Computer Shopper -julkaisun January 2019 -irtonumeron sisällysluettelo

As editor of Shopper, I get to read all the articles in the magazine as part of my job. While I can attest to the high quality of each article that appears (I would say that, wouldn’t I?), I have to admit I don’t carry out every project or buy every recommended product – with 140 pages each month, that would be a pretty time-consuming and costly enterprise. But most months, there are one or two articles that I put on my to-do list, to come back to once the madness of press week is out the way. This issue is one of those rare occasions where I found myself carrying out the project during the editing stage. I’m sure I’m not alone in worrying about the myriad security threats…

Tech pioneer and all-round good egg letters@computershopper.co.uk Nearly every aspect of maths and computing has its origin in Middle Eastern culture I HAVE BEEN thinking about algorithms, and whenever I think about algorithms I think of young Al. Young Al is, or was, a lovely bloke. I hope he is still alive, but he seems to have gone missing and I am getting to be a bit worried about him. He is, or he was, probably the smartest computer programmer I have ever known. I last saw him in the Coffee Cup Café just around the corner from his flat in Shiraz, the modern Iranian and ancient Persian city of poetry and wine, where Muslims, Jews and Christians live side by side in mutual respect. Iran has many excellent computer…

Intel’s new processors come out swinging SAY WHAT? IT’S BEEN TEASING us for most of the year, but Intel has finally released its ninth-generation processors, making official a lot of the details we already knew thanks to masses of leaks. Heading up the new line-up is the Core i9-9900K (see page 28 for full review), which Intel claims is the “world’s best processor for gaming”. Such a statement sounds somewhat hyperbolic, but the processor comes with eight cores and 16 threads, two more than the previous high-end Core i7-8700K and the powerful Core i9-8950HK laptop CPU. The processor has a base clock speed of 3.6GHz that boosts to 5GHz out of the box on one of the cores, so it promises proper gaming power as many games still mostly benefit…

£869 •From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT This AIO is both stylish and cheap, though its display and storage dampen enthusiasm THERE’S A CERTAIN lack of affordable all-in-one (AIO) PCs being made today, which isn’t that surprising when you think about it: the task of fitting good-quality components, a display and all the connectivity required of a full desktop into a single compact package, all while keeping the price down, can’t be a very attractive one to manufacturers. The Acer Aspire S 24, however, looks to have taken a decent crack at it. The particular spec we’re testing only costs £869 – that’s mid-range Windows desktop territory – and yet includes a quad-core Intel Core i5-8250U processor, 8GB of RAM, a large 2TB hard disk and a 24in Full HD display, not to…

£40 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT Dirt-cheap and surprisingly fast, the BX500 is everything you could want in an entry-level SSD This is quite clearly a no-frills SSD, but when it comes to straightforward speed the BX500 exceeds expectations for a budget drive LOGICALLY, IT DOESN’T seem as though there would be much room for a new budget SATA SSD on the market: the SATA platform’s throughput limit means new drives won’t necessarily be faster than old ones, so why not just buy a higher-end drive that’s had a few years to drop in price? Of course, not all NAND is created equal, and even if an SSD promises to max out the speed limits of what SATA can allow, it might fall far short of those speeds in more demanding…

£750 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT Lenovo’s latest flippy hybrid is weighed down by poor battery life, despite successes elsewhere THERE MAY BE nothing too innovative about the Yoga 530’s design to speak of, but it’s what lies within this convertible that’s most interesting: a Ryzen 7 2700U processor. So far, we’ve only seen this in the business-focused – and far more expensive – HP EliteBook 745 G5 (Shopper 370), so the prospect of this high-end chip powering a more affordable consumer device is an enticing one. HUMAN ERROR It’s a shame, then, that the Yoga 530 is so humdrum on the outside. At 1.67kg and 328x229x17.6mm, it’s neither particularly light nor unusually thin, and you get only a fairly basic selection of ports: two USB3, one USB Type-C, one HDMI…

£130 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT The Boom 3 looks and sounds good, and even floats in water – it’s a worthy successor to the Boom 2 THE UE BOOM 2 (Shopper 345) was an instant classic: this distinctively cylindrical Bluetooth speaker was built with IPX7 waterproofing, looked fantastic and sounded excellent, all of which set it apart from its competitors. It’s taken a few years (and a few spin off devices), but UE is finally back with a direct successor, the Boom 3. It’s even more stylish than the Boom 2. The knitted fabric mesh that wraps around the speaker has a much finer weave than before, and it has a natty two-tone colour that shifts under bright ambient light. PARTY ANIMAL At the front of the Boom 3 are…

£1,099 • From www.apple.com VERDICT Top of the class in both performance and price, the iPhone XS Max is the best phone you shouldn’t buy THE MOST POWERFUL iPhone of Apple’s 2018 line-up, the iPhone XS Max is quite simply the best smartphone Apple has ever produced, yet it’s also one that few people, if any, should go out and buy. We’ll explain the technical excellence of the XS Max – bigger brother to the standard iPhone XS – shortly, but frankly nothing outweighs the fact that it’s just too expensive. Specs start at £1,099 for the 64GB model, and that rises to £1,249 and £1,449 for the 256GB and 512GB versions respectively. In all three cases, it’s an outrageous amount to be charging even for a premium flagship, and…

