z Play in terms of 

smoothness and responsiveness. 

Multitasking also feels surprisingly stable – 

Honor claims that its smart fi le system 

reduces fi le fragmentation for faster response 

times, and it certainly feels that way – though 

notably, it still loses out to the ageing Google 

Nexus 5X in the Geekbench multicore test. 

Nonetheless, the 6X is a great performer 

once you crack open some Android games. 

The Honor 6X scored an average frame rate of 

8.4fps in the GFXBench Manhattan 3 test, 

which is perfectly respectable for a phone 

at this price, and both Threes! and Angry 

Birds 2 ran without a hitch. 

A comparatively large 3,340mAh battery is 

fi tt ed, and the phone didn’t do too badly in 

our test, lasting 11h 18m while playing back 

video continuously in fl ight mode. For context, 

that’s roughly an hour longer than both its 

predecessor, 2016’s Honor 5X, and the Nexus 

5X. That said, it lags behind the Moto G4 by 

about two hours, and the Lenovo P2 remains 

untouchable at 28h 50m. 

It’s rare to see a 

non-Google Android 

phone without a bit 

of overlay tinkering, 

and the Honor 6X 

is no exception. 

Usually, this is the 

point at which we 

castigate Honor 

for insisting on 

preloading its own 

onerous launcher 

soft ware, but 

Honor’s EMUI is 

nowhere near as bad 

as it used to be. 

While there’s 

still quite a bit 

of superfluous 

pre-installed 

soft ware – namely 

a handful of naff 

games and unnecessary apps – you can at 

least get rid of them. The downside is that 

the Honor 6X doesn’t ship with Android 7.0, 

but Honor is promising an over-the-air 

update in the coming months. 

THE JOY OF 6X 

This price bracket is chock full of high-quality 

budget smartphones, but the Honor 6X 

stands above most of them. Its design, 

outdoor camera quality and performance 

are great for the money, and battery life 

isn’t bad either. 

The Moto G4 delivers more bang for your 

buck, having both better battery life and a 

more-pleasant-to-use camera, all while costing 

The Honor 6X is the only phone we’ve seen in this price 

range to include a twin-lens camera 

less. The Nexus 5X has also price-dropped 

into the Honor 6X’s territory, and offers 

superior processing power. That said, when it 

comes to physical design, we do prefer the 

6X’s bodywork – and getting a dual-lens 

camera on to a cheap handset is no small feat. 

Still, much like the Moto G4, what’s really 

impressive about the Honor 6X is that it 

holds its own against smartphones that cost 

two or three times as much as its £225 

asking price. In short, Honor has created a 

fantastically capable budget smartphone at 

a very tempting price, and it’s impossible 

not to recommend it. 


SMARTPHONES 

HTC One A9 

★★★★★ 


VERDICT 

Beautifully designed and with a highly 

customisable UI, the One A9 is great value 

MUCH OF THE HTC One A9’s appeal lies 

in its stunning design. Its clean lines and 

simple metal chassis may be eerily 

reminiscent of Apple’s recent iPhones, but 

it’s a winning combination, particularly 

since the subtle ridge on the back of the 

handset actually makes it easier to hold 

than Apple’s phone. The A9 is also very 

light for its size, weighing just 143g. 

It’s a beautiful smartphone, and 

immediately more appealing than the 

fl agship One M9, not least because of its 5in, 

1,920x1,080 AMOLED display. The M9’s 

display didn’t score very highly on colour 

accuracy, but the A9’s AMOLED panel 

rectifies this instantly, covering the full 100% 

of the sRGB colour gamut and producing 

perfect 0.00cd/m 2 blacks. Its contrast ratio of 

infinity:1 also ensures there’s plenty of detail 

in darker images. Whites are admittedly a 

little yellow, but we didn’t fi nd it particularly 

bothersome. The screen’s peak brightness is 

also low at 347.19cd/m 2 , but this isn’t too 

unusual for an AMOLED display. 

JUST GOOD SENSE 

The One A9 comes with Android 7.0 Nougat, 

but it’s running HTC’s Sense 7 UI on top, so 

its overall appearance isn’t quite the same as 

the vanilla version. This isn’t much of a 

problem, though, as Sense 7 is one of the 

most customisable versions of Android 

we’ve seen. Its Theme Generator is excellent, 

as you can change the appearance of your 

phone right down to individual app icons, 

fonts and the caller ID logo, using either one 

of the handful of themes that come preinstalled 

or one you’ve made yourself using 

images from your gallery. 

Once you’ve chosen an image, the Theme 

Generator analyses the colours present in 

the picture and then suggests different 

colour combinations for your home screen, 

Blinkfeed hub and settings menu, which you 

can then tweak to your liking. It’s a brilliant 

touch, and even photos we took that only 

had a few main colours present still gave us 

plenty of colour options. 

Sense Home is another useful feature, as 

this learns which apps you use most in 

certain locations, and automatically promotes 

them to your main homescreen when you 

need them. For instance, it would show Mail, 

Google Drive, Calendar and HTC’s note-taking 

Scribble apps when we were in the office, but 

swap those for Google Maps and HTC’s 

Music and Car apps on the way home. 

HTC has included a fi ngerprint sensor on 

the One A9 for added security. Located at the 

bottom of the handset, 

underneath the display, 

it’s fast and rarely made 

mistakes when we used 

it to unlock the phone. 

Alternatively, the 

grooved power button 

is another great touch 

in the One A9’s design. 

It sits at an ideal thumb 

height and its machined 

fi nish makes it easy to 

fi nd by touch alone. 

On the other side of 

the phone, you’ll fi nd a 

microSD card slot to 

expand the phone’s 

default 16GB of internal 

storage, of which 

around 10GB is available 

to the user. 

SNAP HAPPY 

The One A9 is powered by an octa-core 

1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor 

and 2GB of RAM. In our benchmark suite, it 

showed a significant increase in speed over 

older Snapdragon 615 handsets, as its 

Geekbench 3 scores of 732 in the single-core 

test and 3,050 in the multicore test were on 

average around 100 and 800 points faster 

respectively. As a result, Android felt silky 

smooth and apps were very quick to load. 

It’s worth noting, however, that even at 

this lower price (it launched in late 2015 at 

£470), it can be outpaced by the competition; 

the Nexus 5X handily beats it on multicore 

performance, for instance, as does the latest 

Samsung Galaxy A5. 

Gaming performance is also lacklustre for 

something which once near cost half a grand, 

as it only managed an offscreen Manhattan 

test score of 411 frames in GFXBench GL, 

which equates to roughly 6.6fps. This is by no 

means bad, but complex 3D games such as 

Hearthstone aren’t quite as smooth as they 

could be. The same goes for web browsing, 

as its Peacekeeper score of 793 is a long 

way behind the Galaxy S6’s 1,257. As a result, 

web pages were often 

quite jerky at times, 

particularly if they 

contained lots of images 

or embedded videos. 

Battery life is also 

underwhelming, but it 

does at least scrape into 

double fi gures, as its 

2,150mAh battery lasted 

10h 2m in our video 

playback test with the 

screen set to 170cd/m 2 . 

This should be enough 

to get you through the 

day, but it’s a long way 

behind the Galaxy A5 

and Lenovo P2. 

STRAIGHT SHOT 

Thankfully, the A9’s rear 

camera has received 

several improvements over the famously poor 

M9. Despite only having a 13-megapixel 

sensor (down from the M9’s 20-megapixel 

snapper), its overall picture quality is much 

better, particularly its exposure levels. 

Photos are still a fraction dark in places, but 

switching on HDR quickly sorts this out. 

Indoor photos look great, too. Object edges 

can be a tad grainy and over-processed at 

times, but colours look nice and punchy, and 

there’s plenty of contrast. The only major 

disappointment was the fl ash, which has a 

tendency to turn images rather green. 

You can change the appearance of your phone right down to 

individual app icons, fonts and the caller ID logo, using one 

of the pre-installed themes or one you’ve made yourself 

As a whole, the HTC One A9 looks and 

feels like a fi rst-class handset. Sense 7 is a 

great interface, and its beautiful design 

makes it by far one of the most pleasing and 

attractive smartphones at this price. 

Speaking of which, time has been kind 

to the One A9’s overall value. Having shed 

£160, it no longer has to compete at the 

higher end of the smartphone market, and 

so its shortcomings (particularly its 

performance and battery life) don’t look 

so bad next to more modest rivals. More 

importantly, the things we liked about it in 

the fi rst place still hold up today. 


87

SMARTPHONES 

HUAWEI P8 Lite 2017 

★★★★★ 

£182 • From www.csmobiles.com 

VERDICT 

The updated P8 Lite is a good budget 

smartphone but it has stiff competition 

IF SUB-£200 smartphones are on your 

agenda, Huawei’s £185 P9 Lite (Shopper 350) 

is worth a look, but we’ve been more taken 

with the 2017 remake of the P8 Lite – it has 

a slightly better processor (a Kirin 655 to the 

P9 Lite’s 650) and, while it originally came 

with a higher price, we’ve actually found the 

P8 Lite for less cash post-launch. 

That’s not all that’s good about it, either. 

The P8 Lite is a dual-SIM smartphone that 

features a 5.2in Full HD display, a fi ngerprint 

reader and an octa-core processor, and it runs 

on Android 7.0 – not bad for £182, which is 

around the same price as the Moto G5. 

Speaking of which, competition at this 

price is fi erce, from older handsets like the G4 

to newer alternatives such as the Honor 6X 

and the Lenovo P2. Fortunately for the P8 

Lite, it gets off to a good start with its design. 

The rounded corners and balanced weight 

make it easy to hold, and we appreciate how 

the fi ngerprint scanner is placed on the rear 

rather than the front, so it’s easier to use with 

your index fi nger. It’s not as slick as the 

iPhone 7 it’s so obviously emulating, but it’s 

certainly nice enough for a budget phone. 

SCUFF LUCK 

It’s also good to see Huawei retaining the 

3.5mm headphone socket, found here on the 

top edge of the phone, with the volume 

rocker and power buttons on the right-hand 

side, a dual-SIM slot on the left (the second 

SIM slot can also take a 256GB microSD card), 

and a Micro USB charging port and a single 

downward-firing speaker on the bottom. 

However, there are some practical issues 

as well. The plastic frame surrounding the 

screen, for instance, lowers the tone, as does 

the standard glass, which appears not to have 

been treated with an oleophobic coating, 

meaning it picks up fi ngerprints like crazy, and 

is shockingly quick to pick up scratches. 

We’d suggest a case or protector for 

the IPS display, which works out to a 

respectable pixel density of 424ppi. An even 

bigger strength is its brightness – its test 

score of 700cd/m 2 is among the highest 

we’ve seen, and it stays readable in even the 

sunniest conditions. 

Contrast ratio is pretty high, too, at 

1,553:1, with deep blacks and bright whites 

contributing to 

dynamic images and 

video. We’d have liked 

to have been able to 

disable dynamic 

contrast, though: this 

boosts brightness 

levels when displaying 

white or light content 

onscreen, which could 

hurt battery life. 

The display’s main 

weakness is its colour 

representation. With 

86% sRGB coverage, 

images look slightly 

dull and murky 

when compared 

with the Lenovo 

P2’s 99.9% sRGB 

coverage display. 

SPRING CLEANING 

Unlike the P2, however, the P8 Lite runs the 

latest version of Android, 7.0 Nougat, which is 

a fantastic mobile OS, even with Huawei’s 

Emotion 5 UI (EMUI) skin. This uses extra 

RAM, which isn’t ideal, but it’s far from the 

annoyance it once was. We particularly like 

its storage cleaner, which quickly frees up 

space and wipes your phone’s cache, as well 

as its added power-management tools. 

This refreshed P8 Lite is powered by an 

octa-core (four 2.1GHz Cortex-A53 and four 

The P8 Lite’s screen is among the brightest we’ve seen, 

and it stays readable in even the sunniest conditions 

1.7GHz Cortex-A53) Kirin 655 processor. 

It also has 3GB of RAM, which was plenty 

for our everyday needs. 

Looking at synthetic benchmarks, the P8 

Lite performs well when compared with its 

budget competitors. In Geekbench 4, it scored 

3,237 in the multicore test and 780 in the 

single-core test, putting it very slightly ahead 

of the Moto G4, slightly behind the Honor 6X 

and roughly on a par with the Lenovo P2. 

Honestly, you’d struggle to see a big 

difference in day-to-day use. 

Huawei’s handset is similarly capable of 

gaming. It didn’t struggle with any of the titles 

we tried, and in the GFXBench Manhattan 

synthetic benchmark, it managed 8.4fps. 

That’s far behind the high-end fl agships, but 

is dead even with the Honor 6X. 

Battery life, 

however, is less 

impressive. The 

non-removable 

3,000mAh unit 

lasted a mediocre 

10h 24m in our 

continuous video 

playback test, which 

is close to a third of 

the Lenovo P2’s 

superlative 28h 

50m. It couldn’t 

even beat the Honor 

6X’s 11h 18m. 

The phone’s 

12-megapixel 

rear-facing camera 

with an aperture of 

f/2.0 isn’t bad for a 

£141 smartphone. 

The P8 Lite doesn’t 

come with phase-detect autofocus or optical 

image stabilisation, but that’s only to be 

expected for a phone at this price point. 

It holds its own in low-light conditions, 

producing images that aren’t riddled with 

noise or oversaturation. 

White balance is good as well, with 

automatic exposures being well judged. 

The fl ash doesn’t add a blue tinge to photos, 

either, which is a common problem with 

smartphone cameras. 

GOING PRO 

Sadly, the camera is also prone to losing detail 

at a medium distances, and the HDR mode 

proved of limited benefi t, with only minor 

improvements in indoor shots and barely any 

differences when comparing outdoor HDR 

shots with non-HDR shots. 

You can help things along by tinkering in 

Pro mode, which grants control over white 

balance, exposure compensation, ISO and 

shutter speed, as well as various metering 

and autofocus modes. Still, it’s nowhere near 

the overall quality of our favourite cheap 

smartphone camera, that of the Moto G4. 

This captures images that are sharper, have 

less image noise in low-light conditions and 

look more vibrant. 

Ultimately, while the P8 Lite is a very 

capable and affordable smartphone (even 

more so since we fi rst reviewed it, in the latter 

case), it’s hard to fully recommend when less 

fl awed alternatives exist. If you want the very 

best battery life, choose the Lenovo P2; if you 

want the best all-rounder with the best 

camera, the Moto G4 is the one for you. 


SMARTPHONES 

LENOVO P2 

★★★★★ 

£200 • From www.three.co.uk 

VERDICT 

With its monster battery life, the Lenovo P2 

will keep on going long after others have died 

REMEMBER THE DAYS when your phone 

lasted more than a day on a single charge? 

As great as it is to have smartphones with 

enormous processing power and crisp, 

high-res screens, there’s no denying these 

advancements have made our handhelds 

thirstier for juice than ever. 

The Lenovo P2, however, heralds at least a 

partial return to those glory days: it lasted a 

staggering 28h 50m in our continuous video 

test. That’s a full fi ve hours longer than our 

previous longest-lasting smartphone on 

record, Motorola’s Moto Z Play, and just over 

11 hours longer than the top-end Galaxy S7. 

It shows some serious stamina in everyday 

use, too – anecdotally, after a heavy 

weekend’s sightseeing fi lled with Google 

Maps, selfies and the odd game of Mini 

Metro, the P2 never dipped below 70%. 

Lenovo achieves this by squeezing a 

5,100mAh battery into the P2’s metal body 

(most current phones are around the 

3,000mAh mark), but this still isn’t a bulky 

phone. It does feel a little fatt er than 

super-svelte fl agships such as the Galaxy 

S7 Edge, but at 8.3mm thick and weighing 

177g, the P2 is only 0.6mm thicker and 20g 

heavier than the Samsung. 

SCRIMP AND SAVE 

A fi ngerprint reader sits below the screen, 

with a volume rocker and power button on 

the right edge of the device, while the left 

side treats you to a dual SIM slot and an 

intriguing battery-saving switch. Flick it up 

and your P2 enters Ultimate Power Saver 

mode, switching off data and disabling apps. 

It could be a handy ‘Defcon 1’ function, but 

given the already impressive battery life, it’s 

unlikely to see much use. 

Up front, we’re treated to a Full HD, 5.5in 

AMOLED display, covering 99.9% of the 

sRGB colour gamut. As with all AMOLED 

displays, its contrast ratio is effectively 

perfect. Some of the darker tones, such as 

deeper reds and dark blues, were 

oversaturated under the scrutiny our colour 

calibrator, but you won’t spot this day to day. 

One sticking point is the P2’s peak 

brightness, which sits at a lowly 326cd/m 2 . 

While that’s fi ne for gloomy days, you’ll be 

squinting at your phone once the sun fi nally 

pokes through the clouds. The Honor 6X is 

much better suited to such conditions, with a 

peak brightness of 502cd/m 2 . 

For the price, the P2 is a surprisingly nippy 

performer. Powered by Qualcomm’s octa-core 

2GHz Snapdragon 625 chip and 4GB of RAM, 

overall responsiveness was good. With a 

Geekbench 4 multicore 

score of 3,130, the P2 

bettered the Moto G4 

by almost 700 points, 

and the new Moto G5 

by over 750. It wasn’t 

far behind the Honor 

6X’s 3,319, either. 

Switching to games, 

the phone scored a 

10fps average in the 

onscreen GFXBench 

Manhattan benchmark, 

beating the Honor 6X 

(8.4fps), Moto G5 (7fps) 

and Moto G4 (7.7fps). 

Sky Force: Reloaded, a 

game that grinds to a 

halt on lower-powered 

devices, ran without a 

single frame drop, even 

during those actionpacked 

enemy encounters. 

KEEP OUT 

So far, the P2 has scored near-enough full 

marks, but then we come to the camera. 

It’s not that the P2’s 13-megapixel rear 

camera is bad; it’s just that it loses out 

compared with the Moto G4. Outdoor test 

shots picked up plenty of colour even under 

grey skies, with noise kept at bay reasonably 

effectively. Flicking on HDR gave mixed 

results, with oversaturation on the orange 

bricks in our test shot, but it did help to 

balance out exposure levels. 

Where it falls down is indoors, especially 

in low light. Under close inspection, our test 

subjects looked grainy and, while colours 

were vibrant enough, noise was apparent. 

Try to use the P2’s camera outside with 

plenty of natural light, if you can. 

Lenovo’s camera soft ware is also a tad 

clumsier to use than its rivals. Navigating 

through tedious menus isn’t ideal for 

on-the-fly photography, and the P2 would 

have benefi tt ed from Huawei’s one-handfriendly 

left and right swipes. At least 

Lenovo’s Pro mode allows you to delve into 

settings such as ISO and white balance. 

The fi nal and 

relatively minor con is 

that there’s no Android 

7.0 Nougat here; the 

phone’s operating 

system is currently 

stuck on Android 6.0 

Marshmallow, which 

feels a little dated in 

comparison. We were 

told some weeks ago 

that an over-the-air 

update is coming in the 

very near future, but 

such an update still 

hadn’t rolled out at the 

time of going to press. 

Either way, our few 

criticisms of the 

Lenovo P2 fade into 

insignificance when 

considering what it 

does well. That absurd battery life alone is 

well worth the price: we repeat, this is the 

longest-lasting smartphone we’ve ever seen. 

And it doesn’t stop there: the P2’s display, 

performance and build quality are all top 

notch given the price, and it’s a worthy 

competitor to much more expensive 

mid-range phones. 

P2 ONE 

There is competition; you can buy the Moto 

G4 for less, and in return get a rear camera 

that’s a better performer in low light, while the 

Honor 6X is a thinner and arguably betterlooking 

handset which costs just £25 more. 

We were hoping the Moto G5 would be 

The P2 lasted a staggering 28h 50m in our continuous 

video test – a full five hours longer than our previous 

longest-lasting smartphone on record 

another addition to this list of cheap-yet-highquality 

handsets, but at best it makes only 

very minor improvements to the beloved 

Moto G4; at worst, it’s measurably inferior, 

particularly when it comes to performance. 

With that in mind, there’s nothing else that 

combines the P2’s all-round performance with 

such amazing battery life. If you want a good 

deal on a phone that also ensures you’ve got 

a bang-up-to-date device, rather than an older 

model, look no further: this is the newest and 

current king of budget smartphones. 


89

SMARTPHONES 

LG G4 

★★★★★ 


VERDICT 

With its vibrant screen, versatile camera and surprisingly 

comfy leather rear, the LG G4 still holds its own 

ALTHOUGH LG DIDN’T stick with the G4’s 

leather backing for its G5 and G6 handsets, it 

was still a fantastic fl agship smartphone when 

it launched in 2015 – and now that it’s over 

£200 cheaper than on release, it makes a 

great alternative to newer mid-rangers. 

Measuring 149x75x8.9mm, it’s not the 

slimmest of phones, but the leather cladding 

adds a real premium feel. The same goes for 

the 5.5in display, which has a 2,560x1,440 

resolution producing a crisp 534ppi. LG’s IPS 

Quantum panel helps out here, showing lovely 

rich, vibrant colours and eye-searingly bright 

whites. We measured peak brightness as 

505.66cd/m 2 , so colours look just as punchy 

out in the sun as they do indoors. 

Blacks were deep at 0.27cd/m 2 , and the 

huge contrast ratio of 1,715:1 stands up to 

2017 standards. Its sRGB colour gamut 

coverage of 96.3% is also respectable for an 

IPS screen, though this does point to LG 

overstating the G4’s capabilities somewhat – 

it was supposedly able to reach 98% of the 

wider Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) colour 

gamut, which equates to about 120% sRGB 

coverage. This, evidently, was not backed up 

by our testing. 

The G4’s other headline feature is the 

16-megapixel camera, which makes it the 

fi rst to have a colour spectrum sensor on 

the back, which LG says is able to read and 

interpret colours in exactly the same way as 

your own eyeballs. Indeed, colours looked 

very natural in outdoor shots – more so 

than its contemporary, the Samsung Galaxy 

S6 – and while at times it struggled to 

correctly expose some areas of particularly 

bright cloud, switching to HDR mode quickly 

sorted this out. 

ABLE SETTINGS 

Manual mode is the star here, though. This 

gives you control over white balance, manual 

focus, shutter speed and ISO live onscreen, 

giving you plenty of fl exible controls to be a 

little more creative with your photography. 

Photo enthusiasts will also appreciate the 

ability to save photos as Raw fi les. 

LG has also included a quick launch mode, 

so you can take instant snapshots without 

having to unlock the phone fi rst. It’s certainly 

very handy, but we wish it hadn’t been 

mapped to the rear 

lower volume 

button, as this is 

possibly one of the 

least accessible 

buttons on the 

entire phone, 

particularly if you’re 

trying to shoot in 

landscape mode. 

Rather than 

the Qualcomm 

Snapdragon 810 

favoured by other 

2015 fl agship 

phones, the G4 

contains the slightly 

slower hexa-core 

1.8GHz Snapdragon 

808 chip, plus 3GB 

of RAM. This 

showed in our benchmarks: in Geekbench 3, 

the multicore result of 2,547 is a long way 

behind both old and new high-end 

smartphones, from the Galaxy S6 to the 

OnePlus 3T. Likewise, the G4’s single-core 

result of just 692 has even been surpassed 

by budget phones such as the Honor 6X – 

hardly a ringing endorsement for something 

that cost £530 on its release. 

The G4 has a colour spectrum sensor, which LG says is able 

to interpret colours in the same way as your own eyeballs 

However, benchmarks are only part of 

the story, and the G4 feels beautifully 

smooth when multitasking with different 

apps or browsing media-heavy web pages. 

It also coped well with games, as it ran 

Hearthstone, Threes! and Alphabear perfectly 

well, despite its somewhat average 

benchmarking results: it only produced 921 

frames in the offscreen GFXBench GL 

Manhattan test, which equates to 15fps. 

SWAP MEET 

The G4 has a few more advantages as well: it 

actually has removable storage (microSD 

support up to 128GB), which the Galaxy S6 

and Nexus 5X neglected to include, and the 

battery can be removed and replaced, 

something you can’t do on metal unibody 

handsets. The G4’s battery benchmark result 

of 11h 58m isn’t amazing when compared to 

more recent alternatives, but you could carry 

around spares. We can also see the fi rst 

glimpses of the LG 

G5 modularity in the 

G4’s ability to take 

larger, third-party 

battery packs. 

Following an 

update from 

Android 5.1, the G4 

currently runs 

Android 6.0 – 7.0 (or 

more likely, 7.1) isn’t 

expected to roll out 

on this older model 

until later in 2017, 

which is a shame. 

Whatever Android 

version is installed, 

it comes with LG’s 

UX interface over 

the top. Unlike most 

custom skins, we 

quite like this one; its Knock Code feature 

offers an effective alternative way to unlock 

your smartphone, by tapping out a specific 

pattern on the screen, while the Smart 

Settings menu can enable things such as 

changing the sound profi le once you get 

home, or automatically opening Spotify 

when you plug in headphones. 

Meanwhile, Smart Power Saving will warn 

you when apps are using too much power, 

and create a Smart Notice prompt to let you 

shut them down in order to help save battery. 

Likewise, the G4 will put the CPU to sleep 

when there’s nothing happening on the 

display, helping you squeeze a few more hours 

out of it when the phone is locked. 

AGE BEFORE BEAUTY 

The G4 may not be as powerful as other 

fl agship smartphones – especially those that 

have been released in the past two years – but 

it certainly has a wealth of features to help it 

stand out from the competition. The leather 

back is surprisingly elegant, and we defi nitely 

prefer it to the slippery glass of the Samsung 

Galaxy range. The G4 camera’s unique colour 

spectrum sensor also puts it neck-and-neck 

with the camera on the back of the S6, and its 

display looks just as sharp and punchy as 

Samsung’s Super AMOLED panels. 

It’s also an unusually fl exible smartphone; 

not to the extent of modular devices such as 

the Moto Z Play (nor indeed its successor, the 

G5), but the inclusion of a microSD slot and a 

removable battery makes the G4 a very 

accommodating handset indeed. There are 

many faster and longer-lasting alternatives, 

but at £319 this is absolutely worth the cash. 


SMARTPHONES 


★★★★★ 

£145 • From www.carphonewarehouse.com 

VERDICT 

Fast speeds, an excellent camera, long battery 

life – the Moto G4 is a budget masterpiece 

WE’LL GET TO the newer Moto G5 soon, but 

it’s worth noting that for over a year now, the 

Moto G4 has been the yardstick by which all 

other budget smartphones have been judged. 

It’s only recently that genuine alternatives 

such as the Lenovo P2 have arrived, such is its 

phenomenal balance of quality and thriftiness. 