Free • From itunes.apple.com VERDICT Apple has added some neat desktop-focused tools, but it’s no revolutionary overhaul THE LATEST VERSION of macOS is named after an arid desert, but the Mojave update is far from barren: it brings a decent set of new features that most Mac users will appreciate. 10.14 Mojave, to give it its full name, is a free download from the macOS App Store for anyone running a fairly recent Mac. You can install it on any mid-2012 or newer MacBook Air or Pro; any late 2012 or newer Mac mini or iMac; any 12in MacBook; or the recently released iMac Pro. It’s also available for the cylindrical 2013 Mac Pro, plus 2010 and 2012 tower models with AMD graphics. THE FUTURE IS THEN Although there have…

01 A smartphone’s operating system (OS) dictates its basic features and which third-party software you can install. There are three main contenders: Apple’s iOS, which is found on the iPhone, Google’s Android, which is used by various handset manufacturers, and Windows Phone, which has few options, especially since Microsoft has discontinued support for its OS. Apple iOS and Google Android both have thousands of apps available. 02 All smartphones have colour screens, but their resolutions vary. Basic models have 1,280x720 pixels, but text can be indistinct. Look for a display that has at least 1,920x1,080 pixels so it’s easier to read te and watch Full HD videos. 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…

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

01 Action cameras are typically much smaller than a regular camcorder, as they are designed to be mounted to a bike, board or car, or worn on your person. As the name suggests, they are designed primarily for shooting action footage, but because of their small size they are ideal for strapping on to your pet’s collar or your children’s toys for a different perspective. 02 Even basic action cameras will shoot Full HD video, and many 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, 4K/60, 1080p/60 and 720p/120 models for…

01 You should be able to buy a decent inkjet printer for less than £40. High-quality printing is possible on such a printer, but it will be slow. The actual print speed of an inkjet can be half the quoted (maximum) speed for text documents, and even slower when printing graphics. Budget inkjet printers such as these are designed only for light use and can be expensive to run. 02 For £80 to £90 you can buy a more capable printer that’s either faster and better built or better at reproducing photos. If documents are your priority, you’ll want a high minimum speed and low print costs. Look for inkjets that can handle all your office media, such as envelopes and labels. 03 If photos are your priority, speed is…

01 You don’t have to spend much to buy a decent graphics card that can drive multiple monitors. The AMD Radeon RX 550 costs about £100, for example, and while it isn’t suited to playing the latest games in Full HD, it is perfect for watching videos, browsing the web and playing basic games. 02 You’ll need to spend more money if you want to play the latest games. A good mid-range gaming graphics card is the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060, which is powerful enough to play all modern games at Full HD resolution. High-powered cards tend to be more expensive, so expect to pay over £400 if you want to play games in Ultra HD at the highest quality settings. 03 Check that your chosen card has the graphics…

Chat and Communication UPDATED Evernote 6.15.4.7934 Store your notes, ideas and plans in the cloud, and synchronise them between computers. UPDATED Mailbird 2.5.20.0 A free desktop email client for Windows. Miranda IM 0.10.80 Chat with friends across multiple messaging platforms, including AIM, Facebook, IRC and MSN, all from one simple interface. UPDATED Skype for Windows 8.31.0.92 Make internet voice and video calls for free, and buy credit to make calls to mobiles and landlines. UPDATED Telegram 1.4.0 This free IM app synchronises your conversations across multiple devices, and can spruce up chats with stickers and GIFs. WhatsApp Desktop 0.3.557 A free PC and Mac version of the popular messaging app, letting you chat from your desktop. Customisation NEW VERSION iolo System Mechanic Free 18.0.1 Speed up your system with iolo’s…

£415 • From www.cclonline.com VERDICT The Cosmos C700M is an eminently customisable case with a big footprint and a bigger price AS WITH ANY type of PC component, there’s inevitably a case designed to be as big, brash and expensive as the format would allow. Enter the Cosmos C700M: a huge, RGB-laden, EATX-compatible tower that costs more than the other six models in this test put together. That statistic alone will be enough to make most potential buyers run. Yet the Cosmos C700M is overtly and proudly intended for those to whom money is no object, and has the features and build quality to prove it. GRAND DESIGNS The sheer bulk of the Cosmos C700M borders on comical: it looms over mid-towers and makes even decent-sized monitors look like little…

£70 • From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT It’s better value than most H-series cases, but the H500 still isn’t NZXT’s best work IS SOMEONE AT NZXT a Shopper reader? We’ve previously complained that the component maker’s H700i (Shopper 361) and H400i (Shopper 363) PC cases had limited their appeal by massively inflating prices via the inclusion of dubiously useful ‘smart devices’ – essentially souped-up fan hubs with RGB lighting and built-in cooling controls. In practice, the smart device doesn’t do much a decent piece of system monitoring software can’t do, leaving you with an otherwise good case that costs more than it should. At least someone who’s aired this grievance is being listened to, as you can now buy NZXT’s latest H-series mid-tower either with the smart device (the £100 H500i) or…