In particular, its octa-core 1.5GHz 

Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor and 

2GB of RAM give it serious power. In 

Geekbench 3, the Moto G4 scored 717 in the 

single-core test and a massive 3,107 in the 

multicore test, about what we’d expect from 

a good mid-range device. Indeed, these 

scores are on a par with those of the HTC 

One A9, which costs twice as much. 

It’s lovely to use on a day-to-day basis, and 

it’s even a pretty capable gaming machine, 

too. While its GFXBench GL offscreen 

Manhattan 3.0 score of 412 frames (around 

6.6fps) can’t match, say, the Nexus 5X, we 

still managed to play Hearthstone without 

too much stutter, and simpler games such as 

Threes! worked like a dream. 

Web browsing has also been significantly 

improved over the 3rd Gen Moto G, its direct 

predecessor. Despite a curiously lower 

Peacekeeper score (632 to the Moto G’s 731), 

scrolling through media-heavy pages was 

much smoother on the G4, and images, 

videos and adverts all loaded faster too. 

HOUR SURGE 

All this power doesn’t come at the cost of 

battery life, either, as the Moto G4’s large 

3,000mAh battery lasted an impressive 13h 

39m in our continuous video test. That’s 

fantastic for a budget smartphone, beating 

the much more expensive LG G4 and 

Samsung Galaxy S6 (although only by two 

minutes in the latter’s case). 

Be mindful, however, that the Moto G4 is 

very much in phablet territory, with its screen 

measuring 5.5in diagonally. That makes it 

quite a handful, and the fl at back makes it 

slightly less comfortable than the previous 

Moto G, at least in our hands. Fortunately, 

though, it didn’t take long to get used to. 

Still, the overall design could be better: 

the subtle crosshatch pattern on the rear 

isn’t particularly elegant and it’s lost the 

3rd Gen Moto G’s IP67 waterproofi ng, 

though its water-repellent coating should 

still provide adequate protection from 

splashes or a light rain shower. 

Those who like to customise their handset 

using Motorola’s Moto Maker service might 

also be a little disappointed, as the G4’s 

options are decidedly less fun than those 

of its predecessors. It 

doesn’t cost any extra to 

change the colour of the 

back panel, but the 

shades on offer are rather 

more muted than the 

bright yellows and searing 

limes of yesteryear. 

The choice of metallic 

accents around the 

camera are also rather 

uninspiring, but 

considering it’s free, you 

may as well personalise it 

as much as you can to get 

the look you want. 

The only thing you do 

have to pay extra for on 

Moto Maker is if you 

want to upgrade the 

Moto G4’s storage to 

32GB. This costs an extra 

£30, but when the G4 

comes with a microSD 

slot that takes cards up 

to 128GB anyway, this 

seems like a bit of a waste of money. 

VISION ACCOMPLISHED 

It’s a shame the display (and by extension, the 

whole handset) isn’t a bit smaller, but at least 

Motorola has provided it with a 1,920x1,080 

resolution, giving it a sharp pixel density of 

401ppi. Our colour-calibration tests showed it 

was displaying a respectable 90% of the sRGB 

colour gamut, and its contrast ratio of 1,693:1 

is most impressive as well. It’s also 

considerably brighter than its predecessor, 

as it’s able to reach a peak brightness of 

539.51cd/m 2 , making it much easier to see 

outdoors in direct sunshine. These are, again, 

brilliant results for a budget smartphone, and 

its punchy colours look great regardless of 

whether you’re browsing the web or looking 

at photos in your gallery. 

Speaking of which, the G4’s rear 

13-megapixel camera remains our favourite 

budget smartphone snapper – and that 

includes the one on the Moto G5. Despite 

sharing the same resolution as the 3rd Gen 

Moto G, the difference 

in quality is plain to see, 

as the Moto G4 captures 

far more detail, and 

everything looks that 

much sharper. 

Outdoors, for instance, 

colours looked accurate 

and its exposure was 

expertly judged. It blurred 

the occasional bit of 

brickwork, but overall it 

produced truly excellent 

photos. It looks as if 

Motorola has toned 

down its HDR mode this 

year as well, as rather 

than make images 

appear overly artificial, 

it simply makes them 

look richer and more 

vibrant, so you’ll probably 

want to leave it on to get 

the best exposures. 

CUT TO THE QUICK 

Motorola also simplified the camera app’s UI 

– an action reversed for the G5, in some ways 

– to give it a dedicated onscreen shutter 

button and easy shortcuts to toggle the 

fl ash, HDR and timer on and off. Tap the 

screen to focus, and you can easily adjust the 

lens aperture using the onscreen slider as 

well, which works brilliantly and shows you 

your results in real-time. 

The camera was also an excellent 

performer indoors, as noise was kept to a 

Its octa-core processor and 2GB of RAM give the G4 

serious power – it’s lovely to use on a day-to-day basis, 

and it’s even a pretty capable gaming machine 

minimum even in low-light conditions, and 

detail levels were still pleasingly high. Some of 

the objects in our still-life arrangement were a 

touch grainy in places, but switching on the 

excellent LED fl ash quickly sorted this out. 

We’ve covered the G5 in more detail on 

the next page, but in short we’d rather stick 

with the G4. That a smartphone can achieve 

so much for so little is as astounding today as 

it was in 2016, and while the Lenovo P2 is as 

powerful (with a much, much longer battery 

life), we can’t bring ourselves to take away 

the G4’s well-deserved Best Buy award. 


91

SMARTPHONES 


★★★★★ 


VERDICT 

The heir to the king of budget smartphones 

isn’t as good as we’d hoped 

THIS SHOULD BE an exciting occasion: the 

follow-up to 2016’s best budget phone by a 

mile, the Moto G4, updated with stylish metal 

bodywork and the latest Android 7.0 Nougat. 

Sadly, though, the new Moto G5 is a device 

we can only appreciate with caveats. 

Let’s start with the good. As mentioned, 

both this and the larger Moto G5 Plus (which 

we’ll cover in more detail in a future issue) 

have ditched the plastic backplates of 

previous Moto G handsets in favour of a 

sleeker, slinkier metal design. Although there’s 

the risk that this will scuff, scratch and dent 

rather more easily than the textured plastic 

rear of previous generations, out of the box 

the Moto G5 looks very fi ne indeed. 

In fact, this is a lovely phone to hold – 

not slippery, and with just the right amount 

of grip – and the fi ne-grained matt fi nish on 

the rear is a big step forward in terms of 

sophistication. Note, however, that the 

phone isn’t all metal – only the rear panel is. 

The edges are constructed from plastic just 

as they were before. 

DOWNSIZING MEASURES 

The Moto G5 is also a little more practical 

than its pricier brother, with a removable 

battery, microSD card support (up to 128GB) 

and dual-SIM support. The Moto G5 Plus has 

both a microSD slot and dual-SIM support, 

but you can’t replace the battery. 

Both phones now include a new frontmounted 

fi ngerprint reader and, thankfully, 

have Android 7.0 Nougat pre-installed. 

There’s also NFC, so you can fi nally use 

Moto’s cheapest handset to pay for goods in 

place of a contactless credit card. 

One key thing to note with the Moto G5, 

however, is that the screen is 0.5in smaller 

than on the Moto G4. It’s a surprising 

downgrade but on the plus side there’s no 

denying the Moto G5 is more pocketable and 

easier to use one-handed than before. 

Since the resolution has stayed the same, 

at 1,920x1,080, it also looks just as sharp. Alas, 

along with the reduction in size, our testing 

reveals the Moto G5’s screen has also taken a 

hit on quality. Peak brightness is down from 

the G4’s 539.51cd/m 2 to 471cd/m 2 , and sRGB 

colour coverage is also down to 85.8%. The 

result is a slightly duller, less vibrant display, 

and while the difference between the two 

phones isn’t night and day, it’s still 

disappointing that the Moto G5 is inferior. 

Under the hood, it’s a similar story. The 

base Moto G5 comes with a Qualcomm 

Snapdragon 430 and 2GB of RAM; we tested 

the slightly higher-spec 3GB version, but this 

didn’t prevent it landing 

slightly behind the 

Moto G4 in Geekbench 

benchmarks, with 

scores of 578 in the 

single-core test and 

2,379 in the multicore 

test. It also merely 

matches the G4’s 7fps 

average in both GFX 

Manhattan’s onscreen 

and offscreen tests, so 

it’s no better for gaming. 

So, not only does the 

Moto G5 fail to improve 

on its predecessor, but 

it lags even further 

behind newer budget 

challengers, namely 

the Honor 6X and 

Lenovo P2. 

We were hoping that 

the trade-off for this would be improved 

battery life, but in our video test, the Moto G5 

achieved a time of 11h 51m, which is 1h 48m 

short of the Moto G4. This isn’t disastrous, 

of course, but heavy users may well fi nd 

that they need to top up the phone’s 

charge more often that they would the G4 

– another disappointment. 

FOCUS POCUS 

Motorola says it has improved the camera 

over the G4, though, adding phase-detect 

autofocus to speed up capture. However, the 

snapper’s core specifications remain the 

same, with an aperture of f/2 and resolution 

of 13 megapixels. 

These look to be impressive specifications 

on a sub-£200 phone. They were last year, 

and the Moto G4’s camera was very good 

indeed at the price. However, on the evidence 

of our tests the new camera module in the 

G5 isn’t all that wonderful. 

Outdoors, in brightly lit conditions, the 

Moto G5’s rear camera does perform 

splendidly, capturing photographs with even 

crisper details and richer colours than the G4. 

Exposures are balanced and focus assured. 

It’s an accomplished 

snapper and the 

improved camera 

soft ware is a bonus, too. 

We particularly like its 

ability to automatically 

detect hand shake and 

snap multiple frames, 

upon which it offers 

you the choice between 

two frames, the second 

of which is often 

sharper than the fi rst 

you fi red off. 

In the low light of 

indoor scenes, however, 

images aren’t great. 

Photographs of our 

still-life scene exhibited 

significantly higher 

levels of noise, smearing 

and hand-shake induced 

blur than on the Moto G4, and enabling the 

fl ash doesn’t help much either. Although it 

doesn’t wash out the image, it does add an 

unnatural orangey-pink tinge to the whole 

scene that looks far from attractive. 

ECONOMIC WARFARE 

One thing we can’t fault is the price. This 

£180, 3GB variant is only £10 more than the 

standard 2GB version, which is in turn the 

same as what the Moto G4 cost when it fi rst 

launched. It still packs a punch for that kind 

of money, and as it turns out, you can take 

Not only does the Moto G5 fail to improve on its 

predecessor, but it lags even further behind newer budget 

challengers, namely the Honor 6X and Lenovo P2 

a few steps back from something as 

excellent as the Moto G4 and still be left 

with a pretty good handset. 

That, however, is also the issue. The Moto 

G5 only makes improvements in a few minor 

ways, and has got worse in others. That’s not 

a recipe for a must-have device when the 

Honor 6X, Lenovo P2 and, yes, the Moto G4, 

are readily available as alternatives. 

As such, the only way we can recommend 

the Moto G5 is if you’re utterly determined 

to have the very latest product – and even 

then, remember that the Lenovo P2 is just a 

few weeks older. 


SMARTPHONES 


★★★★★ 

£370 • From www.motorola.co.uk 

VERDICT 

The Moto Z Play’s stupendous battery life 

and modular design make it a great buy 

LIKE THE ONEPLUS 3T, the Moto Z Play 

aims to provide fl agship-quality features 

while undercutting them on price. Take, for 

example, the big 3,510mAh battery inside – 

that even dwarfs the 2,600mAh of its own 

bigger brother, the Moto Z (Shopper 348). 

It thus lasted almost twice as long in our 

continuous video loop benchmark, clocking 

in at an outstanding 23h 45m. Only the 

Lenovo P2 can top that. 

It’s clear where Motorola has stashed all 

those extra milliampere hours in the Moto Z 

Play. Measuring a sizable 6.9mm at its 

thinnest point, the phone feels positively 

behemoth-like compared with the svelte 

5.2mm Moto Z, and its lightly chamfered 

edges are sharper and harder against your 

palm. That’s not to say the Moto Z Play is 

uncomfortable to hold, but it defi nitely feels 

a little gawky compared to its luxuriously 

slim stablemate. 

Girth aside, however, the Moto Z Play 

looks every bit the top-end smartphone. 

Its front-facing fi ngerprint sensor is every bit 

as quick when it comes to unlocking your 

phone, and its glass rear and metal frame 

represent a huge leap forward in overall build 

quality compared to the rubberised rear of 

last year’s Moto X Play. 

It also shares the Moto Z’s main party 

trick: its modularity. While its rear connection 

point might not look quite as elegant as its 

big brother’s, it supports all the same 

Moto Mod accessories, allowing you to 

augment your smartphone with stereo 

speakers, an upgraded camera or just even 

more battery life. 

RULE THE BOOST 

It’s all easily done – each mod simply snaps 

on to the back of the phone with strong 

connecting magnets. You might need to dig 

your nails in to prise them off, but it’s 

defi nitely less hassle than the system on the 

modular LG G5. Motorola is also planning on 

making these mods compatible with at least 

two more generations of Moto Z phones, so 

you should be able to carry on using them 

even if you upgrade. Our favourite mod so far 

is the JBL SoundBoost speaker, which is a 

massive improvement 

on the handset’s own 

tinny speaker, and 

includes its own 

1,000mAh battery. 

Where the Moto Z 

Play starts to deviate 

from the Moto Z is its 

internal hardware; the 

former has to make do 

with the mid-tier 

octa-core 2GHz 

Snapdragon 625. It also 

has 3GB of RAM, rather 

than the Moto Z’s 4GB. 

This is still a pretty 

potent combination for 

everyday tasks, but 

the difference showed 

in our benchmarks. In 

Geekbench 4, the Moto 

Z Play scored only 798 

in the single-core test and 2,599 in the 

multicore test, making it almost half as fast 

as the Moto Z overall. 

To be fair, this is to be somewhat 

expected for a mid-range phone, but when 

you consider the OnePlus 3T also has a 

Snapdragon 821 chip, the Moto Z Play starts 

to look slightly less special. 

The same goes for graphics performance: 

it achieved a mere 636 frames (an average of 

The Moto Mod accessories allow you to augment your 

smartphone with stereo speakers, an upgraded camera 

or even more battery life 

10fps) in GFXBench GL’s onscreen Manhattan 

3.0 test. The OnePlus 3T, by comparison, 

achieved a 47fps average. That said, the 

Moto Z Play will run most current titles 

perfectly smoothly; it just might not be as 

nippy a few years down the line. 

BLANKET COVERAGE 

The Moto Z Play shares the Moto Z’s 5.5in 

AMOLED panel, but with a 1,920x1,080 

resolution, rather than 2,560x1,440. In the 

cheaper phone’s defence, we were hardpressed 

to tell the difference in terms of 

overall sharpness. The Moto Z Play’s vanilla 

version of Android 6.0 looks just as crisp 

as it does on the Moto Z. 

More importantly, the quality of the 

Moto Z Play’s display hasn’t diminished in the 

slightest: it still covers a 

fantastic 100% of the 

sRGB colour gamut, 

produces perfect blacks 

and has superb contrast. 

Its maximum brightness 

only peaks at 355cd/m 2 , 

but this will only be a 

problem on the very 

sunniest of days. 

The Moto Z Play 

actually has a higherresolution 

camera than 

the Moto Z, producing 

16-megapixel images 

rather than 12. You won’t 

fi nd any optical image 

stabilisation here, sadly, 

but you do get a hybrid 

laser and phase 

detection autofocus, a 

wide f/2.0 aperture and 

a colour-balancing dual LED fl ash. Shots 

turned out sharper and more defi ned on the 

Moto Z Play; there was perhaps a fraction 

more grain and noise than on the Moto Z, 

but we’d rather have a bit of grit than have 

everything smoothed over. 

Colour reproduction was top notch, even 

in gloomy, overcast weather conditions. 

Enabling HDR had a tendency to make 

pictures look a little artificial, exhibiting 

strong halo effects around objects and 

buildings on the horizon, but generally it did a 

great job of brightening up muted scenes. 

Indoors, shots were once again a little 

grainy and mottled in places, but there was 

very little noise, and artefacts were kept to a 

minimum. Colours were pleasingly punchy 

and contrast levels remained solid across all 

lighting conditions. We’d recommend sparing 

use of the fl ash, however, as this tended to 

turn everything rather warm and orange 

rather than correctly balancing out white. 

PLAY TIME 

As with last year’s Moto X Play and Moto X 

Style, it’s Motorola’s mid-range phone that 

takes the crown here. The Moto Z might be 

faster, slimmer and have a higher-resolution 

display, but the Moto Z Play is better value. 

You not only get stonking battery life, but 

also a great camera and equal access to 

Lenovo and Motorola’s new Moto Mods. 

It’s arguably worth paying extra for the 

OnePlus 3T’s superior performance, but if 

you’re looking for something a bit different 

that can turn its hand to any task, you won’t 

be disappointed with the Moto Z Play. 


93

SMARTPHONES 

ONEPLUS 3T 

★★★★★ 

£399 • From oneplus.net/uk 

VERDICT 

The OnePlus 3T is a small upgrade with a big 

price increase, but it’s still fantastic value 

THE ARRIVAL OF the OnePlus 3T at the end 

of 2016 was a bittersweet occasion. This was 

an update to one of our favourite high-end 

phones, the OnePlus 3, and made several 

small but welcome changes to the processor 

and battery – yet these incremental 

improvements came with a steep £70 price 

increase, which seemed antithetical to the 

OnePlus ethos of creating fl agship-standard 

devices at knockdown prices. You couldn’t 

even get the older model for less, as it was 

canned with such remarkable speed and 

force that it disappeared from all but the 

shadiest of grey market stores. 

That said, by any reasonable measure 

the OnePlus 3T is still a bargain. Going in at 

£399 for the 64GB model, or £439 for the 

128GB model, it packs a 2.35GHz Qualcomm 

Snapdragon 821 processor, which is a 

straight upgrade from the OnePlus 3’s 

Snapdragon 820, and a convincing 

statement that the 3T is still looking to 

compete with top-tier smartphones on 

performance while severely undercutting 

them on cost. 

Battery size has also grown from 

3,000mAh to 3,400mAh, complemented by 

the new Dash Charge system, which promises 

“a day’s charge in half an hour”. 

SNAP HAPPY 

Along with the processor upgrade, the 

OnePlus 3T inherits its predecessor’s 

impressive list of core specifications. 

Namely, that Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 is 

backed up by 6GB of RAM and includes 

Qualcomm’s Adreno 530 graphics 

processing unit. As you’d imagine, these 

top-of-the-range specifications result in a 

smartphone that’s an absolute pleasure to 

use, and one that comfortably handles 

anything you throw its way. 

In Geekbench 4, it scored 1,903 in the 

single-core test and 4,273 in the multicore 

test. Besides being clear – if moderate – 

improvements over the OnePlus 3, which 

scored 1,689 and 4,026 respectively, these 

also show the OnePlus 3T holding its own 

against the Samsung Galaxy S7, which 

remains significantly more expensive even 

now that the Galaxy S8 has arrived. 

Graphics performance is unchanged from 

the 3, as you’d expect from the two OnePlus 

handsets sharing a GPU. The OnePlus 3T 

matches its predecessor with a superb 47fps 

average in the GFXBench GL onscreen 

Manhattan 3.0 test. That’s actually 9fps 

better than the Galaxy S7, so you’ll have no 

problems running intensive 3D titles. 

Weirdly, however, 

the larger 3,400mAh 

battery actually fared 

worse in our video 

loop test (running at 

the usual 170cd/m 2 

brightness). The 

OnePlus 3T lasted 

13h 22m, compared 

to the OnePlus 3’s 

16h 56m. That said, 

anecdotally we 

seemed to get slightly 

better longevity out 

of the newer phone 

in normal day-today 

use. 

DASH BLAST 

The Dash Charge tech 

is also impressive, 

though the claims of “a day’s power in half an 

hour” need a little extra scrutiny. While it’s 

true we were able to jump from 49% to 92% 

battery in 30 minutes (it took another 24 

minutes to hit 100%), not everyone would 

fi nd 43% capacity enough to get them 

through a day – especially if they’re a power 

user. Your mileage may vary. 

The OnePlus 3T’s rear camera is great as 

well. It’s a 16-megapixel snapper with an f/2.0 

aperture, phase-detect autofocus and optical 

image stabilisation. It’s short of laser 

autofocus for optimal low-light performance, 

but it’s generally solid. 

You might think that bringing the front 

camera up to the same 16-megapixel count 

would produce similarly good selfies, but 

sadly that isn’t the case. We found that 

shots taken on the front-facing camera had 

a nasty combination of overexposure and 

unimpressive colour balance, whether they 

were taken in or outdoors. It’s not a patch on 

the Google Pixel XL’s 8-megapixel snapper, 

proving that pixel count isn’t everything. 

That’s about it for the new additions; now 

we turn to the design and display, which 

remain largely unchanged from the OnePlus 3. 

Technically the 3T’s rear panel is slightly 

fl atter, but only hardcore OnePlus fans are 

likely to notice that at a glance. The anodised 

metal chassis looks the same, and it still feels 

comfortably secure 

in the hand, even 

one-handed. It has 

support for dual 

SIMs, meaning this 

can be your work 

and home phone, 

and it still charges 

via USB Type-C. 

PIXEL OF HEALTH 

At 5.5in, it remains a 

big beast of a phone, 

although that screen 

is still a 1,080x1,920 

AMOLED panel. 

That’s a lower 

resolution than some 

of its pricier peers, 

and undoubtedly 

where some of the 

cost savings are made, but unless you plan 

on using this for virtual reality, then it’s a 

sacrifice worth making. On a screen this size, 

diminishing returns tends to kick in, so most 

1080p content is tough to tell apart from that 

shown on a QHD or 4K display. 

For everyday usage, the OnePlus 3T’s 

screen is just fi ne. We measured a good 

maximum brightness of 421cd/m 2 and perfect 

contrast. Switch to sRGB mode and the 

screen covers 93.2% of the colour gamut, 

and it does so while looking sharp and vibrant. 

The OnePlus 3’s display wasn’t broke, so 

OnePlus has wisely declined to fi x it. 

Top-of-the-range specifications result in a smartphone 

that’s an absolute pleasure to use 

The OnePlus 3T is a brilliant smartphone, 

and objectively improves upon the amazingly 

good OnePlus 3 in a couple of small but 

significant ways: namely the processing 

performance and charging speed. It’s not 

ideal that these tweaks have resulted in a £70 

price rise, especially since one of the other 

hardware upgrades – the bigger battery – has 

such mixed results, but that’s not to say that 

the OnePlus 3T is a rip-off . 

In fact, while it’s not quite as incredible a 

bargain as the OnePlus 3, it still gives you 

demonstrably more bang for your buck than 

anything in and above its price range. It is, 

once again, a fl agship-killer. With the OnePlus 

3 having vanished from mainstream sellers, 

the OnePlus 3T is an easy endorsement. 


SMARTPHONES 

SAMSUNG Galaxy A5 (2017) 

★★★★★ 


VERDICT 

Samsung heads in the right direction with the 

keenly priced Galaxy A5 

THIS ISN’T NEARLY the cheapest Samsung 

handset around, but the latest Galaxy A5 is 

appealing as a value purchase because it has 

much more in common with the Galaxy S7 

than it does the budget Galaxy J series. 

For starters, there’s the fl agship-bothering 

build quality. The Galaxy A5’s clean metal 

frame and all-glass front are incredibly 

handsome for a sub-£350 smartphone, and 

its tapered back helps it fi t snugly into the 

palm of your hand. It’s also the fi rst iteration 

of the A5 where the rear camera is totally 

fl ush with the body. 

It’s a lovely phone to hold and behold, 

then, but then last year’s Galaxy A5 was 

pretty nice, too. The key differences lie 

beneath the phone’s glossy exterior, with a 

new processor, more RAM and a higherresolution 

camera. 

GLASS WITH FLYING COLOURS 

More similarly to last year’s model, the new 

A5 comes equipped with a 5.2in, Full HD, 

Super AMOLED display, racking up a pixel 

density of 424ppi. That’s not sharp enough 

for it to be compatible with Samsung’s Gear 

VR headset, but there’s nothing stopping 

you using Google Cardboard instead. 

More importantly, it looks superb in 

everyday use. Colours are striking, covering a 

perfect 100% of the sRGB gamut, and while 

our X-Rite colour calibrator did spot some 

slight inaccuracies in some of the darker 

shades of green, it’s so marginal that you 

won’t spot this with the naked eye. 

It’s also a reasonably bright Super 

AMOLED screen, too, with the calibrator 

picking up a peak brightness of 355cd/m 2 . 

It’s not as dazzling as, say, the Sony Xperia X 

Compact or OnePlus 3T, and you’ll need to 

shade the screen to read it in really bright 

conditions, but for the most part it’s 

adequate for outdoor viewing. The adaptive 

light sensor on the top of the phone also 

bumps up brightness to a maximum of 

451cd/m 2 , should the need arise. 

When it comes to performance, the Galaxy 

A5’s octa-core Exynos 7880 (clocked at 

1.9GHz) and 3GB of RAM keeps Android 

feeling snappy. It does fall behind the OnePlus 

3T in our benchmarks, scoring 767 in the 

Geekbench single-core test and 4,054 in 

multicore (compared to the 3T’s 1,903 and 

4,274), but since the A5 is nearly £70 cheaper, 

that’s a fair compromise. The multicore score 

in particular is a great showing. 

The phone’s graphics performance is 

somewhat less impressive. Running 

GFXBench’s onscreen Manhattan 3.0 test, it 

gained an average 

frame rate of 14fps, 

which is 33fps slower 

than the OnePlus 3T. 

It’s not so bad in 

practice – Sky Force: 

Reloaded ran with 

minimal hiccups, even 

when there was lots 

happening on the 

screen, but we’re 

concerned about how it 

might handle more 

intensive games that 

might come out in the 

next couple of years. 

ALL-NIGHTER 

Battery life is much 

better. This year’s 

Galaxy A5 ships with a 

3,000mAh power pack, 

and it put in a sterling 

performance in our 

video playback tests. 

With the phone in fl ight mode and the 

screen calibrated to 170cd/m 2 , the Galaxy A5 

lasted 22h 5m before giving up and shutting 

down, handily beating the Galaxy S7 and 

OnePlus 3T and coming fairly close to the 

Motorola Moto Z Play. There’s fast charging 

via USB Type-C, too. 

As for soft ware, we were more than a little 

disappointed to fi nd that Samsung Galaxy A5 

isn’t powered by Android 7.0 Nougat straight 

out of the box. While we’ve been assured 

there’ll be an over-the-air update in the near 

future, you’ll have to wait a little longer for the 

latest, greatest version of Google’s OS. 

Returning our attention to that newly fl ush 

rear camera, Samsung has boosted the 

resolution to 16 megapixels, and done the 

same to the front-facing camera – that’s a 

sizable improvement over the 2016 Galaxy 

A5’s 13- and 5-megapixel cameras. Using the 

rear camera, we were able to capture some 

very detail-rich shots of the streets outside 

our office on a clear day. Switching on HDR 

didn’t yield massive improvements, even if 

the image was already well exposed to begin 

with. A tad more cloud detail could be spotted 

in the HDR shot, but not much else. 

Indoor snaps weren’t 

a problem, with shots 

of our low-light still-life 

arrangement picking 

up an abundance of 

vibrant colour. 

Visual noise is kept 

at bay as well, and 

there’s no muddying 

of the fi ner details. 

Samsung’s camera 

soft ware has seen a 

bit of an update, too. 

In a similar move to 

Huawei’s slick Camera 

app, specific shooting 

modes can be accessed 

via quick swipes to the 

left and right, rather 

than having to navigate 

through convoluted 

menus. It’s the 

almost-perfect 

one-handed experience 

– especially with the 

new movable virtual shutter button, and 

especially handy for selfie enthusiasts. 

FOOD FOR THOUGHT 

There’s also Samsung’s new Food Filter, which 

applies a basic depth-of-fi eld effect and some 

colour tinkering to supposedly make your 

food photos look their Instagram-worthy best. 

Photos with this fi lter applied were a tad 

The A5 is just the ticket if you’re not fond of handing over 

flagship-sized sums of cash but want something sleek 

oversaturated, though, and we weren’t keen 

on the extreme background blur. It’s a 

frivolous and ultimately ignorable inclusion. 

The Samsung Galaxy S8 might be 

grabbing all the headlines at the moment, 

but that doesn’t mean the Galaxy A5 should 

be overlooked. It’s just the ticket if you’re 

not fond of handing over fl agship-sized sums 

of cash but want something that looks and 

feels just as sleek. 

The OnePlus 3T looms large as an 

alternative, but it’s more expensive and its 

battery life isn’t nearly as good. As such, the 

Galaxy A5 takes a well-deserved place as one 

of the best mid-range handsets you can buy 

today, and has enough premium touches to 

make it worth considering alongside older 

fl agships that have come down in price. 


95

SMARTPHONES 


★★★★★ 


VERDICT 

What was an impressive step forward in 2015 

is still a highly competitive smartphone today 

EVEN AT THE ripe old age of two years old, 

the Galaxy S6 still impresses – after all, it was 

the fi rst Samsung smartphone to look and 

feel like a truly premium product, without the 

plasticky panels of what came before. 

It’s not as eye-catching as the S6 Edge, 

with its tapered screen, and also doesn’t feel 

as grippy in the hand, due to the S6 having 

smoother, more rounded edges. Still, these 

are minor quibbles, and there’s much more to 

like about the design than not. It only weighs 

138g, for starters – that’s a good 17g less than 

the LG G4, which is also 1.9mm fatt er – and 

while the glass backplate attracts fi ngerprints, 

it and the aluminium frame make for a vastly 

better-looking device than the old Galaxy S5. 

There’s also the matter of the stunning 

5.1in Super AMOLED display. The 2,560x1,440 

resolution gives it a pixel density of 577ppi, 

which remains among the highest you’ll see 

on any smartphone outside of certain 4K 

outliers. Colour accuracy and contrast were 

through the roof, with sRGB colour gamut 

coverage of 100% and an Infinity:1 contrast 

ratio. We measured a so-so peak brightness 

of 346.49cd/m 2 indoors, but the Galaxy S6 

has the same automatic brightness mode as 

later Galaxy phones, allowing it to reach a 

massive 577cd/m 2 outside. 

CARDS NOT ACCEPTED 

Unlike the S5, the S6 doesn’t have a 

replaceable battery. To be fair, this is 

something that could be said of the vast 

majority of fl agships (as well as most 

mid-range and cheaper handsets), but it’s 

still a mild shame. As some recompense, the 

S6 supports WPC (Qi) and PMA (Powermat) 

wireless charging. The Micro USB port on 

the bottom of the phone also supports 

fast-charging, which gave us about four 

hours of use from 10 minutes attached to 

the mains. We do prefer the reversible USB 

Type-C port on the Galaxy S8, for 

convenience’s sake, though it should be 

easier to fi nd spare cables for the S6. 

Battery size is also down from the S5, 

but this shouldn’t be too much of an issue. 

The Galaxy S6 lasted 13h 37m in our battery 

benchmark, a performance which may have 

been thoroughly 

outdone by the Galaxy 

S7, but still translates 

into a good day’s worth 

of regular use. 

There’s a decently 

fast, thumb-oriented 

fi ngerprint scanner built 

into the home button – 

you can use this with 

Samsung Pay, to make 

payments with the 

phone instead of having 

to pull out a contactless 

bank card – but sadly 

other creatures 

comforts, such as 

waterproofi ng and a 

microSD slot, are 

missing as well. 

You’re therefore 

limited to whatever 

amount of onboard 

storage you choose, 

from 32GB, 64GB and 

128GB fl avours. 

WIZ KID 

On the plus side, Samsung’s 64-bit, octa-core 

Samsung Exynos 7420 processor makes the 

S6 very snappy indeed. It scored 1,427 in the 

Geekbench single-core test and 4,501 in the 

multicore test, so remains among the best of 

the best even in 2017, and while the S7 and 

OnePlus 3T are more future-proofed for 

We hear a lot about ‘flagship killers’. Well, here’s a 

genuine flagship that costs even less than the 

best ‘killer’ on the market 

gaming performance, you can still run any 

intensive 3D title on the S6 with ease. 

TouchWiz, Samsung’s Android skin, is 

more streamlined than it has been in 

previous versions; there are still about two 

screens’ worth of pre-installed apps, but 

it’s cut back on the bloatware. The main 

issue is that, like most custom skins, it seems 

to delay Android updates. The S6 has long 

been running 6.1 Marshmallow, having 

launched with 5.0 Lollipop, but a timeframe 

for the supposedly upcoming 7.0 Nougat 

update has been left vague. 

The Galaxy S6 includes a 16-megapixel rear 

camera, which protrudes slightly outwards 

from the back of the 

handset. This is the 

same resolution as the 

Galaxy S5’s camera, but 

there’s now a brighter 

f/1.9 aperture lens, 

which Samsung claims 

lets in 34% more light 

than the S5’s f/2.2 

lens. Optical image 

stabilisation reduces 

blur in low-light 

shooting, and a 

double-click of the 

home button activates 

the camera in under a 

second, ensuring you’ll 

never miss a shot. 

We were pleased 

with the quality of our 

test photos, as colours 

were bright and vibrant 

with plenty of fi ne 

detail on show. A few 

patches of bright sky 

were overexposed, 

but turning on HDR 

mode instantly fi xed the problem. HDR also 

left the rest of the picture intact, keeping the 

high level of detail and accurate colours we 

saw in Auto mode without making it seem 

unnaturally harsh or artificial. 

RETURN OF THE KING 

There’s no doubting that the Galaxy S6 is a 

much better phone, both in terms of features 

and build quality, than the Galaxy S5 – and, 

more pertinently, it remains a great device by 

more recent standards. 

There is the question, however, of whether 

it’s worth opting for a two-generations-old 

handset when not only is there a newer, even 

better model available, but that the later 

version – the Galaxy S7 – has benefi ted from 

a big price drop thanks to the Galaxy S8. The 

most obvious answer to that is, of course, 

that the Galaxy S6 is even cheaper – we found 

a new and unboxed 32GB unit for just £374, 

which is quite a bit less than both the Galaxy 

S7 and the OnePlus 3T (not to mention less 

than half of what Samsung wants for the 

most basic Galaxy S8). 

We hear a lot about ‘flagship killers’, 

phones that make a few compromises here 

and there to offer premium performance at 

a mid-range price. Well, here’s a genuine 

fl agship that costs even less than the best 

‘killer’ on the market – and there’s defi nitely 

some appeal in that. 


SMARTPHONES 


★★★★★ 


VERDICT 

The Samsung Galaxy S7 is still one of the best smartphones 

out there, now with Android Nougat and a lower price 

YOU MIGHT BE wondering what the Galaxy 

S7 is doing here – aren’t we meant to be 

looking at more affordable current phones 

and older classics? Well, you’d be right in 

that the S7 isn’t exactly chump change, 

but then by the time you read this, the 

Galaxy S8 will have arrived to replace it as 

Samsung’s premier smartphone. That means 

price drops for last year’s model, and we’ve 

already found the S7 for nearly £150 less 

than its original RRP. 

This is great news for bargain hunters, as 

the S7 quickly became our favourite-ever 

Android handset when we fi rst reviewed it. 

Not that fi rst impressions were that great: 

our testing sample had fi ne scratches in 

numerous places on the display and the 

fi ngerprint sensor, and while the glass back 

was in better conditions, it was and remains 

an absolute fi ngerprint magnet. 

RESISTANCE MOVEMENT 

The S7 is 1.1mm thicker than the Galaxy S6 

and, at 152g, is 20g heavier, but neither are 

things you’ll notice in everyday use. Samsung 

has also made some big improvements in the 

form of IP68 waterproofi ng and a microSD 

slot for expandable storage. The S6 was 

sorely missing both, and the S7 is far more 

fl exible and durable for it. 

Our only major quibble is with the 

front-mounted fi ngerprint sensor. It’s much 

lower down than where our thumbs and 

fi ngers would normally rest, and it will only 

unlock the phone once you’ve pressed the 

home button or woken it up with the power 

button. It didn’t always recognise our 

fi ngerprints successfully, either. 

Samsung’s Super AMOLED displays have 

always been one of the highlights of its 

S-series smartphones, and the S7’s screen is 

no exception. It may not have the curved sides 

of the S7 Edge, but this 5.1in, 2,560x1,440- 

resolution display has a super-sharp pixel 

density of 577ppi and its quality is top notch. 

Covering a full 100% of the sRGB colour 

gamut, it can produce pitch perfect 0.00cd/m 2 

blacks, and a super-high contrast ratio makes 

it lovely to look at, whatever the task. 

With a peak brightness of 353.74cd/m 2 , 

it’s not as bright as most LCD-based 

smartphones, but switch to Auto brightness 

and shine a torch on its 

adaptive light sensor and 

the brightness will shoot 

up to around 470cd/m 2 . 

It’s the same thing 

Samsung did with the S6, 

and it makes using the S7 

in sunshine much easier 

than some of its other 

Super AMOLED handsets. 

It also has the added 

benefi t of Samsung’s 

Always On Display 

technology, which can 

be used to display 

information such as the 

date, time and the phone’s 

battery status when the 

screen is turned off. It can 

also show calendar 

information, but it’s a 

shame this widget isn’t 

actionable like traditional 

Android notifications. 

This drains a little 

under 1% of the battery per hour, but 

you won’t have to worry about the S7’s 

overall stamina – it lasted 17h 48m in our 

continuous video playback test, an 

exceptional performance which puts the S6’s 

The Galaxy S7 is far more flexible and durable than the S6 

thanks to IP68 waterproofing and a microSD slot 

13h 37m to shame. Fast-charging has also 

been improved, allowing us to regain 50% 

charge in just 10 minutes, and it supports 

wireless charging via the usual Qi standard. 

DRAGON SLAYER 

In some territories, the S7 runs off 

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820, but in the UK 

and Europe this is replaced by Samsung’s own 

octa-core Exynos 8890 processor. This makes 

it one of the slickest and most responsive 

smartphones around, scoring a massive 2,115 

in Geekbench’s single-core test and 6,437 in 

the multicore test. Samsung’s TouchWiz 

interface (laid over Android 7.0 Nougat) 

simply fl ies, and apps loaded almost instantly. 

Web browsing is similarly quick, with the S7 

scoring an impressive 1,882 in Peacekeeper 

and coping extremely well when scrolling 

through media-heavy pages. 

The Exynos 8890’s graphics capabilities 

are equally impressive. In the offscreen 

Manhattan test of 

GFXBench GL 3.0, the S7 

managed a score of 2,336 

frames, which equates to 

around 38fps. The cheaper 

OnePlus 3T beats it with 

47fps, but this still 

demonstrates the S7’s 

ability to run demanding 

games without hitches. 

Samsung’s added Game 

Launcher comes in handy 

as well, as it can disable 

notifications, capture 

footage and screenshots or 

lock the Back and Recents 

buttons while you play. 

The Galaxy S6 came 

with an excellent camera, 

but for the S7, Samsung 

took a risk in order to 

improve image quality 

further, reducing the main 

snapper’s resolution to 12 

megapixels instead of 

sticking with the S6’s 16-megapixel sensor. 

That may sound like a step backwards, 

but each individual pixel is bigger, up from 

1.12um on the S6 to 1.4um on the S7. This, 

combined with the wider f/1.7 lens and 

dual-pixel sensor, means that pixels receive 

more light, enhancing image quality. 

LUCKY NUMBER SEVEN 

As a result, the S7 takes very similarly 

high-quality shots to the S6, both indoors 

and outdoors. Detailing is excellent, there’s 

plenty of contrast, and colours are lovely and 

bright. It tends toward a slight overexposure 

in shots with a challenging dynamic range, 

but that’s preferable to the alternative of 

darker shots, and we could rectify it by 

switching to HDR mode when possible. 

It’s mainly in the shutter speed that the 

S7 proves itself superior. For instance, in a 

low-light shot, the S7 took the photo at 1 /25 

sec, whereas the S6 shot at 1 /15 sec. This 

means the S7 will be more reliable in low-light 

situations and less likely to blur moving 

subjects, making it the better camera overall. 

Our only remaining issue with the Galaxy 

S7 was its price – £579 was a lot of money, 

even for a fl agship – but now it can be picked 

up for not much more than a OnePlus 3T. 

It’s certainly better value than the Galaxy S8, 

which will leave a £689-sized crater in your 

bank account. Proof, as if more was necessary, 

that a bit of patience can net you a top-tier 

smartphone at middling prices. 


97

SMARTPHONES 

SONY Xperia X Compact 

★★★★★ 


VERDICT 

Sony’s 4.6in handset both improves on and 

steps back from the luxury Z5 Compact 

SINCE THE NEXT cheapest option in Sony’s 

smartphone range is the rubbish Xperia XA 

(Shopper 344), the dinky Xperia X Compact 

looks like the family’s best balance of 

affordability and quality. 

It is, however, something of a 

Frankenphone, combining some features 

from the top-of-the-line XZ with some from 

the older Xperia X, all in its 4.6in chassis. 

So instead of the octa-core Qualcomm 

Snapdragon 820 processor from the XZ, the 

X Compact has the hexa-core Snapdragon 

650 from the X – yet it inherits its camera 

lock, stock and barrel from the XZ. 

Honestly, this is a slightly disappointing 

departure from Sony’s previous Compact 

models, which were typically just as powerful 

as their fl agship brethren, just in a smaller 

body. Physical design has also taken a hit: 

compared to the old Z5 Compact, the newer 

model looks positively frumpy, with its plastic, 

wraparound frame and glossy plastic back 

comparing rather poorly with the sharp lines 

of its predecessor. 

SQUARE’S BREADTH 

The fi t-and-finish isn’t great either, with 

unsightly gaps at the top and bottom of the 

rear panel ready to gobble up unsightly 

pocket fl uff. It might be less fragile than the 

Z5 Compact – we were never terribly 

confident in the Z5’s frosted-glass rear panel 

– but surely Sony could have found a way to 

make its replacement look nicer than this. 

There’s no dust- or water-proofi ng, either. 

The phone does at least fulfil its principal 

raison d’être: it’s both more pocketable and 

easier to use one-handed than most of the 

5.5in-plus behemoths favoured by 

manufacturers for their mid-range and higher 

smartphones these days. It’s also good to see 

that Sony has kept both the dedicated 

camera shutter button and the fi ngerprint 

reader, which is once again integrated with 

the side-mounted power button. 

As for the main camera, the sensor size, 

pixel count and aperture all remain unchanged 

from the Z5 Compact, but Sony has made a 

few minor improvements. First up is ‘laserassisted’ 

infrared autofocus, which Sony says 

helps the camera to focus more accurately in 

low light. In good light, the hybrid phase and 

contrast-detect 

autofocus system 

(again, copied from the 

Z5 Compact) takes 

over. This seems to 

work reasonably well, 

but then we didn’t 

particularly have any 

problems with the way 

the focus worked on 

the Z5 Compact, so 

we’re not convinced it’s 

a huge leap forward. 

Next up is a colour 

sensor, similar to the 

one introduced by the 

LG G4. This is supposed 

to deliver more accurate 

colours under a wider 

variety of lighting 

conditions, and does 

indeed seem to work 

pretty well. Under 

fl uorescent office strip 

lights, halogen and LED lighting, the X 

Compact’s camera always seemed to get the 

colour balance spot on where others, even the 

Samsung Galaxy S7, would veer a little off base. 

BLAME TO FRAME 

Despite these improvements, Sony’s 

smartphones continue to be plagued by the 

same old problems. Even with the camera’s 

manual mode enabled – which is the only way 

of getting 23-megapixel images out of the 

camera, by the way – fi ne details are lost in a 

storm of grain and JPEG compression. 

The screen is only a Standard HD panel, but that’s sharp 

enough considering its size. Photos and video look superb 

We’re not huge fans of the X Compact’s 

wide-angle 24mm lens, either. On the positive 

side, it lets you cram much more into your 

photographs than most smartphones, whose 

lenses are typically closer to 28mm. But the 

downside is noticeable – not to mention 

distracting – optical distortion, where 

buildings and straight lines look warped at 

the edges of the frame. 

Fortunately, the move to a Snapdragon 

650 CPU hasn’t had too much of an adverse 

effect on performance. It’s no slowpoke, that 

much is clear from using the phone from day to 

day – launching apps, fl icking between them 

and navigating around feels slick and quick. 

The fact that the 

screen is limited to a 

resolution of 1,280x720, 

rather than the Full HD 

favoured by most other 

mid-range devices, might 

be off-putting to some, 

but it does have the 

positive effect of helping 

games to run better. 

Here, the X Compact 

performs well, even with 

demanding games such 

as Sky Force Reloaded. 

Indeed, in the 

GFXBench Manhattan 3 

onscreen test, which is 

run at the phone’s 

native resolution, the 

X Compact’s Adreno 510 

GPU gains an average 

frame rate of 32fps, 

which is only a little 

less than what the 

Galaxy S7 managed. Sadly, though, this is 

one area in which the older Z5 Compact 

trounces it, scoring 47fps in the same test. 

At least the X Compact puts up more of a 

fi ght in Geekbench, scoring 1,445 in the 

single-core test and 3,778 in the multicore 

test – competitive with the Z5 Compact’s 

respective scores of 1,369 and 3,795. These 

also put it ahead of Google’s Nexus 5X and 

the Moto Z Play, though it’s still some way off 

the OnePlus 3T in terms of horsepower. 

SMALL WONDER 

The screen is, as mentioned, only a Standard 

HD panel, but that’s sharp enough considering 

its small size. What’s more, photos and video 

look superb on it, whether you have Sony’s 

X-Reality image turned on or not, and 

measurements with our colourimeter 

suggest that it’s an excellent screen as well. 

Contrast, maximum brightness, and colour 

reproduction are all top notch. Indeed, the X 

Compact manages to outdo the Z5 Compact, 

with a maximum brightness of 535cd/m 2 to 

the Z5 Compact’s 461cd/m 2 . 

Battery life has improved as well. In our 

video benchmark, the X Compact lasted a 

strong 14h 41m, which is a full 1h 20m longer 

than the Z5 Compact. 

It may be a disappointment in some areas, 

then, but with its enhanced camera, longer 

battery life and still-respectable performance, 

the Xperia X Compact is still a good phone 

overall, and will particularly suit Android fans 

who want to stick to a smaller form factor. 


SMARTPHONES 

VODAFONE 

Smart Platinum 7 

★★★★★ 

£280 • From shop.vodafone.co.uk 

VERDICT 

It’s fast and has a great screen, but the Smart 

Platinum 7’s camera falls short of perfection 

VODAFONE MAY NOT be thought of as a 

prolific maker of quality smartphones, but it 

has been on a bit of a roll. In the past couple 

of years we’ve had such genuinely great 

devices as the Smart Ultra 6, the Smart Prime 

7 and this: the Smart Platinum 7, a high-spec/ 

low-cost handset in a similar vein to the 

OnePlus range or the Moto Z Play. 

It certainly makes a good fi rst impression. 

With its glossy, glass back, there’s something 

very reminiscent of the Samsung Galaxy S7 

in the Smart Platinum 7’s design, but its 

angular, chamfered edges actually make it 

much easier to hold. The textured power and 

volume buttons are also nice touches, while 

the dual front-facing speakers are another 

welcome addition to the Platinum’s rather 

impressive set of specs. 

The Platinum 7 runs vanilla Android 6.0, 

not 7.0, but at least it’s presented on a 

stunning 5.5in, 2,560x1,440 AMOLED display. 

Covering a full 100% of the sRGB colour 

gamut, the Platinum’s screen looks fantastic, 

producing rich, vibrant colours that look 

much more true to life than those on the 

OnePlus 3T. Likewise, its high contrast ratio 

and perfect 0.00cd/m 2 black levels give 

images plenty of depth, and it’s easily one of 

the better smartphone displays you can buy 

for under £300. It’s certainly one of the 

sharpest, as both the Moto Z Play and Nexus 

5X only have 1,920x1,080 resolution displays. 

LIGHTEN UP 

The only slight downside is that it’s not 

particularly bright, with a peak brightness of 

just 358.20cd/m 2 . This is fairly typical of 

AMOLED displays, but when some AMOLED 

panels such as the one on the OnePlus 3T can 

hit over 400cd/m 2 on its maximum setting, 

you do start to wonder if Vodafone could 

have done a little more to help increase the 

phone’s overall practicality. Still, it’s a small 

complaint overall, as it’s just about bright 

enough to see clearly outside when you’re 

standing in direct sunlight. 

The octa-core 1.8GHz Qualcomm 

Snapdragon 652 processor also gives it a 

significant speed boost compared to similarly 

priced smartphones, as it scored 1,535 in 

Geekbench 3’s single-core test and an 

impressive 4,926 in the multicore test. It’s not 

quite as quick as the OnePlus 3T, which has 

an even more powerful Snapdragon 821 to 

justify its higher cost, but it’s miles in front of 

the Nexus 5X and the Moto Z Play, and beats 

the more expensive HTC One A9 as well. 

Android 6.0 certainly 

feels extremely 

responsive during 

everyday use, and apps 

and games are very 

quick to load as well. 

Web browsing is 

smooth, too, although 

there were occasional 

hiccups here and there 

when it was loading 

pages with lots of images 

and adverts. Still, scrolling 

up and down sites at 

speed was largely free of 

juddering interruptions, 

and its Peacekeeper score 

of 1,160 puts it miles 

ahead of the One A9. 

The Platinum 7’s 

graphics performance is pretty impressive as 

well. Again, the OnePlus 3T is streets ahead 

here thanks to its more powerful processor 

and built-in GPU, but the Platinum’s score of 

923 frames (around 15fps) in GFXBench GL’s 

offscreen Manhattan 3.0 test still provides 

enough grunt for most types of games. 

Hearthstone was a little jerky in places, but it 

was far from unplayable, and 2D titles ran 

perfectly well without any hitches whatsoever. 

DON’T SHOOT 

The Smart Platinum 7’s 3,000mAh battery 

lasted a commendable 13h 16m in our 

continuous video playback test. That’s three 

hours longer than the Nexus 5X and just six 

minutes behind the OnePlus 3T, though when 

it comes to stamina, none of these can touch 

the Moto Z Play and Lenovo P2. 

The Platinum 7’s main downfall is its 

16-megapixel camera. While our shots indoors 

were relatively bright and colourful, outdoor 

shots were on the dingy side, with darker 

objects in the frame having almost no detail 

whatsoever. This wasn’t the only area where 

the camera struggled, either, as the rest of 

our shots were also very grainy and lacking in 

texture. Paving stones blurred into one 

another and brickwork was almost nonexistent 

when viewed at full resolution. 

Even our indoor shots 

were quite smeary when 

viewed up close, both in 

low light and with our 

studio lights turned on. 

Objects in our still-life 

arrangement were very 

soft around the edges, 

for example, and textures 

showed a distinct lack of 

sharpness and defi nition. 

It’s a shame, but this 

just isn’t up to the 

same standard of 

many other sub-£300 

cameras, particularly 

that of the Nexus 5X. 

We also had issues 

with the rear-facing 

fi ngerprint sensor. 

It’s quite small, for starters, and its almost 

fl ush design makes it difficult to fi nd when 

you’re in a hurry. Even when we did, it’s not 

particularly fast – we eventually stopped 

using it, in favour of a traditional swipe. 

PRECIOUS METAL 

The Smart Platinum 7 doesn’t quite reach the 

same heady heights as some of Vodafone’s 

other own-brand smartphones, then, but it’s 

also got some pretty tough competition to 

deal with as well, namely the excellent Moto 

Z Play and the newly cheap Nexus 5X. 

There’s also the OnePlus 3T to consider, 

though in the Platinum 7’s favour, it’s not 

competing as closely as it did with the old 

The stunning 2,560x1,440 AMOLED display is easily one of 

the better smartphone displays you can buy for under £300 

OnePlus 3. This did everything the Platinum 7 

did and more, for just £15 extra, making 

Vodafone’s offering seem like the losing 

choice. That’s no longer the case now that 

the OnePlus 3 has disappeared from retailers 

and its replacement, the OnePlus 3T, is a full 

£120 more expensive. 

Thus, it’s a much closer battle in the 

£200-£300 range. The Moto Z Play is 

perhaps better overall (and there’s no 

disparaging that 23h 45m result in our 

battery benchmarks), but the Smart 

Platinum 7 remains worthy, mainly owing to 

its performance and display quality. 