£103 • From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT Bigger and better equipped than its predecessor, the View 37 is a supremely practical EATX chassis WE STILL REMEMBER the View 27 catching our eye a whole two years ago, when the Cyberpower Ultra Elite FX system (Shopper 347) arrived within it. It was hard not be taken with its distinctive ‘gull-wing’ side panel, which wrapped a curved acrylic window around the top left edge of the PC so you could peer in from the top as well as from the left. The new View 37 isn’t so much a refinement of this idea as an expansion of it. The entirety of the curvy panel is now acrylic, rather than being a partially metal panel with a window, so you can see all the way…

£429 • From www.apple.com/uk VERDICT The new Apple Watch is the sleekest and slickest wearable Apple has ever made IT’S HARDLY SURPRISING that the fourth Apple Watch is only a small departure from Apple’s previous wearables. There are two new sizes, and the Series 4 has a 30% larger screen, but the Apple Watch Series 3 (Shopper 363) was one of the all-time great smartwatches, so we’re not too sad that the two look so similar in the flesh. Now coming in 40mm and 44mm variants, the new Apple Watch takes design cues from the latest iPhones. More rounded corners and smaller bezels contribute to a more edge-to-edge screen design, which in turn means there’s more room for showing sophisticated customisable watch faces on the home screen. Apps benefit from…

£175 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Forerunner 235 offers oodles of options, but accuracy can be off the mark THE FORERUNNER 235 serves to demonstrate not just why Garmin’s reputation for quality running watches is so richly deserved, but also how tenuous this position at the top actually is. Combining a decent-sized 1.77in screen and a circular frame, it’s somewhat chunky and definitely resembles a fitness aid more than a fashion item, but it’s smart enough to wear most of the time. Instead of a touchscreen, there are five buttons for navigation through menus. If you’ve ever tried using a touchscreen with sweaty hands, you’ll know this is a sensible move in a running watch, although five buttons does feel a bit like overkill. It could quite feasibly get by…

£299 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Samsung’s most accomplished smartwatch yet, but some of the new features could be better IT’S BEEN NEARLY two years since Samsung unveiled a new flagship smartwatch, the Gear S3 (Shopper 350), but even with all this time (plus a name change) the Galaxy Watch is clearly descended from the old Gear series. The 46mm Galaxy Watch is about the same size as the Gear S3, and combines design elements from both the Frontier and Classic versions of the latter. Mostly, it has a slick, polished look, but the two flat, grippy buttons – used instead of a traditional crown – are straight out of the rugged Gear S3 Frontier. ON THE TURN The Gear series’ rotating bezel is here as well, and still works brilliantly…

Send your problems to businesshelp@computershopper.co.uk Cap in hand I regularly have to edit Word documents that have entries scattered through them that are all in capitals, and our company policy is that these documents should be formatted as small caps. At the moment I just scroll endlessly through, making the change by the somewhat tortuous process of selecting the text in upper case, then selecting ‘capitalize each word’ from the options on the Change Case icon in the Font area of the Office Ribbon. Once the text has been changed to lower case with leading capitals, I can then select Small Caps from the Effects option that is displayed when I click the arrow to display the Font Dialog Box. This process takes up far too much time; is there…

As promised, there is an easier way to do this. Although nowhere near as much fun, you can download apps to measure and analyse your Wi-Fi reception. For example, Webprovider’s Wifi Analyzer (free, Android) will not only give you a live readout of your current connection, but can also map the signal strength on to a plan of your home and garden. We had no joy with this feature, but the app’s free so it’s worth a try. There are many more Wi-Fi analysing apps for Android, including many that could be easily confused with Webprovider’s app. Things are not so rosy in Apple’s walled garden, however, as iOS locks developers out of the iPhone and iPad Wi-Fi hardware. This means that only ‘external’ network information can be gleaned, and…

letters@computershopper.co.uk Whine seller @ I am looking to change my LG G4 SIM-only phone and bought your magazine as the cover indicated a smartphone review (Shopper 369). I was interested in the Samsung Galaxy S8 as a friend had also recommended it, and I looked on Amazon as suggested by your review as the best place to buy. However, I was concerned by some of the one-star reviews saying this price was a scam, as buyers had been sent phones with European plugs, and others had said the phones were faulty and couldn’t get a refund as it was from a third-party seller. Do you check all this before recommending a company? I note that Carphone Warehouse has it at £499; possibly the phone is more genuine? I am now…

The technology to create very small computers exists, and it’s technically possible to build one that takes information at the hardware level and sends it back to a central server IT COULD HAVE been the plot of a James Bond film: tiny spy chips embedded in our electronic devices, delivering secrets back to the Chinese government. Yet far from being fiction, this was a serious report delivered by Bloomberg, claiming that the Chinese government had embedded chips no bigger than a grain of sand into motherboards used by US companies including Apple and Amazon. According to the report, the chips were implanted on motherboards manufactured by the Taiwanese-American firm Supermicro, before being assembled into computers and used by some of the biggest tech companies in the world. In many ways…