99

SMARTPHONES 

Award RECOMMENDED BEST BUY RECOMMENDED 

Manufacturer APPLE GOOGLE HONOR HTC 

Model iPhone SE Nexus 5X 6X One A9 

Rating ★★★★★ ★★★★★ ★★★★★ ★★★★★ 

HARDWARE 

Processor 

Dual-core 1.8GHz 

Apple A9 

Hexa-core 1.8GHz 

Qualcomm 


Octa-core 2.1GHz 

Kirin 655 


Qualcomm 


RAM 2GB 2GB 4GB 2GB 

Screen size 4in 5.2in 5.5in 5in 

Screen resolution 1,136x640 1,920x1,080 1,920x1,080 1,920x1,080 

Screen type IPS IPS IPS AMOLED 

Front camera 5 megapixels 5 megapixels 8 megapixels 4 megapixels 

Rear camera 12 megapixels 12.3 megapixels 12 megapixels 13 megapixels 

Flash LED (True Tone) Dual LEDs Yes LED 

GPS Yes Yes Yes Yes 

Compass Yes Yes Yes Yes 

Storage 16GB/64GB 32GB/128GB 64GB 16GB/32GB 

Memory card slot None None MicroSD MicroSD 

Wi-Fi 802.11ac 802.11n 802.11b/g/n 802.11ac 

Bluetooth Bluetooth 4.1 Bluetooth 4.0 Bluetooth 4.1 Bluetooth 4.1 

NFC Yes Yes Yes Yes 

Wireless data 4G 4G 4G 4G 

Dimensions 124x59x7.6mm 147x73x7.9mm 151x76x8.2mm 146x71x7.3mm 

Weight 112g 136g 162g 143g 

FEATURES 

Operating system iOS 10 Android 7.0 Android 6.0 Android 7.0 

Battery size 1,624mAh 2,700mAh 3,340mAh 2,150mAh 

BUYING INFORMATION 

Price £379 £284 £225 £310 

Prices correct at time of going to press 

Warranty One year RTB One year RTB One year RTB One year RTB 

Supplier www.apple.com/uk www.ebuyer.com www.amazon.co.uk www.amazon.co.uk 

Details www.apple.com/uk www.google.co.uk www.hihonor.com www.htc.com/uk 

Part code iPhone SE LG H791 BLN-L24 One A9 


SMARTPHONES 

BEST BUY RECOMMENDED BEST BUY 

HUAWEI LENOVO LG MOTOROLA 

P8 Lite 2017 P2 G4 Moto G4 

★★★★★ ★★★★★ ★★★★★ ★★★★★ 

Octa-core 2.1GHz Kirin 655 




Qualcomm Snapdragon 

808 


Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 

3GB 4GB 3GB 2GB 

5.2in 5.5in 5.5in 5.5in 

1,920x1,080 1,920x1,080 2,560x1,440 1,920x1,080 

IPS AMOLED IPS Quantum IPS 

8 megapixels 5 megapixels 8 megapixels 5 megapixels 


LED Dual LED LED LED 

Yes Yes Yes Yes 


16GB 32GB 32GB 16GB/32GB 

MicroSD MicroSD MicroSD MicroSD 

802.11n 802.11ac 802.11ac 802.11ac 

Bluetooth 4.1 Bluetooth 4.1 Bluetooth 4.0 Bluetooth 4.2 

Yes Yes Yes No 

4G 4G 4G 4G 

147x73x7.6mm 153x76x8.3mm 149x75x8.9mm 153x77x7.9mm 

147g 177g 155g 155g 

Android 7.0 Android 6.0 Android 7.0 Android 6.0 

3,000mAh 5,100mAh 3,000mAh 3,000mAh 

£182 £200 £319 £145 

Two years RTB One year RTB One year RTB One year RTB 

www.csmobiles.com www.three.co.uk www.amazon.co.uk www.carphonewarehouse. 

co.uk 

consumer.huawei.com/uk www.lenovo.com www.lg.com www.motorola.co.uk 

PRA-LA1 P2aH42 LG-F500L XT1622 


101

SMARTPHONES 


Manufacturer MOTOROLA MOTOROLA ONEPLUS SAMSUNG 

Model Moto G5 Moto Z Play 3T Galaxy A5 (2017) 

Rating ★★★★★ ★★★★★ ★★★★★ ★★★★★ 

HARDWARE 

Processor 





Quad-core 2.45GHz 

Qualcomm 



Samsung Exynos 

7880 

RAM 2GB/3GB 3GB 6GB 3GB 

Screen size 5in 5.5in 5.5in 5.2in 

Screen resolution 1,920x1,080 1,920x1,080 1,920x1,080 1,920x1,080 

Screen type IPS Super AMOLED AMOLED Super AMOLED 

Front camera 5 megapixels 5 megapixels 16 megapixels 16 megapixels 

Rear camera 13 megapixels 16 megapixels 16 megapixels 16 megapixels 

Flash LED Dual LED LED LED 

GPS Yes Yes Yes Yes 

Compass Yes Yes Yes Yes 

Storage 16GB/32GB 32GB 64GB 32GB 

Memory card slot MicroSD MicroSD No Yes 

Wi-Fi 802.11n 802.11n 802.11ac 802.11ac 

Bluetooth Bluetooth 4.2 Bluetooth 4.0 Bluetooth 4.2 Bluetooth 4.2 

NFC Yes Yes Yes Yes 

Wireless data 4G 4G 4G 4G 

Dimensions 144x73x9.5mm 156x76x6.9mm 153mmx75x7.4mm 146x71x7.9mm 

Weight 145g 165g 158g 157g 

FEATURES 

Operating system Android 7.0 Android 6.0 Android 7.0 Android 6.0 

Battery size 2,800mAh 3,510mAh 3,400mAh 3,000mAh 


Price £180 £370 £399 £332 


Warranty One year RTB One year RTB One year RTB One year RTB 

Supplier www.amazon.co.uk www.motorola.co.uk oneplus.net/uk www.amazon.co.uk 

Details www.motorola.co.uk www.motorola.co.uk oneplus.net/uk www.samsung.com/ 

uk 

Part code XT1672 XT1635 A3010 SM-A520FZKABTU 


SMARTPHONES 

RECOMMENDED 

BEST BUY 

SAMSUNG SAMSUNG SONY VODAFONE 

Galaxy S6 Galaxy S7 Xperia X Compact Smart Platinum 7 

★★★★★ ★★★★★ ★★★★★ ★★★★★ 



7420 



8890 



3GB 4GB 3GB 3GB 

5.1in 5.1in 4.6in 5.5in 


Qualcomm 


2,560x1,440 2,560x1,440 1,280x720 2,560x1,440 

Super AMOLED Super AMOLED IPS AMOLED 



LED LED LED LED 



32GB/64GB/128GB 32GB 32GB 32GB 

N/A MicroSD MicroSD MicroSD 

802.11ac 802.11ac 802.11ac 802.11n 

Bluetooth 4.0 Bluetooth 4.2 Bluetooth 4.2 Bluetooth 4.0 


4G 4G 4G 4G 

143x70x6.8mm 142x70x7.9mm 129x65x9.5mm 154x76x6.9mm 

132g 152g 135g 155g 

Android 6.1 Android 7.0 Android 7.0 Android 6.0 

2,550mAh 3,000mAh 2,700mAh 3,000mAh 

£374 £420 £324 £280 

One year RTB One year RTB One year RTB One year RTB 

www.amazon.co.uk www.amazon.co.uk www.amazon.co.uk shop.vodafone.co.uk 

www.samsung.com/ 

uk 

www.samsung.com/ 

uk 

www.sonymobile. 

com 

SM-G920F SM-G930F F5321 VFD-900 

www.vodafone.co.uk 

VERDICT 

Every single device 

here will serve you well, 

even the comparatively 

disappointing Moto G5. 

Still, a few models stand 

out as particularly 

great-value buys. 

The Lenovo P2 is 

our pick of the 

more recent, 

budget-conscious 

smartphones. It’s not 

as cheap as our other 

favourite, the Moto G4, 

but is comparatively 

powerful (squeezing a 

few more frames per 

second out of intensive 

games), and has a 

so-far-untouchable 

battery life. Only the 

Moto Z Play comes 

close – and this has 

nippy performance 

and a useful modular 

design to boot. 

Google’s Nexus 5X, 

released in 2015, also 

distinguishes itself as a 

powerful mid-range 

phone with a great 

camera, now at a price 

that makes it an even 

better choice. We can 

say something similar 

about the LG G4, 

which offers true 

fl agship credentials 

for only £319. We’d 

have liked another 

price drop for the 

iPhone SE, but 

considering it’s been 

upgraded with superior 

storage, it remains the 

best Apple smartphone 

for the money. 

Creeping further up 

the price brackets, the 

OnePlus 3T is a superb 

combination of value, 

newness and genuine 

top-end hardware, 

though if you don’t 

mind an older model, 

the Samsung Galaxy S6 

performs as well or 

better for a few pounds 

less. Speaking of 

Samsung, it’s worth 

mentioning the Galaxy 

S7, 2016’s most capable 

Android phone, which 

is now about a third 

less expensive than the 

one replacing it. 


103

LOUD AND CLEAR 

Soundbars and speakers 

Don’t compromise movie night with tinny TV speakers or settle for an 

underpowered smartphone dock for music – upgrade to a proper soundbar 

and speaker and enjoy true audio excellence around the house and outdoors 

EVEN IF YOU’RE not an outright, bitrateconscious 

audiophile, you don’t need more 

than one functioning ear to know when sound 

quality isn’t as good as it could be. It could be 

when you’re watching a fi lm or TV show, with 

action scenes being derived of their impact, or 

simply when playing certain songs; unbalanced 

CONTENT REVIEWS 

Page 106 

CAMBRIDGE AUDIO TV2 (v2) 

CREATIVE LABS Sound BlasterX Katana 

Page 107 

ORBITSOUND One P70 

PHILIPS Fidelio SkyQuake 

Page 108 

SAMSUNG HW-K850 

STELJES AUDIO Erato 

Page 109 

AUDIO PRO Addon T3 

LIBRATONE Zipp 

Page 110 

PANASONIC SC-All05 

URBANEARS Baggen 

Page 111 

WHARFEDALE Diamond A1 

YAMAHA MusicCast WX-010 

bass/treble levels, muddied instruments and 

fl at vocals can all ruin the fun. 

This is rarely the fault of the media itself 

– fi lms are produced with literal cinema-quality 

audio, and professional musicians seldom put 

out a genuinely duff mix. We can therefore 

point the fi nger at our own hardware: as TVs 

get thinner, the output of their integrated 

drivers declines, and while proper hi-fi systems 

have fallen out of favour, listening via a cheap 

smartphone dock or bundled Bluetooth 

speaker is hardly a fi tt ing alternative. 

That’s why we recommend giving your fi lm 

collection and music library the sound they 

deserve, by switching to a dedicated soundbar 

(or soundbase) for your TV, and/or a quality 

wireless speaker for playback from handheld 

devices or streaming. As luck would have it, 

we’ve tested six of each right here. 

TUNE UP 

A soundbar or speaker can have as many 

fancy features as the manufacturer wants, but 

ultimately, sound quality is paramount. 

You’ll want a good balance of high-pitched 

trebles, low, forceful bass and… well, mid-range 

mids. For music speakers in particular, these 

ranges should complement each other, with 

no element overpowering the rest, though 

with TV soundbars you can crank up the bass 

to give action scenes some extra physicality. 

Big bonus points if the soundbar comes with a 

separate subwoofer unit, which can really get 

the room shaking much more effectively than 

those with integrated subwoofers. 

With music, all audio hardware should be 

able to let you distinctly hear each instrument 

or vocal track in an arrangement, as this 

produces a more rich, detailed sound than if 

they blur together. It’s also ideal, for music and 

video, if quality remains high as you move from 

sitting straight in front of the speaker to either 

side; the extent to which quality is maintained 

at such angles is referred to as a soundstage. 

This also applies to how well a soundbar 

can place audio in a scene – so if an explosion 

happens on the left side of the screen, the 

resulting noise should originate from the left 

side of the soundstage. 

STREAM TEAM 

Since this is 2017, everything we’ve covered 

here supports at least Bluetooth connectivity, 

making it easy to play music from a tablet or 

smartphone; some support the aptX codec, 

for slightly better playback quality. Wi-Fi 


SOUNDBARS & SPEAKERS 

capability, however, opens up many more 

possibilities, from enabling the setup of 

multiroom networks (where several synced 

speakers can be controlled simultaneously) to 

streaming directly from Spotify’s premium 

Connect service, or Apple’s lossless AirPlay. 

Since a soundbar will be permanently 

parked near your TV, physical connectivity is 

important, too. Optical and/or coaxial S/PDIF 

inputs are great, and many soundbars include 

an HDMI ARC (audio return channel) port as 

an alternative. This is preferable to basic HDMI, 

which requires separate video and audio cables 

running between the TV and soundbar. With 

ARC, both are piped through a single cable. 

GOING PLACES 

There are a number of other hardware 

considerations, too. Good physical controls are 

important; soundbars often come with a 

remote, and speakers (multiroom speakers 

especially) can be controlled via mobile apps, 

but the latter aren’t always reliable. You’ll 

generally need to get hands-on with a speaker 

to connect to it via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi anyway. 

With portable, battery-powered wireless 

speakers, such as the Libratone Zipp or 

Panasonic SC-All05, it’s also worth considering 

how durable it is, including whether it has any 

water-proofi ng. These are perfect speakers for 

a garden party or barbecue, but if the weather 

takes a turn for the worse, you’ll need to know 

if it can handle a drop of rain. 

The best for… 

…bargain hunters: Steljes Audio Erato 

£130 isn’t much for a soundbar, but for a soundbar and a 

well-designed subwoofer as well? That’s serious value. 

You’d be forgiven for thinking the Erato would sound 

rubbish next to more expensive alternatives, even those with integrated subwoofers 

such as the Orbitsound One P70 and the Cambridge Audio TV2 (v2) soundbase. In fact, 

it sounds great, and while the total output of 90W means it won’t reach overwhelming 

levels of loudness, there’s a very respectable amount of tonal richness and bass rumble. 

…taking outside: Libratone Zipp 

We’re going against our own advice here: the Zipp isn’t built to endure a sudden 

downpour, let alone an accidental drop in a pool. Yet there’s plenty about it that 

makes a great outdoor speaker: its eight-hour battery life, its low weight, and best of 

all, its 360° sound output. That’s perfect for parties and gatherings where everyone 

may be spread out, but can enjoy the music at its best quality regardless. It’s also 

Wi-Fi and multiroom-enabled, so if you have more than one Zipp (and a strong 

enough router), you can fi ll both the garden and the house with seamless sound. 

…upgrading a PC: 

Creative Labs Sound BlasterX Katana 

Why should TVs get all the fun? The Katana is a compact 

soundbar/subwoofer combo designed for use with a PC 

rather than a telly. The soundbar sits beneath your monitor and 

connects via USB, and if you play games with a mic-equipped headset, it can plug right in. 

There’s an RGB strip to match any lighting inside your PC, but the main attraction is the 

sound put out by the four internal speakers and the subwoofer’s 5.25in driver. For games 

and videos, audio is loud and detailed, and you can even set up virtual 7.1 surround sound.

SOUNDBARS 

CAMBRIDGE AUDIO 

TV2 (v2) 

★★★★★ 

£200 • From shop.cambridgeaudio.com 

VERDICT 

Big sound, solid bass and a great price; if you want to 

improve your TV’s sound on a budget, look no further 

TECHNICALLY THIS IS a soundbase rather 

than a soundbar, but the added depth isn’t 

just so your TV can sit on top of it; the TV2 

(v2) has room for larger drivers, potentially 

meaning a bigger sound, as well as a 6.5in 

subwoofer driver on the underside, so you 

don’t need to make room for a separate unit. 

The design is elegantly simple: a mediumsized, 

squat box, clad in matt black, with a 

simple cloth grille covering the front. It’s not 

ostentatious or even particularly eye-catching, 

but it’s smart in an understated way. 

A small status LED gleams from behind the 

grille, glowing different colours to show which 

input is selected. On the rear, between the 

TV2 (v2)’s twin bass refl ex ports, is a limited 

array of physical connections. There’s one pair 

of stereo phono jacks, a 3.5mm input jack, one 

optical S/PDIF input and a single HDMI 

ARC-enabled port so you can pass audio from 

your smart TV apps back to the soundbase. 

Aside from aptX-enabled Bluetooth, that’s 

your lot. There’s no Wi-Fi, so no multiroom 

capability, Spotify Connect, Google Cast or 

Apple AirPlay, which limits fl exibility. Still, if 

you’re already using your TV as an audio hub, 

these connections should be adequate. 

In keeping with the simple design, the TV2 

(v2) itself has no buttons on it. Everything is 

controlled via the remote control, which you 

can use to switch it on and off, adjust the 

volume, tweak the bass, mute the sound, 

switch sources and select sound profi les. 

Despite the simplicity of the Cambridge 

Audio TV2 (v2), however, there’s much to be 

said for the sound quality. It’s simply superb. 

What’s most impressive about it is that 

whatever the material, be it explosion-heavy 

movie soundtracks or quiet piano jazz, the 

audio output is balanced, agile and detailed. 

Not once did we feel the need to boost the 

mid-range so we could hear dialogue better, yet 

it’s capable of wall-shaking levels of volume 

and rumble. The audio isn’t as all-enveloping as 

a full surround-sound system, but the breadth 

of the soundstage is impressive, seeming to 

extend well beyond the confines of the 

soundbase itself. The bass delivered by the 

subwoofer driver never feels as though it’s 

overwhelming the rest of the sound, either. 

When playing music, the TV2 (v2) 

produces a fullness, body and richness to the 

mid-range that most soundbars lack, and it 

balances this with an airy, open top-end that’s 

a pleasure to listen to. Everything from hi-hats 

and rim shots to the upper reaches of the 

piano keyboard are delivered with delicacy, 

atmosphere and impressive separation. 

So, while it might be limited in terms of 

its connectivity, and altogether chunkier 

than a soundbar, the TV2 (v2) is well worth 

the compromise. If anything, that’s selling it 

short – it’s an excellent TV speaker. 

CREATIVE LABS Sound BlasterX Katana 

★★★★★ 


VERDICT 

A small yet beautiful-looking soundbar that 

delivers good sound for PCs as well as TVs 

WHILE MOST SOUNDBARS are aimed at 

living room TVs, the Katana has an extra trick: 

it can connect to a Windows PC via USB, 

augmenting the audio output of your desktop. 

For £228, you get a dedicated subwoofer, a 

remote and two wall-mount brackets. Its build 

quality and looks refl ect the price, too: the 

brushed-aluminium design couples well with 

the RGB light strip under the speaker, which 

can be customised with different colours. 

The Katana can be used as a standalone 

speaker – either via Bluetooth with your 

smartphone or a fl ash drive plugged into the 

USB port – but to get the most out of it, you’ll 

need a Windows PC, connected via USB and 

controlled through the Sound Blaster Connect 

soft ware. This offers a plethora of options. For 

example, you can select preconfigured settings 

designed by professionals in the music, fi lm 

and game industry, or quickly toggle settings. 

The Sound section is the most interesting. 

Here, you can play around with effects, enable 

Dolby Digital or, if you’re using a microphone, 

reduce background noise with a simple toggle. 

Conveniently, the Katana itself features a 

mic-in jack for this very purpose. 

The Katana is a relatively small soundbar, 

since it’s designed to sit under your monitor 

instead of a TV. Don’t let its size fool you, 

though. There are four drivers crammed inside 

– two upward-firing 2.5in mid-bass drivers 

and two front-facing 34mm tweeters – plus a 

5.25in driver in the separate subwoofer. 

With a peak power of 150W, the setup 

proved impressively capable of delivering 

large-room sound without distortion. 

24-bit 96kHz audio is supported through a 

Dolby Digital decoder (via PC connection), and 

when connected via optical or USB the Katana 

doubles up as a sound card, bypassing the 

audio processing on your PC. Connected to a 

computer with Creative’s soft ware, you can 

even enable virtual 7.1 surround sound. 

There are limitations, though. We found the 

Katana capable of producing great sub-bass 

frequencies, where the lows extend well; the 

downside was that it cut off the lower sub-bass 

regions. Given the small size of the subwoofer 

and driver (5.25in), this wasn’t a surprise. 

Still, its mid-bass has fantastic control, and 

explosions in movies and gunfire in games are 

accurate and not too bloated. This soundbar 

also shines at instrument separation, thanks 

to the DSP-controlled amplifier, which assigns 

the right frequencies to the fi ve drivers and 

handles the crossover between them. 

However, due to the relatively small size of the 

drivers, you don’t get the thumping feeling 

you do with the Cambridge Audio TV2 (v2). 

Otherwise, the Katana is a great soundbar, 

and its PC-focused capabilities make it very 

fl exible for anyone who wants to play games at 

their PC as well as watch fi lms or play music. 


SOUNDBARS 

ORBITSOUND One P70 

★★★★★ 

£300 • From shop.orbitsound.com 

VERDICT 

A capable all-in-one soundbar that ensures 

everyone in the room gets high-quality audio 

AT A MODEST 817x123x223mm, the One P70 

soundbar can be placed under a TV, stashed in 

an AV cabinet or fi xed to a wall via the 200mm 

VESA mounts. Despite the size, it’s been 

packed with an integrated 5.25in subwoofer 

plus four 2in drivers: two at the front and one 

at each side, angled away from the centre. 

This setup enables the airSOUND system, 

which blasts proper stereo sound out to the 

left and right, rather than just straight on. 

In practice, this delivers an impressively wide 

soundstage; we could park ourselves at a fairly 

severe angle to the TV and still get rich, clear 

audio, with discernible left /right separation, 

so it was always apparent in movie scenes 

where diegetic sound was coming from. 

Dialogue sounds slightly crisper in the 

middle, but overall, volume and clarity were 

consistently good wherever we chose to sit. 

Distortion at higher volumes is minimal, and 

cranking up the bass level helps make 

explosions and roaring car engines sound 

satisfyingly deep – not to the extent that 

you’d get with a dedicated subwoofer, but for 

an integrated unit, it performs well. 

Bass and treble can be tweaked with the 

matt fi nish remote, though one of this 

soundbar’s neatest tricks is the ability to 

‘learn’ your TV’s infrared remote. This is easily 

done through a few button presses, and while 

it’s only really good for changing the volume, 

it does mean that once you’ve settled on 

bass and treble levels, you can bung the 

Orbitsound remote in a drawer and just use 

one for both the soundbar and TV. 

A more detailed display would have been 

useful, though. There’s no actual readout, just 

a line of LEDs to denote volume or tone levels. 

Using the (wisely side-mounted) fi ve-button 

control panel will also require a fl ick through 

the manual, as some actions – such as 

learning a new remote or changing speaker 

orientation – involves some button press 

combinations that aren’t readily apparent. 

Connecting a Bluetooth device is easy, 

but there’s no aptX support, and listening 

closely can reveal a touch of that telltale 

Bluetooth fuzziness. Still, this can otherwise 

act as a very competent music speaker. 

Bass presence in pop and hip-hop tracks 

was uniformly well judged, while vocals were 

clear and classical tracks suitably detailed. 

Heavy rock is the only slight weakness – songs 

with multiple layered guitar tracks don’t have as 

much separation between them as we’d like. 

There’s no Wi-Fi either, which means no 

native multiroom capability, and you’ll need a 

smart TV or connected mobile device to 

stream songs. The One P70 is also a bit short 

on physical connectors, with just one optical 

and 3.5mm aux jack apiece and no HDMI ARC. 

It’s not the most fl exible soundbar in the 

world, then, but the built-in subwoofer and 

ability to sit, stand or be mounted in different 

orientations earn it back some versatility 

points. Most importantly, it sounds good for 

the price, with a distinctively wide, room-filling 

soundstage. This makes it worthy of a 

recommendation, despite a few limitations. 

PHILIPS Fidelio SkyQuake 

★★★★★ 


VERDICT 

Atmos without the atmosphere – the Fidelio 

SkyQuake is expensive and disappointing 

DOLBY’S ATMOS surround-sound tech is 

getting steadily cheaper, but any Atmos-ready 

soundbar is still an investment. Philips’ Fidelio 

SkyQuake will set you back £900, and that’s 

just for the soundbar, subwoofer and remote 

control, with no satellite speakers included. 

There’s a reason Atmos costs so much. By 

bouncing sound off the ceiling with upwardfi 

ring speakers, Atmos soundbars can add a 

vertical dimension to surround-sound audio, 

more clearly defi ning the origins of sound in a 

scene than just placing it on a left -right plane. 

The SkyQuake offers a similar Atmos 

configuration to Samsung’s HW-K850, with a 

pair of upward-firing drivers providing the two 

height channels in a 5.1.2 setup. But despite its 

total of 18 drivers in the soundbar (powered 

by 180W of amplification) and an 8in driver in 

the subwoofer, this three-dimensional quality 

isn’t as pronounced as on the HW-K850. 

Sound effects also lacked Samsung’s accuracy. 

That said, it has some advantages, mainly 

native compatibility with DTS Digital Surround 

signals, and a sleeker design. The SkyQuake is 

also better equipped with connections: you 

get two HDMI ports with support for 30fps 

4K passthrough (including an ARC-enabled 

output, so your TV can pipe audio to the 

soundbar), two S/PDIF outputs, a 3.5mm input 

and a USB port. There’s also NFC for easy 

pairing, and Bluetooth support for the aptX, 

AAC and SBC codecs. Surprisingly, though, 

you don’t get any kind of Wi-Fi connectivity. 

Music is presented in an engaging manner, 

and the system delivers fi lm soundtracks with 

plenty of energy, power and drive. You can 

even add fake height to non-Atmos content 

by choosing between low, medium and high 

levels on the remote control – this gives live 

music recordings a touch more ambience. 

Unfortunately, even without the Height 

effect applied, the soundbar has a tendency to 

over-accentuate higher frequencies. With 

Height enabled, the SkyQuake sounds harsh at 

the top-end and sound effects such as gunfire 

often overpower speech in the centre channel. 

The subwoofer, although powerful, can’t 

match the promise of its large size. It simply 

doesn’t reach down that low, rolling off as it 

does at 40Hz, and although it delivers movie 

sound effects with plenty of impact, deep 

bass rumble evades it entirely. 

The biggest issue remains the Samsung 

HW-K850. It costs the same as the SkyQuake, 

yet produces audio that’s infinitely superior, 

delivering a richer, more balanced sound, with 

far sweeter-sounding treble and a much more 

convincing Atmos effect. Both are extremely 

expensive considering they don’t include any 

satellite speakers, but in simple sound quality 

terms, the SkyQuake doesn’t come close. 


107

SOUNDBARS 

SAMSUNG HW-K850 

★★★★★ 


VERDICT 

Supreme sound quality, but expensive for a 

single soundbar and subwoofer combination 

THE SAMSUNG HW-K850 soundbar is an 

odd product. It effectively takes the HW-K950 

(Shopper 350) and ditches the two satellite 

speakers. This leaves the soundbar, subwoofer 

and Dolby Atmos support all intact, but does 

mean the HW-K850 is merely half a surround 

system, and an expensive one at that. 

First, the positives: the soundbar remains 

superb for non-surround uses, mainly 

streaming and music listening. It sounds just 

as good as the HW-K950, which makes it the 

joint-best soundbar we’ve ever heard, and it’s 

still not half bad for movies and TV. 

It doesn’t process DTS-HD in anything but 

stereo, so you need a player that will process 

the signal and spoon-feed it to the soundbar 

for you, but with Atmos soundtracks it 

sounds fabulous. There’s a convincing sense 

of height to the sound, and a decent sense of 

width and directionality, too. Clearly, it’s not 

as good as the HW-K950 at creating the 3D 

bubble of sound, but as single soundbar and 

subwoofer combos go, it’s exceptional. 

If you really do need true surround sound, 

Samsung’s R3, R5 or R7 speakers can be 

added as optional satellites, but these won’t 

deliver the Atmos height that the HW-K950’s 

rear speakers do. Disappointingly, you can’t 

buy a pair of Atmos rears and add them to 

the system at a later date, either. 

To be clear, the soundbar and subwoofer 

are exactly the same as in the HW-K950. The 

soundbar has 11 drivers in total, three each for 

the left , centre and right channels, plus a pair 

of upward-firing drivers for the upper-left and 

upper-right Dolby Atmos channels. The latter 

is a huge box nearly two feet high, two feet 

deep and a foot wide, with a single 8in driver 

mounted on the side. 

With so many drivers packed in, it’s not 

surprising this is a pretty big soundbar. At 

121cm long, it’s best suited to TVs at least 49in 

in size, and it’s also worth bearing in mind 

that, at a height of 81mm, it’s tall enough to 

block the infrared sensor on many TVs. Even 

so, it’s a good-looking set, and we particularly 

like the white OLED display behind the metal 

grille that tells you which mode you’re in. 

You don’t get many physical connections 

for the price – there’s only one HDMI input 

and output apiece, although these are both 

4K-passthrough enabled, and the output is 

ARC-ready. There are also optical S/PDIF 

and 3.5mm analogue inputs, but no coaxial 

S/PDIF or stereo inputs, which is a fairly 

disappointing lack of fl exibility for a 

soundbar that costs £900. 

Wireless connectivity is much better, with 

multiroom support and extensive streaming 

support, from DLNA servers to services like 

Spotify Connect, Tidal, TuneIn and Amazon 

Music. The only thing lacking is AirPlay. 

The Samsung HW-K850 is a cracking 

soundbar, and better at simulating surround 

sound than any other standalone model – but 

the issue remains that it’s just simulating it. 

Since it’s so expensive regardless, we’d 

suggest going the whole hog and getting the 

fully equipped HW-K950 instead. 

STELJES AUDIO Erato 

★★★★★ 

£130 • From www.zavvi.com 

VERDICT 

A great budget soundbar gains a great budget 

subwoofer; at this price, it’s a peerless bargain 

WE WERE BIG fans of the Steljes Audio 

Calliope (Shopper 342) – a cheap standalone 

soundbar that nonetheless sounded great 

and offered loads of connections. The Erato 

is basically a Calliope with a wireless 5in 

subwoofer. Considering our only major 

complaint (aural-wise) with the Calliope was 

its weak bass, this seems like a great idea. 

Sure enough, it is. The subwoofer looks 

superb: its dimensions of 290x280x180mm 

are manageable, and its painted wood fi nish is 

miles ahead of the soundbar’s black plastic. 

There’s a noticeable performance 

improvement as well. With 30W of power 

behind it, it’s not going to shake the house 

down, but onscreen explosions and crashes 

are beefed up with a much greater sense of 

physicality, and a tangible rumble kicks in 

during particularly action-heavy scenes. 

As for the soundbar itself – well, it’s a 

Calliope. That means its two 2.75in mid-high 

ferrite magnet drivers and two 2.75in 

bass ferrite drivers combine to produce 

brilliantly rich, balanced sound, whether 

you’re watching fi lms or listening to music. 

There’s no way to fi ne-tune bass, mid or 

treble levels, but we had no real qualms with 

the default Movie preset right out of the box. 

The second preset, Music, is the only other 

one we used much; it sharpens up the higher 

end and seems to make instrument 

separation a bit clearer. The fi nal preset, 

Voice, is supposed to bring dialogue to the 

foreground, but the effect isn’t that strong. 

Being a Calliope, it delivers on connectivity, 

too. There are three HDMI outputs, one of 

which is ARC-enabled, a 3.5mm aux jack and 

optical S/PDIF output. We also appreciated 

the inclusion of Bluetooth for smartphone 

playback, and there’s even aptX support. 

The only thing missing is Wi-Fi, though you 

can get around the resulting lack of streaming 

services with a smart TV that supports them. 

Of course, the Erato’s soundbar inherits 

the Calliope’s fl aws as well. As mentioned, 

it’s a bit basic-looking, and the uneven 

backlighting on the LCD display partially 

illuminates its plastic casing, so you can see 

the electronics beneath. It’s a good thing the 

screen powers down after a few seconds, 

otherwise it’d get very distracting indeed. 

Sound quality is high, but only if you sit in 

front of the Erato’s soundbar. The soundstage 

is quite narrow, so richness and detail 

deteriorate quickly as you move to either side. 

The physical controls stick to the basics, 

with buttons for volume, source, preset mode 

and power. This is the case for both the 

soundbar and the included remote, the latter 

adding a mute button as well. 

Frankly, though, basic controls and a dodgy 

backlight are easy trade-off s to make for a 

soundbar that sounds this good for this little 

money. The standard RRP is £230, which 

makes it a great-value package on par with 

the excellent LG SH5 (Shopper 347), though 

it’s currently on sale at a few reputable 

outlets for just £130. For a quality soundbar/ 

subwoofer combo, that’s a phenomenal deal. 


SPEAKERS 

AUDIO PRO Addon T3 

★★★★★ 

£170 • From www.superfi.co.uk 

VERDICT 

A Bluetooth speaker with a delightful design 

and the sound quality to match 

WHILE THE ADDON T3 is smaller and 

lighter than both the Addon T5 and Addon 

T10 Gen 2, it’s not quite the kind of 

Bluetooth speaker you’d want to carry 

around all day; at 2kg, it’s still pretty heft y. 

However, as a speaker you can move 

freely around the house or take down to the 

end of the garden, it’s a comfortable weight. 

Measuring 215x135x115mm, it’s not overly 

large, either, and takes up less space on a 

shelf or sideboard than many of its rivals. 

On top, you’ll fi nd a row of control buttons 

in an attractive, metallic rose gold. It’s a slightly 

odd selection, though: there are separate 

buttons for switching to Bluetooth and to the 

speaker’s auxiliary connection, which could 

easily be combined into one, while media 

playback controls are completely missing. 

Control niggles aside, it does have a handy 

USB port on the back, which you can use to 

charge your smartphone. However, it only 

outputs at 5V/1A, so it won’t charge it 

particularly quickly, and you can’t use it for 

playing tracks off a USB stick either. That said, 

you could use it to neatly power a Chromecast 

Audio, letting you cast your tunes to the 

speaker without an additional power adaptor. 

Inside, the T3 has a Digital Class D 

amplifier that delivers 2x5W to the two 2.75in 

textile dome tweeters, and 15W to the 3.5in 

woofer. A bass refl ex port is found on the 

back of the cabinet, and the speaker has a 

frequency range of 60-20,000Hz. 

The T3 delivers a sound that is confident 

and powerful for a speaker of this size and 

price. However, it’s not the most detail-driven 

speaker, as its low frequencies become a little 

boomy on certain tracks. We noticed it on 

First Aid Kit’s My Silver Lining, where some 

of the violins became a bit lost amidst the 

other instruments, but otherwise there 

wasn’t a lot to complain about, especially 

considering the reasonably low price. 

Its audio quality has a rather warm sound 

to it, which some people might fi nd preferable, 

but we prefer our songs with a slightly more 

transparent sound. Still, there’s certainly a lot 

to like about the T3’s sound signature, and the 

well-weighted cabinet keeps what could have 

otherwise been some rather unruly bass in 

check without any reverberation. There’s no 

hint of any distortion, either. 

Battery life is rated at an excellent 30 

hours on medium volume, or 12 hours with 

music blaring at full volume, so it should 

provide more than enough longevity to get 

you through a party or barbecue. Mind you, 

the speaker isn’t water-resistant in any way, 

so you’ll need to bring it indoors if the Great 

British weather strikes. 

Overall, the Addon T3 is a capable, 

affordable and good-looking home speaker. It 

maintains a charming design heritage and the 

inclusion of a battery makes it more versatile 

than the T10 Gen2. Likewise, its sound quality 

is more than respectable for the price, and its 

battery life is excellent to boot. 

LIBRATONE Zipp 

★★★★★ 

£249 • From www.johnlewis.com 

VERDICT 

The Libratone Zipp can extend multiroom music 

even into your garden, and the 360° sound is great 

THIS UPDATED VERSION of the Zipp isn’t 

just about Bluetooth; it also adds support for 

Libratone’s multiroom-focused SoundSpace 

Link, plus Wi-Fi, Apple AirPlay, Spotify 

Connect and internet radio. 

Otherwise, the new Zipp range looks the 

same: a cylindrical speaker with a detachable 

cover from which it derives its name. Unzip 

the cover and you can replace it with a 

different colour, either to customise the look 

or to distinguish one speaker from another. 

The built-in battery lets you carry the Zipp 

around, but other than its humidity resistance 

it’s not been ruggedised, so don’t leave it out in 

the rain. The battery is rated at 8 to 10 hours. 

The top of the Zipp has a circular touch 

interface; by dragging your fi nger around the 

circumference it emulates a volume dial, with 

a light effect that follows your fi nger. It’s both 

satisfying and slick. Tap the touch surface to 

play and pause, skip tracks, turn on the 

SoundSpace Link function and access your 

favourite internet radio stations. 

If you pair a phone over 

Bluetooth, you can use the Zipp 

as a hands-free speakerphone 

thanks to the microphone. In a 

small room the microphone 

could pick up our voice from 

3-4m away, making the Zipp one 

of the best conference speakers 

we’ve used. Bluetooth range is 

around 10m, and we didn’t have any problems 

maintaining a connection even when the Zipp 

was on one fl oor and our phone on another. 

The Libratone mobile app can be used to 

group different Zipp speakers into groups, or 

SoundSpaces. This is done by dragging 

together fl oating bubbles representing each 

speaker. This can also be done manually, by 

playing a track on the fi rst Zipp, then pressing 

the SoundSpace Link button on it and on 

subsequent Zipp speakers. SoundSpace Link 

allows up to six speakers per group, eight 

different groups and a maximum of 16 

speakers on a single wireless network. 

Libratone has packed in a 4in 

neodymium woofer and two 1in 

soft dome neodymium tweeters, 

supported by two 4in lowfrequency 

radiators, positioned 

to evenly disperse sound in every 

direction in what Libratone calls 

360º FullRoom sound. 

Bass is delivered with more 

punch than you’d expect for a speaker of its 

size. The mids and trebles, while not the 

crispest, aren’t lost among lower frequencies, 

either. The Zipp outputs 100W and can easily 

fi ll a medium- to large-sized room. Position 

the Zipp in the middle of the room and it will 

disperse the audio evenly, thanks to its speaker 

arrangement. All in all, the Zipp sounds great. 

There’s a lot to like about the Libratone 

Zipp. It takes multiroom principles and applies 

true portability with its built-in battery and 

design. Its ability to synchronise audio from a 

multitude of sources also makes it versatile, 

and its sound quality doesn’t disappoint. 


109

SPEAKERS 

PANASONIC SC-All05 

★★★★★ 


VERDICT 

A portable, waterproof multiroom speaker you can use almost 

anywhere, but its sound won’t be to everyone’s tastes 

THE SC-ALL05 IS a small speaker that seems 

to do it all. It’s portable, battery-powered, 

waterproof up to 1m, multiroom-capable and 

has a unique quirk in its Voice mode: this cuts 

down on bass to boost vocals, and is intended 

for easier listening while you’re in the shower. 

It’s a small touch, but it gives the SC-All05 a 

degree of versatility that other speakers of its 

ilk struggle to match, especially if you like to 

warble in the bathroom. 

Even more useful is the internal battery, 

which lasts around nine hours. You can just 

leave it plugged in, but it’s easy to take 

around the house or into the garden as well. 

The LED indicator is almost impossible 

to decipher without the manual, but once 

we had the SC-All05 up and running 

(admittedly following a factory reset), we 

were soon playing tunes via Panasonic’s 

excellent Music Streaming app. 

There are a few backlit buttons on the 

speaker itself, though they tend to pick up 

unsightly fi ngerprints. This is a shame, as 

you’ll be using them a lot, 

whether it’s enabling Bluetooth 

mode or assigning up to six radio 

station presets to dedicated buttons. 

Switching to multiroom mode can be done 

by either tapping the Net button or going 

through the app. With the latter, you can play 

music from your phone or other online 

streaming services such as Spotify Premium, 

Napster, AllPlay Radio or the Aupeo Personal 

Radio. You can also create your own playlists, 

view your upcoming queue of music, reorder 

tracks to your liking, and give each speaker a 

different name, such as ‘Living Room’, to give 

your music system a more personal touch. 

Pairing the SC-All05 with other speakers 

on the network, and subsequently creating 

groups, couldn’t be simpler: from the full list 

of speakers, simply drag and drop one onto 

another, and it creates a group for you. 

We could change each speaker’s volume 

independently of the others, too, which was 

handy when switching rooms. 

Such fl exibility means 

nothing if the speaker 

doesn’t sound good, and the 

SC-All05’s pair of stereo speakers 

coped well with most of our test tracks. 

Acoustic guitar tracks and piano music 

sounded superb, and pop and rock songs had 

a welcome sense of depth to them. 

However, we feel Panasonic went slightly 

too far in pursuit of crystal clear sound: vocals 

sometimes sounded overly clinical, and while 

bass was a tad boomy at times, this was 

compounded by some thin-sounding mids 

and trebles. Film soundtracks were hampered 

by muddled mid-ranges, and the app’s built-in 

equaliser didn’t do much to help. 

On the whole, though, we enjoyed listening 

to the SC-All05. It’s clearly better suited to 

some musical genres more than others, and 

thus shouldn’t really take pride of place at the 

centre of a living room sound system, but it 

could be a worthy addition to a garden, 

bathroom, bedroom or home office. 

URBANEARS Baggen 

★★★★★ 

£399 • From www.urbanears.com 

VERDICT 

This loud and proud speaker entertains, providing you 

can live with the cost and its hidden connections 

URBANEARS HAS FINALLY expanded 

beyond headphones by launching the 

Stammen and the Baggen, two multiroom 

speakers developed with the help of legendary 

amp maker, Marshall. We tested the Baggen, 

the bigger, more expensive brother. 

There’s support for streaming via Spotify 

Connect and AirPlay, and Google Chromecast 

is built in. Multiroom prowess comes in the 

ability to form a network with up to four other 

Baggens or Stammens. 

Up to seven presets can be assigned to 

one of the two knob switches on top, which 

also switches between Bluetooth, aux and 

Wi-Fi inputs. The other knob is dedicated to 

volume. That’s almost it in terms of controls; 

pressing the volume knob will switch between 

solo and multiroom modes, and the preset 

knob can assign a currently played playlist or 

station with a long press, but you’ll need the 

Urbanears Connect app for everything else. 

This isn’t the best designed speaker app 

we’ve used. Volume and equaliser controls are 

present but hidden on 

separate menus, and 

you have to spin through a 

lengthy carousel of inputs and 

presets to select the one you want. 

The Baggen comprises one 50W 6.5in 

woofer and two 16mm 20W drivers. This is 

where it wins back our favour – sound quality 

is truly fantastic. Exquisite detail, excellent 

instrument separation, punchy bass, balanced 

mids, shining trebles and clear vocals – every 

track we played, even low-bit-rate MP3s, 

sounded like they were being played at their 

best. It also has the potential to go incredibly 

intimidatingly loud, and we experienced no 

issues with skipping on Bluetooth, as we did 

on the Yamaha MusicCast WX-010. 

If we had a complaint about the sound, it’s 

that it’s only blasted in one direction: straight 

out the front. Even on the comparatively tiny 

WX-010, there was a sense it was producing a 

much wider soundstage; with the Baggen, you 

might be more limited in where you can place 

the speaker to ensure 

everyone in the room 

gets the full benefi t. 

Further complications arise from 

the connections. The selection of ports is fi ne 

– there’s a 3.5mm aux jack and a 5V powered 

USB2 connector, so you could charge your 

phone while playing from it – but they’re both 

on the bottom of the speaker, so you have to 

tip the whole thing over to plug anything in. 

There’s also the aesthetics. We appreciate 

the attempt at something different but it 

does, as a passing colleague put it, “look like 

a chunk of MDF with some fabric stretched 

over it”. There’s little of the luxury we’d 

expect from a £399 speaker. 

That said, it’s not that bad a deal even by 

single speaker standards (consider the B&O 

BeoPlay A6, which doesn’t do much more 

despite costing £729), and it’s easy to forget 

most of its fl aws while enjoying its sound and 

sheer volume. An aspirational purchase, 

perhaps, but not necessarily a bad one. 


SPEAKERS 

WHARFEDALE Diamond A1 

★★★★★ 


VERDICT 

With an attractive design, handy wireless hub and great 

sound quality, the A1 is a superb set of desktop speakers 

WHARFEDALE IS ONE of the classic names 

in the world of traditional hi-fi, but its new 

Diamond A1 speakers bring the marque bang 

up to date with Wi-Fi streaming, dedicated 

50W amplifiers and a modern-looking design. 

The A1 speakers are a bit chunkier than 

most PC speakers, standing about 320mm tall 

and 186mm wide, so you’ll need a fair amount 

of space on your desk if you want to sit them 

beside your PC monitor. However, the A1’s 

ingenious wireless design makes it easy to 

move the speakers up on to a shelf – you’re 

not restricted by cables as you are with 

traditional desktop speakers. 

Each speaker is completely self-contained 

and has its own power supply, but while you’ll 

need to connect each to a mains socket, there 

are no other cables used with the speakers, 

which means that you’re free to place them 

pretty much anywhere you want. 

The separate hub is shaped like a little 

square coff ee coaster and includes analogue 

RCA and two digital inputs for wired 

connections, along with aptX-compatible 

Bluetooth for mobile devices. The digital 

inputs can handle high-res audio too – well, up 

to 24-bit 96KHz signals at least – so those 

with collections of HD audio recordings won’t 

feel left out. There are no audio cables 

included, though, so you’ll have to supply 

those yourself, and it’s a shame there’s no 

standard 3.5mm connector available as well. 

All your music devices can connect to the 

hub, which can then stream your music to the 

A1 speakers via its own Wi-Fi network, which 

uses the 5.8GHz frequency to avoid clashing 

with your 2.4GHz or 5GHz home network. The 

wireless connection has a range of about 20m, 

and you can even switch the speakers into 

mono mode, which allows you to separate 

them and use them in two different rooms. 

It’s the sound quality that really matters, 

and the Diamond A1 speakers certainly live up 

to Wharfedale’s hi-fi standards. Each speaker 

has its own 50W amplifier, and the 13cm main 

mid-range/bass driver is made out of Kevlar 

(the bullet-proof stuff). That rock-solid 

combination produces a dynamic, expansive 

sound – and thanks to the bass refl ex port at 

the rear of each speaker, the Diamond A1’s 

are capable of producing the sort of fullbodied, 

room-filling sound that you’d expect 

from a much larger pair of speakers. 

The sturdy cabinets keep distortion down 

to a minimum, and the crisp-sounding 

tweeters mean that even the guitar overload 

of heavy rock tracks remains clear and 

detailed as you ramp up the volume. 

They’re not harsh to listen to at all, however. 

The detailed, luxurious sound quality works 

really well with everything from classic rock 

to classical strings. 

The Wharfedale Diamond A1 set is 

anything but cheap, but these speakers 

combine high-tech versatility with the kind of 

refi ned, enjoyable sound quality that can deal 

with the most eclectic of tastes. If you want to 

cut the cables without compromising on 

audio quality, then this is a great choice. 

YAMAHA MusicCast WX-010 

★★★★★ 

£119 • From www.richersounds.com 

VERDICT 

A capable, compact multiroom speaker, but 

it’s not without some playback issues 

THIS LITTLE CUBOID belongs to the same 

family as the Yamaha MusicCast YAS-306 

soundbar (Shopper 350), and as you’d expect 

of anything with ‘Cast’ in the name, the 

WX-010 has some fi ne wireless credentials, 

despite being exclusively mains-powered. 

You can stream from your own DLNA 

server, use Spotify Connect, AirPlay and 

Quboz or simply beam from a Bluetooth 

device; there’s SBC and AAC codec support, 

but no aptX. There’s also no remote, but you’ll 

need to install the MusicCast app on your 

phone or tablet, as this acts as the control hub 

for the WX-010’s multiroom capabilities. 

The app is very adept at this – it’s easy to 

link devices and set up individual ‘rooms’, 

which offer fi ner control over which parts of 

the house are fi lled with music. 

Sadly, it’s not so good at playing music. The 

app offers no way to jump to a specific point 

in a track, and it wouldn’t detect WMA fi les on 

our phone. Most concerningly, at one point it 

stopped playing mid-song, and wouldn’t start 

again until we chose a different 

track. We also found that 

locking then unlocking our 

phone caused the volume 

slider to stop working. 

Using the app is a safer bet than Bluetooth, 

though. Little skips of at least a few milliseconds 

were frustratingly regular occurrences, even 

when the phone was right next to the speaker. 

There’s a lot of good hardware here, though. 

The WX-010 is about the size and weight of a 

bag of fl our, but feels well made and sturdy. 

The glossy piano-black control panel provides 

a single button for both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 

pairing, one each for raising and lowering 

volume, and a combined play/pause button. At 

the back, a little extra fl exibility comes in the 

form of a Micro USB port and Ethernet jack. 

Inside, the WX-010 contains a two-way 

speaker system with a 2.5cm tweeter, 9cm 

woofer and two passive bass radiators. Sound 

output is thick and robust – we don’t usually 

expect much bass from a speaker this size, but 

low-end is actually its strong 

suit, and it delivered plenty of 

punch across all our test 

tracks, regardless of genre. 

Conversely, trebles could 

be a bit sharper and cleaner, and while 

podcasts are no problem, musical vocals (and 

high-pitched notes from pianos, strings and 

some guitars) don’t shine through too 

effectively. The soundstage isn’t particularly 

wide, either, though this is forgivable 

considering the size. In any case, it can go 

pretty loud without distortion, making it good 

for anything short of a raucous house party. 

Besides, it’s always possible to tweak mids and 

trebles with the app’s 3-band equaliser. 

The WX-010’s combination of feature set 

and sound quality makes it a good buy – and if 

you already have MusicCast hardware in the 

house, it’s a very suitable addition to the set. 

Its qualities outweigh its faults in general, 

even if the Bluetooth skipping and MusicCast 

app issues take the sheen off of it. 


111


SOUNDBARS 

Award BEST BUY RECOMMENDED RECOMMENDED BEST BUY 

Manufacturer 

CAMBRIDGE 

AUDIO 

CREATIVE 

LABS 

ORBITSOUND PHILIPS SAMSUNG STELJES 

AUDIO 

Model TV2 (v2) Sound 

BlasterX 

Katana 

One P70 

Fidelio 

SkyQuake 

HW-K850 

Erato 

Rating ★★★★★ ★★★★★ ★★★★★ ★★★★★ ★★★★★ ★★★★★ 

HARDWARE 

Total 

speakers 

Total RMS 

power output 

3 5 5 18 12 5 

150W 150W 200W 400W 350W 90W 

Subwoofer Integrated Dedicated Integrated Dedicated Dedicated Dedicated 

Rear speakers No No No No No No 

Dimensions 100x500x333mm 60x600x79mm 

77x700x173mm 

52x1,058x120mm 

81x1,209x129mm 

89x850x80mm 

(soundbar), 

(soundbar), 

(soundbar), 

(soundbar), 

333x130x299mm 

510x240x302mm 

398x203x414mm 

290x280x180mm 

(subwoofer) 

(subwoofer) 

(subwoofer) 

(subwoofer) 

Weight Not stated 1.5kg (soundbar), 

5.1kg 

12.08kg (individual 

6.67kg (soundbar), 

3.5kg (soundbar), 

4kg (subwoofer) 

weights not stated) 

9.57kg (subwoofer) 

subwoofer weight 

not stated 

Audio ports 1x 3.5mm aux, 1x RCA 1x C/SUB, 1x mic 

in, 1x headphone 

out, 1x 3.5mm aux 

1x 3.5mm aux 1x 3.5mm aux 1x RCA 1x 3.5mm aux 

Video ports 

HDMI ARC, 1x optical 

1x optical S/PDIF 1x optical S/PDIF 2x HDMI, 1x HDMI 

1x HDMI, 1x HDMI 

2x HDMI, 1x HDMI 

S/PDIF 

ARC, optical 

ARC, 1x optical 

ARC, optical S/PDIF 

S/PDIF, coaxial 

S/PDIF 

S/PDIF 

Dock 

connector 

None None None None None None 

USB ports None 2x USB2 None 1x USB2 1x USB2 (updates 

only) 

None 

Networking Bluetooth (aptX) Bluetooth (SBC) Bluetooth Bluetooth (aptX, 

SBC) 

Bluetooth (aptX, 

SBC), 802.11n Wi-Fi 

Bluetooth (aptX, 

SBC) 

NFC Yes No No Yes No No 

FEATURES 

Streaming 

services 

None None None None DLNA, Spotify 

Connect, Tidal, 

TuneIn, Amazon 

Music 

None 


Price £200 £228 £300 £899 £900 £130 


Warranty Two years repair and One year RTB Two years RTB One year repair and One year RTB One year RTB 

replace 

replace 

Supplier shop.cambridgeaudio.com www.ebuyer.com shop.orbitsound. www.amazon.co.uk www.currys.co.uk www.zavvi.com 

com 

Details www.cambridgeaudio.com uk.creative.com shop.orbitsound. 

com 

www.philips.co.uk www.samsung.com www.steljesaudio. 

com 

Part code TV2 (v2) 51MF8245AA000 ONE P70 B8/12 HW-K850 Erato 



SPEAKERS 


Manufacturer AUDIO PRO LIBRATONE PANASONIC URBANEARS WHARFEDALE YAMAHA 

Model Addon T3 Zipp SC-All05 Baggen Diamond A1 MusicCast 

WX-010 

Rating ★★★★★ ★★★★★ ★★★★★ ★★★★★ ★★★★★ ★★★★★ 

HARDWARE 

Speakers 2 5 2 3 2 2 

RMS power output 25W 100W 20W 60W 100W 25W 

Audio inputs 1x 3.5mm aux 1x 3.5mm aux None 1x 3.5mm aux 1x RCA, 1x coaxial 

S/PDIF, 1x optical 

S/PDIF 

None 

Audio outputs None None None None None None 

Dock connector None None None None None None 

Wireless Bluetooth (SBC) Bluetooth (aptX), 

Bluetooth, 802.11a 

Bluetooth, 802.11ac 

Bluetooth (aptX), 

Bluetooth (SBC), 

802.11n Wi-Fi 

Wi-Fi 

Wi-Fi 

802.11ac Wi-Fi 

802.11n Wi-Fi 

NFC No No No No No No 

Streaming services None Spotify Connect, 

Spotify Connect, 


Spotify Connect 


AirPlay, DLNA 

Napster, Aupeo, 

AirPlay, 

AirPlay, Quboz 

AllPlay Radio 

Chromecast Audio 

App support None iOS, Android iOS, Android iOS, Android iOS, Android iOS, Android 

Battery capacity 2,200mAh 2,400mAh 2,950mAh N/A N/A N/A 

Dimensions 215x135x115mm 261x122x122mm 170x179x77mm 301x301x213mm 320x186x230mm 160x120x130mm 

Weight 2kg 1.5kg 1.5kg 6.6kg 11kg (2x 5.5kg) 1.7kg 


Price £170 £249 £120 £399 £699 £119 

Warranty One year RTB One year RTB One year RTB One year RTB Two years RTB Two years RTB 


Supplier www.superfi.co.uk www.johnlewis.com www.currys.co.uk www.urbanears. 

com 

www.amazon.co.uk www.richersounds. 

com 

Details www.audiopro.com www.libratone.com www.panasonic. www.urbanears. www.wharfedale. uk.yamaha.com 

com/uk 

com 

co.uk 

Part code Addon T3 LH0032010EU2001 SC-ALL05 Baggen Diamond A1 WX-010 

VERDICT 

Our pick of the soundbars isn’t actually a soundbar. Even with an 

integrated subwoofer (not a separate unit), the Cambridge Audio 

TV2 (v2) is an exceptional-sounding soundbase at a very fair price, 

and short of Wi-Fi, it comes with all the connectivity you could want. 