▶ For the shelf The Lenovo Yoga 530 is a rare misstep from a manufacturer that usually does rotating convertible laptops as well as anyone. Design-wise, it’s dull: the closest thing to excitement is the occasional sense of panic that comes with accidentally pressing the silly side-mounted power button by accident. There are some bright spots, such as a quality keyboard and speedy SSD, but a mediocre display and dreadful battery life prevent it from feeling like a practical mobile companion. It also has a performance issue we’ve seen before: AMD’s Ryzen 7 2700U doesn’t significantly outperform its more mid-range Ryzen stablemates. (Page 38) ▶ For the wallet If you’re looking for a 2.5in SSD but also watching the pennies, consider the Crucial BX500. The 240GB model we tested works…

London’s sewers set to be flushed with 5G DARK, FILTH, RATS: three things you’d expect to find in London’s sewers. You wouldn’t think those ancient grimy tunnels would be the place to consider setting up a 5G network. But that’s what telecoms firms 02 and Three are planning to do, in partnership with Scottish energy and telecoms network company SSE. The three companies are planning to build the infrastructure to support the rollout of 5G in the capital’s sewers. Rather than pipe 5G signals around tunnels designed to filter human waste to treatment plants, the idea is to use the tunnels to connect the 5G masts that will eventually be erected around London to provide connectivity for a new era of mobile broadband and wireless communication. By using the existing…

£1,099 • From www.nvidia.com VERDICT It has impressive core performance, but Nvidia’s new top card is expensive, and its headline features lack support NEW GRAPHICS CARDS are rarely as exciting as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. This flagship GPU doesn’t just deliver the usual performance boost: it also has enticing new features that could drastically improve lighting effects and transform how antialiasing is applied, potentially helping games look better even as they run faster. The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, along with the lower-spec GeForce RTX 2080 and RTX 2070, uses Nvidia’s new Turing architecture, which was first introduced on Quadro professional GPUs in August 2018. It’s by far the most well-specified of the RTX family, being equipped with 11GB of GDDR6 memory and 4,352 CUDA cores, but it’s the…

£600 • From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT Intel’s most interesting CPU in years blurs the line between mainstream and enthusiast Intel’s octa-core, 16-thread processor is the first widely available CPU to hit 5GHz boost speeds out of the box LAUNCHING WITH AN uncharacteristically quiet fanfare are Intel’s 9th-gen desktop processors, the first wave being led by the mid-range Core i5-9600K, the high-end Core i7-9700K and the crowning Core i9-9900K. This is a bit of a departure for Intel, which has historically chosen the top Core i7 chip as its flagship (the Core i7-8700K, Core i7-7700K and so on). This time, the Core line-up is headed by the far more expensive Core i9-9900K, which also has the distinction of being Intel’s first mainstream octa-core, 16-thread processor, as well as the first widely available…

£509 • From www.microsoft.com VERDICT It’s not the most powerful or longest-lasting 2-in-1, but the Surface Go is still a charming mobile companion A SMALLER, CHEAPER version of the Microsoft Surface Pro (Shopper 355) has always sounded like a good idea, but the Surface Go is almost too compact for its own good; as a standalone tablet, this 10in device can make Windows feel awfully cramped when you’ve got the onscreen keyboard up. Add the actual keyboard attachment, however, and it’s transformed into a much more appealing 2-in-1. The Surface Go comes in two configurations: one with 4GB of RAM and a 64GB eMMC drive, the other with 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SATA SSD. The latter configuration is more expensive (leaping from £379 to £509), but we wouldn’t…

£2,277 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Outrageously expensive, but the 144Hz IPS panel and FALD backlighting provide the best HDR gaming experience yet THE PG27UQ LAYS claim to two world firsts. Not only is it the first gaming monitor to combine a 4K resolution with a 144Hz refresh rate, it’s also the first to provide ‘proper’ HDR thanks to its 384 individual backlight zones. While we’ve seen HDR monitors before – most recently the BenQ EX3203R (Shopper 370) – they’ve had to make do with a handful of backlight zones, making it impossible for them to deliver the true high-contrast HDR of a TV. But the PG27UQ is the real deal, with full-array local dimming (FALD) backlighting. It doesn’t come cheap. The PG27UQ is currently the most expensive gaming monitor on…

£235 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT With top-quality sound and a versatile design, this is a great – if expensive – rugged Bluetooth speaker OWNING A WATERPROOF speaker has its advantages. Even if you’re not into watersports or regularly hitting the pool, a weather-resistance speaker is a lot more versatile than a regular plug-in speaker that sits next to your living room sofa. The Xtreme 2 is JBL’s second attempt at a waterproof Bluetooth speaker, but it’s been built with confidence: not only is it IPX7-certified, which allows it to be submerged to a depth of one metre for 30 minutes, it also has two metal bars to hook on the bundled strap. This is more useful than it sounds, as while the Xtreme 2 can be taken out and about,…