As long as you weren’t dead set on wall-mounting, it’s a fantastic 

choice for bolstering your TV’s sound. 

As far as actual soundbars go, it’s hard to go wrong with the 

Steljes Audio Erato. A capable row of speakers with a dedicated 

subwoofer in the same package, the Erato proves once again 

that cheap doesn’t have to mean bad – we’d rather have this 

than the £899 Philips Fidelio SkyQuake, which manages to create 

an impressive multidimensional soundstage but otherwise doesn’t 

quite justify the expense. 

The somewhat more diverse nature of speakers means there 

are a few worth recommending. The Addon T3 sounds and looks 

lovely, though the Libratone Zipp’s ability to fi ll a room with 360 

degrees of music makes it slightly better in our book. Wharfedale’s 

Diamond A1 is expensive – even more so than the Urbanears 

Baggen – but its combination of modern wireless versatility and 

classic hi-fi sound quality makes it a winner as well. 


113

ROLAND MOORE-COLY ER EXPLORES 

CURRENT-GENERATION GPUs AND 

THE FUTURE OF GRAPHICS CARDS 

114 


ushing polished pixels on to a display 

relies upon the compute power of the 

graphics processing unit (GPU), either 

found integrated with the central 

processing unit (CPU) or given its own spot on 

a motherboard. If a CPU is the logical part of a 

PC, the GPU is the creative part. And they have 

been evolving at a rapid pace. 

There are two major players in the dedicated 

graphics processing world: Nvidia and AMD. 

These two graphics giants have been slugging it 

out for years, both pushing out high-end cards as 

pseudo-vanity projects to showcase how much 

GPU fi repower they can bring to bear, as well as 

creating cards that compete on fi nding the 

sweet spot between power and price. 

RESOLUTION REVOLUTION 

Heavy-duty video and photo editing, as well as 

running graphics-heavy applications, often require 

a dedicated graphics card to carry out tasks at 

speed. But it’s the world of PC gaming that fuels 

the appetite for and innovation in graphics cards. 

Currently, the de facto standard target for 

modern gaming is the 1080p resolution running at 

a minimum of 30 frames per second (fps), but for 

PC gaming a smooth 60fps is the desired goal. 

That target has resulted in powerful graphics 

cards able to deliver silky-smooth performance 

with all the graphical bells and whistles, such as 

detailed textures and anti-aliasing to reduce 

jagged lines. Mid-range and lower-end cards 

deliver the same results but with the graphics 

settings in games reduced by a notch or two. 

However, the debut of 4K ultra high-defi nition 

(UHD) displays, which deliver roughly four times 

the number of pixels than the 1,920x1,080 

resolution, has resulted in the need for GPUs that 

have a lot more power to render smooth games at 

that resolution at playable frame rates, without 

surrendering graphical decoration. 

Until very recently, hitting 60fps at 4K in 

visually intensive games – such as The Witcher 3 

or Rise of the Tomb Raider – was an almost 

unreachable target. 

A middle ground exists with the 2,560x1,440 

resolution, often referred to as quad high 

defi nition, which is four times the number of 

pixels of 1,280x720. Hitting 60fps at 1440p is a 

lot more attainable at more affordable prices 

for PC enthusiasts than at 4K. 

The trio of resolutions have resulted in distinct 

tiers in the graphics card world, and is mildly 

complicated by the advent of monitors with 

refresh rates of 120 and 144Hz, which demand 

enough graphics power to push pixels at a frame 

rate beyond 60fps. What we are left with are GPU 

options that are not simply separated by steps in 

power but their suitability for specific resolutions. 

JULY 2017 | COMPUTER SHOPPER | ISSUE 343 

115

IN THE GREEN CORNER 

Nvidia’s latest Pascal architecture made its 

debut with three cards: the GeForce GTX 

1080 for chasing 30fps at 4K or 60fps at 

1440p for around £550; the slightly less 

powerful but cheaper £400 GTX 1070 for 

30fps-plus at 1440p in demanding games; and 

the GTX 1060, which is designed for maxing 

out graphical settings in games at 1080p at 

60fps for a little over £200. 

But Pascal has been expanded over the 

past 10 months, notably with the crazily 

powerful and expensive Titan X. At more than 

£1,000, the GPU was the fastest on the block 

for around seven months, yet only really 

attainable by the wealthiest PC gamers. 

To put the cat among its own pigeons, 

Nvidia recently revealed the GeForce GTX 

1080 Ti. Despite the name, the GPU is not a 

tweaked GTX 1080, but more a reworked 

Titan X, with high-end silicon sporting 3,584 

CUDA cores, 11GB of fast GDDRX RAM and 

a base clock speed of 1.6GHz. These specs 

pretty much match the Titan X, although 

the 1080 Ti has 1GB less of RAM and 

features a smaller 352-bit aggregated memory 

bus that allows for a bandwidth of 484GB/s, 

which is 4GB/s less than the Titan X. 

TOP LEFT: Metal Gear Solid V at 1080p 

RIGHT: The graphically intense Rise of the Tomb Raider 

BELOW: The powerful but pricey Nvidia Titan X 

At around £700 the GTX 1080 Ti isn’t 

cheap, but it can hit 60fps in games running at 

4K with graphics settings ramped up for a 

smaller wad of cash than the Titan X, rendering 

Nvidia’s pricey fl agship moot for the moment. 

Nvidia also added the GeForce GTX 1050 

and GTX 1050 Ti to its range, which are 

squarely aimed at PC builders with budgets of 

around £100 looking for a GPU to game at 

1080p with the graphical settings turned down. 

Pascal has not only yielded a broad range of 

desktop GPUs but has also seen Nvidia introduce 

mobile versions of its standard cards. 

Normally, mobile GPUs are very much the 

poor cousins of their desktop counterparts, 

delivering expensive gaming laptops that 

can’t match the power of a similarly specced 

desktop. But the energy efficiency of Pascal 

has changed that. The mobile versions of 

the GeForce 1080, 1070 and 1060 offer 

performance that is pretty close to their 

desktop counterparts. 

We recently tried out an Asus GL702VM 

gaming laptop, which has a mobile version of 

the GeForce 1060, and were suitably impressed 

with its ability to deliver between 30fps and 

60fps at 1080p in demanding games with 

pretty much all graphics settings pumped up. 

Nvidia is so confident in the ability of its 

mobile chips it has dropped the ‘M’ suffix that 

separated the previous-generation Maxwell 

mobile GPUs from their desktop counterparts. 

Thomas Bradley, head of the Nvidia 

developer team and technology in Europe, 

tells us that this minor breakthrough in 

performance was down to Nvidia developing a 

GPU architecture that spans all its products 

from mobile graphics to server GPUs, allowing 

innovations in power and efficiency to be 

shared across the company’s portfolio. 

“That has huge advantages on a number 

of fronts, one of which is that we are 

116 


UNTIL VERY RECENTLY, HITTING 60FPS AT 4K 

IN VISUALLY INTENSIVE GAMES – SUCH AS 

THE WITCHER 3 OR RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER 

– WAS AN ALMOST UNREACHABLE TARGET 

ABOVE: Nvidia’s new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 

RIGHT: AMD’s top Polaris GPU, the Radeon RX 480 

optimising not only for performance but 

also for power consumption at every level, 

because you can imagine at the embedded 

level with the Tegra product line, power 

consumption is paramount. But not only that, 

in the higher-end GPUs, including the data 

centre, performance is essentially power 

efficiency as well because you’re limited to 

how much power you can draw into one of 

these cards,” he says. 

“So if you want to improve the 

performance in each generation, the only way 

to do that is by improving power efficiency.” 

That’s a pretty good hint at where Nvidia is 

taking its next-generation GPU architecture, 

the forthcoming Volta. 

Not much had been revealed about Volta at 

the time of writing – we’re expecting to hear 

more about it at the Graphics Technology 

Conference in May – but no doubt Nvidia’s 

pursuit of power and efficiency will be the 

main driver. The GTX 1080 Ti would suggest 

high-end Volta GPUs will be very capable 

cards at handling 4K gaming and video 

encoding, particularly if they make use of 

GDDR6 RAM, which is touted to have a data 

transfer speed of 16GB/s. 

Volta cards could also take inspiration 

from Nvidia’s professional GPU, the Tesla 

P100, which uses high-bandwidth memory 

delivering 540GB/s to process data-heavy 

workloads such as scientific modelling. 

Either way, Volta is set to usher in 

desktop cards, likely around 2018, that will 

offer at least a solid hike in 

performance and see laptop 

GPUs become more capable 

than ever before. A GPU 

revolution may not be literally 

on the cards, but a notable 

evolution in GeForce GPUs 

can be expected. 

SEEING RED 

AMD – previously ATI until the 

former bought the latter in 200606 

– has long kept competitive in 

both high- and low-end GPUs. 

However, over recent years, Nvidia has been 

the frontrunner in pure power. With its 

latest Polaris architecture, though, AMD 

ducked out of the sheer graphics horsepower 

race and instead looked to gain ground in the 

mid- to lower-end arena. 

Its current top Polaris GPU, the Radeon RX 

480, is a card that comes with 2,304 stream 

processors, 8GB of GDDR5 RAM and a 1.1GHz 

base clock speed, all for a price of around 

£200. The card has the chops to hit the sweet 

spot of 1080p at 60fps and can push up to the 

1440p resolution with a few tweaks to graphics 

settings. It’s also virtual reality (VR)-ready, 

making it one of the cheapest cards with the 

certification to power headsets such as the 

Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. 

For anyone looking to build a solid 1080p 

gaming machine, the Radeon RX 480 is pretty 

much the desktop card to go for. 

Joining it in the Polaris line-up are the 

Radeon 470 and 460, both lesser-specced 

cards designed for budget-conscious PC 

gamers and those who want to run eSports 

games such as League of Legends and Dota 2 

smoothly, but have little ambition to run 

cutting-edge games. 

AMD also offers mobile variants of its 

GPUs, but unfortunately they can’t offer the 

level of performance that Nvidia’s 

mobile cards can, meaning the 

latest slew of gaming laptops 

generally tout GPUs from the 

green (Nvidia) corner. 

However, AMD does have 

an ace up its sleeve in the form 

of its Jaguar custom chipset, 

comprising a CPU and Radeon 

GPU that can be found in the 

Xbox One and PlayStation 4. 

Arguably the most popular 

non-casual gaming platforms, 

AMD’s tech is being used to 

JULY 2017 | COMPUTER SHOPPER | ISSUE 343 117

drive the latest console games, while Nvidia is 

left behind in the console market. That is, if 

you don’t count the Tegra X1 mobile chip 

found in the Nintendo Switch (see Shopper 

352), which is a different beast altogether. 

This presence across the two main gaming 

consoles means AMD can benefi t from 

developers making games designed to run on 

its hardware, which should mean PC versions 

of the same game perform well on AMD cards. 

And with its forthcoming Vega architecture, 

AMD looks to be making a major comeback in 

the high-end GPU world. 

Like Nvidia and its Volta architecture, AMD 

has kept pretty quiet about the specification 

of Vega, but one thing we do know is the next 

generation of GPUs from the company will 

feature a cache of second-generation high 

bandwidth memory (HBM2,) which AMD 

used in its last high-end card, the Fury X. 

This memory has a significantly higher data 

throughput than even the nippy GGDR5X, 

potentially offering around 512GB/s, making 

for a very fast card indeed. 

Jason Megit, technical marketing manager 

at AMD’s Radeon Technologies Group, tells us 

that the real power of Vega comes from its 

High Bandwidth Cache Controller (HBCC), 

which aims to shake up how GPUs handle data. 

Traditionally developers would need to 

squeeze all the textures, polygons and shaders 

for the image being rendered into a frame 

buffer in the GPU’s onboard memory. 

Obviously this means the GPU is limited to the 

amount of video memory it has on the card. 

But with HBCC, Vega can stream the data 

needed to render graphics for games and other 

visually intensive applications from all manner 

of memory sources in a PC, potentially being 

able to draw from up to 512TB of virtualised 

memory. That dwarfs the memory bandwidth 

of even the best GPUs on the market. 

“What the HBCC lets us do is treat all 

memory in a system, whether it be system 

SDRAM, VRAM, network storage, all the 

memory off the GPU. We’re able to stream 

data in real time into the GPU and efficiently 

manage it on the GPU,” explains Megit. 

“If we’re able to access a larger data set in 

real time on the GPU we can potentially build 

virtual worlds that are massive in comparison 

to what we currently utilise in a game.” 

ANATOMY OF A 

GRAPHICS CARD 

Graphics cards can be confusing beasts, with several interplaying 

components that determine whether a GPU can crunch through the 

latest games with ease or end up all hot and bothered, as well as the 

resolutions it can hit and quality of image that get piped to a monitor 

CORES 

Much like a CPU, GPUs have processing 

cores, only they number in the thousands in 

the 

latest graphics cards rather than in 

quad- or octa-core configurations in CPUs. 

These cores act as stream processors to 

produce the textures, shaders and polygons 

that make up parts of an image. 

While AMD sticks with the term stream 

processors, Nvidia calls them CUDA cores; 

in 

general AMD’s cores are smaller and less 

complex, while Nvidia’s are larger and more 

complex. AMD cores do more optimisation 

on the tasks that cores are assigned, while 

Nvidia lets the GPU assign the cores 

according to the task at hand. What this 

means is that the number of cores doesn’t 

necessarily dictate the overall performance 

of a GPU, the real results being seen in 

how well it carries out certain tasks. 

MEMORY 

The level of data needed to render graphics 

in very visual applications and games is ever 

118 


LEFT: Nvidia’s next-gen GPU 

architecture, Volta 

RIGHT: Microsoft ’s Xbox One 

uses AMD’s Jaguar chipset 

AMD’S TECH IS BEING 

USED TO DRIVE THE 

LATEST CONSOLE 

GAMES, WHILE 

NVIDIA IS LEFT 

BEHIND IN 

THE CONSOLE 

MARKET 

This combination of a fast memory cache 

with a memory controller that can be 

configured on the fl y to suit specific 

applications has a very strong chance of 

putting AMD and the Radeon line back in pole 

position in the graphics race. When Vega 

makes its proper debut later this year, we will 

expect it to deliver monstrous performance 

at 4K resolutions. But that will depend on 

whether developers can get their heads around 

programming to suit graphics streaming on 

an architecture that is a departure from 

traditional GPUs. Either way, AMD looks to be 

bringing its big guns to the next GPU fi ght. 

DEEPER THAN HARDWARE 

Squeezing graphics performance out of silicon 

happens at more than a hardware level for 

Nvidia and AMD. They both have technology 

that enables their graphics cards to be run in 

pairs or trios – SLI for the former and 

CrossFire for the latter. Doubling the number 

of graphics cards in a PC doesn’t equal double 

the pixel-crunching capabilities, but both 

companies have been pushing the soft ware 

and drivers for their GPUs to make such 

multi-card arrays more effective. 

Both offer a comprehensive soft ware 

suite for developers and gamers to eke out 

the best from their graphics cards. Standouts 

for AMD include its OverDrive soft ware for 

easy overclocking of GPUs, while its work 

on its Mantle and Vulkan application 

programming interfaces (APIs) give developers 

better access to the bare performance at a 

GPU’s heart without requiring a CPU to act 

as a form of computational middle-man 

between an application and GPU. 

Nvidia’s ace soft ware is the GeForce 

Experience, which ensures GPU drivers are 

kept up to date, and intelligently detects and 

adjusts game settings to deliver the best 

performance and visuals a PC’s GPU can offer. 

increasing, so GPUs need a sizable pool of 

memory to draw upon. Most modern 

graphics cards have at least several 

gigabytes of GDDR5 video RAM, configured 

to have higher bandwidth than the DDR4 

RAM plugged in the motherboards of PCs 

and laptops, but at the expense of latency. 

GDDR5X is used in Nvidia’s GTX 1080, 

1080 Ti and Titan X GPUs, and offers a very 

high bandwidth for high-end graphics 

processing. But the debut of high 

bandwidth memory (HBM), fi rst seen in 

AMD’s Fury X GPUs and set to be the star 

in its next wave of GPUs, looks to raise the 

bandwidth even higher and deliver 

blisteringly fast graphics cards. 

CONNECTIONS 

Around the back of a graphics card you’ll 

fi nd a collection of video outputs. 

Traditionally the domain of the VGA and 

DVI ports, the advent of HDMI and Full HD 

resolutions means most modern GPUs have 

at least one HDMI output, which also 

means PCs can play nicely with modern TVs 

and be used as a powerful 

games console if so desired. 

COOLING 

Arguably the most 

visually captivating part 

of a GPU, the fan cooler 

is an essential part of a 

graphics card to preventent 

the silicon from frying 

under heavy loads. 

Graphics cards 

created by third-party 

providers of GPUs such 

as MSI and Asus often 

feature fancy cooling 

arrays, which offer a 

bigger boost in cooling 

than standard reference 

design cards released by Nvidia and AMD. 

This has the knock-on effect of enabling 

the GPU to have its processor and memory 

clock speed ramped up, allowing for more 

performance to be extracted out of a 

graphics card. 

Nvidia, AMD and third-party companies 

offer their own overclocking tools to let PC 

enthusiasts keen for more power and not 

afraid of pushing their graphics card to the 

limit eke out more GPU horsepower and 

achieve higher frame rates in graphicsheavy 

games. 

JULY 2017 | COMPUTER SHOPPER | ISSUE 343 119

Both companies have their sights set on 

features such as multisampling for reducing 

jagged lines and frame synchronisation 

between GPUs and monitors, all of which aim 

to make viewing videos and playing games a 

smoother, sharper experience. 

Neither AMD or Nvidia appear to be 

slowing down on the soft ware side, either, 

with both companies currently working 

away in consortiums or alone to produce 

tools and features that unlock the power of 

their graphics tech. 

ABOVE: Nvidia’s GeForce Experience in action 

BELOW: The Best Buy-winning Nvidia Shield console 

DITCHING DESKTOPS 

While GPUs will keep getting more powerful 

and render games with sumptuous visuals at 

massive resolutions, they have a role to play 

beyond the desktop PC. 

Nvidia recently debuted its GeForce Now, a 

service that uses cloud computing backed up 

by server racks equipped with GTX 1080s to 

stream games to desktops, laptops and TVs, 

the latter via Nvidia’s Shield console. GeForce 

Now fl ips Nvidia’s traditional place in PC 

gaming on its head: you can stream high-end 

games to a MacBook Air, a laptop that’s about 

as far away from a gaming PC as possible. 

There are caveats, though. You need to be 

in the US and have a 25Mbit/s broadband 

connection. Yet GeForce Now serves as an 

example of how the future of graphics may 

not be reliant on powerful gaming desktops. 

VR tech is also another area that Dr 

Wendy Powell, senior member of the IEEE 

and reader in virtual reality at the University 

of Portsmouth, tells us is driving the evolution 

of graphics technology. 

“On the surface, the graphics requirements 

for games and VR might seem similar, with 

both demanding increasing levels of realism, 

high resolutions and good frame rates. The 

difference is that poor graphics performance 

in a game is annoying, but in VR it could be 

the difference between a comfortable 

experience and losing your lunch,” she explains. 

“Because VR immerses us into the 

experience, we expect the graphics 

performance to mimic real life, so when we 

turn our head and the graphics display 

doesn’t keep up, it can trigger instant nausea. 

While games are generally running at 60fps, 

both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive demand 

90fps at a resolution of 2,160x1,200, and below 

this there will be lag and jitter, leading to 

increasing levels of simulator sickness.” 

Powell adds that as top-end displays move 

towards 4K per eye – 8K in total – there will 

need to be a significant hike in 

graphics performance in order 

to deliver not just realism, 

but an enjoyable and 

nausea-free experience. 

“The race is on with 

GPU manufacturers such 

as AMD and Nvidia to 

refi ne techniques such 

as multi-resolution 

shading and image 

warping in order to 

deliver a comfortable 

high-fidelity graphics 

experience within a 

head-mounted display 

120 

JULY 2017 | COMPUTER SHOPPER | 

ISSUE 353

(HMD). We are likely to start seeing PCs 

supporting multi-GPU rendering, allowing a 

separate GPU to output to each eye.” 

GPUs also have a role to play outside of 

gaming. Training artificial intelligence (AI) 

systems and machine-learning 

algorithms for driverless cars or 

automatic image recognition 

requires the use of deep-learning 

artificial neural networks – 

essentially a computer’s take 

on how the human brain 

picks apart and makes sense 

of information. Serial 

processing in CPUs is great 

for completing complex 

logical tasks, s, but in systems 

that need a large amount of 

data to be piped through and 

computed, CPUs simply don’t 

have the throughput. 

GPUs, on the other hand, 

have parallel processing, a 

much betterer method for 

pushing data through an 

artificial neural network. 

This is best explained with 

an example. e. If you think of 

a CPU as a large pipe 

pouring water into a 

collection of pots, it can do 

so one at a time at a rapid 

speed. But with parallel 

BECAUSE VR 

IMMERSES US INTO 

THE EXPERIENCE, 

WE EXPECT 

THE GRAPHICS 

PERFORMANCE TO 

MIMIC REAL LIFE 

processing you have a larger collection of 

pipes, which although they’re not as big are 

capable of fi lling up all the pots at once. 

This higher throughput means GPUs are 

effectively critical components for powering 

future AIs and smart systems. Nvidia has been 

pushing the AI line for some time, and the 

fi rm’s Bradley reckons Volta will enable Nvidia 

ABOVE: Deep-learning networks are used in AI 

BELOW: VR poses a new challenge for graphics fi rms 

users to tap into their GPU’s capabilities and 

program AI systems from their own PCs. 

“One of the things I think we will see more 

and more is that AI is not a segment of 

programing but rather a fundamental 

programming paradigm, which will 

span not only multiple industries 

but also right the way through 

to gaming as an industry as 

well, but also hobbyists and 

so on,” he says. 

“Anybody with an Nvidia 

GPU can pick up any of the 

main deep-learning 

frameworks and start to 

experiment with those. 

And they are all GPU 

accelerates so they can 

get that performance 

advantage out of the box.” 

Not keen on being left 

out, AMD’s Radeon 

Instinct GPU family is 

designed to power deep 

learning, with cards such 

as the MI8 featuring no 

video output, instead 

being designed exclusively 

for use in server racks set 

up for training AIs. 

So while graphics 

cards could be thought of 

as the tools of gamers, they 

are now becoming the core 

parts of machines designed to 

usher in smarter technology and 

perhaps one day a fully fl edged AI. 

At the same time, the competition 

for the adoration of gamers is pushing 

AMD and Nvidia to produce better slices 

of graphics-pushing silicon and soft ware. 

And with the next wave of GPU architectures 

on the horizon, PC gaming fans can look 

forward to graphics that creep ever closer 

to the ultimate goal of photorealism. 

JULY 2017 | COMPUTER SHOPPER | ISSUE 343 

121

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Business Help 

If you have database, office application or macro issues, 

Kay Ewbank is here to help 

Send your problems to businesshelp@computershopper.co.uk 

Save it for the morning after 

I tend to check my emails late at night, 

sometimes into the early hours of the 

morning. Often, I’ll want to reply to an 

email, but I don’t want my answer to be 

sent straight away. If I’m sending a routine 

reply, I don’t want to risk waking my 

recipient at 2am because they sleep with 

their smartphone by their bed, and it 

doesn’t look very professional either. 

My problem is that while I know I can 

use Outlook’s facility to defer the delivery 

by choosing Options, Defer Delivery, the 

default delivery time is set to 17:00. This 

means I have to remember to change the 

time, as I’d like my reply to be sent at 8am, 

to be there for the start of the working 

day. This works fi ne when I remember to 

change it, but is another element where 

tired fi ngers can cause havoc. Where can I 

change the default delay delivery time? 

I’m using Outlook 2010. 

Jenny Allsopp 

The irritating thing is that you can’t change 

the default delay sending time as a setting, 

but you can do it on a message-by-message 

basis using a macro. 

I’ve got two macros, the fi rst for creating 

a new message that will have a default send 

time of 8am, the second for replying to an 

incoming email, again with a default send 

time of 8am. If you assign them to a button 

on your Outlook toolbar, you should fi nd 

they do what you want. If you want to 

choose a time other than 8am as the default 

send time, all you need to do is to alter the 

0.33333 to be whatever fraction of 24 hours 

you want. So for 9am, for example, you’d 

work out that 9/24 is 0.375. 

One word of caution: 

while your message won’t be 

delivered until 8am, the time 

it is shown as being sent 

might or might not be shown 

as the original time you 

created it. I’ve seen both 

effects on different Outlook 

systems, and I can’t see 

where this is activated. 

What I can promise is that 

your message at least won’t 

be delivered until 8am. 

Public Sub 

EmailInMorning() 

Dim objMsg As MailItem 

Dim SendTime As Date 

Set objMsg = Application. 

CreateItem(olMailItem) 

SendTime = DateSerial(Year(Now), 

Month(Now), Day(Now)) + 0.33333 

objMsg.DeferredDeliveryTime = SendTime 

objMsg.Display 

End Sub 

This macro creates a new blank message 

for you to complete; the only thing that is set 

is the default time the message will be sent 

and delivered. The macro below takes the 

email you’ve selected in your Inbox and creates 

a reply, with the recipient’s email address being 

set to the original sender’s address, and the 

contents of the original email within your reply. 

It also sets the delivery time to 8am: 

Sub ReplyInMorning() 

Dim objMsg As MailItem 

Dim objReplyMsg As MailItem 

⬆ You can alter the delayed delivery time, but you can’t set the default 

to anything other than 17:00 in Outlook 

Dim SendTime As Date 

Set objMsg = Application.ActiveWindow. 

Selection.Item(1) 

Set objReplyMsg = Application. 

CreateItem(olMailItem) 

objReplyMsg.Subject = objMsg.Subject 

objReplyMsg.To = objMsg.Sender 

objReplyMsg.CC = objMsg.CC 

SendTime = DateSerial(Year(Now), 

Month(Now), Day(Now)) + 0.33333 

objReplyMsg.DeferredDeliveryTime = 

SendTime 

objReplyMsg.HTMLBody = objReplyMsg. 

HTMLBody & objMsg.Reply.HTMLBody 

objReplyMsg.Display 

End Sub 

Disclaimer alert 

We’re creating an Access report, and we 

want to add disclaimer pages in between the 

‘detail’ pages of the report. Can you merge 

text pages into a report in Access? 

Peter Lamb 

This is more fi ddly than you might expect. 

One non-technical option would be to use a 

commercial printing service to print your 

company disclaimers on one side of blank 

paper, then use that for printing your reports, 

so that on the ‘front’ of a page you get report 

data, and on the back you get ‘disclaimer’ data. 

If you don’t want to use a commercial service, 

just print the disclaimer yourself on one side of 

a ream of paper (or however many sheets 

make sense), then run it through the printer 

again for your report. 

If you don’t want to do that, experiment 

with the page footer on your report. Stretch 

the footer so it’s long enough to hold not only 

the page footer information, but also your 

disclaimer information. When you print the 

report, your report data should show on one 

page, while the next page has the ‘slipped’ 

disclaimer information. The only problem is 

that this could be quite fi ddly to achieve. 


BUSINESS HELP 

Flush out the system 

I’ve fi nally been forced away from 

WordPerfect to Microsoft Word, and it lacks 

some of the features that made my life easy. 

In particular, I can’t fi nd any way of doing 

what WordPerfect calls Flush-Right, where I 

can have text at the very left of the page, 

and text at the very right of the page, and 

nothing in between – like you’d get in a 

table of contents, say. Is Word capable of 

doing this, and if so, how? 

Jess Baldwin 

You can do this in Word, but it’s not as 

convenient as in WordPerfect, where all you 

had to do was type the text you wanted to 

have placed at the margins, put the cursor at 

the point you wanted the text to split, and 

then choose Format, Line, Flush Right. 

In Word, there are two ways to do this, 

neither of which is ideal. The fi rst option is to 

use a right-aligned tab at the right-hand 

margin of your page. To do this, make sure the 

Ruler is visible by choosing the View tab of the 

Word ribbon, and click in the checkbox for 

Ruler. Click on the ruler as close as you can 

achieve to the right-hand margin. You’ll see a 

small L appear on the ribbon signifying that 

you’ve inserted a tab. If you’re good at 

⬆ You can use a right-aligned tab in Word to have text right 

and left aligned on the same line 

selecting, you can now double-click the L to 

open the Tabs dialog, and set the alignment to 

Right. If you have difficulty, open the Paragraph 

dialog by choosing the Home tab of the Word 

ribbon and clicking the ‘more’ arrow at 

the bottom-right of the Paragraph group. 

You’ll then see the Paragraph dialog. 

Click the Tabs button to show the 

Tabs dialog box, and set the right-most 

tab to be Right aligned. 

If you now enter your text, you 

should be able to click Tab at the point 

you want the text to be fl ushed, and it 

will move to the right. How well it is 

aligned with the right-hand margin will 

depend on where you put the tab mark. 

If you need more than one line of 

text, or you want a more perfect 

alignment with the margin, the other 

alternative is to use a two-column table. 

Create one column on the left that is left 

justified, and the other column on the 

right that is right justified, and that will 

give you the effect you want. The trick 

here is to remember to turn off borders 

for the table, so you don’t get the lines 

around and between the cells appearing. 

To do this, right-click on the table, 

choose Borders and Shading, and set the 

Setting to None. One tip: put some text into 

your table before doing this or you stand a 

good chance of losing it as it will turn invisible. 

Source of all knowledge 

I have an Excel workbook that shows data that originally came 

from an external source over which I have no control. The data 

arrives once a week, and is quite extensive. It’s also in the wrong 

format for my workbook. It comes in formatted like this: 

 

 

 

This data is repeated many times. I need to display it like this: 

seen by on 

Is it possible to automate this? 

Mahood Rahman 

You could automate it using a macro, but have you considered using 

a new sheet to display just the data you’re interested in? If your 

imported data is on Sheet1 and starts in cell A1, then on a new sheet 

in cell A1 you could use the OffSet function in a formula to take the 

data you need and display it: 

=OFFSET(Sheet1!$A$1,(ROW()-1)*3,) & " seen by " & OFFSET(Sheet1! 

$A$1,(ROW()-1)*3+1,) & " on " & OFFSET(Sheet1!$A$1,(ROW()-1)*3+2,) 

If you copy that formula down the sheet, you’ll get the information 

you want to display without needing to use a macro to delete cells and 

move things around. The formula is actually fairly simple, just a bit 

long-winded. The OffSet function can be used to refer to a cell or range 

of cells that are a specific number of rows and columns away from the 

cell reference. So you enter the cell for the reference (in this case, 

$A$1). The next parameter is the row offset. You can specify a row and 

a column offset, but we only need a row offset. 

The formula we’re entering is more complicated because you’re 

going to copy it down the page, so it needs to work whether it’s the 

copy in row 1, row 8, 17, or wherever. So to get the correct row offset, 

⬆ Use an OffSet function to retrieve data from cells in different rows in Excel 

you take the row number of the current row (using the ROW() 

function), and subtract 1 from it. This means if you’re in row 1, you get 

0; if you’re in row 2, you get 1, and so on. This is then multiplied by 3. 

Again, for the copy of the formula in row 1, this returns 0 (0*3 is 0). If 

you’re in row 1, this returns 3 (3*1 is 3). 

The second OffSet in the formula does the same thing, but adds 1 

to the fi nal row calculation to get the data from one row onwards, and 

the third copy adds 2. The only tricky bit about the third row is that it 

contains a date. Depending on how the data was originally entered, and 

how it was treated when it was imported into Excel, you might fi nd that 

instead of getting a result of ‘The Larches seen by Fred Bloggs on 

12/03/17’, you instead get ‘The Larches seen by Fred Bloggs on 42806’. 

If this is the case, the date was imported as an actual date, and you 

need to show the text representation, so the whole formula is: 

=OFFSET(Sheet1!$A$1,(ROW()-1)*3,) & " seen by " & OFFSET(Sheet1! 

$A$1,(ROW()-1)*3+1,) & " on " & TEXT(OFFSET(Sheet1!$A$1,(ROW()- 

1)*3+2,),"dd/mm/yy") 

If you copy this formula down the page, you’ll fi nd it returns the 

values from each set of three rows as required. 


125

Helpfile 

Whatever your general PC, hardware and software 

woes, Simon Handby is here to help 

Send your problems to help@computershopper.co.uk 

Hitting the buff ers 

Last year TalkTalk upgraded my ADSL 

broadband and phone package to 

include TV services as well. 

I was given a YouView box and a Super 

Router, which turned out to give better 

coverage and speeds than my old one. 

At Christmas I bought an iPad Pro. 

Although it connected to my router, 

web pages timed out while “awaiting 

response from server”. After digging 

around on the internet, I followed a 

suggestion to change the iPad’s DNS 

settings from 192.168.1.1 (my router) to 

8.8.8.8 (Google). Normal service 

seemed to be restored. 

TalkTalk gave me a free fi lm, which I 

decided to try and watch, but the 

YouView box kept stopping to re-buffer 

every 90 seconds. Again an internet 

search suggested I change the box’s DNS 

settings, which fi xed both this problem 

and a similar one with iPlayer. 

I raised these issues with TalkTalk, 

which said that the DNS settings should 

make no difference to the service, and 

that I should perform a factory reset on 

the router (on which I’ve also changed 

the DNS settings), and change the DNS 

on my devices back to automatic. As the 

default settings caused the issues, I’m not 

sure how restoring them will help. 

Our two iPads use the 5GHz network, 

while we have two Android phones and a 

Now TV box on the 2.4GHz band. We also 

have two PCs connected via Ethernet, but 

these are rarely turned on. Would turning 

off Quality of Service (QoS) help? 

Phil Harrison 

A DNS issue could certainly explain the fi rst 

problem you describe with internet pages 

timing out, but it’s less likely to be to blame 

for buffering issues. There should only be 

any DNS lookups when the stream of 

content is being established or if it needs 

to be re-established because of another, 

non-DNS failure. Still, the differing 

performance you’re getting might happen if 

the providers’ content delivery networks are 

returning different content server addresses 

depending on the DNS server through 

which you’re making the request – in other 

words, they’re trying to serve you fi lms from 

the ‘nearest’ content server, based on the 

DNS server you’re using. If this is the case, 

however, sticking with TalkTalk’s own DNS 

servers ought to be the best option. 

In your setup, you can configure the DNS 

addresses in three places: in the router’s own 

WAN (wide area network) settings; in the 

router’s DHCP settings; and manually on 

individual devices themselves. Changing either 

of the latter two options will cause your 

devices to bypass the router’s built-in DNS 

server and send queries directly to the address 

you provide. This usually isn’t ideal as it 

creates a small amount of extra traffic on your 

broadband connection, and it may be slightly 

slower. That said, it seems that some people 

have had DNS issues with the TalkTalk Super 

Routers, so it might be that bypassing its DNS 

server is fi xing the problem. 

We’d recommend you log into the router 

and make sure its Remote Management 

feature is enabled from the Maintain menu. If 

it already is, or if you enable it and the router 

doesn’t receive new fi rmware within a week or 

so, you may need to perform a factory reset 

to trigger an update – that’s possibly why 

TalkTalk suggested it. In theory, doing this – 

and resetting your devices so that they obtain 

a DNS server automatically – should leave you 

with the latest router fi rmware and the ‘ideal’ 

DNS settings on your network. 

⬅ Adding DNS 

servers here 

causes network 

devices to 

make direct 

DNS lookups, 

bypassing 

your router 

If that doesn’t cure the streaming 

problem, navigate to the router’s WAN 

connection page, scroll down, tick the 

Static DNS box, enter two DNS server 

addresses of your choosing, save the 

changes and restart the router. If the 

problem remains, try bypassing the router 

by manually adding DNS servers on the 

DHCP page. As an aside, remember that 

using third-party DNS servers such as 

Google’s allows that third party to see the 

websites and services you’re visiting. 

If neither of those steps works, assume 

that DNS isn’t the problem and return the 

router to its ‘ideal’, post-reset settings. As 

your network is unlikely to be congested, 

QoS is unlikely to be an issue, but there’s no 

harm in switching this off to see if it 

improves things. 

If not, try a further test: on one of 

your two PCs, open the Start menu, type 

cmd and run Command Prompt, then 

type ping www.computershopper.co.uk -t 

and hit Enter. You should see regular 

replies from our web server. Leaving this 

running, try watching something on iPlayer. 

When you experience re-buffering, quickly 

switch to the Command Prompt and see if 

you’re no longer getting replies. If so, it 

suggests a generic connection problem, 

which you’ll probably need to discuss 

further with TalkTalk. 


HELPFILE 

A land down under 

I am tearing my hair out because the picture 

from my webcam is always upside down, 

whatever I do to correct it. I learnt from one 

local helper that if I deleted and reinstalled 

the driver that would cure the problem, so I 

did and it did: for about a week. I only use 

the webcam in Skype, but it’s very annoying 

for my friends around the world to have to 

view me inverted. I’m running Windows 10 

Home on an Asus laptop. Can you help? 

Brian Deller 

There’s a known problem with some Asus 

laptops, where having the wrong webcam 

driver causes the image to be inverted. It 

shouldn’t happen with models that came 

with Windows 8 or later, but as you don’t 

mention your exact model there’s a chance 

you’ve upgraded from Windows 7. 

Assuming that’s the case, you should be 

able to fi x the problem by opening the Start 

menu, searching for ‘device’, running Device 

Manager, and then expanding the Imaging 

Devices section. In here, double-click the 

webcam entry, select the Details tab and 

select Hardware IDs from the Property list 

box. Select the lower, shorter value, use 

Ctrl-C to copy it to the clipboard, then open 

a text document and use Ctrl-V to paste in 

the value for safe-keeping. 

Now visit www.asus.com/uk/support, use 

the search box to fi nd your laptop model and 

select Driver & Tools. Select your version of 

Windows 10 from the operating systems list, 

Steaming Java 

I am running Windows 7 on a desktop, 

which seems infected with the malware 

‘javaws*32’. It fi lls the Processes tab in 

Task Manager, and on the Performance tab 

the CPU activity rapidly reaches 100%. 

I have run Kaspersky 2017, Malwarebytes 

Anti-Malware and the free edition of 

SUPERAntispyware, but they fi nd nothing. 

Searching Google suggests that I might use 

SuperRegPro or SpyHunter. Are these safe? 

Colin Walker 

The most likely issue isn’t a malware infection, 

which would explain why the programs you’ve 

tried haven’t picked up anything. Javaws.exe is 

a component of Java, so it’s legitimate, but a 

bug sometimes surfaces and causes many 

instances of it to run. The best plan is to 

uninstall Java, then re-install it only if you need 

it. First you might need to disable Javaws.exe. 

⬆ We’ve never been more sure of anything 

⬆ Make a note of your webcam’s hardware ID to be 

sure of getting the right driver 

or if unavailable choose the version of 

Windows 7 that matches your Windows 10 

installation (32- or 64-bit). Find and expand 

the Camera entry, where you’ll see more than 

one driver; download the one which matches 

the hardware ID you copied earlier. 

Now, from the Start menu, search for 

‘control’, run Control Panel, open Programs 

and Features, uninstall the current soft ware 

for your camera, then reboot the computer. 

On restarting, right-click the zipped driver 

you downloaded, select Extract all and click 

Extract. Depending on the type of camera you 

have, you’ll need to double-click the PNPINST, 

setup or install executable fi le to start the 

installation. After rebooting you should fi nd 

that the camera works properly again. 

Reboot the computer and hit F8 on startup 

to get the boot menu, then select Safe Mode. 

After booting into Safe Mode, open Explorer 

and navigate to C:\Program Files\Java. Here 

you’ll see one or more sub-folders, named for 

different versions of Java that may have been 

installed on your PC. Go into the top one, open 

the \bin folder within it, fi nd javaws.exe and 

rename it by adding ‘bak’ or ‘old’ so it becomes 

javaws.exe.old or similar. Repeat this in any 

other sub-folders of C:\Program Files\Java. 

Now reboot the PC normally, open the 

Start menu, type uninstall and click Uninstall 

a program. Select each entry for Java (there 

may only be one) and uninstall them one by 

one. You should now fi nd that the problem 

is cured. You’ll probably fi nd you can do 

without Java, but if needed you can reinstall 

it from java.com/en/download. 

Regarding the additional programs you 

mentioned, we’ve never heard of 

SuperRegPro and we haven’t used 

and can’t recommend SpyHunter. 

In Kaspersky, you already have 

our favourite anti-virus soft ware, 

while we often turn to 

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware for 

additional checks and cleaning. 

Clever 

booking 

I want to catalogue my collection of 

books, but it would take weeks to do 

manually. Is there a way I can use the 

webcam on my Dell N5040 laptop, 

which runs Windows 7, to scan the 

books’ barcodes? I want to produce a 

list of titles and other information, 

which I can then print out; I could add 

any books without barcodes manually. 

Brian Carter 

There are a few programs that might help 

you in a couple of ways. You can fi nd 

multi-purpose barcode scanner soft ware, 

but how these programs would handle 

the resulting ISBN number varies. 

It would be better to try a book library 

program with an integrated barcode 

scanner, such as Book Collector, available 

from www.collectorz.com/book. This 

soft ware has a free trial so you can see 

if it meets your needs. After a brief test 

it appears that the soft ware may be 

quite good, but that it’s difficult to 

position the book well enough to 

successfully scan the barcode; you can 

always type in the ISBN manually. 

You don’t mention a smartphone, but 

if you have one you might fi nd the actual 

scanning easier. There are several Android 

and iOS apps that might fi t the bill, such 

as My Library (Android), which is free and 

seems straightforward. Some soft ware 

lets you use both a smartphone and your 

computer – Book Connect, also from 

www.collectorz.com, is one. In all three 

cases the soft ware looks up the book 

from its ISBN number, so you only need 

to fi ll in any personal fi elds such as notes 

or whether you’ve lent it to someone. 

⬆ My Library is a free, simple book cataloguer 

for Android smartphones 


127

Advanced 

Projects 

Clive Webster has been tinkering with computers ever since 

Windows 98 forced him to manually install his drivers 

clive@computershopper.co.uk 

Upgrade your laptop 

There are a whole host of ways you can extend the life of an old laptop, 

from hardware upgrades for less than £100 to free software and 

maintenance. Clive Webster reveals your options 


ADVANCED PROJECTS 

A NEW LAPTOP might be shinier, thinner, 

lighter and faster than your current one, but it 

will also set you back a good few hundred 

quid. If your laptop is still largely serviceable, 

you might be tempted to upgrade it rather 

than shell out for a whole new machine. But 

is it possible to upgrade a laptop and, if so, 

which upgrades are worth paying for and 

which aren’t? We have the answers. 

TESTING TIMES 

There are many ways to make an old laptop 

more usable, from upgrading the hardware 

to cleaning out unneeded soft ware. You 

could even ditch Windows and install a 

more streamlined operating system that 

runs quicker. We’re going to analyse each 

option with an old Shopper laptop to see 

which yields the best results, and which 

aren’t worth the cash or the hassle. First, 

we’ll concentrate on hardware upgrades, 

then we’ll look at free soft ware changes. 

For each test we compared the laptop in 

its original state (after six years’ hard use) 

with a single change. After each test we 

restored our Sony Vaio laptop to its original 

condition. We analysed the change for pure 

speed, and also for ‘experience’ – in other 

words, how quickly apps loaded and how 

pleasant the laptop was to use. 

upgrade 

this! 

PROCESSOR 

Unless your laptop is as 

thick as a novel, its processor is probably 

soldered to the motherboard. This saves 

space in thin laptops but means you can’t 

(or at least, shouldn’t attempt to) upgrade 

the processor. 

Even in laptops that do use a conventional 

processor socket, you’re severely limited on 

your upgrade options. The potential upgrade 

not only has to physically fi t the socket, it has 

to have the same thermal design power (TDP, 

or maximum heat output) as your current 

CPU, and the laptop’s BIOS must recognise it. 

Should you by some miracle fi nd a 

compatible processer for your laptop, 

you can predict the speed boost easily. 

Processors of the same family and number 

of cores perform in proportion to their 

⬆ Crucial’s memory compatibility tool gives you a blessedly short list of options 

⬆ You should be able to buy any SATA SSD to 

replace your laptop’s hard disk 

frequency: if your current processor is a 

2GHz model, the 2.2GHz upgrade will make 

your laptop 10% faster. That upgrade 

could cost you a few hundred quid, 

however, at which point a whole new 

laptop looks pretty attractive. 

upgrade 

this! 

MEMORY 

You’ll probably have to 

replace you memory rather than upgrade it, 

as SODIMM slots on laptops are rare. You’ll 

⬆ Pull the two retaining clips of your laptop’s memory apart and the SODIMM memory module should pop up 

probably have to buy older DDR3 memory, 

rather than the newer and faster DDR4 spec, 

and your processor might limit 

the amount of memory you can install 

(unless your laptop is very old, the 

memory controller will be embedded in 

the processor). To check your maximum 

memory complement, either consult Intel’s 

excellent ark.intel.com or AMD’s less useful 

products.amd.com websites. 

Thankfully, many memory companies 

take the hassle out of fi nding compatible 

memory. Head to uk.crucial.com and you’ll 

fi nd an upgrade tool, for example. For our 

six-year-old Sony Vaio, we were offered an 

8GB (2x 4GB) kit rated at 1,600MHz that 

costs £60. On paper, this is a decent upgrade 

on the 4GB (2x 2GB), 1,066MHz RAM 

installed in our Sony laptop. 

We didn’t see much improvement in 

outright speed from the new 1,600MHz 

MEMORY RESULTS 

PERFORMANCE 

Image editing 

Video encoding 

Multitasking 

EXPERIENCE 

Boot 

Load Gimp 

Wake from 

Sleep 

28 

29 

39 

39 

55 

55 

0 15 30 45 60 

8GB memory 4GB memory 

18.9 secs 

36.8 secs 

2.5 secs 

7.5 secs 

71 secs 

83 secs 

0 25 50 75 100 

8GB memory 

Old 1080p Shopper benchmarks 

4GB memory 

LOWER IS BETTER 


129


memory, but that was no surprise as our 

lowly Pentium U5400’s memory controller 

only runs at 800MHz; the extra frequency of 

both sets of memory is essentially redundant. 

It was in the experiential tests that we 

saw the advantage of the extra memory 

capacity: the laptop booted 12 seconds 

quicker and woke from Sleep mode (which 

saved our current session of having 1GB of 

photos open to memory) in 2.5 seconds 

rather than 7.5 seconds. The extra memory 

even helped to load complex apps quicker: 

Gimp was ready to go in 18.9 seconds 

rather than the ponderous 36.8 seconds 

with 4GB of memory installed. 

Upgrading the memory defi nitely made 

our old laptop more usable, if not actually 

quicker. To upgrade the memory in your 

laptop, unscrew the rear hatch and carefully 

push apart the two clips holding the 

SODIMM module. The SODIMM module 

should fl ip up, and you can then take it out. 

Push the new memory into the SODIMM slot 

– there’s a notch, so it will only go in one way 

round; turn the module over if the notches 

don’t match up – and then push it down past 

the two clips. The module shouldn’t be loose 

at all; if it is, pry the clips apart and push the 

module into the slot a little more fi rmly 

before pushing down into place. 

upgrade 

this! 

HARD DISK 

You should be able to buy 

any SATA SSD to replace the hard disk, but 

if your laptop is particularly thin you might 

need to consider the thickness of the SSD. 

You should also check that your laptop uses 

the standard SATA connector. If your laptop 

already uses an SSD, you won’t see much 

difference by swapping to another SSD. 

Again, Crucial has a tool to check for 

compatible upgrades: head to uk.crucial.com 

and enter your laptop’s details. The site 

⬆ The standard SATA connection groups the data and power connectors into one integrated connection 

HARD DISK RESULTS 

PERFORMANCE 

Image editing 


Multitasking 

0 15 30 45 60 

SSD Hard disk 

Old 1080p Shopper Benchmarks 

recommended a 275GB MX300 for £91. 

While that’s 45GB smaller than our existing 

320GB hard disk, the data transfer speeds are 

500-530MB/s, which should be much more 

than our six-year-old hard disk. However, the 

specs of our hard disk (ludicrously) claim a 

data transfer speed of 300MB/s. 

28 

29 

39 

39 

55 

57 

EXPERIENCE 

Boot 

Load Gimp 

Wake from 

Hibernate 

37 secs 

9.8 secs 

36.8 secs 

60 secs 

71 secs 

83 secs 

0 25 50 75 100 

SSD 

Hard disk 


We put this claim to the test with HD 

Tune (see www.hdtune.com). The laptop 

hard disk managed a reasonable 64.5MB/s 

average speed; the Crucial SSD more than 

doubled this with a score of 151.2MB/s. 

We therefore expected a big performance 

boost by upgrading to an SSD. 

⬅ ⬇ You’ll need special soft ware to clone 

your current installation on to a new SSD, 

such as Acronis True Image 



Again, our upgrade didn’t affect outright 

speed much – our images and video fi les 

opened a little quicker, giving a small boost to 

the scores – but the laptop felt much more 

sprightly. Gimp was ready to use in under 10 

seconds rather than 36.8, and the laptop 

booted 46 seconds quicker. The laptop woke 

from Hibernate (which saved our session with 

1GB of photos open to main storage) 11 

seconds quicker. However, the biggest jump 

was when opening those 20 high-res images: 

using the hard disk we had to wait 10m 55s; 

with the SSD we only had to wait 6m 44s. 

As with memory, swapping a hard disk for 

an SSD makes an old laptop much more 

pleasant to use. Launch an application and 

it’s ready to use in a reasonable time; open a 

load of images or videos and they’ll be ready 

within standard tea-making time. 

To upgrade to an SSD you’ll have to 

transfer your current data to it. Some SSDs 

are sold as either a plain drive or a kit that 

includes a SATA-to-USB adaptor and 

data-transfer soft ware to clone the contents 

of your old hard disk on to your new SSD. 

Crucial’s MX300 came with the latter but not 

the former, but SATA-to-USB adaptors cost 

as little as £6 (see shop.pimoroni.com). 

Merely copying your data from your hard 

disk to the SSD won’t work as the SSD won’t 

be ‘bootable’; this is why you need cloning 

soft ware. To start, plug your SSD into your 

laptop with the adaptor and then run the 

cloning soft ware; the options should be 

obvious, or else you can refer to the 

soft ware’s instructions online. 

Once done, power down the laptop and 

unscrew its back panel to gain access to the 

hard disk. It might be installed in a caddy, in 

which case you’ll have to remove the disk 

from this, screw in the SSD and then plug 

the whole assembly into the laptop’s SATA 

port. Replace the back panel, fi re up the 

laptop and your laptop should look exactly 

as it did when the hard disk was installed, 

but it should feel a lot quicker to use. 

upgrade 

this! 