£699 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Sony’s first OLED-equipped smartphone is a success, but it still has a tough time standing out SMARTPHONE INNOVATION IS a mixed bag. For every attractive full-body display and triple camera arrangement, there’s some gimmick such as side-squeezing controls or naff 3D face-scanning. For its latest flagship, Sony hasn’t exactly gone where no smartphone has gone before, but its big new feature is exciting nonetheless: a 6in OLED screen, with technology borrowed from the firm’s Bravia line of TVs. This is framed by minuscule notch-free chin and forehead bezels, above and below the screen. The panel wraps around the sides of the device ever so slightly, too, just like the Samsung Galaxy S9 (Shopper 364). OLED BY EXAMPLE Sony has also borrowed a feature originally included…

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

01 A 32in Full HD TV costs around £200, but premium larger 4K models can be closer to £2,000. TVs look much smaller in the shop than in your home, so measure the space available before you buy. Curved TVs are becoming increasingly more common, but bear in mind that these typically take up more floor space than a traditional flat set. 02 A 1,920x1,080-resolution TV can display a 1080p image. You can still buy TVs with a 720p (1,366x768) resolution, but they’re no cheaper and the image won’t be as sharp. 3,840x2,560 Ultra HD resolution, or 4K, TVs are finally available at reasonable prices, although you’ll still pay a premium for one over a 1080p model. 03 Consider the number of inputs you’ll need to connect the rest of…

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

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

£74 • From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT This mid-tower’s striking looks will grab your attention; cooling and ease of use will keep it NORMALLY WHEN WE’RE sent a Cooler Master case for review, it’s some enormous thing like the Cosmos C700M or the MasterCase H500P Mesh White (Shopper 364), so it’s nice to see something as mainstream-friendly as the Masterbox K500. It’s a mid-tower case capable of holding motherboard sizes up to ATX, so it hits the sweet spot where it’s not so big that it takes over your desk or floor but is still spacious enough for a multitude of hardware. SPIN DOCTOR On that note, cooling gets off to an excellent start, with dual 120mm intake fans and one 120mm rear exhaust fan; there’s certainly no pressing need to buy…

£65 • From www.overclockers.co.uk VERDICT It needs an extra fan, but otherwise the Eclipse P350X is a good-value chassis for ATX builds PHANTEKS IS NOT a blockbuster name like NZXT or Cooler Master, but just because it’s a less famous brand doesn’t mean it can’t put out some great kit; the Eclipse P400S (Shopper 351), for instance, is a great mid-tower. The P350X is ostensibly a slightly lower-end chassis, though it takes the Eclipse line in an even more modern direction than the P400 and P400S, thanks to the addition of built-in RGB lighting. Unlike on, say, the Cooler Master Masterbox K500, the lighting doesn’t originate from removable fans but is part of the chassis itself. Thin, light-up strips run along the top edge of the PSU shroud, as well…

£200 • From www.fitbit.com/uk VERDICT A versatile smartwatch with four-day battery life and a compact design, all backed up by the Fitbit community THE VERSA HAS a lot of hopes and expectations riding on it, even if most of them are Fitbit’s own. It’s the firm’s second attempt to break into smatchwatches, following the Fitbit Ionic (Shopper 360), and strips away many of the non-essentials from this precursor to create a smaller and more affordable wearable. Fitbit is hoping this will, in turn, broaden the Versa’s appeal beyond the usual, male-dominated smartwatch crowd. The obvious benefit is the size of the watch on your wrist. If you’re used to wearing something bulky like a Garmin Fenix, the Versa will feel ridiculously compact and lightweight in comparison. It’s still far off…

£220 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT It improves on its predecessors in nearly every way, but the Ticwatch Pro falls down in one crucial area: performance THE TICWATCH PRO is the latest creation of Chinese company Mobvoi, a relative newcomer to the UK smartwatch market whose previous wearables were launched via a Kickstarter campaign just last year. The Ticwatch E (for ‘Express’) and S (for ‘Sport’) stood out among their premium rivals for one simple reason: they offered much the same features but at a fraction of the price. Both models run Wear OS, have a built-in optical heart-rate monitor and GPS, and let you store music offline, allowing you to enjoy a few tunes when you go for a run or bike ride without having to take your phone with…

£190 • From www.withings.com VERDICT This athletic redesign of the Steel HR gains a host of attractive new features AFTER BEING BOUGHT by Nokia in 2016 and sold back to a co-founder in 2018, you might have thought Withings would step back and consolidate before launching itself back into the harum-scarum of the wearables market. Yet it’s wasted no time at all, recently launching the fitness-focused Withings Steel HR Sport. Based strongly on the Nokia Steel HR, which was also released in 2018, the Steel HR Sport adds much-needed extra features and ramps up the style, but follows a similar template to the firm’s previous wearables. FORM AND FUNCTION Just like the regular Steel HR, the Sport model is a watch first and a smartwatch or fitness tracker second. It has a…

With so many accounts breached in the Facebook attack, it’s opened a lot of people’s eyes to the security risk posed by online accounts getting hacked. With that in mind, here’s our security checklist that should be applied to all accounts. 1 Set a different password for each account Don’t let one account getting hacked affect all your other accounts. Instead, make sure you use a separate and strong password for each account. 2 Don’t use single sign-in Using Facebook or Google to create accounts on other services quickly may seem a time-saver, but it’s fraught with danger: if your main account is hacked, the hackers will have access to every other service, too. Instead, always create a separate account for each service. 3 Use two-factor authentication Where possible, turn…