BATTERY 

The only other hardware 

item to upgrade is the battery; items such as 

the Wi-Fi, USB ports, keyboard, trackpad 

and screen are either soldered into the 

motherboard or else too tightly integrated 

into the laptop’s casing. 

If you’re getting awful battery life, there 

are replacements available. For example, 

Sony partners with EET Europarts (see 

uk.eetgroup.com) where a replacement 

5,000mAh battery costs £219. Other outlets 

sell compatible batteries of even higher 

capacity (for longer battery life) for as little 

as £52. You can draw your own conclusions, 

but we’d worry about using a cheap battery 

when even some manufacturer-approved 

batteries prove explosive. 

upgrade 

this! 

OPERATING SYSTEM 

Windows has never had a 

great reputation for efficiency of code and 

Windows cleaning 

Most computer experts believe that 

Windows just needs a good cleanout every 

couple of years; many will even say you 

should reinstall Windows every couple of 

PERFORMANCE 

Image editing 

55 

56 

years to keep your PC running well. Our old 

39 


Sony laptop runs Windows 7, so we tested 

39 

the laptop in its current clogged and abused 

28 

state, and then reinstalled Windows and 

Multitasking 

32 

tested the laptop ‘box-fresh’. 

Considering the hassle of installing 

Windows from scratch – including the 1GB 

Fresh Windows install 

Windows Update update, the 7.4GB Service 

Pack 1 (see tinyurl.com/353projects), further 

Windows updates and all your favourite applications and essential data – the marginal 

increases in speed aren’t worth it. 

⬇ Replacement laptop batteries 

aren’t cheap, but if you do 

buy one make sure you get a 

manufacturer-approved model 

hardware use, so we compared a fresh 

Windows 7 install against a fresh Linux Mint 

install (see linuxmint.com). We used the 

64-bit Xfce version of Mint as it’s designed 

for slow and old hardware. We’ve covered 

how to install and use Mint before in 

Advanced Projects, Shopper 341, so we’ll 

move straight on to our fi ndings. 

We’re unimpressed by Mint’s Hibernation 

feature in all respects: there’s no visual 

feedback that the system is even attempting 

to hibernate – it just freezes and then turns 

off after a while, and then takes too long to 

wake back up. However, Sleep mode is 

excellent, as the laptop quickly shuts down 

and wakes in two seconds rather than the 

6.8-second wait for Windows to wake. 

However, it’s when using soft ware that 

Mint really excels: Gimp loaded in 8.2 

seconds and opened our 20 high-res 

images in a further 3m 10s; on Windows we 

OS RESULTS 

PERFORMANCE 

Boot 

Load Gimp 

Wake from 

Hibernate 

Wake from 

Sleep 

8.2 secs 

32.2 secs 

2.1 secs 

6.8 secs 

48 secs 

52 secs 

76 secs 

67 secs 

0 25 50 75 100 

Linux Mint Windows 7 


had to wait 32.2s for Gimp to load and then a 

further 10m 31s for the same images to open. 

Considering that Mint is free and provides a 

very similar look and feel to Windows, it’s a 

great option to squeeze the last few years of 

life from an old laptop. 

CONCLUSION 

Ditching Windows 

for an Xfce fl avour 

of Linux is an 

excellent way 

to make an 

old laptop 

more useful. 

If you’re not quite 

ready for Linux, we’ve found that 

4GB of memory isn’t really enough for 

Windows. Upgrading to 8GB of memory 

makes an old laptop more bearable to use, 

with fewer slowdowns and quicker 

application load times. 

An SSD provides a more noticeable 

all-round boost, and with 120GB SSDs 

costing as little as £50, it’s a great upgrade. 

Our 275GB Crucial MX300 only costs £91 if 

you need more storage. 

NEXT MONTH 

0 15 30 45 60 

Old Windows install 

Old 1080p Shopper Benchmarks 

BE MORE SECURE ONLINE 

We reveal some low-cost and free VPNs 

to keep you safer when you’re surfing 


131

Multimedia 

Expert 

Photographer, musician, sound engineer, designer and video 

producer Ben Pitt guides you through a multimedia project 

ben@computershopper.co.uk 

Create drum 

loops from 

household 

objects 

Why settle for samey 

drum sounds when your 

house is full of stuff to 

hit, shake, rattle and 

roll? Ben Pitt reveals 

how to make music 

from everyday objects 


MULTIMEDIA EXPERT 

⬆ Keep the microphone close to the sound source to minimise background noises and try different angles to see what sounds best 

MUSIC PRODUCERS TAKE drum sounds 

very seriously. Many modern musical genres 

are defi ned by their drum production: the 

speeded-up samples of drum’n’bass or the 

electronic thuds and clicks of techno. 

Ultimately, though, a drum kit is a collection 

of objects that make a thud, crack or pinging 

noise when hit with a stick. Most objects 

make similar noises when hit with a stick, so 

why limit yourself? From saucepans and wine 

glasses to foot stamps and fi nger clicks, 

there’s no shortage of source material in your 

own home. It may not sound as polished as an 

expertly recorded drum kit, but it’s a lot less 

expensive, more fun and might be just the 

thing to liven up your recordings. 

It’s also very much in vogue to create drum 

recordings from unconventional sources. Listen 

to today’s chart music and you’ll notice a lot 

of songs use abstract sounds that serve the 

same function as a conventional drum kit but 

have been created by more experimental means. 

PICK YOUR INSTRUMENTS 

Hitting a block of concrete with a mallet will 

produce a bone-shaking thud, but by the 

time you’ve recorded it and played it back 

on speakers, it will probably sound more 

like a nondescript clunk. 

A mallet on concrete sounds loud because 

it is physically very loud. That’s irrelevant 

when recording because you can make sounds 

as loud or as quiet as you like, up to the 

chosen volume of the listener’s speakers. 

What we need here are sounds that are 

full-bodied and rich with resonance. 

Concrete sounds boring because a slab of 

concrete doesn’t have much internal structure 

– it’s just a solidified soup of cement and 

broken rocks. Wood, on the other hand, has 

a grain that makes it more rigid in some 

directions than others. That means sound 

waves tend to travel up and down wood in a 

more organised fashion, and that’s what gives 

it more of a pitched ‘thonk’ rather than a 

lifeless thud when hit. The wooden bars of a 

xylophone have been carefully carved to have 

a specific pitch. They ring out for about a 

second because they’re suspended on metal 

pins. The less contact there is between the 

wooden bar and the thing that’s supporting it, 

the less sound energy is soaked up. Put your 

hand on a xylophone bar and the energy is 

quickly absorbed, deadening the sound. 

A wine glass has a highly structured 

shape, and if you hold it by the base, there’s 

very little to soak up the sound vibrations 

as they cycle around the top of glass. That’s 

why a wine glass has a very clear pitch that 

rings for a few seconds. 

Objects that are hollow will have a 

discernible pitch, as the sound waves 

bounce from side to side in the hollow 

interior. The contents of kitchen cupboards 

are a great resource for this, but vases, toys 

and even cardboard boxes can work as well. 

The sound of an object will vary greatly 

depending on how you hold it, where you hit 

it and with what. For example, tapping a 

saucepan with a teaspoon will give a highfrequency 

‘ping’, whereas using a wooden 

spoon or rolling pin will give a fuller-bodied 

‘bong’. Moving your makeshift beater around 

the pan will give varying results, too. 

This is useful for fi nding the most 

interesting noise, but it’s also worth capturing 

this variety for its own sake. Using eight subtly 

different sounds in your four-bar drum loop 

will bring it to life compared to repeating the 

same sample over and over again. 

RECORDING 

The real challenge isn’t so much what to use 

as makeshift instruments, but how to record 

them. The aim is to record these sounds with 

as much clarity as possible and without any 

extraneous sounds, but there are lots of 

pitfalls to contend with. 

First, you’ll need a decent quality 

microphone. A single microphone is OK, but 

a stereo pair is better as it will help your 

recordings fi ll the speakers for a larger-thanlife 

sound. Most musicians already own a 

microphone that plugs into a computer. If you 

don’t have something suitable, consider a 

handheld standalone recorder. These devices 

cost from around £70 and include stereo 

microphones, precise level metering, an SD 

card slot and headphone socket. Tascam, 

Zoom and Olympus are respected brands in 

this fi eld. Having a portable device makes it 

much easier to wander around the home and 

elsewhere looking for sounds. The downside 

is that you can’t build up multitrack 

performances as you record. For that, you’ll 

need to use a regular microphone and audio 

interface, and record directly into your 

music-production soft ware. 


133


⬅ Zoom right into the waveform to 

trim the start of each hit 

⬇ Arranging each sound on its own 

track means you can give each one 

different mixer settings 

It’s essential to monitor with 

headphones as you record so you 

can hear how changing the 

microphone and beater positions 

varies the sound. It’s also important 

to make sure your recordings aren’t 

being spoiled by background sounds. 

Recording percussive sounds is 

tricky because the initial part of the 

sound, known as the transient, is 

very loud compared to the tail of 

the sound, known as the decay. 

When you come to use these 

recordings, you’ll probably want to 

use compressor effects to make the 

transients quieter and the decays 

louder. However, that will also mean 

you’ll make any other sounds in the 

room louder too. Once you put on 

headphones, you’ll soon realise just how noisy 

the average home is: distant traffic, central 

heating, fridges, other people in the house and 

your own breathing are all there to spoil your 

recordings. Sound refl ections in the room can 

be a problem, and the recording device itself 

will also produce a certain amount of noise. 

To minimise sound refl ections, record in a 

room with soft furnishings such as a sofa or 

mattress. Kitchens tend to be full of hard, 

shiny objects, and the resulting room 

acoustics are very lively and recordings sound 

very much like they were made in a kitchen. It 

might not be that noticeable, but move to the 

living room and you’ll fi nd that the recordings 

become much cleaner and drier. 

To minimise other noises, you’ll need to 

record the object nice and loud so you can 

turn down the recording level. If the unwanted 

noises are at a fi xed level, the lower the 

recording volume, the lower those noises 

appear in the recording. You can make the 

desired sound louder either by hitting it harder 

or moving it closer to the microphone. Turn 

down the volume and then move the object as 

close to the microphone as it will reasonably 

go. This works particularly well for stereo 

microphones, as the close proximity will 

ensure that the left and right microphones will 

pick up significantly different sounds, helping 

the recording to fi ll the stereo stage. 

Strike the object and look at the recording 

level meters. They should peak at about -6dB, 

ensuring you’re not distorting the transient 

but capturing the decay with plenty of detail. 

Most standalone recorders, audio interfaces 

and soft ware support 24-bit recording, and it’s 

well worth using this to capture lots of detail. 

Create a separate fi le for each object you 

record, and verbally introduce each one at the 

start of the recording. This makes it easier to 

organise your fi les later. Try lots of ideas, but 

once you fi nd something that really works, get 

lots of variety for that particular sound. 

EDITING 

Now you have lots of raw material, the next 

challenge is to organise it into something 

resembling music. It’s useful to rename the 

fi les so you can quickly fi nd what you need. 

There are various ways to convert raw 

recordings into drum patterns. The simplest 

is to drop them directly into your musicproduction 

soft ware, use the Split or Scissor 

tool to chop them into individual beats and 

drag them into place to create a rhythm. 

Arrange each type of sound on its own track 

so you can give them different mixer settings. 

If you’re using Cubase and want to save 

some time, check out the Hitpoints feature in 

the Sample Editor, which automatically slices 

audio objects into individual percussive 

sounds and creates Regions from them. It can 

save time but is a little fi ddly to get to grips 

with, so use the manual to get up and running. 

Snapping functions will help you lock 

individual drum hits to the tempo. Most 

editors’ snapping functions offer a choice of 

absolute or relative modes. Absolute means 

the beginning of an audio object will snap to 

the downbeats or whatever resolution you 

choose; 8th or 16th beats is usually best for 

drum patterns. Relative mode will move 

objects by fi xed amounts, so if it’s slightly in 

front or behind the beat, it will stay in front 



Once you put on some 

headphones, you’ll soon 

realise just how noisy the 

average home is 

or behind by the same amount when it’s 

moved to a different beat. Keeping everything 

neatly arranged on the quantise grid can work 

well, but it may sound more natural and 

interesting to add a little variety to the timing. 

As we mentioned earlier, it’s also worth using 

variations of the same sound rather than one 

sample repeatedly in a drum loop. 

However successfully you’ve managed to 

minimise background noise, there will always 

be a little. If your recording soft ware lets you 

fade individual audio objects in and out, use 

these controls to fade out at the end of the 

decay so it fades to complete silence. 

Another method is to use a gate effect. 

This mutes the track when the volume is 

below a certain level, only letting the louder 

sounds through. Set the Threshold control to 

allow the sounds you want and mute the noise 

in the gaps. Adjust the Release control to set 

how quickly the gate closes, giving a natural 

decay rather than an abrupt stop. The Attack 

control sets how quickly it opens, and for 

percussion sounds it should be zero unless you 

want to soft en the attack as a creative effect. 

MANIC COMPRESSION 

Compression effects reduce the volume of 

louder parts of a sound, so when you turn the 

whole thing up again, the loud transients are 

back where they were and the decays are 

louder and fuller sounding. Compressors have 

Threshold, Ratio, Attack and Release controls; 

the threshold should be set to catch just the 

transients – typically around -12dB – the 

attack should be zero and the release should 

be around 100ms. The Ratio control sets how 

much the sound is attenuated by, with higher 

values giving a stronger effect. 

Cubase’s Channel Strip controls include a 

compressor, and also has something called an 

Envelope Shaper. This works on a similar 

principle but offers simpler controls, allowing 

you to adjust the attack and decay using a 

single control for each. 

EQ is likely to see a lot of use. Because 

these sounds aren’t designed to be 

instruments, they’re likely to need some 

significant tweaking to sit in the mix. Kick 

sounds tend to benefi t from a big boost at 

around 80Hz to give them punch and weight. 

Apply a boost at around 200Hz to fi ll out 

snare sounds, and cut the middle frequencies 

to thin out hi-hat sounds. 

Another handy trick is to add a bit of 

distortion. You might not want the abrasive 

sound of full-on distortion, but tube emulation 

and tape saturation effects are great for 

adding some extra oomph and presence to 

sounds. These effects aren’t so common in 

Do try this at home 

Percussion tracks don’t have to be based on kicks, snares and 

hi-hats, but it’s often useful to have sounds broadly in these 

territories. Here are a few ideas to replicate these sounds with 

objects you’ll fi nd around the home 

KICK DRUM 

This should have a sharp, clearly defi ned 

initial transient followed by a deep, 

full-bodied decay. 

Stamping feet on a wooden fl oor 

Slamming a door 

Banging table or chair legs on the fl oor 

Hitting a cavity wall with the palm of 

your hand 

Bouncing a football or basketball 

Punching a sofa or bean bag 

Hitting a large, empty plastic box with a 

rolling pin 

SNARE DRUM 

Real snare drums vary widely depending 

on what they’re made of and how they’re 

tuned, but broadly speaking they’re a 

wide-frequency, non-pitched burst of 

noise. This is relatively tricky to replicate, 

but various household objects can make 

viable stand-ins. 

Striking a baking tray with a 

wooden spoon 

Quickly crushing a plastic packaging tray 

Popping bubble wrap (a sharp twist will 

pop lots at the same time) 

Claps and fi nger clicks 

Slapping yourself on the tummy gives a 

similar sound to a clap but with a 

fuller-bodied decay 

Rattling jewellery emulates the snares 

(the thin springs) on the underside of 

a snare drum 

HI-HAT 

Real hi-hats are short, non-pitched ticks, 

but you could go for something more 

like the pitched ring of a triangle. 

Tapping cutlery together 

Clinking bottles together 

Tapping crockery and glassware 

with cutlery 

Slapping a drinks coaster on to a table 

or work surface 

CRASH CYMBAL 

Crashes are a long, bright blast of noise. 

Please be careful when working with 

electricity, water and boiling oil! 

Putting food into a hot frying pan 

Opening a bottle of fi zzy drink 

Quickly emptying a bucket of water 

into a bath 

A running tap (the sound is constant 

but you can turn it into a percussive 

decay in soft ware) 

TAMBOURINE 

The unsung hero of the percussion 

section, a tambourine performance 

can really lift a track and give it 

groove and swing. It’s best to 

perform a loop rather than capture 

single shakes in isolation. on. 

Pepper grinder 

Jar of dried seeds (nutmeg, 

juniper berries) 

Jam jar fi lled with dried pasta 

Plastic bottle fi lled with gravel 

Scraping a hairbrush 

or comb 

Metal chain 

Children’s toy cupboards are a rich 

resource, both for toy instruments and 

random objects that make an interesting 

sound. Don’t neglect your beatbox skills – 

your mouth can produce an incredible 

array of noises, so just make a racket and 

choose the best ones later. 


135


⬅ Enthusiastic use of EQ will give sounds 

more presence and power 

⬇ Cubase’s Channel Strip has lots of useful 

tools for strengthening the mix 

consumer-oriented recording soft ware but 

they do appear in Cubase’s (including the 

entry-level Cubase Elements) Channel Strip. 

SAMPLING 

You can get extra mileage from sounds by 

pitching them up or down. Sounds become 

bigger and boomier when slowed down 

and snappier when pitched up. If you 

have sounds with a clearly defi ned pitch, 

adjusting them so they’re in tune with the 

track can make a huge difference. 

Most recording soft ware will let you adjust 

the pitch of recordings on the timeline, but 

they tend to use pitch-shift algorithms to 

change the pitch while maintaining the original 

timing. That is useful when you’re working 

with rhythmic performances, but for single 

percussive hits it’s 

not so important to 

maintain the timing. 

Simply playing the 

recording slower or 

faster will change the 

pitch and timing 

together, and this gives 

cleaner results than 

pitch-shift algorithms. 

The best way to achieve this is to load the 

sounds into a sampler and trigger them using 

MIDI notes. Cubase Elements comes with a 

drum sampler instrument called Groove Agent 

One. It includes various off-the-shelf sampled 

kits, but you can use your own samples too. 

Trim the samples to size, either on the timeline 

or by creating Regions in the Sample Editor 

module, and drag and drop them directly on to 

Groove Agent One’s drum pads. Click a drum 

pad to select it and use the control marked 

Coarse to adjust the pitch. There are various 

other functions available here too, such as to 

fi lter the frequencies, and trim the start and 

end points of the sample. You can then perform 

the drum pattern with a MIDI keyboard or 

draw MIDI notes using the MIDI editor. 

⬆ Groove Agent One is a sampling drum machine that lets you perform your sounds with a MIDI keyboard 



⬆ Sampler Tracks are new to Cubase 9 (Elements, Artist and Pro), and make it easy to turn any recording into a MIDI instrument 

Groove Agent One is designed for drums, 

so it has a different sample for each MIDI key. 

Other samplers are designed for pitched 

instruments, and lay a single sample out 

across the keyboard so you can play it at 

different pitches. 

Cubase’s new Sampler Track function, 

introduced in version 9, makes this easy. 

Right-click the track header area and select 

Add Track, Sampler, and drop an audio 

recording on to the sampler instrument that 

appears. The only snag is that pre-trimmed 

audio objects will need to be trimmed again, 

as this instrument reverts to the full audio fi le. 

CREATIVE DECISIONS 

It’s up to you how far you want to go in 

emulating a real drum kit. Experimental 

musicians often throw convention out of the 

window and let the sounds live in their own 

sonic space. Matthew Herbert’s album Plat Du 

Jour and Matmos’s The Rose Has Teeth in the 

Mouth of a Beast are extreme examples of this. 

Compare this to many tracks on recent albums 

by Beyoncé, which sound as if they contain 

kick, snare and hi-hat patterns but rarely use 

real drums to create the sounds in question. 

Consider combining both DIY drum sounds 

and conventional kits. It’s often helpful to mix 

a real kick drum in with a homemade sound 

to give it a bit more welly. Roll off the high 

frequencies of the real kick drum so it sits 

behind your DIY sound in the mix. 

Don’t overcrowd the timeline with too 

many events. We have a bad habit of 

creating a single element that stands on its 

own rhythmically, and then layering other 

elements that compete for space in the mix. 

It’s better to start with an idea for a rhythm 

and then use four or fi ve sounds that fi t 

together to perform that rhythm. Try to 

create loops of four, eight or 16 bars rather 

than short cycles of one or two bars. You 

might even just throw some sounds together 

at random and see what works. Sometimes 

it’s the idea that you’d never have thought of 

that is the most interesting. 

Everyone has their own preferred way of 

making music, but we fi nd it’s often helpful 

to separate composition from production. 

While it’s useful to experiment to hone your 

production skills, a drum pattern made from 

household objects won’t necessarily be a great 

piece of music. Write a song or come up with 

a musical idea fi rst, and then use these 

techniques to bring that idea to life. 

NEXT MONTH 

⬆ Cubase’s Hitpoints feature will automatically split audio fi les into individual percussion hits 

MACRO PHOTOGRAPHY 

Discover life in miniature as we look 

at the equipment and techniques 

involved in macro photography 


137

PARTING SHOTS 

Zygote 

There’s a real buzz of excitement in the air this month, as Zygote investigates 

the privacy reverberations of a Bluetooth-enabled sex toy 

INSIDE INFORMATION 

Zygote often wonders why folk 

singers stick a fi nger in their ear 

when they perform. Perhaps they 

are waxing lyrical. Now, thanks 

to some juvenile entrepreneurs, 

we can use our index fi nger to 

make a phone call. 

Innomdle is a Korean fi rm 

founded by 10 young enthusiasts, 

so young in fact that their 

company name means ‘dudes’ in 

their language. To develop their 

fi nger-phone idea they needed 

$50,000, and thanks to the 

crowd-funding site Kickstarter 

they have not only reached their 

goal but far exceeded it. In fact, 

they’ve managed to raise a 

million and a half bucks. Their 

gizmo is embedded in a smart 

watchstrap and it uses the bones 

of a human wrist and index fi nger 

to amplify a phone call from 

Bluetooth-enabled devices. So 

next time you see someone 

babbling with their fi nger in their 

ear, they may not be entirely mad. 

On the other hand, an 

example of sticking your oar in 

where it’s not wanted can be 

found with the We-Vibe sex toy. 

The 4-Plus Vibrator is controlled 

by an app that “allows couples to 

keep their fl ame ignited, together 

or apart”. Unfortunately the app 

has little or no security, which 

means anyone within range can 

seize control of the delinquent 

dildo and launch what amounts 

to a sexual assault. What’s more, 

the We-Vibe 4-Plus collects user 

data and transmits it to the 

Standard Innovation Corporation, 

at 1130 Morrison Drive, Ottawa, 

Canada. This inside information 

includes location, frequency of 

use, vibration intensity and the 

temperature of the anatomy 

involved. But Zygote is most 

reassured to learn that lawyers 

are “looking into it”. 

humans. After watching hours of 

BBC talking heads on programmes 

like Newsnight and Question Time, 

the automaton now instantly 

recognises thousands of silent 

words and phrases with an 

accuracy four times greater than 

professional lip-readers. 

Unlike its human counterparts, 

it also benefi ts from predictive 

text soft ware. For example, it 

knows the exact frequency that 

the word ‘Brexit’ is likely to be 

followed by the word ‘chaos’, so 

is one jump ahead of the 

televised speaker before the 

words have even been uttered. 

And the soft ware can only get 

smarter. Soon it will progress from 

supplying subtitles for televised 

speech, and be able to tackle live 

situations. This will be extremely 

useful to the security services 

weeding out wrong ’uns in 

crowded places, not to mention 

trying to order a round of drinks 

on pension day at Wetherspoons. 

INVISIBLE INK 

Charmaine Sharp herds cows for 

a living near Melbourne, in the 

Australian state of Victoria. She 

uses a simple inkjet printer so 

infrequently that it can take her 

10 months to get through a 

single ink cartridge. 

Two years ago, Mrs Sharp 

started to get sales calls from a 

local printer company called 

Corporate Office Supplies. They 

became so frequent and so 

insistent that for the sake of a 

quiet life she eventually agreed 

to buy 56 cartridges. And that’s 

when things spiralled totally out 

of control. Corporate Office 

Supplies forced another 1,984 ink 

cartridges on her, which at her 

rate of consumption will last for 

the next 1,650 years. They then 

sent in the debt collectors for the 

equivalent of fi ft y thousand quid. 

Zygote is pleased to report 

that the Victorian Civil Tribunal 

has just ordered the rogues to 

pay out a substantial amount of 

compensation and for the 

company to be investigated by 

the consumer affairs watchdog, 

stating that “any business that 

sells over 2,000 cartridges to 

someone who owns one printer 

has acted unlawfully. They may 

as well have said Mrs Sharp 

agreed to buy the Sydney 

Harbour Bridge.” 

BEDDY BUYS 

Shipments of the world’s fi rst 

self-making bed are about to 

arrive, and it’s a bargain at only 

£225 plus delivery charges. 

Actually, it’s not the entire bed 

that makes itself, just the 

computerised duvet, which is 

probably why it’s called the 

Smartduvet. And it’s not really a 

computerised duvet, just a 

plastic inflatable grid that slips 

inside your existing duvet cover. 

There’s a little blower, which can 

be controlled by a timer app, in 

case you need to talk to your 

duvet from a distance and tell it 

to prepare for beddy-byes. 

Anyway, the marketing 

information says it is ideal for 

people suffering from a 

physical or mental condition 

that leaves them incapable of 

working out how to spread 

out a duvet on their own. 

Otherwise known as ‘men’. 

HAPPY CLAPPY 

Computerised bog-roll dispensers 

have been installed in China’s 

biggest public toilet, at the 

Temple of Heaven in Beijing. 

The Chinese Poo Police have 

become increasingly concerned 

that visitors are nicking vast 

quantities of arse-wipes from the 

municipal facility for use in the 

privies of their own home. 

Now, before defecation can 

take place, they have to remove 

head coverings and glasses, and 

undergo a facial scan. If the 

machine doesn’t match their 

mugshot with a previous scan in 

its data fi les, then it grudgingly 

dispenses six statutory squares 

of loo paper. But if the machine 

does spot a persistent plopper, 

then they must turn the other 

cheek for nine minutes before 

they can get another six sheets. 

Which will wipe the smile off 

their face, if nothing else. 

REED BY LIMPS 

Watch your language, because 

deep in the bowels of Oxford 

University’s Department of 

Engineering there’s a computer 

that can lip-read better than 


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Computer Shopper - July 2017

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