Semiconductors is the area of materials science that looks most likely to affect the world of computers and electronic devices, but there’s more. Some of these new materials have electronic applications, even though they’re not semiconductors – and here we could mention advances in battery technology – but others have an entirely different use. Portable and handheld devices such as smartphones and tablets allow us to lead an ever more mobile lifestyle while remaining in touch, but this level of convenience isn’t without its cost. Whenever you take a piece of electronic gear out of your home or office it becomes much more likely to suffer damage. Drenched tablets and cracked or scratched phone screens are testimony to this fact. Yet it doesn’t have to be that way. Increasing use…

Send your problems to help@computershopper.co.uk Wallpaper stripped I’ve had a Chromebook for something like a year now, but after a recent Chrome OS update it replaced my long-term solid-colour background with the default wallpaper. Assuming it was a one-off I reset it, but after every reboot it’s gone again – always replaced with the default image of a feather. Reading online, the advice seems to be that I need to Powerwash the Chromebook, but I’d rather not. Is there any other way to stop the computer forgetting my wallpaper choice? Simon Carter There was an update to the way users select wallpaper around the time that you contacted us, so it’s possible that you fell foul of a bug as this was introduced. If so, there’s a fair chance the…

ben@computershopper.co.uk Interior photography If you’re selling a home or advertising a business, high-quality interior photos make a huge difference. We show you how MOST PHOTOGRAPHERS HAVE one or two subjects that they prefer to shoot: perhaps portraits, wildlife or something more specialised such as macro or drone photography. We don’t know many people who specialise in interior photography – that is, photographing the insides of buildings. It’s an interesting discipline, though, and one that presents a number of transferable skills. High-quality interior photography is crucial when it comes to selling a home. The estate agent industry is increasingly moving online, with low-cost agents doing little more than uploading details of homes to Rightmove. With no-one actively promoting sales, it’s down to the photos to grab people’s attention and convince them…

Education matters @ I find it hard to understand why you think that schools put upgrading computers top of the list (‘Rants & Raves’, Shopper 370). This letter is being written on Windows 7, which has worked perfectly for years except when the memory failed. Primary schools do not need the latest gizmos. My mantra is never upgrade (anything). It always leads to trouble. For Windows 7, you just turn off automatic updates until you are ready. The old black boxes you write about will not run Windows 10. I read in the i newspaper that many of our schools are falling apart; money is shared out among many fields. Also, I have just read in your magazine about Windows 10: you can’t turn off automatic updates so they interrupt…

David Ludlow RANTS COMPUTERS AND SMARTPHONES are making us ruder. I don’t mean that in a heads-down-ignoring-all-human-contact kind of way, I mean in a deliberate, plotted and calculated way, and it’s all thanks to AI. Google, Apple, Microsoft and the like are all trying to be clever and save us time by suggesting automatic replies to our text messages, emails and instant messages. By scanning the content, the companies attempt to pull meaning out of the messages and then give canned responses to save us having to craft a reply. It sounds great in theory, but it’s fair to say that no algorithm has quite mastered the art of being nice. It started with the Apple Watch, which had a bunch of dumb, pre-programmed replies you could use for text…

Canada Call of the wild For people who live out in the Canadian sticks, getting good internet connectivity is a stickier situation than a maple syrup-covered grizzly bear. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has earmarked C$750m for a Broadband Fund to bring fast broadband to rural parts of Canada. The Broadband Fund is aiming for 25Mbit/s download speeds and 5Mbit/s upload speeds, half the proposed 50/10Mbit/s target the CRTC had last year. Consumer rights group OpenMedia called the decision a “stunning step backwards” that “demonstrates a serious lack of ambition”. France Clever cars on show The Paris Motor Show demonstrated the growing obsession with advanced tech that car makers love to show off. Renault’s EZ-ULTIMO concept car is less of an automobile and more a luxury mobile lounge,…

“This claim is without merit, and we’re pleased the court has dismissed it” Google throws shade at the accusation it exploited iPhone user data “This is not the kind of business I would like to see in Houston, and certainly this is not the kind of business the city is seeking to attract” Houston mayor Sylvester Turner doesn’t want to see robot sex dolls in his city “Supply is undoubtedly tight, particularly at the entry-level of the PC market” Intel interim CEO Bob Swan claims growth in PC sales has led to a shortage in the company’s 14nm chips “The next technical frontier for streaming will be much more demanding than video” Catherine Hsiao, product manager at Google, sheds light on the search giant’s game-streaming efforts “It was a method…

£2,100 •From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT Its new CPU and graphics card deliver only modest gains, but this is still a capable 4K gaming system THE GAMER RTX has more cutting-edge parts than most PCs, even past the lofty £2,000 mark: both its Intel Core i7-9700K processor and GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card are more or less brand new. This is also our first chance to see both parts in action outside of the trusty Shopper testing rig. POWER OF EIGHT The Core i7-9700K is an octa-core chip, like the Core i9-9900K (page 28), running at a base clock speed of 3.6GHz with a maximum boost of 4.9GHz. Scan has left these stock speeds unaltered and, with the aid of 16GB of DDR4 RAM, they produced some very high scores in our…

£296 • From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT It’s not cheap or beginner-friendly, but this Z390 board does well by its higher-end features ONE OF THE more unexpected strengths of Intel’s 9th-gen Core series chips is their ability to work – socket allowing – with motherboards that use either the new Z390 chipset or the previous Z370. With recent generation changes, the new CPUs have always demanded the very latest chipset, which meant that upgrading was always that much more expensive. Z390 boards, such as Asus’ ROG Maximus XI Hero WiFi, therefore have a lot of work to do to prove they’re worth investing in over an older, cheaper Z370 model. In the case of this specific motherboard, that means a fresh design, some new UEFI tricks and improved memory overclocking support over…

£230 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT A beautifully crafted Chromebook, albeit one with some display and storage issues CHROMEBOOKS ARE TYPICALLY small and basic laptops that sacrifice looks for affordability, but Acer’s new Chromebook 14 is aiming to shake up that trend. In an effort to prove that it’s possible to build a cheap laptop without the usual trade-offs, Acer is treading an unusual path with its latest Chrome OS portable. In fact, you could be forgiven for mistaking the Chromebook 14 for a MacBook Air at first glance. The Chromebook 14’s wedged shape and gold or silver aluminium chassis, black plastic hinge at the rear and sunken keyboard are all reminiscent of Apple’s classic laptop; only the brushed finish on the lid and Acer logo give the game away. CLOUD…

£144 • From www.printernet.co.uk VERDICT The Pixma TS8250 is classy and fairly capable, so long as you can afford it In most ways, the TS8250 performs very well. Scans are swift, and photo prints were also impressive IF YOU’RE GOING to be spending nearly £150 on a printer, you’ll want it to look special, and Canon’s Pixma TS8250 certainly does. Made from glossy black plastic, brightened up with chrome trim, and controlled by a huge colour touchscreen, this multifunction peripheral (MFP) is about as uncluttered and classy as they come. It’s highly specified, too, with a socket for printing from or scanning to SD cards, and comprehensive support for cloud services, including Google Drive. The TS8250 is aimed at creative use including photography, and to this end its six-ink printer…

£2,299 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT LG has upgraded it’s ‘entry-level’ OLED TV, and the results are sensational HOLD ON TO your credit cards: the LG B8 is the new ‘entry-level’ OLED TV from the South Korean brand. With a starting price of £1,799 for the 55in model it’s still by no means cheap, especially when the 65in model we were sent costs £2,299, but with the latest OLED technology on show, not to mention an upgraded image processor, this big-screen TV looks set to deliver a spectacle to remember. Whereas LG’s higher-ranking C8, E8, G8 and W8 series TVs feature the company’s new top-end Alpha 9 processor, the OLED65B8 uses an Alpha 7 processor, which is essentially a modified version of last year’s chipset. This means the OLED65B8 doesn’t feature…

£89 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Moto E5 Play has its flaws, but a low price and capable camera save it from the bin Outdoors, this is easily the best smartphone camera we’ve used at under £100 MERCIFULLY, THERE ARE still smartphones aiming to be budget champions, even in this age of £1,000-plus handsets. Motorola’s Moto E5 Play, which launches at under £100, is one such smartphone. There’s not much disguising its cheapness: the plain, all-plastic design quickly gives it away. Still, it feels sufficiently robust, and the removable plastic rear cover allows you to easily replace the 2,100mAh battery, access the microSD card slot (cards up to 128GB are supported) or swap out the nano SIM. There’s a fast-charging Micro USB port on the bottom, and a 3.5mm headphone…

01 A basic laptop costing around £300 will run everyday office, multimedia and education software, but it won’t be suitable for 3D gaming or processor-intensive tasks such as video editing. Many laptops at this price have a 15.6in screen and weigh over 2kg, so they’re best used around the house and for occasional journeys. 02 If you want to play modern games, you’ll need a laptop with a dedicated graphics chip such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060M. Good gaming laptops tend to have large 15.6 or 17in screens and weigh around 3kg, so they’re best suited to use at home. 03 If you want a laptop that you can take everywhere, look for a model that weighs less than 2kg. For the best portability, buy one that has a…

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

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

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

01 A basic 1TB internal hard disk should cost around £40. This will be fast enough for general use and will provide enough storage for most users. Make sure the hard disk you choose has the appropriate interface type for your PC. Most hard disks and solid-state drives (SSDs) use the SATA3 interface, which enables faster speeds than the older SATA2. Pretty much every motherboard released in recent years will have multiple SATA3 ports, allowing you to connect several storage drives at once. 02 SSDs can make the most of SATA3’s high bandwidth for fast file transfers. They use flash memory similar to that found in USB flash drives, and although they tend to provide less capacity than mechanical hard disks, they’re significantly faster. More expensive SSDs use the NVMe…

BUDGET BUILDS THERMALTAKE Versa H18 Sometimes a microATX motherboard is all you need, especially when you’re trying to save on component costs – and if that sounds like you, you might just love the Versa H18. This compact case is fantastically affordable, at just £40, but manages to stand up to bigger mid-towers on many of its features. That doesn’t stretch to ATX motherboard support, but storage capacity is good (either two 3.5in drives and two 2.5in drives, or four of the latter), and there are plenty of fan slots, too. It’s also big enough for easy building while still being small enough to tuck away neatly. MID-RANGE GAMING COOLER MASTER Masterbox K500 This mid-tower is a fine example of how to pull off a bold exterior design without it…

£45 • From www.overclockers.co.uk VERDICT It won’t suit more performance-based setups, but the Satellite Plus is a handsome candidate for living room PCs CUBE-STYLE CASES are a fitting alternative to towers whenever you want to save space. This could be just to make room on your desk, but compact designs such as the Kolink Satellite Plus also excel as part of a home cinema PC build, as cube cases tend to fit more easily into AV cabinets. The fact that they don’t look like the archetypal tower PC also helps maintain your living room aesthetic. The Satellite Plus is particularly mindful of looks, as compared to the standard Kolink Satellite, it has exactly the same specs – drive capacity, motherboard support, dimensions – but has dropped the Satellite’s plain, mesh-fronted…

£40 • From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT While it doesn’t entirely escape budget limitations, the Versa H18 is very capable for something so cheap IF YOU WANT a small PC but perhaps aren’t so comfortable building into a truly compact case like the Kolink Satellite Plus, the Versa H18 is a great compromise. Besides adopting a more traditional tower form factor, it’s nice and wide, almost entirely built out of metal, includes a PSU shroud for tidiness, and can be fitted with a good-sized side window: almost immediately, the Versa H18 positions itself as a PC case for those who want more from their budget components than the usual basic, plasticky fare. Being a mini-tower, it’s still limited to builds based around either microATX or Mini-ITX motherboards, but it’s not so tight…

APPS APPLE Watch Series 4 While its fitness-tracking capabilities are formidable, the Apple Watch Series 4 truly excels as a versatile smartwatch. This is partly down to its good looks and highly customisable watch face design, but mainly thanks to it being especially well supported on the apps front. Much of the good stuff comes from Apple itself, such as the Music app that lets you sync iTunes playlists with other devices, but there’s also a wealth of third-party apps. Email, fitness, to-do lists, sound recording and even Rosetta Stone language tuition, among many others, can be found on your wrist with just a few taps. SLEEP TRACKING MOOV Now What makes the Now such an attractive choice for keeping tabs on your sleeping patterns isn’t insights provided by the…

£179 • From www.fossil.com VERDICT The Q Control is Fossil’s first fitness-focused smartwatch, but it lacks several key tracking features MAINLY BY VIRTUE of including a heart-rate monitor, the Q Control is Fossil’s first Android Wear device to be described as a ‘Sports Smartwatch’. How, then, does it compare to other fitness-minded wearables such as the Apple Watch? For one, it’s no less nice-looking. The chunky steel casing exudes a certain degree of style and sophistication, just as you’d expect from a brand that’s associated with fashion accessories. Once it’s on your wrist, however, you might become less enthusiastic about the chunky design as it’s quite weighty, which isn’t ideal when you’re taking it out on a run. The optical heart-rate sensor does at least sit flush with the back…

£45 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT It’s only a simple tracker, but the Now’s unique technology and coaching set it apart FOR MORE CASUAL exercise regimes, you don’t need an expensive smartwatch to monitor activities and improve your fitness – and the Moov Now proves it. It’s an incredibly simple device, to the point of looking slightly peculiar: there’s no screen, just a rounded pod cradled inside a stretchy strap. It’s not ugly, just different – like some kind of extra-terrestrial bracelet – and it’s very comfy as well. That’s down to the strap and tracker having a combined weight of just 15g, making it something we could easily forget we were wearing. It’s also dirt-proof, sweat-proof and waterproof up to 3m, so can handle anything short of scuba diving. Another…

Talk about semiconductor materials invariably leads to mention of mobility and band gap, so an explanation is appropriate. Mobility – by which we are referring either to electron or hole mobility – is a measure of how quickly the charge carriers move through the material when subjected to an electric field. The higher the mobility, the faster the transistors are able to switch for a given voltage. Using a higher mobility material than silicon would, therefore, provide a means of increasing clock frequencies without the dire consequences for power consumption that cause the clock frequencies of silicon-based processors to stall at about 4GHz. The band gap is the difference in energy between a material’s valance band and its conduction band. You can think of this as the energy required to…

clive@computershopper.co.uk Make a Wi-Fi detector Locating the best place for a multiroom speaker or Wi-Fi relay could drive you mad. Luckily, CliveWebster has two solutions, one that’s fun and one that’s quick WI-FI IS AN unreliable connection at times, with the internal fabric of walls and floors interfering in unpredictable ways. To map the best location of an internet device or Wi-Fi relay is therefore not obvious: will a relay in the spare back bedroom broadcast downward on to the patio, or are you better off putting the relay in the kitchen and hoping the broadcast sphere will push through to the upstairs? Is it OK to place that Sonos or Alexa device on the far wall of your study, or does it need to sit further out into the…